July 2014 movie reviews

BEGIN AGAIN.  Greta (Keira Knightly) and Dave (Adam Levine) are a couple who moved to New York so he could work on his rock-and-roll video.  She is a songwriter who believes in authenticity.  Dave gets caught up in his stardom, and dumps Greta.  She is alone in New York, but meets a friend who has her sing one of her songs in a club.  Dan (Mark Ruffalo), having just lost his production company and having personal troubles of his own, hears her and wants to make her the next big thing.  But the music world is changing…  This is a sweet movie, not the romance one might expect, more a movie about the music business and people adapting to it.  Keira doesn’t have a great voice, but she can carry a tune, and the songs are pleasant enough.  And all three actors do a good job making their characters believable. This is by the same director who did ONCE, and has much of the same feel.  Very appealing.

LIFE ITSELF.  Documentary on the life of movie critic Roger Ebert.  Begun during the last year of his life (not that they knew that), it includes interviews with him, colleagues, friends and family, clips from the past, and readings from his autobiography.  I watched Siskel and Ebert beginning with their appearances on PBS, and read Ebert’s reviews and blog (he was a terrific writer), so I knew a fair amount about the man, but I still learned something new about him.  The movie doesn’t idolize him, but also shows his warts, his weaknesses, and his physical struggles at the end of his life.  It also looks at his impact (for good and bad, depending on your perspective) on movie criticism.  Really quite good look at a man who had very full life. It brought me to tears a couple of times.

SNOWPIERCER.  Sci-fi action film. Apparently, in an attempt to solve global warming, humans instead froze the planet, killing everything.  Earth is now an ice and snow covered rock.  The only survivors are on a high tech self-contained train circling the world.  The train mirrors human society, with the destitute in the back of the train (including Chris Evans, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer, Jamie Bell) with the wealthy privileged few (including Tilda Swinton) in the front.  The poor are planning another revolt, and they have to battle car by car forward in the train toward the train’s engineer, who rules over all.  I think this was a little too long, and I am not big on long bloody fight scenes, but other than those minor complaints, this is a really fun and interesting movie.  What should human society look like?  Or what does it have to look like?  Look for it On Demand, although best on a big screen.

BOYHOOD.  This movie is making a big splash because director Richard Linklater filmed it over 12 years.  It is, at heart, just a simple story of a boy growing up, and his divorced parents Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke and a slightly older sister.  There are ups and downs as his mother has her struggles, and that’s it – his life from 6 to 18.  But with a few exceptions, it is fascinating to watch and feels not at all like 2 hours and 45 minutes.  I enjoyed it a lot, even though it really is just about ordinary lives – like a documentary, almost.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.  I really liked the previous RISE OF movie, so I had high hopes for this one.  But….eh, it just didn’t engage me.  The apes are living in Muir Woods while the humans have been decimated by a virus.  The people in SF need to go north to ape territory to fix a dam so they can have power (and try to connect with other pockets of humanity).   The apes have a bad egg, and the humans have a bad egg, and that’s all it takes to start a war between the two groups, even though most want peace.  Big CGI battles. Disappointing.

22 JUMP STREET.  Another sequel fails to impress.  I thought 21 Jump Street was pretty funny.  Here, the “boys” (Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum) go to college, again to take down drug dealers.  There are a lot of self-referential comments (about sequels doing the same thing over, about them looking too old, etc), and there are some laughs, but this one was, I thought, a little more labored.  Not flat-out horrible, but not as consistently funny as the first.  Or maybe just the jokes got old in the re-telling.

IDA.  This Polish black-and-white film takes place in the late 50s/early 60s.  Ida is a teenage orphan brought up in a convent, and is almost ready to take her vows as a nun.  But the Mother Superior insists that Ida first go visit her aunt, an aunt she didn’t know she had.  Turns out, Ida is Jewish, and her parents were murdered in the war.  So her and her aunt (a hard drinking Communist official) go looking for their graves.  If all that doesn’t sound absolutely scintillating, this movie takes place at a snail’s pace.  It has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I am stunned.  I can’t believe anyone with a pulse wouldn’t have trouble staying awake for this.  (OK, the actress is very good, but other than that…)

June Movie Reviews

THIS IS THE END.  Seth Rogen meets best buddy Jay Baruchel at LAX, and they proceed to get high and stupid.  Seth insists they go to a party that James Franco is hosting at his place in the Hollywood hills, and Jay reluctantly goes along.  There they meet Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera…(they all play less than attractive versions of themselves).  Jay is getting fed up and ready to leave when disaster strikes.  It appears the apocalypse is upon them, and they are stuck at Franco’s house trying to survive.  This is a really stupid movie about people behaving badly, but it also has enough laugh-out-loud moments that make it worth the bits that don’t work and the often lowbrow male-oriented humor.

WHAT MAISIE KNEW.  Maisie is a little girl living in New York with her constantly bickering parents (Steve Coogan and Julianne Moore).  When they divorce, they put her in the middle of their never ending and bitter battles.  Mom especially is a self-centered narcissistic mess.  Maisie seems to take it all in stride, though, merely observing the world around her.  Eventually Maisie will understand that her new step-parents more concerned about her than her parents.   Based on a Henry James novel, this modern take isn’t quite as believable as the original, but still compelling, mainly because we totally believe the little girls’ journey in coming to grips with her parents’ true natures and figuring out where she needs to be in the world.

