Hot Pursuit (3/10): Not so hot after all

“He is known as the Bank of Bogota, the Tender Tender, the Lender Lender, the Money Launderer, El Chapo, the Pork Chop.”

There are films where the producers and everyone involved in the making of the movie seem to demand that its audience shut down their brain in order to simply enjoy the movie and have fun with it, and then there are movies like Hot Pursuit where it’s simply imposible to experience any pleasure from it no matter how long you’ve shut down your brain for. Hot Pursuit is the definition of lazy film making where every character is a stereotype and all the jokes seem to revolve around the same concepts: white southern girls are flat and uptight, while latinas are loud, busty and aggressive. There is not much more to this film that only stands out because it stars two females in the lead roles. We’ve all been asking for more substantial roles for females so it is always a delight to see a film like this highlighting two females as the main stars. Unfortunately the script lacks ideas and the comedy falls completely flat which doesn’t help the feminist case at all. 

The film stars two extremely talented and funny actresses, but the script completely handcuffs them and there isn’t anything they can do to save the movie. If you want to have fun go watch Sofia Vergara in any episode of Modern Family and I guarantee you that you will get more laughs out of it. Reese Witherspoon was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year for her performance in Wild where she was outstanding, but if she’s not careful she might end up turning into the next Cameron Diaz who tries so hard to be funny that she only ends up being annoying. If you want to see Witherspoon giving a fun performance then check out Legally Blonde or Election which were the two films that put her on the radar. Vergara and Witherspoon are funny actresses so on papers this seemed like an interesting project, but here they aren’t given any opportunity to shine.

The premise of the film is pretty simple: Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) is an uptight cop who takes the law seriously. Her boss asks her to escort a key witness who is going to testify against an important drug cartel leader. The witness is Daniella Riva (Sofia Vergara). Things don’t go as expected as several corrupt cops and drug dealers try to prevent the two women from reaching their destination. There are also some twists along the way that really don’t add much to the comedy. The film is an excuse to put the two talented females together, but the screenwriters managed to take away whatever magic the two actresses might have had together. Hot Pursuit might be one of the frontrunners for this year’s Razzies for its lack of imagination and being such a missed opportunity.  

Best Laid Plans (5/10): Bad planning

“Who's created this problem? Someone is gonna get hurt, Bryce. It's just a question of who.”

There’s nothing really special about Mike Barker’s Best Laid Plans, but somehow it manages to remain slightly interesting during its short runtime. There’s something about 90’s neo-noir thrillers that manage to captivate me and although this film isn’t up to par with some of the better movies in the genre (the best example that comes to mind is the Wachowski’s Bound), I still appreciated it for its nostalgic value and some decent performances. Alessandro Nivola delivers a solid lead performance and I don’t think he’s ever been better than he was here. It’s a shame he didn’t get more opportunities to star in better films and has only gotten mostly supporting roles. Reese Witherspoon wasn’t that big of a star as she is now, but you could tell by her work here that she would get places. It would be nice to see her in more roles for thrillers like this one. The greatest flaw of the film is that it relies on one too many twists and once you get the feel of what the screenwriter was trying to do you can basically guess what the next twist is going to be. Ted Griffin’s script still managed to entertain although it’s not a story that will stick with you after you watch the film. It keeps you engaged throughout most of the first half of the film, but then it begins to unravel up to the climactic scene, that’s just way too silly even for the 90’s.

The film opens with a diner scene between two old college friends that are getting together for the first time in years. Bryce (Josh Brolin) is in town for a few days house sitting for a wealthy family, and so he has decided to phone Nick (Alessandro Nivola) to meet up with him. While the two are having a couple of drinks together a beautiful girl named Kathy (Resse Witherspoon) walks in. Nick receives a call from his girlfriend and says he’s got to go, but Bryce stays and ends up taking Kathy home with him. Later that night Nick receives a desperate call from Bryce asking him to come over to his house. He says Kathy has threatened to go to the police claiming he has raped her. He has absolutely no recollection of what happened, but after going through her purse he discovers she’s only 16. Bryce didn’t know what to do so he handcuffed Kathy in the basement and is hoping Nick can help him. He wants to talk to her alone so Bryce lets him and that is where we discover that everything was a setup and that Kathy’s name is actually Lissa and she’s Nick’s girlfriend. The film then shifts four months into the past where we are introduced to how Nick and Lissa met and the predicament they get into after making a deal with some small time local criminals (played by Terrence Howard) which gets them in even more trouble as the twists begin to pile along the way.  

