Movie Night Review: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"

I wanted to see this movie for a long time based on its title alone. I'm a sucker for a good title and this one's a great sell. It couples the right amount of story information with the right amount of intrigue. We sense its genre: romantic comedy; identify our two love interests; and get cued into its musical aspirations. Plus the use of the word "infinite" conjures up romantic ideas of the never-ending. And yet, we're left to wonder, exactly what is an infinite playlist? In my days as a reader, I would have been cracking the pages on this one first when I used to tote a bagful of scripts home.

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" is based on the Rachel Cohn & David Levithan novel of the same name, adapted for the screen by Lorene Scafaria and produced by Mandate Pictures. It's a lovely little romp through New York night life, full of characters that feel real, great music and modest intentions.

This is not a hilarious movie. It's a teen movie with charm and sweetness that manages to convey an adult sophistication. Its leads are so likable (Michael Cera and Kat Denning) that you root for them immediately.

The movie's ticking clock is provided by an underground band "Where's Fluffy?" that's playing a rare secret concert somewhere in the city for one night only. Though smarting from breaking up with his girlfriend, Nick gets dragged from Jersey to play a gig with his band, lured by the chance to see "Where's Fluffy?" at the end of it. At Nick's gig, smart, perennially overlooked Norah is there to be the responsible, grown up for her needy, hard drinking buddy Caroline (Ari Graynor) who manages to get separated from the gang during the course of the night. Instead of searching out "Where's Fluffy?", Nick and Norah end up scouring the city searching for the whereabouts of ditzy Caroline.

The stakes aren't particularly high, neither are the complications but in the world of high school where Nick has just broken up with Norah's queen bee, high-maintenance "frenemy" Tris (Alexis Dziena) and identities are cemented by where you head next in the dating pool, the stakes matter enough to keep you constantly engaged. Nick and Norah who share impeccable indie music tastes (she loves his plaintive mix tapes meant for the unsentimental Tris), banter and fall in love in Nick's ridiculous little yellow car which allows for some funny set pieces like the couple who slip into his car thinking it's a taxi and make out in the backseat all the way to their destination.

Equally fun are the cameos, including one from Andy Samberg as a cheerful homeless man in a church cemetery.

And the movie's beautiful to look at...gorgeously directed by Peter Sollet who helmed the edgier, more original "Raising Victor Vargas". While "Nick and Norah" could have benefited from tighter structure (a couple third act scenes seem unnecessary and meandering) the movie's episodic nature perfectly captures the spirit of a random nocturnal adventure.





"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" gets three and a half Oscars out of five.

Movie Night Review: "Pineapple Express"

I have to believe at some point there's going to be a backlash against these Seth Rogen-Judd Apatow brand bromances. I mean, I liked "Superbad" okay, I loved "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", but "Pineapple Express" while funny in parts, made me long for this era to be over.

In all fairness, I'm not the target market. There are, I presume, guys who find all the gay subtext jokes hilarious. (You know the "Ha! Ha! They're trying to free themselves but if you didn't know it it looks like they're doing it!") I also grew impatient with the movie's rambling dialogue after the first act, imploring the story to get a move on. It did, to some extent, when its basic plot kicked in. It goes like this...

Pothead Dale Denton witnesses a murder, dropping his roach at the scene of the crime as he flees. The roach is full of a rare blend of weed called Pineapple Express that only one dealer in town sells. Making things worse, the dealer's only sold it to Dale so the murderer knows who the witness is and stoner and dealer have to hit the road and run for their lives.

The revelation in this movie for me was James Franco. In playing Saul Silver, the kind-hearted, simple minded dope-dealer he shines. This movie has a great central pairing in Rogen and Franco...too bad there's so little plot to keep things going once the guys go on the run.

Hubby tried to watch this movie three times and fell asleep on each attempt. I think it boils down to that lack of tension. Every scene in this movie is too long and saps the story's focus. The stakes don't escalate and the story's saddled with bad guys who are too bumbling to inspire much jeopardy. Also, its introduction of a drug war at the end of Act II feels hurried and there were too few reversals and surprises.