FILL THE VOID.  Shira is an 18 year old girl living in an orthodox community in Israel.  That means it is time for her to get married, and her parents are using a matchmaker to find her a husband.  Shira has some say in her marriage, but it will essentially be based on a look and a quick meeting.  She thinks she has found someone acceptable, but then her older sister dies in childbirth.  And her mother thinks, maybe, Shira should marry her widowed brother-in-law (and keep the grandchild nearby).  But her parents won’t force her.  Shira must think it through and decide for herself what is best, but at 18, that’s tough for anyone.  I really appreciate this kind of movie, which enlightens one about a culture and community that is behind closed doors for outsiders.

THE EAST.  An anarchist group is committing acts of terrorism against corporations, and a security firm whose clients are big corporations sends Sarah (Brit Marling) to try to infiltrate the group.  She is a well-trained young woman who believes in doing the right thing (the movie makes a point of her Christianity).  She is also very smart, and eventually finds and is welcomed into the group.  So, of course, you can figure out that she will begin to sympathize with the group (including Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page).  The morals of the group’s specific actions bother her, but not the cause of justice for the powerless.  The movie is always interesting, although I had trouble developing much emotional investment in Sarah’s issues.  I think the movie has trouble committing.  Patricia Clarkson is excellent (as always) as the cold-hearted head of the security firm.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.  For me, Shakespeare is like a second language I don’t speak all that well.  So I have to really concentrate on what people are saying to make sense of it.  In this comedy, director Joss Whedon has taken the tale of people manipulating lovers to modern day.  Well done, I suppose, but I really need to study up before watching Shakespeare because I otherwise miss too much of the dialogue.  

KINGS OF SUMMER.  Joe and Patrick are 15-year-olds struggling to deal with parents that drive them crazy.  One day, Joe gets the idea to build a house in the woods, leave their families behind, and live off the land.  Along with an odd hanger-on, that it what they (try to) do.  There is also a girl.  While I actually found the boys to have believable personalities, I found this movie to be rather pointless.  It was a favorite at Sundance, and has a high Rotten Tomatoes rating, but I wasn’t enamored.  Perhaps if I had an one point been a teenage boy (like most critics), I would have a better feeling about the movie.   It was just….eh.

KON-TIKI.  As an ethnographer working in Polynesia in the 1930s, Thor Heyerdahl becomes convinced that the Pacific Islands may have been populated from the east, (Peru) not the West as was commonly thought.  After the war, Thor tries to convince people to publish his book on his theory, but no one will buy it because they think it is outlandish, with little proof.  But he truly believe his theory, so he decides to build a raft using 1,500-year-old techniques, and sail to the islands, which he estimates will take 100 days.  And so, in 1947, with all the low technology of the times, he sets off with a group of five others up for the danger/adventure.  This movie is mostly a terrific depiction of his and his crews’ ordeal (storms, sharks!), although there are moments where not much is happening (a raft in the middle of the Pacific can be kind of uneventful).    Beautiful photographed, the movie worth catching if you would like a nice offering in the adventure genre (so rarely seen these days).  Nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar (although it’s in English).

January 2013 Movies

ZERO DARK THIRTY.  The movie opens with the sights and sounds of 9/11 and other terrorist events of the decade.  It then follows Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA analyst who is assigned to Pakistan and working to find Osama Bin Laden.  Events along the way (including torture of detainees) are depicted in a judgement-free, matter of fact way.  Maya is convinced she is on the right track, and pursues her leads doggedly.  The movie ends with the raid on Bin Laden’s compound, which at the time of course, was considered a risky undertaking.  This is a good movie, but I don’t  quite understand the the critical love.  It’s not edge-of-your-seat like ARGO.  It is more of a procedural on how the CIA works.

THE IMPOSSIBLE.  This movie tells the true story of a couple (played by Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor) and their three sons, who were celebrating the 2004 Christmas holiday in Thailand when the tsunami hit.  The first half of the movie does a really good job of showing the terror of the wave, the scale of the disaster, and the subsequent confusion.  SPOILER ALERT: The second half details the efforts of the family to reunite after being separated by the water.  Usually I am a sucker for reunification scenes, but for some reason these didn’t do it for me.  (Maybe because hundreds of thousands of people were dead, so their eventual reunification doesn’t seem that important.  After all, they still had family to re-unify with.)   Even though Watts and McGregor (and the oldest son) are terrific, the the second half was a drag for me.  So first half yes, second half no.

QUARTET.  In a beautiful old country mansion that is a home for retired musicians, the residents are busy preparing for a fund-raising gala, including reserved Reggie (Tom Courtenay) and outgoing Wilf (Billy Connolly).  Into their midst arrives diva Jean (Maggie Smith).  Not only is she distressed to end up in the home, but she was briefly married to Reggie way back when and he has never forgiven her.  They were all part of a quartet who most famously sang together in Rigoletto.  I can’t say there were many surprises in this movie, and I am not one for thinking that ditzy, cranky, and/or inappropriate behavior is hysterically funny just because the perpetrators are old people (as apparently the audience I saw the movie with did).  Just an OK movie, but for me, it was completely saved by a very sweet ending.  

