The Secret in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos): This year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Picture, is a police procedural set in Argentina with two breathtaking plot twists, original characters, a mature romance and one breathtaking, “how did they do it?” shot. The story centers on a murder in Argentina’s politically turbulent 1970s, but most of the story takes place twenty years later when a retired cop revisits the murder.
Veteran Argentine actor Ricardo Darin shines once again in a Joe Mantegna-type role. Darin leads an excellent cast, including Guillermo Francella, who brings alive the character of Darin’s drunk assistant.
Director Juan Jose Campanella is receiving justifiable praise for the amazing shot of a police search in a filled and frenzied soccer stadium. It ranks as one of the great single shots, along with the kitchen entrance in Goodfellas and the battle scene in Children of Men.
Mademoiselle Chambon is the year’s best romance. Finding one’s soul mate in middle age, when one may have serious commitments, can be heartbreaking. Here, the two people are not looking for romance or even for a fling. He is a happily married construction worker. She is his son’s teacher. They meet (not cute) and do not fall in love (or lust) at first sight. He is unexpectedly touched by something she does, and she is touched that he is touched. Despite their wariness, they fall in love.
The lovers are beautifully acted by Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlaine in two of the very finest performances of the year.
A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop is a remake of the Coen Brothers great neo-noir Blood Simple, set in feudal China. I love Blood Simple. Woman Gun Noodle Shop is a pretty faithful remake, but is a far less successful film, at least to this Western viewer. Both films tell the story of venal and carnal people committing selfish and deadly acts; in both films, the darkness of the story is leavened by humor. However, Blood Simple works because of the Coen Brothers subversively dry, ironic humor. The humor in Woman Gun Noodle Shop is very broad; a Chinese friend tells me that this “is very Chinese” and reflects traditions of other Chinese performance mediums. Anyway, the humor was too broad for me.
One thing that DOES work: the beautifully severe landscape of northwest China is another character in the film.
Ben Affleck knows Boston, which is the best thing about this crime drama about thieves desperately evading the FBI. The Town is a well made, satisfying Hollywood action thriller, but nothing more. The movie really had me hooked through the second act with the world of Irish professional criminals in Charleston, Mass. But the end of the movie wraps up everything way too neatly.
Ben Affleck the actor, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, and The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner are all good. Chris Cooper is excellent in a five-minute scene.
Ben Affleck proved in Gone Baby Gone that he can be a fine director, and hopefully he will reach that standard again.
The more I think about The Tillman Story, the more I admire it. And I am increasingly grateful that Michael Moore didn’t make this movie and degrade it into a screed. Instead, Director Amir Bar-Lev avoids the simplistic and satisfying formulas and respects his subject matter and the audience by letting the story speak for itself.
I thought I knew the story. Tillman left the fame and wealth of an NFL career to enlist in the Army post-911. He was killed in a firefight in Afghanistan. The Army reported that he was killed while heroically charging the enemy to save his comrades. It was later revealed that he was killed by fire from his comrades. Still later, it became clear that the heroic death story was immediately concocted by the military for spin control or, worse, propaganda.
I didn’t know that Tillman predicted that the Army would propagandize his death and smuggled out to his wife the documentation of his wish for a civilian funeral.
I didn’t know that Tillman crouched on a hill watching the bombing of Baghdad, and said, “This war is so fucking illegal.”
I didn’t know that Tillman was with the team that waited hours to “rescue” captured soldier Jessica Lynch (abandoned by her captors) until a film crew arrived.
The US military made a huge miscalculation: they assumed that the family that produced someone with Pat Tillman’s values would be satisfied with a phony narrative of cartoonish heroism.
The Tillman Story weaves three stories together: the making of Pat Tillman, how he died in Afghanistan and his family’s struggle to pull the sheets back on the US military’s cover-up. At its core, it is the story of people who insist on truth dealing with a system that operates on perception.
And here is a sharp insight from Mick LaSalle:
“By the way, “The Tillman Story” has an R rating because of language. Think about that one, too: Lies are rated G and can be heard around the clock on television, but try saying the truth with the proper force and you end up with a restricted audience.”
Soul Kitchen is an intermittently funny German romp that tries to find its way between clever humor and broad farce. It’s mildly entertaining but way overrated by critics because it’s a change of pace by trendy Director Fatih Akin (Head-On, Edge of Heaven).
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.
