Lantana

 "Lantana" does not embody a story like most movies; it isn't about anything in particular. It's a movie about characters. Not larger-than-life heroes, but characters who succumb to temptation, cheat on their wives, doubt their spouses, make mistakes and suffer consequences. In other words, "Lantana" is about real people. Normal, imperfect people like all of us. Not that everyone behaves like the characters here, but few films capture transgression with such compassion and sympathy.
Jane (Rachel Blake) is the 'separated' adulterer and probably the stupidest character of this ensemble cast. For someone as middle aged as she is, she's almost embarrassingly inexperienced about men (who knows why she's 'separated'). She has the "one-night-stand that happened twice" with the married man because she appears to think that the man's wife is to blame.
Hahahahahaha! Unfortunately she also doesn't know how to keep female friends-certainly not in her current glow of "anything is possible" (yep, gross stupidity is very possible for her). The second powerhouse actor of Lantana (2001) is the fabulous Kerry Armstrong as Leon's wife Sonja. She still burns with the desire to be a passionate, capable, sexy wife, who is also raising two boys while holding down a job and trying to inject sensuality and fun back into her morose, resentful, uncommunicative, robotic (depressed) husband. She even suspects, as most wives sense, that he is having an affair, just from the abnormal way he reacts to everything. So she cracks open her emotional hope chest to a psychiatrist, Dr Valerie Somers (Barbara Hershey).
To our surprise, the psychiatrist herself is on shaky ground. (Never envy anyone else. Chances are, they have their own insoluble problems, no matter who they are. Your problems are yours to keep, they are your own badges of courage. Talking them through is probably the only education or improvement we can hope for: learn from others -YES. Covet their lives? -NO.)
Dr Somers also, for some reason, chooses to waste her entirely non-evident education quizzing her husband about his very sensible attitude to the amount of sex they now have. OK, so they have drawn apart because of their differing personal reactions to the death of their teenage daughter-that much is at least believable. But how can a psychiatrist be so clearly at stage 0 with her own husband? If anything, married people know too much and import too much peripheral baggage with every nuance, every tilt of the head, every tone of voice, etc. They don't have almost teenage conversations like "Do you ever worry that we don't make love very often?" "-No. I mean I don't think about it that much." "Why not?"(in a tone of complete inability to imagine how that might be). "-I love you. Whether we make love three times a week or once a month doesn't really change that ... is this a test?" "No! I was just wondering what you were thinking..." Really? Even after he gave you the answer, you were still only just "wondering"? Pfft, and this woman is supposed to be a shrink! Do any married women out there think this was an intelligent conversation befitting ANY married couple, let alone when one of them is a psychiatrist?!?!
I gotta believe that this conversation really belonged to the other married couple, Paula (Daniela Farinacci) & Nik (Vince "the curls get the girls" Colosimo, from The Wog Boy (1999)), who are at least suitably young.
The psychiatrist and her husband John (Geoffrey Rush) recover their married maturity in the restaurant and in front of the bookshop window that displays her book about Eleanor, their deceased daughter. I don't even mind that they fight the following morning, after having some more of that much-sought-after sex (see? It wasn't worth it. That's called 'perfunctory'), and that their pall of disenchantment/alienation is not lifted. She does seem to be losing her grip in other ways. The ease with which she lets her gay adulterous patient rattle her confidence in herself is very indicative of her mental desperation. Of course her husband was correct that she should refer that pesky patient on, but she stupidly persists because she resents his dismissive tone, and because she paranoiacally imagines the gay patient to be having an affair with her own husband(!!), when all he is is just an immature, arrogant, shallow, offensive bastard. Patrick Phelan, Mr "sex unencumbered by need" (Peter Phelps), just plays her because he senses that she disapproves of his ethics (not his gayness), which, being shallow and arrogant, he doesn't want to give up. Patrick, mate, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. YOU MAY GET IT.
Claudia (Leah Purcell, Leon's female cop partner) is the most together person (because her life remains fairly uncomplicated'-anyone see a lesson in that?). She gives Leon the best advice of his life. It comes as a rhetorical question: "Why are you trying so hard to screw; your life up? You don't know how lucky you are to have the marriage you've got. And you're whizzing all over it." Too true.
What is rewarding is that each and every story arc gets an insightful resolution. Ironically, because of the murder mystery, life goes on. Almost every adult character gets a revelation of their likely future, to show some lessons to the audience. Patrick Phelan gets to suffer in his jocks (quoting Michael Caton from The Castle (1997) here). I don't mind "blowing" the ending to his arc: he gets to stare in envy in the rain at some "ENcumbered need" (there is no such thing as truly unencumbered sex, unless you are non compos mentis-zonked out of your skull at the time; and even then it's doubtful).
Just remember what John confessed, when you see Leon and Sonja dancing, that after you have been caught out in an affair, you are never quite trusted again. Something DOES get broken (watch Sonja's face). It's astonishing to me that people keep walking blindly into that. For what? "Sex unencumbered by need", perhaps? Well, how many affairs turn out that way?

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the black pearl, Dead Man's Chest and At World's End

I - Curse of the Black Pearl

"Even I love Johnny Depp, and I'm male," a previous reviewer declares, tongue in cheek. Well, I wouldn't go quite that far, but there's no doubt whatsoever that when I lost my heart to this film, Johnny Depp's outrageous Cap'n Jack Sparrow had almost everything to do with it. I don't normally review 'current' films, so the very fact that I'm writing this highlights an almost unprecedented event - after endless failures, Hollywood has finally rediscovered the spirit of the classic swashbuckler movie.

With hindsight, I think the one brilliant decision that was made at some point - given a modern production environment - was to *separate the roles* of hero and swashbuckler. You can then have your worthy Costner-type juvenile lead, as required, who has to Come To Terms with his Past (although his eventual fate is a trifle unexpected in conventional terms...) - *but* you can also have your essential and irrepressible swaggering rogue (of course, he totally steals the film from the moment he first appears, but *that's* no hardship!)

The moonlight special effects were overdone, in my opinion - not that they aren't believable, but that they would have been more effective if used more sparingly, for occasional flashes of nastiness rather than solid minutes of battle. However, that's a minor niggle. The stunts are energetic, highly satisfactory, *not* computerised, and on occasion even carried out by the stars :-)

The other saving grace of the production is its humour - not that there aren't a few over-arch knowing references, but on the whole it manages to send itself up without suspending disbelief in the process. Jack Sparrow's first arrival on the scene (with total aplomb aboard a steadily-sinking boat) is a prime example, as indeed are the vast majority of subsequent scenes involving this character...

The basic Romance and Rescue structure is satisfactory enough, with the addition of the requisite Feisty Female for the 21st century (though I felt the character would have been a little more historically plausible if she had been a little less liberated - she clearly possesses a stronger character than her young man, she doesn't have to strive to be his physical equal as well...) However, it is the pirates themselves who really make the film, simply by being a pack of unreconstructed and uninhibited villains (from the Jeffrey Farnol School of Historical Dialect) who are far larger than life and totally unselfconscious about it. To quote the opening words of the 'Guardian' review: "we have been waiting [50 years] for a modern pirate film featuring someone who, in all seriousness, actually says the words, or perhaps the two-syllable single word: 'Ah-harrrrr!'"

Jack Sparrow, as swashbuckler extraordinaire and consummate rogue (of course, totally honest in his own way... ahem) is the main attraction of the entire film. Not so much loopy as totally round the bend - outrageous and unpredictable (there is a running gag throughout the first part of the film where he is repeatedly described as "the worst pirate I've ever seen", as in "the worst at it", only for the preposterous tactics in question to prove spectacularly successful).

This character saves the hero in more ways than one - without him, the film would be another "Mask of Zorro", a rather stodgy attempt to update an old favourite for modern-day sensibilities and compensate with more and flashier sword-fighting (swashbuckling is not *about* fighting! It comes into it, yes, but it's not the point.) But together, the pair work off one another beautifully - reliability and inspired lunacy, self-doubt and cocky flamboyance, dogged devotion and shameless self-interest. The only question is which, precisely, is the sidekick...

