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.
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.
This is the time of year where you can still see the best movies – by avoiding the theaters. Fortunately, there are some great movies on TV during late August – and here are six of them. Thank God (and Ted Turner) for Turner Classic Movies.
Cool Hand Luke (1967): Paul Newman plays a free-spirited character that refuses to bend to The System – even in a Southern chain gang. Many memorable scenes include the fight with George Kennedy’s Dragline, the wager on eating a massive amount of hardboiled eggs, getting sent to the hole, the scariest aviator sunglasses ever and the unforgettable: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”. One of my 10 Best Prison Movies and 10 Most Memorable Food Scenes. TCM 8/21
A Place in the Sun:One of the great films of the 1950s. Montgomery Clift is a poor kid who is satisfied to have a job and a trashy girlfriend (Shelly Winters in a brilliant portrayal). Then, he learns that he could have it all – the CEO’s daughter Elizabeth Taylor, lifelong comfort, status and career. Did I mention Elizabeth Taylor? The now pregnant girlfriend is the only obstacle to more than he could have ever dreamed for – can he get rid of her without getting caught? TCM 8/23
Andy Griffith as the charming, phony and venal Lonesome Rhodes
A Face in the Crowd (1957): This is a brilliant political classic by Elia Kazan. Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith) is a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal). It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television. He quickly rises in the infotainment universe until he is an A List celeb and a political power broker. To Jeffries’ horror, Rhodes reveals himself to be an evil, power hungry megalomaniac. Jeffries made him – can she break him? The seduction of a gullible public by a good timin’ charmer predicts the careers of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, although Lonesome Rhodes is meaner than Reagan and less ideological than Bush. One of my 10 Best Political Movies. TCM 8/26
James Stewart and George C. Scott tangle in Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder (1959): Otto Preminger delivers a classic courtroom drama that frankly addresses sexual mores. James Stewart is a folksy but very canny lawyer defending a cynical soldier (Ben Gazzara) on a murder charge; did he discover his wife straying or is he avenging her rape? Lee Remick portrays the wife with a penchant for partying and uncertain fidelity. The Duke Ellington score could be the very best jazz score in the movies. Joseph Welch, the real-life lawyer who stood up to Sen. Joe McCarthy in a televised red scare hearing, plays the judge. TCM 8/26 score
The Stunt Man (1980): Steve Railback plays a young fugitive chased on to a movie location shoot. The director (Peter O’Toole) hides him out on the set as long as he works as a stunt double in increasingly hazardous stunts. He is attracted to the leading lady (Barbara Hershey). It doesn’t take long for him to doubt the director’s good will and to learn that not everything is as it seems. Shot on location at San Diego’s famed Hotel Del Coronado. One of my Overlooked Masterworks. Listen to Director Robert Rush describe his movie in this clip. TCM 8/28
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976): This is one of my very favorite Westerns. Clint Eastwood directs the movie and plays a Civil War vet on the run, who unwillingly picks up a set of misfits and strays on his journey. TCM 8/31
A damaged and angry young woman from the British lower class has the second-worst mother in recent films (after Mo’Nique’s role in Precious). She dreams of dancing her way out of the neighborhood in a talent contest. Then her mother brings home a new boyfriend who kindles new feelings in the teen. This development culminates in a scene where she dances to the Bobby Womack version of California Dreamin‘ while the audience holds its breath.
In her first film role, Katie Jarvis plays the girl; Jarvis was discovered by the filmmakers during a sidewalk argument with her boyfriend that convinced them that she could muster the sustained rage (and foul mouth) required by the role. Michael Fassbender is excellent as the mother’s new boyfriend.
This Rumanian film played in US theaters briefly earlier this year and is showing on The Sundance Channel in August. It’s a cop story about a cop who is trying NOT to catch someone. The cop is a young guy who doesn’t want to ruin a teenager’s life by jailing him for a little hash smoking, especially when the kid has been fingered by another kid with designs on his girlfriend. As far as the cop’s superiors are concerned, the informer has handed them some low hanging fruit, and they insist that the cop bring in the kid. Here’s a first for cop movies – in the climax, a dictionary is brought into an office to facilitate a debate over definitions.
Long segments of the film are taken up by real-time trods through a grim industrial city for surveillance and by the filling of reports with minute details.
I appreciated seeing a police procedural without chases and fire fights, but wasn’t sure that the payoff was worth watching so much tedious surveillance.
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune pretty well nailed it in his review: “It’s not for all tastes; it requires some patience. The more your own job involves absurd, time-consuming bits of minutiae, the more familiar (and amusing) it’ll seem.”
Police, Adjective won a jury prize and the Critic’s Prize at Cannes and has a very high Metacritic rating of 81.
Inception andToy 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 the great 1995 documentary, Crumb. For the trailers and other DVD choices, see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TV include The Set-Up, Leave Her to Heaven and The Fallen Sparrow, all coming up on TCM.
Well, we’re at the halfway point of the movie year – the summer movies are winding down, and the Oscar bait is still ahead of us in the autumn and holidays. So it’s time to take stock of the year’s movies to date. I now have ten movies on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far. You can read my comments and watch the trailers on the Best Movies of 2010 – So Far page.
Better yet, you can see Toy Story 3and Inception in the theater this week.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Prophet, The Girl on the Train, Fish Tank, The Ghost Writer and Sweetgrass are all available on DVD right now. Sweetgrass is also available on Netflix streaming video.
The Secrets of Their Eyes will be available on DVD on September 21. The DVD release of my top film of the year so far, Winter’s Bone, is October 26.
