The good autumn movies have started to roll out, and it’s time to go back to the theaters. This week I’m recommending Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Animal Kingdom, The American and The Tillman Story. I’ll be seeing Soul Kitchen soon and will have a recommendation on that, too. And Inception, Toy Story 3, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Get Low and The Kids Are All Right are all still playing in theaters. For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TVinclude Rebel Without a Cause, The Graduateand Touch of Evil, all coming up on TCM.
In this thriller, George Clooney plays an international master assassin. He lives a life of crushing loneliness. Anyone who gets close to him will either die or betray him. He is exhausted by years of perpetual vigilance, unnourished by human affection. I remember this loneliness from my own years as an international master assassin.
Clooney’s character is written and played well. This is a smart, arty film that transcends its hackneyed set-up: the assassin takes One Last Job and encounters some beautiful, available and potentially dangerous women who may be Up To No Good. The climax reminds me of the greatest assassin movie, Day of the Jackal.
In this Aussie crime drama, a high school kid’s mother OD’s on heroin, forcing him into her estranged family of brutal criminals, presided over by his sunny grandmother. Like many teen boys, he is terse in speech and impassive in demeanor. As he is plunged into increasingly desperate situations, neither the characters nor the audience knows what he is thinking in every instance. This, along with his peril, is the key to the movie’s success.
James Frecheville does an excellent job of making us care about a character desperately trying not to speak or reveal his feelings. Jacki Weaver is great as Grandma Smurf, an impossibly upbeat gal who can effortlessly put out a contract on her own grandson. Ben Mendelsohn is excellent as the boy’s most psychopathic uncle. Guy Pearce, in a supporting role as a sympathetic cop, is also good.
Will the teen safely navigate through the maze of his murderous relations? Will evil prevail? We don’t know until the final scene…and then some questions remain.
Written and directed by David Michod, Animal Kingdom won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
The film depicts some close range gunshot deaths with the appropriate amount of splatter.
This is the riveting real life tale of Jacques Mesrine – a French criminal with a portfolio of audacious heists and even more shockingly daring escapes. He became intoxicated by – and addicted to – his own notoriety, which he embellished with some left wing political posing. He saw himself as a modern Clyde Barrow and positioned himself that way in the media (without thinking too much about the final scene in Bonnie and Clyde). At the end of the day, Mesrine was just a vicious thug, although one with an unusual amount of bravado and luck.
Vincent Cassell brings Mesrine to life in a brilliant performance that does not glorify Mesrine, but inhabits a countenance that shifts instantaneously from jokey charm to cold-blooded hatred. American audiences may remember Cassell as the psycho Russian gangster in Eastern Promises and the suave Francois “The Night Fox” Toulour in the Ocean’s movies.
Director Jean-Francois Richet showcases Cassell’s performance with a series of outstanding artistic choices. The harsh violence is shown for what it is but not stylized. Richet makes strategic use of split screen that enhances the story without distracting from it. And when Mesrine meets his new girlfriend (Cecile De France) and she says that she’s up for anything, the movie immediately cuts to the two of them robbing a bank. Point made.
Richet and Abdel Raouf Dafri (screenwriter of A Prophet) adapted the screenplay from Mesrine’s memoir. Dafri has had a spectacular year in crime and prison dramas.
The entire cast is good, particularly Gerard Depardieu, who summons all his hulking menace to play a gang leader who is at least as dangerous as Mesrine.
Richet and Cassell return later this year with the second part of the story, titled Mesrine: Public Enemy #1.
Now we’re really down to the August dregs in theaters. Here’s your chance to see some better movies from earlier in the year.
Inception, Toy Story 3, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Get Low and The Kids Are All Right are all good and still playing in theaters. For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
You can also catch up a good movie with my DVD of the week, Sweetgrass, or last week’s Fish Tank. For the trailers and other DVD choices, see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TVinclude A Face in the Crowd, Anatomy of a Murder, The Stunt Man and The Outlaw Josey Wales, all coming up on TCM.
