Reviews

Christof, the omnipotent, authoritative, media-savvy producer-director in The Truman Show, is identified with Christian. Everything, from sunrise-sunset to each passer-by in the Utopian town named Seahaven, is in his charge, without mentioning Truman, the leading role in this show. Since the day he was born, Truman has been taken good care of by a crop of actors and actresses and functioned as the protagonist of an international televised, 24-hour-a-day series called The Truman Show. 5,000 hidden cameras follow Truman everywhere he goes, chronicling every trivia of his growth. Unknown to him is the trick known to all.

Until someday, from nowhere falls a light equipment. Later, he is soaked in his own rainstorm. When he moves, the rain moves after him. Then, through an oversight, his lost-at-sea father is rearranged into the show again, appearing like a transient in the street. Truman is puzzled by all these inconsistencies. What's worse, on his way to work one day, the radio gets adrift to report his trace in every detail due to a slip of technique. It's paradoxical to call these inconsistencies deliberate coincidences. Because that's what Christof hates but Peter Weif and Andrew Niccol expects.

We have no doubt carelessness beyond control is here and there in Truman's life. It's only a matter of time before Truman to piece out the loopholes together and find out the truth. He is determined to leave the counterfeit world when he is exposed, mercilessly, to the fact that this so-called perfect life he leads is no more than a show-biz illusion where only he is true while others exit merely as walk-ons. Since all other transport doesn't serve him, he chooses sea. (In order to keep him from leaving Seahaven, he has been inculcated with a fear of water. He has expectedly developed a phobia of water since the night his father lost at sea, a catastrophe designed to frighten him.) Having survived all weird rainstorms under Christof's control, he sails cheerfully to his dream world, only to find the sky, the clouds looking so beautiful in distance are pictures in a wall and the horizon itself leads nowhere.

Jim Carrey plays Truman. He is so likable an actor that you cannot refuse any film he takes part in. Most of his films are characteristic of his hilarious performances. But his role in this one is, I should say, light year away from the antics he used to do. He is quite controlled and convincing.

As a sharp-witted, intriguing and offbeat piece of entertainment, the film can be dissected from different angles. And it inevitably raises some questions. To me, the end is hallucination. I admit the end is hopeful to most audience. It seems to reach to consummate when Truman opens the door in the wall and strides out. We are about to applause. Wait a second, where will he go? Into a world full of new lies, leaving former lies behind? So I'd rather have a hateful end.

The film "Crash" is more like an apocalypse. It might be subtitled as racists' redemption, more actually, human's redemption. Hapless and underestimated as the blacks might are, prejudice and racism exists in every culture, without mentioning in the USA, the melting pot of different cultures. In such a white-dominated society, any other races are vulnerable. According to the law of the jungle, these minorities must work twice harder than their white counterparts to get recognized.

Mistrust comes from misunderstanding, rooted prejudice from thinking in stereotype. Should we lay the blame on the whites for our embarrassing situation? A passage from John William, author of " Enough" throws a silver lining. "Who will tell you that if you want to get a job you have to stay in school and spend more money on education than on disposable consumer goods? …who are willing to stand tall and say that any black man who wants to be a success has to speak proper English? Isn't that obvious? It would be a bonus if anyone dared to say to teenagers hungering for authentic black identity that dressing like a convict, whose pants are hanging off his ass because the jail prison guards took away his belt, is not the way to rise up and be a success." Anthony is very self-conscious about his role as a black thief. He complains that the blacks aren't well treated in cafes and even black waitresses are snobs. He harangues that the whites are oppressors and swears to rob the whites only. He takes a white woman's suspicious glances and wariness as the racism and an insult to him. His anger is obvious. Subconsciously, he tries to change, but goes to the other extreme by robbing, a way he thinks that can demonstrate the African-Americans are not the weak, only to end up in being devalued and embarrassing his own race. It's quite out of date to think oneself a victim and defend negative and dysfunctional behavior.

The race relationships are more labyrinthine than the L.A. streets. There are Koreans, Hispanics apart from Afro-Americans and the locals. They crash into each other. Those collisions are logical steps to an understanding of each other.

