Movies

DVD of the Week: Deadfall

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Deadfall is a solid thriller that flew under the radar during the holidays.  Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are brother and sister running for the Canadian border after a casino heist.  They wreck their car and split up.  The brother sets off overland, leaving a trail of murderous carnage.   The local cops are on the alert, including the sheriff’s deputy daughter (Kate Mara).   Meanwhile,  a bad luck boxer (Charlie Hannum of Sons of Anarchy) is released from prison, impulsively commits another crime and is headed for his parents’ (Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson) remote northern cabin.  The sister hitches a ride with the boxer.  Everybody converges at the boxer’s parents’ place for an extremely stressful Thanksgiving dinner.

An essential element of this thriller is that all of the families are dysfunctional.   The siblings have survived a hellish upbringing, from which the older brother has rescued his little sister; unfortunately, he has emerged as a psychopath himself and has infantilized the sister.  The relationship between the boxer and his father has been poisoned by a long-festering dispute.  The sheriff resents and belittles his bright and highly professional daughter while doting on her idiot brothers.

The core of the movie is the evolving relationship between Wilde’s sister and Hunnam’s boxer.  Neither knows that the other is on the lam.  She cynically seduces him because he is useful.  But then she starts to fall for him, and, by Thanksgiving dinner, her loyalties are uncertain.

Sissy Spacek is brilliant as the boxer’s mom, who must steer over the wreckage of the relationship between her son and her husband, and who must then serve a Thanksgiving dinner to a volatile killer who is holding a shotgun on the other guests.  She is a great actor, and she’s as good here as in any of her signature performances.

The cinematography, characters, acting and the directorial choices by Stefan Ruzowitzky are excellent.  What keeps Deadfall from being one of the year’s best is some trite, TV movie level dialogue along the way.  Still, it’s a good watch.

Note: This is NOT the 1993 Deadfall, with Nicholas Cage even more over-the-top than usual.

Warm Bodies: the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast

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Take the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast and we have the charmingly funny Warm Bodies.  When marauding zombies corner some human teens, a hunky teen zombie is smitten by a saucy live girl (Teresa Palmer), saves her from his comrades and shambles her off to his lair.  After he saves her life a few times, she begins to look past his deadness.  But her people want to shoot him in the head, and his people want to feast on her organs, so there’s that.

Nicholas Hoult, all grown up from his role as the kid in About a Boy, plays the zombie.   Although he can only grunt to the zombies and live humans, the audience hears him narrating his thoughts.  It’s normal for any besotted guy to warn himself, “Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”, but it’s very funny when the guy is dead and looks dead.

Director Jonathan Levine’s (50/50) screenplay is adapted from Isaac Marion’s novel, and it hits all the right notes.  It’s the story of a really nice boy trying to get a girl to like him, and it’s just hard for her to get past the fact that he ate her boyfriend’s brains.

Rob Corddray is excellent as Hoult’s zombie best friend and, hey, John Malkovich is in this movie, too.  I’m going to include Warm Bodies in my upcoming list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

Stand Up Guys: one more surge for three old masters

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Stand Up Guys doesn’t really have much going for it except for Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin playing old mobsters, but that’s enough for a good time at the movies.  The premise is that a gangster (Pacino) is released from prison after taking a 28-year fall for his colleagues.  He is picked up by his buddy (Walken), who both men know has been ordered to execute the newly released man.  Along the way, they “rescue” their getaway driver (Arkin) from his convalescent home and have a series of adventures.  The adventures themselves don’t matter.  It’s all  really about these old men – all adrenaline junkies in their youth – getting a chance for one more surge of excitement and mastery.  Pacino’s Val gets to ask for what must be the hundredth time “Are we gonna kick ass or chew gum?”, knowing that Walken’s Doc will once again reply, “I’m all outta gum”.

