SincereFinest
disgusting, overrated, pointless
Kidskycom
It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
Melanie Bouvet
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
vchimpanzee
This is not one movie but a lot of short films. I'm not sure, but I think some of the short films have two or more parts, with the first part shown earlier in the movie and another part of the film shown later. In the credits, each short film has two sets of its own credits, one showing the actors, writer and director, and the other showing other information. For some odd reason the writer is shown twice.From what I can tell, most or all the actors do a good job and the short films are well-written. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them could be Oscar-nominated as short films on their own. I didn't see any credits before I saw the movie, so I didn't recognize most of the actors, but there are lots of big names. There are many different styles of music, most of which I enjoyed. At the prom I was pleasantly surprised to hear sophisticated ballroom dance music, followed by the junk the kids actually enjoy. I did enjoy watching them dance to the so-called music.This is not for the whole family, though some individual films might be. I heard the sound go out a number of times.My favorites were the one where the high school student is set up with a date to prom with by a pharmacist, and the one where Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach play a bickering couple walking through the city to the beach on their 63rd anniversary. The prom date storyline includes an unpleasant surprise for the boy when he meets the girl, an awkward encounter with the girl he was going out with (played by Blake Lively), and an unexpected ending to the story.I will try to describe the other stories that I remember. In a scene where everything is orange, Ben follows a beautiful girl played by Rachel Bilson to a bar and tries to pick her up. She is sweet and nice to him, but then Garry walks in. He is married but she is his mistress. He is also a skilled pickpocket. Later, the girl shows up in the blonde wig from her photo. I'm not sure it's Ben who was playing basketball with some guys from the 'hood, but the girl and the man have a pleasant encounter. The second story is pleasant and well-done, with everything blue or brown. A Hasidic Jewish woman is about to get married and she conducts a business transaction with a Jain man. They each talk about their culture and negotiate over the price of whatever is being sold. After that, we see the wedding with no dialogue or even audio other than music, with lots of men with beards and hats. The bride and groom seem to be enjoying themselves. The Jain man is shown driving somewhere but I'm not sure we ever see him again.There is a story where a white girl born in Mali gets in a Haitian driver's cab. They have a nice conversation. Then they are joined by another man. A composer of music for anime meets a girl online. She is sweet but he has never seen her. Finally they meet, and I recognize the distinctive face of Christina Ricci. Another scene in a restaurant is orange, but I'm not sure what happens. A young woman on the subway is narrating her story, but we only hear her talking. There is a man she will meet later.A retired opera singer moves into a nice hotel. The young foreign- born bellhop is disabled but determined to his job. They have several nice conversations before a mysterious white light appears outside the window. Another older hotel employee seems to say everything the younger man said. An artist who wasn't born in the United States but looks like Jay Leno if he didn't bother to shave wants to paint a beautiful Chinese woman, but she is hesitant. The woman's boss is very strict and doesn't seem to care about her. There is some interesting Chinese music and a surprise at the end. Also in Chinatown, a white woman brings in her sexiest clothes to be dry-cleaned. The dry-cleaner seems uncomfortable with the situation, but at least they are speaking Cantonese and the older man can't understand them, right? We see him later in a nice scene with a middle-aged but attractive woman smoking outside a restaurant. This one has a surprise ending.In a park, two white women see a Hispanic man with a white girl at a fountain. They compliment him on what a good job he does as a "manny". Then the man returns the girl to her mother, where we find out things are not as they seem. This is all that I can remember, but there are a couple of other stories that didn't make enough sense for me to understand.This is a worthwhile film. You are sure to find something you enjoy.
Tim Kidner
I've not been to NYC but have seen loads of films based in and about the City and like any great cities, there's a core of people that make up a group that champion its community and identity. After 9/11, this spirit found an even higher plateau.Look beneath the surface of noise, bustle and showbiz, are the people of course and as with any multi-ethnic and diverse population, there's a labyrinth of stories about them.Some are going to be strange and some straightforward. It might seem a bit misty-eyed and sentimental to try and convince us that eleven directors each producing a snapshot can make up a mural that depicts all of the Big Apple but that's what seems to be the intention.Blessed with a good number of very recognisable actors, that adds a connectivity and gravitas we should be bowled over. But, largely, we're not. It must all come down to the quality of the actual stories, which mostly are unmemorable. Perhaps they're just too short for us to get under their skin and allow us to appreciate them. Maybe, we're supposed to be in love with this movie enough to want to watch it over and again, to fully 'get' it.My 6/10 is because it's "OK". My viewing was pleasant enough. I wasn't repelled or confronted by bad acting and the time passed satisfactorily. But that's like having a 'nice' shepherds pie and I can always buy another of those from Sainsbury's again tomorrow.Since John Hurt is one of my very favourite actors, my enthusiasm increased enormously seeing him halfway through. Though he says only two lines, it was the most beautiful and sad chapter of them all, with Shia LeBeouf and the radiant Julie Christie, playing a crippled hotel porter and opera star respectively.Unless you really want to buy the DVD, catch it on TV. I watched it on Sky Arts.
tieman64
The producers of "Paris, je t'aime" bring us "New York, I Love You", another collection of short films ostensibly revolving around a city, in this case New York. The film was marketed as a ode to romance, love and the Big Apple. In reality it says little about either love or New York city. What it instead seems to conjure up is the world of early film noir. Jules Dassin's "The Naked City", which ended with he line "there are eight million stories in the Naked City", seems to be the unconscious springboard, "New York, I Love You" treating us to a kind of romanticised, cutesy fetishizing of alienation, lonely hearts and fickle human collection amidst a cold, impersonal, urban backdrop. And so the film is best when it's contrasting the yearnings of New Yorkans with a more existential ambivalence. Humans yearn, the city doesn't care. And as love and fantasy depend on a certain amount of anonymity – you as spectator write or project your yearnings upon an object – the vignette-heavy style of "New York, I Love You", which doesn't allow us to learn much about its characters, itself exploits a kind of romantic anonymity.While most anthology films suffer from conflicting moods and styles, "New York, I Love You" has some semblance of unity. It differs from its predecessor in that its short films, each by a different director and each revolving around a different set of characters, are loosely tied together rather than exist separately. The result is a kind of Robert Altman styled portmanteau or mosaic, the stories smoothly overlapping and bleeding into one another. Like Altman's films, the impression is that of a wandering camera or disembodied narrator teasing out different characters and eavesdropping on bits of plot. It's also one of the few New York films to portray the city as being heavily class divided, multi ethnic and inhabited by a rainbow of age groups.If "New York, I Love You" works well as a whole, its actual individual short stories are a mixed bag. Shekhar Kapur serves up the nice tale of a bellhop and a retired opera singer, Joshua Marston gives us a glimpse at a bickering old couple (Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman) and several other vignettes give us snippets of SoHo, and various interesting Chinese, Indian and Jewish locals. Many of the other films, however, are either overly cutesy or pretentious.8/10 - Worth one viewing.
jarnov
Urgh. Watched this courtesy of my significant other. It is a dull, insulting little collection of "star studded" advertisements for a big city in the United States. The dialog, characters and soundtrack are the pretentious, meaningless pulp an untalented filmmaker attempting to produce a "timeless classic" would come up with. It's a sort of silhouette of a good movie, devoid of depth and full of slow piano. The shallowness is exaggerated by the little time given to each story. Possibly interesting characters are given no time to develop. Possibly interesting stories are reduced to little gags. Movies like this are to actual cinema what prefab commercial music is to actual song. (Needless to say, my girlfriend loved it.)