| A Walk on the Moon | | Cast : | Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen | | Director : | Tony Goldwyn | | Studio : | Miramax Home Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | April 02, 1999 | | DVD Released Date : | January 04, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), English (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 29, 2005 | | Summary | Diane Lane goes with Viggo Mortensen to Woodstock (wouldn't you?) | Content
 | The Kantrowitz family is heading to at retreat in the Catskills for the 4th of July in the summer of 1969. Marty (Liev Schreiber), who works in a television repair shop, is going to have to go back to work because Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are going to be walking on the moon later that month and everybody and their uncle wants to make sure they can see the big moment on their television. That means his wife, Pearl (Diane Lane), and mother, Lilian (Tovah Feldshuh, in another fine turn as a Jewish mother almost as good as her exquisite portrayal in "Kissing Jessica Stein"), will stay at the bungalow watching over the kids, Alison (Anna Paquin) and Daniel (Bobby). Alison "becomes a woman," a fact cheerfully announced over the public address system (by Julie Kavner), and goes off in search of her first kiss, her first date, and her first leaving the house to go attend a three day festival of rock music. But Alison is not the only one looking for trouble.
We learn later in "Walk on the Moon" that the first time Pearl and Marty made love when they were teenagers, Pearl got pregnant with Alison. Marty was going to go to college, but that dream ended and he got married and went to work. Now it is fourteen years later and when Pearl sees her daughter running off to have fun and then notices that the "Blouse Man" (Viggo Mortensen), announced that way when he arrives to sell blouses out of a converted bus, is noticing her, she becomes painfully aware that she has only been with one man in her entire life. Now her husband is away, and while the rest of the world is watching images being beamed back from the moon, Pearl takes her own giant leap.
The "Blouse Man" is really named Walker Jerome, a name, it is pointed out, that is backwards. But that hardly matters because he is, as you can plainly see, played by Viggo Mortensen, and that means Marty is going to need some help. At least he has the love and support of his mother, who makes it clear that no matter how bad the traffic is between the city and the Catskills because of the concert at Woodstock, Marty needs to get back up to the bungalow (the time it takes Marty to get from the city to the bungalow is mentioned every time he shows up). Eventually Pearl will discover that while she can run off to Woodstock or a secluded waterfall for her fun with her new lover, the world in which she lives not only has a moon on which men have walked, but a husband, a daughter, and a son. She also finds that not only does she have to explain her infidelity to those who have a right to know, but her marriage as well.
The moment of crisis in "A Walk on the Moon" has to do with Pearl's decision as to what she will now do with the rest of her life. Does she attempt to reconcile with her angry husband or does she live the life she never had with the new guy? My problem is not with Pearl's choice, but rather the idea that changing the music that you listen to can make everything better. I might be willing to buy that deus ex musica if it did not work so quickly, although this 1999 film has a pretty good soundtrack that features Judy Collins singing "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" (for rather obvious reasons given the plot). But I end up rounding down on this one because while the script by Pamela Gray ("Music of the Heart") finely defines the female characters and their motivations, I find Marty's actions to be motivated more by the requirements of the resolution than anything else. Given the story, this one needed to have more than Lane and Mortensen frollicing in the water, as visually compelling as that might be. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 20, 2005 | | Summary | A Tasty 'Period Piece' from the 1960s! | Content
| A WALK ON THE MOON as written by Pamela Gray ("Music of the Heart") and directed by actor Tony Goldman conjures up more atmosphere for the year 1969 than any film to date. Remember Woodstock, the Jewish summer retreats in the Catskills, hippies, face and body painting, threats from the Vietnam era and promises of space habitation by the famous first walk on the moon? It is all faithfully created here as the background for a lovely little sentimental tale about family and fidelity.
The Kantrowitz family - Pearl (Diane Lane), Marty (Liev Schreiber), Alison (Anna Paquin), Daniel (Bobby Boriello) and Marty's mother Lilian (Tovah Feldshuh) - are spending their usual summer away form New York in a Catskill settlement bungalow along with other Jewish families of the same ilk. All seems swell, except that Marty must spend the weekdays returning to his job as a TV repairman, leaving the family under Pearl's and Lilian's care until his weekend visits. A hippie blouse salesman Walker Jerome (Viggo Mortensen) peddles his wares to the settlement and casually but inevitably Pearl feels an attraction to Walker, the man of adventure who represents all the lost dreams of becoming a mother and wife at the too early age of 17. Life has slipped her by but feels salvageable in Walker's advances.
