Rating: 
Summary: Totally tubular tunes & twisted romance
Review: CHERISH is a twisted love story between a woman under house arrest, Zoë (Robin Tunney), and Bill (Tim Blake Nelson), the man who attaches her ankle-bracelet monitor. It is also a thriller -- Zoë has not committed the crime she's under arrest for and she is anxious to find the guilty party, who also happens to be her stalker. This film is a little confusing, not entirely successful, but has some noteworthy elements. It's another great performance from Nelson, a top-notch character actor. Bill, all business in his short-sleeved dress shirts and striped ties, hardly knows what to make of Zoë, as she skates around her kitchen/roller rink, blasting tunes from the local 80's station (great soundtrack). Zoë is difficult and flirtatious, which is equally confounding and alluring for Bill. In one of my favorite Bill moments, he methodically ages a brand-new boom box for Zoë, which he 'nonchalantly' presents claiming it was an old one he had around the house. Robin Tunney can't quite make up her mind as to Zoë's character, but it's an admirable attempt. The story first presents Zoë as the frizzy-haired neurotic outcast of her office, excluded from a coworker's hot party, falling into bed with various men who never call, with no real sense of herself. Following the trauma of her arrest she retreats into a comfortably delusional mode: dressing up in various costumes and singing into her hairdryer in the mirror. Eventually fed up with the legal process she is inspired to take a more proactive approach to her time, trying to work around the confines of her geographical limitations, first to have more physical freedom and in the process, to find her stalker. The supporting cast is a hoot, including indie-rock goddess Liz Phair and not one, but two, Beverly Hills 90210 cast members. Jason Priestly is hilarious as the floppy-haired BMOC/object of affection of Zoë's office, particularly as presented in misty fantasy sequences. Hardly a life-transforming experience, but worth a rental.
Rating:
Summary: soo good
Review: Definitely see this movie if you get a chance, Robin Tunney is very funny in it, it was very nicely put together, and Jason Priestley is awesome and looks great as well, the soundtrack to this movie is great, kinda made me laugh and go oh i remember that song. so good, see it.
Rating: 
Summary: dopey, dingy, flakey, fluffy, but...enjoyable!
Review: Enjoyable largely because of the gorgeous Robin Tunney in the lead role---she looks like a Slavic version of Helena Bonham Carter: huge doe-like eyes and childlike lips, but with smaller hips and a smaller, more girlish face...and surprisingly about the same level of actual acting ability.
The problem is that the film is really more like a made-for-TV flick which aspires to woo the MTV pubescent crowd, which means all the usual MTV fallbacks: an overactive camera, quick cuts, bright eye-catching colors, some PG-rated titillation, nice atmospheric soundtrack (all 70s and 80s pop, for some reason), and generally very shallow characters and non-existent subtext.
The plot is schizoid: it starts out as a fairly entertaining "Singles" type comedy, then turns into a melodrama, then ends up as a weak attempt at a thriller/action-flick. Things keep happening to keep the usual microscopic attention-spans occupied, but the suspension of disbelief required is simply outrageous.
All in all, as much as I groaned and rolled my eyes during the last one-third of the movie, it was sufficiently absorbing that I didn't once get up and go to the kitchen for more beer...not a bad achievement for such a fluffy thing!
Thank God they cast Ms. Tunney in the lead, though she is of course far too beautiful to make her nerdy love-starved character believable, but if it had been say a Kirsten Dunst I'm sure I would've been puking up my lunch halfway through it.
Guess you could say this is the cinematic equivalent of Cheetos.
