GUEST EDITORIAL: 7 Best Films About the World of Translation

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7 best films about the world of translation

How much do people really know about the difficult tasks of translators and interpreters?  The profession of translation is one of the oldest in the world, dating from the first time two ancient civilizations started to interact with each other. Language is one of the most important parts of civilization and translation has the power to bridge different cultures. 

Nowadays, in today’s globalized world, translators are more important than ever before. The experts from The Word Point explain that” Translators are the ones that enhance communication by conveying information accurately from one language to another, thus, eliminating any language barriers that exist across the world. And, unlike computer-generated translations, professional interpreters can provide 100% accurate language translation”.   

Although there are very few movies who revolve around this profession, those who do, succeed to perfectly capture the challenges the translators and interpreters face. Here are the 7 best movies about the world of translation and its importance: 

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Arrival (2016) 

The sci-fi movie Arrival is an outstanding delight for translators and interpreters and the plot of the movie revolves around communication with alien species that come on our planet. Perhaps the biggest challenge a translator could ever face is translating an alien language in a way that humans will understand it. And, when the faith of our planet depends on the translation, the challenge is even more overwhelming. 

Arrival tells the story of a reputable linguist who starts to collaborate with the military in order to help humans communicate with alien lifeforms that come on planet Earth. 

Although it is a fiction, the movie underlines the real-life challenges of translators when a wrong translation can have huge consequences. 

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Chuck Norris vs. Communism (2015)

Chuck Norris vs. Communism is a documentary that revolves around the reality in Communist Romania in the late 1970s and 1980s. The Romanian-British documentary tells the story of the illegal importation of American action and religious movies in a country that was ruled by a very strict communist party. 

 Despite the risks she was exposing herself to, the young radio newscaster, Irina Nistor, dubbed thousands of illegally imported movies in the Romanian language. The story that the movie tells shows the importance that translation had at that time for the Romanian nation as they were able to understand and see what life was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. This movie certainly shows the importance of translators to overcome language barriers and change destinies. 

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Desert Flower (2009)

When translation would be essential to survive in an unknown world, anyone would appreciate the skills of translators a lot more. The 2009 German biographical movie, Desert Flower, tells the story of a Somali little girl who escapes her village to avoid a forced marriage. However, the little girl soon starts to experience language barriers and communication difficulties and needs an interpreter. Unfortunately, instead of her getting a professional translator, she ends up having her words translated by a hospital worker who tells his personal opinions instead of translating what she is saying accurately. 

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The Interpreter (2005)

Who would have thought that knowing foreign languages could put your life in danger? The movie Interpreter uses this scenario for its plot. The Interpreter is a political thriller movie starring the famous actors Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn which tells the story of an interpreter who by mistake overhears a secret conversation between two important politicians about an assassination plot in the Matoban lingua franca. The conversation she overhears becomes the primary element of the movie which starts to put her life in danger leading to numerous thriller scenes. 

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The Terminal (2004) 

Imagine being trapped in an airport terminal where no one speaks your language. Who would you need the most to find a solution to your situation? That’s right, a good translator! The movie The Terminal tells the true story of Mehram Karimi Nasseri who was an Iranian political refugee that was trapped in Terminal 1 of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport in France for 18 years. 

Viktor Navroski, as Mehram is portrayed in the movie, flies to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport where he discovers that his passport is no longer valid. Without being allowed to go back to his country or to enter the country that he arrived in, he is forced to remain trapped into the airport. As he is stuck in his situation, the traveler starts to experience numerous language barriers and communication difficulties. 

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Lost in Translation (2003) 

Lost in Translation is a romantic comedy-drama starring two of the most popular actors from Hollywood, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. The movie is a combination of very unique themes including loneliness, language barriers, and culture shock. 

The movie tells the story of an aging American movie star, Bob Harris, who arrives in Tokyo to shoot an advertisement. Bob keeps on encountering with Charlotte, a young college graduate, who was staying at the same hotel as him. 

The two characters start to bond after a fun night in Tokyo with Charlotte’s friends and start together on the journey of translating Japanese language and culture. Also, during the advertisement shooting, Bob encounters one more language barrier as he meets Ms. Kawasaki who is supposed to be the interpreter between him and the Japanese director. However, the interpreter fails to make an accurate translation of the director’s words which leads to a lot of confusion and misunderstandings. 

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Windtalkers (2002) 

Another movie that shows how challenging the profession of a translator can be is Windtalkers. Imagine being in wartime and your translation skills would be vital for winning the war. The risks and pressure that you would experience are simply unimaginable. 

The 2002 war movie is starring famous Hollywood names such as Nicolas Cage, Mark Ruffalo, and Adam Beach.  The movie reveals the story of two US Marines in World War II who are assigned to use their native language as a radio cypher that could not be broken by their enemies. The movie is about the importance of translating native texts as a key to win the war. 

All these movies mentioned above highlight the importance of the work of translators and interpreters in a globalized world where language barriers must no longer exist.  

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erica Sunarjo is a professional writer, translator, and editor with a Master’s degree in Marketing and Social Media. She writes thought- provoking articles for publications in a variety of media and is an active member of the translator community.

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CAPSULE REVIEWS: 5th annual Irish American Movie Hooley

As an Chicagoan of strong Irish descent myself, let me step in and play the part of “good authority.” I have it on good authority that the annual Irish American Movie Hooley is a boisterous event with a trio of buried treasure movies that normally wouldn’t grace American screens. Just as the event’s name translates: “When a party gets rowdy, the Irish call it a ‘hooley.’” You need to join the 5th edition of this artistic autumnal party at The Gene Siskel Film Center over the weekend of September 27–29. Come for the scene. Consume some friendly and fascinating culture.

Barbara Scharres, the Director of Programming for The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and Irish American radio personality Mike Houlihan recently announced the three choice selections for the upcoming fifth annual mini-festival. All three are making their Chicago premiere with one American premiere to close the weekend slate.

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MISTY BUTTON

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Misty Button shows us that the whole “starving artist” trope of creative individuals being lousy f--kups with commitment issues is not solely an American pitfall.  It bites the Irish too. The protagonist matching these well-worn traits is James, played by Cillian O’Sullivan. To say he lands in a pickle in Misty Button would be an understatement.  It’s more like an inescapable vice tightening so hard the soaked-in whiskey squirts out of his pores in this slow-building dark comedy caper.

