Paradise Road

Starring:Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Pauline Collins, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Ehle, Julianna Margulies, Wendy Hughes, Johanna ter Steege, Elizabeth Spriggs, Pamela Rabe, Clyde Kusatsu, Stan Egi, David Chung (II), Sab Shimono, Penne Hackforth-Jones, Pauline Chan, Lisa Hensley, Susie Porter, Anita Hegh, Tessa Humphries
Director: Bruce Beresford
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Earnest and well-meaning, this film also accumulates power as it goes along, despite its inability to generate any moral complexity. But then how complex can you get in a story about the Japanese imprisonment and mistreatment of an international group of women (including Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, and Julianna Margulies)? Written and directed by Bruce Beresford, it's based on a true story. Japanese brutality has been well chronicled before; the real story here is the way these women of different social and ethnic backgrounds achieve a sense of solidarity in the face of potentially deadly abuse. Strong performances and many uplifting and moving moments. --Marshall Fine

Description

In a time of war, an extraordinary group of women turned a song of hope into a symphony of triumph. From the director of "Driving Miss Daisy" comes a true story of courage, triumph, friendship and strength starring Glenn Close ("Dangerous Liaisons"), Oscar®-Winner Frances McDormand (1996 Best Actress, "Fargo") and Emmy Award Winner Julianna Margulies (TV's "ER"). This compelling drama reveals the heroic actions of a group of women held prisoner by the Japanese during World War ll. These diverse women from different countries, speaking different languages, unite to form a vocal orchestra-creating a life affirming symphony of human voices.

Customer Reviews:

Great ensemble piece.......2007-07-02

I enjoyed this movie as a great ensemble cast. However, I distinctly remember at least one scene in the original movie that is missing from this version - when the women are returning from burying one of their dead, the Japanese forbid them to sing, so they pick up rocks and tap the rhythm of "Bolero". Why would this scene be cut out? It was a pivotal scene. In any case, still a good movie, and I enjoyed seeing so many of my favorite actresses together.

Loriann Ringgold.......2007-06-14

This is a must see movie about a group of women taken hostage during the Pacific Campaign of World War 2. Their Japanese captors are cruel and less than civil throughout their confinement. This is based on a true story. The performances are stellar. I would recommend this to be seen in a family setting with discussion after the movie.

Please, spare me the reptile. .......2006-02-19

I am disturbed greatly by this film. Glenn Close is entirely unbelievable as a prisoner of war... more, a bourgeois / socialite / horror. The only thing that made me smile throughout the film was the lesbian subtext of Cate Blanchett and Frances (uber-german stoic) McDormand's relationship.

Long overdue story that needed to be told.......2006-01-08

It amazes me that so much has been said about the unjust internment of Japanese people in the U.S. during World War II, but so little has been said about the INFINITELY more brutal internment of innocent civilians in Asia by the Japanese at the same time. This film could not have done a better job dramatizing these events according to mainstream Hollywood standards. There's probably some sugarcoating of events, but not as much as I would have expected.

Music to melt the heart.......2005-10-04

A chance viewing - the DVD is not yet available in Europe - and one of the most heartrending stories to come out of the Far Eastern sector of World War II; there have been many tales of derring-do and bravery among soldiers captured by the Japanese, but nothing to match the indomitable spirit of these innocent American women (and children) imprisoned after the fall of Singapore. Their "vocal orchestra" (NOT a chorus, as their director, played superbly by Glenn Close, insists), achieves the seemingly impossible task of transcribing over 30 works, including Dvorak's New World Symphony (we hear a condensed version of the slow movement with a modern Dutch chorus on the soundtrack) via the prodigious memory of one of the prisoners, a British missionary (Pauline Collins), and through their performances in the camp transform the violent relationship between captor and captive into something approaching a human understanding. Nothing is held back in portraying the initial brutality, which makes the contrast with the quiet and unquenchable optimism of the inmates (in spite of many differences of temperament and background) all the more stark.
A splendid supporting cast (Cate Blanchett, Frances McDormand); 2 hours of compelling viewing.

Average customer rating:

bored
WELCOME TO AMERICA ONLY IT GETS MUCH MUCH WORSE
How Strange That Anyone Could Endure It
stranger than anything
The Real World

Stranger Than Paradise
Starring: John Lurie , Eszter Balint , Richard Edson , Cecillia Stark , and Danny Rosen
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 0792846834
Release Date: 2000-09-05

Customer Reviews:

bored.......2007-03-18

i ain't no philistine. subtlties were lost on me. check out "down by law."
that movie is a straight up 100 percent masterpiece and succeeds in every aspect that i feel this film failed in.

