Movie Reviews

Both of the movies that I'm about to review are book adaptations. Both are historical fiction. That's pretty much where the similarities end.

Memoirs of a Geisha, based on the book by Arthur Golden, I have some serious mixed feelings about. I really wanted to like this movie. However, this is a movie that I won't buy, and I won't be buying the soundtrack anytime soon. I prefer Tan Dun as a composer when it comes to Eastern-themed movies.
No, it wasn't because of the Chinese actresses hired to play Japanese women. That caused more of a problem for my boyfriend than myself. I love to watch Gong Li act.
Before picking on the movie, I will say that the cinematography was wonderful (although not the best I've seen), and John Williams did a nice job on the score (for an American movie). And the movie was close to the book (for all its faults).
The feeling I received from Memoirs was that of being decidedly unauthentic. Not even getting into the authenticness of geisha traditional dress/dance/etc., which is discussed in great detail elsewhere on the internet, I felt that the movie was not very respectful to Japan in general and geisha in particular. If John Wayne (in The Barbarian and the Geisha) and James Bond (in You Only Live Twice - the book however is more accurate in regards to geisha) can get the idea of Geisha and Japan right and be respectful about it for their times, why can't Rob Marshall and Arthur Golden in the 21st century get it right? The movie (and book) seemed very sloppy to me in that regard.
The most "Japanese" character to me was The Chairman, played by Ken Watanabe - ironic considering the movie is centered around a Japanese woman. The character of Nobu (played by Koji Yakusho) was also very "Japanese".
To be more blunt, I felt that the movie (and the book, to a greater degree) emphasized and perpetuated stereotypes of Japanese (and by extension, Asian) women and Geisha culture, rather than be the enlightening, eye- and mind-opening experience it was supposed to be.
All of my disappointment regarding culture aside, I felt that the characters were relatively flat (although Gong Li did bring a depth to Hatsumomo that was not apparent to me in the book), and that Chiyo/Sayuri's character is much too naive to be admired as a heroine. Both of these problems are not criticisms of the actors, but rather of the source material.
The last large problem I had with the movie is that it ignores the basic writing (and I suspect, movie) mantra: "show, don't tell". I get the feeling that Golden doesn't trust his audience, and assumes his audience is truly ignorant. Much of the story is told to the audience, rather than shown through great acting. (The extreme opposite of what I'm describing can be seen in the movie Soldier, where Kurt Russell shows you exactly what he's feeling, what his motives are, and who he's aligned with without saying more than 20 lines during the entire movie) Don't get me wrong, the acting is great, but the actors can only do so much with a screenplay that doesn't trust their abilities.
In short, if you want to see a pretty movie that perpetuates Western ideas of Eastern women, by all means go see the movie. To quote Roger Ebert in his review of the movie (which I feel is more articulate than my own brief review, although making the same conclusions), "I realize that my doubts and footnotes are completely irrelevant to the primary audience for this movie, which wants to see beauty, sex, tradition and exoticism all choreographed into a dance of strategy and desire."

The second movie I'm going to review here I enjoyed much more. I tried, unsuccessfully, to read "Pride & Prejudice" in high school, getting lost in Austen's language. The 2005 movie of the same name similarly lost me in the quick-paced, British-accented dialogue, but the acting more than made up for it. I found it relatively easy to keep up with the complex plotline, but please don't ask me to summarize it!
The costume design was wonderful for a period piece (frames 2 and 17, as well as an explanation on this Slate slideshow), and I absolutely loved Knightly's hair when she visits her sick sister Jane in Netherfield and the wonderful updo she has at the Netherfield ball.
I was also very impressed with the at-times complex cinematography, especially at the Netherfield ball, where long takes involving lots of characters and several rooms really put the audience at the ball. The insanely romantic shot of Mr. Darcy walking towards Elizabeth in the morning mist at the end of the movie was wonderful as well.
It's quite obvious that Mr. Darcy is attracted to Elizabeth Bennett from the start of the movie, and he definitely seems to have a "realness" and complexity to the character that book critics say he lacks. This complexity can only be attributed to Matthew Macfadyan's abilities as an actor. I disagree with some movie critics who say that Knightly trumps the beauty of Rosamund Pike (who plays Jane, the beauty of the Bennett sisters), as Pike has a decidedly classic "British" beauty about her.
The recurring theme, performed by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet throughout the film, was both unobtrusive and memorable (similar to the Schindler's List theme when played by Itzhak Perlman in that film)
Since I have little knowledge of the book, the only true fault I can find with the movie is the difficulty of the dialogue. While the story is truly romantic fluff (if romantic fluff can be intelligent), the movie is appropriately light-hearted and good-natured. It's sweet, but not overly so.