Ernest Alba's Blog

Review: The Constant Gardener

I went to LSC's showing of The Constant Gardener with Thomas. When it had come out in theatres, it hadn't caught my attention. It's too bad I waited so long to see it. It is a movie definitely worth seeing. With inventive camerawork and true mastery of the art, director Meirelles, who also directed City of God, weaves a coherent fabric from differently colored situations. In a mere two hours, he creates a powerful relationship between two people, a suspenseful quest for a secret truth, and a documentary of the lives of terribly destitute people. His camera does some incredible things to establish these situations permanently in our minds. For example, one small scene has Fienne's using a webcam to view his wife pregnant in the tub. Now, this is becoming more common in films, but how he uses it, I've never seen done. The camera sits outside the bathroom. We see the blurry people in the bathroom but not too well. Our only view is through the laptop showing the video on the right corner of the screen. This is blurry, too, telling us that we must know what's going on, but not too much because this is a special, private moment between people very much in love. This film's strength does not only lie in the direction, however. A strong cast including Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, the wonderful Shakesperean actor Pete Postlethwaite, and Bend It Like Beckham's Archie Panjabi enhance the overall effectiveness of the movie's many messages. Notice, for example, the way Fienne's friend utters the word "cheap" towards the end of the movie. You can almost taste his complete disgust and bitter remorse for what he, they, and we all do to others. Also notice the way Weisz plays the part of the potentially unfaithful wife and philanthropic saint simultaneously during the beginning when Fiennes does not know the truth. She knows what she is, but she does a balancing act so we don't know. Fiennes himself plays the role of Weisz's husband convincingly. We feel his anger, his jealousy, his pain, his remorse, and his sorrow. We are with him at the end of the movie when he does what we all know must be done. What this movie tries to do, the messages it tries to get across, it all gets across to us because of Mierelles' superb direction and the convicing performances of these actors.

Review: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Saturday night was a night of firsts. It was the night I first experienced the freezing torrential rains of New England, it was the first time I visited the famous Pourhouse Bar, and it was the first time I went to Fenway Theatre, close to the legendary home of the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park.

The Pourhouse isn't as smoky as many bars, perhaps because it's filled with college students that know better than to smoke. I know there were students from Tufts, BU, BC, Northeastern, and MIT there. Probably there were also students from Berklee, Emerson, and Harvard. So the six of us, Amerigo and Mael, his friend from Brown, Thomas, Alberto, Jesus, and I squeezed into a booth and ordered up burgers and fries. The funny thing is, everyone around us is drinking, and when the waitress comes up and asks us what we want, Thomas starts. "Just water, please." Mael, "Water, too." Amerigo, "Water." "Water." "Yeah, water, too." till everyone's ordered a glass of water. The waitress looks like she wants to roll her eyes, but she smiles and goes off to serve people who will actually run up a bill. So what did our bill come to? For six people - 16.43. Combined, I kid you not.

So after Pourhouse, Thomas is the only one who shared my admiration for Wallace and Gromit, so we went off to see the new movie and everyone else went home. The sky was still falling all around us, so we had to keep sloshing through puddles on the uneven sidewalks. It was bad enough getting the bottoms of my jeans soaked, but while waiting at the bus stop to go to Fenway, a bum walked up to me and Thomas and asked Thomas if he could have his coat. Thomas, of course, refused, but the guy persisted. He kept talking about how nice of a coat it was, and how he would like to have a coat like that. The guy was perfectly harmless, but everytime he spoke, spittle flew inbetween the toothless gaps in his mouth and out of his lips and onto my arm. Disgusting.

But it was all well worth it, for the opportunity to see a childhood memory reanimated. Gobless whoever showed us those three cartoons at the Catholic school when we were kids. Wallace and Gromit are a perfectly balanced duo. Gromit is wise, and, thus, knows how to fix things whenever Wallace creates messes. Wallace is intelligent. His inventions are crazy, yes, but also practical and useful. One of the greatest things about these characters is that they are claymation. That is, they are animated using clay models. This gives them a realism unparalleled by any CGI available to date. Even drawings don't give the same feeling that these tangible beings do.

