Jump to content
Hondo's Bar

Closer


Recommended Posts

Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The BirdCage, Angels in America) is like 800 billion years old, and still putting out good stuff. Closer is his newest film. It's about 4 people (Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen) and their relationsships with each other. Mostly it's about the darkest shit we says and think about when we're in relationships. These aren't very likeable characters, but they're still interesting because they're so realistic it's scary.

 

It's based on a play, so the movie really is just 4 people talking to each other and doing little else for and hour and a half, so some people might find it a bit slow. Nichols tries fiddling with fancy camerawork eveyr now and then but when he does it's usually distracting because it's unnecesarry, the material is attention-grabbing enough.

 

The performances are some of the best of this year. Even Julia Roberts delivers. This is probably one of the two or three movies I like her in. As good as everyone is, I think Clive Owen steals the show. Probably because he was in the original play on broadway before doing the film.

 

Only problem I really had was it is the writing was a bit too good. Real people just aren't this witty, so it felt a bit staged. But I don't think that could have been avoided, cause it's the writing that carried the movie. Very small criticism anyways.

 

If you've ever seen "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Closer is a lot like it. The writing is similar and it's similarly presented and performed, that's probably why i like this so much. So if you like the idea of a movie about the dark side of relationships, run over to the theater as quick as you can.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, that sucked. And it was actually very distracting that they didn't show her nudity, because you can tell they danced around it with editing and the scene doesn't play as well as it could.

 

And as far as I know I don't think the DVD will have the scenes. Nichols is against putting deleted material in DVDs in general, so i dont think he'd change his mind just for portman poontang.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Besides the fact that Nichols himself chose to cut the nudity out because he felt some sorta...I dunno...fatherly responsibility towards Portman and didn't feel right keeping it in. So I doubt he'd want it included in the dvd anyway.

 

I'm eagerly awaiting the dvd because I never got to see this one. I don't mind at all when characters talk with a little too much wit. Hell, I'm smarter than 98% of movie characters, it's nice to occasionally watch some interesting people who are more intelligent than I am. It reminds me of a lot of those great 1940s films where dialogue could be rapid-fire and full of wit and intelligence without risk of losing the audience. I guess the fact that most of the movies then were also adapted plays brought that on. If that's the case, Hollywood should adapt more plays.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...