Pacino, Walken and Arkin each deliver rich characterizations.  Pacino’s Val, despite his creakiness, has 28 years of pent-up energy and a determination to party before he gets whacked.  Walken’s Doc has adjusted to the pace of retirement; he’s not looking for adventure, but just to show Val a good time with sad obligation.   Arkin’s Hirsch already has a foot in the grave, but still possesses some impressive skills.  The young actress Addison Timlin brings a charisma to what could have been a generic role; she is in four more movies this year, and she’s worth watching out for.

the Oscar-nominated shorts

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GOD OF LOVE

The short films nominated for this year’s Oscars are opening in theaters this weekend for a one-week run as Oscar Nominated Short Films: Animated and Live Action. All five animated shorts are shown in one bundle and all five live action shorts in another bundle. Each bundle is about the length of a regular 90-minute movie. I usually see them as a double feature on a week night.  (Some theaters are also showing a bundle of the Oscar-nominated documentaries.)

The great thing about sampling the shorts is that, even if one short film isn’t your cup of tea, another one is coming along in 15 minutes and  you might like it a lot more.  I’ve never forgotten the touching and funny God of Love, which earned the 2011 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.  God of Love won that year’s Oscar over Na Wewe, one of the best films about violence in Africa that I’ve seen.  Similar discoveries could be waiting for you this week.

Quartet: geezers at the top of their game

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Quartet, an ensemble geezer comedy, is really an excuse for four brilliant actors (Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins) to show their chops.  It’s set in a retirement home for retired musicians.  The residents are preparing for an annual benefit performance, and the long-estranged ex-wife of a resident is moving in.

The most interesting character is the one played by Pauline Collins – a vivacious woman who may have always been ditzy and now has very little short-term memory. In 1996, Collins won a Tony and was nominated for an Oscar for the title role in Shirley Valentine.

Tom Courtenay plays a man still devastated by a bad breakup decades before.  There’s a wonderful scene in which he explains opera to a class of working class teens by comparing it to rap.  Courtenay is best known for The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965), The Dresser (1983), but was excellent more recently in the overlooked Last Orders (2001).

Maggie Smith and Billy Connolly are very good in familiar roles.  The irrepressible Connolly is very funny as a particularly randy old gentleman.  Smith’s character is in her sweet spot – not unlike the sharp-edged but increasingly vulnerable gals she played in Gosford Park, Downton Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  The actors playing the other residents are delightful, including a passel of opera stars from the 70s and 80s, Sinatra’s European trumpet player and more.

This is the first movie directed by Dustin Hoffman, and he did an able job.  He takes advantage of the beautiful pastoral location, paces the film well and, as one would expect, enables the actors to turn in very fine performances.  Quartet is just a lark, but not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.

Mama: delivering the scares without splatter

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The pretty good horror movie Mama, with Jessica Chastain, can send chills down your spine without any slashing or splattering.  It’s the story of two orphaned little girls who have survived in the forest for four years.  When they are rescued, they are feral creatures who scurry about on four legs.  They are sheltered at first in a research institute, and then in their uncle’s home.  It turns out that, unbeknownst to the adult characters, the sisters were “parented” in the forest by a being who comes along with them.

Jessica Chastain brings an unexpectedly rich characterization to this genre film.  She plays the uncle’s girlfriend, the tattooed bass player in a rock band, who didn’t sign up to parent two deeply troubled kids.  She is apologetically non-maternal, but forced by circumstance to co-parent and then to single parent the girls.  Ultimately, she has a face-off with a very jealous and very scary competitor.

The entire cast is excellent, especially Megan Charpentier as the older daughter and Daniel Kash as the ambitious scientist.   Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the scary bad guy in Headhunters, plays softer as both the girls’ decompensating dad and their compassionate uncle.

I’m generally not a fan of horror films and I especially loathe the gorefests that currently dominate the genre.  But the Mama delivers the scares the old-fashioned way, with inventive characters, a sense of foreboding and a creepy and dangerous villain.

 

Amour: we face heartbreak

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If you’re lucky, you get old.  When you get old, you eventually get infirm and then you die.  I generally do not focus on this grim truth, but no one can argue it isn’t part of the human condition, and director Michael Haneke explores it with his film Amour.

We meet a delightful elderly couple played by French film icons Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.  They live a comfortable and independent life, engaged in culture and current events, until she suffers a stroke.  He steps up to become her sensible and compassionate caregiver.  However, the decline of her health brings humiliating dependence is  for her and frustration and weariness for him.  It finally becomes unbearable for both of them (and for the audience).

