FXjohn
http://wip.warnerbros.com/everythingisilluminated/
Opens Friday 11/18 at Cinema Center Downtown
In "Everything Is Illuminated" Elijah Wood plays Jonathan, who goes to Ukraine, which has gotten over the Soviet occupation but not the atrocities of World War II. Jonathan is a strange young man who is always scrupulously clean and dressed semi-formally, wears Coke-bottle glasses and has a weird urge to collect objects from his life experiences -- a rock or mound of dirt from a significant place, a piece of family jewelry, etc. When the movie opens, his grandmother is dying, and she gives Jonathan an old photograph, taken decades ago in Ukraine. The man in the photo is his grandfather; the woman is unknown. Jonathan's hobby is the past, so naturally he goes to Ukraine to track down the woman. He enlists the aid of a family of low-budget tour guides -- Alex (Eugene Hutz), a Michael Jackson fan and self-styled ladies man, and his grandfather (Boris Leskin), who pretends he is blind and has a guide dog, even though he is the driver on the trip. Adapted from a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and directed by Liev Schreiber, a noted actor ("The Manchurian Candidate"), "Everything Is Illuminated," early on, is almost a screwball comedy in which every character is quirky. Much broad comic mileage is gotten from, for example, the fact that Jonathan is a vegetarian in a land of meat lovers -- they go to a restaurant and the proprietor refuses to serve a potato unless it is accompanied by meat. But just as the movie is about to wear out its welcome, it turns suddenly serious as it becomes clear that the village where Jonathan's grandfather grew up no longer exists. As they follow clues, they discover a dark secret -- the largely Jewish village was wiped from the map by the Nazis and has become forgotten by present-day Ukrainians. It is often a red flag when actors direct for the first time, but Schreiber's images -- a graveyard of old war machines, a field of sunflowers -- are impressive and help convey the wonderful idea behind Everything Is Illuminated: that no matter who we are or where we live, we are all connected. 104 min., Rated PG-13.
"3 and a half Stars! A film that grows in reflection."—Roger Ebert.
"Schreiber takes Foer's sprawling, multilayered, multigenerational beast and hones it into a post-Glasnost buddy picture."—Los Angeles Times.
"It's profound in the way that life is profound in hindsight, its view of the past both fixed in history and mutable in the telling. And it's exquisitely tender."—Houston Chronicle.
"A movie with wit, warmth and unabashed emotion."—USA Today.
"A surreal comedy that turns into a touching road movie."—Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
http://www.cinemacenter.org/
Opens Friday 11/18 at Cinema Center Downtown
In "Everything Is Illuminated" Elijah Wood plays Jonathan, who goes to Ukraine, which has gotten over the Soviet occupation but not the atrocities of World War II. Jonathan is a strange young man who is always scrupulously clean and dressed semi-formally, wears Coke-bottle glasses and has a weird urge to collect objects from his life experiences -- a rock or mound of dirt from a significant place, a piece of family jewelry, etc. When the movie opens, his grandmother is dying, and she gives Jonathan an old photograph, taken decades ago in Ukraine. The man in the photo is his grandfather; the woman is unknown. Jonathan's hobby is the past, so naturally he goes to Ukraine to track down the woman. He enlists the aid of a family of low-budget tour guides -- Alex (Eugene Hutz), a Michael Jackson fan and self-styled ladies man, and his grandfather (Boris Leskin), who pretends he is blind and has a guide dog, even though he is the driver on the trip. Adapted from a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and directed by Liev Schreiber, a noted actor ("The Manchurian Candidate"), "Everything Is Illuminated," early on, is almost a screwball comedy in which every character is quirky. Much broad comic mileage is gotten from, for example, the fact that Jonathan is a vegetarian in a land of meat lovers -- they go to a restaurant and the proprietor refuses to serve a potato unless it is accompanied by meat. But just as the movie is about to wear out its welcome, it turns suddenly serious as it becomes clear that the village where Jonathan's grandfather grew up no longer exists. As they follow clues, they discover a dark secret -- the largely Jewish village was wiped from the map by the Nazis and has become forgotten by present-day Ukrainians. It is often a red flag when actors direct for the first time, but Schreiber's images -- a graveyard of old war machines, a field of sunflowers -- are impressive and help convey the wonderful idea behind Everything Is Illuminated: that no matter who we are or where we live, we are all connected. 104 min., Rated PG-13.
"3 and a half Stars! A film that grows in reflection."—Roger Ebert.
"Schreiber takes Foer's sprawling, multilayered, multigenerational beast and hones it into a post-Glasnost buddy picture."—Los Angeles Times.
"It's profound in the way that life is profound in hindsight, its view of the past both fixed in history and mutable in the telling. And it's exquisitely tender."—Houston Chronicle.
"A movie with wit, warmth and unabashed emotion."—USA Today.
"A surreal comedy that turns into a touching road movie."—Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
http://www.cinemacenter.org/