We’ve all seen cop buddy comedies before (Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and scores of copycats). In the The Heat, the odd couple is Sandra Bullock (as the arrogant and fastidious FBI agent) and Melissa McCarthy (as the earthy and streetwise Boston cop). There are some especially well-written bits in The Heat, especially when Bullock’s prig finally explodes into a completely inept torrent of profanity and when McCarthy’s cop belittles her commander’s manhood for what must be the zillionth time.
But here’s why you will enjoy The Heat. Melissa McCarthy’s line readings are brilliantly hilarious. Her gift for dialogue makes everything and everyone in this movie much funnier. Her performance elevates the entire movie. In fact, every person who has talked to me about The Heat has laughed when describing it. It may not be that original, but it’s sufficiently well made and McCarthy is sublime.
The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
This week’s best pick is the flawless thrillerCaptain Phillips, with Tom Hanks starring as the real-life ship captain hijacked by Somali pirates and rescued by American commandos in 2009.
I also like the intricately plotted and unrelentingly tense suspense thriller Prisoners (with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman). Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon offers both guffaws and an unexpected moment of self-discovery.
My other top recommendations are Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine (with an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett) and the very well-acted civil rights epic Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
In addition, the rock music documentary Muscle Shoals, the based-on-fact French foodie saga Haute Cuisine and the witty French rom com Populaire each has something to offer.
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 How to Make Money Selling Drugs).
My DVD/Stream of the week is the cop buddy comedy The Heat, with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock. The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote/directed/stars in Don Jon, the story of a Guido whose pursuit of a stunning hottie (Scarlett Johansson) is stymied by his porn addiction. With help from an older woman (Julianne Moore), he recognizes what will really make him happy.
It’s just a light comedy, but Gordon-Levitt has a very smart take on romantic comedy – one that takes some unexpected turns until a moment of self discovery. Gordon-Levitt is getting good parts (Inception, 50/50, Looper, Lincoln) and big paychecks (The Dark Knight Rises), so he doesn’t have to write his own stuff – but I’m glad that he gave us Don Jon.
The witty FrenchPopulaire cleverly dresses up a conventional romantic comedy with a Mad Men-esque 1959 setting and the flavor of absurdity. The result is a pleasing confection that triggers some chuckles, if not guffaws.
A very attractive bachelor hires a very attractive but clumsy young woman as his secretary. As in any rom com, they’re clearly meant for each other, but they must battle through his obsession that she win a speed typing championship that is – and here is the absurdity – portrayed as just a rung below the World Cup in public prominence.
Populaire takes full advantage of its 1959 setting to spoof the fashions, decor and culture of the period, including a wickedly cheesy cha cha cha performance. It’s harmless and good-hearted fun.
(The radiant Berenice Bejo (The Artist) sparkles in a small role.)
In the pulsating thriller Prisoners, two girls go missing, and one of their dads (Hugh Jackman) goes vigilante as the lead detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) struggles to solve the case. Both men are driven and desperate, and they clash as they each race against the clock to find the girls, resulting in unrelenting tension for 2-and-a-half hours.
The tension comes from standard suspense devices (characters peering into basements and entering boarded-up rooms and dark hallways, prowlers slipping though a sleeping household, etc.), but there isn’t a hokey moment in Prisoners. That’s a tribute to director Denis Villenueve, who directed Incendies (my top movie of 2011). Plus, an intricately plotted story from Aaron Guzikowski adds a dimension to Prisoners and elevates it from a conventional thriller. As Gyllenhaal’s cop proceeds through the whodunit, he encounters what we assume are dead-end leads and red herrings. But everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – ties together at the end. I sure didn’t see it coming.
The one aspect of Prisoners that didn’t work for me is that Jackman is dialed up all the way from the get go, and there’s little if any modulation in his performance. I guess that may be the point of the character – he’s a tightly wound guy BEFORE his daughter appears to be abducted – and then he goes full-out maniac for over two hours.
Gyllenhaal is solid in the other lead role. Terrence Howard is superb as the other dad, a guy who wants his daughter back just as much, but is more passive, rational and empathetic (and consequently more interesting to me). Viola Davis, Maria Bello and Melissa Leo turn in their expected fine performances. And Paul Dano (perhaps his generation’s Christopher Walken or James Spader) is excellent in another of his weirdo roles.
Haute Cuisine is the French foodie saga of the woman who rose to work as personal chef to France’s president, based on the true story of Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch. She is remarkably obsessed with sourcing premium ingredients, and it’s not hard for her to satisfy the President, who prefers simple country cooking. But palace intrigue takes its toll as she battles both sexism in the downstairs kitchens and a soul-killing bureaucracy upstairs.
Veteran French actress Catherine Frot successfully portrays the chef’s determination and moxy. Haute Cuisine is watchable, but not particularly compelling. The food, however, is outrageously tantalizing, and Haute Cuisine goes on my list of Best Food Porn Movies.
InCaptain Phillips, Tom Hanks stars as the real-life ship captain hijacked by Somali pirates and rescued by American commandos in 2009. The real-life Phillips survived his terrifying ordeal with guts and smarts, and Hanks and director Paul Greengrass bring the story alive. Greengrass is an old hand at movies with urgency and tension: Bloody Sunday, two movies in the Bourne franchise and an Oscar nomination for United 93.
Another key is that Captain Phillips was shot on the high seas on an actual container ship, an actual lifeboat and a skiff just like the real pirates use. As a result, it’s amazingly real when the pirates clamber up the side of the massive ship while both vessels roll in the waves and when the seamen and pirates play hide-and-go-seek below decks in the dark.