There are two beginnings to this film, neither of them bearing any relation to the wooden costume-drama-by-numbers prologue that actually opens the movie. The moment when events start to move (it could scarcely be less subtle) is signalled by the swell of the theme music for the first time at Sparrow's initial appearance. But for me the moment when the film really took off was in that instant during his first escape, when he seizes the rope and swings up, up, and out, in a classic swashbuckler move from the past that brought it all flooding back... and my heart flew up after him into my throat, and remained enjoyably in that position until the end of the movie, when the audience began spontaneously to applaud.

The film is far from perfect - characters like Captain Norrington (*please* - 'Commodore', like 'Prime Minister', is a job description, not a form of address!) and the Governor are little more than pantomime stereotypes, with only frustrating hints of humanity to indicate that they do after all have potential denied them by the script. Annoying anachronisms slip in - "it's okay", "I was rooting for you" - most of the nautical jargon comes out with about as much sign of comprehension as a phonetic rendition of a foreign language, and Sparrow's one precious charge of powder gets soaked through often enough in the course of the plot to be utterly useless by the end. Both hero and heroine come across as wooden and thankless roles. Orlando Bloom may be costumed to look increasingly like Errol Flynn during the course of the film (was it my imagination, or does he spend it gradually cultivating a duplicate of that famous moustache?), but, alas, any resemblance ends there.

But then it doesn't really matter. It is Depp, not Bloom, who has inherited the mantle of Flynn and Fairbanks in this film. Jack Sparrow was the character who caught my imagination - and, since I'm extremely impressionable, also had a distinctly peculiar effect on the way I stood and walked for several hours later. And there's not many films can say *that*..! ÿ

II - Dead Man's Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest does the right thing as a sequel: It maintains the same carefree spirit of the original and creates an even more fitting story to the whole Pirates lore. After narrowly escaping the gallows--with the help of his friends Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley)--and reclaiming his cursed Black Pearl, it still seems Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) has a few more fish to fry. More specifically the barnacle-encrusted undead on board the ghostly Flying Dutchman, lead by Mr. Octopus Face himself, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). Jack apparently owes a blood debt to the inky captain and if he can't find a way out of it--namely locating the secret contents of Jones' famed locker--Sparrow will be doomed to eternal damnation and servitude in the afterlife (insert Jack Sparrow's face of disgust here). Making matters worse, Sparrow's problems manage to interfere with the wedding plans of Will and Elizabeth, who are forced to join Jack on yet another one of his misadventures.

Depp's Oscar-nominated performance as Captain Jack is still a marvel in slovenly pirate behavior, with his slurred speech, swaying swagger and slack, waving arms. But whether channeling famed Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards or not, it's the duality of the character that continues to intrigue us. He is a lusty, fearless man with a deeply defiant and somewhat sneaky streak but whose delicate features, long, dread locked hair, Kohl-rimmed eyes and almost girly mannerisms give him a subtly effeminate air that belies his macho antics. This time around, young Brits Knightley and Bloom have a little more to do, with Elizabeth's growing attraction to Jack and Will's reunion with his father, Bill "Bootstrap" Turner (Stellan Skarsgård), who's soul is stuck on the Flying Dutchman. And Nighy (Love Actually) once again makes his mark as an effective villain, infusing his rather quirky acting ticks--the laconic delivery, the laid-back attitude--which shines through all the special effects make-up. Let's just say, Nighy certainly rivals Depp in the arrogant rock star stance, even if he has tentacles for a face.