Rating:
Summary: A fun, quirky romance that makes up for its flaws with charm
Review: I loved this movie. The plot is summarized well in the other reviews, but I'll give a quick rundown: a socially awkward, lonely computer animator named Zoe (Robin Tunney), who tries to fill up her alone time by dating men who never call her back, crashes a party of co-workers at a local bar, has too much to drink, gets carjacked by a guy who's been stalking her, runs into and kills a police officer, and ends up under house arrest awaiting her trial, confined to her apartment by an electronic ankle bracelet. It's Zoe's worst fear: being confined with only herself as company. But once alone in her apartment, she transforms from a tentative, clingy woman who looks outside herself for approval into a charming, independent woman who finds her strength within. In the process, she forms a bond with her disabled downstairs neighbor and develops a romance with deputy Bill (perfectly played by Tim Blake Nelson), who comes to tend her ankle bracelet. This romance is the best thing about the movie. In the DVD commentary, the director (Finn Taylor) says the script originally didn't focus as much on the romance, but the chemistry between Tunney and Nelson was so good that he changed the movie to focus more on them. Many reviewers felt that the movie should have focused *completely* on that relationship, and on Zoe's inner development, instead of shifting gears into a thriller in the last 20 minutes, when Zoe runs around San Francisco trying to prove her innocence. This movie was also attacked by several reviewers for being "unrealistic," but let's face it, what movie *is* realistic? To me, the success of a movie rests not on its ability to be "true-to-life," but on whether it creates a cohesive, engaging world and draws you into it, and this movie does that. It's very much a lonely single-chick movie, the kind that when you're depressed you can just curl up and watch it while drinking merlot and eating Duncan Hines chocolate frosting straight from the can. If you're a sucker for movies like "Next Stop Wonderland" or "While You Were Sleeping," give this one a try--it draws you into a lonely young woman's world, invites you to ponder it along with her, and makes you think it can actually be fun and charming to be lonely and bemused about life, as long as you're as cute and gutsy as Robin Tunney or as wisely sardonic as Hope Davis. One of my complaints is that Tunney's transformation is initially sparked by changing her hairdo: one day she's a frizzy-haired frump, the next she's straightened her hair and discovered her inner bombshell. As one reviewer commented, the frizzy-haired Tunney is "Hollywood's idea of an ugly girl": a beautiful girl with glasses on. Thus her personal transformation is too easy, starting as it does from outside. I would like to have seen the same transformation without the hairdo, and without someone with as pretty a face as Tunney. It would have been more challenging, but more satisfying. Finally, the growth arc of Tunney's character isn't depicted all that well (despite Tunney's praise of that arc in interviews). Perhaps they were trying to be subtle: we are intended to simply guess that her growth was produced by all those months of crawling up the air shaft, little by little extending the boundary of her physical world, and at the same time that of her internal world. But we don't *see* that clearly enough; it doesn't unfold smoothly; during the time she's not climbing up the air shaft, she's mainly sitting still on a chair. Right up until the final 20 minutes, she's alternately flirting with Nelson, yelling at him for simply doing his job (there's a bit too much of the victim to her at times), or sniffling to him that she's innocent. The next day, she's suddenly running around the city, tough-talking and strong-arming people to get evidence to clear her name. It would've been more engaging to see her inner strength and confidence develop bit by bit with her trips up the air shaft, and be revealed in clearer ways: for example, if she started earlier (and with more determination) to find evidence to clear her name; found ways to deal with Nelson other than yelling, flirting, or sniffling (for example, if she surprised him with some persuasive argument for her innocence); or showed her new strength by planning an act of generosity for her downstairs neighbor, instead of the other way around. But all that said, it's still a fun hour and a half, and the look and the general mood of the movie sort of make you want to watch it again and again. There are amazing images and endearing scenes you'll remember long after the end. It's a good movie that can charm you into overlooking its various weaknesses.
Rating: 
Summary: watch this movie
Review: If you grew up in the 70's 80's you will get this movie. Robin nails the feel. I was really moved watching how this insecure girl grew into this sure woman.
Rating:
Summary: watch this movie
Review: If you grew up in the 70's 80's you will get this movie. Robin nails the feel. I was really moved watching how this insecure girl grew into this sure woman.
