January movie reviews

Not a lot out there the first of the year...



REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. Leonardo DiCaprio is Frank, a WWII vet. Kate Winslet is April, a young woman looking for an exciting life as an actress. They meet post-war, and April is enchanted by Frank, because he had been in France and talks about how "alive" the people were. Flash forward to 1955, and they are married, have two children, and live in the suburbs. Frank has a job he hates, but it comes out that, in fact, he doesn't have the adventuresome spirit. April truly does, though, and she feels stuck in her boring life. She wants to believe they still have the chance to be the couple she envisioned when they got married. But it is becoming clear to her that Frank is not her man. So the movie goes back and forth between the two of them having screaming arguments, and her trying to be content with her lot in life. It is the 1950's, when women didn't have a lot of options. Very well-played and written, but not the kind of movie I particularly enjoy. Very "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", where a couple's disappointments in their partners come out in vicious ways.


LAST CHANCE HARVEY. Harvey (Dustin Hoffman) writes commercial jingles for a living. He lives in New York, and as the movie opens, he is going to London to be at his daughter's wedding. It is obvious he is somewhat estranged from the daughter and his ex-wife. Kate (Emma Thompson) works at the Heathrow airport collecting statistics for some reason or another. She gets set up by a friend, but it doesn't work out, and it's pretty obvious she has been hurt many times. She also has a mother who is very needy, always calling. Harvey and Kate's paths eventually cross, and they reach out to each other. And spend some time getting to know each other, sort of. They are both nice enough people, I guess. So the movie is not horrible, but I didn't really get what they saw in each other, especially Kate. It was more like she was so desperate for anyone to be nice to her, as opposed to the two really having a meaningful connection. Just OK.