Woodstock is close by and Pearl and Walker spend a day of hippie love-in in the crowd, not knowing that teenage Alison is also there observing their free love antics. This crisis event affects the family's unity and the way Pearl faces her moment of indiscretion with Marty and her children builds to a terrific climax.
Diane Lane, Viggo Mortenson, Liev Schreiber and Tovah Feldshuh completely inhabit these simple characters and pull us into accepting all aspects of the predicament of this family crisis. The confrontation among Lane, Schreiber and Mortenson is a trio of acting not to be forgotten. Tony Goldwyn has paced his film beautifully and proves that he has as great skill as a director as well as an actor. The cinematography by Anthony B. Richmond is as recreative of a special time on our history as has been captured. This little film will stay with you long after the credits are over. Grady Harp, May 05
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| Rating | | | Date | May 07, 2005 | | Summary | Watch 'Unfaithful' instead. | Content
| This movie is somewhat similar to Unfaithful but it lacks the erotic intensity. If you haven't seen either of them I recommend Unfaithful instead. If you have seen Unfaithful, you can do without it. I found it a bit slow, and if it weren't for the gorgeous Diane Lane I wouldn't be able to finish it. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 07, 2005 | | Summary | Great Actors but Middling Script | Content
| There are many similarities between this movie and the first Dirty Dancing movie. Both involve up-tight, conservative families off for a summer of fun in a New Yorky style getaway location. Both involve a female visitor becoming fond of a male worker who is much more laid back and free. Where Dirty Dancing focussed just on the young girl and how she 'became a woman', this movie focusses on the mom (Diane Lane) and how she 'regains her childhood'.
The beginning of the movie is sort of clunky, setting the stage. The family with unappreciative kids. The husband who has become boring - he doesn't even want or understand a desire to try new sexual positions. He doesn't want to talk about what is going on at work or make waves there asking for more time off. The mom sees her daughter finding a voice, flirting with guys, doing all the things she missed out on herself. They set this up rather stick-figuredly, but I get and understand the general gist. Woman trapped in her role. See the Hours movie.
Then along comes the 'blouse man', Viggo. I have a big issue with how they managed this relationship. Viggo is a friendly hippy who sells blouses to the Jewish resort inhabitants. He's equally friendly to everyone. Sure, the mom craves affection. Sure, Viggo talks to her 2 or 3 times. But then she calls him up for sex - and he shows up to be her 'back door man' without a blink? He brings her right into his back room and, even though she's talking loudly about her family and obviously having second thoughts, all he says is "want me to stop?" It was very artificial feeling. And almost immediately we are launched into montages of them having sex everywhere - in streams, in dales, in fields. Sure, he gets her to jump into the water. But it really seems to be all about sex.
I'm all for sex, I think sex is great. But I think it really diminishes the story. The story began as a mom who was accused of "having no causes" and who missed out on her childhood of flirting. So as a result she goes out for lots of sex with a guy whose name she doesn't even know until they're halfway into it? Then then crank it into overdrive with a sequence of bizarre coincidences. The daughter, running off to Woodstock (which is very poorly replicated), sees her half naked mom kissing Viggo. Later, the mom is off chatting with Viggo when her young son is almost slain by wasps, and of course Viggo shows up to take care of the kid. And we top off with the contrived-and-tense scene of the betrayed dad having to thank Viggo for that work.
I think contrived is really the word that comes to mind for most of this. There are some really meaningful nuggets in here - the talk that mom and daughter finally have, where they both become more human for a while. The fact that the daughter wants to be "the wild teenager" and needs the mom to be a stable force in her life, even while the daughter says she hates the mom. The dad's hurt anger at being betrayed, and the fact that he has in fact been very disappointed with his life as well but did not act out as a result. The environment is also very realistic - I remember those styles of cabins, those types of pillows and decorations. The over-use of Yiddish sayings was a little much, but they were trying to bludgeon it into our heads that this was an ethnic group of people.
