Lost in Translation (2003)
Starring: Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.
Directed by Sofia Coppola.
Kilgore rates it: 7 (out of 10)

I liked this movie, really I did. But I don't understand why it's received the flood of praise that it has. Bill Murray turned in a fine performance as a washed-up actor having an identity crisis while doing a liquor ad in Tokyo; I believed his character completely. I couldn't grasp Scarlett Johansson's character, though. Supposedly she graduated from Yale, but I didn't buy it. I also didn't buy that she had married Giovanni Ribisi's character. I didn't sympathize with her problems -- she moped around a lot and I didn't understand why. Still, the movie had several funny and touching moments, and earned my eight bucks.

I wrote a post back on October 8 about how Lost in Translation got me thinking about why some people are happy and some people aren't. Murray's character, for example, may be washed up, but he's still rich and famous, with a wife and children, and he's getting paid $2 million to fly to Japan and have his picture taken. Johansson's character is a young, beautiful, educated woman dashing around to exotic locales with her hotshot celebrity photographer husband. Wealth, fame, beauty, family, excitement... these people seem to possess all the ingredients of happiness, yet they are miserable. Why? Think about that.

A Mighty Wind (2003)
Starring: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Bob Balaban, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, and Michael McKean.
Directed by Christopher Guest.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)

A Mighty Wind is the fourth mockumentary produced or written by Christopher Guest, following the excellent Waiting for Guffman, the very good Best in Show, and This is Spinal Tap, which I hated and turned off halfway through.

A Mighty Wind satirizes folk music, so I didn't get it. (I don't know anything about music in general, and I was born in 1974, so I really don't know anything about 1960s folk music.) Still, this film is filled with sharp direction by Guest and clever performances by his posse of improv actors, many of whom have appeared in his other movies. If you know anything about 1960s folk music, you will probably love this movie.

Animal Farm (1999)
Starring: Julia Ormond (voice), Patrick Stewart (voice), Pete Postlethwaite.
Directed by John Stephenson.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)

Animal Farm, written by British genius George Orwell and published in 1945, was a brilliant parody of the Bolshevik revolution in which barnyard animals expel their human owners and take over operation of the farm. Originally they follow the principles of "Animalism," a philosophy intended to create a cooperative animal paradise, but slowly the farm slides into dictatorship as a ruling class of pigs seizes control. Pigs named Major, Snowball, and Napoleon represent Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin; and Orwell throws in starvation as a political weapon, bloody purges, dictator worship, showy but pointless construction projects, and historical revisionism. If you haven't read Animal Farm, you should.

The movie recounts the major events as described in the novel but fails to capture the depth of Orwell's characters -- the dumb devotion of Boxer, the horse; the cynicism of Benjamin, the donkey; and the ferocity of Napoleon's secret police force of dogs. A mixture of real animals and animatronics prove believable in this live-action movie; the most memorable animals are Jessie, a collie who narrates; and Squealer, a pig who delivers propaganda. The filmmakers stumbled badly by tacking on a pointless, nonsensical second ending to Orwell's elegant finish. Overall, this film is a serviceable but tepid adaptation of a great novel.

+posted by Lawrence @ 2/25/2004 11:56:00 PM