Change Your Image
boitu-dao
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Zimna wojna (2018)
A lovely story about the heart and the true artists
The message of the film is so lovely that it makes me weep.
Since long I've been thinking of TRUE artists, as well as TRUE scientists, TRUE businesspeople, TRUE educators... wondering about their ways of choosing "a side" when it comes to the happening of war or such political matters. I always believe that those ones have their own side, not the two political sides. Their side is the heart and how free it can be to beat the rhythm of love. That's an important messgage many people may have learnt but we do need to make sure every next generation, young artists and young people with expertises, should acknowlege, understand and consider it as the meaning of their working life.
Talented artists can make a good living anywhere because all and every human society -- no matter which side or what political background -- needs art. How beautiful it is in this movie, the film makers choose music as an incarnation of art and the context of the Cold War in Europe to tell the story of artists and how they evolve from 'talented' to 'true' artists.
After all, Cold War is just a war like any other wars. After watching this movie, as a Vietnamese I imagine what if this love story should happen in the Vietnam War, two sides are the South and North Vietnam, then the couple's hearts would still be theirs and the flow would be the same, as lovely and warm as true artists' hearts.
Another thing to say, artists are supposed to be born to feel lonely. So how lovely it is to see an artist couple finding love and freely choose a happy ending together.
Such lovely story is told by brilliant storytellers: the movie makers. My praise for the directing, sceenplay writing, cinematography, production design, and leading male and female actors.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
New Mitty's great escape from Old Mitty
Having read the short story by James Thurbur published on The New Yorker in 1939, I'm surprisingly excited in the new character of Walter Mitty in this movie.
While old-Mitty of the short story seemed to keep living his daily life within his daydreams ever after, new-Mitty of the movie finished his legend by turning out to be a changed man who was ready for any adventures. The new-Mitty, starred by Ben Stiller, presents a respective spirit of the American people, a spirit proves the American will to deal with changes. I always adore American people who are responsible, courageous, and affectionately active. I adore the new Walter Mitty.
A beautiful screenplay of Steve Conrad, I think about an Oscar nomination for this. Also the humorous details like the daydreams of Walter Mitty are very enjoyable, and the attractive scenes through out his journey looking for his job-partner, making a perfect Ben Stiller film.
47 Ronin (2013)
Love to see Keanu within the Japanese swords
I feel excited much watching my favorite actor Keanu Reeves playing with a Japanese sword. He got his own way which let me not compare him to Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai.
47 Ronin is a beautiful movie in term of cinematography, and I want to list it as a big nominee for Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
This movie is also a brilliant adaption from the Japanese legend of 47 Ronin, so it's worth for a statuette for Best Adaption Screenplay. I'm quite interested in the idea that a European-Japanese samurai defeats an Asian dragon. We are all tired of such an Asian dragon, aren't we?
Another reason why I like the screenplay and the of this movie: I love to know that Hollywood keeps considering the spirit of every Asian country as an attractive lady. :)
World War Z (2013)
Enjoy Brad's main course
I haven't read the book so I'm not giving a review, this's just my note after a weekend meal. Customers who only expect some brand new ingredients, please don't order this $200.000.000 main course! Gourmets who are fans of sophisticated chefs within readiness of enjoying the art of cuisine, please follow me!
So it's time for this dish World War Z. This one is not a fastfood to instantly fill the curious stomachs of people who never know the meaning of fine-dining. Because this one is made of known ingredients cooked in a known way, but definitely it's another healthy combination becoming a well-decorated dish, placed in front of you with nice table accessories. When you see it you say 'Fantastic!' and when you taste it you say 'Wow, delicious!'... yeah, it's just delicious. How beautiful it is when a fine-dining dish is simply delicious!
Well, because we are talking about fine-dining, now before its arrival on your table I look at the menu and see the main course here: "World War Z" - Roasted zombie/undead and stir-fried disease-disaster served with Pitt's Chronicle sauce.
You'd like to discuss more about it? Okay.
1. Zombie is roasted - means you won't see so much blood as on the raw undead or zombie sashimi. But you know, it's been soaked in some spices before the roasting process so that it smells appetitively good. What spices? Watch and find them! Reviewing the trailer is a hint.
