A Dangerous Method

Movies to See This Week

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THE ARTIST

Some of the year’s very best films are in theaters now. I especially recommend these four:

The Artist: A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.

The Descendants: Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.

Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale of an orphan living in the bowels of a 1920s Paris train station who strives to survive by his wits, keep his independence and solve the puzzle of an discarded automaton.

Best Movies of 2011.  Steven Spielburg’s War Horse has also been nominated for Best Picture.  Roman Polanski’s Carnage is a fine comedy.

Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic  The Iron Lady and the very odd fable Albert Nobbs.  Plus, I liked the lightweight feminist action thriller Haywire.

I haven’t yet seen A Separation or Pina 3D, which open this week.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

 

Your Holiday Movie Guide

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THE ARTIST

As usual, some of the year’s very best films have been released for the Holidays.  I especially recommend these three:

The Artist:  A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.

The Descendants:  Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways)  family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.

Young Adult, another of the year’s best.

Michele Williams gives a dazzling performance as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, a lesser but satisfying film.  Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the Japanese gangster movie Outrage and the Freud-Jung costume drama A Dangerous Method.

Happy viewing!

A Dangerous Method: “Look! There’s Keira Knightly spazzing out and writhing and grunting!”

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A Dangerous Method is David Cronenberg’s telling of how Carl Jung became first Sigmund Freud’s disciple and then his rival.  It’s an interesting story, chiefly because Jung was treating a patient who then became his lover and a psychoanalyst herself.

What keeps A Dangerous Method from being a really good movie is that Michael Fassbinder really can’t find a way to play a reserved and repressed character in a way that is really interesting (even when he has strapped Keira Knightly to the bed for a good spanking).  Fassbender isn’t bad, he just plays Jung as a stick-in-the-mud who reacts those around him.

And there’s plenty to react to.  Who knew Viggo Mortensen could be so funny as a sly Freud? Vincent Cassell is hilarious as a psychoanalyst-turned-patient who espouses having sex with many many people as possible, even one’s own patients.

And then there’s Keira Knightly, whose uninhibited performance as a patient of Jung’s has gotten much attention, some positive.  I’m not sure what she could have done differently, given that she plays a character initially afflicted with hysterical seizures and finally able to relish a heavy dose of masochistic sex.  But a viewer tends to sit and say, “Look!  There’s Keira Knightly spazzing out and writhing and grunting!”.

Still Cronenberg kept the story moving along, and it’s worth a viewing just for Viggo and Vincent (and voyeuristically for Keira).

Upcoming Oscar bait

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I recently updated  Movies I’m Looking Forward To, where you can see descriptions and trailers of upcoming films.  I’ve included some Oscar bait coming out just before the end of 2011, including:

A Dangerous Method:  David Cronenberg’s tale of Freud and Jung  with Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbinder, Vincent Cassel and Keira Knightly.

The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher.

Coriolanus:  Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary version of the Shakespeare play.

Carnage:  Roman Polanski’s dark comedy with John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster, Christoph Walz and Kate Winslet.

Here’s the trailer for The Iron Lady.