Puccini for Beginners (2005)

Loved It!!!!!

I loved this movie it was so funny and cute. It was kinda annoying but I loved the end it was a real good movie I really recommend it!! January 27, 2008

Thought Provoking At Times

I caught this movie on the Logo channel so I don't have the dvd but I figured I'd write a review anyway.

To me it's one of those movies that could never happen in quite this way in real life but it does raise issues that are real.

The main character hooks up with two people who are having problems in their relationships not knowing that their relationship is with each other.

I guess one lesson is if someone just wants to be 'the other person' this may be what they become which is what happens initially.

But ultimately she lucks out and causes someone else to become the other person and she becomes the right person which is what she so desperately wanted.

I guess the main point is how do people find that other person that is right for them. This is a very deep philosophical question. Even a spiritual question.

Perhaps the various experiences that these people went through was a necessary part of that discovery for them.

I think movies like this can be educational if they make people think about the implications, complexities, and possible outcomes of getting involved in intimate relationships. She perhaps underestimated the feelings that her two friends still had for each other.

The two main female characters in this movie are bisexual but this is not a graphic movie. At least not the version I saw on tv.

Jeff Marzano

When Night Is Falling
December 24, 2007

Mediocre attempt of a "brilliant romantic comedy"

This is a mediocre (not terrible, just mediocre) attempt of a romantic comedy. The story centers around an undecided young woman who can't decide whether she is really a lesbian, whether she loved the last girlfriend who dumped her for her inability to commit, whether she is now in love with a man or maybe with his... ex-girlfriend. As you can imagine, the situation will get complicated very quickly, giving rise to fairly trite situations.

Acting is mostly mediocre, and would be just fine for a TV sitcom. Tina Benko and Justin Kirk save the day a bit, but the main character, played by Elizabeth Reaser, is very forgettable, rather silly, and not even very attractive. The dialogue tries hard to be witty, but it ends up in most cases being just trivial and quite unnatural. As other reviewers have pointed out, the screenplay really sounds a like "Woody Allen for beginners".

Overall, a very forgettable movie, which I will quickly forget. November 4, 2007

Nessun Dorma . . .With Everyone Else

This movie is about as subtle as a meat-tenderizing hammer as it's beating us around the head with its pro-gay agenda. But appealing performances keep it from being just a self-conscious film school project. The luminous Elisabeth Reaser stars as Allegra, our prickly, sexually-confused heroine. After a breakup with her longtime girlfriend (Julienne Nicholson), Allegra finds herself carrying on a flirtation (and soon much more) with a man (Justin Kirk) who happens to be quite nearly engaged to someone else (Gretchen Mol). In a turn of events that could only happen in a Manhattan-based sex comedy, Allegra is soon introducing her male lover's clueless girlfriend to the joys of Sapphic love as well. Juggling booty calls from two lovers, one of each gender, proves exhausting, not to mention morally ambiguous (!). So when Allegra's lovers find that they have two-timing each other with Allegra, both Allegra and the audience are quite relieved. In another twist that could only happen in a Manhattan-based sex comedy, this disclosure happens at a swank catered party, with Allegra wearing catering duds. I'm not sure, but I'd wager that Woody Allen's been there done that already. Reaser is a quirky rising talent who we should be seeing a lot more from. She played Diane Keaton's eldest daughter in "The Family Stone" and with good reason--she strikingly resembles the young Keaton. She has a wry way of delivering her lines through her teeth, almost as if she's delivering them as asides. "Can you believe this dreck?" she seems to say as she grits out lines like "Marriage is slavery." Kirk (recently of "Angels in America") seems to be an odd vehicle for helping Allegra to discover her latent heterosexuality; he is not nearly as appealing as the women in this film, which is probably the whole point. Gretchen Mol is charming and I'd chose her over Justin Kirk, too, and I'm straight. This is a highly stylized, picture-postcard Manhattan, where it never rains, the streets aren't crowded and nobody ever works or has to wait for a table . . .they just have a lot of sex in their fabulous apartments, have arguments in fab restaurants and attend glossy parties, at which they fight some more. These people are silly and shallow but it's fun, for 82 minutes, to pretend that it's really possible to live this way. Pair with a couple episodes of "Sex and the City" for a longer experience of sexual absurdist theatre. October 26, 2007

Puccini

Great seller and quick shipment. Movie was very good -- except there was no Puccini in it! September 11, 2007

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