For all the twists and turns that Barker takes his audience through, the film ends up disappointing by trying to wrap things up a bit too nicely at the end. You get so used to the dark atmosphere and the betrayals that it becomes pretty evident what direction the movie is going to take at the end. I still enjoyed the ride although I wasn’t pleased with the destination, but the performances are engaging enough to still make the experience worth the while. There’s just something about the 90’s neo-thriller vibe that always seems to engage me. There’s not much more to add about this film, give it a try if you’re a fan of the cast or the genre, otherwise skip it because it’s pretty forgettable.   

The Good Lie (7/10): There's such a thing as a good lie

“I have courage but all you have is strength.”

 

Director Philippe Falardeau’s follow up to his Oscar nominated film, Monsieur Lazhar, centers on a group of Sudanese children who have managed to escape the massacre of their village during the Civil War and walked nearly a thousand miles to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. At the time, thousands of Sudanese were forced to flee out of their country due to the war and find refugee in camps across Ethiopia and Kenya. After nearly thirteen years of living in poor conditions the kids were relocated to the United States along with other  thousands of “lost boys.” Mamere (Arnold Oceng), Jeremiah (Ger Duany), and Paul (Emmanuel Jal) are sent to Kansas where they meet Carrie (Reese Witherspoon), an employment counselor who helps them adjust to their new lives. Mamere’s sister, Abital (Kuoth Wiel) on the other hand is sent to Boston because there was no family willing to take her in Kansas and for some strange reason she wasn’t allowed to stay with the boys. The first 30 minutes of the film take place in Sudan as we follow the children’s journey to safety and experience some of the horrors they had to go through in their long walk. Once the surviving children arrive in Kansas the film centers on their struggle to adjust to this new life. The Good Lie is an uplifting and inspiring story that ends up falling into the classic fish out of water tale once the refugees arrive in America. The film finds a perfect balance in tone mixing comedy with the inspiring and emotional drama and I was completely engaged with the story. 

Contrary to what the poster may lead you to believe, Reese Witherspoon is only a supporting character in this film. The film centers on the four surviving Sudanese refugees, and these newcomers deliver solid performances. Duany and Jal are both former “lost boys’ in real life making the incredible journey from their torn villages to becoming Hollywood actors. Both were even forced to be child soldiers and I’m sure their testimony is even more powerful than this film itself, but knowing where they have come from gives this movie an even more inspiring and uplifting feeling to it. Oceng gives perhaps the best performance in the film, and he too comes from a Sudanese background (his father was a lost boy who was relocated to England). The actors deliver some incredibly engaging performances and the camera many times focuses on their faces which say a lot about how they are feeling. The greatest strength of The Good Lie is that it manages to keep the center of the story on the Lost Boys and not make it all about how the Americans managed to rescue these people. That is why Witherspoon takes a back seat and lets the four Sudanese actors be the driving force of this movie. The title itself has deep significance and is explained later on in a touching scene involving Oceng’s character.

It is almost impossible not to like a film when there is such an inspirational part of history that is being told through the camera lens. The film has many flaws and at times the opening events feel a little rushed, but it works because it allows the audience to fill in the blanks of the many horrors these children must have gone through without forcing the melodramatic moments and being too explicit. Seeing the grief and pain in the actors faces is enough to understand where they are coming from and what they are feeling. The scenes involving the cultural clash may seem a bit too generic because we’ve seen it played out many times before but the formula continues to work nonetheless and there are plenty of humorous moments. It’s a shame not many people watched this story because it is one that is worth being seen. Witherspoon’s strong performance in Wild may have led fans to watch that movie over this one, but I found The Good Lie to be the better movie of the two. The Good Lie is an emotionally engaging and moving film so if you happen to get a chance to see it, I’d recommend it.     

Inherent Vice (4/10): The First time I was disappointed with a PTA film

“She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to. Doc hadn't seen her for over a year. Nobody had.”