Saturday night was long, I don't think we got in until one in the morning. But when you fill your stomach for less money than you planned and stoke the ashes of dimmed but fond memories, the small things like cold weather and unpleasant people become less important. I realize now that Saturday was not so much a night of firsts as it was a night of remembrance. I remembered the delight I experienced after watching Wallace and Gromit as a kid, and that delight is priceless.

Review: Before Sunset

For a long time, I felt frustrated that so many worthwhile films were being ignored by most Americans. But I've become accustomed to seeing these wonderful movies playing to small audiences. In recent history, I can easily recall movies like Proof, The Saddest Music in the World, Bubba Ho-tep, Pieces of April, Frida, and Howl's Moving Castle. These movies are intelligent, moving, cinematically inventive works of art. And they are relegated to small openings in less than mainstream theaters because the media moguls don't trust the public to pay to see movies that make them think.

Before Sunset, starring well-known actor Ethan Hawke (Training Day, Taking Lives, Gattaca) and French actress Julie Delpy (King Lear, An American Werewolf in Paris, MacArthur Park), is a delicious stroll through the park - literally. The movie takes place in Paris, France nine years after the two main characters, Jesse and Celine, spent the most romantic night of their lives together in Vienna. They meet for the first time since then and decide to go to a cafe to grab a cup of coffee before Jesse has to get back on a plane to go back to the U.S. This is essentially all you need to know. The next hour and a half is dedicated to a continual, uninterrupted conversation between the two characters. That's right, NO time passes between scenes, it is all done in real time. This is part of what gives the movie its charm. The most important part, though, is the way Hawke and Delpy become Jesse and Celine. It is extremely difficult to make an hour and a half conversation that is completely scripted sound completely spontaneous. But, somehow, Hawke and Delpy make it work. At no time, does the audience feel like they are being read a script. This is acting at its best.

You might be thinking, why on earth would anyone want to watch an hour long conversation? That's gotta be boring. And it would be. Except the script, written by Hawke, Delpy, and Linklater, the director, is an intelligent, subtle, involving dialogue that stirs emotions and thoughts in our minds that, otherwise, we might not ever think. Has your brain ever felt like it was at rest? Free from the consuming frenzy of life? Peaceful inside? That quotation from this movie is exactly how this movie will make you feel. It might seem like boredom at first, but it quickly becomes very soulful.

Review: The Interpreter

This movie is one of the best in the genre. It doesn't give us cliches, instead it engages our minds. As Ebert so shrewdly pointed out, the movie doesn't rely on cheap shock value moments or a shoddy romance side story. It fully develops and deals with much deeper emotional trauma. It also covers a lot of other ground, including politics, crime-solving and deduction, human rights, literature, music, and art. It's being touted as an intelligent thriller, and that it is. It's a taut thriller, too, except for the last scene which is quite unnecessary as the story as already reached its conclusion before it. It's a really poorly constructed scene that was obviously meant for the average Joes who don't get the real ending. If you go see this movie, the movie ends after the last shot in the montage of the United Nations building. You might as well walk out of the movie before the next scene begins. It ain't worth watching.

This movie can, above anything else, make you rethink your beliefs, your morals, your way of living. I believe that this movie has a good message that we all need to hear at one point in our lives, in one way or another.

I don't know why I failed to see good actresses before. I've always hated Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman. I didn't think they were good actresses. But then I saw Gwyneth Paltrow in Proof and was blown away. Now I've seen Kidman in The Interpreter, and I'm blown away. How could I not have seen this before? I did the same thing with Charlize Theron before Monster. I guess now I need to recant on my beliefs of a person I still loathe as an actress: Naomi Watts.

It's unsettling to note that all these actresses have something in common: None of them are American.

Editor's Note: Nicole Kidman IS actually American, though she was raised in Australia since she was 3 years old.
Though at the beginning of her career, Gwyneth Paltrow was widely thought to be a British actress (including by me), she's actually from L.A.
Charlize Theron was born and raised in South Africa, and Naomi Watts was born and raised in England.

