Stoker

Um...?

I really wanted to like this one. After all, Chan-wook Park made Oldboy (aka one of the greatest films ever made that did not need a remake). But is was mostly just beautiful shots of stoic people.

The story is that of India Stoker and her weird mother Evelyn, trying to deal with the sudden loss of father and husband Richard. On the day of his funeral his younger brother Charlie shows up and just hangs around, creepily looking at them both and first killing the housekeeper and then his visiting aunt.

Both, Evelyn and India become infatuated with him and he plays along. After India and Charlie team up in killing India's high school friend Whip (his name is Whip?) who is about to rape young India, the girl learns that her uncle Charlie was in fact in a mental institution for the last twenty or so years for killing his and Richard's little brother Jonathan. Little Charlie was jealous of all the attention the baby got from his older brother, so he dug a hole for the boy (literally).

What's more, on India's 18th birthday not only did Richard die in a car accident but it was also the day Charlie got released from the institution. Learning that Richard did not, in fact, want him in his family but rather got him a car and an apartment in far away New York, Charlie snaps (yet again) and beats his brother to death before staging a car accident.

Now, does this make India shy away from her uncle. No it does not. Rather she decides to leave with him for New York. But then the mother gets in the way. She sees the pair get overly friendly and as Charlie is in the process of committing yet another murder, India shoots him instead. And then takes off alone. And then kills a cop that stops her for speeding.

Somewhat disappointing - to me, anyway.

5/10

W. E.

Oooh! What pretty clothes! What pretty jewels! And such nice slow motion shots!

Well....the acting is quite good, actually.

Overall, Madonna's vanity project (not my words, but many a critic's) is way too hectic to tell a decent story. It does try to with the current day story of Wally, neglected wife by her doctor husband. She is strangely obsessed with the love story of King Edward and Wallis Simpson, as her mother and grandmother were before her. So much so that she will eventually go to Paris to meet with Mohamed Al-Fayed because he has hundreds of letters written by Wallis Simpson that she simply must! read! The scene of the actual first meeting is somewhat ridiculous. She tells him she wants to know what she gave up for him, as everyone else was so interested in what he gave up for her. Al-Fayed then does the classic, I-never-thought-of-if-that-way line.

*eye-roll*

The story of Edward and Wallis is told so fitfully it does not even tell a comprehensive story. It only shows parties and paparazzi and desperate looking people. To me, this would have been the more interesting  tale because it has the potential of being a tragedy worth telling.

But, oh what pretty clothes!

4/10

People Like Us

After his estranged father dies, selfish hot shot (with money and possibly pending legal problems) Sam finds out he has a sister he never knew about. He is supposed to get in touch with her and give her and her troubled 11-yr. old son Josh $ 150.000,--. Sam, needing the money and generally upset, wants to keep it for himself but is still curious about this unknown family branch.

He starts stalking her, basically. He worms his way into her life and of course she mistakes his brotherly feelings for something different until he eventually spits out the truth. They clash, she throws him out, takes the money, moves to a new house.

Thanks to precocious little Josh, however, they manage to reconnect and make peace.

...and they all lived happily ever after. You know, just like in real life.

3/10

The Joneses

The family Jones is made up of a group of pretty people that practice stealth marketing. They represent everything their neighbors want to be and as a result, improve sales figures for whatever new product they are assigned to push.

The mother power walks in the niftiest new clothes, the father mows the lawns in the newest mowers, the kids flash all their great new stuff around school and for their new friends. And the friends and neighbors bite...whether they can afford to or not.

Of course, the marketing concept gets the proper Hollywood treatment - an illicit affair, the token gay character, real romance and the big tragedy that finally cracks the shiny front the family unit put up.

Personally, I would have preferred less shine and a little bit more grit to the story. In the end it is all just as shallow as the values the Joneses sell.

3/10