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Amorosa Soledad (2008)
What a waste of time!!
I generally prefer watching Latin American movies and not Hollywood hits, because occasionally, I have seen unrecognized masterpieces, and in most cases the viewer gets in touch with interesting characters, situations and feelings. Unfortunately, this was not the case with "Amorosa Soledad". It is a boring movie, forcing us to spend all time watching uninteresting details of the daily life of a neurotic, hypochondriac girl named Soledad. It seems that during the first half an hour or so, the most interesting event of the story, is the blocking of the toilet, which leads Soledad to use the bidet instead of asking a plumber to fix it. The hypochondriac visits continuously the hospital complaining for various psychosomatic symptoms and byes a digital device for blood pressure measurement, in order to monitor it continuously. We learn that she just separated from her boyfriend (lucky guy) and decided to avoid any further relations for several years at least. However, her decision is not so steady and she falls after a couple of days for the first man who meets in a fast food restaurant. We wonder about her decision to break up her promise of abstinence, because the new fellow is a shorty guy, with uninteresting face and a huge head, bearing a continuous smile and trying, quite unsuccessfully though, to look sympathetic and friendly. However the love plot is nonexistent, and we get through a new series of uninteresting details of Soledad's life, e.g. we have to spend some minutes watching the doorkeeper to unzip the dress of the protagonist, because the zip was stuck (or was it an ingenious hint of the director on the loneliness of Soledad's character?). After an hour or so, it seems that the story reaches its climax, because the new boyfriend obtains to fix the toilet, a fact which initially causes distress to Soledad (may be she got used to the bidet). However, a few more events are to come and finally she moves to the house of the shining-with-joy new boyfriend, but begins to cry. This is kind of surprise, because all of a sudden, the complex, multi-layered character and personality of Soledad is revealed to all of us, the naive spectators, and the director and writer of this "masterpiece" triumph. Unfortunately, we are not clever enough to understand the deeper meaning of this movie, and we just feel deep sorrow for the 80 minutes of our life spent watching this rubbish.
Issiz Adam (2008)
Is it the same person who directed Babam Ve Oglum?
I have not seen much Turkish cinema, except the classic ones (e.g. Guney). However, I recently watched several modern Turkish films, including some excellent ones, such as Gegen die Wand, 3 Monkeys and Babam Ve Oglum, and nationalist rubbish, such as Kurtlar vadisi and Son Osmanli Yandim Ali. I had great expectations for "Issiz adam", because it was signed by the same director who shot "Babam Ve Oglum", which I consider a masterpiece. I was surprised to see a commonplace love story, with nothing special or original. The story was conventional, cinematography was poor and the acting was awful. Okay, Hunal was adequate, but Birkan was completely ridiculous, with this shining, happy-to-be-bride face. The main characters were just caricatures: the professionally successful, heartless, lonely male, who has never known any type of love (come on, at this age?), except temporary relations with whores and the modern, pretty and unpredictable female, who falls in love and behaves like a moron. I do not blame Alper for leaving Ada, I would have left much earlier! The whole movie sucks, but some points were completely funny, such as the close relation of the "bride" with the mother-in-law, which was preserved several years afterward!! It is a pity that a great director like Irmak, spent his potential to produce a cheap drama, just to gain some money from soap opera watchers.
Transsiberian (2008)
Weak plot - could be an excellent movie
This could be a nice movie because it has good actors, has been shot in a wonderful setting, and is based on an interesting idea. I always have been dreaming of traveling this journey myself, and I expected to see the movie to get an idea of the landscape and the whole process (later, however, after realizing that the film was shot in Lithuania, most of the magic was gone). The problem with this movie is its weak plot. The behavior of Jessy (Emily Mortimer) is absurd and out of any logic. She commits a cold-blooded kill, during which the poor victim not only does not show any type of resistance, but also assures her that he is not going to cause any harm to her. She apparently lies to the police officer (Kingsley) with no reason. It would be quite simple to explain everything to her husband, who is anyway a sweet kind-hearted innocent man, full in love with his wife. A series of unexplained lies follows, e.g. Jessy would have left the train alone (it was sure that the fact that the couple had followed her out of the train would be discovered in a few hours at most), the presence of the toys containing drugs should be hidden from all (why not deliver these to the police, as done later?), etc. It should be noticed that Jessy is not a naive, ignorant young girl but an intelligent mature woman with a past of many years strolling around and getting drugs. Playing is excellent. It is a pity that the role of Mortimer is so weak in the script, because she is doing the most out of it. I, generally, don't like Harrelson (I don't like his face and his voice, it is a matter of personal taste), but I admit that his playing here is quite good. And Kingsley is always superb. If you watch this film and avoid asking yourself why Jessy is acting like this right now, you could enjoy the two hours of the movie.