Showing posts with label Manhattan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manhattan. Show all posts
Friday, March 9, 2012
Friday, November 19, 2010
Today’s Special (***)
I haven’t seen that many films about Indian Americans, but I’m pretty sure all of them, not to mention British films like Bend It Like Beckham, deal with issues of family and culture clash. Even the titles of such films—Mississippi Masala, American Chai, American Desi—reference these themes. This adaptation of Aasif Mondvi’s play may be the lightest version of this story. Mondvi, the erstwhile Daily Show correspondent who shares screenplay credit, plays Samir, a Manhattan sous-chef who steers clear of all things Indian—the cuisine, cricket, and the women on the Indian dating sites his mother tries to fix him up with. But when a family emergency forces his father away from the family’s run-down Indian restaurant, Samir is forced to put his own plans on hold and pitch in. And, with the help of an Indian-born cabbie he meets who just so happens to also be a master chef with lots of free time, pitch in he does.
This very likable comedy may be too likable for its own good. Samir’s potential girlfriend (Jess Weixler, of Teeth) has a kid? No problem; we never even find out whether there’s a father somewhere. His new chef doesn’t believe in menus? No problem! (Seriously? An Indian take-out place with no menus?) Of course, everything will work out in this sort of gentle comedy, and that’s fine, but a little doubt in the meantime would have made it more satisfying. The chef is a too-good-to-be true man of the world who can conjures up a full-course meal in no time. Still, as played by Bollywood veteran Naseeruddin Shah, he’s the most captivating of the characters. More downbeat, but realistic, is the relationship between Samir and his father, who simultaneously looks down on Samir for his choice of career and resents him for seeming to disregard his family traditions.
IMDB link
viewed 12/14/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 12/14/10
This very likable comedy may be too likable for its own good. Samir’s potential girlfriend (Jess Weixler, of Teeth) has a kid? No problem; we never even find out whether there’s a father somewhere. His new chef doesn’t believe in menus? No problem! (Seriously? An Indian take-out place with no menus?) Of course, everything will work out in this sort of gentle comedy, and that’s fine, but a little doubt in the meantime would have made it more satisfying. The chef is a too-good-to-be true man of the world who can conjures up a full-course meal in no time. Still, as played by Bollywood veteran Naseeruddin Shah, he’s the most captivating of the characters. More downbeat, but realistic, is the relationship between Samir and his father, who simultaneously looks down on Samir for his choice of career and resents him for seeming to disregard his family traditions.
IMDB link
viewed 12/14/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 12/14/10
Friday, May 30, 2008
Sex and the City (**3/4)
I must confess I’ve barely seen the HBO hit upon which this is based, but I can see the appeal. On the one hand, the series is a seriocomic fantasy about four wealthy Manhattan women who shop a lot, date a variety of eligible (and occasionally ineligible) gentlemen, and have frank conversations whose main subject is the one in the title. (For a series about women, it was largely a series about men, notwithstanding hedonistic Samantha’s brief same-sex experimentation.) Yet there’s some reality too; the series brought up all manner of relationship issues, many familiar and a few, like “funky spunk,” that may or may not be a problem for many viewers. But mainly, the appeal lies in having well-delineated characters, sometimes-clever writing, and an emphasis on the rarely challenged friendship among the women.
The movie version, written and directed by frequent series contributor Michael Patrick King, apparently without the involvement of series creator Darren Star, contains all of these threads, yet tends to the melancholy side. Suiting the transition from TV show to feature film, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw has completed the transition from columnist to book author, just like her real-life alter-ego Candace Bushnell, but still provides pithy voiceovers. (“A knockoff isn’t easy to spot when it comes to love.”) Her possibly impending marriage to Chris Noth’s “Mr. Big” provides the framework for the film. A parade of wedding dresses Carrie gets to try on should serve as fashion porn for those whose interests lie in that direction. There’s another trying-on montage scene later, which had me looking at my watch.