James and his uncorrected troubles reside in the far northern Bronx neighborhood of Woodlawn, known for its “Emerald Isle” turf of Irish-American heritage.  He meets the burdens of his working class life with a triple-dipped punch of groans, signs, and bursts of profanity. In the course of a single day after finding the bottom of another bottle of Jameson, James is canned from his bar job and living single when his wife Hayley (Hannah Jane McMurry) tosses her rings out the window.  Naturally, the impulsive James stoked his own fire to burn every bridge in each of these transpired events. When doesn’t lament in a shot glass, he does so seated at a typewriter trying to write something that gets him discovered.  

James and his friends Declan (Patrick Scherrer) and Eoin (Shaun Kennedy) get their ears bent by little rants emanating from Timmy Thomas, a loquacious bard of a man played by John Keating (recognized from last year’s Hooley entry Emerald City), sitting in the same tavern.  The twitchy, orange-eating middle-aged man propositions James and Eoin to do the legwork of placing a $10,000 bet on a 35-1 local racehorse named Misty Button.  When the two mates blow some of the money on drugs and miss the betting window, they now find themselves in debt to a local crime bully Alonzo (Bret Lada). Worst of all, instead of owing just the $10,000, they owe 35 times that because the titular longshot ended up winning the race, costing all involved a tremendously larger windfall of cash.

The hijinks that ensue from the script and direction of filmmaker Seanie Surgue (making his feature debut after an emerging career in short films) put James, Eoin, and Timmy Thomas through a bungled wringer.  Barstool banter turns into double-crosses. Swindles turn into smash-and-grab heists. Roughed up bumps and bruises meant to teach a lesson or two turn into murder. O’Sullivan, often looking and sounding like Colin Farrell Lite, smolders and shouts his way through these increasing obstacles.  The scene-stealer is always the wiry Keating. The line delivery and physical quirks of his yarns are infectious.  

This is, admittedly for a long stretch, a meandering way to encircle a drain of comeuppance. Misty Button is low on its expressions of suspense and does not employ a musical score to define any consistent tone.  You have to hang on words and narrative beats. Not all of that meshes smoothly or free from head-scratching character choices.

Just when Misty Button seems like it runs out calamities to justify where it’s going, the double-crosses emerging from the previously mentioned banter flip the movie (and you) on its ear. The wild third act twists are a saving grace that redeem what was messy and turns it into a clever hustle primed to be backed often by “The Rocky Road to Dublin” by The Dubliners. Come to be pleasantly surprised.

MILD RECOMMENDATION

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THE MAN WHO WANTED TO FLY

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COMING SOON!

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CUMAR: A GALWAY RHAPSODY

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Annually and without fail, the Irish American Movie Holley delivers a gorgeously appointed documentary among the trio of features that either fascinates with an affecting citizen testimony or astonishes us with the natural beauty of the Emerald Isle.  Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody is a poetic and dazzling example of the later sample of non-fiction art.  With soaring cinematography across streets, surf, and sky, every inch of this documentary drips with the heavenly chemistry of its fine and proud home country.

Directed by Aodh O Coileain, Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody chronicles the layers of culture and natural wonders in and around the western city of its title.  Galway, the sixth most populous city of the country, will be the year-long title-holder of the European City of Culture next year in 2020, and this film shows many of the rich reasons why it was sought for that distinction.  A collection of six artists perform and explore the cultural nuance alongside the flowing stream of visuals.  

Those featured artists include writer Mike McCormack, poet Rita Ann Higgins, singer Róisín Seoighe, street theatre director Noeline Kavanagh, visual artist Pádraic Reaney and musician Máirtín O’Connor. A seventh comes from the narration of comedian Tommy Tiernan which adds context and character to the scenes observed.  The last topping bow of auditory presentation comes from composer Jake Morgan and music from Matthew Berrill and Nicola Geddes.  

The title word “cumar” translates to “confluence.”  In its most natural definition, confluence refers to where multiple waters converge.  In Galway’s case, that matches the River Corrib and the churning bays washed by the Atlantic Ocean.  Through labeled sections, Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody one of those artists is highlighted and the various sub-definitions of cumar and confluence preface each vignette.  Some of those thematic pinpoints include cumar as “the accord between the artist and his tools, the energy that binds the ensemble, the influence of a place on the human spirit, and the unity that stems from a gathering of people.

With this draping chapters, Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody is well-paced and patient with unwrapping its historical notes and asides. Each chapter is an anecdote to the soul of the people.  Parallel to the human element, each chapter, as well, is an earthly sermon to the land and sea. This is a fine credit to O Coileain and his editing team which included Conall de Cleir and Oisin Misteil.    

The true feast of this documentary is the serene photography.  Fast and slow, the blend of urban and domestic landscapes is observational and pastoral.  Near and far, the film is lifted even greater by the wondrous aerial photography captured by Roman Bugovskiy and fleet of cameras.  Theatrical screens will fill with this imagery and evoke dreams of reaching out and touching these divine treasures. That is an impressive treat and feat to enjoy at the Irish American Movie Hooley.

HIGH RECOMMENDATION

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Paddy’s Irish Whiskey will offer a sampling station in the lobby of the Gene Siskel Film Center before each screening, and also hold a free “whiskey raffle” after each screening and award a complimentary bottle of Paddy’s Irish Whiskey to the winner. After the Misty Button screening, director Seanie Sugrue will be in attendance for a talkback. As an added perk, the welcome audience is invited to an opening night reception at The Emerald Loop Bar and Grill, 216 N. Wabash Ave., immediately after the film, with complimentary Paddy’s Irish Whiskey.

For more information about the Movie Hooley, visit: http://moviehooley.org

All screenings and events are at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, located at 164 N. State St.

Tickets to each screening — unless stated otherwise — are $12/general admission, $7/students, $6/Film Center members, and $5/Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) staff and School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) faculty, staff, and students. All tickets may be purchased at the Film Center Box Office. Both general admission and Film Center member tickets are available through the Gene Siskel Film Center’s website.

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VINTAGE REVIEW: The Untouchables

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THIS RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW AND ANALYSIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 FOR 25YL AS PART OF THEIR BRIAN DE PALMA TRIBUTE AND RETROSPECTIVE SERIES.