Before I get a lot of hate for disliking this film I just want to say that I have a lot of respect for Paul Thomas Anderson as a director and have rated all of his previous films with at least four out of five stars. Inherent Vice was one of my most anticipated films for 2014 because his recent movies have been mesmerizing. The Master and There Will Be Blood are both films that I absolutely love. Inherent Vice unfortunately didn’t work for me and I had a very difficult time keeping up with the movie’s plot. I was unfamiliar with Thomas Pynchon’s recent novel which this film was adapted from, and perhaps the movie works best for audiences who have read it, but I just couldn’t follow what was going on. There are many characters who seem to be mumbling their lines and stoned out of their lives, so at times it was hard to figure out wether we were seeing actual events or simple hallucinations. I also had difficulty understanding a lot of the dialogue and found the pacing extremely slow. I put a lot of effort into trying to understand the plot of the film, but I simply didn’t get it. The comedy didn’t work for me either and at times I felt like I was missing a lot of the jokes everyone else seemed to enjoy. It was one of the rare films that I thought I wasn’t going to be able to finish, because I felt tempted to walk out of the movie. I kept with it out of the respect I have for Anderson’s work, but in all honesty I wasn’t able to engage with the characters.

There are some great performances in Inherent Vice. Joaquin Phoenix is impressive and delivers a solid and believable role as Doc Sportello, a private eye who is constantly getting high. Josh Brolin also delivers as Bigfoot, the tough detective who is always on Doc’s back. Katherine Waterston plays this sort of femme fatale who had been Doc’s girlfriend in the past and needs his help investigating her current lover (Played by Eric Roberts). I don’t want to get into details into the plot because it isn’t really important in Inherent Vice. This isn’t your conventional detective mystery story. The narration is hard to follow and many characters are introduced in the story with no specific purpose other than to invade Doc’s world. 

Anderson tends to choose projects that center on the end of an era, and in Inherent Vice it revolves around the end of the psychedelic 60’s. You get this sense of nostalgia towards that era where the hippies dominated the scene. Anderson does a great job at capturing that period very well and he transports us to this time. It is perhaps the greatest thing about this film along with the strong performances, but the lack of a cohesive narrative and its extremely long running time made it very difficult for me to endure. This is the first Anderson film that I have to admit I didn’t enjoy and that I won’t be revisiting any time soon. The story is completely absurd and the humor wasn’t for me. I kind of feel like I’m the odd one out when everyone else is praising the comedy because I simply never got it. It was a very boring and non engaging experience personally, but I still haven’t lost my respect for what Anderson does. I just wasn’t interested in these character and wasn’t able to follow the story (which I think is purposely done this way). I think The Big Lebowski does a much better job of creating a fun experience for the audience with engaging characters without having an important plot. 

Wild (6/10): A long walk in search of self-recovery

“What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed?”

Over the past decades Nick Hornby’s novels have been adapted for the big screen successfully (About a Boy, High Fidelity). He also adapted the wonderful screenplay for An Education. His latest screenplay, Wild, is based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir who hiked over a thousand miles in the Pacific Crest Trail on her own. It is quite a fascinating tale directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club) and starring Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl. The Canadian born director has proven in the past that he can get great performances from his actors, and he does so once again. Witherspoon seems to be playing a similar character from the one she played in MUD. She has been through some traumatic events which have caused her some self destructive addiction problems, but we don’t know what they are at first because the way that Vallee tells the story is through flashbacks as Cheryl is walking through the trail. It rewards patient viewers because despite not being able to identify with her at the beginning we are given small glimpses of her past that will later on allow us to understand why she is doing this. What is made clear from the very opening scene is that she isn’t doing this simply as an adventure because she has  no experience whatsoever. She is walking with way too much weight despite her small size, which also is symbolic because we soon realize that she is carrying a heavy burden herself. Wild’s strength relies on Witherspoon’s performance and those encounters she has along the way, but this is ultimately a road trip movie we’ve seen done many times before in the past (Emilio Estevez directed his father Martin Sheen in The Way a few years ago, and Emile Hirsch starred in Into the Wild both with a very similar premise). Despite the gorgeous landscape, I wasn’t awed by the cinematography which kept its focus on Witherspoon’s inner struggles as she walked the walk.

Unlike what I’ve heard from most audiences, I wasn’t moved by Wild. It tells a powerful story, but somehow I didn’t feel that connection with the heroine of the film. Witherspoon gives a strong performance and we see her without any makeup and full of bruises from the expedition during most of the film. This was very much a physical role for her and she went all in. Laura Dern has also received a lot of acclaim for her supporting role as Cheryl’s mother during the flashback scenes. This mother and daughter relationship is given a lot of importance in Wild and both actresses deliver, although I wouldn’t go as far as considering them amongst my favorite of the year. They’ve both been nominated for their performances. The flashbacks weren’t my favorite part of the film however, because I enjoyed the encounters Cheryl had during the trail. She spends most of the film walking on her own, but there are brief encounters with several other hikers along the way. Those were perhaps the most engaging moments of the film for me. They are simple encounters, but very authentic reminding us the importance of human interaction. There is a scene near the end of the film where she encounter a boy and her grandmother that is very touching. Wild covers too familiar a territory to stand out for me, but I still enjoyed it and definitely would recommend it for Witherspoon’s strong lead performance. I would say that Wild isn’t as much a film about self-discovery as it is about self-recovery becauase Cheryl is trying to recover from destructive addictions while isolating herself from society and taking a thousand mile journey across the Pacific Crest. 

