A team of three Mossad agents are charged with kidnapping a Nazi war criminal out of 1964’s East Berlin. One aspect of the mission remains incomplete, and the three must address it 30 years later. It’s a ripping yarn with some serious comments on the costs of both truth and untruth. Helen Mirren is brilliant as one of the team, as is Jessica Chastain, playing her younger self. Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love).
Movies
Movies to See Right Now
My top choice this week is still the Irish dark comedy The Guard, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle. Sarah’s Key is an excellent drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a journalist investigating very personal aspects of a French episode in the Holocaust. The historical drama Amigo benefits from writer-director John Sayles’ typically excellent juggling of interconnected characters and from a fine cast. The Debt, with Helen Mirren, is a multigenerational thriller that addresses the costs of both truth and untruth.
Woody Allen’s sweet, funny and thoughtful comedy Midnight in Paris is continuing its long, long run. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are excellent in the romcom Crazy Stupid Love. Turkey Bowl is a delightful indie comedy available from iTunes. Despite Rachel Weisz’s performance, The Whistleblower is a misfire – a potentially riveting story clumsily told.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is Poetry. Other recent DVD picks have been Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman, The Music Never Stopped and Source Code.
Amigo: Every character counts, making for gripping drama and sound history
The master writer-director John Sayles delivers a first-class historical drama with Amigo, set in 1900 amid the US occupation of the Phillipines. One of Sayles’ specialties is intertwining the stories of a large ensemble cast while keeping each character recognizable, distinct and textured. As in City of Joy and Lone Star, the audience sees events unfold from the perspective of various characters, none of whom know enough to fully understand the others.
Veteran Filipino actor Joel Torre (over 200 acting credits) plays the village headman, who recognizes that he is doomed to disappoint the contradictory expectations of the Filipino rebels and the US occupiers. Garret Dillahunt plays the well-meaning American lieutenant who is charged to both protect and fight a people that he is not equipped to understand. Oscar-winner Chris Cooper, DJ Qualls, Dane DeHaan, Spanky Manikan and Ronnie Lazaro also excel among the fine cast.
DVD of the Week: Poetry
Early in his film, Korean writer-director Chang-dong Lee tells us his theme. Holding an apple, the teacher tells his students that, to write poetry, you must first see, really see the world around you. Mija is a 66-year-old pensioner in his class who works part-time as a caregiver for a stroke victim and is raising her sullen slob of a teenage grandson. She struggles with the poetry, but she does begin to see the people in her world with clarity – and it’s not a pretty picture. What she learns to see is human behavior ranging from the venal to the inhumane.
The key to the film’s success is the performance of Jeong-hie Yun as Mija, a protagonist who spends the entire movie observing. Her doctor tells her that her failing memory is the start of something far worse. Sometimes she doesn’t see what we see because she is distracted. But sometimes she doesn’t act like she sees because of denial or avoidance. Sometimes she is disoriented. But she has moments of piercing lucidity, and those moments are unsparing.
This unhurried film is troubling, uncomfortable and very, very good. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
Other recent DVD picks have been Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman, The Music Never Stopped and Source Code.
Sarah’s Key: an investigation becomes unexpectedly personal
Kristin Scott Thomas stars in another French film, this time as a journalist tracking the story of a girl during the WWII roundup of Jews in France. Her probe of events almost sixty years in the past becomes more and more personal, and profoundly entangles more and more people. It’s a compelling story, and no actor can portray intensity and doggedness better than Scott Thomas. Co-stars Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) and Aidan Quinn.
Interesting launch of Sayles film
John Sayles’ new film Amigo is opening this weekend in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Nothing unusual there. But, in the San Francisco Bay Area, a Sayles film would usually open in the San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley art houses. Instead, Amigo, a historical drama set in the Phillipines, is opening at mall multiplexes in Milpitas and southwestern San Francisco. Why? It can’t be a coincidence that these theaters are most accesible to the thriving Filipino communities in Milpitas and northern San Mateo County.
