Thanks for checking out our New York, I Love You Review.
Genre: Drama
Released: DVD and Blu: April 20,2010
THE GENERAL IDEA
This is an interesting project with a heap of directors and actors all set to film their own peice of this film. Each of these short films were stitched together to make one big film, each directed and written by someone different. The task was that they had only 24 hours to shoot, a week to edit and needed to give the sense of a particular neighborhood.
Ten vignettes in New York City: a pickpocket meets his match; a young Hasidic woman, on the eve of her marriage, reveals herself to an Indian businessman; a writer tries a pick-up line; an artist seeks a model; a composer needs to read; two women connect; a man takes a child to Central Park; lovers meet; a couple takes a walk on their anniversary; a kid goes to the prom with a girl in a wheelchair; a retired singer contemplates suicide. There are eight million stories in the naked city: these have been ten of them.
THE GOOD
Each of these films is brilliantly brought together with one repetitive encounter with a woman who is randomly filming New York in action for an art project who seems to cross paths with all of these stories. Each story is incredibly different, shows the incredible mix of culture and lives in the busy city.
The most amazing thing about this is that with all these stars, they pull out some impressive performances. Hayden Christiansen was one of my favourites, but he only comes in second to Orlando Bloom. Seriously. These guys blew me away in their bits.
Of course other veterans of the big screen like Robin Wright Penn (beautiful and sexy in this) just knock it out of the park. And on the DVD there is a very artsy segment that was cut from the film, directed by Scarlett Johansson and starring Kevin Bacon (which was in the original ’08 Toronto International Film Festival presentation) that while interesting on its own just didnt fit with the rest of the stories.
THE BAD
There is a very artsy feel to this movie. If arthouse is not your thing this will drag on. The only segment I didn’t like was the old couple constantly nagging at each other for their entire bit. While endearing that they were still married despite the bickering, the message was lost on me from the constant irritable chatter.
OVERALL
A very enjoyable look at the people and lives of New York City. If you want to get a look at the culture of New York in a very enjoyable showcase of short films, this is perfect.
And if you want to know how people like Hayden Christiansen and Orlando Bloom keep getting work, I think this movie will tell you why. I see them both in a different light here.
Tiny bit of trivia, is that the film runtime is precisely 1:43, and “143” is a common numerical representation for the phrase “I love you” indicating the amount of letters in each word of the phrase.
I give New York, I Love You a7 out of 10