But as always, there are things to admire in the writing. It's hard to not feel affected by some of the movie's fuzzy charm, comic characters and the occasional hilarious exchange. Plus, I enjoyed the "wink, wink" ending where the band of brothers make fun of what is supposed to happen in a movie, i.e "hijinks ensue as we all learn a lesson." Ultimately, however, the movie's so unstructured and breezy that it floats away.






"Pineapple Express" gets three Oscars out of five.

Movie Night Review: "Eagle Eye"

I read the script for "Eagle Eye" a couple months ago and was surprisingly engaged by it... so much so that I had to see the movie. I'm glad I did because it's a window into the development process of any project. In some ways development came up with ways to solve the problems of the script and in other ways (more ways I think) they made it more confusing, leaving "Eagle Eye" a bit of a mess.

Let me say first of all that there are a couple of really cool action sequences in "Eagle Eye". There's Shia Lebeouf dangling from a suspended car in a wrecking yard, and then there's a great, nimble cat and mouse chase behind the scenes of an airport's luggage conveyor belt. Those two sequences deliver on genre well, and you can see why a director would be drawn to the material, but in many other aspects "Eagle Eye" is plain colorless.

At the center of "Eagle Eye" is Jerry Shaw, a copy boy at a copy shop who's never amounted to much but who, when his twin brother dies mysteriously, gets a call from a "voice" who forces him to carry out dangerous, criminal acts under the threat of death. Joining him on the insane ride is Rachel, the mother of a music student en route to Washington, who the "voice" has also singled out to be part of some larger plan.

Both Jerry and Rachel have no idea why they've been chosen and what they're being called on to do but the voice can track their every move, using technology to force them to bend to her will. It's a terrific expressionistic thriller concept. Problem is it has no second act. (One of the things that got annoying for me was that there were often no consequences to disobeying the "voice." She'd just sigh and say something along the lines of, guess I got to do this myself.)

Making things even tougher, the characters are all stock and their motivations aren't credible. Take Jerry. He's got no close family, friends, nothing really to live for and yet the "voice" is able to get him to go along with her plan. Like hubby said, as soon as he entered the apartment and he saw the ammonium nitrate sitting on his table, he would have been calling the cops. Seems strange that Jerry goes along. It's a leap of faith that is hard to buy.

In the script, there was the seed of an interesting reason that's been excised from the movie, which leaves Jerry's character all the more vague. And in cutting large parts of the subplot, the FBI folk seem like caricatures. Poor Anthony Mackie has nothing to do in this movie besides wear camouflage and rip out hard drives from the source of "the voice": the agency's massive surveillance A.I. known as ARIA.

Development did come up with a few better ideas in terms of how to execute clunky things in the script...a character's S.O.S. winking with his eyes becomes the rapid shutting on and off of a cell phone screen which fits in well with the movie's theme, and a saggy middle hotel scene where the action just stops to inject some romance and necessary exposition gets transposed to a Circuit City store with its giant projector screens. On the whole though, I'm not impressed by D.J. Caruso's depiction of an oppressive technology-saturated world. In this regard, I think he failed the script.

Couple this with some questionable casting (Michelle Monaghan is pretty vacant as Rachel and I love Rosario Dawson but had a hard time buying her as the tough-as-nails government appointee) and I'm convinced this movie could have been better executed. Still, as is, there are worst things to watch while munching on a bowl of popcorn.





"Eagle Eye" gets two and a half Oscars out of five.

Movie Night Review: "Rachel Getting Married"

We did our traditional Thanksgiving movie a while back and saw "Rachel Getting Married." This movie is so organic, natural and verite I felt like I was at the three-day celebration. It was kind of like watching a home movie of the most fun, multi-ethnic wedding ever, except the young activist rhapsodizing about the transformational power of Obama's victory wasn't there.

"Rachel Getting Married" is not a particularly ambitious drama and I found its ending unsatisfying but it's got other worthwhile charms.

It'll come as no surprise that Anne Hathaway's good in this. Movie audiences and critics are always impressed by the cute girl slumming it, whether it's physical in the case of Charlize Theron and Halle Berry playing unattractive leads or psychological--an unattractive character in the case of Kym, the protagonist here, who's a recovering junkie.