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THE UNTOUCHABLES— 4 STARS

At the turn of the late 1980s, lauded filmmaker Brian De Palma needed a commercial win, the kind of score that filled his bank account and raised his cache to make more of his own artistic interests. He got that in 1987 with The Untouchables, a pet project of producer Art Linson who loved the gangland folklore possible with Paramount’s full rights to the characters. Buoyed by a 50% female audience dared into a violent picture, the film returned triple its budget after what would be the 6th highest debut of the year. Featuring all the director’s bells and whistles singing a new tune, The Untouchables returned bankability and creative acclaim to the career New Yorker. 

For The Untouchables, De Palma came to the writer’s turf of The Windy City to update and redefine the tropes of gangster film “The Chicago Way.”  Bounding with all of the swagger and toughness of David Mamet’s script, The Untouchables amplifies and dramatizes the Prohibition takedown efforts of famed U.S. Treasury agent Eliot Ness against Chicago Outfit leader Al Capone previously serialized by the 1957 television program starring Robert Stack. Kevin Costner was the reluctant final pick for the lead from the pool of Miami Vice’s Don Johnson, a busy Mel Gibson, and a declining Mickey Rourke to play the lawmen pitted against De Palma’s insisted choice and transformed muse Robert De Niro, and all his peccadillos, as the worshiped crime lord.

With steep dramatic license for silver screen flair, the movie Hollywoodizes the story of the diligent crusader Ness coming to City of Broad Shoulders and getting the tutelage of a brash pair of those in the form of an aging Irish beat cop named Jimmy Malone, played by screen legend Sean Connery in his lone Academy Award-winning role despite what an Empire magazine poll voted as the worst movie accent of all-time. Mamet and De Palma condense the historical Primary Ten into a composite squad of four when Ness and Malone recruit rookie sharpshooter George Stone (Andy Garcia, getting to play a hero after being the heavy in Hal Ashby’s 8 Million Ways to Die) and elevate D.C. bookworm agent Oscar Wallace (the welcome amount of comic relief from Charles Martin Smith). Looming next to De Niro is an army of ne’er-do-well underlings covered with overcoats, fedoras, and Tommy guns led by his Outfit #2 Frank Nitti (Pale Rider’s Billy Drago, after Garcia was approached and moved to Stone).

Playwright hitmaker David Mamet showers these actors with outstanding lines, from long rants to rapid-fire conversation. While he may revise a heap of history, Mamet and his “Mamet Speak” give these actors steak to chew on and De Palma tension to shoot. Even with Connery’s rough accent brimming all over and Costner’s genteel baseline, there’s still not a clunker moment of line delivery all movie. All of it sizzles with cigar smoke mixing with spent gunpowder and lament and heroism teeter-totter strides with the moody and brassy pomp of Ennio Morricone’s top-shelf score. 

The high style and period detail are on display in all areas of the movie’s big and clean production values. Many people go straight to the sleek and Oscar-nominated Giorgio Armani threads from costume designer Marilyn Vance (quite a step up from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and they would be keenly right to be impressed. Surfaces like costuming and the equally Oscar-nominated production designs of Amadeus’s Patrizia von Brandenstein, comedy specialist William A. Elliot comedy specialist, and Disney live-action veteran Hal Gausman drape, bath, and decorate pulpy antiquity out of the genuine Chicago locations. 

From this Chicagaoan’s eyes, Eric Schwab, De Palma’s longtime location scout and manager (and a future second unit director on six of the man’s films), outdid himself with the rich finds and recreations that sought lurid decadence. From Roosevelt University standing in as the notorious Lexington Hotel, Frank Lloyd Wright’s The Rookery used as police headquarters on historic La Salle Street, the Tiffany Dome of the Chicago Cultural Center (and original city library) to those climactic Union Station steps and every church steeple in between, Chicago has rarely look better or more ominous. 

Furthermore, the cinematographer and editors are part of what makes Brian De Palma and The Untouchables look so damn good and pop with visual storytelling. That success comes from successful and extensive collaboration. Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum would go on to work with the director for eight films. Editors Bill Pankow and Gerald G. Greenburg add nine and five trips, respectively, with De Palma to that teamwork tally. For more detail, Burum was highlighted by a nice interview piece in American Cinematographer for his work on The Untouchables last year. One fun fact is that the studio quickly talked him out of shooting in black-and-white. Be glad he was because the color always pops. The outstanding widescreen framing from Burum and the suspenseful sense of pacing from Pankow and Greenburg sharpen and highlight De Palma’s entertaining and engaging moves. 

And those chops!  As for what we’re celebrating here on 25YL, the real talent is Brian De Palma and his endlessly studied and glorified filmmaking prowess and visual trademarks. His tricks of the trade are applied to a ballsy, dramatic adventure that bleeds buckets of crimson underneath all those aforementioned surfaces.  Let’s talk angles first.

In many establishing shots, including catching street signs and the high angle zooming straight down from an opening card of history notes to a character introduction of De Niro’s Capone getting pampered and nicked in a barber’s chair, De Palma uses canted angles. De Palma and Burum also enjoyed low angles that highlight height or the towering setting, like the Tiffany Dome presiding over the wide spectre looking up to Capone later. One stellar example of viewing location is the creeper sequence of Malone’s home invasion, where the low angle and the POV steps set up tension and surprise. 

The most celebrated clinical example of angles comes from the “di-opt” split focus used during the blood oath church scene between Malone and Ness with that great “Chicago way” proverb. A half convex glass, one part near-sighted and one part far-sighted, kept both the two heroes in focus as well as the lofty and gorgeous church ceiling behind them. The stillness and depth of that scene, boosted by Mamet’s words and the mettle of the performances, are a very good foil to the pace of the rest of the picture.

The next visual feast of De Palma’s craft from the film are the movements. The amount of slow-sweeping pans and tracking shots of precise choreography are impressively mind-boggling. Long takes rule as the average shot length of The Untouchables is 5.7 seconds, a stout eternity by today’s thriller standards. Capone’s stalking baseball bat table circle monologue has a few cutaways for potential swing victim identification, but the circular pan from the low angle is gorgeous for both the hulking fear and finery on display. Even a shorter sequence like the Steadicam use following Wallace escorting a witness through the police hallways to his grave ending in the elevator are a long single-take marvel. 