Review: Murderball and Wedding Crashers

So I saw two movies this weekend, Murderball and Wedding Crashers. Chances are you've heard of Wedding Crashers, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Chances are you haven't heard of Murderball, starring no well-known actors. In fact, it doesn't star actors at all. The stars of this movie are quadriplegics in wheelchairs. But these are no ordinary wheel chairs - they are wheelchairs from hell. They are made specially for this rugby sport modified for wheelchaired people. But it's every bit as intense and violent as classic rugby. That's why the chair is made from a really tough metal. Despite being tough, after a while on the court, it gets to look really banged up and dirty, giving it an authentic look.

This movie is more about people than anything else. It's about their relationships to their girlfriends, their wives, their sons, their families, their friends, and their enemies. After all, it was made by MTV, the people who thrive on stories about relationships. To that extent, it is a far better story than any other MTV media I've seen including The Real World:Cancun, some of the reality shows they have on TV, and The Perfect Score. It is NOT as good, however, as some other movies released by MTV such as Better Luck Tomorrow and the Original Kings of Comedy. This is a well-shot, thoughtful movie that sheds light on the lives of quadriplegics in a complete manner. It delves into all aspects of this new life - dealing with the past, dealing with the future, sexual functionality (can you get it up?), getting dressed, using the bathroom, driving, dancing, drinking, parties, sports, typing, working, LIFE. This is a great sports movie, a great drama, and a great documentary.

So what about Wedding Crashers? This is a standard funny movie. You don't need to be bothered with the plot. It's there to create situations where Vaughn and Wilson can be funny. One sentence should be enough: Vaughn and Wilson crash weddings to hook up with chicks until one day Wilson finds a girl he loves and Vaughn is dragged along with him to the girl's family's home where Wilson tries everything he can to get this girl to love him back. Along the way we meet some wacky characters including a gay character that I hope people would take offense to, Christopher Walken as the girl's dad, and Jane Seymour looking insanely hot and for an unknown reason, being really hot for Wilson. This is pretty standard fare, and I laughed a lot, got my money's worth, and left chuckling, so the movie works. It ain't great, though.

It's sad to note that the theatre was PACKED for Wedding Crashers, but for the far superior movie, Murderball, there were at most fifteen people in the entire theatre.

Review: Saw and Saw II

I saw "Saw" today. I saw "Saw II", too.

I haven't been this disturbed since I saw "The Ring."

I'm not a big fan of horror movies. I've seen very few, and I've seen even fewer that I've liked. The reason is that I usually can't find anything worth seeing in them. They are as bad as the many action movies or teen drama movies that plague movie theatres. Cheap thrills, gratuitous violence, nudity, and profanity are the rewards you reap from horror flicks. Occasionally, there comes an intelligent horror movie. They become cult classics. "The Shining", "The Exorcist", "Nosferatu", "Psycho", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", more recently, "The Silence of the Lambs", "The Sixth Sense", and "The Ring" are just some of the great horror movies in history.

"Saw" and "Saw II" do not join them in the annals of great cinema history, but they almost make the list. They are immensely disturbing and hard to watch. Both stretch the human mind to its limit; I believe if I were put through what these people were put through, I would lose my sanity. My mind would split into a million pieces and the shards would pierce through whatever semblance of reality I could sense with my body. I would fall into a state of eternal shock, unable to escape from the doorless, windowless room of my empty head. I can't muster words to recount the emotional stress these movies caused me. They rely not on cheap camera angles that suddenly reveal scary images, instead they rely on a psychological terror that is much more penetrating and lasting. This is the secret to the success of a horror movie, of any movie, in the long run. It must affect us for us to care about it. These movies make us care. They make us think about our lives. Deeply.

A quick summary of these movies: The original "Saw" creates a serial killer nicknamed "Jigsaw" who puts his victims through "games" in which they must choose to live or die. Living usually requires doing something they really don't want to do. For example, one poor soul wakes up with a metal device around his head. (This example is from Saw II, but it gives you the gist of the game.) He is locked inside of a room with no immediately noticeable way of getting out. A TV turns on suddenly. A clown puppet appears and informs him that the device will close around his head, smashing it into a pulp in a certain amount of time. The only way to escape from that grisly death is to find the key to unlock the device. The twisted part is that the key is located behind his eye. He must dig out his eye to get behind it to get the key. And this is the gist of these "Saw" movies. Yes, it involves people that we should root for, hope that escape from the sick games they are playing. That's pretty much it for plot. These movies are truly perverse, twisted, and brutally violent. Horror enthusiasts should love them. Others might think they are fun to watch. As for me, I was saddened and disturbed by these movies. After leaving "Saw II", I could not stop shaking my head. I suppose I was trying to remove the images I had just seen from my head. But they are still in there. And they will stay there. If you are sensitive to violence, I strongly urge you to NOT watch these movies.

