Someone Like You

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Set in a metropolis with realistic characters who lead troubled, single, professional lives, “”Someone Like You”” is a movie that tries to provide a new twist on a trite story.

Ashley Judd portrays the main character, Jane Goodale, who delivers a surprisingly believable performance of a woman hurt by men and determined to make sense of their ambiguous nature. There is another surprise with solid performances by Greg Kinnear and Hugh Jackman as the men in Jane’s life, and by Marisa Tomei as the emotionally distraught best friend.

Despite all these credible performances by the cast, “”Someone Like You”” fails to be anything more than another romantic comedy in which a young attractive woman falls for the man who has been right under her nose the whole time.

There is, however, an innovative twist of adding unconventional “”scientific theories”” and hysterical farm narratives to give the movie a little individual flair. The occasional dreamy musings of Jane, along with the seemingly serious narration on outlandish and humorous subjects, makes the film better than many recent romantic comedies that exist for no reason except to employ good looking actors and parade them around half-naked.

Overall, the hackneyed plot makes this a rather mediocre film, though this can be expected from a film of this genre. However, its occasional humorous and imaginative moments, including the narration and explanation of Jane Goodale’s theories about men through analogous cows, makes the film worthwhile if you are in the mood to see a romantic comedy.

— Anne Cong-huyen

Yi Yi

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You’d think 170 minutes of subtitled Taiwanese might be a bit of a meal. This film has won a wide array of awards, and it might take as much as 45 minutes to figure out why.

It’s a good thing this leaves you about 125 minutes for awe and appreciation, because this film is brimming with beauty as it stitches a quilt where the patches are everyday episodes that might not be as everyday as they at first seem.

Birth, love, marriage and death within a family are tangled in a mesh that emphasizes the view of time as circular, a view that is favored by many Asian epistemologies. The casting is superb, and the actors manage to express a huge range of emotions, from Hollywood hysterical sorrow, to dry, situational wit that almost resembles that of British social realist films.

The cinematography of this film must be seen. In a detached way that requires more effort from the audience than does your average Hollywood blockbuster, it paints out the intrigues and passions of the portrayed family in broad, soothing brush strokes.

The action is often shown as reflections or behind reflective surfaces, and the viewer is allowed to peel away the layers as one would peel a succulent fruit. This parallels the rich texture of the family’s intertwined stories and emotions.

The film draws toward an unexpected conclusion: a death. One cannot help being overwhelmed by the elegance and ease with which this film copes with the complexity of its own plot. There’s nothing to do but lay back and be washed away by this tsunami of life’s events.

“”Yi Yi”” is directed by Edward Yang, and we can only hope and pray that he’ll send more of this our way. This film is on at the Ken in Hillcrest, and for a very short time only, so schedule in those three hours before it’s too late.

— Liss Anda