Gone Baby Gone
Bases on the Dennos Lehane novel about two detectives in the Boston area investigating the kidnapping of a little girl, which becomes a professional and personal crisis.
I must say how surprised I was at seeing such a well done movie knowing Ben Affleck was the director. It is interesting, emotive without having to restore to melodrama, touching, and it makes one think for a long while after seeing it.
I really liked the way it was told, the way it seemingly jumps all over the place and yet it all makes sense in the end. It creates a lot of suspense, and it keeps you guessing what’s going to happen.
The acting was pretty good – nothing too remarkable, but take Ed Harris, for example, who was also in that lame-ass movie, Nacional Treasure 2 I saw the other day, and compare his terrific performance in Gone Baby Gone with NTs cheesy and boring one. Casey Affleck, too, was surprisingly good, considering it’s the first time I’ve seen him in a dramatic role, and he pulled it off really well.
The most interesting part of the movie, though, is the subthemes it handles – What’s right and what’s wrong? Does the end really does justify the means? Most of the characters have a pretty gray morality, and it’s that dichotomy between right and wrong that leaves you thinking, and that makes the characters intriguing, because one has to wonder to just which lengths they’re willing to go to do right in their eyes.
It’s hard to write a good critic without living the ending away, since that’s what just turns the movie around completely, and leaves you one last question: Has Patrick done the right thing? Believe me when I say it’s hard to answer it.
Technically, it has certain camera angles that are pretty good, but other than that, the lack of embezzlement fits really well with the theme. The movie doesn’t waste time with the faux-grittiness that is so popular nowadays, and it shows things and people with a stark realism (physical looks included) that is as weird and refreshing to see in Hollywood.
To sum it all up: I do hope Ben Affleck goes on directing, because honestly? He does it better than he acts.
Love in the Times of Cholera
Florentino Ariza, Fermina Daza and Doctor Juvenal Urbino form a romantic triangle that lasts generations, with the cholera plague in XIX century Colombia as background. Based on the novel by Gabriel García Márquez.
For starters, this doesn’t manage to even come close to the novel. The first part is too melodramatic and corny in excess, and it managed to bore me. Enter Javier Bardem, and he saves the movie. Really, without him, it’d be so so bad.
Giovanna Mezzogiorno, the actress playing Fermina Daza doesn’t show any emotion, and just while actino alongside to Bardem manages to shine a bit (I couldn’t remember where I’d seen her before, and it wasn’t until I realizad she’s Italian that I remembered she’s in L’Ultimo Bacio, one of my favorite Italian films. I don’t remember her being quite this bad in that one.) I’m still downright pissed at the way Benjamin Bratt tore to pieces the character of the Doctor Juvenal Urbino. I always liked him loads in the book, and Bratt made him conceited and unlikable, a complete villain instead of the protagonist he should be. In the same way, his and Fermina’s relationship becomes false and in no way convincing instead of the wonderful couple they were in the book.
Ah, but Bardem. He placed Florentino Ariza with a tad more insecurity than he shows in the book, but leaving that out, he was perfect. He gets that mixture of shyness, dreaminess and sheer magnetism Florentino always had, and while the movie was focused on him it became interesting, and even funny. As soon as it went back to other characters it became stifling and boring. So there are some good moments – even some pretty good moments, but they’re outshined by the bad ones. But yeah, the last part improves significantly, so much that you can even leave the theatre with a smile.
Technically, the cinematography was rather pretty – green and wet just like the Caribbean, even if it wasn’t anything that remarkable (it does help in lack of a proper plot, though). It was honestly weird to have Shakira songs thrown around left and right. It fits while the ending credits are rolling. While in the middle of the movie? Not so much.
I give it a very low 3 out of five. I hesitated from this grading because in all honestly I didn’t like half of the movie all that much, so that last point is here just for Javier Bardem and his marathonic attempts to save a disaster.
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