Movies

Updated Movies to See Right Now

by
Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in The Adjustment Bureau

The Must See film right now is The Adjustment Bureau, a first rate love story embedded in the action thriller genre.  You can still see Oscar winners True Grit, The King’s Speech and The Fighter. They are on my Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom. Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy. Kaboom is a trippy sex romp. Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Inside Job. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV this week include After the Thin Man, Arsenic and Old Lace, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Trouble Along the Way on TCM.

The Adjustment Bureau: Avoiding the Curse of the Delayed Release

by

My hopes were not high for The Adjustment Bureau after the studio had delayed its release for several months.  That can be the telltale marker of a movie disaster.  But not this time – The Adjustment Bureau is a first rate love story embedded in the action thriller genre. A couple meet by chance and are drawn together – only to have scary guys in hats try to enforce different destinies for them.

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have excellent chemistry, and the screenplay by director George Nolfi is smart and inventive.  Nolfi also wrote the smart and inventive screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum.  I’m certainly looking forward to his next project.

The supporting players – Terence Stamp, Anthony Mackie and John Slattery – are excellent.

Given the scarcity of them these days, it must be pretty hard to write a smart and authentic romance.  So all the more credit to Nolfi, and to Damon and Blunt for pulling it off.

Blogging from Cinequest: 3 Backyards

by

This unbearably pretentious and self-indulgent wannabe art film is constructed around three completely unconnected plot threads.  In the best written and acted of the three, Edie Falco plays a woman excited about driving her new celebrity neighbor (Embeth Davidtz) to the ferry.  The celebrity is having a personal crisis and deigns not to share her innermost turmoil with the new acquaintance.  Because Falco’s character had fantasized about gaining a celebrity BFF, she is disappointed.   Unless petty disappointment counts as a major theme, this segment is pointless.

In the second thread, Elias Koteas plays a man unhappy at home whose business trip is aborted.  He wanders around waiting for the unexplained catharsis at the 87-minute mark of the movie.  Koteas proves once more that he can furrow his brow and mumble at the same time.

The third thread is about a little girl who plays with her mother’s precious new bracelet and loses it.  By this time, we almost expect the random appearances of a mystical unicorn, but we have to make do with a white poodle instead.  Plus there’s a masturbating dog killer.  In between the three plot threads, there are odd transitional shots of caterpillars and the like.

Somehow 3 Backyards won Eric Mendelsohn his second Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.  I like to think that good directors tell stories and make them compelling, so I am baffled by this “achievement”.   I hated this movie – and it is still pissing me off.

Blogging from Cinequest: Small Town Murder Songs

by

So there’s part of a good film in here somewhere.  Peter Stormare (the hulking brute in Fargo) plays the local cop in a rural Canadian community with German-speaking Mennonites.  The cop comes from the traditional Mennonites, but he is ostracized by them (including his father and brother) for a previous act of violence.  Now he has adopted a personal religiosity himself.  Then there is a murder, and the suspect is the new boyfriend of the cop’s ex (Jill Hennessy – very good here).  Stormare gives a fine performance as the cop.  So far so good.

But the movie drags.  It’s at only 75 minutes, but feels like two hours.    Indeed, there are some completely superfluous scenes with Stormare’s partner and the partner’s 12-year-old daughter.

One of the of the film’s potential assets is the unfamiliar setting.   But after some old Protestant hymns and some stark scenes of northern nothingness, the audience is jarred by very loud and distracting call-and-response music that is completely inappropriate to the time and place.  Disappointingly, the story relies on that hackneyed gimmick of using TV and radio newscasts to advance the plot.  Finally, writer-director Ed Gass-Donnelly climaxes the story with a Christ-like sacrifice that doesn’t fit this heretofore realistic movie.  Overall, not a success.

DVD of the Week: Inside Job

by

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.

It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2010.

Blogging from Cinequest: Question in Details

by

In this unassuming Hungarian film, a man and a woman recognize that their first date is a disaster and decide to keep talking as acquaintances – without the first date tension.  They go back to her apartment, and he meets her brother.  The three talk, bantering at first and then probing.  A previously unknown connection between them surfaces – and it’s a big one.  The audience cares about the characters (at least two of them) so much that it’s easy to forgive a highly unlikely coincidence in the plot.   It’s a satisfying little movie.

Blogging from Cinequest: Here’s the Kicker

by

The biggest surprise at San Jose’s Cinequest film festival so far is the indie comedy Here’s the Kicker, written by its star, Ian Michaels.  The relationship of a prematurely retired football player and his girlfriend is being battered by their dead-end jobs in LA; (she is a make up artist – in porn films).  To save their relationship, he agrees to move back to her hometown in Texas where they can open a salon/saloon: a combo beauty parlor and sports bar.  Just as they are leaving on the road trip, he is offered his dream job as a football scout.  When is he going to get the nerve to tell her?  Along the way, they pick up his obnoxious former teammate and, most hilariously, his dad, who does NOT want to return to alcohol rehab.  Many guffaws ensue in this all too rare occurrence – a satisfying American film comedy.

It’s hard to write comedy.  Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies.  So Ian Michaels deserves some recognition, and, above all, to get more screenplays greenlighted.

As the girlfriend, Sarah Smick succeeds in remaining sympathetic despite being continually aggrieved – no easy accomplishment.  Luce Rains is great as the drunk dad.

According to Ian Michaels at the screening, Director/Cinematographer/Editor Chris Harris made the key decision to cut some early scenes so the road trip could commence sooner. Obviously, that move worked.  Here’s the Kicker deserves a wide release.

Blogging from Cinequest: A Little Help

by

A Little Help is a Jenna Fischer vehicle that illustrates the depth that Fischer can bring to even a shallow character.  In this dramedy, Fischer is suddenly widowed and must reassemble her life and support her quirky 12-year-old son despite the intrusions of her shrill, micro-controlling sister (Brooke Smith) and their chilly mother (Leslie Anne Warren).  Fischer’s biggest challenge is helping her son navigate social life at his new school, where he has told a preposterous lie on his first day.

Kim Coates steals every scene as a medical malpractice attorney.  Ron Liebman sparkles as the blowhard father.

Writer/Director Michael J. Weithorn made the very smart decision to hold Fischer’s character accountable for the bad choices she has made in her life.  If she were instead written as a completely innocent victim, the story would have lapsed into cliche.  Instead, it’s a pretty good movie and a fine showcase for Jenna Fischer.

This week’s Movies to See Right Now

by
Oscar winner Natalie Portman and Natalie Portman in Black Swan

You can still see Oscar winners True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter and Oscar nominee Another Year. They are on my Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom. Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy.  Kaboom is a trippy sex romp.  Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Fish Tank. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV this week include D.O.A. and The Searchers on TCM.

And more upcoming movies

by

I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions.  This month we’ll see the singer/songwriter documentary Troubadours (first aired March 2 on PBS), the tragic Cannes hit Of Gods and Men (Des Hommes et des Dieu)( releasing widely March 4) and Abbas Kiarostami’s The Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) with the luminous Juliette Binoche (releasing widely March 18).

Here’s the trailer for Carancho, which will release widely on April 8. Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this sexy and violent noir thriller.  Stars Ricardo Darin of The Secrets of Their Eyes and Nine Queens.  Won Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

The Movies I’m Looking Forward To page also features Hanna, Potiche, Jane Eyre, Restless, The Tree of Life, Tabloid, Cold Weather, Boxing Gym and American Grindhouse.