Julie and Julia

Synopsis

Two parallel stories about two people who love food.  Aspiring writer, Julie Powell, finds her life somewhat uneventful and decides to cook all 524 recipes in a Julia Child Cookbook in 365 days and blog about the experience.  Intertwined with Julie's story is Julia Child's own story of how she overcame the many obstacles that led to her cooking notoriety.

Entertainment Value - A

This was a fun story with a creative and witty script.  I found myself wondering how long the movie was going to be about two-thirds of the way through, only so much of a person's blogging life or cooking life can be made enjoyable.  I would also advise you to not watch this on an empty stomach, there are loads of delicious meals presented throughout the 2 hour show, making it that much harder to sit through.  Meryl Streep did an amazing job as Julia Child, and even Amy Adams played a very believable part as the blogger Julie.  I had a hard time buying into Julia's husband, played by Stanley Tucci; maybe because my only association with him is in the Terminal and Pelican Brief, but I really didn't like him in this role.

Moral Value - Failure to Communicate? - 3

One of the strong points of the movie was the way the husbands of the titular characters supported them through the trials and obstacles that faced them during their marriages.  All were very believable (no one was portrayed as perfect).  Due to the trials that did occur one can see the detrimental effect of letting goals get in the way of family relationships.  (Or by letting the comments from your blogging audience drive your whole existence when you are living with a real, live person who can really satisfy your needs).

One word could have been eliminated with no negative affect on the movie, and I would have enjoyed it a bit more.  This totally could have and should have been rated PG.  By toning down the implied husband/wife night-time rendezvous and the language and the film could have been much more charming.

Frost/Nixon

Synopsis

This film covered the preparation and the airing of the historical 4-day interview David Frost conducted with former president Richard Nixon.  Some wanted the interview to be the trial Nixon never received (due to Ford's pardon); others simply wanted the experience of interviewing one of the most controversial men in history.

Entertainment Value

I'm not sure how accurate the interviews in the film were with the actual ones, but no matter what, Ron Howard did an excellent job putting this story.  For consisting of mostly just dialog between the titular characters, it was as tense as any other action/suspense film I've seen, reminiscent of the style of film 12 Angry Men was.

Moral Value

It's intriguing to see Frost's motives for interviewing Nixon dramatically shift just before the last leg of the series.  Frost accepted some of his researchers because of their intent on proving Nixon guilty in order to give Americans the resolution they needed for the preceding years of scandal.  Frost didn't quite share that passion and was fighting a losing battle until he too decided to take things seriously and conduct the last interview in a way that would start the healing process for disillusioned Americans.  This is a great example of how anything done halfheartedly cannot bring you real happiness, no matter how optimistic you are.  Once a person has done everything to ensure the success of a goal, no matter the outcome, that person is successful.

Being how this is a depiction of a very important event in our history, I think it is of great value to everyone to see this film.  The film could very easily have been brought to a PG-13 rating, but I fear that Hollywood pushed for the R-Rating solely to target it's audience to a more mature crowd.  I can see that this film probably would not be enjoyed by too many under age 17, so why market the film towards them by giving it a PG-13 rating?

We did watch this edited, and as far as I know only a handful of swearing was cut out (turn up your nudity filter if you don't care to see the back of a naked man running into the ocean at the end).

Fight Club

The fight-club aspect of the movie is what made me interested in seeing it. I have some fond memories of the bare-knuckle fist-fights that happened at boys camps to resolve any angst or bad feelings between other kids (though never involved in any directly). But this movie was much more than just a couple of guys duking it out because they disagreed with each other or (as you're lead to believe in the beginning) because their lives were dull.   The first half/two-thirds of the movie was rather disturbing until I started realizing what was going on (right along with the main character), and then my head started spinning.

Everyone, as far as I know, desires to do something other than what their current profession requires of them or to be somebody else or somewhere else.  Case in point: I would love to be a professional movie critic and do nothing else but watch and review movies; but that's pretty unrealistic.  How many people ever get to live out their dreams or are courageous enough to start their lives on a path towards what they want to be? It is quite evident from the story that unhappiness and mayhem result from a life where there is no direction, no end goal. Edward Norton never realized what he wanted to do/be and that made him unhappy.  What could be considered his goal in life is possibly that he wanted to help others not end up like himself.  He wanted to make sure that everyone else tried to achieve their goals, even if he had to force them to do it at gun point.

All in all, this was a very cool show, but not very moral (evident by the R-rating, so remember I'm reviewing an edited version of this). Not because there was more bad than good in the film, but that the bad wasn't shown receiving its natural consequences. [Spoiler Alert] For example, when Norton realized the chain of events he had set in place and tried to stop them from occurring, he found that everyone he could possibly think of turning himself in to was already in on his plan; they thought it a ruse that he was telling them to call it all off and even tried to impose on him some of his own consequences for trying to ruin the plan.   And then to top it off, not only are all the possible good guys turned bad, but his plan to reset humanity is successful (though we don't see the actual impact of the destruction he caused).  The ending scene had me in total disbelief and even caused me to laugh at the absurdness of it all.

I don't know if I could recommend this to anyone (even edited), but I can't deny the fact that there was a small amount of enjoyment found in watching it.  For any of you who have seen Fight Club what's your take on it? I bet you'll think twice before buying any nice perfumed soap that costs $20 a bar.