Almost Buddhist - 戲‧論

(Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill) (2011)  ★★★★★ Frankly, I don’t enjoy watching baseball. I know nothing about it. I don’t like this game at all, but I like this baseball film very much. It’s, as a matter of fact, not really about baseball in spite of some terminologies there must be. It’s more about a man struggling to attain what matters to him out of the game, which is to win the last game of the Series and be able to keep his job and move on. You don’t have to be a baseball expert or lover to enjoy the film. You don’t even have to know what moneyball is. This film’s simply moving and thought-provoking enough to impress you even if you’re not a fan of baseball. It’s based on a true event. Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the General Manager for a losing baseball team, who strives to rebuild the team with limited budget after being seriously gutted. He comes across a guy named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), an Economics graduate from Yale, at a business meeting of trading players. Peter lat...

(2011)  ★★☆☆☆ I checked out ‘Johnny English (2003)’ on account of its trailer that’s so much funnier than the movie itself. It didn’t make me laugh till the last scene when Johnny starts to sing and dance to one of ABBA’s hits. It’s in general a turnoff. Years have passed. Now Johnny’s reborn, but the way he behaves still seems so Bean. Nothing’s of a surprise. Everything’s expected. And some said Mr. Rowan Atkinson would better fit in a silent film. I agree. As a comedy, this film’s such a failure. I however, appreciate Mr. Atkinson’s courage and profession all these years trying to entertain us by sticking to what once made him so well known. That’s, I guess, a gift as well as a curse!

(2011) ★★★☆☆ The first few minutes in the film is like a travelogue of the city Paris, going with sexy Jazz music, so I thought it was going to be romantic. Yes, it is, plus a little bit of science fiction and a lot of artistic elements. If you’re an arts student, you’ll be able to appreciate it more! Gil (Owen Wilson) is an American writer traveling in Paris with his fiancée. One night, he gets a bit drunk and insists to take a walk alone around the city. He’s later picked up by an antique car and slides through time to meet famous artists from the past. Since he’s struggling on his latest novel about a nostalgic man, he finds his time travel inconceivably fascinating and of course helpful. Nostalgia is what the film’s all about. Said it’s the denial of the painful present. There’re people who like to complain about the present and imagine how great it would be if they could live in the golden past they prefer. Gil also kind of believes that people in the past were much happier ...

(2011)  ★★★☆☆ I’m a fan of David Fincher. I love the style of his works. That’s why I still went for it even though I saw the Swedish version already few years back. It’s hard to say which’s better. I guess both of them are good in terms of how the story’s presented as well as impressive characterizations. David’s version, however, has an advantage that the original version doesn’t seem to have—the outstanding score. It makes this atmospheric crime story much more breathtaking than it’s supposed to be. The case itself is not at all complicated, but thanks to David’s ingenious direction, it looks so much so. It seems to me that it’s not the missing-person case that the director wants to thrill us with. It’s the dark side of human nature as a matter of fact. Why have there been sickos, sadists, rapists, racists and abusers? Is it simply because they’re rich Nazi? Okay, why’d they want to join the crazy Party and become one in the first place? What made them think that they wer...

(2011)  ★★☆☆☆ Sex before marriage, it happens. Sex before officially dating, would you accept? Jamie (Mila Kunis) and Dylan (Justin Timberlake) try to play a game of sex without love. They seem to be okay with it at first, but things get a little bit tricky later, as expected. The story’s of no surprise. You know how they’re going to start it wrong, and how they’re going to fix it right. I guess it’s much easier for men (not including me, I’ve made myself clear in ‘ One Day ’ review) than for women to do sex without love. It’s because, for women, having sex involves the risk of getting pregnant, so they’d need a loving, caring, responsible man to share their burden in the end. They can’t really afford to do it without. Even if they say they can, they’re probably lying. I’m not sure about men unlike me, but I’m sure there must be perverts who’d prefer sex without love, fun without responsibilities. Like it or not, this world is made up of the good and the evil. Jamie and Dyl...