movie recommendations

Blogging from Cinequest: A Little Help

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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

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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

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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.

DVD of the Week: Fish Tank

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First-time actress Katie Jarvis plays Mia, a damaged and angry young woman from the British lower class.   Her party-girl mom is the second-worst mother in recent films (after Mo’Nique’s role in Precious).   Can Mia use her passion for dance to escape her grim surroundings?   Mom brings home a new boyfriend and everything changes.   Michael Fassbinder, starring soon as Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, is great as the mother’s boyfriend in Fish Tank.

Criterion has released the DVD.

Kaboom: A trippy sex comedy

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Director Gregg Araki created the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin, but here he’s just having fun.  In the first hour of Kaboom, I lost track of how many characters had sex with each other – it’s just about non-stop and guy-on-guy, girl-on-girl, guy-on-girl, guy-and-girl-on-guy, etc.  I would characterize the sex as casual, but that would make it seem that the characters were having even a modicum of difficulty in finding partners.  Anyway, the chaotic sexathon is fun and very funny.   The last twenty minutes takes the film into a campy version of a paranoid apocalypse film, before an abrupt (and I mean abrupt) ending.  Did I mention the bad guys in the animal masks? It’s fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Cedar Rapids

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Cedar Rapids is surprisingly winning comedy about a guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience.   Helm plays a character whose sincerity and decency elevate his guileless cluelessness.  There are excellent supporting performances by Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and the irrepressible John C. Reilly.

This could have been a much courser and a lesser movie in the wrong hands.  It’s directed by Miguel Arteta, who also brought an appealing sense of humanity to the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.

Movies to See Right Now

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Another Year

You can still see True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter and 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.

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 Animal Kingdom. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV this week include Tom Jones, The Silence of the Lambs and All About Eve on TCM.

DVD of the Week: Animal Kingdom

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Watch this, and you’ll be rooting for veteran Australian actress Jacki Weaver to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

In this 2010 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.  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.  Animal Kingdom won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Set your TiVo for Carlos

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The Sundance Channel is broadcasting Olivier Assayas’ 5 1/2 hour miniseries Carlos again on February 23.  Don’t miss this miniseries on the 70s/80s terrorist Carlos the Jackal.

Carlos begins as a playboy who thinks it would be cool to fight for the Palestinians.  It turns out that he is way smarter and more nervy than the other dippy wannabe terrorists, so he rises to lead his own crew.  At first he prudently tries to remain clandestine, but he inadvertently gains some celebrity, and he LOVES IT.  After his first exposure in the media, he self-consciously dons a Che Guevara beret for his next adventure.  Soon he is a legend in his own mind.  Finally, he learns what happens when he becomes too hot for anyone to shield.

The action sweeps between atrocities in Paris and Vienna, a terrorist training camp in Aden, secret bases in Berlin and Budapest.  Along the way, we meet European goofball radical posers and smarmy Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan intelligence officers.  We see dynamite action scenes as Carlos must pull off escapes and attacks in compressed time.

Carlos is a  star making performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez who plays Carlos and has to carry almost every scene.  Ramirez perfectly captures Carlos’ bravado, audacity, vanity, sexiness, delusion and dissolution.  Ramirez plays a few scenes in the nude, with Carlos at first admiring his own beefy body and later lolling about with a pot belly.

Carlos is a French film, but is mostly in English; there are subtitled scenes with French, Spanish and Arabic dialogue.

Carlos has also been released in a 2 hour 45 minute version on Pay Per View.  I strongly recommend the full length version on the Sundance Channel.