movie gourmet

Return of the Gangster Movie

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During the next few months, we’re going to see some major releases of violent crime dramas.

The first, opening on August 29, is Lawless, written by musician Nick Cave.  It is set among moonshiners in Depression Era Appalachia.  The cast includes Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska and (why is he a movie star?) Shia LaBeouf.

On October 19, we’ll see what I expect to be the best of the lot,  the stylishly violent Killing Them Softly, a big hit at Cannes.  It’s a contemporary story with an ensemble cast featuring Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins and Sam Shepherd.

Those two movies were going to sandwich the release of Gangster Squad, a mob movie based on Mickey Cohn’s 1949 sojourn in LA, starring Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker) and Giovanni Ribisi.  But one scene in Gangster Squad is a shooting in a movie theater; the Aurora, Colorado, tragedy made the distributor skittish, and the release has been delayed to January 13.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.  Here’s the trailer for Killing Me Softly:

Celeste and Jesse Forever: another actress-written, smart, funny movie

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I really enjoyed Celeste and Jesse Forever, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg as best friends who have been married, are now working on an amiable divorce and are still best friends.  The screenplay is co-written by Rashida Jones (Paul Rudd’s fiance in I Love You, Man) and, once you accept the comic premise that this couple is made for each other but not as a married couple, everyone’s behavior is authentic.  Sure, he wants to get back with her when she isn’t in a place to do that – and, then, vice versa – but the characters resolve the conflict as they would in real life.  Here’s a mini-spoiler – this movie is just too smart to end in rushing to the airport or disrupting the wedding or any of the other typical rom com contrivances.

The supporting characters are funny without being absurdly zany (except for one pot dealer).   Chris Messina pops up in Celeste, as he did in Ruby Sparks, and does a good job here, too.

I’m certainly looking forward to Rashida Jones’ next screenplay.

Movies to See This Week

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CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER

Here’s a surprise – there are some appealing (and smart) romantic comedies this August!  I am impressed by both Celeste and Jesse Forever and Ruby Sparks – each is written by an actress and each is a good time at the movies.  Celeste and Jesse Forever is a smart and authentic comedy of best friends too perfect for each other to fall in love at the same time.  Ruby Sparks is a hilariously inventive romance that probes whether realizing a fantasy can bring happiness.

And here are two more comedy winners.  Frank Langella’s performance in Robot and Frank elevates the film from a pretty good comedy to a revealing study of getting older.  The Intouchables is a crowd pleasing odd couple comedy – an attendance record breaker in France.

It’s worth seeking out the compelling documentary Searching for Sugar Man, about the hunt to uncover the secret fate of an artist that didn’t know that he was a rock star. The same holds for Bill W., the story of the reluctant leader of a movement, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The brilliantly made Louisiana swamp fable Beasts of the Southern Wild enters the life and imagination of a child and celebrates her indomitability. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, which opens this week, is a rollicking light culture clash comedy. The Dark Night Rises is too corny and too long, but Anne Hathaway sparkles. Magic Mike has male stripping, but no magic.

I haven’t yet seen the French drama Beloved, the controversial indie drama Compliance or the bike messenger thriller Premium Rush, all of which open this weekend.   You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is the brilliantly constructed (but gloomy) Iranian drama A Separation, which won the Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar.

DVD of the Week: A Separation

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A contemporary Iranian couple had planned to leave Iran for a better life in the West, but, by the time they have wrangled a visa from the bureaucracy, the husband’s father has developed Alzheimer’s. The husband refuses to leave his father and the wife leaves the home in protest. They are well-educated and secular. The husband hires a poor and religious woman to care for his father (and she does not tell her husband about her job). Then there is an incident which unravels the lives of both families.

This is a brilliant film. Writer-director Asghar Farhadi has constructed a story in which the audience sees and hears everything that happens, but our understanding of the events and characters evolve.  We think we know what has happened, but then other narratives are revealed.  Likewise, the moral high ground is passed from one character to another and to another.  It’s like Rashomon, but with the audience keeping a single point of view.

Much of that point of view is shared by the ever watchful teenage daughter of the educated couple.  She desperately wants her parents back together, views everything through this prism and is powerless to make it happen.  She is played by Farhadi’s real life daughter.

Religion towers above the action – and not in a good way.  It guides the actions of the religious couple into choices against their interest.  The Iranian theocracy restricts the choices of the secular couple and of the judges trying to sort everything out.  Almost every character is a good person who is forced to lie to avoid some horrific result otherwise required by the culture.

One final note:  it will be a lot harder to make an easy joke at the expense of American lawyers after watching the Iranian justice system in A Separation.

The realistic angst of the chapters makes this a difficult film to watch – not a light date movie for sure. But the payoff is worth it, and it’s a must see.

This film was on the top ten list of over 30 critics and is Roger Ebert’s top-rated film of 2011.  It won the 2011 Foreign Language Picture Oscar.  Because regular folks like us could only see it in 2012, it made my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Movies to See Right Now

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A dream girl comes to life in RUBY SPARKS

Ruby Sparks is a hilariously inventive romance that probes whether realizing a fantasy can bring happiness.  In contrast, Killer Joe is NC-17 for a reason and will either thrill or disgust you; that notwithstanding, it pops and crackles with excellent performances by Mathew McConaughey and Juno Temple.  The Intouchables is a crowd pleasing odd couple comedy – an attendance record breaker in France.

It’s worth seeking out the compelling documentary Searching for Sugar Man, about the hunt to uncover the secret fate of an artist that didn’t know that he was a rock star. The same holds for Bill W., the story of the reluctant leader of a movement, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The brilliantly made Louisiana swamp fable Beasts of the Southern Wild enters the life and imagination of a child and celebrates her indomitability. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, which opens this week, is a rollicking light culture clash comedy.  The Dark Night Rises is too corny and too long, but Anne Hathaway sparkles.  Magic Mike has male stripping, but no magic. The relationship drama 360 is a snoozer.

