My last five girlfriends

Duncan- Brendan Patricks
Gemma- Naomie Harris
Wendy- Kelly Adams
Rhona - Cécile Cassel
Olive- Jane March
Natalie- Edith Bukovics
Will- Daniel Hoffmann-Gill
Director: Julian Kemp
Writers: Julian Kemp (screenplay)
Alain de Botton (novel)

Julian Kemp’s film My last five girlfriends is different from any movie I have ever seen. I don’t know much about comedy in the United Kingdom but everything about this film from the cheesy graphics to the child-like imagination of the protagonist was strange and new for me. The film’s plot revolves around a man named Duncan and his past five relationships. The audience views these relationships in their real time and through the lens of Duncan’s playful and complex mind. Although the film uses many different quirky animation sequences to represent the state of Duncan’s relationships, the most memorable were his girlfriends as amusement park rides. Duncan is represented as the theme park Duncan World. With each new relationship, Duncan World opens a new ride. And with each ride, Duncan is sure it will be the most exciting of all and will last forever but of course, this isn’t the case for any of them.

All five relationships fail for one reason or another and Duncan views the ups and downs of it all with a child-like optimism. The visuals used to examine Duncan’s thoughts are what make the film sweet and funny. On the surface, Duncan seems like a pretty simple guy. He wants to be in a relationship with an attractive woman who appreciates him for who he is. But when the film delves into his thoughts, the audience sees that Duncan views women, stress, and simple interactions with great complexity. Everything in his mind is shown with some sort of comedic satire or amusing graphics.

One of the best jokes in the film is when Duncan is so fed up with his failed relationships that he swallows a whole bottle of pills. We see him fall to the floor and the next shot is the outside of his apartment building with the credits scrolling. I stared at the screen with my jar to the floor and a look of disbelief. But then we hear Duncan chime in with “we’re not gonna end it like this.” The credits rewound and the camera zooms in on Duncan lying on the floor foaming at the mouth. He had taken a whole bottle of alka-seltzer pills. I’m pretty sure I heard a harmonious sigh of relief from the rest of the audience. I was just glad that I didn’t just sit through one of those funny- at- first- but- then- it- wants- to- get- all- dramatic- on- you- movies. I was pleasantly surprised that the movie stuck with its cheerful disposition all the way through.

At the very beginning of the film, I almost wanted to walk out. I just didn’t understand why everything was so…weird. The characters, the jokes, the sets, everything was weird. I stayed simply because, I didn’t have anything else to do. But by the film’s end I understood the purpose of the cute amusement park themed set ups and what they meant to the character. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It was cute, funny, and unique. I would recommend this movie to anyone who needs a good laugh or wants to experience a comedy outside of the standard formula lineup in America. The movie left me with a carefree feeling very different from the usual drained sentiment I have after a day at the festival. I realized that I am a here watching these movies because I can and want to, not because I have to buy and sell for business. If I had been a buyer, I’m sure I would’ve walked out in the first ten minutes. Strangely enough, watching this film helps me appreciate the simple lifestyle I have that people usually only have a small window of time to take advantage of.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Director- Hans Canosa
Writers: Gabrielle Zevin (novel)

Naomi Sukuse- Maki Horikita
Gabrielle Zevin (screenplay)
Alice Leeds- Emma Roberts
Ace Zuckerman- Anton Yelchin
Yûji Miwa- Ken'ichi Matsuyama



Right before I saw the film Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, I was sitting at a lunch table with a film director. This meeting happened completely by accident of course but he gave me some good advice. He told me that most of the mistakes made by directors are in the actors’ performances and the dialogue. Sometimes a director becomes so focused on different camera angles and setting up interesting looking shots, they forget about the performances and believability of their film. For an actor, it is important for the audience to see you as a real person. When someone watches you on screen, is he or she seeing you live your life, or are they seeing you pretend to live someone else’s? If you are pretending, your acting isn’t believable and the audience will not relate to the character. But even the best actor cannot overcome horrible dialogue (or at least that’s what my new director friend says). The mistake filmmakers make with dialogue is having their characters say too much. In real life, most people don’t actually say everything they’re thinking out loud. Many of our thoughts are either too stupid, inappropriate, or unnecessary to say. But in a movie with bad dialogue, the characters will always say what they are thinking. Even if what they have to say is stupid, inappropriate, or unnecessary. But good dialogue, according to the director, is all about intention. Characters say certain things and behave a certain way to get a reaction from another character. That is how real people interact with one another. And that is what makes for a good movie. Believability.

