The Housemaid (Hanyo)

First Hit: Started with hopeful interest but, by the end, fell to uninspired.

I’m not sure if this Korean film sharing the same name with a 1960 Korean film is a remake or a reinterpretation. However, this film starts with some promise and fades quickly as there is nothing in the film to give the audience any idea the main character would act the way they do in the end.

It’s like there is a piece of background missing. It begins with a young woman Eun-yi (played by Do-yeon Jeon) getting out of the bed of her best friend. We’re able to piece together that this was an interim place for her to stay as she quickly picks up a new job as a nanny for Nami (Seo-Hyeon Ahn).

She is the smart cute daughter of Hoon (played by Jung-Jae Lee) and the very pregnant Haera (played by Seo Woo). Hoon is attracted to Eun-yi’s beauty and innocence and directs her to have sex with him. I say direct because the class system of Korea plays a prominent role in this film as does the employer / employee relationship.

The relationship continues and when Eun-yi becomes pregnant Haera and her mother plot to get rid of her and the baby. Part of the ploy works but Eun-yi wants revenge of sorts and makes a complete spectacle of herself at the end of the film.

Jeon was good up to a point. She played the innocence well but where was the background that had her act the way she did in the end? This was not her fault but the writer and director’s issue. Lee was arrogantly perfect as the super-rich husband who felt entitled to behave anyway he wanted. Woo was beautifully pregnant and OK in her role as the cheated on wife. Ahn was excellent as the daughter. Sang-soo Im both wrote the screenplay and directed this film. He missed a critical piece in his exuberance to create a suspenseful thriller. One has to have enough information in the end to connect the dots or else the audience is left with film that doesn’t make sense.

Overall: There is very little to make this film work or interesting.

The Tourist

First Hit: Who didn’t know that Johnny Depp was Alexander all along?

Yes it is mean to give away the whole point of the film in the first line of a review, but it is also mean to put two strong actors in parts that don’t work well together, in a story that is poorly created, build some fluff around it, then make it about life and death and hope we like it, let alone believe it.

In the scene where Elise Clifton-Ward (played by Angelina Jolie) strolls down the train looking for someone who is about the same height as Alexander (Depp) how would she have picked him? There is nothing about the “description” (about the same height) we are given about whom she should pick that would have had us believe that Depp’s character is Alexander’s look alike.

You can’t pick the height of someone sitting down. But, OK, we will live with this, but then there’s all this fluff about Depp being Frank Tupelo an American math teacher tourist who is just willing to follow, or more accurately be commanded by Elise to do what she wants.

First off Depp gave me no feeling he was a math professor and second he didn’t seem the meek person his role called for. Her goal was to set him up to be the real Alexander to throw the cops off. Why?

Scotland Yard wants Alexander because he owes 744,000,000 in taxes on money he stole from Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff) who gained his money from crime and being a ruthless mobster (why isn’t Scotland Yard after him?). Seriously, is this really a Scotland Yard crime? Even as both Scotland Yard and Shaw believe that Frank Tupelo isn’t Alexander they think Alexander will show up soon to see Elise.

But Elise is also a Scotland Yard undercover cop and some of the team wonders if she went rogue. Oh and Elise falls in love with whomever she is last with or that’s what we are told by Scotland Yard to have us believe she is falling for Frank Tupelo who is really Alexander. Confused yet?

Just watch the film some Sunday afternoon when it is on video enjoy the beautiful scenes of Venice and wonder what could have been.

Jolie is gorgeous as always and the scenes as she walks through the train and through the ball the staring is probably real. Jolie can be captivating. However, this isn’t much of a part and there isn’t much for Jolie to grab on to from an acting perspective. Depp is not very believable in his role as a math teacher tourist. There is an incongruence that just doesn’t make it work. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck directed this and I’m not sure why.

Overall: If you’re bored someday, pick up the DVD or use On Demand and watch some mindless fluff.

Black Swan

First Hit: Natalie Portman captures the character and is mesmerizing although the film is a bit excessive in its representation.

I really left the theater with two main thoughts: Portman was outstanding as Nina Sayers (Swan Queen) and is my pick for Best Actress for this year. Secondly, why did the director (Darren Aronofsky) over do the visualizations. Why did he feel he needed an overtly hammer the audience in expressing the internal pain of an obsessed ballerina?

Portman brought everything that was needed to this part. An example of this overt visualization was when Nina was getting ready to dance she removes one shoe. Her toes are stuck together because she spends so much time in her tight ballet slippers. With some pain she pulls her toes apart. Then she takes off the other shoe and Aronofsky shows us a fully webbed foot.

I didn’t need that overkill because I got the point with the first foot. This is the downside of the film; overkilling points. The amount of blood (real and perceived) in this film along with an Exorcist kind of leg breaking in one bedroom scene was also excessive. However I’m clear that the journey we take with Nina from living the life of an obsessed ballerina trying to please everyone but herself, was extraordinary.

I’ve enjoyed ballet as a season ticket holder to both the American Ballet Theater and the San Francisco Ballet. I’ve seen all forms of dance from Joe Goode to Baryshnikov’s White Oak Project. The practice it takes to perform at these levels borders on being fanatically possessed at times. The result when a performer lets the feeling and the art of the story come through them with their technical abilities can be phenomenal.

Portman captures all this but to her overall demise. She is living with her fanatical mother Erica Sayers (played by Barbara Hershey – The Queen) who wants and doesn’t want her daughter to succeed. Erica was also a dancer and at age 28 got pregnant with Nina which ended her dancing career.

