英文电影影评

英文电影影评 一个购物狂的自白 Confessions of a Shopaholic Movie Review I like "Confessions of a Shopaholic" about as much as I disliked "Sex and the City." Both are about clueless women, but this one knows it. "SATC" is about women searching for love in most of the wrong places, and "Shopaholic" is about a woman searching for happiness in the places that are absolutely right for her: Prada, Gucci, Macy's, Barneys, Saks and on down the avenue. The plotting is on automatic pilot. It needs Chesley B. Sullenberger III. There is not a single unanticipated blip in the story arc. But here's what sort of redeems it: It glories in its silliness, and the actors are permitted the sort of goofy acting that distinguished screwball comedy. We get double takes, slow burns, pratfalls, exploding clothes wardrobes, dropped trays, tear-away dresses, missing maids of honor, overnight fame, public disgrace and not, amazingly, a single obnoxious cat or dog. At the center of this maelstrom is a genuinely funny comedienne named Isla Fisher. She reminds me of Lucille Ball, and not only because she's a redhead. She does one of the most difficult things any actress can do, which is physical comedy: Walk into doors, drop trays, fall into people, go ass over teakettle. She plays a Perfect Ditz in the sense of the Perfect Storm, carrying all before her. Give her a fan and 20 seconds of tango lessons, and get off the floor. It is to the credit of the director, P.J. Hogan of "My Best Friend's Wedding," that he gives Fisher freedom and yet modulates it, so her character's earnest desire to please shines through. It was the same on "I Love Lucy." Lucy wasn't a klutz because she was trying to look funny. She was a klutz because she was trying not to. Fisher plays Rebecca Bloomwood, the only child of blue-collar parents (Joan Cusack and John Goodman), who has been reborn as a Most Preferred Customer through the miracle of credit cards. She begins with a narration describing the nearly erotic bliss she feels while shopping, and we follow her through store after store in an endless cycle of accessorizing outfits, and then buying outfits to match the accessories. It's like the dilemma of the 10 hot dogs and eight buns: You can never come out even at the end. She dreams of working for a famous fashion magazine, but stumbles, literally, into a money management magazine published by the same company. How does this woman who knows nothing about money or its management get the job? By impressing the editor (Hugh Dancy) with her eccentric brilliance. Everything she does that's wrong turns out right. Also she benefits from a brave roommate, Suze (Krysten Ritter), who plays the Ethel Mertz role: co-conspirator and occasional voice of reason. Meanwhile, the villainous bill collector Derek Smeath (Robert Stanton) is on her trail, hints that breaking her legs is not out of the question and eventually has one of the funnier scenes in the movie. After she gains (highly improbable) international fame overnight on the basis of her writing, it would destroy her, she fears, to be unmasked. Whether it does or not, I leave it to your experience of cinematic plotting to determine. Look. "Confessions of a Shopaholic" is no masterpiece. But it's funny, Isla Fisher is a joy, and -- of supreme importance -- it is more entertaining to a viewer with absolutely no eagerness to see it (like me) than "Sex and the City" was. Also, no movie can be all bad where the heroine attends a Shopaholics Anonymous meeting and meets a former Chicago Bulls star. 2012 Doomsday 2012世界末日 This is one of those "Christian-based" films with a fair amount of preaching, so be forewarned. This is the basic fault that I found with this film. Instead of telling a story and letting the viewer make his or her own decision, it's always being shoved in peoples' faces. I do not have anything against people of any religious persuasion, until they start preaching. This is the problem of people who think they are following Christ's example. Christians today, especially in America, do not follow Christ's teachings, or at least they may think that they do, but most only end up sounding very ignorant and unable to reason. Most become intolerant of everybody else unless it's Christian and start to see "demons" behind every door. This isn't spirituality, this is madness. What I find strange as well, is that so many Christian films feel that they must keep up with secular films by putting in lots of violence in their films. Aren't American Christians able to watch a film that isn't steeped in violence, and if not, why? A question to think about. I would think that following the teachings of a man like Christ would eventually change one's nature somewhat. These are a few problems that infiltrates Christian-based films. I noted as well, a lot of "Colonial" themes going on in this film. The untrue notion about non-native peoples having been to Mexico before Columbus is an atrocious colonial/imperialistic mindset that white supremacists also would like to believe is true, as well as the fact that all of the caucasian people in the film save the pregnant Mexican woman. (I'm not sure if she was supposed to be indigenous, she didn't appear Native American in the least.) Again, more colonial thought: the Europeans must save the lost indigenous peoples. This is something akin to the themes of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. The white guy always has to save the "savages," nevermind that in anthropological classifications, Indians (from India) are basically caucasoid. It's all about skin colour, still, to this day. And of course, the "savages" have no true God. They must know the one, true God. Personally, the movie wasn't all that bad as a whole, but all of what I mentioned is offensive, especially since I have relatives who are not only 100% Native American (Cree Indians), but close relatives who are mixed with Native American as well. Most have had their lives destroyed or damaged by religion. My mother-in-law's family was torn apart and taken away by Catholic missionaries when she was younger. This is just one example. If anything, if so-called Christians want to improve the world, make a film about what we should do to stop global warming; how to be better neighbours to one another; how to end war; how to be more peaceful and loving; how to treat all living things with care and respect. Many other spiritual paths teach this, Hinduism for example. Jesus Christ wouldn't want Christians to focus on so much violent death and destruction if he were here, he would want us to focus on life, joy, and peace. After all, he claimed to die for our sins and that we should be living examples of Christ, no? I would recommend to all Christian filmmakers to stop focusing so much on death and destruction as a means to an end. All the bloodshed and violence just isn't worth whatever strange visions or endings they may believe they may have waiting in store! Also, by promoting violence in your films, you are succumbing to secular modes of film-making. 