After talking to the mysterious film director, I walked into the movie Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. The first thing I noticed was, of course, the acting and the dialogue. The characters in this movie said everything. Every thought, every plot device, even their actions are spoken. My director friend says that if you can show something, you should show it. You don’t have to say everything (and you shouldn’t). Many of the shots in this film move too quickly to show anything with purpose or intention but there are so many different shots that sometimes the audience does not know for sure what is going on.

The film has the same characters as most teen romantic dramas; the jerk/jock boyfriend, the artsy friendly but not really a friend girl, the mysterious loner, the sweet but obsessive best friend, and the charming and clumsy protagonist. I was sure I knew what this film was all about when it started. In the film, the charming and clumsy protagonist, Naomi, falls down a flight of stairs trying to catch her friend’s camera. She injures her head and a mysterious loner named Yûji takes her to the hospital. This encounter leads to a relationship between Naomi and Yûji. Why wouldn’t she fall in love with some weird guy she doesn’t even know, I mean, this is a movie isn’t it? Naomi tells everyone that she is suffering from memory loss. But I noticed she only seems to forget things like, her old boyfriend and her obsessive best guy friend. This is explained later in the film when we find out the secret Naomi has been keeping. Her revelation is what made the film worth watching. Like I mentioned before, the film says everything. So when it is finally revealed that Naomi had been lying about her amnesia, the film explains it in great detail. I learned that Naomi had purposely thrown herself down the stairs in order to meet Yûji. She did this because she didn’t want to fall in love with her best friend. Naomi describes her actions as “throwing herself away from something towards something else.” It is a strange way to meet someone but I’m glad she did it. And even though you don’t have to say everything, I’m glad the film said this because it was important to explain the intention of her actions. I would recommend the first hour and a half of this movie. The beginning will seem familiar but there will be points in the movie that are unique. But after those points, the movie’s way of saying everything will start to wear on you. So after about the first hour and some, feel free to walk. I might have enjoyed the movie more if I had.

Love and other impossible pursuits

Emilia- Natalie Portman
Carolyne- Lisa Kudrow
Jack- Scott Cohen
Simon- Anthony Rapp
Director: Don Roos
Writers: Don Roos (screenplay)
Ayelet Waldman (novel)

