Movies to See This Week

DETACHMENT

Yes, it’s Despair Week at the Movie Gourmet, where you can experience the hopeless human experience with my three top picks.  First, the gripping drama Detachment features a top-rate performance by Adrien Brody as a teacher in a hellish school system that decays teachers’ souls.  In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.  The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Joshua Marston, writer-director of the brilliant Maria, Full of Grace, has made a fine drama set in Albania, The Forgiveness of Blood.  It’s slightly less depressing than my top three this week.

Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor. Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.

The Best Picture Oscar-winning The Artist is still playing in theaters.

I have also commented on the biopics My Week with Marilyn (thumbs up) and The Iron Lady (thumbs down).

I haven’t yet seen Footnote and The Kid with the Bike, which open this week.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of these and other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is Take Shelter, #2 on my list of Best Movies of 2011 and probably the single most overlooked film of last year.

Movies to See This Week

It's not going well for Adrien Brody in DETACHMENT

The gripping new drama Detachment features a top-rate performance by Adrien Brody as a teacher in a hellish school system that decays teachers’ souls.

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.

The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Joshua Marston, writer-director of the brilliant Maria, Full of Grace has made a fine drama set in Albania, The Forgiveness of Blood.

Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor. Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.

The Best Picture Oscar-winning The Artist is still playing in theaters.

I have also commented on  the biopics My Week with Marilyn (thumbs up) and The Iron Lady (thumbs down).

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

My DVD pick of St. Patrick’s week is the Irish comedy Waking Ned Devine.

Movies to See This Week

Writer-director Asghar Farhadi's real life daughter Samina plays the daughter at the center of A SEPARATION

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.

The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Joshua Marston, writer-director of the brilliant Maria, Full of Grace has made a fine drama set in Albania, The Forgiveness of Blood, which opens this weekend.

Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor. Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.

If you still need to catch up on the Oscar winners, you can see the Best Picture Oscar winning The Artist and the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,

I have also commented on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

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

My DVD pick of (last) week is the fine political drama The Ides of March with Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney.

All New Movies to See This Week

Woody Harrelson in RAMPART

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.

The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor.   Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.

If you still need to catch up on the Oscar winners, you can see the Best Picture Oscar winning The Artist and the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,

I have also commented on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

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

My DVD pick of (last) week is Outrage, the hardass Japanese gangster movie with lots of dull body tattoos and severed fingers.

Movies to See This Week

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.

 

The Iron Lady: a magnificent Streep amid a middling story

Meryl Streep is the finest actress of our lifetimes, a fact reemphasized by her performance in The Iron Lady.  Streep plays two Margaret Thatchers.  In flashbacks, she plays Thatcher in her prime –  seizing power and wielding it with complete confidence and absolutely without a nano whit of mercy.  She also plays today’s elderly Thatcher, doddering on the verge of dementia.  Streep is magnificent, which might be enough reason to see the movie.

It’s also always a pleasure to watch Jim Broadbent, and he teams with Streep as Thatcher’s hubbie.  Alexandra Roach plays a third and younger Thatcher – forming herself in her early twenties.  The fine actor Nicholas Farrell is also quite good as one of Thatcher’s mentors.

My problem is with the story.  Now I’m no expert on Thatcher, although I have loathed her from afar for decades.  To me, the most interesting aspect of Thatcher was her certitude – the absolutely deep and profound belief that she was always right and the will to impose her direction on everyone else.  When her actions were creating widespread pain and she was hated (really, really hated) by a large percentage of her own people, why did she not doubt herself for a moment?  The Iron Lady explains her conservatism as coming from her father, but leaves her certitude unexamined.

Instead, The Iron Lady‘s screenplay chooses to focus on her feminism, battling to make her way in an arena filled with men especially eager not to relinquish any power to her.  (Her feminism seems to be entirely in practice, not theory, as she battles for HER due, but not to make the way easier for other women, whom she probably expects to pull themselves up by their own pumps.)

A lot of screen time is also devoted to her aged decline, which gives good fodder to Streep, but is not very important to understanding her career.

On the other hand, The Iron Lady does depict the very personal impact of the IRA’s campaign against her, with an assassination attempt and the killing of a close colleague.  It also gives us an unsparing look at her bullying of friends and allies, which, of course, does not encourage loyalty.  And there are telling glimpses into her family life, especially her longtime marriage.

But on the whole, The Iron Lady is long on Streep and short on understanding what made Margaret Thatcher the pivotal political leader that she was.

Upcoming Oscar bait

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.