We are sick. Why are we fascinated by abominations? We look away, but peek back. We delight in misery - our misery and the misery of others. Violence, hatred, and despicable acts of cruelty foment feelings of raw energy, emotion, and excitement. Despicable! That is what we are. When we glorify these things, we renege on our promise to encourage, hope for, and save life. This is your only life. The clock is ticking, and you don't know when time will run out. Live and be at peace.

Review: Flightplan

She was born in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de la Porciuncula, Los Angeles for short, L.A. for shorter and educated at Le Lycée Français de Los Angeles, an exclusive prep school which follows French curriculum of study, allowing students to study for the French general Baccalauréat. She went on to earn a B.A. in literature from Yale, graduating in 1985. At 14, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a teen prostitute in Scorsese's Taxi Driver. She's fluent in French and has performed in French films. She has won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, one for The Accused (1988) and one, of course, for The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She is a director and producer, having founded a production company called Egg Pictures.

I first saw Jodie Foster in Contact at the University of Kansas in the summer of my seventh grade year. I was taking a Psychology course, and Foster's portrayal of a brilliant scientist who deeply questions matters of physics, mathematics, religion, the universe, politics, and extra-terrestrial life is sufficiently superb to write a lengthy paper over her psychological disposition. Next, I saw her in Silence of the Lambs, in which she once again showed that she is an excellent actress. Finally, I saw her in Anna and the King, which I actually bought. She is just so very beautiful!

Now she is starring in Flightplan, a suspenseful whodunnit thriller where Foster is once again trapped in a very small space. It's amazing how so much can be done with such a modest premise. In Panic Room, she was trapped in her house with no possible way of escaping. Now she is trapped on a plane, with no possible way of escaping. The setup is this: she and her daughter are the first to get on a plane. They are transporting her husband's coffin to New York. He had died tragically a week before, jumping (Foster believes falling) off of a building. She goes to sleep next to her daughter on the plane and wakes up to find her gone. She goes around looking for her and can't find her. That's the setup. Now she has to find her. And that is what the rest of the movie is about. It sounds like it couldn't be a movie, but it is. And a good one, too. It's all about psychology. Brilliant stuff. And the way Foster handles the character shows how incredibly talented she is. This is a fun movie. I suggest seeing it. All that being said, I do have one bone to pick with the movie. But if you haven't seen it, then I can't discuss it because it will give away important plot points.

Review: Minority Report

Minority Report has an all-star cast and crew including director Steven Spielberg, editor Michael Kahn, producer Jan de Bont, composer John Williams, and actors Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, and Steve Harris. Tom Cruise plays a cop in the year 2050 or so in Washington, D.C. Crime has been virtually wiped out because of a new program in D.C. called Pre-Crime. Three psychics suspended in water predict what future murders are going to occur. The only jobs the cops have is to get there in time to prevent the murder. You can see where the public would need complete reassurance that the psychics are completely correct in telling the future. Otherwise, you might get innocent people going to jail. Well, technically, everyone in jail is innocent because they never actually committed a crime. But they thought about committing the crime, which is the same as committing it. But the public has every reassurance that the Pre-Cogs (the three psychics) get it right all the time. What they don't know is that the Pre-Cogs don't always agree. One might see the future different than the other two. In that case, the police ignore the Minority Report. And then, the unthinkable happens. Tom Cruise is accused of killing someone. He, of course, would never kill anyone, so he goes on the run to try to find out who set him up. But did someone set him up? Or is he actually going to be a killer? These questions are not easily answered, and the ensuing adventure is thrilling. This is an exciting movie that builds up insurmountable tension and delivers a poignant, thoughtful, and impactful ending.

