A British French German American romantic comedy directed by Chris and Paul Weitz, starring Hugh Grant, Toni Collette and Rachel Weisz.
An independently wealthy man decides that single mothers are good to date and gets himself in trouble by lying about having a son. Through a friend of a friend, he meets the 12 year old son of a suicidal single mother and they become friends.
I think I like Chris Weitz as a director. I recently watched A Better Life (2011) and saw the similarities between these 2 films. His films don't jump out and grab the viewer like those of Alejandro Jodorowsky or Quentin Tarantino, but these realistic dramas about families are made well and hold my attention. They seem to have a tendency to get a little sappy at the end, but I can see past a little maple syrup when the rest is this good. Something about this one that I really liked was the heavy double narration. The man and the boy both had voice-overs spaced through the duration. I'm rating this good. If you like this or A Better Life, you should watch the other and possibly other films by Chris Weitz.
An American drama directed by Chris Weitz, starring Demián Bichir.
An illegal Mexican father works in landscaping. His sister lends him money to buy his friend's truck, but the truck is immediately stolen. His son has been distant, but grows closer to his father while searching for the stolen truck.
Pretty cool. The plot held my attention and characters fit their roles. Acting seemed natural and dialogue was convincing, meaning there was good writing. Camerawork and editing looked good. The audio was pretty level and mixed Spanish and English in a convincingly Mexican American way. I'm talking about a solid green good rated film in which everything just worked. There's not much more to say, except you should probably watch it.
A fantasy directed by Chris Weitz, starring Nicole Kidman.In a world where people have animal counterparts that are bonded for life, a girl finds out about kids being abducted. The woman that she is staying with turns out to be in charge of this operation and the girl heads off to rescue the children.There are many things to comment on: The animals that these people have are called demons, to start with. One of the men in the film is named Azrael, also known as the angel of death with 4 faces, 4 thousand wings and a body made up of tongues and eyes equal to the human population of Earth. The ruling elite in the film push conformity in many of the same ways that the ruling elite here do it. The child abduction scheme rang a bell as well (Project MONARCH and MK ULTRA). I was especially entertained by their version of unmanned spy planes. The only thing more entertaining than that was an object that I misheard as being called an "anesthesiometer". New world order/Illuminati similarities aside, it was mainly a kids' film and about 95% CG. I'm rating it poor because I didn't like it, but it gave me something to write about.