当幸福来敲门 The Pursuit of Happyness With a title like The Pursuit of Happyness, you expect the characters to get to the promised land. They do, but if the journey matters more than the destination, this is a movie to skip. The Pursuit of Happyness is long, dull, and depressing. It expands into two hours a story that could have been told more effectively in one. This is not the feel-good movie of the season unless you believe that a few moments of good cheer can redeem 110 minutes of gloom. Sitting through The Pursuit of Happyness is a chore. Downbeat movies aren't inherently bad (in fact, many are powerful), but this one provides artificial characters in contrived circumstances. How is it that movies "inspired by a real story" often feel more fake than those fully embedded in the realm of fiction? Will Smith has generated Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Chris Gardner, the real-life guy whose rags-to-riches story forms the basis of the movie. (Impoverished guy becomes capitalist poster boy.) While it's fair to say that this is one of the best straight performances of Smith's career, it didn't blow me away. In and of itself, the acting, while effective, is not Best Actor material, but it wouldn't surprise me if the movie's prestige factor and Smith's popularity earn him a nod. Meanwhile, his female co-star, Thandie Newton, isn't going to be considered for any award. Newton spends about 90% of her screen time doing an impersonation of a harpy: screeching, bitching, and contorting her face into unpleasant expressions. Smith's son, Jaden, is okay as the movie's child protagonist; it's unclear whether his occasional deficiencies are the result of his acting, Steven Conrad's writing, or Gabriele Muccino's direction, but there's not much personality behind the cute features and curly hair. Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is down on his luck. It's 1981 San Francisco and his self-employed business of selling portable bone density scanners isn't doing well. His wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), does nothing but yell at him and give him a cold shoulder, and the lack of domestic harmony is impacting the disposition of his beloved son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith). That's when Chris' life turns into a country song. His wife leaves. He is evicted from his home. He goes to jail, neither passing GO nor collecting a much-needed $200. He gets hit by a car. He is robbed. He makes his son cry. He alienates a friend over $14. He gets to spend a night in the cleanest public restroom in the history of public restrooms. But there's a bright spot, although you need a dark-adapted eye to find it. Despite having no experience, Chris applies to enter an internship program at Dean Witter. He would appear to have no chance to get in until he amazes the head of the program (Brian Howe) by solving the Rubik's Cube puzzle in the back of a taxi cab. It's a blessing that the movie doesn't use a stock villain to impede Chris' herky-jerky trip to the top, because that would have tipped the movie into the empire of the unwatchable. However, the lack of a strong conflict makes the two-hour running length seem very long. Thankfully, there's also not much in the way of overt melodrama, but that could be a byproduct of having characters who are not deeply realized and have narrow emotional ranges. It's tough to connect with Chris and his son. Although they are played by a real-life father and son, there's no chemistry between them. We're constantly told how desperately Chris loves Christopher, but it takes a long time before we begin to buy it. Most of the time, Christopher seems like an annoying piece of baggage that Chris drops off at daycare when he has other things to do.www.130q.com The film's most compelling scenes are those that show Chris struggling to enter the rat race. Granted, this is no Glengarry Glen Ross, but it shows the pressure these salesmen are under and how important the contact lists are. In the overall scheme of things, however, these sequences are background noise. They are neither plentiful nor lengthy. The movie spends more time following Chris on his futile sales rounds for the bone density scanner than it does accompanying him during his broker training. The moral of the story is as trite as they come: don't let anyone convince you to give up on your dreams. Disney animated films have been doing this better for decades. The Pursuit of Happyness concludes with a caption that tells us what happens to Chris after the end of the movie; it promises a better story than the one we have just watched. The film is also marred by a persistent (although not verbose) voiceover that adds nothing to the story while frequently jerking us out of the experience of watching it. I don't need Will Smith telling me: "This part of the story is called 'riding the bus.'" This is the English-language debut of Gabriele Muccino, who has made a name for himself in Italian cinema. The Pursuit of Happyness has the kind of slow, drab tone one occasionally associates with a director raised outside of the Hollywood system. What can be an asset in some circumstances is a detriment in this one. The Pursuit of Happyness isn't enjoyable, and its meager pleasures, including the eventual "payoff," aren't enough to justify the unrelenting misery. The Pursuit of Happyness is competently made and gets lots of the details right, but when it comes to the emotional core of the story, it loses the pursuit and misses the "happyness." 