Memories of Tomorrow

It's not the latest movie, it was on the screen in 2007 and it's one of my favorite film. Since I watched it on television again recently, I decide to introduce this touching film.

At first it’s a matter of a missed word, a forgotten name. Then he forgets how to drive a familiar route. The advertising executive keeps his worries to himself, but he can’t hide his problems, and eventually a doctor delivers a dread prognosis: Early- onset Alzheimer’s. He is only 49.

“Memories of Tomorrow” is a movie about the disease that is told from the sick person’s point of view, not that of family members. The subject of the film, Saeki, is a high-octane ad executive with a young and eager team, and as a perfectionist it depresses him to discover his own imperfections mounting. He forgets dates, times, business meetings. In one breathtaking scene, he gets lost in Tokyo’s urban maze and takes instructions from a secretary over his cell phone while literally running back to his office.

The character is played by Ken Watanabe and there is a personal element in his brave and painful performance. I learn from the Japan Times, he had been fighting leukemia. His Saeki is just as determined to fight Alzheimer’s, and is much aided by his patient and courageous wife Emiko (Kanako Higuchi), who writes notes naming everything in their house, prepares his daily schedule, and keeps up a brave front.

He holds on as long as he can, even accepting a lesser position and a smaller pension to stay with his company, but finally he must retire, and return to a home where now it is his wife who goes out every morning to earn a salary. He has better days and worse days, and a day fraught with fear when he must make a speech at his daughter’s wedding. He loses the text of his speech. “Just say anything,” his wife whispers. “I’m here for you.” She takes his hand.

She has the patience of a saint, but one day his wife snaps, telling him with cold anger what a distant husband he has been, and then he physically hurts her, how flawed, how cruel.The director handles this painful moment with great visual tact, not showing it but instead cutting to the sudden darting of fish in an aquarium.

There are moments of almost unbearable sadness, as in what he reveals to a nurse that he is the one who is coming to the nursing home at the end of a tour of a nursing home. And we observe the indifference of the company where he has been a salaryman all his life: Yes, thanks for your contribution, now go quietly, please, and don’t let the clients know. Some films on Alzheimer’s attempt to show an upside. I don’t think there is an upside somehow. I really love this film, I was so touching about the relationship between Saeki and his wife. (and I always moved to tears through almost the whole film! haha)




http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071129/REVIEWS/71129006

Letters to Juliet

You know how it is when you go off to Italy with your boyfriend and he ignores you and so you go to the house of a fictional character where lovesick ladies leave heartbroken letters stuck to a wall and then you find one that's been there for 50 years and then you meet the widowed lady who wrote it and go off on a a road trip through one picturesque Italian village after another until you find the now-70-year-old guy she's been pining for her whole life? And the widow's seemingly snooty but secretly warm-hearted and deep-thoughts-having grandson comes along and you fall in love with him?

“Letters to Juliet” is about Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), an American girl who visits Verona with the man she’s engaged to marry (Gael Garcia Bernal). He’s always leaving her behind to investigate wine and truffles for his New York restaurant. She visits the house allegedly inhabited by Shakespeare’s Juliet. Below the balcony there, lovelorn women for years have posted “letters to Juliet,” asking for advice.

Sophie finds a letter 50 years old, written by a young British girl about a Tuscan boy she met, fell in love with and allowed to fall out of her life. Sophie writes to the girl, the letter amazingly finds its way, and soon Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) and her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan) arrive in Verona. So now, if you are an experienced moviegoer, you definnitely will know what must happen by the end of the story.

All of this is wrapped up in unimaginably beautiful shots of the Italian countryside, the warmth of the friendship between Sophie and Claire, and visits to many of the men named Lorenzo Bartolini, which was the name of the boy Claire loved so long ago. “Letters to Juliet” requires the three of them to visit the candidates in person, leading to a series of false leads and at last, of course, to the real Lorenzo Bartolini (Franco Nero).

To me, the story seems like a fairy tale, but it's really romantic somehow. As the movies goes, I can feel sweet elements in the whole film, and it's indeed a lovely story.

The Last Station

"The Last Station" focuses on the last year of Count Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer), a full-bearded Shakespearian figure presiding over a household of intrigues. The chief schemer is Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), his intense follower, who idealistically believes Tolstoy should leave his literary fortune to the Russian people. It's just the sort of idea that Tolstoy might seize upon in his utopian zeal. Sofya (Helen Mirren), on behalf of herself and her children, is livid.

Chertkov, the quasi-leader of Tolstoy's quasi-cult, hires a young man named Valentin (James McAvoy) to become the count's private secretary. In this capacity, he is to act as a double agent, observing moments between Leo and Sofya when Chertkov would not be welcome.

After almost fifty years of marriage, the Countess Sofya, Leo Tolstoy’s devoted wife, passionate lover, muse and secretary—she’s copied out War and Peace six times…by hand!—suddenly finds her entire world turned upside down. In the name of his newly created religion, the great Russian novelist has renounced his noble title, his property and even his family in favor of poverty, vegetarianism and even celibacy. After she’s born him thirteen children!

When Sofya then discovers that Tolstoy’s trusted disciple, Chertkov—whom she despises—may have secretly convinced her husband to sign a new will, leaving the rights to his iconic novels to the Russian people rather than his very own family, she is consumed by righteous outrage! This is the last straw! Using every bit of cunning, every trick of seduction in her considerable arsenal, she fights fiercely for what she believes is rightfully hers. The more extreme her behavior becomes, however, the more easily Chertkov is able to persuade Tolstoy of the damage she will do to his glorious legacy.

It's a tale of two romances, one beginning, one near its end, The Last Station is a complex, funny, rich and emotional story about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it.

I like the movie, in the movie I can see harmonious and beautiful pastoral life. And I like Helen Mirren very much!

It's Complicated

The movie stars Meryl Streep, who has rich white people problems, like dealing with her lingering feelings for the ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) who’s now married to his much younger mistress and figuring out where to put the second kitchen add-on in her sprawling Santa Barbara ranch house. Moreover, she’s over 50 and single, so with the exception of her mousy architect (Steve Martin), her ex is the best dating option she’s got. Oh, what’s a beautiful older woman with a thriving bakery business and an amazing home and three normal grown children to do? Writer-director Nancy Meyers has a solution for Meryl’s terrible, horrible life problems: have an affair with your ex-husband!

It’s Complicated rolls along with a crackling energy as it sets up the love affair between Jane (Streep) and Jake (Baldwin). Grown-ups will relate to the feelings behind their illicit reconciliation, though adultery is always a tough sell in the movies and Baldwin comes off as a bit of a cad. (Since Jake’s cheating on his evil current wife, who used to be his mistress when he was married to Jane, we’re supposed to think it’s totally ok.) Thankfully, Meyers sees the absurdity in the ups and downs of the post-mid life crisis and dances a fine line between seriousness and humor, serving up a romantic comedy with maturity.

“It’s Complicated” was written and directed by Nancy Meyers, a Hollywood filmmaker who makes female-specific indulgences that, at their irresistible best, are testaments to the power of fairy tales. Perhaps that's why I like this movie so much, it depict a sweet story about a woman in late middle age, who, after years of going it alone in bed and out, suddenly becomes sexually and romantically involved with two very different men. In the end of the film, Jane(Meril Streep) seems not choose anyone as her lover, but to me this is the best and proper ending to this film. In my opinion, any chose she made would make the story unrealistic.

By the way, Meryl Streep is one of my favorite actress, and she looks so energetic and beatuful in the film and she really makes the film much more attractive. This is really an interesting movie, it makes me laugh all the time!