Short Cut Movie Review: Two Lives

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

This film has not yet been released commercially in the United States.

The German-Norwegian co-production Two Lives is about the war children of Norway – babies fathered by Nazi soldiers during the occupation. Because Norwegians were considered true Aryans, these children were regarded as part of the pure race and so the movie, written by Georg Maas, Christoph Tölle, Stale Stein Berg, and Judith Kaufman (and directed by Maas), claims many of these children were forcibly removed from their Norwegian mothers and placed in Lebensborn homes in Germany. This is the story, based on an unpublished novel, of a woman who was reunited with her birth mother in Norway, but whose life begins to unravel after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Jack Reacher Movie Review

It has been so long since I’ve been both truly surprised and genuinely thrilled at the movies that I’d almost forgotten the feeling, but Jack Reacher reminded me of exactly the reason why I love sitting in a darkened cinema several dozen times a year. It is not the best movie I’ve ever seen. It’s not even the best movie I’ve seen this year. But it did exactly what I expect an action thriller to do and it did it competently, excitingly, originally, and without pandering to the lowest common denominator audience members. I loved this movie. I loved it almost unequivocally. I loved it for all the reasons it could have been a standard genre film, but wasn’t. Loved it for all the ways it managed to enthrall me from one minute to the next. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the hugely popular (though not well-liked by me) The Usual Suspects, adapted the story from the eponymous character created by author Lee Child and more specifically from one of the sixteen books featuring Jack Reacher as the main character.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Movie Review

David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, adapted from Stieg Larsson’s book by screenwriter Steven Zaillian, is the second such adaptation of the novel, the first being a Swedish production from two years ago. It represents the growing trend in Hollywood of taking popular and well-crafted films from overseas and reshaping them for American audiences. Fincher’s version, which should really be considered an alternative adaptation of the book more than a remake, is an expertly made, great looking, moody and atmospheric yet totally conventional thriller. Which is sort of like having the New York Philharmonic perform a composition by a middle-schooler with mediocre musical ability. The conductor is brilliant and his orchestra top-notch, but the music itself insists that we ask why such talents were wasted in pursuit of something so pedestrian.

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island Movie Review

It’s hard to avoid seeing the parallels between Shutter Island and Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio’s two films from this year. Both deal heavily with illusion versus reality and the way we perceive the world. They both deal with madness, the former more than the latter. In both films the driving force behind DiCaprio’s characters’ actions is the tragic loss of his wife. And the soundtracks of both films are characterized by the droning sound of low horns in the orchestra, which in this film is a reminder of a ship’s foghorn. Although the two films have similarities in their subject matter, they could hardly be more different in terms of tone and directorial approach.

Inception Movie Review

A unifying theme has slowly emerged from the film work of Christopher Nolan. He is fixated on the idea of perception and the conflict of illusion vs. reality. In Memento, a man believes he can be sure of certain facts despite being incapable of creating new memories after about 15 minutes (in the end we learn his foolproof system allows for self-delusion). Insomnia looks at the effects of sleep deprivation on the conscious mind and The Prestige is about the way people can be deceived by distracting the mind with misdirection. Nolan’s latest film, Inception, perhaps shares more in common with his first feature than with anything else in his impressive body of work. But for the chance at a spoiler I shall say no more than that.