Movies

Dirty Girl: actors good, story not in teen road trip movie

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Dirty Girl, which arrived with some measure of indie buzz, is a pleasing trifle, nothing more.   Two teenagers, whose parents don’t get them,  run away on a transformative road trip. One is played by Juno Temple, whose smart, quirky sexiness pretty much took over this year’s Kaboom.  The overweight gay kid is played by Jeremy Dozier.  Both are good, Temple is special and Dozier might be.  I’m looking forward to seeing them in better movies.

Against type, Milla Jovovich plays a trailer trash single mom.  Dwight Yoakam plays yet another dirtbag, this one without a lot of depth.

But it’s Mary Steenburgen who really reminds us how good she is.  Steenburgen plays what is written as a fairly cardboard role – the bullied wife, the prude wearing high-necked blouses, the devoted but helpless mom.  But Steenburgen brings so much texture and intensity to the performance and creates a character that transcends the one on the page.

Pearl Jam Twenty: a good first 43 minutes…

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Just watched Pearl Jam Twenty on the PBS series American Masters.  It’s Cameron Crowe’s (Almost Famous) documentary on the formation and rise of the band Pearl Jam.  My initial test for any rock band documentary is whether it’s better than an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music.

The first 43 minutes of Pearl Jam Twenty is pretty good.  There’s the drug overdose death of the lead singer in Pearl Jam’s predecessor band (usually the fatal rock OD is AFTER the rise to stardom). There’s a wonderful video of an early performance where new lead singer Eddie Vedder unleashes the rage in his voice when angered by an overaggressive bouncer during a performance at a small club.  Finally, playing before a festival crowd of 60,000 for the first time, Vedder ends a song, gazes across the masses and inhales, literally breathing in the sweet smell of success.

But then the documentary tails off, and there’s not much in the last hour except for Vedder’s ad lib at an awards show cracking up Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant backstage.  If you’re a big Pearl Jam fan, then the last hour is probably worthwhile.

Blackthorn: Butch Cassidy rides again…through Bolivia

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What if Butch Cassidy had survived that 1908 shootout with the Bolivian army?  That’s the premise of this stylized Western starring Sam Shepherd as Butch.

I love Westerns, and I found this one to be satisfying but not exceptional.  It’s a beautifully shot film with sound acting.  Unfortunately, once we get past the inspired premise, the screenplay is pretty routine.

Sam Shepherd’s presence and features make him well suited to play an icon, whether Chuck Yeager (The Right Stuff) or Butch Cassidy.  Eduardo Noriega (so good as the drug smuggler in Transsiberian) reeks unreliability as the one person who has what Butch needs.  Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) has a gift for hangdog performances, and he gives another good one as the Wiley Coyote of Pinkerton agents.

This is the directorial debut of noted screenwriter Mateo Gil (Open Your Eyes/Vanilla Sky, The Sea Inside).  Gil has the directorial touch – he makes full use of the dramatic Bolivian landscape and engaging Bolivian cast.

Margin Call: Will the greedy survive?

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This is a taut drama about an investment bank facing the financial collapse of 2008.  In his first feature, writer-director J.C. Chandor (whose father worked on Wall Street) successfully creates a pressure cooker of a tale.

The story is compressed into a critical 24 hours in the life of the company.  It is set in darkened offices lit only with computer monitors that are gleaming with menacing graphs and spreadsheets.

Stanley Tucci is compelling as the bean counter who discovers an existential threat.  Kevin Spacey (also always good) is the corporate lifer who must clean up the mess.  Don’t overlook the depth of Paul Bettany’s performance as an amoral and personally empty corporate climber who is in it only for the sport and for the adrenaline, using his bonuses merely to keep score.  Finally, in Margin Call‘s most superb performance, Jeremy Irons oozes menacing confidence and power as the CEO who do anything to save his company.

Unfortunately, Chandor cannot create acting range for Simon Baker and Demi Moore, who are out of their depths among the otherwise fine cast.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DqFRsPrns]

50/50: what’s funnier than cancer?

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who has reliably excellent taste in his choice of movie scripts) stars in this cancer comedy.  Yes, cancer comedy.  Seth Rogen plays his buddy.  And it’s funny.  Pretty damn funny.

Writer Will Reiser takes the story from his own bout with the Big C.   Reiser’s real life friend Seth Rogen helped him through the ordeal.

As usual, Gordon-Levitt is excellent.  And, if you’re out chasing skirts while bald and weak from chemotherapy, who could be a better wing man than Seth Rogen?

Anna Kendrick (so good in Up in the Air) plays the cringingly green psychologist assigned to help the patient face his 50/50 chance of survival.   Bryce Dallas Howard (excellent as the achingly fragile survivor in Hereafter) plays the girlfriend with the best intentions but neither aptitude for care giving or unlimited loyalty.  Angelica Huston plays not just another smothering mom.  They’re all very good – good enough to play against Gordon-Levitt and Rogen.  So are Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) as fellow cancer patients.

Take Shelter: digging his fingernails into sanity

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Michael Shannon (Shotgun Stories, Agent Van Alden in Boardwalk Empire) is perhaps our best creep actor.   And what’s creepier than watching a solid parent and spouse enduring a full-fledged psychotic breakdown?

Shannon plays the most grounded guy in America until he starts having terrifying dreams and then hallucinations.  One of his parents is mentally ill, and he is determined to resist a breakdown and protect his family.  Unlike in a lesser screenplay, Shannon’s protagonist is very aware that he may be going crazy and is digging his fingernails into sanity.

Shannon gave a breakthrough performance in Shotgun Stories, by writer/director Jeff Nichols.  (In the excellent Shotgun Stories, Nichols created a dysfunctional family with a father so dismissive of his offspring that he non-named them Son, Kid and Boy.)  This time, Nichols has given Shannon the role of a lifetime, for which Shannon should get a dark horse Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

You may have noticed that this is Jessica Chastain’s year (The Debt, The Tree of Life, The Help, Texas Killing Fields), and Chastain should receive an Oscar nod for her supporting performance as Shannon’s wife.  Chastain must react to her husband’s behavior, which starts out quirky, becomes troublesome and spirals down to GET ME OUT OF HERE.

Nichols, Shannon and Chastain have given us one of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5U4TtYpKIc]

Coming up on TV: M*A*S*H*’s precursor

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Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting Battle Circus (1955) on October 7.  It’s not a great movie, but Baby Boomers will recognize many similarities to 1970’s MASH.   Battle Circus stars Humphrey Bogart as a doctor in a US Army mobile hospital unit in the Korean War. As in MASH, there’s plenty of casualty-laden helicopters, smart ass humor, partying and nurse-chasing.

Of course, Battle Circus‘ story came directly out of the then-contemporary Korean War. MASH was adapted from the 1968 novel by Richard Hooker, who had served in such a unit 15 years before.  And, of course, Robert Altman framed MASH so that, although it was set in the Korean War, it was really about the Vietnam War.

(By the way, the novel and the 1970 movie were titled MASH, and the epic TV series was titled M*A*S*H*. )

 

DVD of the Week: The Last Lullaby

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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.

Other recent DVD picks have been Road to Nowhere,  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, Poetry, Queen to Play and Kill the Irishman.

DVD of the Week: Incendies

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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.

Higher Ground: a provocative and respectful film about faith

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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.