The other thing Dead Man's Chest does right is make things bigger and better. From a hair-raising sword fight on top of a spinning water wheel to the way Davy Jones and his crew look--all water logged and crustacean-like--the film's production value is simply amazing. Returning producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski make sure the action sequences, the sets, the costumes, the make-up and the special effects give the audience a familiarity to the original while also taking them on a whole new adventure. And if you are a fan of the Disney park attraction (the one at Disneyland, not Disney World), the elements that got missed in the first one--the creepy bayou, the beating heart in the treasure chest--are in this sequel. Dead Man's Chest does lag a bit from time to time, especially in heating up the Jack, Elizabeth and Will love triangle. But that's OK. We enjoy watching their banter, as much as we do the rest of it. And for those who'll want more adventure after the movie ends, Dead Man's Chest gives us a promise the third installment will be just as much pirate fun.

III - At World's End

The Pirates of the Caribbean-movie serials is probably one I'll never grow tired off. The characters are fun and great, always adventurous and spectacular to watch.

It's really too bad that this time they felt the need to make things even bigger, more complex and conclusive than the previous two movies. Really not needed. In my opinion the first movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" is still the best because of the reason that it's simple, fun and choices to be purely entertaining. They already went wrong with this approach during the second movie; "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest", when they put in more new characters and different hard to follow plot lines. "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" goes on in the same trend as the previous movie. There are more new characters and as far as the new many plot-lines are concerned...well let me just say that after a while I just gave up trying to understand the movie and just let the movie take me away with its visuals, humor and other entertaining elements. And this movie regardless should really be able to take you away on a roller-coaster-ride of pure entertainment.

No doubt in my mind that this movie could had become the best one out of the series. It had all the potential and budget for that, now if they had only cut down about halve of the script...Most of the plot-lines seem redundant and are actually far from believable because they contradict from what happened in the first two movies. The many betrayals among characters and side-picking became really confusing after a while, till it reached a point when you just didn't knew who was fighting for what. But like I said before, after a while you just stop caring about it and simply enjoy the movie for what it brings you. It all is also the reason why the movie is now nearly 3 hours long. Now the movie is not as good and entertaining as the first but maybe just slightly better than the second one, because of the large scale of this movie.

The movie is definitely big. There is no lack of action as some people claim there is. There is just as much action as there is in the first two movies, only difference this time is that the movie is nearly 3 hours long and therefor the movie also has some more talking-sequences and slower moments in it.

The movie is also big with its musical score by Hans Zimmer and he actually succeeded in composing a new great theme for the movie. In its action moments the movie gets definitely uplifted by its musical score.

The action sequences are definitely well constructed and at times pure eye candy. So are the special effects, although I feel that the second movie was still better on that. It seems like they tried to overdo things this time and I'm mainly talking about the end battle, when it comes down to its special effects, by putting in some complex shots. No matter how good CGI is these days, you still see that it's CGI.

Most roles get extended in this movie. Marty, Tia Dalma and even Jack the monkey and Cotton's parrot. But of course the movie still remains the Jack Sparrow-show. Really one of the best characters in recent years, all thanks to Johnny Depp, who provide the movie with its biggest laughs and most hilarious absurd moments. He still plays the character as good and fresh as he did for the first time 4 years ago. You can't just ever grow tired of Jack Sparrow. I was also very pleased to see Geoffrey Rush back as Barbossa. His role was bigger which allowed Geoffrey Rush to shine even more. Bill Nighy was also as good as always as Davy Jones. Orlando Bloom's and Keira Knightley's acting also has really improved over the years. I was actually surprised to see how much of the movie Keira Knightley carries this time and how well she does this. Even in the sequences with Geoffrey Rush she does. She also gets to do more interesting in the movie when it comes done to action. In a way she has taken over the Will (Orlando Bloom) role in this movie this time and Will himself gets pushed more to the background this time compared to the first two movies, which really shouldn't bother most people, unless you're a teenage-girl of course. She handles both the action- and comical sequences really well. And even Keith Richards shows up in an already classic cameo as Jack's father. But some role also got narrowed down to my regret, such as Jonathan Pryce's and Jack Davenport's and lets not forget the Kraken.

Still, I really wouldn't mind seeing more Pirates of the Caribbean movies in the future, if needed with new actors and characters, as long as Johnny Depp stays as Jack Sparrow. The serials still have more than enough potential and haven't dried up yet.