Lovelace

Movies to See Right Now

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Lake Bell in her IN A WORLD...

In A Word… is the year’s best comedy so far – it’s a Hollywood satire, an insider’s glimpse into the voice-over industry, a family dramedy and a romantic comedy all in one. 

The powerfully authentic coming of age film The Spectacular Now and the emotionally powerful Fruitvale Station are both on my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.

My other top recommendations:

  • The jaw-dropping documentary The Act of Killing, an exploration of Indonesian genocide from the perpetrators’ point of view, is the most uniquely original film of the year.
  • Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine centers on an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett.
  • The very well-acted civil rights epic Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

My other recommendations:

Also out right now:

You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand.  There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including Letters from the Big Man).

My DVD of the Week is the riveting IRA thriller Shadow Dancer, with Clive Owen.  Shadow Dancer is available on DVD from Netflix.  Also check out my newest movie list: Best Movies About The Troubles (Northern Ireland).

On September 10, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the great French heist movie Rififi. And on September 12, TCM will air one of the greatest examples of film noir, Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas.

OUT OF THE PAST

Movies to See Right Now

by
Lake Bell in her IN A WORLD...

In A Word… is the years best comedy so far – it’s a Hollywood satire, an insider’s glimpse into the voice-over industry, a family dramedy and a romantic comedy all in one.

The powerfully authentic coming of age film The Spectacular Now and the emotionally powerful Fruitvale Station are both on my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.

My other top recommendations:

  • The jaw-dropping documentary The Act of Killing, an exploration of Indonesian genocide from the perpetrators’ point of view, is the most uniquely original film of the year.
  • Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine centers on an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett.
  • The very well-acted civil rights epic Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

My other recommendations:

Also out right now:

  • The American porn star biopic Lovelace, more of a soap opera.
  • The British porn kingpin biopic The Look of Love.
  • The Irish horror comedy Grabbers, which fails to deliver on a great premise.
  • The astonishingly bad shocker The Rambler, with its 58 second vomit scene.

I haven’t yet seen the indie criminal-on-the-run story Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which opens today. You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the New Zealand cop miniseries Top of the Lake, starring Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss. You can catch Top of the Lake episodes on the Sundance Channel or watch all seven episodes on DVD or streaming from Netflix, and it’s perfect for a Labor Day Weekend marathon.

Movies to See Right Now

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THE SPECTACULAR NOW

This week’s MUST SEE is still the powerfully authentic coming of age film The Spectacular Now – don’t miss it. Better yet, take your teens!

Along with The Spectacular Now, the emotionally powerful Fruitvale Station is also on my list of Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.

I haven’t yet seen the British farce The World’s End or the indie criminal-on-the-run story Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which open today. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My other top recommendations:

  • The jaw-dropping documentary The Act of Killing, an exploration of Indonesian genocide from the perpetrators’ point of view, is the most uniquely original film of the year.
  • Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine centers on an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett.
  • The very well-acted civil rights epic Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

My other recommendations:

  • The droll indie comedy Prince Avalanche.
  • The rock documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, essential for music fans.
  • Another rock doc, A Band Called Death with the story of three African-American brothers in Detroit inventing punk rock before The Ramones and The Sex Pistols – and then dropping out of sight for decades.
  • the satisfying shocker The Conjuring.
  • The HBO documentary Casting By, which reveals an essential ingredient in filmmaking.

Also out right now:

  • I Give It a Year – a British rom com with a twist.
  • The American porn star biopic Lovelace, more of a soap opera.
  • The British porn kingpin biopic The Look of Love.
  • The Irish horror comedy Grabbers, which fails to deliver on a great premise.
  • The astonishingly bad shocker The Rambler, with its 58 second vomit scene.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the funny and sentimental Canadian indie Cloudburst, with Oscar-winning actresses Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker.  Cloudburst is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other VOD providers.

Lovelace: soap opera – not that there’s anything wrong with that

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Peter Sarsgaard and Amanda Seyfried in LOVELACE

Lovelace is a soap opera about a nice girl who meets the Wrong Guy and, before she knows it, she’s in a porn movie.  The movie is cleverly constructed.  First, it outlines the true story of the naive and troubled young woman soon-to-become porn star Linda Lovelace, culminating in the 70s porn megahit Deep Throat.  Doing so, it captures both the polyester period and the appeal of the then-novel campy humor in Deep Throat.   Then it fills in the blanks, completing the flashbacks of earlier scenes (and inserting new ones) so we see the relentless abuse of Lovelace by her Wrong Guy husband. His abuse of her – even pimping her out – is horrific.

It’s generally a well-acted film.  The appealing Amanda Seyfried works as Lovelace.   The most welcome aspect of the film is the goofy team of Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale and Chris Noth as the pornographers – they’re very funny and lighten the film.

As we would expect, Peter Sarsgaard makes for the most despicable movie husband since Lawrence Fishburne’s Ike Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It.  His sadistic sociopath is both smarmy and sadistic.

An unrecognizable Sharon Stone is excellent as the rigidly devout Catholic mother who insists that Lovelace return to her physically abusive husband and obey him (although, to be fair, the mom can’t imagine the depth of the abuse).

Robert Patrick is excellent as her terse father, especially in one particularly heartbreaking scene.  So many of Patrick’s roles are in action movies, so I’m glad that he got a chance to play a rigidly unemotional guy that is having deep emotions.

Some of the other casting is pretty random.  James Franco is completely wrong as Hugh Hefner.  Hef is cool only because of the Playboy Empire.  Franco is cool because he’s Franco.  Here Franco doesn’t swap out his own personal magnetism for the real Hef’s stiff reserve.  Less would have been more.  And, oddly, Chloe Sevigny receives a credit for what may be less than five seconds on-screen.

The real Linda Lovelace wasn’t particularly deep, and neither is Lovelace.  As well-crafted as it is – and with the superb performances of Skarsgaard, Stone, Patrick, Azaria, Cannavale and Noth – the central cautionary tale of Lovelace – the fall and redemption of a sympathetic character – nonetheless remains a not very profound soap opera.