Rating:
Summary: Good movie
Review: love it...yes it does have it's corny moments..which I noticed *quite* clearly.....But over all it's a good one...the characters are charming...Zoe is so cute..a raspy..tough kind of cute..and I loved the soundtrack..this one is worth watchin
Rating:
Summary: off putting at some times but Robin Tunney is excellent
Review: Robin Tunney(The Craft, End Of Days) plays a quirky chatter box who is being stalked by a man. She goes to a invited party only where she has a good time with the man she likes played by Jason Priestley(Calendar Girl, Love and Death On Long Island). The stalker played by Brad Hunt makes her run over a cop and she is inlisted into a place where she wears a tracking device around her ankle. Tim Blake Nelson(Minority Report, O Brother Where Are Thou) plays the cop who looks after her. Determined to get out she tries many possible things. Cherish is a inventive dark comedy with some offbeat moments but delivers some funny things. the wheelchair guy is funny and so is the part where Tim Blake Nelson is trying to do Yoga and his instructer is Phil LaMarr from MAD TV. also starring singer Liz Phair
Rating:
Summary: Cherish
Review: The editorial reviews summarize this movie well-except to include the fact that this is an original idea for a movie that plays out very well. The story is quite unusual, unpredictable & can make a person want to watch it again to grasp at all the interesting ways the film is presented. If you liked this you might also like "Human Traffic" and/or "Floundering".
Rating:
Summary: Who is Finn Taylor?
Review: The way this film starts, with a lot of people sitting in modern office workstations, I thought it was going in depth into a dazed state I might call technocracking of the brain, if I may coin a phrase for the state of mind induced by the technical problems that seem to crop up when a computer is doing something that just might not have logical solutions. The computer worker (a woman) who is totally into a radio program (as if music were the only link with life available while working) as the only practical therapy for pushing a mind that isn't getting the answers it needs in the job-related situation, suddenly faces her boss, the well-dressed and lofty Liz Phair, shyly admits the jumping around that her computer is doing, and even suggests a solution while cringing with feelings of insignificance, if not incompetence. Since this is a film, the irony is that the movie star on the cover of this DVD is playing the quirky, lost individual who wants to be liked, and Liz Phair, the acting novice, is the perfect picture of greatness as a mind so aloof from petty computer techniques that her mere "Yes," is a devastating understatement of the degree of understanding of the confusing mental turmoil her underlings must suffer to be able to achieve anything. The rightness of the part for Liz Phair is based on her musical ability, of which I am a fan. Once, when she asked a crowd to sing along on her song, "Flower," I was a guy singing falsetto, doing the easy repetitious part with the crowd, while she was singing "kind of like you're underwater." That song seems pretty simple musically, compared to most of her songs, but her attitude is something that might be considered unique. Finn Taylor wrote and directed this movie, but many of the actors were not personally acquainted with him before shooting the film, so the most comic scenes in the Behind the Scenes Featurette were part of a series of questions which asked each of them who did they think Finn was before finding out which of the team he in fact turned out to be. This is funny like a king disguising himself as one of his subjects, only these actors tried to rehearse all the scenes with the cameras running, and no one seemed to be telling them when the actual film was being shot. Finn said the crew was particularly pleased when a scene was filmed with the original music from the score. Part of the plot is how clueless some people seem when they have no background music to relate to, and life keeps putting these people into situations where they don't really fit. I don't think this really qualifies as a romantic comedy. The fact that men and women in the film have to interact with each other doesn't lead to any relationships. The action generates a lot of guilt feelings, but the title of the movie could have been *The Fake Natasha.* The main feelings this is about are the feelings of fans. The D.J. responds to the feelings of the music fans, but the fans love music more than him personally. Even Liz Phair has become so glamorous as to be unapproachable, and the film thwarts every opportunity that it opens up. This might be funny to the people who think this stuff up and film people doing it, but I can see how no one would want to be caught trying to get people to act this way. On a political level, I thought the title "Cherish" relates pretty well to how America would like the rest of the world to accept America as the sole remaining superpower. The fact that the main character was not allowed to have a computer while locked up, because hackers had previously manipulated jail records, is a lot like the United States thinking that other nations should not have weapons of mass destruction. The little guy who lived downstairs reminded me a lot of Kuwait. I can't remember that Kuwait ever won a war on its own, so it seemed like a perfect candidate to become an occupied territory or annexed province when other neighborhoods in the Middle East were concerned about how the Palestinians were doing. Little kids in the neighborhood throwing gum at the prisoner in her window was what reminded me of that political situation in the first place. America has some friends who have at least that much trouble where they are. This film didn't express an opinion about how likely we are to all end up in such a world. I haven't figured out what the optional ending was for, though.
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