Kym is proof that you don't have to write a sympathetic protagonist for a movie to work. Kym is self-absorbed, destructive and needy, but she's also fascinating to study in the way tornadoes are. She's the dark force of a juicy family drama, the kind with secrets and ghosts that all comes to a head at her sister Rachel's wedding.

The movie is shot with a variety of HD cameras, often hand-held, which initially I found distracting but it soon settles down. Weirdly enough, there's something of a romantic comedy structure in play at the opening of "Rachel Getting Married", which sets up romantic tension between Rachel and the groom's best man, Kieran (Mather Zickel) and I kept thinking how I would have also liked to watch that movie, the dysfunctional romantic comedy about the junkie and the ex-alcoholic but oh well...

Instead we have the battle between the two sisters Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) who always feels she's had to play second to the neuroses of her sister Kym who feels like she's the black sheep of the family, constantly under a microscope as folks wait for her next meltdown. The conflict makes for top-notch drama and the ghost of their brother who died under mysterious, tragic circumstances works perfectly to ratchet up suspense. And Kym plows through it all, getting into trouble, making things worse. It's divine to watch.

Unfortunately the movie's ending doesn't really deliver. There's a marvelous showdown between the protagonist and a major secondary character that just peters out and the filmmakers hint that the guilt for the death of the brother may not be Rachel's but it's all frustratingly vague.

I left the movie theater looking for signs of how the ending played with other folks (For the record, hubby was distinctly underwhelmed.) I overheard a couple in the lobby...

MAN: Well that was good.
WOMAN: You think? What did you like?
MAN: Well, I don't know...I have sort of low expectations when it comes to movies.

And while Man in Lobby Theater is a great audience member I'd like at my movie premiere, I think "Rachel Getting Married" fails to give the ending most story lovers crave. Sure, it's true to life and things don't have neat endings, but stories are artificial by their nature. Call me a sucker for form and function, but I like that something happens in a movie, that there's some kind of change, that I've gone on this journey for a reason.

For me "Rachel Getting Married" was interesting, brilliant in parts, but ultimately a let down, although it was kind of neat getting to know a slew of characters, hearing pitch perfect wedding toasts I will someday steal from, and being a fly on the wall for such colorful/chaotic nuptials.





"Rachel Getting Married" gets three and a half Oscars out of five.

Movie Night Review: "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is one funny movie...my favorite dick-flick from the Judd Apatow gang so far, and yep, that is with the inclusion of "The 40 Year Old Virgin" which felt at times to me like an extended character sketch.

Jason Segel, actor/screenwriter here, is such a lovable doofus as Peter Bretter, a music composer for a one hour TV crime drama and Russell Brand steals the show as the raunchy Brit-pop star and new object of affection for the eponymous Sarah Marshall.

I'm amazed at how Segel managed to make a passive goal ("forgetting Sarah") into something so active and engaging. Plus, you have to see this film as an example of how to write strong, memorable secondary characters. The surfing instructor, the bartender, the obsequious fan/waiter, the nervous newlywed, they all come together in an epic tapestry that forms the perfect background to a comic tale about modern love and sex.

I liked too that the romantic lead, Rachel (Mila Kunis) held so many surprises. She was a character I hadn't seen before on screen. Introduced as the sweet front desk concierge, we soon see she's got edge and a colorful past. She's miles more interesting than the bland Apatow female lead of "Knocked Up." And the setting...they get as much comic mileage out of the setting as is humanly possible.

When a movie works this well, it's easy to understand why the studio's hot for a sequel, even if it's hard to figure out what exactly it'd be about.





"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" gets four and a half Oscars out of five.

"Adulthood": An Exercise in Target Market

"Kidulthood" is a 2006 movie that gained attention as a grim slice of life depiction of teenagers in a tough London school. Four years later comes "Adulthood", this time directed by the original's screenwriter Noel Clarke, who's also, for good measure, the lead.

