Showing posts with label kate mara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kate mara. Show all posts

6/19/2013

Brokeback Mountain (2005)


Summer of '63




It was the summer of '63, Wyoming. Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are hired to herd sheep on Brokeback Mountain. They get to know each other in the middle of nowhere and their friendship soon blossoms into feelings they cannot deny. When they part ways due to the ending season, what seemed to be a summer fling actually turns out to be a lifelong passionate love story. Brokeback Mountain tells Ennis and Jack's secret relationship over almost 2 decades. This masterpiece is a love manifesto avoiding clichés. Its focus is the struggle to live with yourself when society doesn't accept who you are and dictates who you should or shouldn't love. The fight against self-hatred and prejudice are also central topics of the storyline. Ang Lee majestically directs one of the most beautiful love stories ever told on the silver screen. He succeeds where others have failed: he delivers a dynamic movie out of a plot that could have been slow. Lee certainly is an actor's director. The cast he's chosen to prove this point radiates with truth. The late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the leading roles praise tolerance with their magnificent interpretation. You can also enjoy the performance of a plethora of good supporting actors: Michelle Williams, Kate Mara, Anne Hathaway, Anna Faris... The fabulous country original score is soothing and echoes in the splendid hills of Wyoming. The sound of the resonator guitar transports you to those quiet great outdoors. I can only hope the blatant moral of this picture will stick to your shoes forever. Brokeback Mountain highlights the cruelty of mankind towards difference. There is a paradoxical challenge enlightened by this tale: whether you embrace or hide who you are, you will have to pay the price. Let's hope Brokeback Mountain, a figurative mountain of New Queer Cinema, helps people not to ever have to pay the price again.

1 reason to watch: BM will be a wakening whether or not it's about your own situation. You are concerned. We all are.




5/25/2013

Happythankyoumoreplease (2010)


"Hardly Dickensian, Y'Know What I'm Sayin'?"



I do like my NYC common folk stories with a passion. Why you ask? Because I can relate to those characters. They aspire to something else, something greater than their current routine. They make bad decisions that they know they'll regret. It's the dawn of their lives. They're excited and scared by their dreams and surroundings. Happythankyoumoreplease is a witty comedy about thirty-something New-Yorkers with  just the right amount of oddness. It combines several things I enjoy in a movie: a rad soundtrack, New York City, common people, witty humor, simple plot. Happythankyoumoreplease is almost real life. It's as far as you can get from Sex & The City but still residing in Manhattan. It's fresh, young, full of promises and hope. It may not be the movie of the century but certainly a nice directorial and writing debut for Josh Radnor and a relaxing movie session. It won the Audience Award at the 26th Sundance Film Festival. And I believe you can always trust Sundance. 

1 reason to watch: spend a good time with those characters because they are like you