DVD of the Week: The Edge of Love

Directed by John Maybury
Starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Matthew Rhys, and Cillian Murphy

SYNOPSIS: This film chronicles the relationship between poet Dylan Thomas, his wife Caitlin, a childhood love Vera Phillips, and her husband William Killick. It's loosely based on Thomas' life during World War II.

THE POSITIVE: When I first saw the trailer for this I assumed it was sort of triangle between Dylan Thomas, Vera Phillips, and his wife Caitlin. It's really not. The acting was quite good, I'm a big fan of Keira Knightley, and the story was...interesting. Honestly, it was kind of weird and I'm really only including it because it happened to be what I could watch on Netflix. I mean it holds together pretty well, but a lot of it is confusing and not fleshed out very well. Plus there's some weird things going on with the cinematography.

THE NEGATIVE: I kind of accidentally already talked about it, but there was a lot of CG work done to simulate London during the blitz that just looked cheesy. Most of the outside shots were like this and very stylized. I'm okay with giving a certain look to a film, but make it across the board-don't include it some scenes and not in others. Also the story was confusing. I couldn't figure out if Vera really wanted to be with Thomas or not. No character motivations were clear at all and all the characters seemed to do things for no reason or to simply move the story along.

THE VERDICT: Don't even rent it. I saw it on Netflix, so if you already have an account you can watch it on your computer for free if you're really interested. A classic case of good acting not being able to make up for a bad story.

I give it 2 out of 5 stars.

A new feature on the site: Actor's Spotlight!

Actor's Spotlight On: Sienna Miller.
I didn't even know who she was until Jude Law had an affair and she was in all the tabloids with their two kids looking like the wronged woman. All that aside she's had some good roles in the last couple of years. She was on G.I. Joe where she managed to keep me interested in her character despite G.I. Joe just being a bad movie. Her performance in this role stands out because she played a complex woman and she played it well. As Caitlin Thomas she is both free-spirited and closed off, she is willful and loving, she's playful and deceitful. Her character really had three dimensions for me and she embodied all those traits well. All of the other actors were great, but they each seemed to have more of a purpose in the movie. Caitlin was the only one of the four who was directionless. Dylan had his poetry, Vera had her singing, and William was in the army. All three characters seemed to actively participating in their own lives, in contrast Caitlin reacts. You get the sense that this is all she can do. She has no trade and she lives off her friends. Her and her husband have frequent affairs, some for fun, some in retaliation. Her life is influenced by other people and not by her own actions. Sienna Miller did a great job of bringing this fact to life without overdoing it and making her melancholy or lifeless. Indeed she had a great deal of life and a great presence in the film.