I saw Eat Pray Love over the weekend. I can’t remember the last film I walked out of but I certainly wanted to walk out of this one. I stayed because I want to know what is going in the world. I know now and it’s not good.

The cinema was half full, almost all were women.

The film is deeply depressing. I recently saw Precious, I had avoided it because I thought it would be predictable and depressing. It’s not, even with its subject matter.

However nothing in the cinema this decade has depressed me as much as Eat Pray Love’s hymn to vacuous selfishness. There are 16 year olds who have more profound insights. Talking of 16 year olds, the journey of enlightenment taken by Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) in the film is very reminiscent of 16 year old’s experiences; girl meets a boy, falls in love with him, gets bored, chants a bit and meets another boy, bliss.

Back to the story, Eat Pray Love is criminally dull. (more…)

[Editor's Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there's been an Internet. Therefore it's no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product.]

The good news first – there’s no pinko sucker punch in The American despite the presence of chatty progressive George Clooney in the title role.  Sure, there’s a tiny bit of the hackneyed “American learns about life from the earthy foreigners who truly know how to live” cliché, but not much.  Now the bad news:  Not only is there no sucker punch but there’s no punch at all.

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This is a technically well-written script by Rowan Joffe that tells a story that made me want to lick my finger and stick it in a socket to jump start my soul.  Stop me if you’ve heard this before, which pretty much means stop me now.  Clooney plays a hit man who “wants out” and hides in an Italian village while he puts together his One Last Job.  He interacts with a few locals, sips coffee, acts paranoid, and awaits the series of twists and betrayals everyone sees coming a mile away.  Arrivederchi, two hours of your life.

I almost wish that the script had empowered Clooney’s Hollywood lib instincts so I could have felt something while reading the script other than the same exhausted ennui that the main character is supposed to feel.  Yeah, he’s burned out and morally and emotionally bereft.  We get it.  I mean, we’ve only seen this movie and this character, what . . . 500 times?  Except this one is hiding out in the same soul-regenerating village Italian countryside we’ve seen in, what . . . 500 other movies? 

Call it Clash of the Cliches.  Too bad they never actually unleash the kraken.

Let’s catalog some of the other clichés: (more…)

The AP has so effectively embarrassed themselves here that no comment is required other than to point out that what the AP is reporting on is not an entertainment-related event but a fraud trial. We don’t make this stuff up … because we don’t have to. The only question that remains is how Ms. Barry manged to write while at the same time biting down on her knuckles to restrain the desire:

The AP’s Colleen “Breathless” Barry:

George Clooney radiates cool on witness stand

It’s no wonder the Italian businessmen claimed George Clooney was behind their fashion line — the actor knows how to wow an audience whether he’s on the red carpet or the witness stand.

Maintaining his trademark aura of cool, Clooney delivered a few wisecracks Friday as he testified against three defendants accused of co-opting his name with the goal of launching a fashion line.

The appearance of the star, who maintains a villa on nearby Lake Como but is rarely seen here in public, sent the normally staid courthouse into full celebrity tilt. Clooney had to push his way through a wall of cameras into the courtroom, saying “scusa, scusa,” — “Excuse me” in Italian — and warning “Don’t crush my lawyers.”

Throngs of fans packed the tiny courtroom. The judge repeatedly told spectators to be quiet and tossed out one woman who snapped a photo of Clooney. (more…)

I know, I know. Italy has been questioning the amount of aid that the United States has sent to Haiti as of late. If only we could be more like our Italian counterparts. How many troops have they put on the ground there? Maybe they can send George Clooney over with a few gift baskets. I hear he summers in Laglio.

(more…)

Watching Gomorrah is like learning Latin: You’d rather say you’ve done it than actually do it.

Gomorrah is a slightly fictionalized portrayal of life under the influence of the criminal organization Camorra (unknown to most of the U.S., but apparently running things with bloody fists in Italy). It’s a situation that deserves attention. A picture could have presented events as riveting entertainment or art, and perhaps helped to bring about change. Yet Gomorrah fails as art, entertainment and promotional tool. Any publicity about the horror of the Camorra has come from the existence of the film, not the watching.

Gomorrah is dull and flat and emotionally uncompelling: It is a sprawling tour of future-less lives and hollow days punctuated occasionally—very occasionally—by brief set pieces in which something violent and terrible happens. That may be true-to-life, but so is sitting at a desk all day, and neither is particularly interesting to watch. If filmmakers have any foundational obligation, it is to make a picture that makes you want–need–to keep watching. These filmmakers feel no such burden. It is as if they have taken the seriousness of their subject as license to relieve themselves of the obligation to sustain the interest of the audience. They’re counting on guilt or something to keep us interested, and they could not have been more mistaken. (more…)

Lest we forget, we are at war. 

Men and women at this very moment are fighting for their lives and for the lives of those they took an oath to protect and defend. 

There have been some recent films about war and what it means for the “average Joe” to be at war. A few of these are receiving deserving accolades for their realism. No, not the realism of blood and guts spilled, which is what war is, of course, but the realism of human behavior in adverse conditions, or as Hemingway put it, grace under pressure. This is the human condition that we all face, in one form or another, each and every day of our lives. Of course, most of us can face our pressures, make our decisions, get through our daily angst without wondering if a shell is going to go off five feet away, having the vehicle we’re riding in targeted for destruction or being exposed to combinations of chemicals not even named yet. No, we don’t have that extra worry. But some out there do.  (more…)