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Reviews
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Back...back...back...to the future
It was hard trying to wait for this movie because the Douglas Adams classic series had such a profound impact on me when i was dorky teenager. Thinking so highly of the 1st book, I was deeply concerned that this movie might be a debacle a la the 1st animated Lord of the rings are Dune (shudder!). And yet, in a lot of ways, the movie works well.
Martin Freeman starts rather unconvincingly as Arthur Dent, and he's not helped with the AWOL status of the signature lines in the 1981 miniseries (after finding out the planet is destroyed, he stops and says in typical crushing British understatement: I think I'm upset about that.). Zooey Deschanel is an uneven as she clearly isn't sure how to play the sexy/vulnerable Trillian. On the other, Mos Def's Ford is great and particularly Sam Rockwell's shades-of-George-W Zaphod Beeblebrox and the always great Alan Rickman's manic depressive Marvin the robot are worth the price of admission alone.
The best thing about this movie is the judicious use of CGI and the outstanding choice to go to Jim Henson and make the Vogons 3-D and tactile. It was wonderfully quaint and shows how the unchecked use of CGI deceives the eye, not enhances it. It made the final scenes with the wistful Bill Nighy as the Slartibartfast all the more spectacular and wistful, tying Arthur Dent's development. This movie is quaint and done at a slower pace...preserving that style for movies like this is reason enough to check this oddly sweet movie out.
Sideways (2004)
Any Movie About Wine Can't Be Bad
Nor can any movie with Paul Giamatti in it. I'm not sure about the casting of T.H. Church and Sandra Oh as the bad-boy on a "chick safari" before his wedding and her as the conquest. There is a darkness in the screenplay that is both incongruous and yet unexplored.
This was a novel first and I plan on reading it for further insight. The wine insights are great and the movie entertains. The dislike/distrust between Church and Giamatti might've been intentional but the failings of both characters mars what should be a buddy movie with a twist into hints of elements of despair in both characters alluded to but not explored.
The hype might disappoint those who's expectations are elevated but this is a very good movie worthy of a night of discussion and a decent pinot noir.
When Do We Eat? (2005)
Creative, innovative and charming
First movies are by definition hit and miss. They are usually self indulgent (often justifiably so) and either modest or insane. This movie is astonishingly none of those things. The movie is a mass-appeal charmer with some real touching moments blended in with the many physical comedy bits the movie uses to elicit laughs.
The laughs come easy and the viewer forgets the movie is a debut movie, filmed on a modest budget as opposed to a Hollywood blockbuster. The effects are effective, funny and just low-tech enough to fit the visionary elements of the movie. The cast demonstrates legitimacy and insight, even in performing characters that are comically extreme and yet more than on dimensional, led by memorable performances by Michael Lerner, Max Greenfield and the venerable Jack Klugman.
It's a charming movie about a Jewish experience but really, it is one that any family gathering has elements of and thus the movie is familiar to the viewer within the first minutes. The jokes are cute, accessible, funny and insulting only to the most oversensitive among the Jewish diaspora. The few Jewish in-jokes that non-Jews would wonder about are not particularly germane to the plot, but could be tightened up in the future.
You can't fake laughter. 700 saw this movie in its opening night gala world premiere at the Palm Beach Film Festival. I laughed, they laughed and hopefully, a star is born in the creative juices percolating in Salvador Litvak's head.