With the upcoming DVD/Blu-ray release of Sarah Polley’s second directorial feature, Take This Waltz, the Canadian-born writer/director builds upon the promising foundation of her filmmaking career.
Polley follows up her acclaimed and Oscar-nominated debut, Away from Her (2006), with a simply honest portrayal of a woman’s struggle to fill the gaps in her seemingly happy marriage. Boasting crisp cinematography, good writing, and believable character depictions, the effort mostly succeeds in coming across as composed and genuine. While Michelle Williams predictably delivers a solid performance, it’s difficult at times to understand or empathize with her predicament and decisions, due to their impulsive and somewhat erratic nature. Seth Rogen as the naively loving, slightly disconnected husband and Sarah Silverman as the strangely wise alcoholic sister-in-law both fill their supporting roles effectively. It’s worth a look if you’re curious.
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Categories: Article, Women in Cinema Tags: Andrea Arnold, Anna Paquin, Away from, bank requesting, banker, Bill Murray, Bob Harris, Brenda Chapman, Bruce Wayne, Canada, Carey Mulligan, Charlotte, Christian Bale, Cinema of the United States, Coppola family, Debra Granik, Entertainment/Culture, Evan Rachael Wood, Holly Hunter, Jane Campion, Jim Sturgess, Jodie Foster, Jonathan Dayton, Julia Child, Julie & Julia, Julie Taymor, Katheryn Bigelow, Kimberly Peirce, Lisa Cholodenko, Lorene Scafaria, Lynne Ramsey, Mary Harron, Mel Gibson, Meryl Streep, Michael Arndt, Michelle Williams, Nora Ephron, Oscar, Patrick Bateman, Patty Jenkins, Paul Dano, Penny Marshall, Peter Sarsgaard, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Polley, Sarah Silverman, Scarlett Johansson, Seth Rogen, Sofia Coppola, Steve Carrell, the Oscar, the Oscars, Tokyo, tom hanks, Valerie Faris, Waltz
Emily Bronte’s classic Wuthering Heights is a colossal mish-mash of sub-genres narrative perspectives, and literary tones all interweaving to form a story that has been reproduced countless times over. It appeases the romantic, the historian, the horror enthusiast, the feminist, the political activist, and those who enjoy a juicy read with heightened soap operatics. Perhaps Bronte’s total commitment to covering every angle of the human need for escapism drained every fiber of her being, and could very well be the reason why Wuthering Heights remains her sole novel. I can only imagine that those who have adapted the book into a television miniseries or film haven’t always been met with success or praise. Bronte’s novel is simply too multilayered and tonally dense to be compressed into such a limited time frame and still stay true to her authorship’s vision. It takes a very special auteur to pick apart pieces of Bronte’s definitive novel, and churn it into something that is stylistically very much their own without diminishing the story or the characters that millions of readers hold sacred. Andrea Arnold has accomplished this with a visual imprint unlike any I have ever seen in a film adaptation, evolving her own directorial skills in the process. Read more on Wuthering Heights (***½)…
Categories: Film Reviews Tags: Andrea Arnold, British films, Catherine Earnshaw, Emily Brontë, film adapations, Heathcliff, Katie Jarvis, Kaya Scodelario, Lee Shaw, Lockwood, Oscilloscope Laboratories, Robbie Ryan, Wuthering Heights, Wuthering Heights Review
 After wowing me a few years back with her intense and very solid film ‘Fish Tank’, filmmaker Andrea Arnold stumbles greatly here with her incredibly flawed take on ‘Wuthering Heights’. This adaptation is incredibly bleak, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but it winds up becoming just a completely unpleasant film to sit through. The movie unfurls at a snail’s pace, replaces dialogue with the sound of the wind blowing, and winds up just plain boring you. To be sure, Arnold is attempting a rather radical retelling of the classic Emily Brontë novel of the same name, but it’s all for naught. The acting is fine but hardly strong enough to make up for the problematic filmmaking, which suggests a Mumblecore approach (by way of a poor man’s Terrence Malick) more than anything. Factor in a running time that goes past 2 hours and multiple animal cruelty scenes and you have an incredibly trying flick to sit through. It looks sufficiently bleak and I’m sure that that’s the point, but this really is going to be a hard sell for people when it opens at the beginning of October. I’m not 100% steering you away from it, but if you’re a fan of the story this interpretation might annoy you for being so visually and emotionally different than you’re used to seeing in a big screen adaptation of this sort, and if you’re not a fan of the book then I can’t see this interesting you at all. There’s a curiosity factor at play here and some decent enough acting, but that’s about it.
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Coming on the heels of the selection of films in competition, the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival have announced the jurors who be tasked with judging the films. The jurors include Ewan McGregor, Diane Kruger, Oscar winner Alexander Payne and other notable international film presences.
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