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Posts Tagged ‘Natalie Portman’

Thor Movies Review – 2011

I prayed that Kenneth Branagh would learn from his mistakes with handling a big budget movie, namely his Frankeinstein. Thankfully, I am glad to say he learnt a great deal from those mistakes. Of course, this is no Henry V, this is just pure popcorn entertainment but a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to Thor for the big screen. Chris Hemsworth played the part with a lot of energy, charisma and I have to admit from a bloke’s point of view, annoying good looks. Anthony Hopkins added much needed heavyweight presence as Odin but its a role he has quite frankly played a gazillion times but I never tire of it, so I’m not complaining. In a year long span of brilliantly playing vastly different roles from psychotic to swashbuckling heroine, Natalie Portman this time plays the sweet determined scientist girl who falls for the strangely mannered good looking guy. Nothing too taxing for any of them but they do give a re-assuring aura about them.

The visuals were quite spectacular, mainly, the sweeping canvas of Asgard. The action scenes were also good though I thought could have been executed better with lesser use of the fast cut edit style that is too often the norm in action film these days.

There is plenty of humour when Thor is on Earth but not in a put-off way as there is a suitable contrast of a serious tone with everything set in Asgard. Even though the storyline was somewhat predictable, it was still a riveting one.

For those like me, who were concerned about how Thor fits into the established Marvel connected universe set by the Iron Man films need not worry. That is just another thing that Branagh and crew pulls off very well. We can now fully embrace the forthcoming Avengers where a God, a man who transforms into a giant green beast, and a man who flies in a hi tech amour suit can share the same screen. So its all coming together nicely.

And make sure you stay for the end credit scenes. In case you did not know of this before, I urge you to go back to the previous films (Iron Man 1 & 2, Incredible Hulk) and watch the end of credit sequences if you haven’t already. They tell a separate story strand that will culminate to a certain upcoming Marvel movie. The end credit sequence of Thor is the most fascinating yet as it actually takes a major plot development in the story strand ;) And it was the longest bloody end of credit sequence I’ve ever seen in any movie! One last thing, the film I saw was in 3d and once again, it practically nearly ruined all the action scenes for me. In the non action scenes, it was pretty useless and just simply made the film much darker.

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The Other Women (2011)

I saw this at the Toronto Film Festival. I go to university in Toronto, and I decided on impulse to watch one of the movies in between my classes, and this one fit so I wouldn’t have to be late for my next class. I’m very glad I saw it.

The film is about Emilia (Natalie Portman), who lives with her husband John (Scott Cohen), and her stepson William (Charlie Tahan). We watch as her story is told through flashbacks and we learn that John was married (to Carolyne, played by Lisa Kudrow) and had an affair with Emilia. He soon divorces Carolyne and marries Emilia. We watch as Emilia struggles to keep her life together with her marriage strained by the death of their 3-day-old daughter Isabel, and William’s resentment towards her.

I really liked the acting in this movie. Natalie Portman is really natural in this role. Scott Cohen and the young Charlie Tahan were very good too, and Lisa Kudrow too, even though she didn’t have a lot of scenes.

I liked the story, and I didn’t find the pace of the film to be dragging. The characters were well written too- I was always able to see their side of the story and could sympathize and understand them, even when they contradicted with other characters.

To me, The Other Women was a very good film overall.

By Sal D’Souza from Ontario, Canada (IMDB)

No Strings Attached (2011)

No doubt about it folks, we are in the age of the R-rated sex comedy. This explosive trend among movies stems from filmmakers and producers’ never-ending pursuit of making the rare comedy that costs little but rakes in obscene amounts of money. “No Strings Attached” fits the exact profile of a film quite literally strung together with the hopes of getting its cup under the R-rated sex comedy tap and catching a few precious drops of what has been comedy gold the last five years. And if 2011?s first romantic comedy is any indication, that cup hath runneth dry.