The piece-de-resistance of editing and motion married together is the movie’s storied gunfight climax set on lobby steps of Chicago’s Union Station. It’s a scene De Palma reduced from a moving train sequence for budget and shot on the fly in substitution. Out of necessity, De Palma mixed a source of homage, the Odessa Steps sequence from Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin, to create his own holdout sequence where hurdles block the protagonists’ path for a necessary task. This classic scene also presents the best use of De Palma’s penchant for occasional slow-motion while amping up the sound work of the intersecting chess pieces. Pankow and Greenburg’s editing assistance really shines. Replica or note to Eisenstein, the result is brilliant and better than what some big-budget train chase would have been. De Palma would get that checkbook-busting chance again in Mission: Impossible nearly a decade later.

History and popularity have been kind to Brian De Palma’s crime movie achievement. The American Film Institute nominated the movie in five categories (Movies, Thrills, Hero, Villain, Film Score, and Gangster Film) during its “100 Years” series last decade. Then and now, The Untouchables earned a city’s pride and spurred new popularity to the Capone legend. Its success also fueled a star’s rise (Costner), secured another’s lasting legacy (Connery), and reminded audiences just how sharply talented its steward was. Once the end credits hit and Morricone plays us all out, you can also feel Brian De Palma channeling tough-guy Jimmy Malone with a “here endeth the lesson.”  The hitmaker never lost his edge.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#827)

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VINTAGE REVIEW: Simply Irresistable

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THIS RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW AND ANALYSIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 7, 2019 FOR 25YL AS PART OF THEIR “GUILT-FREE PLEASURES” SERIES.

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SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE— 3 STARS

Basic as the word may be, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition for the adjective “cute” goes in three very distinct directions. The second variation thereof: “attractive or pretty, especially in a childish, youthful, or delicate way” is the one used most often. The first meaning veers smarter defining “cute” as “clever or shrewd, often in an underhanded manner” and “impertinent, smart-alecky.” Lastly, “cute” can also describe something “obviously straining for effect.” As coincidence would have it for this 25YL article on “Guiltfree Pleasures”, the sentence example on that third definition reads “The movie’s too cute to be taken seriously.”

Folks, we have a triple winner. The 1999 Valentine’s Day romantic comedy and Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle Simply Irresistible typifies each of those three definitions of “cute.” The attractiveness is easy to spot and the creative smarts bubble with the glamour.  Most especially, though, the movie is entirely the third one supported by the cinematic citation.  

With its willowy whiff of courtship and cuisine, this movie is indeed too cute to be taken seriously. The proper response as a viewer for Simply Irresistible then is simple. Don’t take it seriously. Enjoy all the flights of fancy and let yourself lap up all the cuteness possible.

Originally titled Vanilla Fog, the movie begins with a classic Hollywood meet cute complete with soon-to-be-recurring klutziness. Gellar’s fashionably mismatched and plucky restaurant owner Amanda Shelton catches the ankle and the eye of Sean Patrick Flannery’s clean-cut and blue-suited exec Tom Bartlett at a sunny outdoor food market, when an ornery peekytoe crab she came into possession of tries to crawl up his dapper and unsuspecting dress pants. From the get-go, this silent little crustacean and the guardian angel of Gene O’Reilly (Tony Award-winning playwright Christopher Durang) stand as the proxy puppeteers from the mystic beyond sent to improve Amanda’s failing business, unraveling confidence, and romantic luck.

Thanks to this twinkling and clawed dash of magic, Amanda and Tom soon find their personal and professional trajectories intertwined. Amanda is an exceedingly sweet woman who recently lost her mother and culinary mentor. She is quick to give a compliment and earns them just the same. A little corps of loyal old customers, her Aunt Stella (Betty Buckley of Split), and her bestie sous chef Nolan (poor Larry Gilliard, Jr., checking off the ’90s trend of the necessary sidekick of token diversity for the second time in a year after The Waterboy) help her mother’s Southern Cross restaurant stay open despite financial woes and a chef’s version of writer’s block.

Tom is a paper airplane connoisseur and a data-minded man of pragmatism and neurotic picadillo’s.  He is handcuffed to a vain girlfriend (Amanda Peet before her The Whole Nine Yards breakout) and charged with opening a $4 million posh restaurant inside the high-end Henry Bendel designer department store for Bendel heir Jonathan Bendel (veteran character actor Dylan Baker).  His right-hand voice of reason and persistent pusher is his assistant Lois (Patricia Clarkson, the best talent of the ensemble), who has fawning eyes for Jonathan.  

The kooky kick of edible enchantment is that Amanda’s feelings are mixing in and coming out of her renewed cooking. Needless to say, with one ecstatic bite, Tom, and anyone else with a triggered taste, is hooked. The charisma of the actors take over to sell this sorcery.  

Powder impresser and hot The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones star Sean Patrick Flannery—months before The Boondock Saints would turn him into an even bigger cult icon—counts as a nice casting get, but this entire project was built for the enormous Buffy the Vampire Slayer popularity of Sarah Michelle Gellar at the peak of her powers. Simply Irresistible, She’s All That, and Cruel Intentions all hit theaters in the winter of 1999, and this one was the flop of the trio by a large margin. It’s a shame, because Simply Irresistible might be the most re-watchable.  

Gellar and Flannery, draped nicely by the threads of costume designer Janie Bryant (It, Deadwood, and Mad Men), look gorgeous together. The aimed eye contact and targeted gazes alone, followed often by snickers and smirks between the two, disarm at every come-hither turn. Just the committed presence of the central couple overcomes some awful “if the broom fits, ride it” dialogue from Judith Roberts (her only feature credit). Loopy feelings from food make for a loopy movie too that sputters to a sweeping finish.

The raunch-less love scenes of cooking, kissing, and dancing can initially seem to come from a different movie than a ’90s-era romantic comedy in the same year as American Pie. But then, with the dedication for the glossy showmanship never shrinking, you realize you’re exactly in a throwback. With a tweak of two of period adjustment and pacing, Simply Irresistible would fit either in the Pillow Talk genre of farces or the It Happened One Night-level screwball comedies. This is a successful tone recognized by the late Roger Ebert in his overwhelmingly positive review of the film. His take comprises a hefty minority chunk of the movie’s unsightly 13% Rotten Tomatoes rating and 27 Metacritic score.

