Movies

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

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Michael Shannon in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

In My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, Werner Herzog explores why an actor would re-enact a theatrical scene for real and kill his mother with the sword that he had been using for a prop.  The short answer is because he was crazier than shit.  This is based on an actual event.  The generally intense and often creepy Michael Shannon plays the murderer, who has suffered a schizophrenic breakdown and is decompensating by the minute.  The audience wants to tell his fiance (Chloe Sevigny) to run, not walk, away from him.  His craziness is so immediately apparent, that there’s really no arc to the film, as we watch flashbacks from the prior year.

Shannon, who is now seen as the revenue agent in HBO’s fine Boardwalk Empire, is very scary.  Incidentally, the movie belongs to that very small subgenre of films where Williem Dafoe (here the cop) does not play the creepiest character.  Dafoe is also out-creeped by Brad Dourif, whose role apparently exists to show that entire family is crazy (like Arsenic and Old Lace).

I would rather recommend a great Michael Shannon performance in a much better film, Shotgun Stories.

The film had an extremely limited theatrical release early this year, but was not widely distributed.  Available now on DVD.

DVD of the Week: Barbarians at the Gate

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The Social Network reminded me of another classic send up of contemporary business history:  Barbarians at the Gate.     Barbarians is the story of late 1980s corporate excess centered on the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.  James Garner, Fred Thompson and Jonathan Pryce star as the duelling CEOs bouncing between corporate jets, boardrooms and must-be-seen-at charity galas with their egos and trophy wives.  Barbarians at the Gate was originally broadcast on HBO and is available from Netflix.

A great movie on TV you haven't seen

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The Earrings of Madame de… (1953):   This is one of the great movies that you have NOT seen, having just been released on DVD in 2009.  Max Ophuls directed what is perhaps the most visually evocative romance ever in black and white. It’s worth seeing for the ballroom scene alone.  The shallow and privileged wife of a stick-in-the-mud general takes a lover, but the earrings she pawned reveal the affair and consequences ensue. Great Italian director Vittorio De Sica plays the impossibly handsome lover.   TCM 10/6

The Social Network

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The best and most entertaining movie of the Fall tells the birth story of Facebook, and may win Oscars for director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War).  It’s a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires.

Let’s reflect on Sorkin’s challenge here; he is writing a screenplay about nerdy guys writing computer code and making it fast-paced, understandable, funny and even gripping.  To compound his challenge, all of the main characters but one are extremely obnoxious, yet he makes us care about what happens to them.

Yet the most compelling aspect of the film is Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.  Eisenberg’s Zuckerman has few social skills, less social aptitude and exactly one friend, yet creates a framework for other people to share scores and even hundreds of “friends”.  Eisenberg carries the film with an especially intense performance of an emotionally remote character.   Eisenberg has been underrated despite strong performances in Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man.  Here, it is impossible to think of another actor who could so vividly create this Zuckerman.

This is a uniformly well-acted movie.  Justin Timberlake is terrific as Napster infant terrible Sean Parker.  Armie Hammer is outstanding as both of the Winklevoss twins, the entitled, preppie wunderkinden.  Rooney Mara nails her scenes as Zuckerberg’s soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Douglas Urbanski (usually a producer) does a viciously hilarious impersonation of former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers.

One more thing:  Fincher and Sorkin know how to end a movie.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

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This is Woody Allen’s latest comedy about romantic entanglements and human self-delusion. It is mid-level Woody – not as good as his recent Vicky Christina Barcelona or Match Point, but not completely unwatchable like some of his other recent work.  To save you 90 minutes of your life and ten bucks:  the character who comforts herself with ridiculously fatuous superstition ends up happier than those who are grounded in scientifically valid reality.  Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin and Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) all do their best with the material.

Another thing that ticks me off about Wall Street

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There is a modest SPOILER in this post.

After thinking so more about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (and getting more annoyed), I have updated my first assessment of the movie.

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 turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behaved) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.

Pretty lame, Oliver Stone.

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.