Barney's Version (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Richard J. Lewis. Starring Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike.
Sentimental but not sappy drama spanning an eventful life.
Barney's Version is the story of Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti), a Canadian TV producer whose impulsive, emotional personality wins him three marriages and a murder accusation over the course of three decades.
How exactly Barney manages to land all of these wealthy, attractive women is a bit of a mystery. He is awkward, clingy, neurotic, a murder suspect, and looks an awful lot like Paul Giamatti.
But he's also a multifaceted character too complex to sum up or judge in any single breath, and Giamatti brings every side of the role up to the light.
Support from the likes of Minnie Driver and Dustin Hoffman make for an outstanding cast on the whole, particularly for a Canadian production. It's especially nice to see Hoffman retreating from the cartoonish roles he's been playing of late; as Barney's father, he is well rounded but nevertheless overflowing with personality.
Story-wise, Barney's Version is more a collage than a filmstrip, and while I haven't read the Mordecai Richler novel on which the film was based, I suspect it was more cohesive than this.
Several of the earlier events of the story are almost incidental, showing little apparent influence on either Barney's later personality or on the course of his life. The murder accusation and its associated plotline seem to exist in a vacuum without any tie to the rest of the story. The framing device of Barney telling his own side of the story is entirely absent, making the title somewhat nonsensical.
But what is present is sincere, interesting to watch, thought-provoking, and occasionally touching.
When it's over, it feels as though as though a life really has gone by, and there's no greater praise than that.
Rated R for Giamattian romance.
4 out of 5
The Warrior's Way (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Sngmoo Lee. Starring Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush.
Cowboy-versus-ninja fantasy action film with an extra serving of violence.
Korean actor Dong-gun Jang plays The World's Greatest Swordsman, a warrior/assassin/samurai/ninja of confusing eastern origin. Chased to the American Old West by his former allies when he chooses to spare the infant he was ordered to kill, he lands in a small town populated by a redheaded Kate Bosworth, a drunk Geoffrey Rush, and enough circus performers to serve up the inevitable three-way battle between clowns, cowboys, and ninjas.
The story is so simple, it could have been written by anyone-a thin excuse for a crossover between iconic eastern and western mythologies. This is a gimmick movie through and through, but it's a good gimmick.
The Warrior's Way uses an ultra-stylized, live-action-anime look in the vein of Sin City and 300.
There's hardly a shot in the film that isn't at least three-quarters artificial, and each computer-generated flower petal and droplet of blood is emphasized in super-slow motion.
The impossibly saturated colors and pristine detail of this sensory overload approach produce their moments of beauty, but frankly, the style is wearing thin these days. This applies especially to the fight sequences, which have traditionally been the greatest strength of the live-action martial arts genre. Instead of elaborate choreography, most of the action here uses a lone actor in front of a green screen swinging a sword once or twice in an artistic fashion, with his enemies added in later.
The film is writer/director Sngmoo Lee's debut production. He shows promise as a visual storyteller if he can learn to tone it down a little.
As the lead, Dong-gun Jang takes the "stoic warrior" thing seriously, managing to banish any trace of expression from his face for the entire hour and forty minutes.
As for Geoffrey Rush, I haven't the foggiest idea what he's doing in this movie.
The Warrior's Way is uninspired, but doesn't take enough risks to go too badly wrong. Fans of abstract violence will find enough here to be sated.
Rated R for multicultural violence salad.
3 out of 5