For those of a different inclination, Samantha’s (Kim Catrall) escapades in the series had provided titillation and male eye candy. It’s unfortunate that for most of this movie her libido is sidelined, and so is she, having moved to LA in an attempt at monogamy that may be as frustrating for the viewer as it is for her. Perky Charlotte (Kristin Davis), wife and mother to an adopted three-year-old, mostly serves as a foil for the other characters, leaving the most compelling subplot to high-strung Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), whose husband confesses to cheating after they’ve not slept together for six months. Hence more melancholy, but Miranda’s trust issues are easier to relate to than Carrie’s.
I won’t give away why exactly it takes over two hours before we find out whether Carrie and Big will marry after all, but to me the thing that keeps them apart is basically trivial and arguably phony. Critics have often called the series and its characters shallow, but others found it shallow and fun. Shallow and dour is not so appealing. I wouldn’t mind watching Carrie mope in Mexico, as she does when things seem to sour, so much if this storyline were better and not built around the conventional dilemma of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-married. Not to say there aren’t some lighter moments. An early scene in which the four women comically use coloring with crayons as a sexual metaphor, due to the presence of Charlotte’s young daughter, has the right feel to it, at once funny and truthful. The scenes with Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie’s newly hired assistant, also have that balance between lightness and seriousness that is sometimes missing elsewhere.
The theme of the movie is forgiveness, and I’m sure most longtime fans will forgive its flaws, but notice them. (Newcomers don’t need to have seen the series to follow along.) After seeing the feature I went and watched a whole episode—the one where Charlotte meets her future husband (Evan Handler)—and enjoyed that at least as much.
IMDB link
viewed 5/30/08 at Moorestown
The movie version, written and directed by frequent series contributor Michael Patrick King, apparently without the involvement of series creator Darren Star, contains all of these threads, yet tends to the melancholy side. Suiting the transition from TV show to feature film, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw has completed the transition from columnist to book author, just like her real-life alter-ego Candace Bushnell, but still provides pithy voiceovers. (“A knockoff isn’t easy to spot when it comes to love.”) Her possibly impending marriage to Chris Noth’s “Mr. Big” provides the framework for the film. A parade of wedding dresses Carrie gets to try on should serve as fashion porn for those whose interests lie in that direction. There’s another trying-on montage scene later, which had me looking at my watch.
For those of a different inclination, Samantha’s (Kim Catrall) escapades in the series had provided titillation and male eye candy. It’s unfortunate that for most of this movie her libido is sidelined, and so is she, having moved to LA in an attempt at monogamy that may be as frustrating for the viewer as it is for her. Perky Charlotte (Kristin Davis), wife and mother to an adopted three-year-old, mostly serves as a foil for the other characters, leaving the most compelling subplot to high-strung Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), whose husband confesses to cheating after they’ve not slept together for six months. Hence more melancholy, but Miranda’s trust issues are easier to relate to than Carrie’s.
I won’t give away why exactly it takes over two hours before we find out whether Carrie and Big will marry after all, but to me the thing that keeps them apart is basically trivial and arguably phony. Critics have often called the series and its characters shallow, but others found it shallow and fun. Shallow and dour is not so appealing. I wouldn’t mind watching Carrie mope in Mexico, as she does when things seem to sour, so much if this storyline were better and not built around the conventional dilemma of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-married. Not to say there aren’t some lighter moments. An early scene in which the four women comically use coloring with crayons as a sexual metaphor, due to the presence of Charlotte’s young daughter, has the right feel to it, at once funny and truthful. The scenes with Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie’s newly hired assistant, also have that balance between lightness and seriousness that is sometimes missing elsewhere.
The theme of the movie is forgiveness, and I’m sure most longtime fans will forgive its flaws, but notice them. (Newcomers don’t need to have seen the series to follow along.) After seeing the feature I went and watched a whole episode—the one where Charlotte meets her future husband (Evan Handler)—and enjoyed that at least as much.
IMDB link
viewed 5/30/08 at Moorestown
Friday, August 24, 2007
The Nanny Diaries (**3/4)
A recent college graduate takes a detour on her career path to work for an extremely demanding female boss in Manhattan. Though she mocks the values of the people she works for, she nonetheless gets drawn into their world and strives to please them, at the cost of her personal life. You could easily mistake this plot for that of The Devil Wears Prada, another movie adapted from a bestselling novel. (In fact, a copy of Prada can be seen in a beach scene.)