Even more contrived is the finale. The movie was very Hollywood - there really was little doubt that this is how it would end up.
On the positive side, the soundtrack here is just AMAZING and right on. Diane really does a good job with the script she was given, on showing the pulls and tugs in her life, her attempts to have something more and how she is pushed back into place at each turn. To be fair, the husband does say near the end that she COULD have pushed harder if she really wanted to, to make her needs known. But she was pushing hard already and was in return being pushed down into place. Is he really saying that it's her own fault for not pushing *really* hard? Isn't that what she in fact did with Viggo, just pushed hard for something she wanted? In any case, you do see that angst and desire for fun and desire to do the right thing all conflicting within Diane.
How about Viggo? Again, this script didn't really give him much to work with. How many lines does he really get? A few "this looks nice on you" lines, then he shows up to be a call-on-demand gigilo, then lots of scenes of sex. A few hokey lines about "here's the cool way to cure wasp stings", one or two lines about travelling across the US, and it's over. There was no construction of a relationship, no sharing of ideas, no melding of minds. No staring at the stars discussing infinity. I realize romance doesn't have to be esoteric. But if it was just about wham-bam sex, the story looses a lot of its meaning. It would have been SO much more gripping if he had dreams as well, and shared those dreams with her, and those dreams were incredibly similar. It would have meant something then, that they had considered running off hand in hand.
A nice watch, but many other movies tackle this same theme with a MUCH more realistic and involving storyline. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 23, 2005 | | Summary | Not bad at all... | Content
| Goldwyn, with platinum Hollywood credentials courtesy of being the grandson of Samuel Goldwyn (as in Metro-*Goldwyn*-Mayer), is relatively new to the directing business - this is his debut, and he's directed two others since. He is better known as an actor for his roles in *Ghost*, *The Pelican Brief* and *Nixon." In the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon, " Goldwyn played astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon, and perhaps was inspired to base this film, called *A Walk on the Moon*, on unrelated events that occur on that famous night. Goldwyn also seemed to take a good long look at *Dirty Dancing* before he made this film - unarguably a dangerous proposition - but he seemed to be able to determine what parts of it were charming and which parts were schlock. He, thankfully, left most of the schlock on the cutting room floor. Like *Dirty Dancing*, it is the story of a Jewish family spending the summer at a resort in upstate New York. Where *Dirty Dancing* took place in 1963 as the world was just beginning to notice the changes, *Moon* is set in the summer of 1969 and the world's already on fire, but these people don't know it. Diane Lane and Liev Schreiber play Pearl and Marty Kantrowitz, a young blue-collar couple who began having children at a very young age, missing out on their own youth. As their daughter, Alison (Paquin), comes of age, she faces the inevitable gulf that separates her from her parents - it was a requirement that children felt estranged from their parents in 1969 - but her parents simply aren't that much older than she is. Life is pretty dull at the resort, with the highlights being visits from the "Knish Man," the "Ice Cream Man" and the "Blouse Man." Pearl, who finds herself alone during the week while Marty goes back into the city to work, falls hard for the "Blouse Man," a hippie who lives life on his own terms (the movie had the regrettable working title of *Blouse Man*). The entire resort is excited about the impending moonwalk, but Marty won't be able to make it back in time to see it with Pearl. Pearl spends the night in her own world of celestial bodies and shooting stars as she gives herself to the hippie blouse man. Meanwhile, not far away, is this event happening - no one really knows what it's about - it's called "Woodstock." Daughter Alison wants to go, but is forbidden to. She runs away and goes anyway, running into - who else? - her mother who has been taken there by the Blouse Man. Mom inadvertently gets dosed with acid and trips out, and daughter comes unglued over it, screaming, "I'm the teenager! Not you! You're my mom!" The story gets a little messy here and there, as daughter comes to terms with the fact that she may not be quite so different from her parents, and the parents come to terms with the fact that modern life has just about left them in the dust. It is a touching ending as the parents are trying to work it out between them, which seemed somehow unusual - it the Sixties most parents would have split up to "find themselves." It is a refreshing film, nonetheless, with a very good performance from Lane and a number a good performances from lesser-known cast members. |
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