NOT FADE AWAY.  Douglas is a teenager in 1960s New Jersey.  Like many young guys, he dreams of his garage band making it big.  Meanwhile, he has a father (James Gandolfini) who seems to be very bitter at all the advantages his son has that he never had.  And his mother seems depressed.  The band has ups and downs.   That’s kind of it.  The changes that occurred during the 60s were interesting, and the soundtrack here is fun, but these people aren’t.  I found this semi-autobiographical movie by David Chase to be a bit dull.  

RUST AND BONE.  In this French movie, Marion Cotillard is a Sea World-type trainer who suffers a terrible accident.  Before the accident, she meets a single dad who is making ends meet as a bouncer, and  is a former boxer.  She has a boyfriend, so nothing happens.  But they reconnect after the accident, and develop a very unusual friendship.  It’s very matter of fact.  He starts making money by participating in “street” fights.  She starts adapting to her disability.  He is the right person to help her at the right time, because he completely lacks sentimentality.  Their friendship becomes a little but more, but not really a romance.  I found this to be a very odd movie, maybe a bit too French for me.  

November movie reviews

LIFE OF PI.  Pi is growing up in India, where his father owns a zoo.  As a youth, he has spiritual questions, and adopts Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.  Then his father, because of political considerations, decides to move the family and zoo animals to Canada.  On a freighter in the Pacific Ocean, a terrible storm sinks the ship, and Pi is left on a life raft with a few of the animals.  After a slow start, the bulk of the movie is how Pi survives on the ocean with the animals.  Beautiful visuals (although I didn’t really need the 3D), this movie is compelling to watch and also one of those movies with ideas that stay on your mind after viewing.  Entertaining, too.  I really liked it.

LINCOLN.  The movie opens right after Lincoln’s re-election in 1864.  With so many lame ducks who are not beholden to the voters, Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) determines there is no better time to get the amendment to abolish slavery passed.  The movie shows the machinations that went into working with the various congressmen (including Tommy Lee Jones) and getting the votes of the recalcitrant.  It also shows a bit of Lincoln’s home life, including his troubles with his wife (Sally Field) and his oldest son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).   Lincoln also has to deal with his own cabinet (including David Straitharn as Seward).  The movie really humanizes the man, and Day-Lewis is really, really good.  In addition, the movie felt very authentic to me (i.e. dark smoky rooms, the language), and I can’t deny this is an extremely well-done movie.  There were definitely some emotional moments for me.  However, I am not at all interested in political maneuverings, so much of the movie just wasn’t my thing.

SKYFALL.  In this latest Bond installment, Bond (Daniel Craig) is presumed dead after losing a battle with someone stealing a hard drive containing all MI6 agents undercover identities.  As M (Judi Dench) is hauled in front of a committee to defend her work, a hacker destroys a government building and agents start dying.  Of course Bond isn’t dead, so he appears to find the bad guy.  Clues lead him to China, Macau, and eventually Javier Bardem, a former agent who has an issue with M and is bent on destroying her.  It is up to Bond to save her and MI6.  I liked Casino Royale quite a bit, but in general I am not a big Bond fan, and this movie didn’t really provide me the excitement needed to make me change my mind.  I found it too dark (I don’t go to Bond movies for heavy), although I assume Bond fans will generally like the movie.

FLIGHT.  Whip (Denzel Washington) is an airline pilot who, as the movie opens, is waking up with a raging hangover.  A little cocaine perks him up, and he goes to work.  During the flight, the plane goes through some nasty turbulence and then things go really haywire and the plane appears to lose all hydraulics.  Whip has the talent to bring the plane down with limited loss of life (these flights scenes are terrific).  But he was drunk and high when he did it, and the NTSB knows it.  The bulk of the movie is concerned with efforts by Whip, friends, and his attorney (Don Cheadle) to ensure he is not found at fault for the accident.  But Whip is a serious alcoholic who continues to go on benders, so the outcome is in doubt.  This is a good movie (Denzel is always good), although I didn’t love the last couple of scenes.  Be warned that this is not a movie about a plane crash, it is a movie about an alcoholic.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.  Pat (Bradley Cooper) has just gotten out of the hospital after suffering a manic episode.  Moving in with his parents, he is obsessed with getting his wife back, even though she is divorcing him and has a restraining order.  Dad (Robert DeNiro) is a bookie with an obsessive compulsive disorder and many superstitions about his team, the Philadelphia Eagles.  One day Pat’s best friend introduces him to his very blunt sister-in-law (Jennifer Lawrence) who is a grieving widow acting out.  So what we have here is a story of a bunch of people with issues just trying to get by.   They are all on the edge, it seems, so the movie isn’t exactly a fun experience (although some are calling it a comedy).  But the movie is really well acted and the people very believable.  It’s very different (as you might expect from David O. Russell –  THREE KINGS, THE FIGHTER, SPANKING THE MONKEY), and I kind of liked it.

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN.  In the early 1970s, a Detroit man named Rodriguez released a couple of albums.  Maybe because they had a folk feel to them, they failed to sell in the U.S.  But astonishly, his albums were huge in South Africa, and even are credited with giving people courage to question apartheid.  He was so important there (bigger than the Rolling Stones, says one), yet no one knew anything about him, partly perhaps because during apartheid, Rodriguez was a banned artist.  Rumors were that he had killed himself on stage.  In the 1990’s, a couple of South Africans tried to discover more about him, including putting up a website “searching for Rodriguez”.  When his daughter contacted them, they were overjoyed.    This documentary traces their quest for more information that lead to conversations with his record producers, people who knew him back in the day, and his daughters.  This documentary brought tears to my eyes, because he meant so much to the South Africans, while remaining completely unknown in the U.S.  Life can have some real unexpected twists, as it turns out.