The young graduate, Nan, is here played by Scarlet Johannson, the wicked boss by Laura Linney; there’s also a four-your-old child and a little-seen husband, played by Paul Giammatti. Linney’s character is called Mrs. X. Whereas this gives the novel the feel of a confessional, in a movie, where we can actually see Mrs. X, it merely seems awkward. One thing that was changed from the novel is that the heroine now has no experience. Her potential employers’ apparent willingness to overlook things like references, sort of explained by her being white and native born, still strains credulity, especially given Mrs. X’s overall overprotectiveness.
This is the second non-documentary feature from the married writer-director team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. As with their acclaimed American Splendor (which starred Giammatti), they incorporate some fanciful visuals into the movie, including a couple that nod to that most famous of movie nannies, Mary Poppins. As excessively narrated by Johannson, the movie is an extended metaphor in which the wealthy Upper East Side wife is seen as a unique culture, like that of a tribe in some faraway place. Clever, but more so as an idea than as actually executed in the movie. Primarily this is so because the story actually reveals little about either nannies or the wealthy elite that you wouldn’t already imagine. The narration apologizes in advance for engaging in “geographic profiling,¨ e.g. the observation that “adultery is pathologically ignored” among these ladies of leisure. Of course, stereotypes can be true, but rarely tell all. Where Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly was, in Prada, both a type and something more, Linney is the perfect picture of the spoiled trophy wife, but only that. (Giamatti is even more one-dimensional.) Where Prada was witty and sharp, The Nanny Diaries is merely likable, the wishful-thinking ending being symptomatic. (“Don’t think having money makes it any easier,” we’re told. Really?)
This is the kind of movie I like. It’s fun to watch the clash of different values; it’s interesting to watch the behavior of those whose money insulates them from having to do things they don’t want, like take their children to school. The relationship between the nanny has some interesting parts, even if the boy’s rubberband transition from hating to loving her is too easy. Except for the way the heroine gets simultaneously courted by a dozen women without even trying, which is embarrassingly silly (men, maybe), there’s nothing particularly bad about this movie. But nothing good enough to recommend, either.
IMDB link
reviewed 8/30/07
The young graduate, Nan, is here played by Scarlet Johannson, the wicked boss by Laura Linney; there’s also a four-your-old child and a little-seen husband, played by Paul Giammatti. Linney’s character is called Mrs. X. Whereas this gives the novel the feel of a confessional, in a movie, where we can actually see Mrs. X, it merely seems awkward. One thing that was changed from the novel is that the heroine now has no experience. Her potential employers’ apparent willingness to overlook things like references, sort of explained by her being white and native born, still strains credulity, especially given Mrs. X’s overall overprotectiveness.
This is the second non-documentary feature from the married writer-director team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. As with their acclaimed American Splendor (which starred Giammatti), they incorporate some fanciful visuals into the movie, including a couple that nod to that most famous of movie nannies, Mary Poppins. As excessively narrated by Johannson, the movie is an extended metaphor in which the wealthy Upper East Side wife is seen as a unique culture, like that of a tribe in some faraway place. Clever, but more so as an idea than as actually executed in the movie. Primarily this is so because the story actually reveals little about either nannies or the wealthy elite that you wouldn’t already imagine. The narration apologizes in advance for engaging in “geographic profiling,¨ e.g. the observation that “adultery is pathologically ignored” among these ladies of leisure. Of course, stereotypes can be true, but rarely tell all. Where Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly was, in Prada, both a type and something more, Linney is the perfect picture of the spoiled trophy wife, but only that. (Giamatti is even more one-dimensional.) Where Prada was witty and sharp, The Nanny Diaries is merely likable, the wishful-thinking ending being symptomatic. (“Don’t think having money makes it any easier,” we’re told. Really?)
This is the kind of movie I like. It’s fun to watch the clash of different values; it’s interesting to watch the behavior of those whose money insulates them from having to do things they don’t want, like take their children to school. The relationship between the nanny has some interesting parts, even if the boy’s rubberband transition from hating to loving her is too easy. Except for the way the heroine gets simultaneously courted by a dozen women without even trying, which is embarrassingly silly (men, maybe), there’s nothing particularly bad about this movie. But nothing good enough to recommend, either.
IMDB link
reviewed 8/30/07
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