Resentful yet supportive, Erica is living through, for and against her daughter’s success. She has created such an insulated world for Nina that this 20 year old girl lives in a room full of stuff animals and ballet musical boxes. But because of her relentless devotion, Artistic Director Thomas Leroy (played by Vincent Cassel – The Gentleman) selects Nina to dance his new version of Swan Lake.

The Swan Queen will dance both the white swan and black swan parts. Thomas sees Nina as the perfect white swan but says she must let go of everything inside that she uses to control her life so that she can also become the Black Swan.

Lily (played by Mila Kunis – Black Swan) a young dancer from San Francisco joins this company is the prime competition for the part because she dances the Black Swan part perfectly. She is an intuitive dancer who seduces and is not seduced.

With all the players in place we have the ballet being danced in real life as real characters while also in the performance of Swan Lake.

Portman is the best woman actress on the screen this year. The brief moments that she breaks out of her afraid obsessed filled life and gives us the Black Swan within her is perfect. It is believable, powerful and the type of range one rarely sees in a single part for an actress in a single film. There are just a few glimpses of this extraordinary movement, but sitting in the audience, I felt it. That is the mark of this performance – I felt her fully. Hershey was equally great to watch as the mother who wanted her daughter to both fail and succeed where she herself didn’t. Kunis is wonderful to watch as the free spirited Lily. Cassel was perfect Artistic Director pushing things to the limit with his cast. Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz wrote a very good screen play. Director Darren Aronofsky over did his job in some aspects of the film as previously explained, however he was masterful at getting strong performances from his cast and the mood of the film, dark, not slick, and glaring at times was very good.

Overall: I cannot forget Portman’s performance and that makes it worthwhile.

The Girl Who Played With Fire (Flikan som lekte med elden)

First Hit: Good film, not as strong as the first of the series, yet interesting enough to be engaging.

Noomi Rapace reprises her role as Lisbeth Salander, "the girl" referred to in the title in the trilogy of films. Michael Nyqvist reprises his role as Mikael Blomkvist the journalist of the Millennium magazine.

Taking off from the first film “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, this film picks up Salander vacationing in a foreign country. She looks rested yet her intensity is still obvious in her eyes as she stops her traveling and heads back to Sweden to take care of some unfinished business.

Upon returning, Salander breaks into her parole officer’s home and reminds him that she still has his number and expects him to continue to write positive reports about her. Her father, whom she set on fire when she was younger, is still alive and now after her by setting her up for murders being committed by his goon a big blond former boxer.

Blomkvist doesn’t believe police reports that Salander has murdered 3 people. He begins to investigate and through a couple of emails learns that Salander is thankful for his belief and help. As Salander makes her way to where her father is living she runs into the protective goon (the big blond man) who beats her.

After awakening she learns he doesn't feel any pain and that this big blond goon is her half-brother. Her father and the goon dispose of Salander but her perseverance has her rising from the grave to kill him. And Blomkvist, he arrives on time to keep her alive.

Rapace is unforgettable on the screen. Whether you watch her walk away naked with her full back tattoo, or hooded and disguised as she quietly sneaks her way across town, she captures the audience’s attention. Blomkvist is not a strong screen presence but plays his character with so much integrity I can’t help but be on his side, no matter what. Jonas Frykberg and Stieg Larsson wrote the screenplay from Larsson’s book of the same title. This story isn’t quite as strong as the first film. Daniel Alfredson directed the film in a way that was well paced and allowed the story to unfold rather than force it.

Overall: A good follow-up from the first film, but the story wasn’t quite as strong as the initial one and so it didn’t quite bowl me over.

Salt

First Hit: Despite Jolie’s strong acting and excellent execution, the ending was predictable and telegraphed.

For a film to be suspenseful it has to be set up that way. It has to keep the audience wondering what will happen and make them believe what they are seeing is really the truth. Salt was not set up to do this.

I’d be surprised if anyone in the theater thought for one minute, that Salt (played by Angelina Jolie) would turn out to be a die-hard Russian spy wanting to kill the President of the US. With that resting in one’s mind from the get go, how could one buy into the story on the screen? I didn't.

Therefore the film became one about; can this obvious story be told well and would the acting and action be engaging? To those questions the answer is yes, it was engaging and it was fun to watch.

The story is about a Russian man named Vassily Orlov (played by Daniel Olbrychski and Daniel Pearce) who wants to cause havoc in the world because he prefers the cold war fight between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. of the 1950's and 1960's to the present day friendship. To keep that old battle alive he kidnaps young kids in Russia and trains them to be obedient killers and spies.

Salt, who is a US Russian diplomat’s daughter, is one of them. To carry out his plan he sends these well trained people into the US to live their lives and to be ready to march on his orders to perform the covert functions they were trained to deliver.

Jolie is good and keeps the whole film interesting. She is both athletic and beautiful. You believe she can to all the things she does in the film; from beating the crap out of people to saving the world from total destruction. Liev Schreiber as Jolie’s boss Ted Winter is strong as the man who cares but also has his own secret. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Peabody the government agent overseeing the problem of spies, is his usual strong self. Olbrychski is great as the Russian activist who wants the world to be different than it is. Phillip Noyce did well with the given script but the problem is that the script is too obvious to work as a suspenseful thriller.

Overall: It is entertaining in an action sort of way but it is not suspenseful as the ending becomes glaringly obvious as the film rolls.