It takes a special kind of acting to make every bite on-camera look orgasmic while still carrying the throwaway sexual humor and scripted lines.  One wonders how many takes and versions director Mark Tarlov (the husband of Roberts working his only feature directing credit after a career as a producer) and his editor Paul Karasick sifted through for the cuts they settled on. The emotiveness while chewing, especially during the climactic big dinner backed prominently by Gil Goldstein’s nice and thick score, is over-the-top and adorable. Eat your heart out, Brad Pitt.  

As Gellar’s character seductively states, “dessert is the whole point of the meal.” Simply Irresistible is a sweet tooth’s dream, both in the kitchen and on the home-viewing couch. By golly, if you do not crave an obsessive urge and want to lick the DVD with the imagined taste and aroma of the caramel eclairs and other plates you see on screen, your parietal lobe interpreting those functions is broken. Go ahead and accept all of the synonyms for “delicious” used by Amanda in one aside to describe the treats on screen, including “savory,” “tasty,” “scrumptious,” “delectable,” “succulent,” and “mouthwatering.” Don’t worry, heavily researched copycat recipes exist for your future date night.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#826)

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MEDIA APPEARANCE: Quoted in Reel Chicago for the short film "A Sisterhood of Signatures"

I’ve known film critic and now filmmaker Okema “Seven” Gunn for a few years now. She is someone I recruited into the Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle for a time. When she tabled her review writing to work on her passion project of making a film, I told her I would first in line to give her work a proper review. Her film, A Sisterhood of Signatures, premiered at the Black Harvest Film Festival and recently had another showing at the Oak Park International Film Festival. I’m happy it’s getting itself out there, and I’m glad the words of my postive review could be a benefit for the film, as seen in recent coverage featured in Reel Chicago written by Daniel Patton:

THE FULL REEL CHICAGO ARTICLE MY FULL REVIEW OF "A SISTERHOOD OF SIGNATURES"

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MOVIE REVIEW: Auggie

Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films

There is a fine line when using the verb “titillate.” Broadly, the word can simply mean “excite” or “thrill.” Taken more seriously, the word sharpens closer to “arouse” or “stimulate.” Context, ahem, is key. Auggie, the feature directorial debut of actor Matt Kane, walks that fine line of titillation and deftly blurs where to place its context on that line. This independent film debuts in limited release and VOD platforms on September 20th.

Felix, played by TV mainstay Richard Kind, is an architect pushed not-so-mildly and not-so-quietly into retirement. His parting gift from the office before going home to his upper middle class sweatpants, departing adult daughter (Simone Policano of Extra Innings), newly acquired free time, and a beautiful working wife Anne (fellow TV veteran Susan Blackwell) is a pricey bauble named “Auggie.” It’s a pair of seemingly normal spectacles that operate as an augmented reality companion or personal assistant. Auggie uses subconscious brain signals gathered from sensors in the temples to personalize a human image projected into the wearer’s view as if they were part of the environment. The created virtual person interacts in real time with unending support and positivity.

To observers on the outside, Auggie users look like they are oddly carrying on a conversation with someone who is not there. Our increasingly bored and listless new retiree becomes curious about the possibilities and puts the glasses on. What he projects is a beautiful twenty-something brunette (supermodel and first-time film actress Christen Harper) that hangs on his every word with eagerness and an ever-present smile. When Anne gets a promotion that adds work hours and a closer relationship to an interested peer (James C. Victor), Felix is left to his own devices and an imagination being fueled by Auggie. The bewitching, womanly spectre is a bug in his ear who doubles as one in his eyes.

LESSON #1: PEOPLE NEED CONVERSATION — Selfish as it may be, Felix, just as he says in the film, needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Professional goals have been dashed and familial fulfillment has gone distant. In talking to this imaginary woman with all the right answers, Felix gets exactly what the product promised to deliver: companionship. At least Auggie notices and talks to him. He shortsightedly finds that these experiences are all he has. For the social animals we are, motivation comes from shared conversation. Digital interaction beats no interaction at all. That is, until it goes to far.

LESSON #2: THE DAMAGE OF EMOTIONAL CHEATING — Sure enough, attention escalates to affection within Felix. An add-on upgrade grants a new level of physical stimuli to go with the mental titillation. Once Felix finds superior fulfillment away from Anne, his emotional detachment leads to multiple pratfalls. You will find yourself asking two questions. First, there is a comparison of the degree of error between digital cheating and the real flesh-and-blood thing. Also, you wonder which reality Felix will choose. The true inspirational source of what or who matches Harper’s image of Felix’s Auggie is a stunner that lights this lesson on fire.

Shot with intentionally gray filters, the atmosphere of Auggie is wholly opposite the metaphor of rose-colored glasses. Auggie transparently wades often in a place of sadness because, echoing Lesson #1, we’re watching, in essence, a one-sided conversation. Richard Kind glows and melts nearly simultaneously in this role of euphoric highs and destructive lows. His disarmed yearning is palatable. For those that only see Richard ham it up in spots on the small screen, Auggie will be a revelation for his presence and aged talent.

The absorbing and impressive pull of Auggie comes from its combination of camera and editing work from two feature film first timers in cinematographer Natasha Mullan and editor Marc Underhill+. Mullan, working her first lead lenser spot after years as a second assistant camera and film loader on bigger things, constantly toys with placement in a genius fashion. During innocent and later more amorous exchanges, the camera switches back and forth between direct and inescapable eye contact to represent the POVs from Felix and Auggie. The piercing gazes those shots represent in close-up could not prod more personal or engaging.

Then, to remind the isolation, Mullan’s placement and a quick cut from Underhill will step back to across a room or a longer difference of distance. The fantasized beauty of Harper disappears while the conversations continue or close. Becoming the observer instead of the recipient, these shifts coyly reveal and remind the true half-filled reality of this relationship. These little jolts orchestrated by director Matt Kane linger quite well. This shrewd and stellar work creates a viewing effect in Auggie that tantalizingly bounces your comfort level between intimacy and voyeurism. This moral rattler deserves attention and praise as indie gem.

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GUEST EDITORIAL: The Best Movies with the Most Unpredictable Denouement

(Image: independent.uk)

The movie industry is flourishing. New movies are created every day and more and more young people get involved in the industry. But, making a movie that will be first in the box office is not that easy. It must have a great plot. It must have strong characters and an interesting story. It must have an eye-appealing graphic and mesmerizing effects. But, one of the things that contribute the most to the success of a movie is the denouement. 

