Thousandapologies » film

500 days of summer

tjadejong — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:00:35 +0000

“This is a story about boy meets girl, but it is not a love story”, a remark at the very beginning of this interesting movie 500 days of summer. And indeed, this quote characterises the entire movie very well, because it tells the story of a woman, Summer, who doesn’t believe true love exists and a man, Tom, who is desperately looking for “the one”. When Tom meets Summer he believes he found that one, and what follows is a description of the 500 days they spent together, seen through Tom’s eyes. A hopeless story, because Tom is desperately trying to make it work, and Summer is doubting whether she’s just looking for the causual flirt, or for something more serious. This story is portrayed especially well; as the movie randomly jumps from day to day, from start to end, to middle, and back again, Tom’s emotions seem to follow this randomness. A little bit like Goethe’s “Himmelhoch jauchzend und zum Tode betrübt”, he goes from utter joy and hope the one day, to complete sadness and despair the other, even onto a point that his job starts suffering from it. Summer, on the other hand, seems not too much affected by their relationship, is mostly lighthearted about it, but also does not seem to have a clue of what she really wants. While this sounds like a heavy theme to deal with, the movie does not overwhelm the viewer with sadness or heavy feelings, and the randomn order of events even seems to result in some distance to the topic and makes it a very interesting movie to watch. Especially, Zooey Deschanel, an actress I love to see and who mostly portrays somewhat odd characters, gives Summer the necessary substance that is needed for this movie. And while the relationship between Tom & Zooey does not work out as expected, the movie ends positively and in a happy mood. In short, if you like arthouse movies, this is certainly a movie you should not miss.

Twilight

tjadejong — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:48:31 +0000

Ok, I admit that although I’m not a teenage girl, I still liked the Twilight Movie a lot. The movie already starts with a catching quote that must have been taken from the book directly, and gathers momentum as it goes. In the beginning, I was still sceptical, thinking for example that Bella’s friends were too damn shallow (they are) and that would they have come at me on my first schoolday I probably would’ve been freaked out by them. While most of the supporting characters stay shallow, the relationship between Edward (a Vampire) and Bella (Human) develops during the film and the tension between them is clearly felt throughout. Most of all, I think the movie was a good mixture of romance, tension and action and is beautifully shot; especially the American scenery is breathtaking. And hey, a movie that has Flightless Bird of Iron & Wine on its soundtrack has to do a lot to lose my favour . Anyway, a good way to spend a Friday evening and the film has made me curious about the books too. One thing I thought quite funny was that both this movie & the True Blood series have Vampires and mind readers in them, and both use the theme of attraction between them, wonder whether that was a coincidence.

Avatar

tjadejong — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:19:12 +0000

Yesterday, the drizzly winter weather in the Netherlands lend itself for a visit to a nice warm cinema. I already decided to go and watch Avatar since I saw its movie trailers in the States, and I had been playing around with the idea of going to see it; yesterday I finally got round to see it, and I’m glad a did. The movie is just awesome! The story tells us about a paraplegic marine, Jake Sully, who is shipped to an earth-like planet to help the mining operations there. The mining company is searching for an ore ironically called “unobtanium”, but met fierce resistance of the humanoid Na’vi, the original inhabitants of the planet. Jake is hired to control an avatar, a Na’vi-like body, to win the confidence of the locals. However, in his contact with the Na’vi he starts to admire their ways and falls in love with Neytiri; one of the Na’vi women. When a confrontation between both peoples is at hand, Jake has to choose his allegiance. Thus, enough matter for an interesting movie, and although I feel the story and characters could have been worked out better, the movie is shot beautifully: you’ll find yourself emerged in it from the beginning to the end. The 3D graphics were also astounding and set a new standard for the industry. Moreover, this was my first 3D movie and I was quite impressed by the effects; my seat right at the front row probably wasn’t ideal, but it was really interesting to see parts in the movie where objects suddenly started to float towards me. All in all I would really want to advise you to go and see this one, you definitely won’t regret it.

As I said, the story could have been worked out a bit better, but hey, I know, it’s an action movie. Funnily, the story reminded me a bit of the theme also addressed in “Dances with Wolves” and “Pocahontas”, invader meets indigenous, starts admiring their ways and falls for one of their women, eventually becoming one of their own. Also, the Na’vi themselves, their looks and language, reminded me of American Natives, maybe no coincidence. More importantly, the movie addresses an environmental theme that is really actual and makes you reflect. The Na’vi are a people close to nature, and believe in an interconnectedness of all beings on their planet, an idea quite similar to James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, and to some of the Indian religions. This, for example, becomes clear when Neytiri has to kill some wolflike creatures that were attacking Jake; the kills could’ve been prevented if he behaved otherwise, and the unnecessary kills are therefore regretted by Neytiri. The difference between the Na’vi and the humans is the most prominent in the movie and serves to provide us a look in the mirror. The bulldozers destroying the Na’vi holy places are not different from the ones destroying most of our rain forests, and the greed that drives the humans to destroy a foreign planet for an almost unobtainable ore, is no different from the greed for oil and minerals that destroys so much nature today. While most of all being an enjoyable action movie, this is a message that it quite strikingly puts forward and hopefully one that at least some of the million spectactators will bring back home…

Nice trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRdxXPV9GNQ