This film is what I like to call “genre confused.” The story is set up perfectly to provide the audience with one hundred and two minutes of mushy gushy, lovey dovey romantic drama. The film bases its story on Ayelet Waldman’s bestselling novel by the same name. The description of the plot on IMDB says the film is about a young woman trying to recover her broken marriage through a relationship with her stepson. That sounds sweet and romantic, right? However, Love and other impossible pursuits is about so much more (and less) than that. With the characters possibly being more and the plot being less. The film is actually about a young woman (Emilia) who sleeps with a married man (Jack) who neglects his young son to spend time with his mistress. Then Emilia gets pregnant with Jack’s child. She tells him about the baby over dinner after some cliché lines about not being able to leave his wife because of his reputation. But when Emilia tells Jack about the baby he drops everything to marry her. You’re probably thinking, “but doesn’t Jack have a son with the woman he is already married to?” Why yes he does, and this is the first example of perfectly good characters, who are horrible people, being placed in a mushy gushy, lovey dovey romantic drama instead of a dark comedy/drama where they belong. This is where the genre confusion begins. The problem with this film is that the characters are more realistic than the plot allows them to be. Romance films don’t usually allow much room for realism because meet-cutes, passionate sex scenes, and clichés take up all the space. In a darker film, the characters could fully embrace their self-centered qualities and the story would feel less mapped out and pre-planned. The story would flow naturally because it wouldn’t be confined to the structure of most romance genre films.
The film’s director, Don Roos, makes his characters shuffle through a phony love story where they try to be the people we love in all those other romance movies and novels but that’s not who they are. When Jack and Emilia talked about their love for one another or their stepson, it feels insincere. They are only saying what they have to in order for the plot to move forward. Jack is every other older married man who is seeing another woman. He is unhappy in his marriage. He loves his son but doesn’t pay him much attention and treats his first wife like crap. Emilia is every other young mistress seeing a married man. She wants to form a life with him with the wife out of the picture. They both have sour intentions and say they love each other but don’t show it. Yet the movie still pushes Jack and Emilia in a forced loving relationship that the audience is supposed to root for.
As far as I can tell, the characters in this movie would rather be doing what normal, emotional, real people would do in similar circumstances. Jack would rather just sleep with Emilia and leave it at that, Emilia would rather have Jack to herself, minus the wife and kid, Carolyne would rather do away with Emilia and keep her old life, and I’m sure the stepson would rather have a new life all together. The best scene in the film is when Jack and Emilia are arguing about their relationship. Jack tells Emilia that she only loves him because he reminds her of her father. Her father cheated on her mother and left her for another woman. He tells her how they fell in love under horrible circumstances and for the wrong reasons. In this short scene, the characters finally tell the truth about themselves. They scream at each other (and to the audience) who they really are yet the story still continues on its genre driven path. The scene soon goes from revealing right back to cliché when Emilia brings up the death of their baby. Now that I think about it, their dead child might have just been a ploy to make us feel sorry for the characters (since their own behavior doesn’t bring about any sympathy).
This film didn’t work for me because love between characters is central to the plot of a romance film and I don’t think these characters love one another. I think they loved themselves, a lot, but that isn’t what the film’s goal was. The film wanted to tell the story of a woman’s relationship with her husband and stepson but it is so busy trying to romanticize serious moments that the major theme is lost. The characters would have fit better in a different movie and the plot would have been better with less sarcastic, selfish characters. I would recommend this film to anyone who really loves Natalie Portman or enjoyed Ayelet Waldman’s novel. To everyone else, I would recommend seeing a movie that is sure of what it is and who its characters are.

Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

I don’t know anybody like Precious. I don’t know anyone who has been viciously bullied at school. I don’t know anyone who has been sexually, physically, and verbally abused by their parents. I also don’t know anyone who has given birth twice before even learning how to read or write. Or maybe…I just don’t know if I know anyone like Precious. I can’t imagine anyone throwing these life milestones out at any class reunions. This is why I, and assumingly many others, was shocked at the events in the film adaption of Sapphire’s novel Push. In the film, a young woman named Claireece Precious Jones suffers unspeakable crimes at the hands of her family, classmates, and strangers. Her mother deals out the most abuse seen on camera. However, the audience soon learns that her father has repeatedly raped Precious and she is pregnant with his child. Because of this, her principal sends her to an alternative school.

Although the performances by Gabourey Sidibe and Monique have been widely critically acclaimed, (both were nominated for Academy Awards with Monique taking the prize for best supporting actress) my favorite performances in the film were the interactions between the girls in the alternative class. The young women, Rita, Rhonda, Jermaine, Joann, and Consuelo, are all people I “know.” They’re the friends I go to school with, share secrets with, cry with, and most importantly, laugh with. The actresses brought such natural performances that I almost wanted to be in that classroom with them. If their interactions with one another were simply lines and directions from a script then Hollywood has a very special group of young actresses on their hands and more credit should be given to their performances. I don’t know how Precious would have survived her terrible circumstances had she not met such wonderful people and I don’t know if I could have fully appreciated this film without these characters. In the beginning of the film, I viewed Precious’s life as so unbelievably different from mine that I did not know if I would understand this film. By the end of the film, I still recognized the extreme difference in our lives, but her interactions with the girls in her alternative class helped me see her character as someone I “know,” a friend that I would sympathize with and want to make a happier person. A friend that I go to school with, share secrets with, cry with, and most importantly, laugh with.