Amour is heartbreaking, made so by its utter authenticity.  I have been plunged by circumstance into the caregiving role at times, and I recognized every moment of fear, frustration, resentment and exhaustion that the husband experiences.

I tend to despise Haneke because he is a sadistic filmmaker. I hated his critically praised The White Ribbon because the audience has to sit through 144 minutes of child abuse for the underwhelming payoff that parents of Germany’s Nazi generation were mean to them.  In Funny Games, where a gang of sadistic psychos invade a home, Haneke toys with the audience’s expectation that the victimized family will be rescued in a thriller or avenged – but they are simply slaughtered.  However, he doesn’t manufacture cruelty in Amour, the cruelty is in the truth of the subject.

Haneke’s brilliant skill in framing a scene, his patience in letting a scene develop in real-time and his severe, unsparing style are well-suited to Amour’s story.  He is able to explore his story of love, illness and death with complete authenticity.  That, and the amazing performances by Trintignant and Riva, make the film worthwhile.  That being said, it is a painful and not enjoyable viewing experience.

Amour is an undeniably excellent film.  Whether you want to watch it is a different story.

Gangster Squad: waste of a good cast

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An uncommon collection of acting talent (Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi) sinks with Gangster Squad, a mob movie based on Mickey Cohn’s 1949 sojourn in LA.  Because director Reuben Fleischer recently made Zombieland, which I loved for its original approach to zombie movies.  Unfortunately, there is not one original minute in Gangster Squad.  If you enjoy movie violence, avoid Gangster Squad and see Django Unchained a second time.

Sean Penn plays Mickey Cohn – or maybe he’s playing Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas.  What made Pesci’s volatile character so menacing (and unforgettable) was that you never knew when he would irrationally erupt and do something unthinkably horrible.  But Penn’s character is totally predictable – he always does the worst thing imaginable so there’s no menace; it’s like watching Michael Vick train dogs – just gruesome.

Gangster Squad was slated for a September 7, 2012, release, but it contained a scene of a mass shooting inside a movie theater; the Aurora, Colorado, tragedy made the distributor skittish, so another scene was shot to replace it, delaying the release for four months.

Promised Land: so good until the corny ending

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Promised Land is an engaging drama about the exploitation of natural gas in rural America –  until the corny ending.  Matt Damon and Frances McDormand play a team of corporate road warriors who persuade farmers to lease their land for the fracking.  Based on the experience of his own hometown, the Damon character believes that the American rural way of life has become an unsustainable myth, that small farming communities are doomed without the cash from natural gas.  He believes that he is suckering them into their own salvation.

It’s an “issue movie”of the kind that I often dislike. My day job is in   public policy, and I see more nuance and tradeoffs than usually make it into these movies, which are often too “black hat/white hat” for my taste.  Promised Land doesn’t fall into that trap because Damon’s character and because the locals are not uniformly saintly.  Most of the struggling farmers can’t sign their leases fast enough.  Ken Strunk plays an elected official right out of Mark Twain’s Hadleyburg.  Lucas Black plays a guy who is a puddle of bad choices waiting to be made.  Scoot McNairy (Argo) plays an inarticulate man of firm principles; he’s right, but he doesn’t know why.

Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Paranoid Park, Milk) creates a rural community that is completely authentic without using clichés.   Damon is outstanding.  McDormand, John Krasinski, a frisky Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married, Your Sister’s Sister) and Hal Holbrook are all reliably excellent.

Unfortunately, after navigating through the conflicting values, difficult tradeoffs and shades of gray that are found in real life, the movie takes the easy way out – an improbable ending that is happy for all.  Too bad – a little cynicism would have gone a long way here.

Not Fade Away: a pleasant enough coming of age story

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Not Fade Away is a pleasant enough coming of age story by The Sopranos creator David Chase and rocker Steven Van Zandt.  It centers around the life of a 16-year-old’s garage band from 1963 through 1966.  As you would expect from Chase, the movie absolutely nails the look and feel of each year of the dynamic period – a treat for Boomers.  The protagonist’s generation gap with his father (James Gandolfini) climaxes in a poignant encounter in which the dad reveals a secret to his son – the only way he can find to forge a bond.  Van Zandt wrote songs for the band, along with a hilarious advertising jingle for a medical supply company.  But, other than that, it’s a fairly unremarkable film.