The Counterfeiters B
The Lawyer really enjoyed this one (A-, review here), but I wasn’t as smitten. While the acting is uniformly excellent, this 2007 Best Foreign Film Oscar winner brings nothing new to the Nazi-WWII films. Karl Markovics is great as lead Sally Sorowitsch, the greatest counterfeiter in 1930’s Germany who happens to be a Jew. Unfortunately, the wiles of a beautiful women lead to his imprisonment, where his ability to perfectly copy currency saves his neck and those in his all-Jewish counterfeiting crew. The secondary story of the Third Reich’s attempt destroy the economies of their enemies by flooding them with phony money churned out in concentration camps was riveting, but the ethics of the main plot, based in loyalty to the gang over loyalty to any universal humanity, left me cold. Even so, if they hadn’t wussed out at the end and given Sally an inexplicable conscious, I’d have liked it better. B
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Definitely Maybe C
My ability to enjoy any chick flick is largely predicated on the women on the screen. This one gives you Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher, and Rachel Weisz. Not too shabby. The set-up is also reasonable, with recently-divorced Ryan Reynolds explaining to his daughter (Abigail Breslin) how he came to pick her mother as his wife. The first holds up pretty nicely before Breslin becomes the “know-more-than-daddy” brat I hate in these kinds of flicks. The second half is as tedious as they come. By the end, you won’t care who ends up with who. C
Made of Honor C+
Yes, I realized that’s back-to-back romantic comedies. I was recently on a plane for a total of 36 (gulp) hours, and I’d already seen most of the on-board movie selection…. As mentioned above, it’s the girl that can make-or-break a chick-flick for me, and it just so happens I’ve loved Michelle Monaghan since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. While this movie has no reasonable concept of who guys are or what they do when girls aren’t around (co-screen-writer Adam Sztykiel should be ashamed of himself), this retelling of My Best Friend’s Wedding with the genders reversed was still reasonably fun for me. Patrick Dempsey’s lack of acting chops outside of a smoldering look and above-average appearance in scrubs is a distraction early on, but either he settled into the role or I just got used to him sucking. Either way, the under-appreciated Monaghan holds the film together from second fiddle. The breath-taking shots of Scotland are a nice bonus, although the too-cheesy ending for even this by-the-numbers rom-com is not. C+
The Thirteenth Warrior D-
Based on Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, this 1999 release is a truly bad film. Antonio Banderas plays an Arab emissary (yes, that‘s correct. An Arab. With a halting Hispanic delivery) sent from his homeland for bagging the wrong dude’s woman. He meets up with some Vikings who enlist him to fight a people-eating monster from the north. What follows are ridiculous battle scenes and even more ridiculous platitudes of respect across cultures and religions. Awful. D-
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Quickies
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3 comments:
They didn't so much give Sally a conscience...they basically allowed him to be a human. He's not a ruthless criminal, just a lover and a talented counterfeiter. The film is a B+, with the bookend scenes elevating it to an A- for me.
Monaghan sucks.
The Thirteenth Warrior sounds like the worst. movie. ever...
to be fair, i should have said he didn't stick to his internal ethics. why walk away from that money then? he had plenty of times when he could have taken a stance, but he never does. i didn't think he was a ruthless criminal, or, particularly, a lover. to me it would be interesting to say "some people did some pretty courageous things in WWII to survive. Pretty interesting things. But they were very pragmatic individuals, not at all driven by idealism." To me that fits Sally. But the turn to me comes out of nowhere. I really wanted to like the movie more than I did. There are some great, great seems.
Monaghan is hot.
I'm with Priest. The bookends in Counterfeiters were there to show Sally's sudden disgust (i.e. conscience) with himself after realizing he should have taken the more "enlightened" view of Burger (the saboteur).
This is also my main problem with the film: it's based on a book by Adolf Burger who is overwhelmingly self-congratulatory, and basically says he and he alone is responsible for Germany's defeat in WWII since he sabotaged the counterfeiting of the U.S. Dollar. The first half was great though and the end result is a B for me.
Monaghan is hot, though her post-Kiss Kiss Bang Bang roles have been erratic.
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