I like
movies. Who doesn’t? Well, I’ve realized that in my first post I said I might
post movie reviews once in a while. Since it’s been a while I’ve seen a
movie in the theatres (I believe the last time I went to the movies was in
December – The Hobbit and Django Unchained – too long ago to give
my thoughts, but I enjoyed both for different reasons), I thought I might share
some thoughts on two that I recently saw at home.
Keira
Knightley is an actress whose movies I always seem to want to watch. Maybe it’s
because she’s in a lot of historicals, and being a history buff, I tend to
gravitate towards those kinds of movies. But she’s also in a lot of movies that
were adapted from literary classics (i.e. Pride
and Prejudice). That being said, the last two movies I saw featured Keira.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
(2012)
 |
| Seeking a Friend for the End of the World 2012 |
Starring
Steve Carell as well as Keira Knightley, Seeking
a Friend for the End of the World is a dramatic comedy about, well, the end
of the world. An asteroid impact is imminent. People are preparing themselves
to die and it looks like they are generally having fun. Except for Dodge (Steve
Carell) who finds himself suddenly alone after his wife leaves him. We never
see this wife (apart from in pictures, I think) and only hear his friends speak
about her and try to comfort Dodge by joking how it took the end of the world
for her to finally get up the courage
to leave him (or something along those lines). Without giving away too much of
the plot, Dodge finally meets his neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley) when she
cries outside his window on the fire escape. Funny enough, they have never
spoken before then. Dodge was an insurance salesman and Penny was a free spirit
type, so why should they have ever spoken before? But Penny had spoken to his
wife, whom she thought was simply his roommate, innocently asking Dodge about
his wife’s boyfriend. Well, that was a shock to Dodge. She also gives him mail
that had come into her box accidently and which she never before bothered to
return to him. In that pile of mail, Dodge finds a letter from his high school
sweetheart, the only woman he’d ever truly loved, and thus begins a journey to
find her before the asteroid hits, a journey that will involve a guilt ridden
Penny.
I must
admit, I shed some tears during this movie. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but
it can be a little depressing. I really felt for Dodge and his loneliness. And
when Penny finally reached her family by phone, it wrenched my heart. To have
those last words with her family brought tears to my eyes. All in all, I really
enjoyed this movie. It wasn’t one that I had wanted to see but when it came up
one night on the movie channel, I decided to try it out. I generally like end
of the world type movies and this one was a refreshing change. Usually these
movies are all about the astronauts or the scientists trying to save the world
and succeeding. But this one was about failure and about normal people and how
the end of days might look like. It kept my interest the whole way through and
was good for a few laughs. It made me think of what I might do in the same
situation and coupled with the meteor hit in Russia and the asteroid pass in
real life, it gave me an awesome apocalyptic dream a couple nights later. That
dream was like watching a movie in my sleep. No better CGI than your own
imagination!
My
rating: 4/5
Anna Karenina (2012)
 |
| Anna Karenina, 2012 |
Keira Knightley
stars as the title role. The movie is based on Leo Tolstoy’s work of the same
name. Anna Karenina seems to be a woman perfectly happy with her life. She is
married with a young son. So when she goes to visit her brother in Moscow, there
should be no reason for her to want to stray, should there? Wrong. She meets
Count Vronsky on the train and, gosh, he’s too dashing for her to forget. She
then sees him everywhere. At a ball, where she dances with him all night, much
to the displeasure of Kitty (her niece? I was never sure of their connection)
who had been expecting the Count to propose marriage to her. Poor Kitty had
just turned down an offer from another young man, Levin, much to Levin’s agonizing
sorrow. The rest of the movie shows us Anna and Count Vronsky’s affair, the
implications of it, and on the side, tells the story of Kitty and Levin.
I have
not read the book by Tolstoy, so I don’t know how close this is to reality. I
remember, very vaguely, learning about the book in my Russian history class,
but alas, not enough to relate it to the movie.
My feelings
about this movie are mixed. On the one hand, I thought the storyline itself was
interesting and really gives us a view into Russian high society. To me, it
wasn’t fair that Anna was the whore and outcast for being with Count Vronsky
and he seemed to get around the whole affair without any consequences. And I
believe her own brother was allowed to have a mistress without any judgment. But
that was life. I get that. I knew that. What really bothered me about this
movie was the weird setting. I don’t know why they set it on a stage. Why
couldn’t they have just used real settings? I would have loved to see a real
Russian setting. Real snow for god’s sake. Just when I thought I’d gotten over
the use of a stage, it would bother me all over again. The horse race could
have been so much better if they had used a real race track. The whole movie
could have been a lot better if it hadn’t been set on a stage.
If I
wanted to see a stage, I’d have gone to a theater. Movies shouldn’t be set on a
stage.
Ugh.
Okay. Rant over.
My
rating: 3/5
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Links (IMDB):
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I'm supposed to go see Jack the Giant Slayer today, so maybe I'll post something on that later this week. I am also going to work on my From the Bottom of the Box Part II post. I had thrown that in my desk and forgotten about it! Until then, have a nice day!
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