Showing posts with label Nicole Kidman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicole Kidman. Show all posts

Thursday, October 2, 2014

DOGVILLE (2003)

Like some kind of Biblical fable about a secret angel showing it's weakness to a group of humans in order to judge their compassion DOGVILLE is the story of a frail woman, Grace (Nicole Kidman), who wanders into the small "town" of Dogville in need of help.  I say town in quotes because its only got like 15 people living there, all on one street.  Anyway, Grace is penniless and looking for shelter.  The townsfolk, somewhat reluctantly, take her in and even after it's discovered that she's wanted by the Law they keep hiding her.  To earn her keep she does odd jobs for citizens of Dogville.  Then things start to take a more sinister turn. 

Before you take it upon yourself to watch DOGVILLE you're first going to need to gird your loins.  The runtime is nearly 3 hours and that's just ridiculous because this story could have easily been told in less than two.  Next (and this is the biggest thing) is there isn't an actual town or sky or trees or anything.  The entire movie is filmed on a single "black box theater"-style stage with the imaginary street and houses and plants and everything drawn out on the floor.  Outside of a few minor set pieces (a desk, an organ, a bed, etc.) the entire film is in your head.  That's an interesting experiment, but it gets old quickly and just comes off looking cheap and pretentious.  Next is the camerawork that seems, by the way it's always teetering around and never standing still, to be taken by somebody wearing Google Glass.  After that is the editing which is just all over the place.  I don't even have any idea what was going on there...was it taken from multiple takes with absolutely no consideration for continuity or flow?  One moment a person will be laying down (cut to the next angle) and literally 0.0001 of a second later they're sitting up.  It happened so flagrantly that it had to been on purpose.  The acting by the impressive cast was good for the most part, but there were a few that seemed not up to their normal standards, so I'm guessing once again: the stiff acting was done intentionally for some kind of artistic reason?

I didn't dislike DOGVILLE.  I'm all for filmmakers taking chances and trying something new, but a lot of the stuff that went on here went right over my stupid little head.  I did take issue with the excessive run time.  I liked the story (even though I didn't really understand what the point of the whole thing was), but it was just too long-winded and the characters too unbelievable.  That last act took forever and how dumb could that main guy be?!

Interesting watch for the braver film lover, but I think most people will be totally unamused.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

THE INVASION (2007)

Yet another reboot of the body snatcher story.  This time around the alien life form is a fungus that's brought to Earth on the space shuttle.  Nicole Kidman is a psychiatrist who keeps hearing people talk about relatives/friends who are acting strange and not being themselves.  At first Nicole dismisses it, but then when her ex-husband (Jeremy Northam) starts acting weird and barfing up nasty alien yack all over her face, she starts to see there's definitely something going on.  Turns out that once you're infected (like she is now) the spore can only take over once you fall asleep...kinda like Freddy Krueger.  So, this means that she has to stay awake long enough to save her son who has been kidnapped by the aliens because he is immune to the alien spore due to a childhood illness.  Whatever.

I liked THE INVASION alright.  The story veered away further from the original than the other two remakes, so that was interesting, and the acting was good.  Still though I can't ever see myself wanting to watch it again.  It took too long to get to the action and once it did, it was just your standard fare of cars crashing and people running around.  Also, the ending was weak as hell.  Worth a watch if it comes on TV, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.  Although, Daniel Craig's Goo Goo Dolls haircut was pretty dope.

Honestly, after watching all four of the body snatchers films I don't think any of them did the idea justice.

Original - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Remake 1 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Reboot 1 - Body Snatchers (1993)