Love in the time of Cholera (2007)

Love in the time of Cholera is, of course, the classic novel from Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which is now a new movie starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem and Italian actress Giovanna Mezzogriorno. For most of us this was required reading in college. However, I never got around to it.

Love in the time of Cholera is one of those movies which you could be a little bored in the beginning, but towards the end you realize that everything comes together. All of that seemingly superfluous stuff at the start makes sense in the end and you can see that it is all necessary to the story. It’s worth it because as a whole it is a beautiful story.

It is a love story set the behind a backdrop of war and disease (Cholera), and peace. It is also the character of love as war and disease, and peace. I thought it was clever.

It also has the pained elements of a story of people the areas around and including Mexico and South America. People are overly proud, emotional, and tragic. There is a strong sense of colonial values and situations. The story takes place in the white upper class of Victorian Colombia.

Set in Colombia, almost no one here sounds like it too much. Bardem speaks perfect Spanish. He is from Spain. Mezzogiorno is Italy and really sounds Italian when she has to show emotion. Giovanna may be more beautiful than she is a great actress. Many of her scenes are uneven and when she plays an old woman she mostly moves like a young woman. It is noticeable and distracting. Another, noticeable and distracting element in the film is the transition between the Florentino character as a young man, Unax Ugalde, and Florentino for the rest of film Bardem. It is really to tell that are the same person outside of the fact they wear the same clothing. A bit of a surprise is John Leguizamo who is actually Colombian, and is perfect in his of Fermina’s (Mezzogroino) father. Liv Schreiber, Catalina Sandino Moreno (also Colombian), and one my favorite actors, Hector Elizondo around out a great supporting cast,

There is great cinematography, sets, rainfalls, and natural beauty. You do feel like you are in some Spanish colonial world. Mostly the movie is a character driven movie. Like a long book, which it is, you watch the characters develop. Hopefully you like them, because you are spending a while with them. All character’s relationships seem to explore the love between in its different forms. Love between man and woman (Romantic Love), love between Mother and Son, Father and Daughter, Uncle and Nephew, between cousins, between co-workers, and that is the nature of the film and the story. It is important to know that going into it. There is a lot in Love in the time of cholera.
It felt like there was something there, and I found myself thinking about its themes for sometime afterwards.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

The long await return for Ethan and Joel Coen ( the Coen Brothers). No Country for Old Men is not their best work but it is, just by the fact that it is them, ten times better than most of the films out this year. It is sometimes hard to be critical on a movie that does so many things right. It pulls you in right at the beginning. It has excellent characterization. It is tense and it has many parallel themes going on at one time. But at the same till, it is has some very loose ends.

In many instances this film is like Fargo. It takes place in an interesting subset of the United States; this time the U.S.-Mexican Boarder. The Coen brothers show many instances of quirky people from South Texas but they seem to lack the overwhelming racism and anger of the real people from Texas. In some ways Texas seems like a normal place, which anyone from Texas knows is just not true.

The film stars Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, and Kelly Macdonald. Bardem is brilliant as a psychopath. Not for one second do you believe that he isn’t a complete sociopath. The cat and mouse game with the Josh Brolin character, Llewelyn, is nail biting and the heart of the film. The good cop and old time Texas Lawman of the Tommy Lee Jones character is underdeveloped and barely necessary to the story.

It starts out seeming to be an old west story brought to a modern setting, but then it loses that, and tries to picked it up again, ultimately failing. Jones is great as he ever is, but he doesn’t have much to work with, and this whole storyline could have taken out of the film which would have improved it greatly.

Kelly Macdonald plays Carla Jean Moss wife of Llewelyn, and you would never know that she was the English preteen from Trainspotting.

There is not much to the story. There is a robbing of drug money. Llewelyn finds it, takes it, and he is hunted. It’s a hell of a ride. It has a bit of a money is the root of all evil moral to it, but you really hope that the film maker are doing more. You think that they must be, but maybe there are not.