My Review: Election (6/10)

"You see, you can't interfere with destiny, that's why it's destiny. And if you try to interfere, the same thing's just going to happen anyway, and you'll just suffer."

Election is Alexander Payne's sophomore film and many consider it to be his best work since it uses some slick and witty dark humor to make a satirical political comedy. Payne manages to mix this political satire with High School life by using the school elections as a metaphor for American politics and in doing so the film is rather successful. Just like that famous short essay written by Robert Fulghum "All I Really Need to Learn I Learned in Kindergarten" where he claims that if we sticked to the basic rules we learned in kindergarten we would live in a better society, here Payne compares politics to High School elections and shows how corrupt the system actually can be and how selfish these people are. The dirty campaigns all begin in High School and these people seem to be doing things for themselves rather than to help others. I think this is what works best in Payne's ambitious film. I enjoyed the scenes that took place in the High School, but when Payne takes us out of the school to the characters homes it kind of loses its magic. I didn't care very much about their lives outside of school. One of the things that Payne does best is create interesting characters and that is why the actors give engaging performances because they have a lot to work with. These characters are usually dislikable, but somehow we end up routing for one despite all their flaws. Reese Witherspoon's character is so annoying that we actually want Matthew Broderick to succeed despite all the immoral acts he is committing. They both give strong performances, although compared to other Payne films I thought they were the weakest characters. Sideways still remains as my favorite Payne film, but his work here obviously opened a lot of doors for him. Payne is one of the best when it comes to creating midwestern American characters.

Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is a very driven and ambitious student from Carver High who has high goals and expectations for her life. One of those goals is becoming class president, and despite the fact that she is running unopposed she still dedicates most of her time in school to achieving this. Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) is one of her teachers, but he doesn't like her very much because she had an affair with his best friend, Dave (Mark Harelik), a former teacher who got expelled from school when the director found out. Jim, who is married to Diane (Molly Hagan), decides to complicate things for Tracy by convincing the school jock, Paul (Chris Klein) to enter the race. When Paul's lesbian sister, Tammy (Jessica Campbell), discovers that he is campaigning for class president, she decides to run as well to pay him back for dating a former love interest of hers. And soon what seemed to be a simple election becomes chaotic as the dirty campaign begins. Will Tracy achieve her goal or will her teacher crash her dream?

The film has each character describe the events that are going on through voice over narrations. At first I thought it didn't work very well as it took me out of the story, but then I understood what Payne was trying to achieve (or at least this is what it transmitted to me), by letting his characters narrate what they were experiencing we understood what they were trying to achieve, the way they wanted others to see them, but of course their actions were completely opposite to the way they wanted to be perceived. It was like their own mask, because they were nothing like what they wanted to be perceived as (take Jim for example who considered himself a likable and influential teacher, but really he ends up being quite the opposite). The characters in this film are very well developed, but they were probably my least favorite from a Payne film. I wasn't a big fan of Chris Klein's performance, but the rest of the cast was pretty strong. The dark humor was witty, but it just wasn't my cup of tea and didn't care for any of the characters. Election may be one of Payne's most ambitious and satirical films, but I would rather sit through Sideways a hundred times than seeing these characters again.

My Review: MUD (10/10)

"I just can't spend the rest of my life running away with him."

