Four Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Pride and Prejudice

I really enjoyed this film. Of course it's a well known good Jane Austin story, but it was told well, had good performances, sets, costumes, etc. You really felt like you were there. Also for a 2 hour version of a 350 page novel of which a 6 hour mini series is based, they did a good job with pacing and getting enough of the story in. This was one of my favorites of the year.


Movie Review: Memoirs of a Geisha

I saw many so-so reviews of this but I liked it. The story follows a young girl sold into slavery at one of the geisha houses in Japan (Kyoto?). She sees an older man (Ken Watanabe) who buys her an ice cream cone and falls in love. Then a rival geisha (Michelle Yeoh) trains her and she (ziyi Zhang) becomes the star of the town and of course see her love again. There's much more to the story, involving her rival (Li Gong) and once friend (youki Kudoh) which pushes the melodrama scale very far. If you look past the creepiness factor and an out of place dance scene that reminded me of Flashdance I was very entertained.

Movie Review: Mrs. Henderson Presents

I knew nothing about the story going into this film and was surprised. It starts out in 1937 with Mrs. Henderson (Judi Dench) burying her wealthy British husband and figuring out what to do with her new widowed life. But this seems to be comedy and some of these scenes are quite funny as she decides to run a theater in the West End. She hires Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) to run it and they create a vaudville-like show that runs continuously. When others copy it, Mrs. Henderson suggests turning it into a nude review to bring in the crowd. It's then part musical and still pretty fun. Of course World War II intervenes some personal issues pop up to give the film some dramatic bite. The movie kept wanting to shock us by having Judi Dench swear and it pretty much works.

Movie Review: Transamerica

In this one Felicity Huffman plays Stanley Osbourne who's a week away from becoming Bree Osbourne. Having taken hormones and dressing the part, she already goes by Bree. And then she gets a phone call from someone claiming to be Stanley's unknown 17 year-old son Toby (Kevin Zegers). Her therapist (Elizabeth Peña) says she has to resolve this before she can give approval for the sugery and delaying it would mean a long scheduling delay. So off to New York goes Bree to bail out Toby. She doesn't tell him that she's his father and a road trip to Los Angeles ensues. Oh yeah, Toby is a 17 year male prostitute drug-user who dreams of being a porn star, a model child. You can guess the bonding plot summary but none of the details. The middle of the film with the road trip isn't all that good but it does pick up in the last act. I would have liked this better if the characters were a little more likable. Bree's situation didn't bother me but did they have to make her someone who corrects everyone's grammer and uses the vocabulary of a anthropologist? They explain she went to college for 10 years but failed to get a degree, but I don't think that explains that she works as a dishwasher in a small mexican restaurant and does telemarketing from home. Among all the characters and performances, Huffman is the only one of note, and she's very good, almost good enough to carry the film, if only there was more for her to work with.