Tags
Anne Hathaway, Assembly, Becoming Jane, 集 結 號, James McAvoy, La Vie En Rose, Marion Coittilard, Movies, Netflix
Becoming Jane
I couldn’t help but notice that this movie had many very suspicious parallels to “Pride and Prejudice” such as the typical “I find Mr. X so arrogant and full of himself” in the beginning then start to flirt and fall in love after a series of encounters. Though its sad to think that the real Jane Austen might have fell in love young but could never bring herself to marry anyone else. But I suppose that it’s one way of explaining the constant themes and plots of her novels. What this movie really has going for it is the chemistry between Anne Hathaway‘s Jane and James Mcavoy‘s Tom that really drove this story. Some scenes gave me goosebumps or perhaps it is the Jane Austen fan in me that causes me to feed on these kinds of romance stories. In another unrelated note, I would almost argue that there was more chemistry between James Mcavoy and Anne Hathaway than James Mcavoy and Kiera Knightley in Atonement.
La Vie en Rose
First off, the acting by the lead actress, Marion Coittilard, was incredible! She switches from a vibrant and idealistic youth to the proud and carefree established singer to the slowly deteriorating but determined Edith Piaf in her old age throughout the whole movie. But what kind of drove me crazy was that this movie was fractured, flashing back and forth and back and forth between the singer’s youth and her approaching death. If I hadn’t read her biography on Wikipedia before I watched this movie, I would be even more confused. I think what was the hardest to follow was who was who. Besides the title character, it was hard to keep track of all her people because you only see them for moments before flash to another period of life. Then when that character (I think) comes back into the film, they look so different because of age that I don’t pick up on the fact that its the same character as before. Perhaps this is just the way that the French make their movies, or perhaps I have been spoiled too much by Hollywood spelling everything out for me in bio pics.
Assembly (集 結 號)
As I was falling asleep one night, DL was watching this new war movie called, Assembly from Mainland China. He calls it the Chinese version of “Saving Private Ryan.” From what I could hear and from what I read online so far, this movie looks really, really good. Feel free to correct me if I am incorrect for saying this, but I think that this would be China’s first big commercial epic war movie about on the civil war between the Guo Ming Dang (KMT) and the Communists in the years following World World II. More on this movie, once I get around to watching it.