THE SESSIONS.  Mark O’Brian (John Hawkes)  got polio when he was six and had to spend 21 hours a day in an iron lung. He can feel but can’t move (except his head).  Despite this, he got his degree at Cal and became a writer/poet and activist for disability rights.  After conferring with his priest (William H.  Macy), he decides, at age 38, to lose his virginity.  So he hires a sex surrogate (Helen Hunt).  This might sound like a prurient topic, but the sex is very matter of fact, and Mark apparently had a great sense of humor, so the movie is amusing and not-always-serious.  It’s really a tribute to the power of the human spirit to overcome obstacles.  Very good.  True story.

LIBERAL ARTS.  Thirty-five year old Jesse (Josh Radnor) works in the admissions office at a college in New York City.  He gets a call from a favorite college professor (Richard Jenkins) who is retiring, and goes back to college in Ohio for the retirement dinner.  While there, it is obvious that he really misses college life.  He meets a sophomore (Elizabeth Olsen) that reinforces those feelings.  They become pen-pals, and he revels in being able to write thoughts like he was still in college, in love with ideas and emotions.  The parts of this movie don’t work together all that well, but all the characters – a young woman wanting to grow up faster than she should and a man yearning for the ideals of his youth, along with smaller roles of a senior regretting his retirement, a professor (Allison Janney) disillusioned with life, and a couple of students, are interesting.  So overall I enjoyed it. 

THE FLAT.  In this documentary, an Israeli man is helping his mother clean out his grandmother’s flat after she dies, and is astonished to find a newspaper article indicating that his grandparents accompanied a Nazi from Germany to Palestine in the 1930s.  And, maintained the friendship even after the war!  He is so puzzled by this that he digs deeper into his grandparents background, and visits the daughter of the Nazi.  While his mother maintains disinterest in those events, he is fascinated by them.  An interesting look at the differences in people and how they view the importance (or lack of importance) of the past.

August Movie Reviews

RUBY SPARKS.  Paul Dano plays a young writer who made a big splash with a great novel when he was 19.   Now he is 29 and suffering from writer’s block.  His therapist suggests a writing exercise of just writing one page about a woman he would like.  It gets him going, and he writes reams about a woman of his dreams.  And then, she comes to life.  (You just have to go with it.)  At first, of course, he thinks he is going crazy, but when he realizes other people see her too, he realizes his good fortune.  And their relationship grows and he is happy for the first time in a long time.  But…even with a woman who you can control by writing her to be/do what you want, things will get complicated.  This movie is funny at times but at heart it is taking on people who can’t accept that no one is perfect, even the partner of your dreams.  Loved it – one of my favorite movies of the year so far.

HOPE SPRINGS.  Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones play a long married couple whose marriage has gone stale.  Grumpy old Tommy doesn’t care to do anything about it, but Meryl is desperate to save her marriage and insists they go to couples therapy.  This movie is being touted as a romantic comedy.  Although it is occasionally mildly amusing, the movie is really about a couple that is seriously sexually repressed and needs sex therapy.  I don’t care how good the acting is (and it was), this is not a movie I was interested in.

PREMIUM RUSH.  This is a popcorn movie about a bike messenger racing through Manhattan being chased by a sinister man who wants his delivery.  A silly premise, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon are really good actors, and it is getting generally positive reviews, so I thought I would give it a shot.  Actually the scenes with the bikes were my least favorite, because those guys are such assholes in traffic (making it hard to root for them), but I did like the story behind it all.  The plot involves gambling and money changing in Chinatown, among other things I won’t divulge, and is more coherent than many an action flick   So all-in-all, not a bad 90 minutes, if a fast-paced chase movie is what you are in the mood for.

ROBOT AND FRANK.  In the near future, Frank (Frank Langella) is getting a little forgetful.  He goes to town, visiting shops and the local librarian (Susan Sarandon).   His son (James Marsden) lives far away, and knows that someone needs to be there to watch out for Frank.  So he gets him a helper robot.  Frank is really annoyed at the gadget, but he eventually warms to the robot, especially since it doesn’t judge him.  And Frank does have a criminal past.  They end up going on adventures together, and the robot actually does help his health.  But Frank can’t keep going the way he is…. A bittersweet kind of story, as stories about people getting old invariably are.

CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER.  Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) have been best friends forever, gotten married, and, when the movie opens, after six years of marriage, are getting a divorce.  She is a professional and he is an artist going nowhere, so she thinks she has to move on.  But neither is thinking anyone is at fault.  They are still really close friends, and their friends are thinking it is all a bit weird.  Eventually Celeste and Jesse will start trying to move on with their lives and date other people.  But in doing so, they will each come to the realization that they can’t quite maintain the friendship they had.  Although somewhat amusing, this is also sort of a sad story about the importance of maintaining relationships and not taking them for granted.  Not bad, but definitely not a must-see.

