Lovely and Amazing
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Movie Reviews of Lovely and Amazing
Movie Review: Plotless yet charming
Summary: 5 Stars
I just saw this on television, and really enjoyed it. I don't want to repeat too many reviewers, so I'll keep this brief and say that most people who are accustomed to pondering their self-worth will get a lot out of this film. You'll likely see a bit of yourself in each character.
Also, the adopted daughter Annie is reason enough to give this film a shot. This overweight but darling girl really brought a lot of life to the story.
All in all, I don't think you're supposed to love all of these characters. Most everyone in the story has a significant, debilitating issue, but you've just got to experience what they go through--it can be really meaningful to your own life.
Movie Review: A womens' movie for men
Summary: 5 Stars
Hey, I liked this chick flick because the acting is great, the script is intelligent and the plot makes sense. The soundtrack is good. It may feature some Hollywood actors like a young Jake Gyllenhall, but the ambience is completely indie and that's a great thing in a small movie. This is better than most blockbusters. It will make you relate to the human condition.Movie Review: the title describes the film!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
The four females in "Lovely & Amazing" look at themselves through a self-cracked mirror. Jane (Brenda Blethyn) is a well-off woman in her 50s who cares enough about others to adopt Annie (Raven Goodwin), an 8-year-old African-American girl whose birth mother is a crack addict. Jane also cares enough about herself to sign up for cosmetic surgery ($10,000 a pop and no insurance) to remove 10 pounds from her midriff.Along with Annie, Jane has two adult daughters. The older one, Michelle (Catherine Keener), is a former homecoming queen who has turned into a childish, self-centered neurotic. Though Michelle's husband constantly prods her to get a job, she fancies herself an artist. She makes miniature chairs to sell to knickknack shops, but no one's buying.
Michelle's younger sister, Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), is a beautiful aspiring actress who's already landing some small movie roles. But she has such a distorted self-image that she thinks of herself as unattractive -- even as she's posing for a photo spread in Vogue. Asked to do a "chemistry" audition with a big star named Kevin McCabe (Dermot Mulroney), she's forced to listen while casting agents casually appraise her sexuality -- or lack thereof.
Both sisters are stuck in unfulfilling relationships. Elizabeth's overcritical live-in boyfriend is tired of hearing her obsess about her auditions, her resume photos, her agent, etc. Meanwhile, Michelle's sullen self-absorption and testy attitude have worn down her husband to the point that he's not especially interested in sleeping with her. To spite him, she takes a menial job at a one-hour photo shop, where her teenage boss (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes a Mrs. Robinson-like interest in her.
As she proved in her fine 1996 film, "Walking and Talking," director Holofcener has an uncanny understanding of people as well as a gift for sharp, funny dialogue. Yes, "Lovely & Amazing" will probably spawn noxiously shallow lifestyle pieces on why women have poor self-esteem. But the film is much subtler and more complex than that.
The entire cast is terrific, from Goodwin to Mulroney. But you have to focus on Keener, perhaps best known for her role as the merciless co-worker of John Cusack in "Being John Malkovich," who's become the Queen of Late Summer. She's creating her own type -- the acerbic smarts and ironic world-view of wisecracking dames like Rosalind Russell or "Frasier's" Peri Gilpin, with a twist of simmering anger and a drop of self-loathing. As vulnerable as she is venomous, she doesn't want to be the way she is, but she can't quite give it up, either.
Deftly directed, winningly acted and shrewdly written, "Lovely & Amazing" is as softhearted as it is ruthless, as amusing as it is poignant, but it does have its faults. Mostly, it doesn't offer a lovely and amazing final resolution, one reason why I wish it went on longer. It's an engrossing and emotional film that every woman (and gay man) should see.
Movie Review: "Lovely and Amazing" shows an interesting view into a family of women.
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the second film that writer/director Nicole Holofcener has made, and I think that she has succeeded very well in making a highly original film with very interesting characters. Some people feel that the dialog is very good, although on occasion it felt a bit off to me. The story doesn't really go much of anywhere, but that's not really the point of a film like this. The acting in this movie was uniformly very good among the women.
"Lovely and Amazing" documents several days in the life of a mother and her three daughters. The mother, Jane (Brenda Blethyn), is in the midst of a mid-life crisis and decides to service herself through a liposuction treatment. As she is going through with the procedure, she asks her daughter Michelle (Catherine Keener) to take care of her younger, adopted sister Annie (Raven Goodwin). Michelle is a house-wife/artist who becomes so enthralled in her work of home-made miniature chairs that she asks ridiculous prices for them before storming out of stores at their disapproval. The third sister, Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), is rescuing homeless dogs in between visits to her agent. Having just completed her roll in a Hollywood film, Elizabeth does her best to stay a humanitarian en route to what she wants to be success.
Eventually, all four women's problems are projected in full effect. Jake Gyllenhaal reprises his role as the adolescent roué who somehow ends up bedding Catherine Keener (just like Jennifer Aniston in "The Good Girl"). He is perfectly cast with his dark, sultry looks, and wild puppy eyes. Raven Goodwin played her part naturally well and shined on every scene. She is clearly a very talented actress and I've notice recently a lot of child actors on screen are really getting better in their roles. Finally we have Aunjanue Ellis who I believe is one of the most underrated African-American females on the screen today who has dramatize her role just as well as the rest of the cast, she seriously needs to have bigger parts to show off her full abilities. The men in the film have smaller roles because this is a film about (but not exclusively for) women. They include Jane's cosmetic surgeon, Michelle's husband, Elizabeth's boyfriend, Kevin McCabe (a star who Elizabeth reads for a part with, played by Dermot Mulroney).
"Lovely & Amazing" is a crazy entertaining movie. It has everything, liposuction, statutory rape, fast food, show business, and possibly rabies. Director Nicole Holefcener apparently had a lot to say and I quite enjoyed it. If you're a fan of any of these actors, then I would recommend this movie to you.
Movie Review: Insecurity on display
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a tale about multiple insecurities. There's a mother who's insecure about her body and so goes for liposuction. There's her married daughter who's insecure about a whole lot of things. There's her single daughter who's insecure about her looks because she's an actress, or trying to be, and is not sure is she's sexy enough. And there's her adopted daughter--an 8-year old black girl--who's insecure about the way she looks also.
This whole nest of insecurities gets these folks into a bunch of wacky situations. The dialogue here is smart and sharp and natural, and that's a really good thing, and so we do get a chance to dig into these characters' psyches. At the same time, even though things don't always turn out for the better along the way, making the film more 'realistic', there's something missing here.
It feels like a kind of forced realism, as though the situations, or at least a couple of them, happen the way they do to let the audience know that, guess what, things DON'T always turn out the way we hope they will. We know they don't; it's just ever so slightly cringe-producing to see a film where you sort of feel like the filmmaker is bending over backwards to show this. True, more of the situations do feel natural than these forced ones. But the forcing does come through, unfortunately, and gets in the way of what could have been a superior effort.
Overall this is not a bad film at all. The married daughter wants to be an artist and some of her work is fairly good, but the situation of nobody thinking so in a commercial establishment brings her down, understandably. Her unsympathetic husband tells her to get a job and she does, working at a one-hour photo shop. Complications ensue.
Complications also ensue when the mother goes in for liposuction and the single daughter auditions for a part in a film and the adopted daughter, willful to the max, does all kinds of things without telling anybody. This was a tough call, choosing between 3 and 4 stars. I gave it 4 because the acting is top notch and the writing is more often than not also great.
Some snags, but definitely worth a look.