This is a lovely little Czech film about a marriage that's running into trouble as the couple reaches old age. The main character (who, and I can't stress this enough, is not played by Sean Connery) is a school teacher who quits his job and finds work in a grocery store paying people for their recyclables. The old man is bit of a flirt and very into matchmaking. Seeing how he flirts with the young ladies and, generally, charms everyone in the grocery store it's perfectly understandable that his wife is depressed that none of those attentions go her way. It's sort of a coming-of-age film for the geriatric set.
This is a film about seduction, evil, and politics. It follows a precocious kid who comes to the attention of a politician played by Steven Weber. By the by, I think I like Weber more every time I see him. I'm going to officially nominate him for the Most Underrated Actor of His Generation Award. Seriously, how could so much talent have come out of "Wings"? Anyway, this is a great movie that had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. You can tell that Weber is not the great guy he pretends to be (in order to get elected) from the very beginning. But you're never sure if he's just another insincere politician or if he's Mephistopheles himself.
Definitely the goriest film I've seen this year. The director went so far as to claim that it's the goriest Italian movie ever but I find that hard to believe. I mean, we're talking about the country that Lucio Fulci called home. But this movie doesn't just have the gross-out factor going for it, it's a genuinely creepy film where good and evil are defined in relative terms. Although, I don't totally buy the director's theory that the movie is about a girl who matures into a woman and that all the blood is metaphor for menstruation. I think he just said that to gross us out one last time.
Helen Hunt's directorial debut shows competence but the story isn't anything special. It's one of those movies that's too heavy to be a romantic comedy and too light to be a drama. It's just sort of . . . there. Frankly, it's not that interesting to watch Colin Firth try to out nebbish Matthew Broderick for Ms. Hunt's attention. Also, having The Divine Miss M show up as Hunt's long-lost mother/local talk show host seemed a little random.
It was a long day and I was getting sick, so it was really tough for me to stay awake through all of these animated shorts. But you know how these things go: some good, some bad.
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