DVD Review: The Ramen Girl (2008)

An American in Japan:
To Noodles With Love
Arriving on DVD
5/26/09

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A.K.A. The Ramen girl

Simultaneously able to break your heart (a la Girl Interrupted) and melt it at the exact same time simply by being her free-spirited and spunky self (yes, even in Love and Other Disasters and Uptown Girls)-- it's always been a wonder to me why Brittany Murphy has never managed to become a big box office star.

Yet, in the same token, it's most likely to her benefit and credit that she's that talented of an actress that we often forget that the same (then) girl who learns the joys of shopping in Amy Heckerling's refreshingly sophisticated teen movie Clueless is the same actress who eerily cooed "I'll never tell" to Michael Douglas in Don't Say A Word before the petite pixie stood up to Benicio Del Toro as her abusive married police officer boyfriend in Robert Rodriguez's Sin City.

And now she's adding the role of producer to her resume with this unusual tale from Media 8 Entertainment and Digital Site Corporation that's hitting DVD shelves from Image Entertainment. Murphy-- the woman who once beat out an impressive bevy of A-list stars for the hotly coveted lead role in the now forgotten biopic about Janis Joplin-- crops up this week in the Japanese/American production The Ramen Girl.

Having worked steadily over the years primarily in the independent and offbeat realm and usually in romantic roles that showcase her innate sweetness-- it seems apparent that Murphy obviously latched onto the five-time Emmy nominated television director Robert Allan Ackerman's debut feature film The Ramen Girl for all the right reasons.

Working from newcomer Becca Topol's original screenplay, Ramen takes the framework of a romantic comedy but leaves those two requisite ingredients (of romance and comedy) on the counter in lieu of a female empowerment screenplay. At its core, Topol's Ramen is about a young woman trying to "find" herself after being dumped in Tokyo and it's a fetching Under the Tuscan Sun paradigm that must have appealed to Murphy since it reveals its true nature shortly into a movie that on the surface is decorated like a typical rom-com.

Although the press release describes the film as "Tampopo meets Lost in Translation," and it aims more for drama than the promised "hilarious culture clash" described in the introduction, the film will strike an instantly familiar chord with those who've experienced Like Water for Chocolate, Waitress, Last Holiday, Chocolat, Simply Irresistible, The Mistress of Spices, and Woman on Top.

Unfortunately and despite Murphy's considerable charm, it's nowhere near as successful as Water, Last Holiday, Waitress, Chocolat, and Spices as Topol crafts one of the most unlikable "mentors" in recent memory to serve as the film's anti-Mr. Miyagi in the role that poor Toshiyuki Nishida is saddled with as the angry and often drunk, fond of hitting, ruthless curmudgeon.

When the bright and bubbly Abby journeys to Japan to be with her techie boyfriend Ethan (Gabriel Mann) in a move we soon gather that was more her idea than Ethan's, she's stunned to find herself on the receiving end of a cliched "I'm a traveler," I need space styled break-up.

Leaving her stranded in a strange city where she knows only two of his friends (the obligatory gay guy and a dramatic diva) and can barely make small talk with the aid of a Japanese to English dictionary-- instead of getting on the next plane back to the states, Abby's denial continues. And in a painful to watch series of events, she optimistically continues phoning Ethan until one night, she finds herself strangely drawn into a ramen noodle shop run by the ornery Maezumi (Nishida).

Wandering in after hours and greeted with his angry drunken shouts in Japanese, the fragile Abby breaks down into helpless tears but is soon transformed when Maezumi and his wife serve her his own special bowl of ramen noodles. Ignoring the airline ticket her parents have purchased for her return-- seemingly illogically and still in shock from the departure of Ethan-- Abby begins to return to the ramen shop regularly, helping out when she can until she makes a seemingly impulsive decision that she wants to become a ramen chef to make people smile and laugh the way that the chef does (when he isn't drunk or hitting people that is).

Going as far as to lock Abby out of the restaurant, trying to scare her off with endless countless of dirty dishes to clean, toilet bowls to scrub by hand on her knees, and an increasingly humiliating set of tasks-- the chef is as amazed by Abby's persistence as we are that she remains in the shop.

