Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
If you want drama, Tennessee Williams ladles it on thick in 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The movie version of Williams’ steamy Southern Pulitzer Prize-winning play stars Elizabeth Taylor in a slip and Paul Newman with a crutch and a drink. Taylor and Newman are great, but Burl Ives steals the movie as Big Daddy. Madeleine Sherwood is outstanding as the weaselly daughter-in-law Ida.
For other great movie choices on TV, see my Movies on TV.
The Fighter is an excellent drama, starring Mark Wahlberg as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Christian Bale) and his powerful, trashy mom (Melissa Leo). As one would expect, Bale nails the flashier role of the addict, deluding himself about both past glories and his importance to his family. Leo is almost unrecognized under her teased hair, and is accompanied by a hilarious Greek Chorus of adult daughters, each trashier than the last.
The boxing scenes are very well done, and Wahlberg matches Stallone and Swank in making us believe that he is, indeed, a boxer. See my list of 10 Best Boxing Movies.
This documentary chronicles the physically grueling and emotionally draining three-day competition for the MOF, the highest designation for French pastry chefs. Amid impossibly towering sugar sculptures and delectable cream puffs and layer cakes, we see the essential cores of competition – aspiration, ambition, perseverance, commitment, desperation, heartbreak and victory. Kings of Pastry is directed by the brilliant documentarians Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker (The War Room).
It has earned a spot on my list of 10 Food Porn Movies.
Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhardt play a couple that lost their four-year-old son eight months ago, and are grieving in different ways and at different paces. David Lindsay-Abaire’s screenplay is based on his Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play, and it’s as brilliant an exploration of the grieving process as I’ve ever seen. There is just enough suspense and humor to make the film eminently watchable despite the grim subject. Kidman, Eckhardt, Sandra Oh, Dianne Wiest and newcomer Miles Teller lead an excellent cast.
This is an exquisite film – one of the year’s best.
Inception is the year’s most successful Hollywood blockbuster and now available on DVD. Because it was written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight), we expected it to be brilliantly inventive and it exceeds that expectation. The story places the characters in reality and at least three layers of dreams simultaneously. A smart viewer can follow 85% of the story – which is just enough. Then you can go out to dinner and argue over the other 15%. The Wife said it was “like The Wizard of Oz on acid”.
Leonardo DiCaprio leads the cast, but the supporting players give the best performances: Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Pete Postlethwaite, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Tom Berenger and Tom Hardy.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Natalie Portman plays a ballet dancer competing for the role of a lifetime. Her obsession with perfection is at once the key to her potential triumph and her potential ruin. Barbara Hershey brilliantly plays what we first see as another smothering stage mother, but soon learn to be something even more disturbing. Vincent Cassell (Mesrine) captures the charisma of the swaggering dance master who pushes the ballerina mercilessly. Portman’s dancer has the fragility of a porcelain teacup, and, as she slathers herself with more and more stress, we wonder just when, not if, she’ll break. The tension crescendos, and the climactic performance of Swan Lake is thrilling.
Fresh from The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is another directing triumph. In fact, parts of Black Swan are as trippy as Aronofsky’s brilliant Requiem for a Dream. I expect Aronofsky, Portman and Hershey to be nominated for Oscars.
This iconic 1939 Western was John Ford’s first Western sound film and the first of the seven that he shot in Monument Valley. It’s a conventional Western plot, exquisitely executed with a young and vital John Wayne leading an outstanding cast. Watch for stuntman Yakima Canutt jumping from horse to horse in front of the runaway stagecoach. Plays on TCM on Saturday, December 18
For other great movie choices on TV, see my Movies on TV.
Ripped from the headlines, this is the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. We already knew the story of Joe Wilson exposing the Bush Administration’s false WMD pretext for the Iraq war, and the White House striking back by outing an American covert intelligence operative – Wilson’s wife, Plame. But this film adds two more dimensions to the story.
First, this screenplay is based on Plame’s book, and the first act chronicles Plame’s exploits as a CIA officer. She indeed ran undercover operations. The depiction of real life, contemporary spycraft is even more thrilling than a fictional spy movie.
Second, the story also explores the excruciating pressure on the Plame/Wilson marriage. Joe is an able and principled guy with a little too much testosterone. His short fuse leads him to act impulsively to pick a fight that has even more severe consequences for his wife. In principle, Joe is right, but Valerie’s career is ruined, her family’s safety is threatened and her social life is shattered; she is both scared and resentful. And at the moment that they are under the most unbearable stress, each of them wants to react by moving in an opposite direction. Will the relationship survive? This dimension – a study of an adult relationship – makes this film much more than a typical history.
Love and Other Drugs has the advantage of two winning leads and lots of sex. Anne Hathaway gives a profoundly deep and textured performance as a smart and horny woman urgently living life to the fullest in a desperate race with Parkinson’s Disease. Jake Gyllenhaal nails the role of a charismatic and relentless serial seducer. And the two of them have lots of sex. Fully naked sex.
Unfortunately, Love and Other Drugs peters out into a Disease-of-the-Week movie, albeit pretty good for that forlorn genre.
One moment in particular illustrates how much better this film could have been. Hathaway emerges from a Parkinson’s support group uplifted and empowered, while Gyllenhaal has just received an unvarnished description of living with Parkinson’s from the husband of a later stage patient. We see what she doesn’t – that the two are no longer on the same page. Peter Friedman plays the patient’s husband with an authenticity that will be recognized by anyone who has experienced caregiver fatigue. It’s a great scene – but then the movie turns sappy.
Sadly, the overly broad comic relief attempted by Josh Gad as Gyllenhaal’s little brother merely distracts from the story. So does the sappy score – beware soulful piano in the third act. And when a movie climaxes by having the boy race to catch the girl in the nick of time, it’s as much of a cliché to catch up to the bus as it is to pant up to an airport loading gate.
The year’s best romance, Mademoiselle Chambon is available on DVD this week. Finding one’s soul mate in middle age, when one may have serious commitments, can be heartbreaking. Here, the two people are not looking for romance or even for a fling. He is a happily married construction worker. She is his son’s teacher. They meet (not cute) and do not fall in love (or lust) at first sight. He is unexpectedly touched by something she does, and she is touched that he is touched. Despite their wariness, they fall in love.
The lovers are beautifully acted by Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlaine in two of the very finest performances of the year.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.