"Adulthood" is what happens when a decent little movie overachieves and becomes a success by grabbing its target audience by the throat. The cheap little movie gives birth to the cheap, underdone sequel...but does it matter? "Adulthood" made £1.2 million its opening weekend and looks like it cost peanuts to make.

"Adulthood" was originally going to be a movie night review, but about forty minutes in, reviewing it started to seem like a waste of time. The quality of "Adulthood" is kind of irrelevant. The movie is engaging enough with a likable main character and something of a ticking clock in that the protagonist's trying to protect his family from forces who wish him harm. But the story is all over the map: the main character doesn't have much of a dilemma (the repentant criminal's too good all the time) and the drama doesn't have much build.

I know people complained about "Kidulthood" having too much sprawl but I liked the epic nature of the thing, the myriad teenagery problems. In this one, old characters from the original seem shoehorned and merely introduced for interchangeable "shouty" talking head scenes.

But forget flaws for a moment. Why are people so passionate about these two movies? Yes there's violence and sex but it's pretty tame, and there are no stars. No big production budget. No great thrills or turns in the story. Could it be that the star in these movies is simply the authenticity of the setting, an authenticity that resonates with a lot of people who feel the fakeness of what Hollywood offers up as their lives?

This movie is not for American audiences. This movie is not made to travel. It is not Guy Ritchie/Danny Boyle cool. This movie is made squarely for a target audience of young urban teens from Ladbroke Grove and Hackney who soak up movies and live lives something akin to the characters on screen.

I feel a bond with these kids because what Hollywood offers up as life in my Third World country is often pretty embarrassing. For that reason we are underserved and hungry. I was blown away recently when I was in London by the success of "The Harder They Come" on the West End. The quality of the production didn't do justice to the Perry Henzell movie or the Jimmy Cliff music but throngs of all sorts of people from all walks of life turned out night after night for that celebration of "the real." Real Jamaican music. Real Jamaican accents. And real Jamaican nostalgia. We've got one friend who's seen it five times and I bet that's the tip of the iceberg.

All of this gives me so much heart when I look at the slate of movies that our little company has. We're hobbled in some ways...there's no money, there's no people, we get stuck, we're not commercial enough ...but if we can find a way to build something genuine and attractive for a reasonable price, I know the market is there.

Movie Night Review: "The Secret Life of Bees"

This week movie night was actually at a theater (God bless sister-in-laws who babysit) but in a certain time slot and geographical radius which meant that we had a limited choice of what we could see.

"The Secret Life of Bees" rose to the top by process of elimination. Have to say I was a little surprised that hubby wasn't more averse to it. This is generally the kind of movie he would have to be dragged into the theater and tied to the seat to sit through.

"The Secret Life of Bees" stars Dakota Fanning and a high-wattage cast-- Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo. It's directed by Gina Price Bythewood who made "Love and Basketball."

The movie opens with a bang. At age four Lily accidentally shoots her mother as she's trying to protect her from a violent domestic row. Immediately following the prologue comes a sense of the time period and the thematic water we're gonna be treading. We see Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act and moments later, Lily's servant Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) setting off to register to vote with Lily at her side. However, on the way to registering, Lily and Rosaleen meet up with a couple of bigoted whites who insult Rosaleen. Rosaleen's not one to hold her tongue and violence breaks out. Police step in and Rosaleen is carted away.

Later that night, Lily provokes her mean, sad sack father (wonderfully played by the underrated Paul Bettany) who tells her that her mother abandoned her. Crushed, Lily runs away, but not before she busts Rosaleen out of the hospital where she's in custody, recovering from a severe beat-down. They run away to a town called Tiburon where Lily's mother once lived and because there's no hotel that will take in a white girl and a colored woman, they try their luck with a well off black family in the area, the Boatwrights, who make the best honey in all of South Carolina.

Our set-up over, thirty minutes in, Lily's knocking on the door of the grand pink Boatwright manor and asking the matriarch, eldest sister August (Queen Latifah) for a place to stay. And so Lily finds a loving family and relishes lots of sage bee metaphors from August.