2. Disease-disaster is stir-fried - means if you'd tasted movies like Contagion and you are a gastronomer indeed, you realize there's something new seasoned in here. Hint question: Stay at home through out the pandemic or leave?
3. Pitt's Chronicle sauce - means it's a chef's secret, it's the way chef expressed himself. His life, his experience, his talent, his fate. I don't give you hints anymore. I tell you the following spoilers. Brad played a role in 12 Monkeys. Brad (and Angie) adopted children from poor countries. Brad loves his family. Brad adores UN and WHO. And Brad's Hollywood life, there's supposed to be some pandemics (I don't know what they are, maybe greedy, cheating, stress...) that Brad's once had to face up to them.
Okay I stop now, the food is coming.
P/S: Zombies don't care if human blood tastes delicious or not. If you're not a zombie, what are you waiting for to award Brad Pitt, the chef, and his kitchen Plan B a long applause?
The Great Gatsby (2013)
Luhrmann makes me love the book twice as much as I did
"It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment." ~ Chapter 6, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
People, you think you understand the book enough to criticize Luhrmann's movie? Let me begin this review within that heart-breaking note from chapter 6 while I'm telling people how I respect Baz Luhrmann's look at the novel by Scott Fitzgerald. If you've got your own way to dip yourself in the story about Gatsby, this director certainly got his own. And there's no doubt that Baz Luhrmann is a great name because of his own power of expressional adjustment.
Following are 4 main reasons which enable me to vote 10 stars for The Great Gatsby 2013.
1. Music --- I don't know why many people dislike the OST of this movie. I've been listening to Young and Beautiful (L. D. Rey) and Happy Together (Filter) and Back To Black (Beyonce feat Andre)... everyday. For me the music here is quite an intelligent touch to make me feel that the story of Gatsby could absolutely happen in any summer, any era. It's a smart way to link the man named Gatsby of 1920s to every man who was, or who is, or who is going to be 30-year-old. In the novel, Nick Carraway told us many times about this detail, that they - Nick and Gatsby, and Tom Buchanan - were at the same age, 30 year old.
Book, chapter 7: "What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"
2. Cast --- Jay DiCaprio or Leo Gatsby, which name is right? I can't believe if someone else could ever be more brilliant than Leonardo playing Gatsby. And Carey Mulligan is the most beautiful Daisy. I like the whole cast. Tobey Maguire, I totally like him in this movie. There're many bad comments about Luhrmann's choice for Nick Carraway, I can't get their underestimation. Definitely Tobey shows us the real Nick who participated through out the story with an appearance that looks younger than men at his age. I think Tobey, with kind-of-naive eyes and efforts, successfully embodies the best character of Nick. Let's discuss the detail again: men at around 30-year-old. People spend much time drawing the portrait of Gatsby but not many ones can imagine the right picture of Nick, even me. Thanks to Baz Luhrmann, now I remember the eyes of Tobey, the eyes of Nick, and the eyes after the glassed of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.
Book, chapter 2: "But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground."
3. Sreenplay --- I won't tell much because I don't want this review to be a big spoiler. The only thing I can't help writing about is the green light. Yes, the glamorous green light from Daisy's. You see it at the beginning. It's Baz Luhrman who knows how Gatsby was haunted by that green light. I'm a woman and I don't know much about a man's psychical motivation that leads him to dos and don'ts, but now I can imagine more exhaustively the deceiving hope of Gatsby. And the answer for the question "Why Gatsby is great?" may come clearly: it's his primitive love raised by the idea that once a green light is visible you can take it, you will take it at any price. Well, inspired by this I got a wish that every woman could seed such green light into a man to make him as great as Gatsby. And I know Luhrmann's sreenplay makes me love the novel much more.
Book, the end: "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
4. The 3D era --- Everything looks more splendid, more "real". But the best impression showed up right at the beginning: the old W. Bros logo dimming out and the introduction in 3D comes, then... the green light appeared! I think about an Oscar statue for best production design. Much appreciate to see a modern film being designed that way in praise of the immortality of a literary classic like The Great Gatsby.
Book, chapter 1: "If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness..."