Somewhere

I know that when you see my rating you will think "it can't be That Bad". It is. If you don't believe me, then please rent the DVD (hope you have NetFlix). After you watch it, please read any other reviews that I have made because you will realize I'll tell you the truth and that I'm not one of the Hollywood flunkies that rate movies high to get more sales. I hope the movie was recorded digitally and not on film. It would be a shame to waste all of that good film. The first few minutes of the film start off very s-l-o-w and then, very quickly, proceeds to get even slower. The movies starts nowhere, goes nowhere, and then ends in the same location that it started. After reading someones bad review I rented the movie anyway because Sofia Coppola wrote and directed it. I wish I would have believed his review. I plan to read more of them:)

We totally get it: life of a celebrity can be boring--so is this movie. If you plan on watching this, don't expect too much. Not everyone can relate to it. I can write a story about my grandma on her 50's and still manage to make it look better than this. If you're making a movie and you want to deliver a message, don't stress too much on the things that not a lot of people can appreciate. You can make a good realistic movie without compromising its ability to entertain. The message is deep--or maybe hidden is the right word. It's up to you to find where it is. It's there SOMEWHERE--oh, I finally got it. 2 votes for the twins.

For the third time I beg, no, I entreat IMDb to please give it's users the possibility to vote with minus values! This "movie" (I cannot continue without quote it) is the perfect example. Remember when I first heard of "Seinfield" and when the whole fuzz about this show was flowing around - "this is the best show ever, the show about nothing" - and exactly what it was, a nowhere to go show about nothing, putrid, inane and unfunny. "Somewhere" is worse - it is classified drama with no drama elements in it, it is just stupid, pale, bleak example of a documentary movie shoot with papa's millions on hand-held camera and presented as a movie. It is truly bad - the Coppola fans will find it slow, boring and empty - as if they made ten or twenty long unedited scenes with their Nokia's and then put it together into a movie - without editing and without thinking it might hurt. The moviegoers who like art and non-ordinary movies will also be cheesed off. I adore these movies, but hey - slow movie does not mean genial one; it needs something more to be good instead of just showing several hours/days/weeks of a someone's lifetime. I can give you a thousand examples of art movies in which ostensibly nothing happens that are a head ahead this one, but I think it's simply not worth it. I am truly stunned why this turkey has received Golden Lion in the last year's Venice festival (which attracted mucho personal interest in the movie in the first place); my only guess is that they are paying tribute to her father who deserve praise by all means; but God, how am I disappointed they did that for this particular piece of trash! This movie lines along the other pseudo-intellectual pseudo art movies in the last year, such as Inception, The American, Black Swan. Movies for the masses, movies for about nothing, made in such a way redneck would say at the end "I don't understand a sh*t of it so it must be genial!" and then rushes in IMDb pressing undoubtedly 10/10. Shame on you, Hollywood! You failed, but not just this time...

Have you seen a film where NOTHING happens but you wait nevertheless, hoping that there will be something meaningful any moment now? Well, this is one of them. What's the point of mentioning some fairly good acting and a decent soundtrack....it's all for nothing... What a shame, to realise that an hour and a half of your life has just been stolen. Now, a review needs to be at least ten lines long....haa-haa, a film needs to be of certain length too, doesn't it, Sophia? I could just fluff it all up a little, but that would be akin to plagiarising Ms Coppola's work. Instead, I shall repeat what I said earlier: Have you seen a film where NOTHING happens but you wait nevertheless, hoping that there will be something meaningful any moment now? Well, this is one of them. What's the point of mentioning some fairly good acting and a decent soundtrack....it's all for nothing...

This movie is boring and pointless. If you enjoy watching movies with no real plot, following around some self absorbed Hollywood types this movie is for you! The movie has less depth than a puddle, and the best acting comes from a little kid, Elle Fanning. I kept waiting for a real storyline to begin, it never happened. I wish I could sue the producer of this movie, because time is priceless, and this movie wasted an hour and a half that I can never get back. Dude drives around in a porche, gets drunk, meets a bimbo, gets laid. His manager calls on the phone, wakes him up for some boring engagement, then he goes to a party, meets a bimbo, gets drunk. This time there is a plot twist, he passes out before he can get laid, then gets woken up by the manager in the morning. I cannot believe someone wasted all the people involved with this movies time like that, and I feel sorry for anyone that has their name on this movie, it will not help their career any, that is for sure!