Meanwhile relationships ebb and flow between the other two Boatwright sisters, the uptight, political June (Alicia Keys) and the sensitive soul May (Sophie Okonedo) and Zach, a good-looking black teen who helps out with August's bees. Inexplicably, no one seems in the least bit concerned about the development of a taboo relationship between Lily and Zach in segregated South Carolina where Rosaleen not too many movie minutes ago got her head beat in by some racist white folk.

It's this short sightedness of the family to the relationship between Lily and Zach that was my biggest problem...that and the wonderful hospitality and forgiveness of the Boatwrights which doesn't help create the kind of conflict internally (within the walls of the house) that would really lift the movie.

By the time the story peters out with a tame resolution for our protagonist, the journey felt derailed and slight. The movie is blessed with strong acting performances but only flirts with darkness underpinning it. As such, "The Secret Life of Bees" is determined to retain the golden hue of its honey to its detriment.





"The Secret Life of Bees" gets 3 Oscars out of 5.

Movie Night... Okay make that Movie Week Review: "Fanaa"

"Fanaa", a Bollywood hit from 2006, had been sitting on our bookshelf for just short of two years but thanks to Movie Night, hubby and I decided its time had arrived.

We're working on this Bollywood-styled Third World musical comedy and a while back hubby went into a Jackson Heights movie store and asked for recommendations. The guy brought out Parineeta which we loved and has become a focal point of the DVD collection and Fanaa which became the stepchild we never watched.

It took us two years to get in the mood for Fanaa but we put it in a couple nights ago and it was um...a revelatory movie-watching experience. I am not kidding when I say I've never seen anything like it.

"Fanaa" is about a blind Kashmiri girl, Zooni, who sets off with her friends to perform as part of a dance troupe to commemorate India's independence at a palace in Delhi. In Delhi, Zooni meets Rehan, a charming tour guide who's a Casanova. They flirt with each other openly, and their clever repartee back and forth shows what a great match these two are for each other, despite all the disapproving tut tutting of Zooni's overprotective friends.

I glanced down at my watch about forty minutes in, thinking, while this is cute, there's not exactly any conflict. Stakes don't seem all that high. Guy loves her though worried about his ability to commit but he's going along and she thinks he's the bees knees. I'm still waiting for something to happen.

It sort of does when Zooni implores Rehan to meet her for a final day of fun in Delhi before she returns home and he stands her up, unable to deal with his attachment to her. She's upset and seeks him out. He tries to give her the brush off with groaners like "Women are like cities. I spend a little time in one and then I move on" but Zooni is adamant that she's met her true love. She throws out the line her mother said she ought to save for her true love...a line that equates with the movie's title "Fanaa: Destroyed in Love"...but Rehan appears not to be taken in by it.

Heartbroken, Zooni sets out on the train back home only to have Rehan stop the train, clamber aboard and declare his love. He takes her back to Delhi and you can be forgiven for thinking they live happily ever after the way the movie's going.

But "Fanaa" has something else up it's sleeve. Rehan gets news of a new surgical operation that can bring Zooni back her sight. This is something he's always dreamed of for her. At long last she'll see the world. Zooni goes in for this operation but Rehan, on the way to the airport to pick up Zooni's parents who are to meet him for the first time, is presumed killed in a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile Zooni wakes up, and she can see! She greets her family who tell her Rehan's died in the bombing. Perversely, Zooni's first sighted act is to identify the remains of her husband...remains which turn out to be his clothing and a scarf she knitted.

***HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD***
At this point as a viewer I sit right up because I think... where is this movie going? It's about seventy minutes in and I just can't figure out the road map. While Zooni wails, and rescue crews descend into flames there is I think one of the coolest but weirdest reversals I've ever seen on screen. We learn that the bombing is the act of a dangerous terrorist who's targeted many other Indian sites. (We see the terrorist looking at all these other tourist sites.) We switch perspective to a "24"-style counter terrorism unit that is tracking the rogue terrorist. We tilt up from the shoes of the rogue terrorist as he strides through an airport. And we learn that the terrorist is...Rehan!

And then the slate tells us it's intermission. Now that's what I call an act break!

