Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
movie gourmet 
Bad things happen at the circus. And bad things happen in Freaks. This is one of the most unsettling horror films, because it was filmed in 1932 with real circus freaks. If you have teenagers jaded by today’s empty horror flicks, this will knock them for a loop. Only 64 minutes. Available on DVD and often televised around Halloween.
The best of the current crop of films is Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols’ brilliant tale of a psychotic breakdown with Oscar-worthy performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. One of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
50/50 is an engaging cancer comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. Margin Call is a taut financial meltdown drama with superb performances by Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci. The Ides of March is a fine political drama with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney. Drive is a stylishly arty and ultraviolent action film with Ryan Gosling.
Blackthorn is a beautiful but flawed Western set in Bolivia. Dirty Girl is a fun but unexceptional romp with promising newcomers Juno Temple and Jeremy Dozier.
You can still find The Guard, the Irish dark comedy starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, and Sarah’s Key, an excellent drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a journalist investigating very personal aspects of a French episode in the Holocaust. The Debt, with Helen Mirren, is a multigenerational thriller that addresses the costs of both truth and untruth.
I haven’t yet seen the two psychological thrillers that open this week, Martha Marcy May Marlene or Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In, which opens this week. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the Week is A Little Help. Other recent DVD picks have been Incendies (the year’s best movie so far), the heartwarming documentary Buck, the very original teen misfit movie Terri, the delightful indie comedy Turkey Bowl and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979).
A Little Help is a Jenna Fischer vehicle that illustrates the depth that Fischer can bring to even a shallow character. In this dramedy, Fischer is suddenly widowed and must reassemble her life and support her quirky 12-year-old son despite the intrusions of her shrill, micro-controlling sister (Brooke Smith) and their chilly mother (Leslie Anne Warren). Fischer’s biggest challenge is helping her son navigate social life at his new school, where he has told a preposterous lie on his first day.
Kim Coates steals every scene as a medical malpractice attorney. Ron Liebman sparkles as the blowhard father.
Writer/Director Michael J. Weithorn made the very smart decision to hold Fischer’s character accountable for the bad choices she has made in her life. If she were instead written as a completely innocent victim, the story would have lapsed into cliche. Instead, it’s a pretty good movie and a fine showcase for Jenna Fischer.
Dirty Girl, which arrived with some measure of indie buzz, is a pleasing trifle, nothing more. Two teenagers, whose parents don’t get them, run away on a transformative road trip. One is played by Juno Temple, whose smart, quirky sexiness pretty much took over this year’s Kaboom. The overweight gay kid is played by Jeremy Dozier. Both are good, Temple is special and Dozier might be. I’m looking forward to seeing them in better movies.
Against type, Milla Jovovich plays a trailer trash single mom. Dwight Yoakam plays yet another dirtbag, this one without a lot of depth.
But it’s Mary Steenburgen who really reminds us how good she is. Steenburgen plays what is written as a fairly cardboard role – the bullied wife, the prude wearing high-necked blouses, the devoted but helpless mom. But Steenburgen brings so much texture and intensity to the performance and creates a character that transcends the one on the page.
Just watched Pearl Jam Twenty on the PBS series American Masters. It’s Cameron Crowe’s (Almost Famous) documentary on the formation and rise of the band Pearl Jam. My initial test for any rock band documentary is whether it’s better than an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music.
The first 43 minutes of Pearl Jam Twenty is pretty good. There’s the drug overdose death of the lead singer in Pearl Jam’s predecessor band (usually the fatal rock OD is AFTER the rise to stardom). There’s a wonderful video of an early performance where new lead singer Eddie Vedder unleashes the rage in his voice when angered by an overaggressive bouncer during a performance at a small club. Finally, playing before a festival crowd of 60,000 for the first time, Vedder ends a song, gazes across the masses and inhales, literally breathing in the sweet smell of success.
But then the documentary tails off, and there’s not much in the last hour except for Vedder’s ad lib at an awards show cracking up Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant backstage. If you’re a big Pearl Jam fan, then the last hour is probably worthwhile.
What if Butch Cassidy had survived that 1908 shootout with the Bolivian army? That’s the premise of this stylized Western starring Sam Shepherd as Butch.
I love Westerns, and I found this one to be satisfying but not exceptional. It’s a beautifully shot film with sound acting. Unfortunately, once we get past the inspired premise, the screenplay is pretty routine.
Sam Shepherd’s presence and features make him well suited to play an icon, whether Chuck Yeager (The Right Stuff) or Butch Cassidy. Eduardo Noriega (so good as the drug smuggler in Transsiberian) reeks unreliability as the one person who has what Butch needs. Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) has a gift for hangdog performances, and he gives another good one as the Wiley Coyote of Pinkerton agents.