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

My DVD pick this week is the French drama Time Out – an excellent choice for the current economic environment.

2 Days in New York: a diversion, sometimes funny

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Writer-director Julie Delpy and Chris Rock play a couple living together in a cramped New York City apartment with their kids from previous relationships when her eccentric French family comes for a visit.  Most French are reserved and impeccably polite; because that’s not funny, Delpy wrote her visitors to be very badly behaved extreme hedonists.  The stress of the first visit by the in-laws, the claustrophobia of packing people into a tiny apartment and language and cultural barriers are all promising comic situations.   A mid-range comedy, 2 Days in New York has its moments.

As a screenwriter, Delpy’s strengths are a keen eye for family dysfunction, brisk pacing and a willingness to get raunchy.  But much of the broadest gags in 2 Days in New York fall flat.  There is a funny bit about Delpy’s emotionally brittle artist literally selling her soul as a piece of performance art.  And it’s funny when Delpy invents a preposterous tragedy to avoid facing a complaint from a neighbor.  But the funniest moments are two Chris Rock monologues when he retreats to his man cave to converse with a large poster of Barack Obama.

I wouldn’t recommend a special trip to the theater to see 2 Days in New York, but it’s a pleasant enough diversion to watch on DVD or stream later this year.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Time Out

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Aurelien Recoing in TIME OUT

In Time Out (L’emploi du Temps)(2001), a middle-aged guy (Aurelien Recoing) loses his job with an international consulting firm in France and can’t bring himself to tell his family.  Instead, he pretends to still have that job, and then invents a new, better job in Switzerland.  He doesn’t spend his days at the local bar – he actually goes on faux business trips from which he calls his family.  He even dresses in a suit and visits the Swiss corporate HQ where he claims to be working, prowling the cubicles and lounging in the lobby while talking on his cell phone like a big shot.  The lengths to which he goes in convincing his family (and embracing denial for himself) are pathetic, then creepy and finally chilling.

Ironically, he has a smart and supportive wife (Karin Viard); we can tell that, had he told her the truth immediately, she would help him out.  He also has very successful father with the bucks to keep the family afloat until he finds something else.  But so much of his self-identity is wrapped up in his career, that he just can’t bear the thought of disappointing them.

Of course, he can’t keep up this charade forever.  There’s the matter of income, for example, which drives him to join a scam.  And then there is the web of lies that must eventually unravel.  His wife intuits that something is amiss and starts sniffing around….

Recoing is outstanding as the man inside a pressure cooker of his own making.  The great French actress Karin Viard (Polisse, Potishe, Paris) is, as always, perfect.

Time Out is a superb film because of the acting and the writing.  Director Laurent Cantet (2008’s popular The Class) co-wrote the screenplay with Robin Campillo.

Time Out is available on DVD and on Netflix streaming.  (I have not embedded the Miramax trailer because it, replete with swelling music from another film, makes the movie look heart-warming and  melodramatic, and it is neither.)

The Dreaded Mid-August at the Movies

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Usually mid-August is not very promising at the movies.  Distributors have already released the big summer movies and are holding their Oscar bait until autumn.  But I’m intrigued by a few upcoming films.

The French Beloved traces the lives of women over several decades and several cities.  It stars Catherine Deneuve, her daughter Chiara Mastroianni and, in a rare acting role, the great director Milos Forman.

2 Days in New York is Julie Delpy’s sequel to her 2 Days in Paris (in the vein of the superb Before Sunrise and Before Sunset), this time paired with Chris Rock.

In Premium Rush Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in a bike messenger thriller with Michael Shannon as the scary villain.

Red Hook Summer is Spike Lee’s contemporary film about Brooklyn, which he insists is NOT a sequel to his masterful Do the Right Thing.

Lawless is a violent crime movie set among Depression Era moonshiners.

The indie Compliance has been controversial at festivals, evoking both love and hate.  Inspired by true events, the employees of a fast food restaurant follow the over-the-phone instructions of someone who claims to be a cop – and enter dangerous territory.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.  Here’s the trailer for Compliance:

Movies to See Right Now

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Matthew McConaughey in KILLER JOE

Killer Joe is NC-17 for a reason and will either thrill or disgust you; that notwithstanding, it pops and crackles with excellent performances by Mathew McConaughey and Juno Temple.  Ruby Sparks is an hilariously inventive romance that probes whether realizing a fantasy can bring happiness.  The Intouchables is a crowd pleasing odd couple comedy – an attendance record breaker in France.

It’s worth seeking out the compelling documentary Searching for Sugar Man, about the hunt to uncover the secret fate of an artist that didn’t know that he was a rock star.  The same holds for Bill W., the story of the reluctant leader of a movement, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The brilliantly made Louisiana swamp fable Beasts of the Southern Wild enters the life and imagination of a child and celebrates her indomitability. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Farewell, My Queen is a lavishly staged and absorbing French drama of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles at the onset of the French Revolution; it features excellent performances and was shot at Versailles itself.

The wistfully sweet and visually singular Moonrise Kingdom is another must see, and it’s hanging around some theaters.  Adults will enjoy Brave, Pixar’s much anticipated fable of a Scottish princess, and it’s a must see for kids.

The Dark Night Rises is too corny and too long, but Anne Hathaway sparkles. Magic Mike has male stripping, but no magic.  The relationship drama 360, which opens this week, is a snoozer.

I haven’t yet seen the franchise thriller The Bourne Legacy with Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker).  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is the American spy documentary, The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby.