Although I haven’t been writing as much lately, I have been keeping up with my movies. Unfortunately, I haven’t really had the opportunity to see any of the films I really wanted to see, such as Blindness, but it should be out on DVD soon, so it’s not so bad. The movies I have seen are Quarantine, August and Rachel Getting Married. It’s three really different films, but with kind of a common theme. No, there are no zombies in the Anne Hathaway drama Rachel Getting Married, but all three kind of revolve around the idea of people being trapped; may it be in their jobs, relationships or an apartment building full of zombies.
The poster for Quarantine is admittedly a rip-off of The Blair Witch Project
To sum up Quarantine in a few words, it’s like Cloverfield meets 28 Days Later. Adapted from a Spanish film, Quarantine is the American adaptation of a story about a group of people that are trapped in an apartment building that is, well, full of zombies. Starring The Exorcism of Emily Rose’s Jennifer Carpenter and Crazy/Beautiful’s Jay Hernandez, the movie was pretty much a migraine waiting to happen. I’m not a fan of these uber-realism movies where they sacrifice viewer comfort for a sense of realism. That whole “ooh look the camera’s shaking like someone’s actually filming the thing in real life” is done and done. I prefer not feeling like shit after seeing a film, thank you very much. Unless of course it’s the kind of movie that’s so intricately woven in substance and message it makes you feel like shit, now that’s a different story. The camera was shaking so badly in this movie, I had to close my eyes and chew gum and pray that I wouldn’t throw up in the theater. What made it even worse is that I guess I have this knack for eating ridiculous amounts of food before I go see crazy shaking camera movies, which contribute to that whole motion sickness factor. Although I wouldn’t say the camera movement was as bad as Cloverfield, I do think the added fact that the characters were trapped in an apartment building and there were a lot of shots of tight spaces, and there was so little lighting, it made it seem suffocating. Overall the film was pretty all right. It was a little annoying, because there really was no resolution to the story, much like Cloverfield, and you’re basically just kind of left wondering what the hell this was all about.
Josh Hartnett's dot com CEO broods over his predicament over a couple of drinks.
August stars Josh Hartnett and Prison Break’s Robin Tunney, and includes a special appearance by David Bowie towards the end. It’s basically about this hipster extraordinaire [Hartnett] who is CEO of a dot com business he started in 2001 with his brother, back when the internet was booming and stocks in the IT field were skyrocketing. All of a sudden, his company is in the tank due to mismanagement and turmoil in the stock market, and he has to fight to save his company, while at the same time trying to backpedal from his being an asshole for the last few months since he started the company. Hartnett does well in this role, however, I felt like the film needed a little bit more. It was full of technical jargon and e-lingo that I couldn’t follow, and really the film felt like it was only 30 minutes long, because the story was so small that you couldn’t really be wowed. The relationships in the film were interesting, and this is why I say it revolves around the feeling of being ’trapped’. Hartnett’s character, Tom Sterling, is trapped in his job in the sense that he doesn’t really know anything about e-commerce and e-trade, but he considers himself a good businessman, and he is desperate to stay afloat in this business, because failure would not only mean he proved his overbearing parents right, but that he let his brother down as well. Overall, I thought the color schemes were interesting, and definitely the stylist for this movie was great, but I don’t think it was very successful.
Rachel Getting Married, on the other hand, was really brilliant. I thought Jonathan Demme did an excellent job with the simplicity of this movie and just allowing the raw talent of the actors to shine. Anne Hathaway made a bold statement with this movie: She’s all grown up now. I wished that she had done this movie before she did her boobie-flashing stint on Brokeback Mountain, but hey, that’s just me. Rachel Getting Married is about Kim [Anne Hathaway], who returns home after being in rehab for 9 months just in time for her sister Rachel’s [Rosemarie DeWitt] wedding. Her family receives her warmly at the start, but her presence in the house only seems to make their problems more apparent. Kim’s past is a very troubled past, and her family has been subjected to her fits and tantrums. Though back from rehab, she is flung into this busy family affair that is Rachel’s wedding, and although she wants to have her family all to herself in this difficult time, she can’t seem to get away from her past. So you could say that Kim is trapped by her past. She can’t escape it, but she can’t move on without acknowledging it, and the same goes for her family. She gets into all sorts of arguments, and Hathaway’s and DeWitt’s performances were pretty spectacular. They were honest, vulnerable, oftentimes scathing with their words without really meaning it. I have to admit I teared up a little bit watching this movie. It was really powerful in spots, especially because you get the impression that this family suffers from such a deep wound yet they try to cover it up for this momentous occasion that is Rachel’s wedding. It was intense, sarcastic, passionate and very real. The camera work was sometimes handheld, and gave you the feeling like you were spying on these really private moments between the family members. I would highly recommend this to anyone who’s feeling like seeing a good movie.
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