The second part of the movie is an entirely new film, like the directors said, we made a romantic comedy, now we feel like making a thriller. In "Fanaa part 2" as I call it, operatives try to track down Rehan and locate the dangerous trigger he wants to secure to launch some diabolical attack. However, when Rehan gets shot down in the middle of the snowy Kashmir mountains, he drags himself on the point of death, to a cabin. The door opens and it just "happens" to be the home of Zooni, who of course doesn't recognize Rehan since she was blind for all of their relationship. Further complicating matters, crowding around the door is the son Rehan never knew he had...an adorable kid who dotes on the mysterious stranger.

The soap opera continues as Zooni and her father nurse Rehan back to health. Zooni gradually learns Rehan's identity (as her former lover) and they get married only for her to discover, as the dragnet for the terrorist tightens, that the man they're searching for, the dangerous renegade, is Rehan. Now Zooni has a totally compelling choice, except it's all so over the top and not treated in any genuine way. Scenes continue to be laughably unrealistic, especially the big finale where a woman agent in an airborne helicopter shoots a pistol into another helicopter and hits the enemy!!! Yes indeed, "Fanaa" will make you shake your head many, many times.

At a running time of 168 minutes, it took me almost a week to watch "Fanaa" but I was so fascinated by it that it made me think of the ability of other non-traditional, non-Hollywood, filmmakers to straddle genres. Is there a comparison here to Tyler Perry and the whole subgenre of gospel plays that confound straight genre types by blending comedy and melodrama so effortlessly? Is there something about us Third Worlders that makes us understand that things don't come in neat boxes? Or is such genre-bending simply amateurish?

Because at the end of the day I'd pick the straight romance of "Parineeta" over the interesting but ultimately unsuccessful hybrid of "Fanaa" any day.

One other quibble that makes me mark down "Fanaa", the music isn't memorable. There's nothing you'll go away humming...which is also a completely new experience for me, fledgling Bollywood movie watcher that I am.




"Fanaa" gets 2 and a half Oscars out of 5.

Movie Night Review: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

The weakest and longest of the J.K. Rowling books makes a pretty entertaining movie that reminds Third World Girl of this really annoying deputy headmistress who once came into her high school and wreaked havoc via totalitarian rules as does the movie's Deputy Minister of Magic Dorothy Umbridge. (Our deputy head was, however, never driven away by a herd of angry centaurs as much as our school population might have enjoyed it.)

But back to "Order of the Phoenix". The installment is directed by David Yates who must have satisfied the studio alright since they've handed off the rest of the franchise to him. (I will perhaps always be partial to the grit of Alfonso Cuaron's "Prisoner of Azkaban" with its cool magical realism though Mike Newell did a pretty bang-up job too with Goblet of Fire. I love it when producers open up novels as diverse as Rowling's to different directors though the first two done by Christopher Columbus now seem dull and slavish to the source material.)

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", like the book it's based on, is a whole lot of exposition...a bridge between the high jinx of the earlier series with its quaint Quidditch matches and house rivalries and the moody, deeper apocalypse of the later books. For that reason it's kind of hamstrung as a movie. (The entire thing, in fact, exists to deliver one really important piece of exposition.) In fact, hubby seemed distinctly unimpressed as he was measuring the movie up against Goblet of Fire.

I won't provide a synopsis here apart from saying Harry's pursued by dementors, uses magic in front of a Muggle while school's out, gets into major trouble for it, gets hauled before the Ministry of Magic who in a very unlikely scene lets him go his way after a Dumbledore speech, heads off to Hogwarts, kisses an Asian girl, gets heat from students who think he's lying about the Dark Lord's return, has really bad dreams that he realizes are Voldemort's visions and seeks to find out exactly what is the relationship between him and said Voldemort, a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Named. (Go read it in 870 pages. I'm always amazed that people understand the movies as stand-alones.)

It's good character stuff that sets up a lot of information we'll need for the later novels--oops movies--but "Order of the Phoenix" doesn't really set any fires on its own.

Still a few largely redeeming observations...

1. J.K. Rowling has employed so many top notch seasoned British actors who are so good in these cameos she should get some major damehood.