People in this film are multi dimensional. The L.A. cop Ryan is a good son. After being rejected by a supervisor of African origin to find a better doctor for his father, he takes it out on a black couple. He pulls over their SUV, humiliates the husband, Cameron, and sexually abuses the wife, Christine. He is a bigoted racist. When it comes to the car accident scene where the director decides to go soft before it gets too downbeat, he takes his life and saves Christine, trapped in an upside-down car. He is a nameless hero.

Coincidences make the edgy film consistent and dramatic and enable Crash to cover the serious subject "Racism" from many facets and levels. It rates A.

Parentless recidivist H.I. regards prison as his home. No matter it is a partiality or a revenge in his own words, he robs convenience stores; he goes to jail; he talks nice to a parole board; the cycle repeats itself. And finally falls in love with a policewoman, ED. Life goes easy on them at first. They bask on the folding chairs, dreaming to have a youth to share their thoughts and feelings.Then the story abruptly turns sad. ED.is barren. what should they do?

Tempe is a rock place that bears women deprived of the happiness at conceiving babies.Their wombs are barren and hard like the rocks in the desert. Florence,Dot and ED are the victims of the metaphor.One takes fertility pills,another adopts orphans,the other after being turn down adoption,steals a baby named Nathan Jr.

Nothing could be more exciting than a rebirth. The film tells us what a rebirth is like. Push hard through the saturated mud above your head at the 99% risk of being stifled to death. One second delay would be too late. That's Gale and Evelle's narrow escape from the jail. It sounds surrealist. But that's Coens's wit lies. They twist reality and exaggeration into knots to spin our noggins.Snatching a packet of diapers in a convenience store can be a life-or-death chase scene, without mentioning the leather-clad,bonehead,bounty hunter Biker, who can browbeat nothing except little animals.

Troubles arrive in sequence. That's the way the life is. At the end of the film, H.I. and ED returns the Nathan Jr.to his parents.It doesn't belong to them and will never be theirs.Why not keep the dream of having kids go on? If H.I.'s dream of the hellion Biker is not a phantasm, his dream of being blessed with descendants might come true some day.

In despite of the superficially hilarious scenarios, it is a sad story to the marrow. H.I. and ED's sorrow is not skin-deep and can be felt by any of us who puts heart into this film.

It is in Elizabeth that Kate Blanchett began to be endeared to me by her brilliant performance. Later on, I was impressed by The Gift, a thriller in which she is a fortune teller. You can't tell she is a gorgeous, but she is the kind of actress directors dream for. Stories hidden somewhere in the inner world are told from her delicate facial expressions. She is much like Meryl Streep in her prime.

It's the same with the biographical film 'Veronica Guerin'. The film itself can't rank high. But Kate Blanchett brings into this films her professionalism, competence and vigor. She plays the journalist in a way that peps me up. Her witty words, sly smiles, careless driving and quick movement from one place to another are very typical of a journalist.

The film is based on a true a story. In 1996, anti-drug crusading Irish journalist Veronica Guerin was shot down in daylight at a highway crossroads. The event galvanized the nation into sweeping street campaigns against drugs and led to constitutional alterations allowing the freezing of assets and seizure of "unexplained wealth" from suspected drug lords.

Through the experience of seeing the film, I couldn't help reexamining myself. Would I do the same thing as Veronica did if exposed to the brutal fact that so many kids were hooked to heroin around me? She was hard-nosed. If there were any death threat, she wouldn't show the fear. Her style was more like an FBI agent. What's different is she was only armed with a pen and a notebook. Her poking into the criminals single-handedly and her high profile to bring down the drug trade finally brought the assassination of her. Some people didn't understand her while she was still alive, "what drives her on?" they asked, " fame or idealism?" They still ask the same question. She was an investigate journalist. It was the nature of the work to be a trouble seeker. And it was her conscience and instinct to protect the underage kids in her motherland at a time both law and guards had nothing to do with those drug dealers. The public needed her reports and she wanted their united support to free the island of drugs.

