MaestroReviews

Deb and I are artists, painters actually. We go see films as often as once a week. That's right, we go to the theater and sit in a dark room with strangers to see movies. We rarely rent. We like "little" movies, foreign and documentary films. We try to stay away from mainstream and blockbusters whenever possible, but a couple sneak in each year. We seek out the obscure. We try to avoid violent movies, and that really limits our choices, most film makers seem to think violence makes a story interesting.
I try not to give anything away in the reviews, but offer an honest reaction.
We rate them 1~10, 10 being highest.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Blue Jasmine

Deb 9    Me 8

Another Woody Allen movie. They got to a point where they just wore me out, then came Midnight in Paris which turned my head around. Then To Rome With Love switched me back off. This one is somewhere between for me. He has mastered looking into personality types and presenting them in analytical depth with varying degrees of entertainment. But what he does well is make his characters familiar, these are people you know by the time the film ends. You may not want to know them, but they become part of your vocabulary. One thing has stood out in recent movies, the Rome movie, Before Midnight and this one are all shot in exotic locations to no benefit of the film. There are a few location shots that fix you to a certain location, but the rest of the time could be any sound stage in the world. I don't get why the extra effort to shoot in say, Greece, when there's only a few moments of uniquely Greek things that could come from stock shots. I dunno. But back to this one, Kate Blanchett was just great, leading an all star cast that included Bobby Canavale, an under appreciated actor of great strength. Alec Baldwin is always a treat and Louis CK just makes me like all the film makers choices. This is kind of a profile movie, not always happy, but insightful, funny and even enlightening.

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