The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

I loved Rushmore and I liked The Royal Tenenbaums and I didn't see The Life Aquatic.

I'm not sure what I think about The Darjeeling Limited. Visually, it's lush and colorful and humorous. It was interesting to watch. The shots were framed precisely. The plot was slim and nonsensical. The action was fractured and inscrutable. Some scenes jumped out and others fell flat.

Two things struck me, though. One was a close of up of Angelic Huston. She is getting more beautiful as she gets older. She has one of the most fantastic faces in pictures and her lingering close up is one of the highlights of the film, even though it lasts for less than a minute.

The second thing had to do with those who do good works in foreign lands. In the movie, three brothers end up visiting their mother, who doesn't want to see them. She is living in a convent in Nepal helping orphan children. We later find out that she didn't go to their father's funeral. When they see her, they ask her to come home and she says, "They need me here." That made me think, "But your family needs you too. And, don't you have more responsibility to these people, who you gave birth to, than strangers? If it weren't for you, they wouldn't exist, so if they say they need you, you ought to pay attention."

Whew, it pissed me off then and it still does! Not the point of the movie, though, I suspect.

Rendition (2007)

I watched this on my own and found it a rather draining experience. The story is horrifying and the scenes of torture were torturous. I had to close my eyes in parts. Yet, it wasn't too graphic, rather more emotional and disturbing than violent (but plenty violent too). Of course, the movie had a serious message, and one that I strongly agree with, but I wish they could have figured out a less heavy-handed, direct, "on the nose" way of putting it.

As for the acting, Reese Witherspoon is good but has almost nothing to do in this movie. I prefer her to show some humor. Maybe that's why I enjoyed her first scene, where she plays soccer with her young son and smiles. That's all the smiling we get from her. After that, all we get is lot of close ups of those big, blue, pleading eyes. Most of her acting consisted of being pregnant and walking…very…slowly.

Jake Gyllenhaal, a CIA agent overseeing the questioning of Witherspoon's husband (the person subjected to "extraordinary rendition") in "North Africa" is tormented and inert and by far the best thing in the picture. He is the only one with any moral dilemma and with any shades of grey in his character. Yet, we know very little about him. Like the other characters, he's still a sketch, in service to the message of the film: extraordinary rendition is bad. Did I really need to spend two hours to find that out? Sigh.