...makes "Somewhere" an utterly forgettable, self-indulgent (in the worst sense of the term) waste of celluloid. I gotta say, first of all, I have immense respect and admiration for Sofia Coppola. The girl who showed the world she couldn't act in "The Godfather III" had a decade to find herself and prove everybody she was a sensitive, talented writer-director with 1999's "The Virgin Suicides". "Lost In Translation" (2003), which gave her the Oscar for best original screenplay (and a nomination for best director - the third female and first American woman to ever be nominated in that category), is my #3 favourite film of all time. I can watch it over and over and every frame of it can make me appreciate the beauty of life, film, human connections, and music, more. Sounds corny, doesn't it? Well, but it's true. Sofia's follow-up to LiT, 2006's ostracized "Marie Antoinette", was, yes, sort of shallow, but I have to admit that eye candy and great music alone make it a delicious piece of cake for me. The same can't be said about her latest, "Somewhere", which won the Golden Lion for Best Film at Venice 2010 (a blasphemy, specially considering titles like "Black Swan" and "Balada Triste" were in competition). It follows a bored, kind of good-looking, shallow and womanizing movie star, Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) who (surprise) goes through an emotional transformation after spending some time with his 11 year-old daughter (product of a failed marriage), Cleo (Elle Fanning, a more natural actress than her older sister Dakota). We already knew that Sofia is fascinated by the ennui of the rich; but what made Bob Harris and Charlotte such wonderful characters in "Lost In Translation" was their humanity (and the chemistry between their fine performers, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson). Johnny Marco is not 1/5 as interesting as those two. Not every main character needs to be likable for a film to work for me, at all - I love character studies, no matter how conflicted ("The Piano Teacher") or pleasant ("Happy-Go-Lucky") the protagonist might be. However, Marco is not someone interesting enough to spend 97 minutes with, and although Cleo seems to be a nice enough girl, she can't carry a whole film on her shoulders. They don't even share the historical curiosity of a figure like Marie Antoinette and her colorful ways. Marco is just shallow. Filthy rich. Bored. And boring. It's hard to feel bad for him, or even compelled to follow what he might become (the open ending, in that sense, is not a quality, since the movie ends when it could possibly become somewhat interesting). The soundtrack was nice enough (not memorable like those of her previous work), the cinematography is pretty enough (by Harris Savides, and not Lance Acord, this time around), but this is no 'Lost in Translation Redux', or even a film I would want to see again. It's a shame, but I am still curious to see what you do next, Sofia. I know you have it in you to amaze us! Verdict: 3/10. P.S.: Quentin Tarantino, Sofia's ex-boyfriend who awarded "Somewhere" the Golden Lion as president of the jury at Venice last September, later wouldn't even name it one of his top 20 movies of the year (yet, he lists abominations such as "Jackass 3D", "Knight and Day"...). That can prove one of two things: 2010 was a less than great year for movies, or he finally realized the mistake he made. Well, perhaps both?

This is the one film I wanted to see at the Venice Film Festival and, dear, oh dear. A strange "tribute" to the French New Wave, at least that's what I think I thought. No emotional hooks to be found even if the story by its very nature should be emotional, not sentimental but emotional. I was in a sort of emotional limbo from beginning to end, hoping to cling on to something but not such luck. To be a French New Wave director you have to be French and working in France preferably pre-1970. What is Sofia Coppola all about? This film, after "Marie Antoniette", makes me wonder. I can't guess what her intention was here. News that ex boyfriend Quentin Tarantino, president of the Venice Film Festival Jury, awarded "Somewhere" the top honor doesn't really surprise me but it makes me so mad. What an outrageous blatant move. I wonder what Tarantino's adoring Italian critics are going to say now.

I am a big fan of underrated actor Stephen Dorff. I don't know what happen to him but his career is kind of dead. So, this movie "Somewhere" gets me interested the fact that he is the star of it. This movie also stars Elle Fanning, the younger sister of former child actress Dakota Fanning. Some people might not like the direction given by Sofia Coppola. The movie is slow pace, too quite, there are scenes with long cuts, and sometimes there is nothing going on for 1 minute or more. This approach could be boring to some people but for me it is very effective in conveying the despair, loneliness and boredom of Hollywood actor Johnny Marco. Stephen Dorff didn't do much dialog or doing actions in this. When he speaks, he spoke only few phrases. But, the emotion through his eyes, the tears or a simple smile kills it. Elle Fanning is remarkable as well. The movie runs maybe slow but if you are patient enough, the emotional impact that struck on you throughout the film is worth it.

I went out of the cinema feeling cleansed, which is the same reaction I had to Lost in Translation. Which, for me, is a very rare reaction. It's slower and slightly more adult, but it's the same limbo theme; alienation, emptiness and loss of purpose. And SC uses the hotel as a symbol once again: A nothing place, like standing on a platform waiting for the train. Stephen Dorff plays, excellently and believable, the pleasure addicted star that is in the middle of falling apart, slowly dissolving in his surface life. SC let's the character free himself from all the unnecessary things in life, one by one, until there is only the core left, and I couldn't help feeling lighter and happier myself when that happened. Apart from that it's also hilarious - if you are able to appreciate subtle humour and can laugh at the ridiculous side of life. Just a little thing like the unsexy, squeaky sound it made, when the blonde twins turned on their poles... It totally cracked me up. :D

Well, I am considerably shocked that anybody found this big yawn some kind of brilliant statement. It made most minimalist European art films look like exhilarating action flicks. Not that I'm a fan of action flicks. I am a fan of well written scripts, usually character driven. This character, well there is no there there. Which I guess is the filmmaker's point. But in making a movie about how empty and superficial Hollywood is, Sofia, a product of said Hollywood, proved her point by making an empty superficial film. The only compelling bit was when the daughter signaled her emotions without much help, it appears, from the script, and this was a few fleeting moments. Now I guess this is a spoiler. But since not much really happened, I am not sure. I knew I was in trouble when the car went around the track half a dozen times at the intro, when 2 or 3 would suffice. Then I was treated to a pole dance that lasted a few minutes too long, the daughter dancing about 4 minutes when 2 would suffice, an eternity watching the actor sit in a plaster cast (I know, it was MEANINGFUL-he was suffocating), etc etc etc. Obviously Sofia is of the school that painfully long sequences of nothing much happening is broadcasting to us that something IS happening. But I'm an old fashioned girl. I like actual drama.