Tag Archives: Cate Blanchett

ARCHIVE REVIEW: I’m Not There

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I’m Not There
Directed by: Todd Haynes
Written by: Todd Haynes & Oren Moverman (screenplay)
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, and Richard Gere

Where to begin?  Here is a movie with almost no beginning and no end, an interwoven tale about both the same person and six very different ones.   It’s fitting that a movie about such a radical is filled with radical notions of its own, at least about filmmaking.

Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There is a visionary look into the life and ever-shifting personas of Bob Dylan.  You don’t hear his name once during the two-and-a-half hour journey into his head, but at the end you get something you don’t usually get from biopics: a true understanding and examination of the subject.  We don’t follow a single artist as they are discovered to have musical talent,  inevitably become famous and then acquire famous people problems.  All of these things happen in I’m Not There, but to different characters in different ways.

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REVIEW: Hanna

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Hanna
Directed by: Joe Wright
Written by: Seth Lochhead & David Farr (screenplay)
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, and Olivia Williams

Looking at a DNA report that concludes the subject is “Abnormal,” is probably the last thing a teenager needs to see.  Though when said teenager has just finished disposing a handful of government agents like life were on the “Easy” setting, it may be the least of her worries.  But Hanna (Saorise Ronan) still looks slightly wounded when looking at that piece of paper.  It’s one of the few moments director Joe Wright stops to smell the emotion in this thrilling exercise in kinetic action.

Hanna begins in the arctic wilderness, where her father (Eric Bana) has kept and trained her since he went rogue from the CIA.  She was bred for tactical assassinations, something he infuses with his own agenda.  Hanna is tasked with taking down Marissa (Cate Blanchett) the woman he claims has killed her mother.  Wright never lingers in loss or death in this film, putting Hanna in constant motion throughout.  It is a vision of what last year’s Kick-Ass would’ve looked like had the subject been only focused on Hit-Girl and her father.

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SPOTLIGHT: Cate Blanchett

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Cate Blanchett has come a long way in a short period of time.  One of the actresses to gain momentum in the 2000′s and rise quickly to critical praise, she has become an actress that everyone has seen in at least one movie.  It was probably Lord of the Rings, but in no way does that tiny part reveal to us the extraordinary skill this woman posseses.  She garnered much of her fame for playing Queen Elizabeth, and became the first person ever to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar-winning actress (Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator.)  She selects roles that will take her somewhere new, and by extention she takes us with her.  Whether she is a school teacher drawn into an affair with one of her students or Bob Dylan, Blanchett never hesitates to go to places other performers would stumble.

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REVIEW: Robin Hood

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Robin Hood
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Written by: Brian Helgeland
Starring: Russel Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, William Hurt

This happens just about every time an Academy Award winning team gets together to update a classic story into a big commercial success. It was the same sort of thing that happened with Alice in Wonderland earlier this year and the same sort of thing that will continue to happen when our favorite directors and actors take on a familiar unoriginal project. Disappointment. Continue reading →

REVIEW: Ponyo

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Image courtesy of The Retort

Ponyo
Directed by: Hayo Miyazaki
Written by: Hayo Miyazaki (screenplay)
Starring: Noah Cyrus, Frankie Jonas, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, and Liam Neeson

For those who love the art of Japanese anime, Hayo Miyazaki is widely considered the God.  The man behind such works as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke delivers his latest, Ponyo, with a wide color palette and unique take on Hans Christian Anderson’s “Little Mermaid.”

It starts off underwater.  The young fish we will soon know as Ponyo (Noah Cyrus) makes her way to the surface in an elaborate, beautiful opening sequence.  When she arrives, she meets Sosuke (Frankie Jonas), a vibrant and happy five year old boy who rescues her from a glass jar.  The fish licks the wound, healing it and binding her DNA with that of a human.  She begins to take on human characteristics, learning to speak and sprouting limbs.  All the while, her father (Liam Neeson) is keen on keeping her the way she is, and takes her back into the underwater realm.  She breaks free, and once liberated, unleashes the sea and makes her way back to Sosuke.

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