DVD Round-Up

Here's a trio of "foreign" flicks...some of which are better than others...

I've Loved You So Long (2008)

If only this movie were a little shorter, it certainly would've ranked in the top five of 2008 movies I had seen. Nevertheless, this French film is definitely a winner because of two great female performances. Kristin Scott Thomas is Juliette, a woman who was imprisoned for fifteen years for murdering her son, and Elsa Zylberstein is Lea, Juliette's sister who longs to create a relationship that has been missing for so many years. These two actresses are really just amazing...how neither of them got Oscar nominations is beyond me. Like I said, it certainly lulls in parts, but the revelation that occurs at the end was shocking to me and threw a whole new perspective on the movie and Thomas's performance in particular.

The RyMickey Rating: B+

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Let the Right One In (2008)

I don't know if I've ever seen a Swedish movie before, but I can be certain that I've never seen a Swedish vampire movie. Definitely different, the film is good, but not as great as the raves it was getting at the end of 2008 (it showed up on many Top Ten lists). Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a twelve year-old boy who is constantly bullied at school and finds some solace in Eli (Lina Leandersson), an odd girl who just moved into his apartment complex. Perhaps the reason she's so odd is that she's actually a vampire. The film focuses on some vampire lore that I've never seen before in movies and it's certainly not the least bit scary (although there is bloodsucking, but what would a vampire flick be without bloodsucking?). Although the two young leads are stellar (I really can't say enough about the two of them...they were great), the relationship set up between them feels way too adult. There were scenes between the two of them that made me incredibly uncomfortable...they were much more, for lack of a better word, sensual than anything I've seen in any American flick. Add to that uncomfortableness, the director paces the film incredibly slowly. There were definitely whole scenes that could've been removed to make it flow better. Nevertheless, not a bad movie and certainly a different movie. Worth a rental if the general idea of the film intrigues you at all.

The RyMickey Rating: B-

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Australia (2008)

This is likely the only one of these three movies that most people have heard of and it's by far the worst of the three. Unfortunately for the film, I'm liking it less and less the more time passes after watching it. Nicole Kidman is awful in this. Wide-eyed and oddly theatrical, I laughed at her when I shouldn't have. As far as Hugh Jackman goes, he was serviceable in his role, but he was nothing special. I (used to?) appreciate Baz Luhrmann as a director, but his goal to produce an "epic" film fell tremendously flat. The film veers from over-the-top in the first thirty minutes to way too serious in the last hour (with a crazed villain thrown in for good measure) and he never finds an appropriate balance. The film is a simple love story between two unlikely people and there's not enough story to last 165 minutes. Plus, the film seriously could've ended an hour earlier. The whole war saga at the end was completely and utterly unnecessary. I remember that when we first got the movie at the theater, the film broke, we had to pass the theater, and people asked me, "How much of the film was left?" I said, "At least an hour," and they said, "Really? It seemed like it was ending." Well, it could've ended after 105 minutes...in fact, Baz even throws in a montage and voice-over narration that you might expect to see at the end of a movie, but he then makes it go on for over an hour more. My appreciation for Baz certainly lessened after watching this one.

The RyMickey Rating: D+