WELCOME TO AMERICA ONLY IT GETS MUCH MUCH WORSE.......2006-10-14

Road film for the eighties: From Bing and Bob in the forties to Dennis and Peter in the sixties and now this in the eighties. Welcome to America. Where is the wonder? Where is the song?

This movie is the best representation of where we have come from and of where we went wrong. Where is that American Dream?

Please see this movie deeply. Let it take time. Watch Mystery Train and Ghost Dog too. You will see what there is to see and what is only whispered.

Why movies? This is why. Watch.
Nuff sed.

After this film grab a real human being by the hand and hold on tightly.
Or get a small cool old school black hat full of no hope and squeeze in.

This film comes real cheap.

You'll never see the inside of a hotel room the same way again.

This is what My Name's Earl WANTS TO BE BUT NEVER WILL DARE TO BE.

Turn this on instead and tune in.

Throw this frisbee no further than your DVD box, but deeper than your deepest understanding.

How Strange That Anyone Could Endure It.......2006-06-13

The most astonishing thing about this film - stranger than paradise or hell could ever be - is that anyone let Jarmusch make another film after it wrapped. (That it won Best First Feature at Cannes in 1984 shakes one's faith in a rational universe.)

STP easily ranks as one of the worst movies ever made, it is so vapid and purposeless that at times one almost senses that the characters on screen are looking straight into the camera as if to say, "Please, please give us something to do, we just can't take another minute of this torture!"

Watching Stranger Than Paradise one feels compelled to laugh as the realization hits - Jarmusch wants this movie to be boring, slow, vacant, tedious, and gloomy, in short - lacking any quality that might be considered redemptive. He has a terribly clever, art-house idea; he wants to recreate the bleak existentialism of Samuel Beckett and J.P. Sartre on film, painting meaninglessness and pointlessness in broad strokes, black and white, hollow lives played out in the absence of hope, value, or passion.

What Jarmusch has missed, however, is that these writers portrayed their philosophical viewpoint in endlessly fascinating ways, masterfully crafting characters and situations. A boring, idiotic movie doesn't become interesting or consequential just because you say, after the fact, "I intended to make a boring and idiotic movie." That the art-house crowd fell for Stranger Than Paradise only shows that painfully chic intellectuals with delusions of hippitudinousness are more easily deceived than children - children can spot a naked emperor.

While it's hard to criticize a man who's worked Screamin' Jay Hawkins into two of his movies, (Mystery Train), good taste in music in not nearly enough to absolve Jarmusch. Repeated viewings will cause you to be dumbstruck with wonder over and over as you wrestle with the idea that Stranger Than Paradise is as bad as it is on purpose. Deep as a Frisbee, and with luck, you might be able to fling it as far.

stranger than anything.......2005-12-08

A Hungarian girl goes to visit her cousin who lives in the ugliest apartment in the ugliest part of New York City; then the cousin and his best friend go to visit the Hungarian girl who now lives in the ugliest house in the ugliest part of Cleveland; then all three of them take a road trip and end up at the ugliest hotel in the ugliest part of Florida. Along the way nothing happens, and then it happens again. A great film, and an important one too, that I thoroughly enjoyed watching.

The Real World.......2005-07-21

The real world "Gone With the Wind" & made for a few bucks. All about stuff in the heart that can't go anywhere. Willie & Eddie are the line & Eva is the light. And it's funny! Once again, let's savor Eddie's moment: This time, Eddie knows something that Willie doesn't. Willie & Eddie open a beer & Eddie gets his 15 seconds.

Average customer rating:

Also shocked by such good reviews
Surprised at the good reviews
gradually winning
Flawed and disturbing, yet beautifully executed
Experimental Filmmaking at its Best

Searching for Paradise
Starring: Samantha Buck , Jeremy Davies , Jonathan Lisecki , Chris Noth , and John Pierson
Manufacturer: Sundance Channel Home Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00080ZGNS
Release Date: 2005-04-01

Description

When Gilda Mattei's father dies, she is left with nothing but her video camera, her father's secrets, and a fascination with a movie star named Michael DeSantis. Using her camera as a diary, and propelled by grief and anger, Gilda sets off on an adventure in New York City. Ultimately, Gilda finds herself right in the middle of her movie star fantasies . . . and the true adventure begins.