THE IMPOSTER.  Documentary.  In 1993, a 13-year-old boy in San Antonio went missing.  Three years later, the family gets a call from Spain saying he has been found.  Despite the fact the supposed son has different skin, hair and eye color, the family bought into the fiction that this was their boy.  They believed his tales of torture and sexual abuse and ignored obvious clues to his fakery.  Interviews with the family, the imposter, and investigators make this a fascinating story.  Unbelievably true.

THE WELL-DIGGER’S DAUGHTER.  In this French movie, Patricia is the oldest of 5 daughters in turn of the century rural France.  Circumstances sent her to Paris as a young girl, but now she is back home in Provence, where her widowed father knows he needs to marry her off.  He would be OK with his work colleague, a really good guy, but working class and not very charming, being his son-in-law.  She, however, will fall for the local good-looking guy from a well-to-do family who is a smooth operator.  This is a very old-fashioned movie, with bucolic scenery, and will be appreciated by those who are not put off by a movie with plot points that hinge on 19th century morals.

AI WEI WEI – NEVER SORRY.  Documentary about human rights activist/artist Ai Wei Wei, a Chinese dissident who uses his fame as an artist (he designed the bird’s nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics) to highlight the abuses of the Chinese government, most often in the arena of lack of transparency by the government.  For example, he investigated the large number of schoolchildren who died in an earthquake due to shoddy school construction.  And then his results posted it online, where he had a large following.  When the government shut down his blog, he moved to Twitter.  Admirable man, this movie is worth seeing.

EASY MONEY.  J.W. (Joel Kinnaman) is attending school at the Swedish School of Economics, where he is working nights and trying to keep up socially with the wealthy boys.  When his boss asks him to help him in a task, it involves saving an escaped prisoner from a beating and takes J.W. into the criminal underworld of drugs and money.   In addition to J.W. and Jorge, the escapee, the movie also follows a thug that has gotten custody of his little girl and wants a better life.  They will all be working toward a big score that will help them escape their circumstances. The movie has Serbian mobsters, Spaniards, and maybe Russians, I am not sure.  Because there were so many ethnic groups (all subtitled) I sometimes got a little confused on who was with who.  Not a bad movie, but maybe a little slow and not very satisfying in the end.  Mostly in Swedish.

July 2012 movie reviews

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.  I don’t generally love the movies based on comic books, but I do like the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy the best.  In this final installment, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has been a recluse ever since he allowed the powers-that-be to blame him for the crimes of the DA (in The Dark Knight movie).  Alfred (Michael Caine) is getting really worried about him.  But when a super evil villain Bane (played by Tom Hardy) takes over Gotham, Batman will have to return to save the city.  Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) makes an appearance as well (and it’s a well written and well-done role).  No more details here, other to say this is a very dark movie.  The plot is way over the top, the evil doers’ plans didn’t make a lot of sense to me (and they weren’t amusing like the Joker), and as usual with summer movies these days, this is too long.  But I still liked it.   Also starring Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman.  Everyone is good here.  And kudos to Hans Zimmer who does the music; he really gets the adrenaline going.

TED.  Seth McFarlane (of TV’s The Family Guy) directs his first movie.  As a little boy, John (Mark Wahlburg) is friendless.  When his parents give him a teddy bear for Christmas, John wishes the bear were alive to be his best friend.  And his wish comes true!  Much publicity and fame follows (everybody can see and hear the talking bear).  But fast forward to the present day, where John is still a bit of a loser who can’t do without his best friend Ted – who has become the worst sort of obnoxious, lewd, politically incorrect frat boy.  John’s girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) is pretty understanding – she really loves John – but she is losing patience with John’s inability to grow up.  That’s the plot. If you don’t mind really offensive outrageous humor, this is a riot.  If it were a real person saying and doing these things, it would be disgusting, but coming from a cute teddy bear, it’s mostly pretty damn funny stuff.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD.  Hush Puppy is a young girl who lives with her father in The Bathtub, an on-the-margins community in what appears to be low-lying Louisiana.  The movie is seen through her eyes as the community sees a big storm coming that may drown them all.  Hush Puppy sees herself as a small part of a much larger world, but also imagines that even the littlest piece is important.  I imagine we are supposed to take great meaning from her wisdom.   This movie is getting great critic love.  I understand the value of a movie where we see the world through her eyes (and the actress is charismatic, I’ll give you that), but the fact is that she lives in squalor with an abusive father surrounded by alcoholics.  I thought the movie was a pretentious mess, romanticizing a life that is not at all charming.  I guess I was just in a too literal state of mind.

FAREWELL, MY QUEEN.  The movie begins on the day the French Revolution started, with the fall of the Bastille prison.  In Versailles, where Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI reside, at first things proceed normally, as if nothing really important has happened.  The Queen frets about fashion, and asks for her reader Sidonie, who loves the queen.   Because Sidonie is employed by royalty and lives in the palace, she and her friends have some advantages.  But still…they are servants only.  As events begin to spiral out of control, the members of the elite and their employees being to panic.  And Sidonie observes it all.   I wouldn’t call the movie entertaining, exactly, but it does give one a sort of impression of what historically might have been happening at that time, through the eyes of an outsider.

THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES.  The Siegals and their 7 children are fabulously wealthy Floridians, he having made his fortune in timeshares.  His 30-years-younger wife is a former IBM engineer and beauty queen.  This documentary begins as she decides their mansion with 17 bathrooms isn’t big enough, and embarks on building a 90,000 square foot home (with bowling alley, gyms, etc.)  modeled after Versailles (it would be the largest private home in America) .  But then the depression of 2008 hit, and their finances change.  You go into this movie thinking these people are going to get their comeuppance, but in the end, I didn’t feel that way.  Although she clearly has a shopping addiction and is vain and tacky, at the same time you don’t come away feeling they are bad people.  They lived beyond their means, like a lot of people, just on a much bigger scale.

May 2012 movie reviews

BERNIE.  Bernie (Jack Black) is the assistant funeral director in a small East Texas town.  Everybody loves Bernie.  He sings at church, participates in the local theater, is kind and giving, and is wonderful at his job.  The little old ladies especially adore him.  He even befriends the meanest (and wealthiest) old lady in town, Mrs. Nugent (Shirley McClain).  Everybody, including her own family, dislikes and avoids her.  But Bernie gets along with her, and before we know it, he is living a very nice lifestyle thanks to her, traveling with her to international destinations, flying a private plane, etc.  But this won’t last.  This movie is based on a true story, and I won’t say more, but it’s a look at small town relationships as much as anything.  It is interspersed with comments from the townspeople, which give it a real depth at how people looked what happened.  On one hand, it is a kind of a slap at small town naiveté, but on the other hand, it is really very funny.  Most enjoyable movie so far this year.

HEADHUNTERS.  Roger is a smooth corporate headhunter.  He is married to a tall, beautiful blond, and feels inadequate.  To compensate, he steals art works on the side so he can give her expensive things.  He is deeply in debt, and when the opportunity for a big score comes along, he grabs at it.  But of course, things will start going wrong, and he keeps getting deeper and deeper in over his head.  One doesn’t know if he will be able to extricate himself from the bodies that are piling up.  I really, really liked this Norwegian thriller – it kept me interested through all the twists and turns.  They’ll probably re-do it in English, but it may not be as good.

FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT.  Romantic comedy, with Jason Segal and Emily Blunt getting engaged at the beginning of the movie (no meet cute, or hating each other before realizing they belong together).  It is clear that they have a loving, grounded relationship.  But when she gets a job that will take her cross-country, their relationship will be tested in ways they never expected.  Written by Segal, who also did FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, this is a romantic comedy that isn’t ridiculous in its premise.  Funny, and very enjoyable.

BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL.  Seven various retirees in England get taken in by a glossy brochure that extolls retirement living in luxury in India.  When they get there, they find the hotel doesn’t quite live up to its name.  Not to mention that life in India is quite different from England.  Some of them will roll with the punches, some can not.  Each character is developed so that they seem like relatively believable people, and it turns out that going to India will be more than a physical journey, but also a psychological one for most.  It’s hard to go wrong with a movie starring Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, etc.  It gets a little sappy at the end, but all-in-all, it’s a charming little film.

AVENGERS.  An evil Nordic wanna-be god steals an energy source and plans to use it to dominate earth.  Only a group of superheroes can save humanity.  Samuel Jackson will bring them together and they work out their competitive natures before joining together in battle.   I have never had much of an inner  fan girl when it comes to comic book movies (with the exception of the Batman movies, I usually think the genre is just ok) and this one was no different.  I enjoyed the character development, and the repartee between characters quite a lot, and there were a couple of laugh-out loud moments.  But the battles just went on too long.  This is a special effects extravaganza, and by no means a bad movie, it’s just not my taste.  Maybe if it were 20 minutes shorter…

FIRST POSITION.  Documentary about kids ages 9-19 who compete in a ballet competition for scholarships and jobs in elite ballet companies.  The movie follows a small group of contestants from around the world through regional contests and the finals in New York.  I have never taken a dance lesson in my life, and rarely go to dance shows, but I am fascinated by these kids being so devoted to something at such a young age.   And they are GOOD, amazing to watch.  This is a nice little view into a subculture that we rarely see. Really enjoyed this.

SAFE.  Sometimes I just want to see a mindless action flick.  And Jason Statham can do the job, because he looks good beating the crap out of a dozen guys at once.  In this case, he is a disgraced cop/martial arts fighter (!) who tries to save a young Chinese girl from the various bad guys (Russians, Chinese, and cops on the take), who are after her because she is a math genius who has memorized a code they all need.  Doesn’t make a lot of sense, and not really an edge-of-the-seater….just OK.  Jason can, and has, done better.

April movie reviews

CABIN IN THE WOODS.  I don’t enjoy horror movies, but I went to see this one because it was written by Joss Whedon (who I love).  It’s a sly take on the horror movie genre.  Here, the five college age students (each filling a stereotypical role), despite warnings from a maniacal gas station owner, go to a secluded cabin in the woods to relax.  What makes the movie different is that they are all guinea pigs in a government experiment (the first scene shows two bureaucrats; I am not giving anything away).  That setup allows for lots of clichés to be poked.  The movie is rather clever, has some amusing bits, and despite a couple of standard horror scenes where a woman is being brutalized (which I HATE), it’s an original take on the standard story.  I would think horror fans would really love it, because they understand all the conventions being tweaked.

BULLY.  Documentary.  This film follows several students in several states who endure bullying (psychological torture, really) in school, as well as parents who have lost their children due to bullying.  This is a heartbreaking movie, well worth seeing, and very effective at showing the problem, if not so much at pinpointing solutions.  One can only hope that it pushes school boards and administrators (who are unbelievably useless in this movie) into realizing bullying doesn’t have to be something that is tolerated, and do something about it.

JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI.  Documentary.  This films follows 85-year-old Jiro Ono, who had to begin working in restaurants when he was 10, and continues to pursue absolute perfection in his 3-star Michelin sushi place every day.  He is obsessed with sushi, never taking a day off and working long hours.  Interviews with his sons and restaurant critics and his suppliers bring little more insight into his psyche.  He is just plain and simple driven to be the best he can be, and old age isn’t changing that.  Every day he thinks about what can be done to make the sushi better.   Interesting enough movie. I was hungry after, even though the focus isn’t on the food, but the man.

FRIENDS WITH KIDS.  Romantic comedy.  This is a likeable little movie, written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt (who did the amusing KISSING JESSICA STEIN).  Julie (Jennifer) and Jason (Adam Scott) are best friends, who because they are not attracted to each other, have never hooked up.  But they are very close.  They see their married friends having varied success trying to cope with being parents and trying to maintain the romance.  So in movie-world style, Julie and Jason decide to have a child together but remain just friends.  Of course it is a ridiculous premise, but this isn’t just a simplistic romantic comedy.  The movie does actually show some of the challenges of relationships, like not being in the same place at the same time, or having romance crushed by real life challenges.  Great cast, including Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm, Ed Burns, and Kirstin Wiig, this is cute enough if you don’t require your movies to be grounded in reality.

MONSIEUR LAZHAR.  This French Canadian movie (nominated this year for Best Foreign Film) is about a classroom full of kids trying to recover from a teacher’s death.  Because the school has not been successful recruiting a replacement, they hire Monsieur Lazhar, an Algerian immigrant.  He has different ways of doing things, which he, the kids, and the school administration find a challenge.  He also has his own tragic past, which helps him help the kids.  This is an OK movie, but I think typically movies of this type have an inspirational story that really grabs the heart.  This one was a little too low-key and subtle for my taste.

FOOTNOTE.  In this Israeli film, Eliezer has spent his life comparing versions of the Talmud, and was on the verge of publishing his ground breaking results when another researcher, as the result of a fluke discovery, beats him to it.  Meanwhile, Eliezer’s son, Uriel, has had great success in the same field, both in academia and the popular press.  Although the son is very considerate of his father’s feelings, the father is still very bitter.  When a mistake is made in awarding a major academic prize to the wrong person, it will have serious ramifications for their relationship.  Seen by some as a comedy, I smiled a few times, but mostly I saw the movie as one of a father-son conflict with no winners.  In  Hebrew, also nominated for Best Foreign Film.

March Movie Reviews

HUNGER GAMES.    Teenage Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in coal mining District 12, one of the districts that rebelled against the Capitol.  After the rebellion is put down, each of the districts must provide a teenage girl and boy to fight to the death in the televised Hunger Games (reality TV gone amuck).  Katniss’ family is so poor after the death of her father that  she hunts in restricted areas to help feed her family.  So she has some skills, and when her little sister is chosen to fight in the games, Katniss takes her place.  This movie does a fine job showing how the teenagers are manipulated for prime time.  And Katniss is a strong and clever girl (always a welcome sight in movies) when it comes to participating in the games.  The movie has great supporting characters as well with a cast including Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz.  I really enjoyed this movie and think the series has a lot of potential. (I haven’t read the books, so I had no expectations for the movie going in.)

21 JUMP STREET.  Channing Tatum was the cool but dumb kid in high school, while Jonah Hill was the smart nerd.  They become friends in police academy, where Channing helps Jonah with the athletics, and Jonah helps Channing with the academics.  After graduation, they end up working undercover in high school to uncover a drug ring.  The movie is very wink-wink about the silliness of the premise (one of the high school kids tells Channing he looks like he’s, like, 40 years old).  A mix-up has Channing in the smart kid classes, and Jonah in the popular crowd.  Things have changed since they were in HS, and aren’t as predictable as they would have thought.  There is a lot of humor, although it’s not a gut-buster.  It’s silly, sure, and I think the movie was just a tad too long, but it has enough laughs to make it worth a Netflix, at least.

SALMON FISHING IN YEMEN. Ewan McGregor is a stuffy bureaucrat in the British fisheries department; Emily Blunt works for a wealthy sheikh from Yemen.  The sheikh loves salmon fishing, and is determined to spend millions to make it possible in his homeland, even building a dam to create the water for the salmon.  Ewan knows this is crazy, but is forced into it because the British government, mired in the war in Afghanistan, needs a feel-good story from the Arab world (Kristin Scott Thomas is a manipulative but funny government press agent).  Directed by Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat, Cider House Rules), who does movies with such heart, this is a nice little movie depicting the conversion of Ewan into a believer, and the developing friendship between him and Emily.  Enjoyable movie, although nothing huge.

JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME.  Jeff (Jason Segal) is thirty years old and living in his mother’s (Susan Sarandon) basement.  He is waiting for a sign to tell him what he should do with his life.  His mother and brother (Ed Helms) have lost patience with him.  When Jeff gets a wrong number for a Kevin, he takes it as a sign to pursue references to Kevin.  And that is how he spends his day.  Coincidentally, this will lead to a meet up with his brother, who discovers his long-suffering wife (Judy Greer) may be cheating on him.  So the signs take Jeff from place to place, and lead to a climactic event.  The movie is less than 90 minutes long, which is good, because although I wasn’t exactly bored, I don’t have much patience for guys like Jeff (or his nasty brother, for that matter).  Mildly amusing at times, this was lightweight, just OK.

THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD.  Nic is a normal teenager – going to school, always on his cell phone, and has a crush on a cute girl.  But he lives in Albania, which means things are a little different from here.  His dad makes a living delivering bread in a horse-drawn cart, for example.  One day his dad gets into an argument with a neighbor and the neighbor ends up dead.  In Albania, that means the members of the surviving family can take revenge and kill a family member (his dad has disappeared).  Nic essentially must remain in the house 24/7 to avoid being killed.  Not easy for a teenager, but the older generation doesn’t appear to want to change, admit this is wrong, and take the burdens of the old ways off of the young.  This movie is interesting in its depiction of a different way of life, but it felt more like an anthropology study than entertainment.

November 2011 Movie Reviews (part 2)

HUGO.   Martin Scorsese has made a beautiful movie that takes full advantage of 3-D.  Pre-teen Hugo lives behind the walls of the 1930’s Paris train station after his father is killed in an accident.  Hugo fixes the clocks behind the scenes, steals food to survive, and evades the Station Inspector (Sacha Cohen Baron) who would put him in an orphanage.   The one thing Hugo has left from his dad is an automaton that he is trying to repair.  To work on it, he has been stealing parts from toy store owner Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley), who works in the station.  When Hugo gets caught stealing, it sets off a series of events that lead him to learning more about the automaton, and about Georges.  Why does the Georges’ god-daughter have the key to the automaton?   This is almost two movies – the first is Hugo’s adventures in the train station (and the 3-D is fabulous here) and the second involves discoveries about the early movie making years.   This might be a bit long for children, and it does include a bit of a history lesson, but I really, really liked this movie. 

THE DESCENDANTS.  The movie begins with George Clooney’s voiceover, stating that just because people live in a Hawaiian paradise, it doesn’t mean their lives are problem-free.  It seems his wife was in a boat accident and is in a coma.  He has to take care of his younger daughter, and decides to take his older teenage daughter out of boarding school to help him.  But George hasn’t been around much, and she’s a bit of a pill, for good reason.  The events around and following his wife’s accident make George take a look at his marriage, his parenting, his job…it’s more than a family crisis, it’s a personal crisis for him.  This is a thoroughly entertaining movie, quite funny at times, but also with a serious bent.  (It’s by the director that did Sideways and Election; men in crisis seems to be his genre.)  It’s a good movie, and Clooney is even better, as is the actress playing the older daughter.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN.    This based-on-a-memoir movie revolves around Marilyn Monroe coming to London in 1956 to make a movie with and directed by Laurence Olivier.  The third assistant director Colin Clark became her friend for a week and accompanied her on a weekend around London.  I found the core story to be pretty shallow.  Of course the young man was smitten, of course Marilyn broke his heart.  But I did enjoy the details surrounding the movie-making, and some of the side bits (her acting coach, Olivier’s frustration with Marilyn’s unprofessionalism, Vivian Leigh).   Michelle Williams doesn’t really look or sound anything like Marilyn Monroe, but she does a terrific job of making you see Marilyn’s specialness, sexiness, sweetness, insecurities…

INTO THE ABYSS.  Werner Herzog’s latest documentary investigates a capital murder case that happened in Texas in 2000.  Two teenage boys, because they wanted a red hot Camero, senselessly murdered three people.  Herzog interviews the murderers (one on death row, one not), victims’ families, the police, and others.  Although he states up front he is against capital punishment, he isn’t railing against it in this movie.  He is just examining a really tragic event from all angles.  This is quite good, but sooo sad.  Like a real life DEAD MAN WALKING.

LIKE CRAZY.  This movie is about two college students who meet and fall madly in love.  Anna is an exchange student, and she is so in love with Jacob she can’t bear to go back to England for the summer, so she violates her visa conditions and stays in LA.  When she is caught and has to go home, their relationship of course will suffer the ups and downs that long distance creates.  And it will take months and months for her immigration status to be resolved.  I thought Anna especially immature, so I had trouble having sympathy for her.  And Jacob could be a jerk.  You know, like real people.  Interesting to me, sort of, but I think anyone’s interest in this movie will strongly depend on their tolerance for young love and how naive (i.e., stupid) young people can be.

THE OTHER F WORD.  Pretty amusing documentary about punk rockers (members of Rancid, Black Flag, Pennywise, etc), and how they were forced to change when they became fathers.  Most of them did not have great male role models, but are determined to be the best dads they can be for their kids.  They realize the conflict between their careers (when punk is all about doing whatever the fuck you want and fuck everyone else) and being there for their kids and raising them right.  The movie is a little long, but I enjoyed it a lot.

LE HAVRE.  French movie about a middle-aged shoeshine man who lives in Le Havre, a port town.  One day a container of illegal immigrants from Africa is opened, and a young boy escapes.  The police are hot on his tail, and Marcel, the shoeshine man, and his neighbors endeavor to help the kid.  Marcel also has a sick wife in the hospital.  Critics are saying this is a sentimental black comedy.  Wow.  I thought it was a rather dull slice of life portrait of ordinary people doing something to help a kid, nothing more.