That being said, the movie wouldn’t work without Tom Hanks, who is unsurpassed at playing an Everyman thrust into a perilous situation. Hanks is our generation’s Jimmy Stewart, and I can see Hanks playing Stewart’s roles in Rear Window, Vertigo, Anatomy of a Murder and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Most of the pirates are standard types, but the lead pirate is a much more textured character, superbly played by Barkad Abdi, hitherto a Somali-American limo driver from Minneapolis. The depth in Abdi’s performance is also essential to the film’s success. The cast also features character actor Michael Chernus, so good in Higher Ground and Men in Black 3, as the #2 on the ship.
All in all, Captain Phillips is a flawless true story thriller.
Although I haven’t had a chance to write about them yet, I like the suspense thriller Prisoners (with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman) and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon. I hope to post about them this weekend.
I haven’t yet seen the Tom Hanks thriller Captain Phillips or the rollicking Danny Trejo action comedy Machete Kills, which open today. You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films atMovies I’m Looking Forward To.
My other top recommendations:
Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine centers on an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett.
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/Stream of the Week is the provocative eco-terrorism drama The East.
On October 17, Turner Classic Movies will be showcasing the excellent prison drama Convicts 4. It’s not aptly titled – it’s about one convict (Ben Gazzara), whose talent as a visual artist blossoms in prison. Convicts 4 is soon to be on my list of Best Prison Movies.
The Year & the Vineyard is an interesting, funny, original movie, shot without a budget. It was written, directed and edited by Spanish director Jonathan Cenzual Burley. The story is set in a small village in the beautiful countryside of Spain in 2012. It begins when a strong macho Italian, who is a fighter for the International Brigade, literally falls through a hole in the sky and lands in a vineyard. He believes he is fighting the Spanish Civil war in 1937. The local priest, who is very funny, flamboyant and a little odd, is convinced the Italian is either an angel or a saint, and, after a thorough examination, concludes that neither is correct.
The Italian stays at the home of a very shy teacher and the 2 men become friends. The teacher is in love with a local girl and the priest and the fighter encourage him to sing to her to minimize his nerves, so that he can actually declare his love to her through song. The scene reminded me of Romeo and Juliet when Romeo declares his love to Juliet when she is standing on a balcony.
The Italian sees a picture of his lover from 1937 in a history book and notices that she is also fighting in the war. His sole desire is to be reconnected with her back in 1937, and so the men try to figure out how he fell out of the sky in the first place. Finally, by throwing stones up in the air close to where he fell, they finally realize that there is a hole in the sky that he is able to climb over to go back to 1937. He does this with the help of a ladder and his friends.
What struck me about the director is his absolute passion and belief in what he is doing. His Grandfather fought in the civil war and played a small role in the movie. In addition, filming took place where Burley spent his summers as a child, so his personal connection was apparent. You could see how hard he worked to put this piece together. It took him about a year to make the whole film from start to finish without a budget. His actors are not well-known, but I was impressed with their ability. He finally finished the movie on Sunday, days before the world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, and I was lucky enough to attend and see him introduce it to the audience. It was exciting to see how dedicated Jonathan Burley is to his work.
The Year & the Vineyard was funny and cute and, even though the start was slow, I really enjoyed the whole production. The audience was clearly engaged, and being present and hearing the answers to our questions, you can see that this man is committed to his art.
Our Marin correspondent Zeke Ortiz represented us at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival.
The East is a smart and gripping thriller that explores both our response to corporate criminality and the unfamiliar world of anarchist collectives. Brit Marling plays a brilliant up-and-comer in an industrial security firm who goes undercover to hunt down and infiltrate a band of eco-terrorists named The East.
The East seeks to brings deadly personal accountability to corporate leaders who injure people and the environment. These aren’t Hollywoodized corporate villains – all of the corporate crimes depicted in the movie have occurred in real life. Lesser filmmakers would have made The East into a revenge fantasy with a Robin Hood-like merry band of earnest kids – or a conventional espionage procedural, hunting down a gang of wild-eyed terrorists.
The East is so good because it explores our helplessness in the face of corporate malfeasance. The corporate targets deserve to be held accountable, and their crimes cry out for punishment. Yet the vigilante violence of The East is clearly unacceptable. No self-selected group of avengers – no matter how legitimate their grievance – should be able to inflict extra-legal violence. (If you don’t think so, just substitute white supremacist militia, fundamentalist Mormons or Chechen immigrants for the hippies in this movie.)
We view this dilemma through the perspective of Marling’s protagonist, whose own views evolve through the course of the story. Marling co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij. Marling and Batmanglij spent over three months in an anarchist collective, living a cash-free life off the grid; that experience has paid off with an unusual authenticity in the depiction of the anarchist lifestyle.
Marling and Batmanglij also co-wrote the indie The Sound of My Voice, and Marling wrote and starred in last year’s sci-fi hit Another Earth. Here, they have created a set of original characters and invented some really ingenious plot points, especially a very powerful initiation dinner and an astounding bit of tradecraft involving dental floss.
Besides Marling, Ellen Page is especially good as one of the eco-terrorists. Julia Ormond is brilliant in a tiny part as a business executive. There are other fine performances by Patricia Clarkson as Marling’s nasty boss and by Alexander Skarsgaard and Toby Kebell as anarchists.
There may be some holes in the plot, but The East is such a tautly crafted thriller, that we don’t have time to notice. There is one unfortunately corny scene between Ellen Page’s character and Jamey Sheridan’s (he’s become the Go To Guy for entitled white male scumbags). But those are quibbles – The East is a very strong film.
The East is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, iTunes, GooglePlay and other VOD outlets.
