Everything is Illuminated ****

I loved this movie. The trailers and marketing for this film hardly do it justice. The basic premise is simple, a young American Jew, Jonathan Safran Foer (played by Elijah Wood), travels to the Ukraine to discover the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. But above everything else, this film is a journey.

The film starts off light-heartedly with a great deal of comedy, mainly driven by the outstanding performance of Eugene Hutz as Alex. Elijah Wood's character is a strange little obsessive compulsive guy who we are shown "collects" things. There is a great deal of humor from the initial culture clash of these two character's worlds colliding, but that drops sharply in the middle of the film and the movie suddenly takes on a much more serious tone after the grandfather (Boris Leskin) has a particularly violent outburst. It is after this point that the film begins to take on it's gravitas.

The issue of anti-semitism is dealt with throughout the film, as this mismatched crew searches for a town that was obliterated during World War II. As so many movies, the real journey is not so much the physical one, but that of the characters finding themselves. It is in this journey that secrets and regrets are revealed and in the end, everything is illuminated.

This marks the directorial debut of actor Liev Schreiber, and while I thought it was great, I'm still left wondering how much better it could have been in more experienced hands. There seemed to be a somewhat plodding pace in the beginning and a lot of shots that really weren't relevant in showing us either the place or the story. That being said, it is still a very impressive first film. I thought Elijah Wood was great, if not too wooden. At times it was almost as if he held back in an effort not to look like that other character he played, the hairy footed hobbity one. The grandfather turned in a solid performance as well, but the real standout was Eugene Hurtz who managed to have both humor and grace in even the most dramatic moments.

The Brothers Grimm- ***

So how excited was I for the release of a new Terry Gilliam film? Gilliam has been conspicuously absent from the screen since 1998's rather disappointing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (with the exception of 2002's gut-wrenching Lost in La Mancha). The Brothers Grimm looked like it had all the elements…so what went so wrong?

This is a film that feels like it had so much edited out that we’re seeing a bare minimum of what the film should be, but at the same time, the plot itself doesn’t seem to require the two hours it already takes. The first half of the film, where we meet Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob (Heath Ledger) Grimm, moves at a lightning pace that does not fit Gilliam’s style. The quick cuts and jumpy edits never fully give us a chance to see what’s happening, and since Gilliam is all about his visuals, this hurts the film severely.

The Grimm brothers travel around Germany, taking advantage of villagers by pretending to rid them of the supernatural beings. They are discovered to be frauds by the invading French general Delatomb (Jonathan Pryce), who offers to let them live if they help him calm a dissenting village where children have been disappearing. Delatomb believes it is from another group of fraudulent exorcists. The Brothers Grimm, along with their guard Cavaldi (Peter Stormare) are thus sent to track down the shysters and find the missing children, in exchange for their freedom and their lives.

This is where the film finally starts to slow itself down. There is an interesting mix of several different fairy tales that combine to form the plot, but the farther we watch, the more we realize…that’s it? That’s the whole thing? Whiel the mixing of the fairy tales is sometimes clever, it is also sometimes extremely forced, as in the appearance of the gingerbread man from the sludge in a well. This is a great scene visually, but seems out of place. Even more out of place is a scene is a kitten being kicked into rotating blades. This could’ve been an interesting, darkly comic scene, but instead it seems to happen for no reason at all. In fact, most of the comedy, and the darker scenes don’t seem to fit in this world, as they do in his better movies.

Another detriment to the film is the lack of any sort of development at all. The beginning show young Jacob being taken in by someone selling magic beans, but we never really get a sense of how this affects the brothers, except for Wilhelm yelling, “MAGIC BEANS!!!” every once in a while. We’re given everything we need to be given, but nothing else. And the love story is so underdeveloped that the phrase “tacked-on” can’t even do it justice.

The only real stand out performance is Heath Ledger, since he’s the only character with any sort of depth to him. Matt Damon has little to do but bully his brother. Both Pryce and Stormare give the most scenery-chewing of performances, which could work in a Gilliam film (think Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys), but they are so outrageous they overshadow the lower-key main characters. Stormare, who is usually known for being oddly low-key, is ridiculously crazed, especially in the earlier scenes, where the quick cuts make him into sort of a whirling dervish you can’t quite wrap your mind around.

This being said, the movie still has its good points. The special effects are hit-and-miss, but the fight with the trees is like something out of old 80s Gilliam. Once the movie calms down in the second half, and things start to happen, the plot does get more involving. But it reminds me a lot of Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which was also choppy and strangely uninvolving.

So, I’m left with one horrifying thought: has Gilliam lost his touch? The only thing that still gives me hope is Tideland, which comes out later this year, and seems to be Gilliam returning to the weird, psychological dealings of his best work. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

The Constant Gardener ****

The beginning of the movie is rather disjointed, but you are drawn into the love story element of the two main characters immediately. Rachel Weisz as Tessa and Ralph Fiennes as Justine are the heart of this movie. They transcend the material and manage to give you full and complex characters with a truly loving relationship (which you rarely see in a Hollywood movie these days)that you actually care about.

Director Fernando Meirelles (City of God), transports you to Africa with such a cinematic flair you feel as if you have indeed left the theatre for the heart of Africa. The screenplay, based on a novel by John le Carré, is practically ripped from the headlines - just this year they found AIDS drug makers were "fixing" tests of their drugs in Africa - with big drug companies conspiring with governments in secret deals to make millions by fixing tb tests in Africa by disposing of the people who died from the side effects. The movie didn't hold back on any of the atrocities that are a reality in Africa, including a gripping account of the horrors occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Where this movie falters is in the screenplay adaptation itself. The loving relationship between the two main characters is cast aside a third of the way through the movie and leaves you distant from both characters for the sake of intrigue. I don't think this served the movie well, as they are the foundation of the film. Also, they never really delve into the reasons behind Justine's gardening (which they throw into the movie in odd places) or why Tessa felt she had to protect him from the work she was doing. You don't get enough of his character's story line to really understand this.

Overall, the visuals, the characters and the intrigue and conspiracy of this movie make it both thrilling and disturbing - in a money is indeed the root of all evil way. Some of the stories and images will haunt you, as any good movie on a real subject should.