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DVD We Don't Live Here Anymore
Few movies offer as intimate a portrait of a fragmenting marriage as We Don't Live Here Anymore. Jack (Mark Ruffalo, You Can Count on Me) and Terry (Laura Dern, Citizen Ruth) are best friends with Edith (Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive) and Hank (Peter Krause, HBO's Six Feet Under)--but Edith and Jack, frustrated with their own marriages, have fallen into an affair that gradually erodes all of their lives. Most movies pretend their sex scenes are really about the characters' emotions; in this case, it's true. The movie's greatest strength, however, is that it's as much about parents and children as husbands and wives; the children of both marriage are as caught up in the events as the adults, and are often more clear-eyed about it all. The whole cast turns in strong performances, but Ruffalo and Dern are particularly vivid. A sad, hopeful, beautiful movie. --Bret Fetzer
So you have this terminally uninteresting individual, really, TERMINALLY UNINTERESTING, and you multiply him times four. Then you put these four in a situation where their boring problems become yours because, after all, you, you simp, paid for this DVD. Their marriages have become abysmally stale (no surprise there), but they are all too guilt ridden to avail themselves of the obvious solution which is to enjoy their affairs with each other's spouses and shut up. Once the secret is out about their respective infidelities everyone goes away mad and returns to the 1950s.
And so we are left with Hollywood's version of a morality tale.
This crowd really makes you yearn for Mae West and Errol Flynn.
God-Awful, Marriage-Bashing, Depressing Film
In "We Don't Live Here Anymore," Edith (Naomi Watts) compares being married to a gorilla in a cage eating his own sh*t. When I rented this film, I was expecting some intelligent, elegant philosophizing on suburban marriage and adult friendship among married couples.
This film has nothing intelligent to say. It only serves to depress. It makes a strong anti-marriage statement. None of the positives of marriage are discussed - only children are shown to be a light in an otherwise bleak institution.
If not for the superb acting of Laura Dern and Mark Ruffalo, this movie would have received one star from this reviewer.
"I wonder how we'll get caught."
From director John Curran comes the nasty little drama--"We Don't Live Here Anymore." It works to the film's overall advantage that we neither care nor like the film's 4 main characters--2 married couples. College Professor Hank Evans (Peter Krause) is terminally unfaithful and largely ignores his wife, Edith (Naomi Watts). Meanwhile, Edith consoles herself with Jack Linden (Mark Ruffalo) who's married to Terry (Laura Dern). The two married couples are 'best friends', and spend frequent drunken evenings together. These evenings are marked by sly sidelong glances and quick furtive gropes. While Jack and Edith indulge in their adulterous affair, there's also chemistry between Hank and Terry. Is this chemistry a natural consequence of the fallout between two neglected spouses in a claustrophic social situation, or is it revenge?
Hank and Jack both teach English at Cedar County College, and they also jog together. In fact Jack uses jogging as an excuse to get out of the mayhem in his home and meet Edith for noontime trysts. At the college, Hank has his own office, and is trying hard to get published. Jack has to share an office--so we know his status at work is less than Hank's, and yet while the subject is never mentioned between the two men, there's a subtle, underlying competitive streak in all their interactions. Similarly, during her noontime trysts with Jack, Edith professes to really like Terry, but their interactions are laced with subtle criticisms of Terry's lack-of-performance as a housewife. Edith even whispers that she'd "feed" Jack better if they were married.
"We Don't Live Here Anymore" is an excellent portrayal of the decaying state of two marriages. There's a pathology to adultery, and it's captured here in the interactions between these four people who have a tremendous capacity for causing themselves and each other pain while studiously avoiding their problems. Jack works quite hard to protect his marriage when it comes to Terry discovering the truth, but at the same time he steadily undermines the relationship by avoidance, lies, and a refusal to communicate. "We Don't Live Here Anymore" isn't particularly easy to watch, but it is a raw, accurate depiction of adulterous adults at their worst--displacedhuman
Jeff Bridges demonstrates once again that he is one of the finest actors in film. Ted Cole (Bridges, Seabiscuit, The Big Lebowski), a successful writer/illustrator of children's books, invites a young student named Eddie (Jon Foster) to be his assistant for a summer. Eddie doesn't realize he's being drawn into the middle of a dissolving marriage until Ted's wife Marion (Kim Basinger, L. A. Confidential) invites him into an affair--which Ted both condones and resents. Slowly, Eddie comes to understand the secrets that are tearing the marriage apart. Bridges never shows off; everything he does seems simple, natural, almost unavoidable, but it's also utterly watchable. Whether you like the movie will depend on whether you like John Irving (The Door in the Floor is... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jeff Bridges - Kim Basinger - Jon Foster Director(s): Tod Williams DVD Release Date: Released the 14 December 2004 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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In 1994, director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Waking Life) made Before Sunrise, a gorgeous poem of a movie about two strangers (played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) wandering around Vienna, talking, and falling in love. Ten years later, Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy have returned with Before Sunset, which reunites the same characters after Hawke has written a book about that night. Delpy appears at the final book reading of his European tour; they have less than two hours before Hawke has to catch a flight to New York...and in that time, they walk around Paris, talk, and fall in love all over again. It sounds simple, perhaps dull, but it's written with such skill and care and acted with such richness that it's a miracle of filmmaking. On its own,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ethan Hawke - Julie Delpy Director(s): Richard Linklater DVD Release Date: Released the 09 November 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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When a movie can blend passionate social concern with good old-fashioned suspense, it must be doing something right. Maria Full of Grace scores high on both counts. Maria is a Colombian teenager who, for a large paycheck, agrees to be a mule for drug-runners: she has to swallow dozens of thumb-sized capsules of heroin and smuggle them into New York. This debilitating process is painstakingly described, and of course not everything goes as planned when Maria and her fellow mules land in America. Director Joshua Marston is working on a low budget, which explains the film's narrow, single-minded focus--but this may be a strength, not a weakness. The trump card is the lead performance of Catalina Sandrino Moreno, who won awards at the Seattle and Newport Film Festivals. Her empathetic... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Catalina Sandino Moreno - Guilied Lopez - Orlando Tobon Director(s): Joshua Marston DVD Release Date: Released the 07 December 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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