The vision of the future is another delightful part of this movie. The technological innovations make sense and seem like things that we could eventually use and live with. For example, Lexus cars are still around, just with a sleeker design. Computer monitors are still around, just flatter than ever, and no more mouse. Cell phones are still around, just small enough that they fit discretely around your ear. The future here is plausible, yet fascinating.

Minority Report is an incredible sci-fi film. It's smart, gripping, and edgy. It's perfectly directed, orchestrated, acted, and written. This is one of the best science fiction films I've seen yet.

Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter mania is once again hitting the U.S. After a sagging box office trend, studio execs are hoping that the heavy hitters that usually come around the holiday season, this time including Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong, and Memoirs of a Geisha, will buoy the total receipts for the year. And I suspect that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire will deliver in a big way. It's a crowd-pleaser in every sense of the word. It has romance, action, adventure, terror, suspense, and, best of all, magic. It lacks better than perfunctory dialogue, which fortunately doesn't detract much from the movie, and something far more important than that - the ability to make us part of the Potter universe.

I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books. (I've read the first four.) But I could never connect with the characters or with the story on more than a superficial level. The whole thing felt rushed despite going on for several hundred pages. Even the lengthy Goblet of Fire takes only a few hours to read. Nevertheless, I enjoy the series. The movies feel the same way to me. I like them a lot. I think they are masterfully done. But, once again, they feel rushed, like one can never really be a part of that world. This most recent Potter movie gave me that feeling the most acutely. I understand what I should be feeling, but I don't feel it deep inside of me. Whenever a certain tragic death occurs in the movie, for example, I should feel sorrowful. And I can't because I can't ever feel anything for these characters, so I put on a sad face in the darkness of the theatre to oblige the director. When I see the dragons flying, the wizards casting spells, and the underwater world being explored, I know I should be enraptured, enchanted, and totally engrossed by them, but I just can't be. Still, it's a load of fun to see it. I just can't feel it in my core the way I felt it with Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and The Matrix. Those movies truly expected you to dive into their respective universes and become a part of them. With Harry Potter, I'm a spectator not a participant.

General reaction after the show: Jose, Hugo, and Hector liked it. Daneaya, like always, tried to convince herself that she liked it more than she really did. She's such an optimist; I love that. Andrea, I could tell, didn't like it, though she politely nodded agreement with the others. After I commented that it was a bit too long, she said, "I know!" - nakedly exposing her opinon.

Katie Leung plays Harry's love interest in the movie. In this movie, there are a lot more black, Indian, and Asian people than I remembered in the previous ones.

Review: The Aviator

The Aviator is a big Hollywood production in the classical sense of the word. Just as the big pictures of Classic Hollywood like The Jazz Singer, Some Like It Hot, and Ocean's Eleven showed off their stars and starlets like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn, and Ava Gardner, this movie has the look and feel of one of those shows of the past, including a long list of today's stars: Leo DiCaprio, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Ian Holm, and even Gwen Stefani. And, of course, in the tradition of great Hollywood directors such as Lewis Milestone, Victor Fleming, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese directs.

The Aviator is a biopic about the eccentric Hollywood Golden Boy Howard Hughes. At one point in his life the richest man in the world, Hughes was always fascinated with aviation and film. After inheriting a Houston-based tool company from his father and a phobia of germs from his mother that would become debilitating later on in life, he decided to make the grandest war epic in history. He flew out to Hollywood and proceeded in making the most expensive movie ever made, Hell's Angels. This is just one of the several daring and some would say stupid ventures in his life. This film attempts to chronicle these adventures while also showing the internal struggles he went through in his life. This film is very long, two hours and forty-five minutes long. But it flies by, as you press on, hoping for..I don't know what - lasting happiness for this high-spirited but wounded soul.

What can I say? This movie deserves every Academy Award it won (5 out of 11 nominations). Cate Blanchett is excellent in her role. Leo DiCaprio is also superb. This movie is exciting and moving. I can't believe that the last two movies I've seen are two of the greatest movies in their respective categories that I've seen. Of biopics, only Monster and Amadeus beat out The Aviator. And Monster is, perhaps, the best movie I've ever seen.