Tilda Swinton was so good in I Am Love, the movie I panned this week, that now I’ll plug The Deep End. This 2001 thriller stars Swinton as a Lake Tahoe mom who must cover up a crime to protect her teen son. Then ER heartthrob Goran Visnjic shows up to blackmail the family. The more the situation spirals out of control, the more gripping Swinton’s performance.
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I Am Love
I Am Love (Io sono l’amore) – the operatic tale of the family of a zillionaire Milan industrialist and how each family member seeks happiness – is less than the sum of its parts. The movie has many successful components: another fearless performance by Tilda Swinton, searing love scenes, and some nice small touches in the screenwriting (an aristocratic family’s treatment of the new wife during a tragedy, the re-taking of a man’s suit coat, among others). But the soundtrack’s musical crescendos at the most emotionally charged moments are too distracting, as are the over-the-top plot points in the third act. And the character of the favorite son is written to be impossibly sweet and naive. Marisa Berenson (whose career has been pretty quiet since 1975’s Barry Lyndon) is excellent in a small role.
There is some mouth-watering food porn (especially the glazed prawns); if this movie could generate a wider audience, the line “I made your mother prawns” would become a catch phrase, as in “I made your mother prawns and we hiked the Appalachian Trail”.
The film making is described in the New York Times.
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3: It’s the best American movie of the year so far, and belongs in the elevated class of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. I would recommend the film for anyone, not just 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.
The preview version I saw was in 2D. The 3D version should make the opening and climatic scenes even more compelling.
Movies to See This Week
Click here for this week’s recommendations. Scroll down this blog to watch trailers. My top recommendations are Toy Story 3, Micmacs, The Secrets in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos), and Iron Man 2. You can still find The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in theaters.
My top picks on DVD is Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains. The Messenger, Crazy Heart and Broken Embraces (Abrazos Rotos) are also good choices on DVD.
Monkey Business, All The King’s Men, The 400 Blows and The Shootist are all on TV.
DVD pick of the week: Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
In 1972, a group of privileged Latin American college guys boarded a chartered airplane for a rugby weekend. The plane crashed in the Andes, and some of them died. They awaited rescue. Then an avalanche killed some more of them. Then it became apparent that the search for them had been called off. In this documentary, the survivors tell their story – and bring their adult children back to the scene of the crash. They candidly explain how humans act and react in the most desperate circumstances, faced with the most appalling choices. This was my #2 film of 2009; (made in 2007, it was only widely available in the US in 2009). Here’s a scene from the film:
Movies I'm Looking Forward To
Here’s my new Movies I’m Looking Forward To page. Click to get the buzz on promising films and to see trailers.
If I were programming a theater, I would make sure I had locked up Toy Story 3, The Kids Are All Right, Another Year and Inside Job. I would take a flyer on The Certified Copy, Poetry and Uncle Boonmee. And I would try to track down The Locksmith, Everyone Else, The Square and Cane Toads.
On July 9, I’ll be watching for The Girl Who Played With Fire, which follows my personal favorite film of the year so far, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as the second part of Stieg Larssen’s trilogy.
This post is for you, Paula.
Get Him to the Greek
Get Him to the Greek is LOL funny. Russell Brand reprises Aldous Snow, the craven and narcissistic rock star that he created in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The funniest parts are when Jonah Hill plays the most absurd situations so, so earnestly. And what other movie has cameos by Lars Ulrich AND Paul Krugman?
Sex and the City 2
I haven’t seen Sex and the City 2 and don’t plan to, so I am not weighing in on the film itself. But its critical reception can best be described as uniformly venomous. For each movie, Metacritic.com assigns numeric scores to the reviews of America’s leading critics and averages them into a Metacritic score between 1 and 100. Generally, really outstanding movies score in the high 70s, and dreadful movies score in the low 30s. Sex and the City 2‘s Metacritic score is 28. As a comparison, the worst movies that I have seen this year are Tooth Fairy (Metacritic score of 36) and Leap Year (Metacritic score of 33). The worst movie that I saw last year was Paul Blart: Mall Cop, which scored a 39. So we can safely say that Sex and the City 2 is widely reviled and will show up on the Worst of the Year lists.
I keep Best of the Year lists but not Worst of the Year lists. Because I’m not a professional critic, I’m not required to see every movie. I try to avoid the bad ones. Because I repeatedly saw the trailer for Did You Hear About the Morgans?, I skipped that one. The only reason that I have seen Tooth Fairy and Leap Year is because they were the only movies I hadn’t seen that were showing on very long airplane flights.
I love Metacritic because the critical consensus is generally closer to my taste than that of individual critics. Click here and check it out for yourself.
Micmacs
Micmacs is the latest delight from French master Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie and the very underrated A Very Long Engagement). France’s top comedian Dany Boon plays an oddball who is twice victimized by armaments sellers. He is adopted by a group of eccentric and highly skilled outcasts who support his campaign of revenge against the arms manufacturers.
As in Amelie, Jeunet creates a gentle, charming and whimsical universe in modern Paris. In Micmacs, he is ceaselessly inventive. And he proves that sometimes the most effective political attacks can be the most gentle.
This film has been cursed with an absolutely insane and baseless R rating. There is no violence, sex or language which justifies this rating. It is a crime because this movie is a great choice for a bunch of 12-year-olds. I would have given this film a PG.
This week's Movies to See
Click here for this week’s recommendations. Scroll down this blog to watch trailers. My top recommendations are The Secrets in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos), Iron Man 2 and, of course, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
My top picks on DVD are still The Messenger, Crazy Heart and Broken Embraces (Abrazos Rotos).
Some Like It Hot, Diabolique and Monkey Business are all on TV.