Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [11]
They missed out on one of the most delightful adult comedies in recent memory.
Casanova is a romp, in the manner of Tom Jones, but reinvented for the post-feminist era. Ledger plays the fleet-footed serial womanizer of eighteenth-century Venice, stealing into bedrooms and out of windows one step ahead of angry husbands and protective matrons. He finally meets his match in the person of Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller), a spirited young woman who not only can handle a sword with the best of men but has the gumption to write a series of feminist tracts that she distributes throughout the city (taking the precaution to sign a man’s name to those unpopular diatribes). She is the first woman who hasn’t heaved a sigh at the mere sight of Casanova and that presents the great lover with a unique challenge.
Miller is as charismatic as Ledger here, and that’s one of the reasons Casanova is so appealing.
The political wrangling and sexual high jinks veer into the world of farce through the presence of Oliver Platt, as a bloated merchant who’s been promised to Miller in marriage, and Jeremy Irons (possibly channeling Boris Karloff) as a self-important bishop who has been dispatched to Venice to put a lid on the citizens’ errant behavior. These two fine actors go to town with their pompous characterizations that invite comic deflation from the moment they appear on screen.
With deft support from Lena Olin as Miller’s mother, Omid Djalili as Ledger’s quick-witted servant, and Charlie Cox as Miller’s lovesick brother, Lasse Hallström’s handsome production never allows the opulent settings to overwhelm the action in the foreground. Although the authentic Venetian backgrounds are a treat for the eye, this is still a comedy in which character and incident take precedence and the director never loses sight of that. Kimberly Simi and Michael Cristofer wrote the story, which was turned into a Screenplay by Simi and Jeffrey Hatcher.
The result is a modern-day rarity: a smart, sexy comedy for grown-ups. It’s also a major credential for Heath Ledger, whose performance as a lighthearted romantic hero couldn’t be more different from the repressed gay rancher he played so well in Brokeback Mountain.
14. CHOP SHOP
(2008)
Directed by Ramin Bahrani
Screenplay by Ramin Bahrani and Bahareh Azimi
Actors:
ALEJANDRO POLANCO
ISAMAR GONZALES
CARLOS ZAPATA
AHMAD RAZVI
ROB SOWULSKI
Having captured the attention of film festival audiences and critics with his brilliant feature Man Push Cart, Ramin Bahrani followed it with another movie just as potent, and just as good. Once again, he began by exploring a little-known area of New York City and getting to know it well before he even attempted to fashion a story with his writing partner, Bahareh Azimi.
He later explained the origins of Chop Shop in this official statement:
Willet’s Point, Queens, is twenty blocks of junkyards, dumping grounds, and row upon row of auto-body repair shops. Over seventy-five years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald described it as “The Valley of the Ashes” in The Great Gatsby. More recently the current mayor of New York has named it, “The bleakest point of New York.” Across the street from the junkyards and repair shops looms Shea Stadium, whose giant billboard reads, “Make Dreams Happen.” I was curious to know what dreams can happen in this place, and who these dreamers are, so I set out to make Chop Shop.
During the year I spent in the location, I became increasingly drawn to the lives of the young Latino kids who work and live in the auto-body shops. My story is about one of them, a twelve-year-old Latino who has an immense yet flawed love for his sixteen-year-old sister. In their world there is no room for sentimentality and even less for judgment.
As in his previous film, Bahrani found his stars through a lengthy audition process—this time, at city schools—and then spent months rehearsing with them, to get to a point where they would feel at ease in front of the camera and their scenes would seem genuine, not scripted.
Alejandro