Sweetgrass: This unadorned documentary tells the story of the two (heterosexual) cowboys who drove thousands of sheep on the last sheep drive in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains. Because it is not dressed up with narration or music, the audience is left with the story, the people, their quest, the sheep and the landscape – and that’s more than enough.
If you’re life is too frenetic, pop this movie on and take a contemplative 101 minute respite.
It’s common that a movie trailer will turn me off from seeing a film that I suspect is bad. But sometimes a trailer makes me think that it’s a pretty good movie that I don’t want to see, either. That’s the case with Conviction, the story of a young woman whose brother is convicted of murder; over 18 years, she gets her GED, her college and law degrees and begins a legal struggle to clear him and rescue him from Death Row. It’s an Oscar vehicle for Hilary Swank, who plays the sister, and what appears to be another fine performance by Sam Rockwell, who plays the brother. It’s based on the true story of one Betty Anne Waters.
The problem for me is that the film looks self righteous, overly earnest and humorless. It’s just too damn inspirational. Melissa Leo, who can add texture to any performance, apparently has been given a one-note cardboard cut-out role of a close-minded cop.
And here’s a lawyer’s quibble: You wouldn’t expect somebody right out of night law school to overturn a murder conviction with a well-reasoned appeal – and she doesn’t. Instead, she gets the Innocence Project to test the DNA, which clears the brother (that isn’t a spoiler if you’ve seen the trailer). Now you don’t need to go to law school to involve the Innocence Project – they get involved on the wishes of the non-lawyer relatives of convicts all the time. So the 18-year struggle may be extraordinary, but that’s not what gets the brother off.
This trailer reminds me of the one for The Duchess, which featured Keira Knightly adorned in 18th century finery in a spectacular shot with hundreds of candles – and made me want to gag. No The Duchess for me.
Speaking of trailers, I really enjoy another (even more irreverent) WordPress blog, The Trailer Trashers. Their tag line is “The only critics who dare review movies BEFORE we see them”. Yes, they review the trailers. Give them a look see.
On August 24, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the 1919 silent film The Busher. It may not be a great movie, but it is an excellent document of baseball 90 years ago. In 1919, John McGraw was managing the Giants, Ty Cobb was in his heyday, Babe Ruth pitched 17 games for the BoSox and the White Sox were fixing the World Series. If you want to see how baseball looked back then (how the fans and umpires dressed, how the catcher squatted, etc.), watch this movie.
September is approaching, and so is the Fall movie season, when the studios push their Oscar contenders. So I have updated my Movies I’m Looking Forward To page with new titles and new trailers.
There are films by Clint Eastwood, Mike Leigh, Terrence Malick, Peter Weir, Sophia Coppola, Julie Taymor and the Coen Brothers. Two of my favorite lesser-known directors, Suzanne Bier (Brothers, After the Wedding, Things We Lost in the Fire) of Denmark and Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) of France, have new movies. Darren Aronofsky will release his newest film after hitting it big with The Wrestler – Black Swan with Natalie Portman.
Helen Mirren will star in three movies: The Debt, Brighton Rock and The Tempest.
The Oscar Bait includes The Town, The Fighter, Another Year, Somewhere, Hereafter, True Grit, Howl, The Way Back and The Tree of Life. Wall Street: The Money Never Sleeps and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest look to me like the surest Fall hits. Another Year, The Town, Hereafter and The Way Back look like they will be the best movies. We should have a better feel for the buzz after Toronto’s film fest in mid-September.
As my friend Keith always advises me, movie distributors send out their weakest material in August. Make lemonade out of the lemons by catching up on the better movies from earlier in the year.
Inception and Toy Story 3 are two of the year’s best. If you want a thriller, go with The Girl Who Played With Fire. Robert Duvall gives another masterful performance in Get Low. For an indie dramedy, try The Kids Are All Right. For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
My DVD of the week is a British coming of age drama from earlier this year, Fish Tank. For the trailers and other DVD choices, see DVDs of the Week.
Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun
Movies on TV include Cool Hand Luke, A Place in the Sun, A Face in the Crowd, Anatomy of a Murder, and The Stunt Man, all coming up on TCM.