In the digital era, everyone has access to the internet and information. And it often happens to read the spoilers. But if you are not concerned about them, here is a list of the best movies with the most unpredictable denouement that you should watch. 

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Gone Girl

Gone Girl is a movie directed by David Fincher and it was released in 2014. It has even been nominated to Oscar and Golden Globes for the amazing performance of the leading actress and the intriguing screenplay. Gone Girl is about a couple which celebrates their wedding anniversary and then the wife disappears. Of course, the main suspect is her husband, who seems guilty half of the movie. They even thought that Amy is dead and that her husband killed her. It turns out that Amy framed her husband. She changed her look and disappeared. It surely deserved the nominations and wins!

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The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense is about a young boy named Cole Sear who has supernatural powers: he can see and talk to ghosts. Being such a young soul, he is terrified by his power to talk to the dead. Especially because all the spirits reach him to help them solve their problems. He meets with a child psychologist who tries to help him and find out the source of his supernatural powers. It turns out that Dr. Malcom Crowe is himself a spirit which has unsolved problems on the Earth, but he knew how to talk to Cole. 

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Shutter Island

Who did not hear about Leo DiCaprio? Shutter Island is one of the successful movies he played in. Released in 2010 and directed by the great Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island is a thriller movie that tells the story of a U.S. Marshal. In 1954, Teddy Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, investigates the disappearance of a criminal who escaped from a mental hospital. This criminal killed his family, so the stakes are high. Everything seems ok until it turns out that Teddy Daniels is himself a patient at the hospital for mental problems and he killed his wife after she murdered their three children. His quest of searching for the criminal is a form of therapy and an attempt to bring him back to reality. 

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Inception

If you have not watched Inception yet, then you must do it as soon as possible. Inception is the movie directed by Christopher Nolan premiered in 2010. Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor also in this movie, aspect that gives more value to it. Dom Cobb is a dream-thief which manages to find out the dirtiest secrets using dream-sharing technology. It is then discovered that Dom and Mel, his wife, spent fifty years creating a world of their memories. The sad part is that Mel committed suicide because she thought she is still dreaming, and this suicide will bring her back to reality.  You do not even know if at the end of the movie Dom is living the reality or is still dreaming. This is what Inception is about. 

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Seven

Quite an old movie, directed by David Fincher and released in 1995. It stars Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt in main roles. The movie is about two detectives who are trying to catch a serial criminal. What is so special about this movie? The serial killer uses the seven deadly sins as motives for his murders. It manages to bring the detectives in the desert. He has also murdered the wife of one of the detectives, played by Brad Pitt, and then forces him to kill himself. 

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Conclusion

It is often hard to find time to relax and watch a movie. Being an adult and having such a crowded agenda with so many tasks is tiring and difficult. Being a student with so many assignments and exams is also not relaxing at all. 

The good thing is that with a little help, most of us can find time to go to the cinema or watch a movie at home. Assignment Helper can edit and proofread your essays. Because these five movies with the most unpredictable ends are worth the time. Amy Daniels from best paper writing service review and essay reviewer cannot highlight enough the importance of finding time to relax. You can choose from thriller and mystery movies but be prepared for the most unpredictable ends. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Justin Osborne is a writer at edubirdie and best essay writing services review, he loves to share his thoughts and opinions about education, writing and blogging with other people on different blogs and forums. Currently, he is working as a content marketer at assignment service and best dissertation service. 

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MOVIE REVIEW: Ad Astra

(Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox via EPK.tv)

AD ASTRA— 4 STARS

There are competing dichotomies between performance and narrative in James Gray’s Ad Astra that are incredibly fascinating. The beginning of the film presents a focused pragmatic protagonist whose voiceovers are clear and stern about his impervious state of mind. That man is Brad Pitt’s veteran astronaut Roy McBride and he endeavors in a not-too-distant future that couldn’t be wider with ambition. Then, when the storyline strikes the catalyst that calls for preventing impending calamity, everything slowly shifts in competing directions.

The presented mission increases Roy distance from home and its securities. With each jaunting step into the solar system, the claustrophobic closeness of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoyema’s camera increases as well. What settings were once towering and broad become gradually more constricting and perilous. The same happens to the man. His compartmentalization skills begins to fail. The further Roy journeys, the narrations of the unfeeling and unrattled spaceman reveal hurt and pain that will not go away as easily as before. The global perils shrink to hinge on the simplistic fate of a father and his son.

That throbbing level of staggering aura occurring parallel to poignant familial intimacy in Ad Astra is remarkably captivating. This is an accomplishment of contemplative science fiction that is felt in your core as much as it pours wonderment in your eyes. The high concept space opera vibes and the melancholic musings have been stretched and exploited further in other cinematic offerings within this fictional discipline. Nevertheless, the sharpness of execution here is something to behold with plenty of profundity to absorb and impress.

Major Roy McBride is an unflappable ace in his services with the U.S. Space Command. Exactitude and mission discipline drive him at the expense of external joys and attachments, including his ever-disappointed wife Eve (Liv Tyler). When Earth begins to suffer crippling waves of electrical surges caused by antimatter bursts coming from Neptune, the only piece of machinery left orbiting that final gas giant planet of the solar system is the culprit. That space station probing for extraterrestrial life beyond is the farthest any human astronaut has reached. The man who reached that milestone was Roy’s father H. Clifford McBride (Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones) and he hasn’t been heard from in nearly three decades.

If these bursts are the actions of Clifford, they must be stopped before the damage wipes out mankind. Cloaked in top secrecy and fearing that very worst, U.S. Space Command enlists Roy as a mouthpiece to communicate with his estranged pioneer father. The cover story is to learn about the threat when the real undertaking is to talk the man down. What looks like search and rescue could easily be flipped to seek and destroy. The only communication hub not damaged by these surges is a subterranean base on Mars run by the facility administrator Helen Lantos (Loving Oscar nominee Ruth Negga). By way of off-the-books rocket travel from the very commercialized Moon, Roy will be escorted by one of his father’s former teammates, Colonel Pruitt, played by Jones’ equally ancient Space Cowboys co-star Donald Sutherland.

