Ever wonder what it would be like to have a super power? You know, like a superhero. Ever wanted super-human strength? The ability to fly? Laser beams shooting out of your eyes? Well how about a super sense of smell? In Perfume, Jean-Baptiste is born with an amazing sense of smell. I don’t even know how to describe it other than he’s like a human hound dog. He can smell you coming and going.
Jean-Baptiste lived a hard life during the French Revolution. He was born in a fish market and soon ends up in an orphanage. If you didn’t know, those places weren’t all fun and games. I’d probably have to describe them as hell holes. Anyways, he eventually starts working in a tannery and one day gets to go into town for a delivery. There are all kinds of wonderful smells he’s never encountered before. He eventually smells the most wonderful scent he’s ever encountered, but tragically loses it.
Jean-Baptiste’s next line of work then becomes the perfume industry. He starts learning how to make perfumes in the effort to preserve smells. He wants to recreate that smell he found in town that one day. As you can probably tell from the title, Jean-Baptiste also happens to be a murderer. I don’t want to give the story away though, so I won’t get into that.
This film is a good watch. There is a slight, crazy twist at the end that kind of involves a mass orgy. Don’t really see that one coming. For this reason I won’t be recommending this to a lot of people. It’s not crazy or too revealing…especially after seeing John Cameron Mitchell’s 
Shortbus. If you’ve seen Perfume, we’d love to know what you thought of it. If you liked it, you might want to check out some of Tom Tykwer’s other movies such as Run, Lola, Run or The Princess and the Warrior .
Rating: 
This has got to be one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. Just the charisma between Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ellen Pompeo (“Grey’s Anatomy”)would be enough to make this an awesome film. However, we can’t forget about the story, the set and scenery, the location and the music.
The story starts off with the recent death of Diana Floss. Diana is daughter to Ben (Hoffman) and Jojo (Sarandon) and was engaged to marry Joe (Gyllenhaal). We then get to see how the family, friends and town deals with this tragic event and how the events unfold. Bertie (Pompeo), who works at the Post Office and a local bar, ends up befriending Joe one day when he comes to the office. She too is grieving over the loss of a loved one and really represents love in this film.
This movie has lots of seriousness, comedy and just real life going on in every single scene. I think one of my favorite parts in the movie is when Joe is having dinner with a family and the hostess seems to think he shouldn’t be “tangled up in all that still” two weeks after the death of his fiancee. He then explains a bit to her about some of the “entaglements” involved in the recent death of his loved one.
I watched some of the extras on this and the director, Brad Silberling, really reminded me of Cameron Crowe in the way he talked about his film like it was part of his life story. Silberling has directed a lot of TV and I think this was his first excursion onto the movie side. He’s also done Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, if you’ve seen that one. For some reason I really like this guy. I’m interested to see what he comes out with next.
I was worried about this one. I was worried that every funny part was in the trailer and that it would just be a re-visited attempt at creating so many funny moments launched by “Meet the Parents.” Thankfully, it wasn’t all that.
I’ll reveal nothing more than saying Dustin Hoffman steals every scene he’s in and is absolutely wonderful. And, the grandbaby comes in a close second for getting laughs. See it and tell me what you think.
Assss–hoooooOOOOOle. (i thought of phil boltz every time this was uttered 
Maybe I’m a sucker for movies that carry-on the theme of the wonder and beauty of child-like belief and faith and hope (see my last year obsession with “In America”) or maybe there’s something that touches on the eternal when films capture so subtly what people spend their whole lives trying to understand. Whatever the reason, “Finding Neverland” does just this. One minute, you’re watching a movie as an adult; the next, your overwhelmed by faces of children, magic, and your own bewildered tears.
At one point while watching “Finding Neverland,” I was crying and I had no reason why. I started thinking, “why am I crying at this point?” and kept thinking on it till’ the movie ended and I think I may have figured out (partly) why. This movie deals with that pivotal moment in every person’s life where their childhood is no more and they are, in fact, an adult. Call it growing up, growing older, or ‘innocence lost,’…whatever/whichever way you put it, everyone eventually goes through it. I think when movies touch on such universal truths or rather, human circumstances and feelings, they touch on something much greater than the sum of their parts. “Garden State” did this with its exploration of ‘home’ and captured near-perfectly that odd transition between high school, college and age 30, where life seems to be staring straight back at you, asking you what to do next. Here, in “Finding Neverland,” director Marc Forster (director of the brilliantly brutal “Monster’s Ball) does something truly groundbreaking: he makes adults care about hope and wonder and belief, in a world where adults are taught to care about everything and anything else BUT these things. That’s the kind of direction more film directors need a lot more of nowadays
So far this year, “Finding Neverland” is one of the year’s 10 best films for many reasons, but I’ll mention only one reason briefly for time sake: Johnny Depp. Depp gives another groundbreaking performance that proves he really is the most versatile actor working out there today. Sure it’s less flashy and showy and funny than his work in “Pirates of the Carribean” but it’s much harder to pull off what Depp does here so effortlessly. His simple, quiet, yet profoundly tender performance deserves Oscar recognition. on top of that, I can think of no other actor who could do what he does, and make a movie such as this come off as good as it does here.
So all in all, go see this movie—now. And I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
I’ve really fallen behind in posting about movies so here I go….Saw this one with Elaine, Liz and Sarah. It was definitely the best example of existentialism I’ve ever seen. It’s one of those things I read a little bit about in a couple classes, but never really quite grasped the concept. Wonderful performances by Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore (1998)) and Mark Wahlberg. You also had Jude Law, Dustin Hoffman, Naomi Watts, and Lily Tomlin. Definitely a star-studded cast. Elaine had told me while watching this movie she was kept on the edge of her seat waiting to hear what they would say next. I’d have to say I concur. Definitely great dialog going on here. For some reason while watching it I was constantly reminded of John Cusack. One actress in here was the teacher he talked to outside the high school in Grosse Pointe Blank who he told still dresses like Mary Tyler Moore. There were also little things that reminded of some of his other movies. I thought Naomi Watts did an awesome job portraying how shallow everyone was in treating her after she quit trying to look “pretty” all the time. There were also a bunch of little things like when Jude Law threw up in the meeting and him crying at the end. I also loved when he admitted going to the existential detectives just to get Albert kicked out.
This is definitely a movie that can be appreciated on multiple levels. It’s entertaining and witty on the surface, yet is also much deeper if you want to sit and really think about what you’re watching. Definitely something to watch sometime.
Saw Runaway Jury with Joe and Cheryl and Jim (a.k.a Superjew from the Springs) and his very pregnant wife Nichole. I’m not exactly sure how much I liked it yet. There were definitely some cool aspects to it like John Cusack not in a High Fidelity - Grosse Pointe Blank - Say Anything role (even though I own and enjoy all 3), Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz, interesting plot, etc.
Some things I didn’t really like was how the movie kinda advocated that gun companies are responsible for the violence that people act out with them. I’m sure many people disagree with me on this, as I so easily found out being at Taylor, but I really don’t see the logic in that. Being a gun owner, I know that it takes a finger to pull the trigger. The gun is just a tool. More people die every year car related incidents then gun related incidents. So why don’t people get ‘up-in-arms’ (pun intended) over crappy drivers all the time and sue the car companies? Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox.
This movie was a decent court-room drama sort of thing that was a bit suspenseful and contained a few twist sorta things. If you’re a Cusack fan I’d definitely recommend this - especially if you enjoyed seeing him branch out in Identity.
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