The film begins at the end, then flashes back. It gets our attention and makes us in suspense. And I should say Kate's over reaction at the epilogue when she got off the multiple speeding and parting ticket charges can't be more suitable. It made a huge contrast to Veronica's tragic end and made it more tragic. She laughed out loudly, gave her friends calls boasting her narrow escape. She drove her car like a mad thing. All of a sudden, she was shot again and again to a pulp in her car by two gangsters.

The most toughing part is the tribute people paid to her. Her death spurred people into action and resulted changes in constitution, and made the criminal rate drop a lot. In a short, it tells us what a responsible journalist should be like. That's never giving up to evil forces. Certainly, she was stupid sometimes. She relied on " seat of her pants" sense and got wrong information from wrong sources. But she was finally on the right track. Despite it, the film is still highly recommendable.

Never seen a more entertaining gangster film than this one. It elicits belly-laughs with its black humor.

Guy Ritchie lures us deep into an intricate world, a world only belonging to streetwise charmers, merciless debt collectors, dope drug dealers, paranoid marijuana growers, eccentric Afros and inept burglars. In this criminal subculture, they cheat and rob each other.

Such a film as it is, if shot by a less intelligent, would be a disaster. But Guy makes the story full of twists and coincidences and weaves them all into his well-craft web. Elements like guns, knives, corpses and claret are indispensable parts for a gang film. In Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, guns are replaced by air rifles and antic shotguns, knives by kitchen ones and some kicking. And the bullets fly and corpses aren't that bloody since most are off-screen. And I couldn't help laughing at Soap's theory like " guns for show, knives for pro" especially when he soapboxes it with a seriousness on his soft-soap face.

The dialog is recommendable and quotable. The shooting angles, especially close-ups cannot be more suitable for this films. See a label sticker under the sole of Harry? To crown them all, the cliffhanger ending is peerless.

The Net is a glass of onion martini. I have no doubt that Sandra Bullock falls for the taste.

Though too many efforts have been made to foreshadow the climax that comes too late, the movie is still thrilling especially in the cat-and-mouse chasing scenarios and near the end of the story. Bullock's performance has great weight with the box office. That's what we call Bullock influence, bigger than the film itself. She is low-key and she never overdraws her roles. Maybe that's because she is acting herself. If you are true to yourself, you needn't overcast.

This is much a self-independent, self-help story, a predecessor of "Flight Plan". These women are really heart breakers because of their braveness in desperation. Helpless, desperate, fragile yet stubborn, they want to survive this jungle-law world. If Weaker or less intelligent, they will be devoured mercilessly. There are heaps of "innocent people being wrongly accused" movies. Maybe it reflects our tastes.

The movie is well-crafted. It covers the affection a daughter has for her mother who's caught senile dementia; deals with tenderness a psychologist shows to his former patient and lover; as well as admiration and hatred an assassin entertains to his target. They were tangled up to make the movie a little bit overloaded. Jeremy Northam is blessed with the role as the assassin who is more complex than we see those in other movies. Bullock's roles are stereotyped, mostly" nobody turning to a big hero". She is still likable.

They do put some pep talks in the film. And the title " view from the top" is attractive enough to pull you back into comedies again at a time when you are more interested in thrillers. The films must been greatly botched for some reasons because the brilliant performances of Gwyneth Paltrow and Mike Myers can't cover the choppy continuity. And just like John Whitney said " you put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable", the focus of the film splits into two contrasts, career and love. See, it is always your dream to be a first-class flight stewardess in the international route. But you ended up staying in a small town for a boy who couldn't understand you when you decided to realize your dream. It is not worth a rap. The love story stole your thunder and the dream took off once, and then crashed down again.

In spite of these obvious distortions, the film elicits your smiles and peps you up. Your childhood dream comes back again no matter what it is. And sometimes it is fun to watch a film that requires little thought. Besides, uniforms are eyes-catching. Anyway, when the lights come up, you stand up to leave the cinema, stop to buy an ice cream on the way, surely you will have a good sleep without worrying to be tortured by nightmares ignited from thrillers.