Category: Comedy - Comedy Video - Drama - Feature Film-comedy - Movie
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DVD Garden State
Zach Braff (from the TV show Scrubs) stars in his writing/directing debut, Garden State--normally a doomed act of hubris, but Braff pulls it off with unassuming charm. An emotionally numb actor in L.A., Andrew (Braff) comes back to New Jersey after nine years away for his mother's funeral. Andrew avoids his bitter father (Ian Holm, The Sweet Hereafter) and joins old friends (including the superb Peter Sarsgaard, Boys Don't Cry) in a round of parties. Along the way he meets a girl (Natalie Portman, Beautiful Girls) with demons of her own; bit by bit the two offer each other a little healing. Plotwise, Garden State is familiar stuff, a cross between The Graduate and a Meg Ryan movie, but Braff has an eye for goofy but resonant visual images, an ear for lively dialogue, and a great cast. The result is surprisingly fresh and funny. --Bret Fetzer
Garden State is one of my top 3 all-time favorite movies. One of the best soundtracks I've ever owned, unique dialogue, quirky and fun direction, and Natalie Portman and Zach Braff both hit their roles right on the head. I saw this twice in the theaters and loved it both times - one of the few movies I can watch over and over again and still love it.
I Love Natalie Portman
My choice in "romantic comedy weekend" (vs. wife's "Spanglish") was "Garden State", directed, written by and starring Zach Braff, has a promising future in the business. My wife only hung in thru about 10 minutes, though I encouraged her to give the rest of the movie a chance as it really picked up once Natalie Portman got involved as Braff's new girlfriend. It's nice to know that she got such a fun role after (before?) suffering through her time as queen in Star Wars the last. The whole film has a grittier feel than "Spanglish", which helped make it more to my taste. It's R-rated, but aside from a few "MF's" and some fairly substantial drug and alcohol use in the first 10 minutes, the story's probably OK for kids down to 11 or 12 (at least by my standards). The movie also has an interesting mental health aspect at its core and should appeal to those who've lived with someone who's under a psychiatrist's care.
Overwritten debut effort for the talented Zach Braff
Zach Braff of "Scrubs" fame wrote, directed and starred in "Garden State." The flick has a lot of good ideas, but at its heart there is a sodden, dull story that cannot be enlivened by copious amounts of wit.
Braff plays "Large," a once-successful actor now reduced to waiting tables in a Vietnamese restaurant. He returns home to Jersey when his mother dies, stirring lots of ugly family history. Once home, Large's emotional zombie-status becomes evident, but is almost matched by the toneless muddle of high school friends he runs into. The only spark is Sam (Natalie Portman), who for some reason falls for this sack of dull platitudes.
The script is too clever by half, invoking hamsters, silent velcro, an abyss, infomercials on real estate, and other inanities in an attempt at edginess. The movie feels like it was written by a hyper-depressed writer cut loose from the sad last year of "Northern Exposure." Couple this with a too-on-the-nose soundtrack and a wasted crop of actors (why, Ian Holm, why?), and you've got "Garden State."
Here's hoping Mr. Braff can get past the quips and into some serious storytelling.
As deadpan comedies go, Napoleon Dynamite stands in a class all its own. Played by John Heder, the title character is (in the words of critic Roger Ebert) "the kind of nerd other nerds avoid," a mouth-breathing dweeb with a mangy nest of orange hair, and ungainly features that suggest a perpetual state of half-conscious depression. He lives in Preston, Idaho (former home of 24-year-old director Jared Hess) with his thrill-seeking grandma and 32-year-old brother, and his days at high school consist mostly of being abused or ignored by indifferent classmates. Napoleon's sad-sack story doesn't offer the scathing, impassioned humor of Welcome to the Dollhouse because Hess (who cowrote the nearly plotless screenplay with his wife, Jerusha) doesn't have an angst-ridden axe to... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jared Hess DVD Release Date: Released the 16 May 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Screenwriters rarely develop a distinctive voice that can be recognized from movie to movie, but the ornate imagination of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) has made him a unique and much-needed cinematic presence. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a guy decides to have the memories of his ex-girlfriend erased after she's had him erased from her own memory--but midway through the procedure, he changes his mind and struggles to hang on to their experiences together. In other hands, the premise of memory-erasing would become a trashy science-fiction thriller; Kaufman, along with director Michel Gondry, spins this idea into a funny, sad, structurally complex, and simply enthralling love story that juggles morality, identity, and heartbreak with... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Michel Gondry DVD Release Date: Released the 28 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party. Almost immediately, Jack's insatiable need to sow some wild oats before his marriage leads them into double-dates with a rambunctious wine pourer (Sandra Oh, Under the Tuscan Sun) and a recently divorced waitress (Virginia Madsen, The Hot Spot)--and Miles discovers a little hope that he hasn't let himself feel in a long time. Sideways is a modest but finely tuned film; with gentle compassion, it explores the failures, struggles, and... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Alexander Payne DVD Release Date: Released the 05 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Four extremely beautiful people do extremely horrible things to one another in Closer, Mike Nichols' pungent adaptation of Patrick Marber's play that easily marks the Oscar-winning director's best work in years. Anna (Julia Roberts) is a photographer who specializes in portraits of strangers; Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer struggling to become a novelist; Alice (Natalie Portman) is an American stripper freshly arrived in London after a bad relationship; and Larry (Clive Owen) is a dermatologist who finds love under the most unlikely of circumstances. When their paths cross it's a dizzying supernova of emotions, as Nichols and Marber adroitly construct various scenes out of their lives that pair them again and again in various permutations of passion, heartbreak, anger,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Mike Nichols DVD Release Date: Released the 29 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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