Customer Reviews:

Also shocked by such good reviews.......2006-07-23

I bought this movie on a whim, thinking I'd give it a try. I thought the backcover summary of the film, though cliche, looked promising as an interesting story. I was wrong. As I watched the movie, I kept waiting for it to get better and for something to happen. However, it did not. I actually found the heroine Gilda to be quite unlikeable. It was very difficult for me to feel any sympathy for her or to relate to her in the slightest. The way the movie was filmed is choppy, and it jumped about quite a lot. I could tell it was attempting to be artsy, but did not have that effect. Characters were introduced, and then quickly snatched away not to be heard from again. Also, there is no real climactic moment. The scene with Chris Noth in the hotel room was disappointingly short, then it all just sort of ended and Gilda was back home again. The sad thing is that even though the basic story is cliche, it still could have made an excellent film. The story itself had so much potential, but the movie did not, in my opinion, reach that potential.

Surprised at the good reviews.......2004-08-09

I didn't like this story at all. Mostly because the story is a very old one... seen many times before. And also the camera style annoyed me. Basically we follow Gilda as she deals with her fathers illness, death, and learning of his affair with another woman. Gilda is already obsessed with an actor played by Chris Noth, but becomes increasingly so as she discovers truths about her father and family.

The style of the story is very haphazzard with lots of cuts and clips. Made it hard for me to really feel for Gilda.

The material itself seemed like movie of the week territory and was boring and trite. I couldn't tell how old Gilda was supposed to be but she can't be too world weary if she can be so easily influenced by a movie star.

gradually winning.......2004-06-13

an intriguing film that gradually envelops the viewer and takes one into the interesting and unpredictable mind of its protagonist. At first I thought this was gonna be another one of those now cliched movies that features a character making their own home movie and going nowhere fast. Fortunately, I was pulled into the somewhat disturbed and surreal psychology of this woman and her strange journey. The acting is admirable and one is left being moved by this charming and troubling visionary sojourn.

Flawed and disturbing, yet beautifully executed.......2004-05-21

This film is impeccably put together, with a fine cast and excellent screenplay. The story combines humor (a young woman named Gilda is obsessed with a sexy older actor, and meanwhile engages in prickly schoolgirl interactions with her mother and grandmother) with pathos (the enormity of dealing with a parent's death). The dialogue rings true and the acting is uniformly inspired. There are some touching meditations on what it is to love a parent and on our relationships with the dead. There is the ever-interesting film-within-a-film subplot as well as, for hard-core Freudians, the phallic symbolism of the video recorder. But the Freudian analysis is laid on very thick: Gilda's Electra complex manifests itself in fantasies involving incest and murder, which threaten to break through into her overt behavior as she stalks and seduces the actor. While the film implies that perhaps this leads to a cathartic resolution of her conflicts, that was not persuasive to me because her character is portrayed as a pretty sick puppy in serious need of psychiatric intervention. Another bone I would pick is that the "paradise" theme is more of a throwaway motif than an integral part of the film (though I did enjoy the shot of bathroom graffiti about "paradice"). But even the underdeveloped theme and unconvincing psychological portrait didn't detract too much from what is in many ways a very intelligent, gutsy, affecting, and refreshing film.

Experimental Filmmaking at its Best.......2004-02-16

SEARCHING FOR PARADISE is an autobiographical story written and directed by the gifted Myra Paci. This film is an excellent example of just how fine Indies can be - taking risks on story, on actors, on the mechanics of filming techniques, on pacing, on music scoring, etc. Paci examines the life of Gilda (the superb Susan May Pratt) whose Italian father (Michele Placido in a stunning performance) loves her but leaves her in death to carry on his idiosyncratic view of romance. Gilda fantasizes about meeting and having an affair with a movie star (Chris Noth) and prepares for her adventure by using a video camera to record her father's last days, her mother (Laila Robin), and her friends. When her father dies, her 'search for paradise' takes her (with video camera) to New York where she dons the persona of Paola Mattei from Rome's Espresso magazine just to gain an interview with her movie star hero while living with her grandparents (Joseph Summers has a fine cameo as her grandfather). She has a brief and unsuccessful attempt at romance with a student (Jeremy Davies). Up to this point we know the movie star only through a TV talk show interview Gilda has been watching and Director Paci uses this technique of inserting the black and white TV talk show to probe the personality of the movie star. Gilda as Paola gains her interview, finds a brief and utterly disappointing affair that further bursts her bubble about romance in general. The knowledge that both her father and grandfather had extramarital affairs now seems less romantic and more painful. She returns home to the mother she has never understood and mother and daughter quietly uncover a new relationship.