Natalie Portman, the darling of Hollywood right now coming off her Golden Globe (and what will likely be an Oscar) win for “Black Swan” and the somehow always-popular Ashton Kutcher co-star in what amounts to “Friends with Benefits 101,” or a very rudimentary telling of how two people come to and work through a decision to use each other strictly for sex. Although no movie has highlighted this story line so explicitly, most young people are aware of the concept, yet the film takes us through the motions as if we’re all 50-something and aren’t aware such progressive sexual arrangements exist.

That’s why veteran director Ivan Reitman (“Ghostbusters”) proves immediately to be out of place. He appears to have been handed Elizabeth Meriwether’s script and told “this is what’s popular now, go do it.” Meriwether certainly didn’t go out of her way to divert from formula as “No Strings” overflows with plot-subservient supporting characters (the roommates and friends of our “not lovers”) and injections of foul-mouthed humor, but a more modern comedy director wouldn’t have exposed those ploys as brutally as Reitman does.

The film takes us from the beginning of Adam and Emma’s acquaintanceship (they were never really friends before the sex happened), which started at a summer camp when Adam attempted to mope about his parents’ divorce to Emma in hopes of a sympathy hook up. Deciding to be frank, he asks to finger her. This is the movie’s first attempt at slapping in “modern” and “R-rated” sex jokes. Maybe that would’ve been funny in 2005, but our over- exposure to dirty dialogue in film has — and rightfully so — desensitized us to laughing at, for example, any time the word “penis” or a variation on “penis” gets tossed into a movie script as “No Strings” so often does. In fact, by comparison to similar comedies, the movie hardly warrants an R rating.

As romantic comedy fans know, however, great chemistry in the leads can help remedy even the worst of situations. To some degree, Portman and Kutcher have something that works, but Adam and Emma are so poorly set up that it slightly undermines Kutcher’s sweet and surprisingly sympathy-worthy performance and Portman’s excellent ability to reveal all her characters’ inner thoughts and feelings. When they first have sex, it should in theory be an enormous release of sexual tension for the audience, but it feels as if it just happens for the sake of there being a movie. That’s the real problem with “No Strings Attached”: as genuine as the characters can feel at times, they all ultimately feel like pawns of or cogs in a formula to deliver us a story. A good film executes like a real-life or at least intriguing situation that the audience gets to peek in on.

So like any film with an absurd amount of pieces, the characters surrounding Adam and Emma either insignificant to us or we like them but their screen time is completely short- changed. Meriwether would have been better served to cut down on the amount of friends and roommates and relatives and add dimension to the better of the bunch. Among the list of those who deserved more attention are Greta Gerwig as one of Emma’s roommates, Lake Bell as one of the assistant producers on the “Glee”-type TV show Adam works for and SNLer Abby Elliot as a bartender who does weird impersonations. Unfortunately, the most intriguing supporting role, belonging to Kevin Kline as Adam’s former TV star dad who starts seeing his ex-girlfriend and loves drugs, falls flat.

The lack of laughs and botched attempts at “hip” jokes, however, are the root of the film’s problems. After Emma gets drunk on tequila shots one night after she and Adam have decided to sleep with other people, she goes to Adam’s place and finds him with two other girls whom she proceeds yell at, calling them “pumpkins” for absolutely no reason. It plays like a bad cut of improv, but Reitman seems to have blind faith that that’s what “comedy” is these days.

You’d really like to give credit to Portman, Kutcher and many of the other actors who attempted to build likable characters despite how processed they come across in the story itself, but “No Strings Attached” never relents in its dependency on formula. We all know how a romantic comedy will end (except 2006?s “The Break-Up”), but when you know how it will start and middle, that’s busting the illusion that fans of the genre pay good money to be fooled by. Sadly, the fact that there’s no disguising the film’s attempt to jump on the sex comedy bandwagon undermines nearly everything, perhaps even the bandwagon itself.

By Steven C – MovieMuseReviews.com

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