This is a surprisingly brilliant contemporary noir film from 2008 (that I KNOW that you haven’t seen). Tom Sizemore plays a retired hit man, a professional loner now living what would be a comfortable loner life (except for his chronic insomnia). He is offered a very large sum to take out a librarian (Sasha Alexander), but he is attracted to her and wonders why? And, as in any noir film, is she the innocent that she seems? Sizemore’s performance and a smart screenplay by Peter Biegen and Max Alan Collins carry this film, and Alexander is good, too.
This searing drama is the year’s best film so far. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.
Because the film is anything but stagey, you can’t tell that Canadian director Denis Villaneuve adapted the screenplay from a play. Lubna Azabal, a Belgian actress of Moroccan and Spanish heritage, is brilliant as the mother.
It’s a tough film to watch, with graphic violence against women and children. But the violence is neither gratuitous nor exploitative – it is a civil war, after all, and the theme of the film is the cycle of retribution.
Incendies was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, but lost out to a much inferior film on the same subject of violence, In a Better Life.
The fine actress Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, Source Code, The Departed) directs and stars in this drama about a woman in a tightly communal church and how her faith supports and fails her. Farmiga’s character is not a naturally spiritual person, but lives within an intensely spiritual community. It’s rare that a film examines the question of religion so personally. It’s a thoughtful and provocative film that takes a position, albeit a respectful one.
Higher Ground, adapted from a novel, would have benefited from less sexism from the male characters and more contemporary clothing for the female characters; both distract from the central question of the usefulness of faith. As a director, Farmiga is not afraid of using some magic realism, which generally works.
The performances are especially strong. Vera’s little sister Taissa Farmiga, aided by a strong physical resemblance, is eerily perfect as the younger version of the protagonist. Also especially excellent are Dagmara Dominczyk as an especially vibrant church member, Michael Chernus as her sincere and dutiful husband and Norbert Leo Butz as the pastor. The always reliable Bill Irwin (Rachel Getting Married) and John Hawkes (Deadwood, Winter’s Bone) are good, too.
Road to Nowhere could be subtitled Monte Hellman’s Jigsaw Puzzle. It’s the first film in twenty years from 79-year-old cult director Hellman, and he has delivered a multi-layered riddle that challenges the audience. There is the story of a crime as it was originally understood, the story of what really happened and the story of a film being made about the crime. The same actors play the characters in all three stories. One of the actors in the movie may actually be one of the participants in the original crime.
It’s not a film for everyone. You must be willing to accept that the story is not going to make sense for a while, and some issues are never going to be resolved. If you can engage in the puzzle, there’s enough of a payoff.
My guilty pleasures include Hellman’s 1974 Cockfighter with Warrren Oates and his 1971 Two-Lane Blacktop with Oates and James Taylor (yes, the singer-songwriter James Taylor). Road to Nowhere is far more stylish and ambitious than those films, but far more baffling.
In Road to Nowhere, the director of the film within the film discovers and becomes besotted, even obsessed, with his leading lady – and things do not turn out happily. I had to think of the female lead in Two Lane Blacktop, Laurie Bird; Hellman had a relationship with Bird, who later became Art Garfunkle’s companion and committed suicide in Garfunkle’s apartment.
In this 1979 miniseries version of the classic John le Carre spy novel, there is a Soviet mole in the highest echelon of British intelligence. It could be anyone except George Smiley, whom the other top spies have pushed out to pasture. Smiley, in one of Alec Guinness’ greatest performances, begins a deliberate hunt to unmask the double agent. Guinness is joined by a superb cast that includes Ian Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Ian Bannen and Sian Phillips. It’s 290 minutes of pressure-packed whodunit.
The Labor Day weekend is a great opportunity to watch the old master spy drilling down through the characters of his former peers to expose the mole – one of the best mysteries ever on film.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has been remade into a much shorter theatrical version that will open in the US on November 18. This new film version will also feature a top tier cast – Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Fassbender, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones and Stephen Rea. The trailer is at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
A team of three Mossad agents are charged with kidnapping a Nazi war criminal out of 1964’s East Berlin. One aspect of the mission remains incomplete, and the three must address it 30 years later. It’s a ripping yarn with some serious comments on the costs of both truth and untruth. Helen Mirren is brilliant as one of the team, as is Jessica Chastain, playing her younger self. Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love).
The master writer-director John Sayles delivers a first-class historical drama with Amigo, set in 1900 amid the US occupation of the Phillipines. One of Sayles’ specialties is intertwining the stories of a large ensemble cast while keeping each character recognizable, distinct and textured. As in City of Joy and Lone Star, the audience sees events unfold from the perspective of various characters, none of whom know enough to fully understand the others.
Veteran Filipino actor Joel Torre (over 200 acting credits) plays the village headman, who recognizes that he is doomed to disappoint the contradictory expectations of the Filipino rebels and the US occupiers. Garret Dillahunt plays the well-meaning American lieutenant who is charged to both protect and fight a people that he is not equipped to understand. Oscar-winner Chris Cooper, DJ Qualls, Dane DeHaan, Spanky Manikan and Ronnie Lazaro also excel among the fine cast.
Kristin Scott Thomas stars in another French film, this time as a journalist tracking the story of a girl during the WWII roundup of Jews in France. Her probe of events almost sixty years in the past becomes more and more personal, and profoundly entangles more and more people. It’s a compelling story, and no actor can portray intensity and doggedness better than Scott Thomas. Co-stars Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) and Aidan Quinn.
This one-minute movie,Discovery of the Woodsprites by Jadrien Steele, was shot on a cell phone. Sandisk was a sponsor of Cinequest 2010, and four films shot on cell phones – all less than a minute and six seconds – were shown before most features at the festival. You can watch all four movies at 4 Movies Shot on a Cell Phone
In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess in midlife. It’s a film about aspiration. First, she must muster the courage and resourcefulness to learn the game. When it becomes an obsession, she and her family must adjust.
The excellent actress Sandrine Bonnaire (Intimate Strangers) is the perfect choice to play this laconic and controlled character, who reveals her thoughts and emotions to the audience almost only through her eyes. A French-speaking Kevin Kline is also very good as the crusty American widower who teaches her chess.