Once urgency triggers impetus, those aforementioned dichotomies begin to engulf the viewing experience. The first knockout sensory trait is the electronica-tinged dirge of Max Richter’s musical score playing alongside a fantastic sound mix of active silence and science. It devours your cochleas. The superlative production values and canny special effects, both new heights of capability for James Gray following 2016’s The Lost City of Z, create a foreboding sense of suspense and an atmosphere fitting this hazardous pursuit orchestrated by Richter’s tenor. The colors and created surfaces created by Oscar-winning set decorator Karen O’Hara and production designer Kevin Thompson for this ascent into a Heart of Darkness for the heavens add to the intrigue mightily.

The truest ambience in this movie comes from heady and instinctual allegories emanating from the original story written by Gray expanding on the work of co-screenwriter Ethan Gross (TV’s Fringe). The director is no stranger to tales of exploration where the lofty external destination is dwarfed by a far more pressing internal one for the explorers. What waxes plenty poetically is still a tight and efficient 122 minutes with little waste. With either stronger measures of incongruity (think Kubrick) or a looser discipline of musing meditation (think Mallick), this could have turned out very obscure and far less compelling. The balance of quickening tingles and throat-clenching emotions is very well done.

All the sheen and shine of Ad Astra matter not without Brad Pitt’s committed lead performance. He’s been described often as a character actor inside of a body of a leading man. Pitt has always been a very economical actor where nuance plays right off of his charisma, where his mere presence can overwhelm. He merges both here perfectly for Gray’s ponderous material. Through each gruff dismissal and frozen pause of internal conflict, Brad Pitt makes immersion look so natural and easy. The character’s unraveling never buckles the actor’s command underneath. The soon-to-be 56-year-old star of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood just doubled his Oscar chances for next February.

LESSON #1: WHAT WEARS ON MEN — Men have a distressing tendency where they bottle up and hide internal and external problems until they burst. The list of stresses that sink a man’s shoulders, heart, and spirit tends to be an eclectic one that should not cause the stigma of shame. It’s proof you’re human and need help. To highlight one specific, there is a taxing sense of unrealized resentment that pervades throughout many characters in Ad Astra, a crisis made to feel bigger than the potential extinction being faced. Born of untreated pain and anger, it is the heaviest weighted character chain. Relieving that is key.

LESSON #2: UNFULFILLED PROMISES — To the general public, Clifford McBride is a legend with greatest attached to his name. He is the inspirational reason so many, including his own son, have entered the dream fulfillment of space exploration. But, to Roy, he’s the father that left him in his youth with a mountain of unanswered questions. The inquiry becomes whether Clifford’s hermetic quest was worth the broken bonds and repeated failures it caused.

LESSON #3: SHARED BURDENS — There’s a line in this film that ripples with multiple meanings. It’s the assertion of “we’re all we’ve got.” You can take that chestnut to mean several things, from the limits and scarcity of family to our entire civilization’s interdependence with this one precious planet we occupy. Piggybacking from Lesson #1 of what wears on men, that line becomes more of an omen than a rallying call. The tip-of-the-spear dreamers in Ad Astra need to be mindful of the necessary “we” for managing needs and challenges. The expansion of knowledge, glory, or fortunes without prepared conditioning or thought of consequence for the greater good does not work without some level of togetherness.

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EDITORIAL: Top 5 Online Slot Games Based on Hollywood Films

Top 5 Online Slot Games Based on Hollywood Films

Films have made their way into every facet of our lives — so much so that we live in a world where not one, but two Angry Birds movies have been made. The Angry Birds, if you aren't familiar with it, is a mobile game that requires you to fling birds to knock different structures over. This is all well and good, but this article explores how film is tied to a different kind of game, as the big screen has found its way to the world of online casinos. Of course, the iconic images of film are a great way to connect with casino fans across the globe. If you're curious how so, then read on to know about 5 of the best online slot games based on Hollywood films.

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King Kong

(Credit: Warner Bros.)

King Kong has been one of the longest-running franchises in the history of cinema. First appearing on the big screen in 1933 under RKO Pictures, The Hollywood Reporter points out that the franchise has seen over 11 films all under different studios, with a 12th one coming soon in 2020. The online slot game that best represents the iconic gorilla would have to be Kong- The 8th Wonder of the World, which is based on the 2005 iteration of King Kong under Universal Studios. The game features two different game modes: Jungle Mode and Big City Mode. Each mode has its respective backdrops, and the game's icons are made up of Kong and the other characters in the film, played by Jack Black and Adrien Brody

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Ghostbusters

(Credit: Ghostbusters)

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters is a pop culture phenomenon that spans generations. This is most evident in 2016's reboot of Ghostbusters, which featured an all-female cast and Chris Hemsworth as their doting secretary. The Ghostbusters online slot uses the characters from the original 1984 film, which makes sense as it's the one that set the whole franchise off. The Ghostbusters slot is a 30-payline video slot with 5 white reels set against the backdrop of New York City. Fans of the franchise will be glad to know that the infectious <em>Ghostbusters</em> theme blares every time you spin the reels.

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Top Gun

(Credit: Wikipedia)

The recent news on the sequel to 1986's Top Gun has renewed interest for the modern classic that made Tom Cruise one of the biggest stars of the 21st Century. The online slots includes images of key characters from the movie captured in the symbols — including Iceman, Charlie, Jester, Stinger, and Goose, with Tom Cruise's iconic Maverick missing from the bunch. No need to worry, though, as you'll be seeing him reprise his role of Maverick in 2020's Top Gun: Maverick.

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Terminator

(Credit: imdb.com)

Sarah Connor, one of the most iconic heroines in the history of cinema, first hit the screen in 1991. This is from the same franchise that launched the career of a then-unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger. 28 years later, the Terminator franchise is still going strong with Terminator: Dark Fate coming out in November of 2019. The online slots game includes memorable iconography from the film, and revolves around Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Plus, the randomly triggered T-800 Vision mode targets character symbols and triggers bonus wins.

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Man of Steel

(Image: Warner Bros.)

Superheroes have taken over most modern mediums, but one of the earliest and most iconic figures in this genre is Superman — first introduced in Action Comics, Issue 1 in 1938. Since then, there have been hundreds of films born from superhero mythology. For instance, Man of Steel came out in 2013 and birthed the DC Extended Universe, which includes 2016's Suicide Squad and 2017's Justice League. The Man of Steel slots game features images of Superman along with his adoptive parents, Martha and Jonathan Kent, along with other images from the film. The online slots game also comes with 3 modes: Battle for Earth, the World Engine, and Krypton.

