I’ve been in a long distance relationship, so I appreciated the first half of the story, where the two leads meet during summer and share two intense weeks. Then he leaves for military and they start an intense correspondence through hand-written letters.

I appreciated all that, I thought the actors were fine, and I especially liked Amanda Seyfried here, as well as previously in Veronica Mars and Big Love.

Then we get the twist, which I should spoil so that you won’t check out this movie yourself. But I won’t. Let’s just say that the twist felt so forced that the reasons behind it are just not believable and in turn it destroys my interest in the characters.

The final scene was even worse, as if the writers had no idea how to end it and they just threw a scene together. Totally skippable.

Rating: 1.5 Stars

They do cross into each other, but in the end it’s just a collection of love stories that don’t really have much in common. Plus I don’t really get attached to any character, because each story is very superficial and we don’t really get into the characters’ motivations.

The three women who work in the same office are supposed to be connecting each other’s stories, but their chemistry is totally absent. They don’t even seem to be friends at all.

This is just a useless movie, the worst rom-com I’ve seen in a while.

Rating: 1 Star

From the plot point of view, this was not the greatest movie. The battle between England and Spain came to the center only in the last part, and the resolution felt anti-climactic.

Before that it was all about the Queen and her relationships with the 2 co-stars. This relationship didn’t make much sense to me, I just couldn’t identify with any of these people (I guess that’s my problem with all costumed movies).

Geoffrey Rush is always fun to watch, but his subplot was so short that I couldn’t get too attached to him. The actors playing the Spanish were too one-dimensional, just there to play the villains and nothing more.

Seeing the Queen on a horse with an armor I almost wanted to laugh. Not because she’s a woman, she just didn’t look right.

Even Cate Blanchett’s performance didn’t save this movie in my eyes. I can see she was trying to convey the Queen’s emotions, I just didn’t get it. Not a movie for me.

Rating: 1 Stars

The Holiday

The premise of this story is ludicrous, why would you need to swap home with somebody else? Especially for Amanda (Cameron Diaz), she is so rich that she could buy another house anywhere in the world. And why of all places should she choose Englad? The weather sucks and the houses are small. Why not go to a deserted island with a tropical weather? I can see Iris wanting the swap, because the house is so big, and the weather is nice, and she doesn’t have to pay for it.

Unfortunately, things don’t get better. The break up between Amanda and Ethan makes no sense at all. The relationship between Iris (Kate Winslet) and Jasper also does not make any kind of sense.

The new relationships they form after the swap are not much better. First Amanda has casual sex with Graham (Jude Law), and we are lead to believe that Graham is a womanizer. Than we’re supposed to be surprised that instead he is a family man, and in fact not a womanizer. Then how come he slept with Amanda without even knowing her?

Iris meets Miles (Jack Black), but this feels more like a platonic friendship rather than a romance. There is absolutely no sexual tension or even a little bit of romance between them. Iris’s relationship with Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) is deeper, more meaningful. This is probably the only good thing about this film, Wallach’s performance (if you like him). (ok ok, the two little girls were cute).

The end is… not the end. I mean, it does not resolve their relationship. None of them made long term commitments, they’re just having a nice little holiday together. What happens after that doesn’t seem to matter.

Wow, one of the worst movies I’ve seen in years.

Rating: 0.5 Star

Babel

There are 4 stories, 2 of them take place in Morocco and they are tightly related: 2 young kids play with a rifle and shoot at a bus, injuring an American tourist; this tourist is Susan (Cate Blanchett), and her husband Richard (Brad Pitt) tries his best to help her.

The third story is loosely connected to the second one: Amelia is Susan and Richard’s maid, and she is taking care of their two kids while they are away in Morocco. Her son is getting married though, so she takes the two kids to Mexico to attend the wedding.

The four story has an even thinner connection to the others: Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a deaf-mute teenage girl in Japan, and she struggles to deal with her condition and her mother’s suicide.

Frankly, the only story that I was interested in is this last one, in Japan. We are introduced to a unique world, so far away from our own, but so compelling and interesting. Chieko’s struggle is very touching and emotional, and because I don’t understand her I find myself curious to know what she is going through.

All the other stories did not interest me at all. Nothing happens to Susan and Richard after she is shot. They stay in that village and wait to get help. And that’s it. The two kids are simply stupid and make one stupid decision after another, and their father does the same. Their end is tragic, but I almost feel like they got it coming. Amelia’s story also moves very slowly, for 3/4 of it we just see them travel to Mexico and participate in a wedding. And it’s only in the last few minutes that something happens, and it’s weird.

All these stories were obviously meant to present different cultures in the world, but I feel that they didn’t really show us anything interesting. I did like the political commentary in the first two stories. Obviously the American government jumped to the terrorist theory, even though Morocco is not known for terrorist ties. And the American tourists are also afraid of staying in the village, when it is obvious that those people are completely innocuous.

The performances were very good, starting from Brad Pitt who proved himself to be able to give a serious dramatic performance. Cate Blanchett didn’t have much to do in this movie, but what her few scenes were very good, as usual. I am surprised by Adriana Barraza’s Oscar nomination, I didn’t find her performance particularly impressive. Yes, the emotional scenes towards the end were good, but that was only a few minutes out of her total run time. Rinko Kikuchi’s performance was the most impressive, she manages to convey a whole range of emotions without any dialog.

Unfortunately I feel this movie is 2006’s Crash: a good ensemble cast with good performances, but the overall movie was weak. I hope this won’t get any Oscar outside the actor’s nominations.

Rating: 1 Star

This movie is not afraid to tackle weird and disturbing situations, even more than its premise. Normally I would say that this is brave, but it just didn’t feel like the execution was very good. At times I felt bored by this movie, and during the “disturbing” scenes (which were disturbing in concept, not necessarily visually) I did not feel touched or emotionally involved.

The comedy scenes were not that funny either. Just felt like they were sticked in there to lighten the movie. But they simply were not funny.

The main performance well deserved the Oscar nomination for Felicity Huffman, but I am not sure it deserved the win. She does a great job with her voice, and some mannerism, and the scene with her parents was the only emotional one for me.

Not a terrible film, but I just did not enjoy watching it.

Rating: 1 Stars

This seems to be the year of movies about important issues, mostly based on true facts like Good Night, and Good Luck, Munich, Syriana, Cinderella Man…

The issues dealt in this movie are not less important, but somehow the execution was not as good. This felt too much of a black and white movie, where the bad guys are just evil, and the women are innocent victims. I am not saying that the miners men were not like that, just that the movie did not present both sides.

The facts were also dramatized to an extreme, especially during the trial at the end. First of all, the real trial took more than 10 years, and we don’t see that in the film. Plus the people standing up in the courtroom to show their support was way too cheesy.

A good performance by Charlize Theron, but the script was too dramitic to be believable.

Rating: 1 Star