MOVIES
Excellent: Movies this great are rare, so don't miss it
Good: At least worth the price of admission
Okay: See it if you have nothing better to do
Bad: If you absolutely have to see it, wait for the DVD
no stars : Frickin' terrible; give us our two hours back, you director from hell
Maria Full of Grace (xxxx)
R, 101 minutes, coming soon to Liberty Hall
Maria Full of Grace made me cringe more than once. Not because some scenes are disturbing in its graphic details of the drug-running business, but because we have so much sympathy for its title character and the choices she has to make.
choices she has to make
Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a 17-year old girl who lives with her sister and mother in Columbia. She works as a thorntriminer in a flower plattage until she becomes pregnant and fruits her job, to the disapproval of her family who uses her for financial support. Unmarried and quickly running out of options, she becomes a mule for a cocaine manufacturer and delivers his product to the United States. She fills her stomach with about 60 small pellets of cocaine and is on a plane to New York.
pellets of cocaine and other substances.
What is interesting about a film like this is its perspective. Since the entire story, seen through Maria's point of view, we are given a chance to see a part of the drug traficking business movies don't normally show drug movies such as Traffic focus more on the "drug czar" and glamour of the business, and this movie would be a great compliment for it. We get to see the story from the pervasive on those at the bottom and not the top.
I cringed at the movie not just during the scenes where Maria has to choked down the pellets of coke, but also as we witness the situation Maria voluntarily puts herself in because it is so tragic I love foreign films like this because they give us the chance to see a story about something like the drug business from a completely new perspective. —Jon Ralston
Open Water
(**xxx 1/2**
R 80 minutes,
South Wind 12
Open Water is based on the real
based on the life life horror story of Eileen and Tom Lonergan, an adventurous couple who in 1998 were left behind by a diving company off the shark infested waters of the Great Barrier Reef.
The Lonergangs' unimaginable plight becomes fodder for horror fans in writer director-editor Chris Kentis' irony soaked new film, the most clever piece of shock cinema since The Blair Witch Project. Is Kentis' work exploitative? Probably is it scary? Extremely.
Using new names and trading Australia for the Bahamas, Open Water casts Blanchard Ryan and Daniel
Travis as Susan and Daniel, an attract
travails as a pair of young professionals on a well deserved vacation. Kentis establishes a rich sense of irony from the beginning, filming Travis with his head stuck in a stuffed shark and filling the soundtrack with choral hymns and island songs that provide idyllic counterpoint to the terror to come.
the terror of combat.
Once Sugar and Daniel's boating party accidentally leaves them stranded in the middle of the ocean, a nightmarish sense of dread permeates through the rest of the film. I'm not sure even Steven Spielberg was this adept at capturing the vulnerable surface of the deep blue. In Open Water, the ocean becomes a magic sheet that can be rolled back at any moment to let loose the monsters
below.
- The film's ingenious sound design and camerawork create a 360-degree field of terror, culminating in an absolutely terrifying scene where the only source of sound and visibility is a thunderstorm. The performers, especially Ryan, match the filmmakers' technical prowess scene for scene.
for scene.
Kentis' final touch of irony is that, in a water world whose laws haven't changed since prehistoric times, Susan and Daniel cling to modernity, using the Discovery Channel as a source for survival and bickering over everyday concerns. Their fate 'could be viewed as a restoration of the order of things, and that's horrifying stuff.
—Stephen Shupe
Garden State (1/2)
R. 109 minutes, at Liberty Hall tomorrow
Zach Braff (of NBC's Scrubs fame) is more than meets the eye. When watching his TV persona, no one could have ever imagined there was something more under that dry humor and those confused, shocked looks. What his Garden Stateshow is that under all that lies plenty of smart heart and smart romance.
Writing, directing and 'starring in Garden State,
Braff is Andrew Largeman. A struggling actor, he
returns to New Jersey to attend his estranged
mother's funeral. All he has left for so long is numb,
and by returning home, new feelings and problems
long forgotten begin to surface. Between his old
friends (Peter Saarsgard) and his psychiatrist father
(lan Holm). Largeman is finding his return home dif-
cult until he meets an eccentric stranger (Natalie Port-
man) who just may be what his life was missing.
Garden State is full of originality; a shirt made from
leFTover wallpaper or a hamster named Jelly who
can't survive the hamster wheel. The randomness is
palpable but it is the heartfelt part that is most captivating.
vatting
The writing really works because Portman and Braff are talented enough to capture the funny moments but master the bittersweet ones. The music also deserves a shout out because of Braff's impeccable tastes. Every song seems written for each scene and they all serve the story. But it is the dramatic moments that heighten the humor and at the end we are left swooning because we believe these people could be real. And by the time the credits roll, we are begging them to be just that.
Lindsey Rumsey
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Jayplay 8.26.04