http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Fri, 2 Dec 2005 13:12:35 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/02/131235.php Michelle PooleCold Mountain is a pretty decent film. At first I thought that the entire premise was a bit weird because the main characters, Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Inman (Jude Law) barely kiss before he goes off to fight for the Confederate Army, but despite this fact, they are completely obsessed with each other and the film follows his vehement struggles to return to her. After giving it some more thought, however, I decided that this is not a weird idea at all. I can understand how when a person is absent, our idealization of them slowly forms them into an entirely different person than who they actually are. When they are absent, they become perfect; everything that we need; "if only they would return my life would be ok; I need them to successfully go on with my life." But when they do return the reality sets in that they are not in fact who we were imagining them to be, and we probably didn't really "need" what we think we did after all. This line of thought is a major theme of Cold Mountain.Nicole Kidman thought she needed a sexy man to take care of her and Jude Law thought he needed a skinny blond to think about having sex with while away from home. And in the end, Kidman found she could take care of herself despite the fact that Tom left her and Law found out that when your woman's not around, the nanny can be used in a pinch. Wait, that was real life. Back to the film. As many character flaws as Jude Law displays in real life, he seems to be a pretty capable actor. Previous to Cold Mountain, I only remember seeing him in Spielberg's A.I., where he plays a robotic male prostitute, and I didn't get a true sense of his acting abilities there because of the typecasting factor. In this film he plays an American Confederate soldier who stays faithful to a woman for FIVE YEARS that he's only kissed once...so, definitely a challenging role for him. He pulls it off. His southern accent is also spot on and I bought it all. The same goes for Kidman's performance.So it is a highly watchable film, excellent performances, and we see Jude Law get dirty and sweaty quite a bit which helps keeps the interest level up for the ladies.....but the end...It's always the end isn't it? It's the end that ruins a film. People rarely say "It would have been great except for minutes 32 through 47... that part sucked!" Nope, the end makes or breaks a film and this one....well, it's based on a book, so I guess it's not the movie's fault. ****Spoliers Below**** Needing to get back to Ada, Inman goes AWOL from the army and manages to trek back despite being shot at, arrested, chained to a bunch of criminals, and hit on by Natalie Portman. He stumbles upon Ada in the mountains (long story, go watch the film) and finally gets to have sex with her after 5 years of only thinking about it. Pretty great chemistry between the two actors by the way, which probably had something to do with their off-screen illicit affair. He's such a dog. Anyway, they have this amazing reunion and then Inman is shot dead the next morning by a confederate police officer who wants to nab him for deserting.So that kind of sucks in and of itself (I'm a sucker for happy endings I guess) but here's the thing that REALLY bugged me. He has the opportunity, but fails to shoot and kill his killer in a variation on Roger Ebert's "Fallacy of the Talking Killer" rule: Fallacy of the Talking KillerThe villain wants to kill the hero. He has him cornered at gunpoint. All he has to do is pull the trigger. But he always talks first. He explains the hero's mistakes to him. Jeers. Laughs. And gives the hero time to think his way out of the situation, or be rescued by his buddy. Cf. most JAMES BOND movies.In this case it's the hero Inman that has a chance to kill the villain, but instead they chat for awhile, Inman misses the opportunity to kill to villain, and then they shoot each other at the same time. To the writer's credit, Inman does remark that he doesn't want to shoot this man because he's "tired of fighting." Which is understandable coming out of the Civil War. But to think that the villain wasn't going to shoot him was very bad planning indeed, considering that the baddie's buddies shot Inman's friends, and Inman had to shoot them to avoid further problems. So it's very admirable that Inman decided to become peace-loving in the last 10 minutes of the film, but being shot dead was probably not the outcome he wanted. So he is stupidly killed and the whole point (and whole movie) about struggling to get home to his woman becomes a moot one. The point about realizing one's own potential is fulfilled by Kidman's character. She realizes (much with the help of her friend Ruby, played by Renee Zellweger) that she really didn't need a man to take care of her; she can manage just fine on her own. I guess you can't blame her for wanting Jude Law around anyway, though.At the very end of the film we see "5 years later" and are shown that Ada had Inman's child (yes from having sex only once, take that anyone struggling to have a baby) which is supposed to make us all feel better. And it did make me feel a little bit better, because like I said, I'm a sucker for happy endings and I'll take what I can get. All in all, this is a highly watchable film that I recommend to anyone not in the mood for a comedy. ed:ak Video40414@blogcritics.org Fri, 2 Dec 2005 13:12:35 EST