Movies to See Right Now
My top choice choice this week is still the Irish dark comedy The Guard, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle.
There are three movies now in theaters from my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far, including Woody Allen’s sweet, funny and thoughtful comedy Midnight in Paris. Buck is an extraordinary documentary about a real-life horse whisperer with a compelling human story. You might still be able to find Errol Morris’ documentary Tabloid, the hilarious story of Joyce McKinney, a beauty queen jailed for manacling a Mormon missionary as her sex slave and, decades later, cloning her dog.
A Little Help is a funny Jenna Fischer vehicle about a sad sack mom. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are excellent in the romcom Crazy Stupid Love. The Names of Love is an amusing but forgettable French comedy about a flighty leftwinger who seeks to educate and convert conservatives by sleeping with them.
Turkey Bowl is a delightful indie comedy available from iTunes.
Despite Rachel Weisz’s performance, The Whistleblower is a misfire – a potentially riveting story clumsily told. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is Queen to Play.
Movies on TV this week include the Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest and the Burt Lancaster epic The Leopard, both on TCM.
DVD of the Week: Queen to Play
In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess in midlife. It’s a film about aspiration. First, she must muster the courage and resourcefulness to learn the game. When it becomes an obsession, she and her family must adjust.
The excellent actress Sandrine Bonnaire (Intimate Strangers) is the perfect choice to play this laconic and controlled character, who reveals her thoughts and emotions to the audience almost only through her eyes. A French-speaking Kevin Kline is also very good as the crusty American widower who teaches her chess.
Other recent DVD picks have been Kill the Irishman, The Music Never Stopped, Source Code, Potiche and Another Year.
The Whistleblower: a potentially riveting story, clumsily told
The Whistleblower is a potentially riveting story, clumsily told. It’s a paranoid thriller about human trafficking that was tolerated and even assisted by UN peacekeepers in Bosnia. After seeing this movie, I was determined to debunk its claim of “inspired by real events”. So I looked up the story and was surprised to learn that it is essentially true. The problem is that the filmmaking caused me to think it was fictionalized.
Director Larysa Kondracki throws every Hollywood trope at the screen. The photography is dark when the movie is supposed to be foreboding, and extra dark and jerky when things are supposed to be scary. To keeps things dark and scary, Weisz uses a flashlight instead of flipping the light switch when entering an uninhabited room. Several characters exist primarily to give exposition-filled speeches. Various Eastern Europeans conveniently speak English when they encounter Rachel Weisz. And Weisz’s character is the only person in Bosnia who drives a jeep around unaccompanied.
The Whistleblower is a vehicle for star Rachel Weisz and she does a good job. David Straithern and Vanessa Redgrave contribute their customarily excellent performances. Human trafficking is topical. But this movie just isn’t up to its subject or its cast.
Movies to See Right Now
The best choice in theaters this week is the Irish dark comedy The Guard, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle.
There are three movies now in theaters from my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far, including Woody Allen’s sweet, funny and thoughtful comedy Midnight in Paris. Buck is an extraordinary documentary about a real-life horse whisperer with a compelling human story. You might still be able to find Errol Morris’ documentary Tabloid, the hilarious story of Joyce McKinney, a beauty queen jailed for manacling a Mormon missionary as her sex slave and, decades later, cloning her dog.
A Little Help is a funny Jenna Fischer vehicle about a sad sack mom. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are excellent in the romcom Crazy Stupid Love. The Names of Love is an amusing but forgettable French comedy about a flighty leftwinger who seeks to educate and convert conservatives by sleeping with them.
If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread).
Turkey Bowl is a delightful indie comedy available from iTunes.
Despite Rachel Weisz’s performance, The Whistleblower is a misfire – a potentially riveting story clumsily told. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is Kill the Irishman.
Movies on TV this week include two Jimmy Stewart classics: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Anatomy of a Murder on TCM.