Topol's script and Ackerman's film starts with potential as an amusingly offbeat tale about a young woman who starts to find her true self in a place where the only thing she's able to translate is emotion and feels that perhaps ramen noodles are far superior to mispronounced phrases and crying jags. However, soon it becomes a patience testing study of just how much punishment Muphy's character will take from a man who regularly hits and rough-handles her.

And similar to a military picture, we gather it's all "part of the training" to see if Abby has what it takes but Topol's attempts to humanize the cruel chef are few and far between making our heroine seem a bit weaker and unheroic in her willingness to continue to serve as a masochistic glutton for punishment.

While perhaps some greater glimpse into her home-life would help us better understand the reason she remains in the shop-- (and indeed on the DVD's extra features, you do catch a phone conversation with her nagging never seen mother that does assist in this process)-- nonetheless, it still makes a trying feature to sit through clocking in at a mere 102 minutes.

Although a minor romantic subplot is added in for good measure and perhaps to try and make us smile every once in awhile-- ultimately by its halfway point, we realize that like a recipe that needs some adjusting, Topol's script wasn't quite ready for the oven by the time Ramen Girl went into production.

And while I do love her premise and much like Love and Other Disasters Murphy is the right choice to elevate weak material-- in the end, Abby's character arc was in desperate need of little more spunk a la Queen Latifah's ambitious yet also emotionally tested foodie in Last Holiday or Keri Russell's spirited turn in Waitress which would've strengthened Ackerman's picture.

Moreover, there's so much wasted potential that-- if strung together tighter and played upon-- would've augmented it considerably in the form of a great "girl power" under-utilized alliance Murphy has with the chef's wife and Tammy Blanchard's dramatic diva. The friendships-- if handled correctly-- could've done for Ramen what the Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, and Judi Dench friendship did for Chocolat and likewise, Topol's direct magic realist Like Water for Chocolate homage (including one alternate ending) feel like they were so cribbed from Esquivel and Arau's source material that there could be a lawsuit on Topol's hands. But luckily as evidenced in the weak but amusing Sarah Michelle Gellar film Simply Irresistible, the idea of a cook's emotional state somehow passing through to the food and into those who digest it has already been utilized before.

While far from a complete disaster and instead, one of those movies that's so maddeningly close to having been something so special that it's worth exploring on that level alone-- in the end, Ramen reminds women and writers that the addition of a romance or a handsome "prince" isn't an arc that should be used to ever define a main female character.

Gorgeously transferred to digital form for its debut on DVD to the highest of widescreen quality, the disc offers the addition of the film's trailer, the alternate ending (that REALLY gave off a Like Water for Chocolate vibe that would've greatly altered the tone of the movie) and a few deleted scenes. Ultimately, Murphy's first effort as a producer fails to nourish or satisfy the way a delicious bowl of ramen noodles should but it makes great food for thought as we examine the ingredients and imagine the concoction it should've been if the timing had been right before it hit the oven.

Brittany Murphy

DVD Review: Cadillac Records (2008)

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Although pop culture would tell you otherwise, rock 'n roll did not begin with Elvis Presley at Memphis, Tennessee’s Sun Records. Instead, rock had its origins in the blues and later rhythm and blues. And while arguably the first bona fide rock 'n roll star was none other than Chuck Berry—Berry’s story along with the other pioneers of rhythm and blues that led to rock 'n roll as we now know it today has basically been left in the dust.

While interviews with artists like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and other musicians along with musical scholars will cite there early blues influences and a few years ago an entire PBS documentary was dedicated to the subject-- writer-director Darnell Martin said to change all that in a minor way with her stunning, underrated ensemble piece Cadillac Records.

Although admittedly, some of the facts have been blended together and some of the personalities have been left by the wayside to squeeze in what Martin explains was “the absolute truth” of the stories she wanted to tell “about how the blues became popular music, how it affected civil rights,” by whittling down her 150 page first draft to a feature-length movie running just 109 minutes, she achieves a wonderful success that works on two levels.

Firstly, she's made it one hell of a great film about the blues (which in reality is surely about the history of the American people) by calling attention to artists that have been long forgotten and secondly, like a cool walking musical encyclopedia, Martin earns in n honorary title as professor in making us want to not only seek out the recordings by these amazing artists but also learn more about them as human beings.