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Goldfinch

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THE GOLDFINCH — 2 STARS

Normally, the book vs. movie argument centers around missed opportunities. The majority lament becomes about the necessary condensing and trimming executed by writers and filmmakers that shaves too much of the nuanced essence from the sprawling story of the written page. With The Goldfinch, a different effect occurs. Given a longer running time than most movies already and all the patience in the world, any additions of extra depth and detail to the film adaptation would not help. What is already present is bloated, sluggish, and ineffectual. That’s an odd circumstance to say the least. Talk about a movie that should have stayed a book.

The infeasible task of adapting Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel fell on Academy Award-nominated Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy screenwriter Peter Straughton (who, just to note, followed his Oscar glow with the trio Frank, Our Brand is Crisis, and The Snowman) and Brooklyn director John Crowley. The title refers to the Rembrandt pupil Carl Fabritius’s treasured 1654 still life painting that hangs today at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The painting’s existence is significant as one of the few works of the artist to survive an explosion and fire that killed the artist himself in the same year.

Playing with ironic fate, that very painting resides prominently in the fictional setting of another explosion, this one of the terrorist variety occuring this century at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theo Decker, played by Pete’s Dragon and Wonderstruck child star Oakes Fegley, survives a bombing that killed his beloved mother Audrey (Hailey Wist) while observing Fabritius’s oil-painted panel. The rush of sensory and mental memories of this tragedy manifest throughout the film in flashback snippets of nightmares shared by the teenager and the adult Theo we observe, played by Baby Driver’s Ansel Elgort.

LESSON #1: YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO DECIDE YOUR FUTURE — Sure, everything ahead of people is unknown, but foresight wouldn’t hurt. Wearing shellshock like a sealing shellac at both ages, Theo is a young man growing in and out of several personal attachments of formative significance. At the time of his mother’s death, he is undefined and without true parents and solid friends. His future clean-cut and reinvented self, clad in tailored suits and posh spectacles, may look like an improvement on the outside, but is worse than the kid he was on the inside.

No matter the lift provided with each relationship, Theo remains consumed by the resonating aftermath of his mother’s death and the presumed destruction and loss of Fabritius’s masterpiece. In just a shade under two-and-a-half hours, The Goldfinch, like the novel, hops back and forth between the past and the present to saunter alongside the guiding tangents in Theo’s life. The transitions are abrupt and terribly uneven, matching the rough gamut of these intersecting people.

With his deadbeat father Larry (Luke Wilson) absent, Theo is taken in by the wealthy Barbour family and their well-to-do matriarch Samantha (Oscar winner Nicole Kidman) and her collection of welcoming or indifferent silver spoon children and schoolmates. A clue from the bombing bonds the inquisitive Theo to a fellow young victim, knotted by their fates, named Pippa (Aimee Laurence) and leads him to her legal guardian James “Hobie” Hobart, a restorer of high-end antiques. Theo would learn the trade and go on to work for Hobie as his slick and cultured front-man salesman.

Theo’s growing comfort and recovery is derailed when Larry resurfaces to claim his son and the financial benefits that come with him. Larry and his prostitute girlfriend Xandra (Sarah Paulson) remove Theo from the bustling and colorful urban penthouse and whisk him west to Las Vegas to a virtually empty housing bubble townhouse subdivision in the flatly beige desert. There, Theo is able to make one awkward friend, a woeful and troublemaking Ukranian immigrant named Boris, played by Stranger Things lead and Timothee Chalamet wannabe Finn Wolfhard.

LESSON #2: DO BETTER THAN MEDICATE YOUR PROBLEMS — From the moment Samatha Barbour volunteers some old prescription meds to Theo, we watch a parade of people offering easy exits and a young man that will never shake those vices. Every hit of a recreational drug, swig of a bottle, or drag of a cigarette adds to tailspin instead of relief. Those choices don’t help a man forget.

Broad character strokes are used to paint every character listed above not named Theo Decker. While this cannot compare to the sympathetic levels as his heart-warming turns in Pete’s Dragon and Wonderstruck, Oakes Fegley impresses mightily with his third performance of youthful loss and self-discovery. The young performer never overacts a single scene. He clearly taken cues and had good practice with this tonal level and it shows. Ansel Elgort is a good match of maturation to Fegley. He too can convey and engage subtle character fractures and always garner your eye contact as a viewer.

Everyone else around them are a revolving door of eccentricity. They are static sculptures of veiled enigma. The likes of Kidman and Wright represent stature and the promising roots of educating morals for the troubled Theo, only to never shift with the highs and lows of the kid. The contrasting flighty factors like Wilson, Paulson, and Wolfhard fare no better. Their presences feel fleeting and little more than soapy opera sludge when they are supposed to matter. It’s astonishing how something so full of eclectic talent could be so empty in impact.

LESSON #3: THE INABILITY TO SHAKE A SENSE OF FAULT — No matter which type of person above Theo confides his trust in, the hindrance to greater connection is thwarted by a burden of his own creation. He blames himself for being the reason he and his mother were even in the museum that fateful day. During this journey, Theo finds some shared tragedy and people to lean on or collapse with, but he is his own worst symptom for healing.

The soft gloss from cinematographer Roger Deakins counts as a feather in this movie’s hat. The camera legend mixes foreground and background points of focus to shroud suspicion and mystery in a striking way. However, it is an effect that given up on after the first 30 minutes. More of that sense of space, atmosphere, and tone could have gone far deeper into such a lengthy and weighty picture. The very same can be said for the very slight and weak score from composer Trevor Gureckis. Many moments could have used some cued oomph to press more importance. What is there is pretty and all, with its privileged (albeit esoteric) ocean of antiquity, but to what end becomes the question.

As aforementioned with the transitions, the meandering pacing of The Goldfinch is nearly maddening. There was more than enough time here and committed work from Fegley and Elgort to cure even the heaviest cement into sturdy drama. Instead, nearly every angle building towards a promised denouement of consequence, especially the titular piece of art, fades horribly to indifference. This story, in movie form, fails to make one care. Anything that lingers feels extraneous at best.

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