Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
moviegourmet 
One of the main threads of Toy Story 3 is how the toys escape (while sending up virtually every convention of the prison movie genre). On NPR’s Fresh Air, Toy Story 3‘s editor Lee Unkrich and screenwriter Michael Arndt recently discussed how they watched many prison movies for inspiration. The interview is here.
The movie that they call the “most boring” is Le Trou, which actually tops my list of Best Prison Movies.
The best American studio movie of the year – Toy Story 3 – is now available on DVD. If you don’t have kids in your life, you probably missed it. That would be a mistake – it’s not just for kids. Adults will howl at the enhanced roles of Ken and Barbie, an impassioned duet of “Dream Weaver” and the funniest scene in movie history involving a tortilla.
Pixar understands that the best animation in human history is not enough by itself, and tells great, great stories. Pixar screenwriting is incredibly superior to that of other animation studios.
This is a significant achievement in film making and belongs in the elevated class of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is an acceptable final chapter in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy and best as the showcase for Noomi Rapace’s final performance as Lisbeth Salander. If you’ve seen the first two movies, you should complete the trilogy by seeing this film.
Yet director Daniel Alfredson (who also directed the second film, The Girl Who Played With Fire) lets the film plod to its climax. Considering that Alfredson had a great page turner of a story and a singular performance from Rapace, it’s kind of amazing that he let his two movies drag.
This wasn’t a problem with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, directed by Niels Arden Opley. That movie popped off the screen. After Dragon Tattoo, I was worried that the Hollywood remakes would dumb down the story and soften Lisbeth. But now, I’m really looking forward to the American versions directed by David Fincher, and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. It’s easy to see how Fincher will improve the pacing of the second and third films in particular.
As with the first two films, Hornet’s Nest centers on Rapace’s Lisbeth, a tiny fury of a Goth hacker, damaged and driven. Lisbeth is always mad AND always gets even.
We’re living in a good time for crime drama. When I think of this genre, I generally think of The Godfather, Goodfellas, and the film noir of the 40s and 50s. But there are some excellent contemporary ones. This year, we have had A Prophet, The Secret in Their Eyes, Ajami, Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Animal Kingdom. (Interestingly, two of those films are French, and the others are Australian, Argentine and Israeli.)
Here are some more outstanding crime dramas from the past seven years: The Lookout, A History of Violence, Layer Cake, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Tell No One, Gomorrah, Sin Nombre, In Bruges, Zodiac, Maria Full of Grace and Eastern Promises. All of them have inventive, fresh takes on the crime genre. All of them are on my list of best films for its year.
For descriptions and trailers, see Best Recent Crime Dramas.
Charles Ferguson’s brilliant documentary Inside Job may be the most important movie of the year. It is a harsh but fair explanation of the misdeeds that led to the recent near-collapse of the global financial system. Unexpectedly, the film begins in Iceland, setting the stage for the collapse and kicking off the easily understandable explanations of the various tricks and bamboozles that have hidden behind their own complexity.
Hereafter: For the first time, Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) venture into the supernatural with the story of three people and their individual experiences with death. The most skeptical, nonspiritual viewer (me) finds this to be a compelling film.
The question of What Comes Next is unanswered, and less interesting than the film’s observations of what happens on this Earth to living humans. Eastwood’s genius is in delivering moments of complete truthfulness, one after the other, across a wide range of settings, from intimate human encounters to the big CGI-enhanced action sequence at the beginning of the film. Eastwood is an actor’s director, and star Matt Damon leads a set of excellent performances, especially by Bryce Dallas Howard, Frankie McLaren, Cecile de France and Richard Kind.
The Social Network: The birth story of Facebook is a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires. It’s a triumph for actor Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man), director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). It’s already on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.
Howl has a fine performance by James Franco, but is marred by an unsuccessful animation.
For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
I have not yet seen The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, which opens this week. You can see the trailer at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the Week is Winter’s Bone, the best American indie film of the year. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TV include Freaks and Downhill Racer on TCM.
I’m surprised at the wide range of critical reaction to Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, a film that I admire. Hereafter now has a middling MetaCritic score of 56 – the same score as Jackass 3D.
Comfortingly, three of the critics that I respect the most reacted to Hereafter as I did. Metacritic assigned 100 points to reviews by Roger Ebert and Mick LaSalle and 90 points to a review by A.O. Scott. But enough midrange reviews along with a smattering of negative reviews brought Hereafter‘s average down.
I read several of the lukewarm and disapproving reviews. Some didn’t find the supernatural premise credible enough to suspend disbelief. Some expected an answer about what comes after death. Some were disappointed by the languid pace after the rock-em sock-em opening sequence. I think that they all missed the point. The movie isn’t really about whether there is an afterlife. It’s about how we living humans deal with mortality with grief, fear, avoidance, faith, questioning and belief or non-belief in an Afterlife. The richness of the movie is in the superb depiction of actual humans doing what we humans do – including grieving, longing, wondering, scamming, searching and ignoring.