This is the directorial debut of noted screenwriter Mateo Gil (Open Your Eyes/Vanilla Sky, The Sea Inside). Gil has the directorial touch – he makes full use of the dramatic Bolivian landscape and engaging Bolivian cast.
This is a taut drama about an investment bank facing the financial collapse of 2008. In his first feature, writer-director J.C. Chandor (whose father worked on Wall Street) successfully creates a pressure cooker of a tale.
The story is compressed into a critical 24 hours in the life of the company. It is set in darkened offices lit only with computer monitors that are gleaming with menacing graphs and spreadsheets.
Stanley Tucci is compelling as the bean counter who discovers an existential threat. Kevin Spacey (also always good) is the corporate lifer who must clean up the mess. Don’t overlook the depth of Paul Bettany’s performance as an amoral and personally empty corporate climber who is in it only for the sport and for the adrenaline, using his bonuses merely to keep score. Finally, in Margin Call‘s most superb performance, Jeremy Irons oozes menacing confidence and power as the CEO who do anything to save his company.
Unfortunately, Chandor cannot create acting range for Simon Baker and Demi Moore, who are out of their depths among the otherwise fine cast.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DqFRsPrns]
The best of the current crop of films is Take Shelter , Jeff Nichols’ brilliant tale of a psychotic breakdown with Oscar-worthy performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. One of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
50/50 is an engaging cancer comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. Margin Call is a taut financial meltdown drama with superb performances by Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci. The Ides of March is a fine political drama with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney. Drive is a stylishly arty and ultraviolent action film with Ryan Gosling.
Blackthorn is a beautiful but flawed Western set in Bolivia. Dirty Girl is a fun but unexceptional romp with promising newcomers Juno Temple and Jeremy Dozier.
You can still find The Guard, the Irish dark comedy starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, and Sarah’s Key, an excellent drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a journalist investigating very personal aspects of a French episode in the Holocaust. The Debt, with Helen Mirren, is a multigenerational thriller that addresses the costs of both truth and untruth.
I haven’t yet seen Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In, which opens this week. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the Week is the heartwarming documentary Buck. Other recent DVD picks have been Incendies (the year’s best movie so far), the very original teen misfit movie Terri, the delightful indie comedy Turkey Bowl and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979).
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who has reliably excellent taste in his choice of movie scripts) stars in this cancer comedy. Yes, cancer comedy. Seth Rogen plays his buddy. And it’s funny. Pretty damn funny.
Writer Will Reiser takes the story from his own bout with the Big C. Reiser’s real life friend Seth Rogen helped him through the ordeal.
As usual, Gordon-Levitt is excellent. And, if you’re out chasing skirts while bald and weak from chemotherapy, who could be a better wing man than Seth Rogen?
Anna Kendrick (so good in Up in the Air) plays the cringingly green psychologist assigned to help the patient face his 50/50 chance of survival. Bryce Dallas Howard (excellent as the achingly fragile survivor in Hereafter) plays the girlfriend with the best intentions but neither aptitude for care giving or unlimited loyalty. Angelica Huston plays not just another smothering mom. They’re all very good – good enough to play against Gordon-Levitt and Rogen. So are Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) as fellow cancer patients.
Michael Shannon (Shotgun Stories, Agent Van Alden in Boardwalk Empire) is perhaps our best creep actor. And what’s creepier than watching a solid parent and spouse enduring a full-fledged psychotic breakdown?
Shannon plays the most grounded guy in America until he starts having terrifying dreams and then hallucinations. One of his parents is mentally ill, and he is determined to resist a breakdown and protect his family. Unlike in a lesser screenplay, Shannon’s protagonist is very aware that he may be going crazy and is digging his fingernails into sanity.
Shannon gave a breakthrough performance in Shotgun Stories, by writer/director Jeff Nichols. (In the excellent Shotgun Stories, Nichols created a dysfunctional family with a father so dismissive of his offspring that he non-named them Son, Kid and Boy.) This time, Nichols has given Shannon the role of a lifetime, for which Shannon should get a dark horse Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
You may have noticed that this is Jessica Chastain’s year (The Debt, The Tree of Life, The Help, Texas Killing Fields), and Chastain should receive an Oscar nod for her supporting performance as Shannon’s wife. Chastain must react to her husband’s behavior, which starts out quirky, becomes troublesome and spirals down to GET ME OUT OF HERE.
Nichols, Shannon and Chastain have given us one of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5U4TtYpKIc]