Short reviews - Set 5 (Smoke, The Royal Tenenbaums, Another Earth)

Smoke (1995)
Germany, USA, Japan; 112min
Comedy, Drama
Director: Wayne Wang
Writer: Paul Auster
Stars: Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Harold Perrineau 

Easy going story about few Brooklyn residents which lives gets closely connected at one point. Auggie is a smoke shop owner, Paul Benjamin is a Auggie’s loyal customer, writer and some kind of a short term guardian to Rashid who is in a search of his father, while Ruby is Auggie's ex who wants Auggie to help their pregnant daughter.
Nicely directed with great acting and well-written characters but although it is a comedy don’t expect laugh out loud moments. Basically, don’t expect anything. It all works fine but at the end you get the question in your head: That’s it!? It’s one of that about life movies and it has it’s moments and definitely it has a point but there’s a feeling that it just isn’t enough. 


The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) 
USA; 110min
Comedy, Drama
Director: Wes Anderson
Writer: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
Stars: Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow

 

A story about unusual family told on unusual way from the eyes of Wes Anderson.
Royal Tenenbaum left his family long ago and after he faced bankruptcy he comes back to make things right with his family. The crew is full of big names like Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alec Baldwin and of course Anderson's regulars Bill Murray and Wilson's brothers. Names didn’t stay only on names so the acting is as good as it gets with Stiller’s surprisingly good performance.
The Royal Tenenbaums doesn’t deviate much from other Anderson’s movies. Directing is almost the same with similar type of characters and narration. Since it’s probably most normal of his movies I would recommend to those not familiar with Anderson’s work to start from The Royal Tenenbaums.
It’s good family drama with many elements of comedy with strange and memorable characters directed in a wonderful, fairytale like, way.
I recommend this to everybody, if for nothing else than just to enjoy great directing.


Another Earth (2011)
USA; 92min
Drama, Sci-Fi
Director: Mike Cahill
Writers: Mike Cahill, Brit Marling
Stars: William Mapother, Brit Marling, Matthew-Lee Erlbach 

Simple story about a mistake, tragedy, ruined lives and redemption with metaphorical Sci-Fi elements which only purpose is to highlight hope for different flow of life.
It’s a type of story seen many times before, even with that Sci-fi context but it always leaves hard impact on viewer like the true drama should do. Just don’t expect standard Sci-fi, or even any, because there’s less of it than Melancholia.
For a directorial debut Mike Cahill did a solid job but I hope that his next project, ‘I Origins’, will be on higher ground and that he won’t use that heavily overused documentary approach. Although widely unknown actors were few levels above Cahill and it’s hard to have any complaints on their job.
All in all, Another Earth is very good drama and probably is enjoyable only to lovers of that genre and although it is kind of Sci-fi it definitely isn’t for typical Sci-fi fan.