A different experience than you may be used to. The Girlfriend Experience.

 I won’t make you wait till the end to figure me out here. I really enjoyed this movie. While there is always a concern when seeing a movie featuring non-actors it fell by the wayside quickly here. Sasha Grey, who happens to be a very young and active adult film star, is phenomenal. I am sure that if I saw her in any other film errr, mainstream theatrical movie I would have a much different opinion but she nailed this role, no pun intended. I have never seen any of her other “movies” but I have to think that her experiences in the adult film industry was the perfect precursor to playing the role of Chelsea. Her live in boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos) a personal trainer in the film and in real life is another non-actor. He is good looking, but the kind of good looking that is kind of hard to look at, his face seems to be carved from a piece of misshaped geological artifact. He is just as believable as Grey in his role.

Soderbergh uses a non-linear storyline to explore the life of a call girl and the relationships that make up her life. This area has been treaded on before, many times, most notably to me in one of my favorite movies of all time “Leaving Las Vegas”.

There is a lot of talking in this movie as in any movie about feelings and relationships. The plot revolves around Chelsea being interviewed by a journalist who wants the inside scoop on what its like to be a high priced call girl in New York who is also in a monogamous relationship.

Chelsea is a high priced hooker but that seems to be a front for the 21-year-old girl who essentially turns into a therapist for middle-aged men. She is professional, but not cold, she has sweetness about her with the men that make them comfortable and let them believe, if only for the night, that she is there for them. There is nothing amazingly clever about this film, surprisingly if only for the mere fact that it deals with a dirty business that often involves low-life scum bag type characters, drugs, police, and so on and so forth. For those who are curious, there are no drugs only drinks. No sex, only nudity. In the end, there are real emotions from real people in real relationships, no matter how out of the ordinary they may seem.

My Vote:  This film is in limited release so you may have to rent it, but its well worth the wait.

Who's in on it? Who really cares?

I was excited to see The Brothers Bloom. Rian Johnson directed this picture and also directed 2005’s Brick, a film noir set in a present day high school. His understanding of the genre shined and he really pulled off a believable flick in Brick. His much anticipated follow up fits neatly into an identifiable genre so the outlook was promising and with a budget 40 times greater than that of Brick it seemed as if everything was going his way.

The Brothers Bloom is a Con-comedy staring Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz. I am not a big fan of Brody but I didn’t mind him here. I thought Ruffalo and Weisz were extremely enjoyable throughout the film. Visually Rian Johnson can be compared to Wes Anderson. His establishing shots are panoramic and colorful and he uses a lot of visual gags that will keep the artsy side of you engaged. He really employs the term Mise en scene in this film and asks you to try and think about it too.

However, while Brick took and old genre and applied it to modern times there wasn’t any fancy twist to this one. We are all aware that in a con movie nothing is as it seems. We know that we will think we have it figured it out at least three or four times and then BLAM! We get the big twist we didn’t see coming and we walk out of the movie theatre with a big smile. So knowing that we are really hanging on these relationships. Brothers and friends and women and enemies and money, its all very romantic but in the end it doesn’t deliver. The movie is enjoyable at times but the payoff isn’t there. I laughed and pondered life and what I would do in thier shoes but I also had the same reaction to Die Hard.

My Vote: If you’ve seen one Con-movie you’ve seen them all. Rent Brick

Mein Kempf

About half way through this movie I laughed out loud. For those of you who are unaware of the seriousness of the plot, please understand nothing was intended to be funny. Lets get the good stuff errr, good thing out of the way. My roommate pointed out to me that the Nazi’s have sick fits. I mean, those uni’s are pretty sharp. Its funny to me that the most hated group of people in the history of wars, the world, the universe are the Nazi’s but they somehow manage to look the best…hmmmm, isn’t that something to philosophize about.

In the opening scenes of the movie Tom Crusie (TC) sits at a table writing in German. His voice speaks over the action in perfect German while the English subtitles scroll on the bottom of the scene. Then the sub titles stop. Tom starts speaking in his very deliberate voice and that was that. All the Nazi’s speak English, some even with a British accent. Really? Okay, I can deal with this, sort of, I mean I could get past it if there was nothing else horribly wrong with this movie, but it really is the least of its problems.

We already know what the out come of this movie will be. I know nothing about this story but anyone who stayed in school past the third grade knows that Hitler killed himself, so knowing that TC intends to kill Hitler is a bit of a mcguffin, right? So with that out there it becomes a suspenseful story of risks and consequences and we should be so infatuated with these people lives we are glued to the edge of our seats. We have to care about TC or the movie will fall flat very quickly.

Tom Cruise carries out the actions of his character as if he were William Wallace but there is never a moment where I cared about what was at stake or did I ever believe or understand why TC was such a noble German. He has lost a hand, two figures and an eye. He seems to have enough children to field a baseball team and a relief pitcher on the way. He has given his body to Hitler and if he fails this mission his family will be hunted down and executed.
I couldn’t have cared less.

At one point in time I wanted to be JUST LIKE TOM CRUISE. Now that he thinks he can pull of an Oscar performance in every scene I feel bad for the guy and that poor girl he married I used to love on Dawson’s Creek. He was excellent in so many movies, all of which were filmed more than 10 years ago.

The pacing of this movie was the worst. Synger did a good job of telling us some things with action and voice over but all the “emotional” exposition was delivered by a group of respected actors who must have thought they could carry this movie. It takes them 10 minutes to explain something that could have taken a more thoughtful creative director 30 seconds of action to create. TC needed his face time. It’s a shame. This movie has suspense built right into it. Synger has made some amazing movies, but I say, after very careful consideration, skip this piece of shit and thank me for sitting through it for you.