Thursday, August 29, 2013

Blue Jasmine


Cate Blanchett's performance in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine is so rarefied that it is nearly impossible for me to imagine another actress (aside from, of course, Meryl Streep) matching it this year. It is remarkable. This photo is from an alchemical scene in which Blanchett's Jasmine reveals the depths of her pain to her sister's 10-year-old boys who have been left in her charge. Jasmine's life as a New York trophy wife and socialite was capsized by the arrest, conviction and suicide of her unscrupulous husband (Alec Baldwin). Impoverished and addled by fistfuls of Xanax, Jasmine goes to San Francisco to live with her sister, Ginger (a tremendous Sally Hawkins), whose cramped day-to-day existence with a coterie of brutish men pushes all of Jasmine's neurotic buttons. This is Woody Allen at his best. Highly recommended.

No comments:

Trap

  M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller, Trap, is mind-bending poser like his previous pictures but not in the same way. The biggest ques...