Tag Archives: Comedy

Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)

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Me And You And Everyone We Know (2005)“Me and You and Everyone We Know” tells the story of Richard Swersey (John Hawkes) and Christine Jesperson (Miranda July) and how they get along in their daily lives.

Richard just separated from his wife and is taking care of his two sons when not working as a shoe salesman and Christine is struggling to become an artist and driving a cab for elderly people to make a living.

They fall in love with each other, a love at first sight sort of thing and a complicated one. The one just divorced and afraid to lose his children. The other yearning for the perfect man, expressing herself in ways no one else cares or is able to understand. They both find themselves at the crossroads of their lives. Which way will they turn?

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The Brothers Grimm (2005)

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Brothers Grimm (2005)“The Brothers Grimm” is a silly movie. It has a certain pythonesque quality that you need to be able to appreciate otherwise you will most likely think it’s a stupid movie. It isn’t. There are of course countless references to Grimm fairy tales and sometimes these are presented in a most absurd manner – something you have to expect from Terry Gilliam and it’s something he delivers.

At one point we suddenly cut to the two brothers Wilhem (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger) wearing bonnets while scrubbing the floor and making dinner for their italian torture master Cavaldi (Peter Stormare), easy to spot as a reference to “Cinderella” but also very… “pythonesque”.

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Drifting Clouds (1996)

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Drifting Clouds (1996)I first came across Aki Kaurismäki’s work when I saw “The Man without a Past” back in 2002 and I really liked it and I had high hopes for “Drifting Clouds” (1996), which is one of his earlier works. After watching it recently, I was a little dissapointed I must admit. It emanates a certain crudeness that makes it difficult to immerse yourself in the story even more so since the English subtitles are awkward at times and distract from the characters original dialogue.

Aki’s movies have often been described as being minimalistic. The mis en scene in “Drifting Clouds” mirrors a time of recession in Finnland, with highly saturated colors reminiscent of ’50s Technicolor and lots of shades of blue (as is the case in “Man without a Past”). The colors and the absence of warmth make the sets appear void of happiness and in a way resemble the desolate inner state of the characters. We do not get to see much if any emotions from the characters themselves and the acting could be considered almost clinically sterile.

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Garden State (2004)

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Garden State (2004)If the only thing that keeps you going is your faith and you no longer know what you believe in or have stopped believing in anything anymore then you must feel quite lost and life may bear no meaning. “Garden State” is about twenty-six-year-old Andrew “Large” Largeman (Zach Braff) who is so numb and void of emotions that he has literally detached himself from everything and everyone around him.
When we zoom in on him in the beginning of the movie, he is lying in a white room in a white bed and he looks so pale, he might as well be already dead.
Together with Braff the viewer goes on a journey of awakening, of rediscovering life, of experiencing emotions, honest and heartfelt emotions.

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Broken Flowers (2005)

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Broken Flowers (2005)The latest Jim Jarmush movie Broken Flowers is in the tradition of all Jarmusch movies a mood piece where you begin a journey, visit different places much like in a road movie and in the end return to where you came from not quite the person you were in the beginning.

Don Johnston with a “t” (Bill Murray) recently dumped by his girl friend and contemplating life in his newly gained solitude receives an anonymous pink letter claiming he has a son who might come looking for him. Only by sharing the news with his neighbor is Don coaxed out of his passiveness after much convincing. Without much to go on his neighbor and hobby detective commences to formulate a cunning plan to uncover the mystery and sends him on a readily planned road trip to visit his past, to “check in” on his former girl friends from twenty years ago.

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