Purporting to tell the history, inception, and impact of Chicago's own Chess Records initially created by first-generation Polish immigrants Leonard and Phil Chess (although Phil is mostly absent from the film aside from a few scenes in which we infer he’s the “other white guy” next to Adrien Brody), Martin simultaneously weaves in the story of the artists who would join the label including Leonard Chess’s first great star, Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright).

In yet another phenomenal, chameleon-like performance by the great Jeffrey Wright -- the type of which we’re beginning to take for granted on—he tackles Muddy first as a sharecropper in Mississippi whose life was forever changed by a happy accident when his voice was recorded by two men from Fisk University who had initially set out see record the fault music of the late Robert Johnson. After they learned that Johnson had passed away, they were directed to Muddy’s porch and following an impromptu recording that gave the future “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Mannish Boy” the first opportunity to hear the way he sounded on vinyl, he memorably noted he felt as though, “I’m meeting myself for the first time.”

It was with those determined and confident words that Muddy packed his guitar and headed north without looking over his shoulder to Chicago where he formed two important relationships. The first was with Geneva (Gabrielle Union) who would become his longtime love and the second was none other than Leonard Chess, with whom Muddy began making records, taking part in payola schemes, getting him as well as the rest of the Chess lineup of artists unprecedented air-play and treating them to shiny new Cadillacs sometimes without informing them that it was being taken out of their royalties.

Admittedly in the 1950s, both the friendship and relationship -- especially when money was involved -- between both white and black individuals was charged with complexity over whether or not the musician was being exploited and the idea that a white man may have been needed to be the front for the organization in order to lead to the era of Motown but Martin never makes any concrete judgments about her characters.

This is especially evident as other artists join the roster and Martin manages to interlace some double-standards and new thoughts coming from all involved—mostly in the form of Muddy’s greatest harmonica player and the seventeen year old hot-headed prodigy Little Walter (Columbus Short) and the fiery and proud Howlin’ Wolf (Eamonn Walker) who has extremely firm ideas about what we sense he felt was an evolved version of “slave” and “master.” Rounding out Martin’s ensemble piece, we’re also introduced to the terrific writer and current owner of Chess Records who has turned it into a museum, Mr. Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), and two of the most legendary acts—Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and Etta James (Beyonce Knowles).

Although it was Muddy that paved the way, eventually it was Berry’s blend of country and rockabilly helped destroy racial barriers playing sold out gigs to white and black listeners alike along with appearing on television. Yet, unfortunately while his song “Sweet Little Sixteen” was blatantly stolen by The Beach Boys for the background of “Surfin’ USA,” and his career was cut short when he was imprisoned for driving a white female minor across state lines (making his dalliances with young women not that much different than Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley), soon a savior managed to enter the recording studio at precisely the right moment in the form of the exquisite yet contradictorily volcanic Ms. Etta James (Knowles).

Despite her deceptively sweet appearance, James was a woman who as Leonard described “lived the blues” instead of just singing about them. With a horrific addiction to heroin and countless family problems including a failure to get her rumored father Minnesota Fats to acknowledge his paternity, James as played by Knowles is walking heartbreak. Anyone who thought that the singer’s vast improvement as an actress in Dreamgirls was a fluke will be immediately taken aback by her dynamic portrayal in this film.

In the part written exclusively for the musician by Ms. Martin and amazingly shooting all of her scenes in just six days, Knowles is able to effortlessly capture James’ tough-talking demeanor, her more vulnerable side opposite Oscar winner Adrien Brody (in a few scenes that really send sparks flying), and most importantly bring the house down in recording session performances that will send shivers down your spine as she sings not just “At Last,” but also “Once in a Lifetime,” and “I’d Rather Go Blind.”

While indeed there is some accurate criticisms about liberty being taken with the facts, Martin surpasses expectations by avoiding the trappings of strict biopic and moving into a far more daunting challenge of bringing to life several figures at the same time. To tell you just the Leonard Chess story, or just the Muddy Waters story, or just the Chuck Berry story, or just the Etta James story wouldn't have captured the real story namely that of the blues which is what provided the soundtrack of the American experience.

