Lovely and Amazing
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.45 You Save: $10.53 (70%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.09 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Lovely and Amazing
Movie Review: Lovely & Amazing
Summary: 4 Stars
Very good movie. Emily Mortimer is just fantastic.The whole movie and cast is good.I would have given the movie five stars had Ms. Mortimer had been in it more.Movie Review: good
Summary: 4 Stars
this movie was great. about real life everyday troubles that add up and ones that we don't always notice.
Movie Review: A smart, responsible take on dysfunctional women.
Summary: 3 Stars
"Lovely and Amazing" is much of what "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" never was. It's about real women, women who make their own beds and lie in them, instead of having one disaster after another thrust upon to make their life miserable. It's about choices; a movie is usually far more exciting when a character makes decisions, instead of having the obvious thrown in their face. Eepecially good is Catherine Keener as a housewife entirely of bereft of ambition outside of erecting her worthless wooden crafts, which she insists on trying to sell for outrageous sums to unsmiling art dealers. Keener -- by choice, I suppose -- has shoehorned herself into playing the square peg in the round hole -- a sardonic, mouthy type who knows and thinks more than her position in life would indicate.
There are two other sisters; One a shallow, insecure actress (Emily Mortimer) with a soft spot for stray animals, and the other an adopted 10-year-old black girl who's eaten too much fast food, has anger issues, and can hold her breath underwater a dangerously long time. Their mother is a fading beauty in her late fifties (Brenda Belthyn) heading in for plastic surgery.
Visually, "Lovely and Amazing" is a little flat, which is fine for a talky, ruminating movie. Writer/director Nicole Hofencofer does a nice spoof on Hollywood agents and television hunks; one in particular, played by Dermot Mulroney, is more than interested in Mortimer's character outside of the audition room, even if they look like groping, suckfaced fools on the casting couch.
Running through the two older sisters is a streak of self-torture -- Keener seems to like brawling with snobbish store owners, while Mortimer relishes the opportunity to have a man point out her physical flaws -- while the young girl is just beginning to learn, in possibly unhealthy ways, how to negotiate her own demons. The movie seems to hint, in fact, that troubled years are ahead for all of them, especially for Keener, who finally gets a job at a photolab only to start an affair with the 17-year-old manager. Mortimer, on the other hand, get the sadistic wish of temporary disfigurement through canine intervention.
Blethyn spends much of the movie in the hospital enduring complications from her surgery, so she isn't left much to do. And yet she uses the inflections in her voice in more than one interaction with her daughters to suggest her disappointment, even as she describes them as the movie's title, "lovely and amazing." It's a cute term of endearment, empty given the circumstances, although, given a better roll of the dice, we can see where these women might have been more.
Movie Review: Lacked coherence.
Summary: 3 Stars
Lovely and Amazing (Nicole Holofcener, 2001)Nicole Holofcener (Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, Six Feet Under) delivers her second feature film in which a lot of people do a lot of talking and no one actually does much of anything. This one centers around a mother (Brenda Blethyn, recently seen in Little Voice) who's about to go into the hospital for liposuction, and her three daughters, Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer of The Ghost and the Darkness fame), Michelle (Catherine Keener from being John Malkovich), and adopted daughter Annie (Raven Goodwin, last seen in The Station Agent). The mother and the three daughters are all variously dysfunctional. Elizabeth, an actress, has a minor part in a movie that's about to open and no other forthcoming prospects. Michelle is an artists trying to consign her handicrafts to various art stores and failing repeatedly, while her husband is off knocking boots with her best friend. Annie, transracially adopted, is just trying to fit in however she can. Let's face it, it's an Oprah Movie Club pick waiting to happen, if Oprah ever starts a movie club.
Still, it's got its good points. I rented it solely for the Jake Gyllenhaal factor, truth be told. While Gyllenhaal's entrance into the movie comes late, the boy is never less than a pleasure to watch onscreen, and he does a great deal to redeem the movie (his character is the catalyst that drives many of the few events that actually occur in the film). Dermot Mulroney, as a possible new relationship for Elizabeth, does some of his best work here since Young Guns (one wonders if, between this and The Safety of Objects, Mr. Mulroney isn't beginning to vault himself up onto the A list). The four main actresses are all very good in their roles, if not actually given much to do. Even the normally loathsome Brenda Blethyn is watchable (i.e., a bit less loathsome than usual), though she just doesn't sound right with an American accent.
The strength of the movie, however, lies in Raven Goodwin. Annie's search for some way to fit in to the mess that is this family provides most of the movie's truly absorbing moments (the relationship between Keener and Gyllenhaal providing the rest of them). The rest of the movie seems to be made with an eye towards exciting a kind of embarrassed, nervous laughter from the viewer (and it succeeds well), but most of the scenes containing Annie aim for the heart, and without the usual emotional manipulation one is apt to find in most Hollywood fare. It's a refreshing change.
If you want movies where lots of things happen, you can probably dismiss this. If you don't mind a slow pace and a lot of dysfunction, give it a look. ** ½
Movie Review: A Bit Dull
Summary: 3 Stars
I'll be honest. I got this movie because I saw Jake Gyllenhaal's name on the cover and as a huge fan of his work, I thought I would give this movie a look. I'm kind of sorry I even bothered to look. This movie is drab and dull and drags along with not a whole lot happening and when something does nobody seems to make a big deal out of it, yet I get the feeling they want you to make a big deal out of it.
Michelle is a housewife, bored, and spending her time making useless miniature, ugly chairs and painting handmade wrapping paper that she wants to sell at an outrageous price. She's not a bad artist, but she should get in line-- there are lots of starving artists and you can't start out on top. Elizabeth is her sister, a neurotic actress who doesn't like herself. Michelle doesn't like herself either. And what do you know, their mother goes in for liposuction in the beginning of the movie because she doesn't like herself either. These three women manage to drag the young, adopted sister named Annie into their completely neurotic lives as well.
The dialouge is witty at times and Dermot Mulroney swooops in and saves this movie a little bit. Even Gyllenhaal (who is hardly in the movie at all) saves the flick as well, creating some necessary action. But I get the feeling I've seen this Gyllenhaal character before... (could it be a less depressing version of the kid he plays in The Good Girl??!!) Without a doubt though, the character Annie is the saving grace in this movie, providing some necessary laughs and great insight for such a young girl. Aside from Dermot and Jake, she's the real reason to watch this movie.
The film wrapped way to quickly for me without much resolution for any of the characters-- well, except for the mother. This could have been a better movie, but hey-- it is what it is. A humdrum, dull, kinda witty, kinda cute in spots, little bit weird movie. Check it out sometime when you're not sure what you want to watch. When it's over, I'm sure you'll have a whole list of excellent films in your mind that you'll want to follow this one up with.