As to the Afterlife, the one character in the movie who really knows that there is one, can’t work hard enough to escape any contact with it. What does that say?
As a side note, virtually all the reviews, even the most negative ones, praised the tsunami sequence at the beginning. Everybody loves a good tidal wave.
For the first time, Clint Eastwood ventures into the supernatural with the story of three people and their individual experiences with death. It’s also a departure for screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United). The most skeptical, nonspiritual viewer (me) finds this to be a compelling film.
The question of What Comes Next is unanswered, and less interesting than the film’s observations of what happens on this Earth to living humans. Eastwood’s genius is in delivering moments of complete truthfulness, one after the other, across a wide range of settings. Young boys enabling a druggie mother. People in a hostel watching for the last breath of a loved one. Experienced, skilled and loving foster parents facing a challenge that they cannot fathom. Every instance of human behavior is completely authentic.
Equally realistic is the big CGI-enhanced action sequence at the beginning of the film – an Indonesian tsunami, not overblown in any way, but frightening in its verisimilitude.
Eastwood is an actor’s director, and star Matt Damon leads a set of excellent performances. Bryce Dallas Howard has an Oscar-worthy performance of a woman achingly eager to move past the painful episodes of her life. The child actor Frankie McLaren carries significant stretches of the story with his unexpressed longing and childish relentlessness. Cecile de France ably plays a successful television anchor compelled by events to veer her life in a different direction. Richard Kind delivers a moving portrayal of a man seeking closure after the death of his wife.
My pick for 2010’s best movie to date is Winter’s Bone, which is just now available on DVD. A 17-year-old Ozarks girl is determined to save the family home by tracking down her meth dealer dad – dead or alive. The girl’s journey through a series of nasty and nastier Southern Missouri crank cookers is riveting – without any explosions, gunfights or chase scenes. Every moment of this film seems completely real. Winter’s Bone won the screenwriting and grand jury prizes at Sundance.
With just her second feature, Debra Granik has emerged as an important filmmaker to watch. She presents an unflinching look at this subculture without ever resorting to stereotype. Granik hits a home run with every artistic choice, from the locations to the spare soundtrack to the pacing to the casting. I’ll be watching for her next film.
As the protagonist, 20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence is in every scene. With a minimum of dialogue, she creates a lead character of rarely seen determination.
Dale Dickey is exceptional as a criminal matriarch. John Hawkes (the kind Sol Star in Deadwood) also gives a tremendous performance as the ready-to-explode Uncle Teardrop.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week. Winter’s Bone is on my lists of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far and 5 Great Hillbilly Movies.
Charles Ferguson’s brilliant documentary Inside Job may be the most important movie of the year. It is a harsh but fair explanation of the misdeeds that led to the recent near-collapse of the global financial system. Unexpectedly, the film begins in Iceland, setting the stage for the collapse and kicking off the easily understandable explanations of the various tricks and bamboozles that have hidden behind their own complexity.
Like this year’s other best documentaries, The Tillman Story. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and Sweetwater, Inside Job gets out of its own way and just lets the story speak for itself. There is no need for a Michael Moore to portray the financial sector as criminally greedy and reckless – the facts speak for themselves and the audience can be trusted to “get it”. At the showing I attended, there was general applause at the end.
Besides the obvious villains at the investment banks (Goldman Sachs, etc.) , the insurers of credit default swaps (like AIG) and the rating agencies (e.g., Moody’s), Ferguson also takes aim at these thieves’ political enablers and economist apologists. There are some 60 Minutes-style ambushes, but they are far less interesting for the squirming of the subjects than for exposing the completely clueless entitlement of the financial sector and its governmental and academic lackeys.
Inside Job exposes our Wall Street government, and is unflinchingly bipartisan in meting out the blame.
Matt Damon narrates.
The Social Network tells us something about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – not about this year’s Swedish version, but about next year’s Hollywood version to be directed by David Fincher.
First, The Social Network shows that Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) is still operating at his best. The Social Network is essentially about some annoying, immature geeks writing computer code and getting financing for a company – but Fincher makes it rock! Fight Club and Zodiac are two of my favorite contemporary films, and Fight Club‘s desperate violence and Zodiac‘s whodunit relentlessness translate directly to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So there couldn’t be a better director for this project than Fincher.
Second, the success of the Stieg Larsson trilogy depends on the portrayal of Lisbeth Salander. The Swedish version has been amazing because of the Danish actress Noomi Rapace’s jawdropping Lisbeth. But in Fincher’s movies, Lisbeth Salander will be played by Rooney Mara. The good news from The Social Network is that Mara nails her scenes as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. And we get a glimmer of the intensity that Mara will need for Lisbeth. Plus Mara is used to working with Fincher, who is notorious for his scores of takes; reportedly, Fincher required over 90 takes for the opening scene between Mara and Jesse Eisenberg.