Over the past few years, we've been inundated with biopics and while some of them have been exceptional such as James Mangold’s Walk the Line-- the decision to move away from that tried and true paradigm and instead embrace the idea of presenting us with an authentic sense of time and place is what sets Cadillac Records apart.

In the incredibly worthwhile roughly twenty-seven minute making-of-featurette “Playing Chess,” the filmmaker accurately describes the approach in the work of the cast as “everybody’s playing a different instrument.” Effectively managing to make the most of their limited budget by ensuring the production and costumer designers always knew what was going to be seen by the camera at any given moment to avoid unnecessary expenses, the largely female production team discuss the methods they used in augmenting the story from using both color and texture to truly “sell the period.”

Employing a large amount of blues, greens, purples and browns near the opening—Martin reveals in the design featurette “Once Upon a Blues,” that she was extremely careful about avoiding the color red until the moment Chuck Berry and rock ‘n roll are officially introduced. In addition to providing deleted scenes, the filmmaker also takes part in a feature-length commentary track that would be of extreme interest to music buffs as Martin’s knowledge of the characters, Chess records, music, and the time period is extraordinarily detailed, which is evident from the start as she helps clear the air on factual items that didn’t make it into the movie.

Unfortunately overlooked in a crowded December filled with a large amount of Oscar bait pictures making their way daily into theatres across the states, luckily Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s underrated gem is now available in both DVD and Blu-ray high definition where the sound on even the DVD alone manage to heighten the sound of James’ “At Last” or Waters’ “Mannish Boy” to concert level quality despite your sound system setup.

Download the Standard or Deluxe
Soundtrack From iTunes
(Click the Icons Below)

Download "The Best of Chess"
(The Original Recordings of the Songs
Heard in the Film Via the iTunes Album Icon Below)

Bella

Director: Alejandro Gomez Monteverde

Although infinitely preferable to the sexist and conservative rants of Dr. Phil, normally I wouldn’t advise trying to glean any wisdom on how to live one’s life from the heartbreaking oeuvre of Tennessee Williams. Despite this, there is definitely something to be said for Blanche DuBois’s memorable confession, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” uttered in A Streetcar Named Desire. Not only do those words ring true more regularly than the evening news would have us believe in real life, but often they also provide a terrific springboard for creativity in the world of independent filmmaking.

From The Station Agent to Once, it seems as though we overwhelmingly gravitate towards stories in which our main character finds either their romantic or platonic soul mate in a complete stranger. Frequently this burgeoning appreciation echoes the events onscreen as audience members find themselves becoming an integral part of a steadily growing word-of-mouth movement that brings together film lovers from all backgrounds and walks of life to find truth, solace and consolation in the fact that this world is much smaller than we may think, with people who feel things in the same way as do we.

A beautiful cinematic realization of this sentiment can be found in writer/director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde’s feature film debut Bella which earned the 2006 People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, once again exemplifying the determination of filmgoers to seek out and reward works with which they identify. Primarily set during the course of one fateful New York day, save for a few wisely chosen flashes backwards and forwards in time, we encounter two employees of a restaurant who find a spark of recognition in one another.

When the pretty, young waitress Nina (Tammy Blanchard) is fired by domineering Manny (Manny Perez) after arriving late to work, despite the fact that they’re relative strangers, something in the girl’s eyes and manner speaks to Manny’s brother, the restaurant’s chef Jose (Eduardo Verastegui) who follows Nina to the subway where she reveals she is pregnant. Not wanting to leave her alone and equally drawn to her plight by the ghosts of his own tragic past which are revealed over the course of the film and refreshingly without predictability, Jose brings Nina to his family’s home.

Traditional narrative structure would have us believe that we’re watching a straightforward romance where Jose would chivalrously save the young woman from a tragic fate however just when you think you have it pegged, the film moves in another direction. Moreover, Monteverde’s intelligent screenplay and carefully chosen leads never let us forget that Jose needs Nina just as much as she needs him and Bella avoids becoming mired in a tired formula as the film evolves from a naturalistic romance to one where the romance isn’t simply to be found in the relationship between a man and a woman but one that celebrates genuine love between human beings, whether it’s classified as romantic, familial or platonic.