2. Daniel Radcliffe is really short but he's a pretty decent actor as is the Ron Weasley dude. Emma Watson I just don't get.

3. Rowling's books translate so well to the screen. The dizzying visual landscapes of her carefully created worlds (the Ministry of Magic, the Hall of Prophecies, the Weasley Wizard Wheezes) are all meant to be experienced on the big screen...which is somewhat unfortunate because movie night currently takes place on a humble, old TV that hubby and I bought ten years ago.




"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" gets three Oscars out of five.

Movie Night Review: "Outsourced"

"Outsourced" seemed like my kind of movie...the kind of light charming global confection that tackles with humor a contemporary, controversial problem.

It's about a mild-mannered customer service manager, Todd (played by Josh Hamilton), whose call center department in Seattle is outsourced to India. While the rest of his team lose their jobs, Todd is hired to go there to train the new manager. (The movie does that really annoying jump cut thing when a character says, "There's no way on earth I'm going to India!" and then the next shot he's in India! Wow, hilarious right?)

A fish out of water, Todd must guide his department through the mysteries of selling Western kitsch to customers who bristle at having to deal with "foreigners" on the phone. This is all in hopes of getting the call center's "incidents per minutes" down to six minutes, a feat Todd achieves by teaching his charges how to sound more American, despite the fact that they're miles away and in a completely different time zone.

I loved the premise of this movie but watching it felt like I was seeing writ large the flaws of this immigration comedy I have that's been kicking my ass for a while. See "Outsourced" is basically a comedy of manners but once the initial humor at Todd adapting to Indian life is mined, there's not much else.

For a comedy, too, the movie lacks a comic character. The romantic sub-plot is thin and incredible and there's not enough conflict in the movie. At about sixty minutes in, Todd's seen the error of his sneering ways and begins to embrace India, and though there's a reversal at the end, it's not a genuine complication. "Outsourced" just meanders along lacking tension for almost half of the movie. As Time Out describes it it's "Office Space"... only shot in Mumbai and not funny.

It's weird though how you can sometimes learn the most from watching an unsuccessful film. "Outsourced" is like looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection of my problem script as it is now, though I can only dream of getting a lead actress as hot as Ayesha Dharker in the final product. Somebody please give her more mainstream work.




"Outsourced" gets two Oscars out of five.

Movie Night Review: 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

Well, if Slate and Netflix are looking for candidates in the most unwatched category next year, this dark but affecting drama out of Romania will probably be high on the list.

I'd heard the tough to remember title "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" referred to as a kind of "The Life of Others" (that Best Foreign Film upset from a couple years ago). I adore "The Life of Others", hubby watches it compulsively and this is one I wanted to see in theaters but missed. I was surprised however when it showed up on the hubby-managed Netflix queue. (He was unaware of the subject matter.)

"4 Months..." is riveting. A fascinating character study framed within an explosive and timely subject: a black market abortion in communist Romania. The film is gritty, naturalistic and graphic. Seeing a 5 month fetus on the floor of a bathroom floor is haunting, a first for me as a movie watcher, and a moment that I'm unlikely to forget.

You know you're watching a foreign film too. The scenes are long, sometimes shot in one take. The tension is excruciating. The camera lingers. The director, Cristian Mungiu, shuns close ups and barnstorming theatrics for quiet moments in the shadows.

The basic plot is about a tech student, Otilia (played by Anamaria Marinca) who in the final days of Communist Romania helps her weepy best friend/roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) get an illegal abortion. It's clear from early that they're in over their head. They don't have financial resources and aren't used to dealing with the seedy underworld. It's only the fierce determination of Otilia that pulls them through...but at a brutal emotional cost.

It is impossible to watch a film like this and not think about the current debate on abortion. I came away more convinced than ever that for women like Otilia who want professional lives, who are on par with their boyfriends academically one moment and cooking them and their brood potato stew the next, "choice" is a human right. Having said that, in its gruesome reality, director Mungiu doesn't sanitize the subject, making his audience cognisant of the heart-breaking, flesh and blood sacrifice made in choosing "choice."




"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" gets 3 1/2 Oscars out of 5.