Finally got my equilibrium back after Rachel Getting Married (but made sure to sit a row or two back from my usual spot--that wasn't hard because Mary Ellen & I were the only ones at the matinee today). I loved Everything is Illuminated (2005), directed by actor Liev Schreiber (wonderful in A Walk on the Moon (1999), the remake of The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and the gorgeous The Painted Veil (2006)), starring Elijah Wood (Frodo in the Lord of the Rings movies and Sigourney Weaver's son in Ang Lee's brilliant-but-depressing The Ice Storm (1997)) as a young Jewish-American man searching out his past in a Ukrainian village, and co-starring Eugene Hutz as the crazy Russian tour guide.
Hutz is the star and narrator of this ensemble piece, Madonna's directing debut. He is also the frontman for a Gypsy punk band called Gogol Bordello, which contributed several songs to the movie and appears on screen at the end. The only other actor in it that I had heard of before was Richard E. Grant, a Brit with a long resume whom I will always remember for his good and better first and fourth movies, Withnail & I (1987) and How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989). This movie is not for everyone but we liked it. Yes, we are in the minority. It's spotty, sometimes even hokey (despite starring a male character who, according to the Times of London, spanks other men for a living), and oddly uplifting. It can be summed up by the maxim, "Most folks are as happy as they want to be." Goof: when we first see Juliette in the pharmacy, her nametag is backwards, leading me to believe that the film was flipped for part of that scene.
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