Jeff Nichols surprised everyone a few years ago with his excellent film, Take Shelter, and now he delivers another great movie with MUD. Despite being more mainstream than Take Shelter and less artistic, I enjoyed this film more because of the way the story was narrated and the characters were developed. I was blown away with this story and in my opinion it is the best film of the year and my first five star review of the year as well. The screenplay, written by Jeff Nichols, seemed to be taken straight from an unpublished Mark Twain novel. It felt like I was watching a contemporary adventure of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. MUD was fantastic, I felt like it took some of the best elements of some other films like Stand By Me and Sling Blade and improved them. Nichols knows about small southern towns and the location becomes an important character in this superb and suspenseful film. In my opinion MUD is a masterpiece and I could watch it many more times thanks to the way in which Nichols drew me into the story and got me emotionally involved with the characters. It is a very rewarding film if you remain patient and let the story slowly build into what it becomes. It is a character driven film with some powerful performances and some great visuals.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are two young teenagers living on the banks of the Mississippi River in Arkansas. These good friends decide to sneak out of their houses one morning to a small island where Neckbone has spotted a boat on top of a tree. Apparently the boat ended up there after a flood that took place sometime in the past and these kids recently discovered it. Wanting to claim it as their own they climb the tree and to their surprise they discover that someone has been living there. That is when they meet Mud (Matthew McConaughey) a fugitive who has been hiding out from the police and some bounty hunters after committing a crime for the love of his life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). Ellis, who has an idealistic view about love decides to help Mud convinced that their love story is pure. Shaped by Mud's story and love for Juniper, Ellis begins to have feelings of his own for a girl named May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant). He really feels the need for Mud and Juniper to be able to escape safely together after seeing how the marriage of his parents, Senior (Ray McKinnon) and Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson), begins to crumble at home.

Matthew McConaughey is superb in this film and in my opinion gives one of the best performances of his career. He has been on quite a role lately with some very interesting roles. I hope he gets nominated for his work here. As much as I enjoyed his performance, I don't know if the movie would have worked without the strong lead performance from the two young kids, especially from Sheridan who is the lead character and through whose eyes we see everything. Sheridan blew me away and I really cared for his character. There is so much depth to his character and we see the range of emotions that he goes through. He is tough but at the same time sweet, he has strong convictions about love but at the same time these convictions are being put to a test. Sheridan nails the role and delivers this film. There are also some strong secondary performances from Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon who plays a very different role here. Shannon's character, Neckbone's uncle, has the funniest scenes and brings some lightness to the story. This is by far the best film I've seen this year. I loved the story, the characters, and the suspense. The attention to southern detail that Nichols makes only improves this film and makes it more emotionally involving than it already is. 

My Review: This Means War (8/10)

¨It`s spy against spy.¨

This Means War is a really silly and predictable film, but I had a great time with it thanks to the excellent cast. Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, and Reese Witherspoon are great actors, and they prove it in this film in which they turn mediocre material into an extremely fun film. I couldn’t stop laughing while seeing Tom Hardy in action. He is one of my favorite actors and you can hardly recognize him in most of his films. I never expected to see him in a rom-com like this, and I usually hate most of these predictable and painfully unfunny films, but This Means War is the exception. It could be my new guilty pleasure, considering it did get trashed by most of the critics. Everyone in the theater I saw it with was laughing hysterically, so I guess I wasn’t the only one. This film was directed by McG, the man who brought the Charlie`s Angels to the big screen, and this might be my favorite film of his (although that isn’t saying much because I pretty much hated his other movies). The screenplay was written by Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg. It isn`t really funny, but the actors make the movie and the jokes better. I guess Chelsea Handler wrote all her lines herself because it sounded like the advice she would truly give her friends on TV. I wasn’t too much of a fan of her character, but the rest of the cast made the film for me. I knew everything that was going to happen, even the twist at the end, but that didn’t ruin the film one bit; it was seeing Hardy in this role I`d never think I`d see him in that made this such a pleasant experience. Witherspoon and Pine held their par as well. This is no Lethal Weapon, but it still was entertaining.

FDR Foster (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy) are spies working for the CIA. After their latest assignment blows out of proportions and leaves several people dead, their boss takes them off the field and assigns them to office duties only. FDR and Tuck were made for the field, so life in the office grows increasingly tedious for them. Besides working together, they are great friends. FDR is a ladies’ man; he is good at hitting on girls and having one night stands with them, while Tuck has a harder time finding a woman after his latest marriage failed. He does have a six year old son named Joe. Tuck decides to try his luck on a dating website so he publishes his picture and description hoping he can meet a nice girl. Lauren (Reese Witherspoon), who left Atlanta for a man that later left her for another woman, is now an independent working woman who hasn`t really dated anyone seriously after being dumped. Her best friend, Trish (Chelsea Handler), places a profile of her on the dating website without her permission. When Lauren finds out she ends up seeing Tuck`s picture in the site and decides to give it a try. The date goes well, but later Lauren runs into FDR who also makes a move on her (having not realized that she is the girl Tuck is dating). Both FDR and Tuck realize they`re dating the same woman and decide to compete for her without letting her know they know each other. They make a gentleman`s agreement and don’t think this situation will harm their friendship one bit, but what will happen when both men fall for her?