牛仔裤的夏天2 The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” which you will agree has one of the more ungainly titles of recent years, is everything that “Sex and the City” wanted to be. It follows the lives of four women, their career adventures, their romantic disasters and triumphs, their joys and sadness. These women are all in their early 20s, which means they are learning life’s lessons; “SATC” is about forgetting them. The traveling pants, you will recall, are a pair of jeans that the four best friends tried on in a clothing store in the 2005 movie. Magically, they were a perfect fit for all four. So they agree that each can wear the jeans for a week of the coming summer, and then FedEx them to the next name in rotation. Following the jeans, in both movies, we follow key moments in the girls’ lives. Carmen is my favorite. Played by the glowing America Ferrara (“Real Women Have Curves”), she has followed her tall, blond friend Julia (Rachel Nichols) to Vermont, where Julia will spend the summer at the Village Playhouse. Carmen sees herself as a stagehand, but is dragged into an audition by a talented British actor named Ian (Tom Wisdom) and amazingly gets the female lead in “The Winter’s Tale.” Not so amazingly, she falls in love with Ian, and the jealous Julia tries to sabotage her happiness. Meanwhile, Carmen’s remarried mother produces a baby brother for her. Alexis Bledel plays Lena, spending the summer at the Rhode Island School of Design and still in love with the Greek guy she met in the previous picture. Amber Tamblyn is Tibby, possibly the most contentious video store clerk in history. She's going through a shaky period in her romance with Brian (Leonardo Nam). Blake Lively is Bridget, who goes on an archeological dig in Turkey, adopts the supervising professor (Shohreh Aghdashloo) as a mother-figure, then flies home to seek out her grandmother (Blythe Danner) and learn for the first time the details of her own mother's death. It's worth noticing that all four heroines are involved in relationships that are cross-cultural and/or interracial. The movie intercuts quickly but not confusingly from one story to another, is dripping with seductive locations, is not shy about romantic cliches and has a lot of heart. The women are all sincere, intelligent, vulnerable, sweet, warm. That’s in contrast to “SATC,” with its narcissistic and shallow heroines. The “SATC” ladies should fill their flasks with cosmopolitans, go to see “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” and cry their hearts out with futile regret for their misspent lives. Because the four leads spend the summer in different places, the movie has an excuse to drop in interesting supporting characters. Blythe Danner is splendid as the Alabama grandmother who knows the whole story of Bridget’s mom. Leonardo Nam is a kind and perceptive boyfriend for Lena, Shohreh Aghdashloo (“The House of Sand and Fog”) is a role model for Bridget, Kyle MacLachlan has fun as the wine-sipping director of the summer playhouse, Tom Wisdom does a lot with the small role of the playhouse star. And Rachel Nichols as Julia proves a principle that should be in the Little Movie Glossary: If a short, curvy, sun-kissed heroine has a tall, thin blond as a roommate, that blond is destined to be a bitch. No way around it. As for the pants themselves, they’ve gathered a lot of patches and embroideries over the three years since the last installment, and still fit. But not so much is made about them in this film, and by the end, they’ve disappeared, sparing us “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 3” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 4.” The movies are inspired by the novels of Ann Brashares, but this one, I learn, combines plot details from novels two, three and four, and so the sisters can go their separate ways, no doubt keeping in touch by e-mail, and congratulating themselves on being infinitely better than the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. 纽约时刻 New York Minute Long before Paris and Nicky Hilton became the sister act du jour, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were sibling media phenoms thanks to the '80s sitcom "Full House." Now, after several straight-to-video releases, the twosome star in this feature film that will probably disappear from theaters, as the title says, in a "New York Minute." That said, this one is so strictly amateur-hour that it could end up as a camp classic. A microphone boom hangs down from the top of the screen in so many scenes that it seems to be attached to the top of the twins' heads. And the script, which is more sophomoric than its stars, is directed by Dennie Gordon, who also gave us "What a Girl Wants" and seems to be making a career out of straining to find out. The predictable plot revolves around a device as ancient as "The Patty Duke Show." Twins Ashley and Mary-Kate may look alike and talk alike, but they're as different as night and day. There's Jane (Ashley), a prim and proper scholar heading for a contest where she'll compete for a fellowship from Columbia University in New York; and Roxy (Mary-Kate), a raucous rocker heading for a music video production in hopes of riding a wave to stardom in the Big Apple. From a commuter train on their way to the city, they somehow end up half-naked and chased through Manhattan by Chinese-American DVD pirates. Double trouble for the twins will mean dreary duty for parents accompanying their 11-year-old girls, who will appreciate it mainly for the cute costume changes and hairstyles the sisters undergo within this seemingly endless New York minute. The cast includes Eugene Levy as a truant officer out to bust the school-skipping Roxy, blending a rehash of his obsessed oceanographer from "Splash" with an undertone of Humbert Humbert from "Lolita."