Tag: Robbie Coltrane

So a strange part of this website is that I am now in a position where I have students. Weird right? My icebreaker is pretty easy, I make them state their favorite movie, and out of 75 students, only six of them I had not yet seen before. I put them on my short list, and I was even more stoked to find out that some of them are in the useful range for reviews. So I picked The Brothers Bloom, because its the only one I also hadn’t ever heard of. Woo mysterious films!

The Bloom Brothers actually end up playing an important role in this movie. Funny, eh?

Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and his younger brother (Adrien Brody) grew up as orphans, and shipped from foster family to foster family. They were interested in illusions and magic, but they became quite adept at being con artists, starting when they were kids. Gotta love making cash.

But many years later? They are still up to it. Their schemes are way more elaborate, lead by Stephen who plans them perfectly. He loves it the most, and is great at it, but little Bloom is getting tired. Wants to quit. Alright, well one more con.

And this one involves a woman! They’ve never conned a woman before. One Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a weird shut in rich heiress. Easy scam, pose as antique dealers and get all her monies. But as any con movie you have ever seen goes, those cons are generally several layers deep and go wrong. Well in this one, it is of course true, but that ‘main’ storyline ends kind of early. Then crazier shit happens, and it builds and builds, getting pretty damn serious and having no knowledge on what is the actual con anymore. Fun eh?

Rinko Kikuchi is also in this as their main woman assistant, and Robbie Coltrane as another ‘foreign’ helper.

Hey, who cares if they are get conned if they at least have fun, right?

One of the main aspects of Stephen’s cons is he, at the end, wants everyone to walk away satisfied in some way. Sure they get conned, but hopefully the experience was worth it. Similarly, he generally wants to make his brother happy, and that is his biggest driving factor.

Which is awesome. And I loved the first half of the movie. But as I pretty much already said, it gets kind of dark and serious, and it is hard for me to really understand and grasp it all. I couldn’t follow the ‘cons’ or potential cons, and I felt time moved pretty weirdly.

It was a definitely a bold move and experience, but something I couldn’t really follow well. Adrien Brody was kind of meh for the movie, but I did like the charisma of Mark Ruffalo.

When I saw the (countless) previews for Brave I was never wildly impressed with them, and didn’t really care if I saw it or not. Well, I knew I would see it but when is the better question.

I also learned recently that there is a rather large subset of people who believe that Pixar can do no wrong, all of their movies are amazing, and judge new movies based off everything they’ve ever done. That sucks for Pixar. Good for money, but still, kind of a weird position to be in.

Either way, what bugged me about the previews is they were all super vague. For some reason a girl wants to change her fate and has to go at great lengths to do it. But from the previews it makes it seem like the fate she wants to avoid is just a marriage? Hmm, weird.

Oh and she likes to shoot things, of course.

Merida (Kelly Macdonald) is a Scottish “princesS”. Her father Fergus (Billy Connolly) lost his leg in a fight with the deadliest bear ever, of all time, and helped lead the other three tribes to fight off invaders. So they made him king. However, they agreed that to strengthen the tribes, the daughter (once she gets a certain age) must marry the first born son of one of the other chieftains. Ugh, marriage!

Her mom Elinor (Emma Thompson) is the voice of reason in the house, and has been grooming her daughter to be a proper lady and suitable Queen should the time come. Her dad gave her a bow and arrow, and taught her to ride and be adventurous and hunt! Doesn’t help when the the tribes come to town, the three suitors are all “undesirable” (seemingly based on outward appearance only, for shame Merida). Lord Dingwall (Robbie Coltrane), Lord MacGuffin (Kevin McKidd) and Lord Macintosh (Craig Ferguson) are all willing to fight over it, so she has an archery competition to decide!

Which she enters herself, pissing off her mom, embarrassing the tribes, and then she runs away. Hey whats that? A witch (Julie Walters)? A potion to change her fate by changing her mom? That is a vague as crap potion wish, I am sure it won’t come back to haunt her or do anything too drastic. AND THEN I REALIZED WHY THE PLOT WAS SO SECRETIVE.

It just feels ludicrous to even explain what happens in the second half, and spoils a lot of things. So uhh, rather you find out on your own.

Her unkempt hair shows her free spirit.

Alright, first off I don’t care that the main character is a woman and that she can shoot a bow. Movies that go against stereotypes just to do that shouldn’t matter, cause I don’t care if a lead is male or female, animated or actually existing. Turns out the fact that she can shoot a bow really good adds…very little to the story. Its whole purpose to give her a “non girly” thing to do and surprise people with.

But outside of that, I think the the writers walked a pretty nice line in terms of avoiding women stereotypes, if that was their goal. Don’t be fooled though, this movie is mostly stereotypes. I mean, kilts, Scottish people, just asking for it. Most of the humor is slapstick in nature as well. But the mom? Not mean, just caring. Merida? Not really brave, but kind of reckless and childish. The witch? Not at all mean, just kind of a plot point to teach people lesson/morals.

The actual “bad guy” in the movie also turns out to not even be that bad. A film with everyone being a decent person (eventually).

You might be confused. “Wait? Merida not that Brave?” Sure, she does some stuff, takes some courage. But the bravest character in the movie is in fact the mom character. I think it should have been more from her point of view, but that is harder to sell. So when I looked back on the film, I imagined it as her story and liked it a lot better. Because like I said, Merida is just way more typical child, leaping before looking, overreacting, refusing to talk things out, reckless, than brave. But hey, whatever.

I also felt that some instances could have been vastly improved, story telling wise. But then it would have probably made it a PG-13 movie instead. Oh well.