Movies

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

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Again, Oliver Stone makes the movie equivalent of one of those glossy fashion editions – kinda fun to page through, but really nothing there.  But it is glossy.

Stone sets this drama at the onset of the 2008 financial collapse, but really doesn’t have anything much to say about it, other than Josh Brolin’s character is an especially bad man.

Here’s what really ticks me off (modest SPOILER in this paragraph only).  The screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking).  Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout.  The movie’s payoff (things will turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behave) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.

Michael Douglas is excellent in another delicious turn as Gordon Gekko, but he isn’t the main character.  The protagonist is played by Shia LaBeouf. Will someone explain to me why Shia LaBeouf seems to be a movie star?  I just can’t figure it out.

Once again, Carey Mulligan is good as the moral center of the story.  Unfortunately, the power of her performance is undermined by the improbable and inconsistent happy ending.

Another problem is Stone’s use of nuclear fusion as an example of renewable energy that would save the planet if the bad money guys would only invest.  There are very promising alternatives in renewable energy, but fusion ain’t one of them.  It’s an insult to folks who are serious about being Green.

DVD of the Week: The Secret in Their Eyes

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The Secret in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos): This year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Picture, is a police procedural set in Argentina with two breathtaking plot twists, original characters, a mature romance and one breathtaking, “how did they do it?” shot.  The story centers on a murder in Argentina’s politically turbulent 1970s, but most of the story takes place twenty years later when a retired cop revisits the murder.

Veteran Argentine actor Ricardo Darin shines once again in a Joe Mantegna-type role.  Darin leads an excellent cast, including Guillermo Francella, who brings alive the character of Darin’s drunk assistant.

Director Juan Jose Campanella is receiving justifiable praise for the amazing shot of a police search in a filled and frenzied soccer stadium.  It ranks as one of the great single shots, along with the kitchen entrance in Goodfellas and the battle scene in Children of Men.

It’s one of my Best Movies of 2010 So Far.

Mademoiselle Chambon

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Mademoiselle Chambon is the year’s best romance.  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.

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop

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A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop is a remake of the Coen Brothers great neo-noir Blood Simple, set in feudal China. I love Blood Simple.  Woman Gun Noodle Shop is a pretty faithful remake, but is a far less successful film, at least to this Western viewer.  Both films tell the story of venal and carnal people committing selfish and deadly acts; in both films, the darkness of the story is leavened by humor.  However, Blood Simple works because of the Coen Brothers subversively dry, ironic humor.  The humor in Woman Gun Noodle Shop is very broad;  a Chinese friend tells me that this “is very Chinese” and reflects traditions of other Chinese performance mediums.  Anyway, the humor was too broad for me.

One thing that DOES work: the beautifully severe landscape of northwest China is another character in the film.

The Town

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Ben Affleck knows Boston, which is the best thing about this crime drama about thieves desperately evading the FBI.  The Town is a well made, satisfying Hollywood action thriller, but nothing more.  The movie really had me hooked through the second act with the world of Irish professional criminals in Charleston, Mass.  But the end of the movie wraps up everything way too neatly.

Ben Affleck the actor, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, and The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner are all good.  Chris Cooper is excellent in a five-minute scene.

Ben Affleck proved in Gone Baby Gone that he can be a fine director, and hopefully he will reach that standard again.

DVD of the Week: Ajami

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Ajami is an ultra-realistic crime drama set in a scruffy neighborhood in Jaffa, Israel.  The story weaves together Arab Christians and Arab Muslims and both religious and non-religious Israeli Jews.  Everyone aspires to make a living and live in personal safety, but the circumstances and tribal identities make this very difficult at best.  There are two trans-religious romances, but no one is going to live happily ever after.

It’s a film that doesn’t make any overt political statements, but shows what is from the perspective of individual of different backgrounds.  Given their own experiences, it’s easy to understand the motivations of each character.

Ajami was co-writtten and co-directed by Scandar Copti, a Jaffa-born Palestinian, and Yaron Shoni, an Israeli Jew.   After seeing the film, I was surprised to learn that it has no trained actors – all of the roles are played by real-life residents who improvised their lines to follow the story line.

Ajami was nominated for the most recent Best Foreign Language Oscar, was released earlier this year in US art houses and is now available on DVD..

Co-Director Scandar Copti discusses the process of using non-actors improvising within a script framework.

Going the Distance

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Drew Barrymore and Justin Long star in that rarity –  a sweet, smart, funny and successful romantic comedy for adults.  Screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe tries a novel approach that respects the audience- creating characters like the ones we know in real life, who talk and act like real people do.  Instead of an implausible set-up, the conflict here is the real problem of a bi-coastal romance.

Her sister, played by Christina Applegate, is wound very tight for comic effect, but I know people like her.  His friends are WAY eccentric, but their exaggerated quirkiness delivers laughs without  distracting from the central romance.  Going the Distance has the toilet humor of a guy flick, but both genders were yukking it up at the screening I attended.

The Tillman Story

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Pat and Kevin Tillman in Afghanistan

The more I think about The Tillman Story, the more I admire it.  And I am increasingly grateful that Michael Moore didn’t make this movie and degrade it into a screed.  Instead, Director Amir Bar-Lev avoids the simplistic and satisfying formulas and respects his subject matter and the audience by letting the story speak for itself.

I thought I knew the story. Tillman left the fame and wealth of an NFL career to enlist in the Army post-911.  He was killed in a firefight in Afghanistan.  The Army reported that he was killed while heroically charging the enemy to save his comrades.  It was later revealed that he was killed by fire from his comrades.   Still later, it became clear that the heroic death story was immediately concocted by the military for spin control or, worse, propaganda.

I didn’t know that Tillman predicted that the Army would propagandize his death and smuggled out to his wife the documentation of his wish for a civilian funeral.

I didn’t know that Tillman crouched on a hill watching the bombing of Baghdad, and said, “This war is so fucking illegal.”

I didn’t know that Tillman was with the team that waited hours to “rescue” captured soldier Jessica Lynch (abandoned by her captors) until a film crew arrived.

The US military made a huge miscalculation:  they assumed that the family that produced someone with Pat Tillman’s values would be satisfied with a phony narrative of cartoonish heroism.

The Tillman Story weaves three stories together: the making of Pat Tillman, how he died in Afghanistan and his family’s struggle to pull the sheets back on the US military’s cover-up.  At its core, it is the story of people who insist on truth dealing with a system that operates on perception.

And here is a sharp insight from Mick LaSalle:

“By the way, “The Tillman Story” has an R rating because of language. Think about that one, too: Lies are rated G and can be heard around the clock on television, but try saying the truth with the proper force and you end up with a restricted audience.”
Here is Mick LaSalle’s full review.

Soul Kitchen

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Soul Kitchen is an intermittently funny German romp that tries to find its way between clever humor and broad farce.  It’s mildly entertaining but way overrated by critics because it’s a change of pace by trendy Director Fatih Akin (Head-On, Edge of Heaven).

The American

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In this thriller, George Clooney plays an international master assassin.  He lives a life of crushing loneliness.  Anyone who gets close to him will either die or betray him.  He is exhausted by years of perpetual vigilance, unnourished by human affection.  I remember this loneliness from my own years as an international master assassin.

Clooney’s character is written and played well.  This is a smart, arty film that transcends its hackneyed set-up:  the assassin takes One Last Job and encounters some beautiful, available and potentially dangerous women who may be Up To No Good.  The climax reminds me of the greatest assassin movie, Day of the Jackal.