 The story is pretty simple and we`ve seen it before, but it’s the actors that make the movie so much fun. I focused mainly on the romantic triangle because that is the center of the movie, although there is a pretty ridiculous side plot dealing with a villain named Heinrich (Til Schweiger), but that story doesn’t do much for the film really. I guess they placed it there to keep some of the guys interested and have some action scenes, although the scenes are really cartoonish and dumb. The fun in this film isn’t trying to guess who Lauren will choose, but really seeing these two men fighting each other and trying to boycott each other`s date. Pine and Hardy are two excellent action stars, but I hadn’t seen them in this sort of role before and they were great in it. I laughed at most of the goofy moments, and I can see how so many critics hated it, but I can also see why so many people got a kick out of this movie as well. This Means War isn’t a memorable film, it won`t win any awards, but it is an entertaining movie and an interesting option for a date movie. I really had a blast with this film; my new guilty pleasure.

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My Review: Water for Elephants (7/10)

¨I don`t know if I picked that circus. But something told me that circus picked me.¨

Francis Lawrence (I am Legend, Constantine) directed this film which was adapted from Sara Gruen`s novel of the same name by screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You, The Bridges of Madison County). Water for Elephants is a period drama that takes us back to the era of the Great Depression and introduces us to the dark side of the circus entertainment industry. Not everything is pure fun and entertainment because once the show is over we get to see the suffering and difficulties that go along with running a circus. Some things are just illusions as we soon find out from the mean spirited manager of the traveling circus. He seems so fun and nice during the show, but when the lights go off he runs the place with a stern hand, throwing coworkers off a running train, or beating animals whenever he`s upset. The mood of the Great Depression can be felt throughout the entire film, and only when the show is running can we experience the illusion of happiness. There is also a love triangle involved which makes things more depressing because it proves how difficult love can be at times. I really enjoyed this period drama and thought it depicted the era quite nicely. There are some interesting characters, but the heart of the film revolves around the elephant (which happens to be the star of the circus and the symbol of hope during their struggle to survive).

Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) is a veterinary student who seems to be living a normal life until he receives some bad news: his parents have just passed away in a car accident leaving him with nothing. Jacob abandons college and ends up spending the night on a train. The train happens to belong to a traveling circus but there is no space for newcomers. One of the men that find him wants to throw him off the train, but another saves him and introduces him to the manager of the circus: August (Christoph Waltz). August runs the circus with a very stern hand, he`s volatile and dangerous, but at the same time he has the charisma it takes to run a circus show. When August realizes that Jacob is a veterinarian, he hires him so that he can take care of the animals which are pretty much all in a bad shape. The first thing he has to do is sacrifice one of the horses who was badly injured, and unfortunately happened to be the star of the circus along with her rider Marlena (Reese Witherspoon). Now with little money and no main attraction to bring in an audience the circus is barely struggling to survive. August might be mean and evil, but he is a visionary and finds an opportunity when he encounters an elephant named Rosie and decides to invest all his money on that animal. Marlena must learn how to ride it, and Jacob how to master it. The two young good looking kids spend a lot of time together and they begin to fall for each other. The only problem is that Marlena is married to August and he will surely not let go of her so easily.

I could think of no better actor to play the part of August than Christoph Waltz. He is just great in this film and inspired fear every time he got upset. He proved Inglorious Basterds was no fluke and he is a great villain. At times he seemed nice, but he was just a time bomb waiting to explode the moment something went wrong. I loved Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, but in this film her performance isn`t really memorable. I would have preferred another actress in this role, I really didn`t feel the chemistry between her and Robert Pattinson. It was good to see Pattinson playing a none-vampire role, but I would have chosen two different actors to play these roles. They are probably the weakest links in the film. The film actually picks up when we are introduced to Rosie, the elephant. Without her I don’t think I would have enjoyed the movie as much as I did. She doesn’t just save the circus, she also saves this film. She is the heart and soul of the picture. This isn`t one of the best films of the year, but it is a satisfying and entertaining film and definitely worth your time. It could have been so much better if the lead actors would have had a better chemistry between them. The romance didn`t work as well as it should have, but the film still succeeds at depicting the era and the mood during the Great Depression. Rosie and Waltz are worth the ticket price alone.

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