Movies to See Right Now – the big Holiday movies

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DJANGO UNCHAINED

It’s the Holidays and big Holiday movies are joining the great choices already in theaters.  I haven’t yet seen Tom Hooper’s all star epic Les Miserables, but the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal exploitation.

In Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man.  Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. The rewarding dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has a strong story, topicality and humor, but it’s worth seeing just for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance. All three films are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Don’t overlook The Matchmaker, a gem from Israel or the solid thriller Deadfall that is flying under the radar this holiday season.

Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling. The Sessions is an uncommonly evocative, funny and thoughtful film about sex leading to unexpected emotional intimacy. Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism.  Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a more shopworn 007 from Daniel Craig.

The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore.  The crime drama Killing Them Softly wastes an excellent cast on a run-of-the-mill gangster story. Skip the forgettable non-comedy Lay the Favorite. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

2012 in the Movies: thoughtful geezer movies

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THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

2012 featured a crop of thoughtful films about the aged.  Of course, one of the year’s most popular indies was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the surprisingly deep story about Brits seeking a low-budget retirement in India.

All Together works much the same territory with a French sensibility and Francophone actresses Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin.

In Robot & Frank, Frank Langella’s performance elevated a curmudgeon comedy to a revealing study of getting older.

Of course, this year’s biggest geezer film will be Amour (which most of us will be able to see on January 18, 2013);  this Austrian film plumbs the ultimate issues of aging –  frailty and death – and is a lead pipe cinch to win the Foreign Language Oscar.

Now before we get all misty-eyed, let’s remember that these four movies are all foreign and indies – the Hollywood studios still run screaming from scripts about people over 40.   Still, this is a welcome trend, and, as Baby Boomers continue to age, I think we’ll see more and more good movies about older people.

2012 in the Movies: the year of the alcoholic

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Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Octavia Spencer in SMASHED

An extraordinary group of 2012 movies featured searingly realistic depictions of alcoholism.  The indie drama Smashed portrayed the drinking life and the challenges of recovery and relapse, informed by the personal experience of co-writer Susan Burke.  In a potentially star-making performance, Mary Elizabeth Winstead played half of a couple navigating life while drunk.  Can they stay together and flourish when she sobers up?  Winstead realistically took her character through the carelessness, denial, humiliation and self-degradation of drinking and the fears and determination that co-exist in her recovery.

A much bigger movie, the Hollywood hit Flight, takes on deceit’s centrality to alcoholism, and Denzel Washington brilliantly evokes the protagonist’s achingly vulnerable loneliness and self-loathing.

The excellent documentary Bill W. tells the story of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it’s quite a story.  Wilson was a reluctant movement leader. His primary passion was for business, in which his drinking killed his potential success. Instead, he achieved fame and historical importance in a field not of his choosing. As the founder, he could have easily formed AA into a hierarchy with himself at the top – and AA as his personal power base. But, once AA could stand on its own, he chose to walk away from its leadership.

The appealing documentary Paul Williams Still Alive, tells the story of the songwriter, omnipresent in the 70s, but not now.  Paul Williams is now twenty years sober and very content in his skin; he doesn’t dwell on the time when he was rich, famous and unhappy.

And in the overlooked Take This Waltz, Sarah Silverman co-stars the protagonist’s sister-in-law, a recovering alcoholic whose relapse sparks a fierce moment of truth telling.

2012 at the Movies: a resurgence of smart romantic comedies

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A dream girl comes to life in RUBY SPARKS

Just when I had branded the entire genre brain dead, several smart and engaging romantic comedies popped up in 2012.   The most inventive was Ruby Sparks,in which a shy writer writes about his imagined perfect love object until…she becomes real.  Yes, suddenly he has a real life girlfriend of his own design. Ruby Sparks takes this fantasy of a perfect partner and explores the limits of a partner that you have designed yourself.  The biggest star in Ruby Sparks is its leading lady Zoe Kazan’s ingenious screenplay – funny without being silly, profound without being pretentious, bright without being precious.

Also co-written by its female star, in this case Rashida Jones, Celeste and Jesse Forever is about a couple that is now working on an amiable divorce and are still best friends.  Once you accept the comic premise that this couple is made for each other but not as a married couple, everyone’s behavior is authentic.  Sure, he wants to get back with her when she isn’t in a place to do that – and, then, vice versa – but the characters resolve the conflict as they would in real life.  Here’s a mini-spoiler – this movie is just too smart to end in rushing to the airport or disrupting the wedding or any of the other typical rom com contrivances.

Similarly, the best thing about The Five-Year Engagement is the authenticity of the situation.  There are no wacky plot devices; this story could all really happen – and is the narrative for some couples today.

Save the Date: nothing new here

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Save the Date is an utterly unremarkable romantic comedy – and has nothing in common with the smart rom coms that I’m writing about today.  A young woman is barely ready to commit to moving in with her smitten boyfriend when he poisons the romance with an unwelcome public marriage proposal.  Then she meets her soul mate.  There is no reason for her to stay with the boyfriend or to spurn the new guy, hence there is no credible conflict in the story.

It is a waste of its star, Lizzy Caplan, who is quite good in a broader comedy 3,2,1…Frankie Go Boom from earlier this year. If you must see a romantic comedy this weekend, rent Ruby Sparks or The Five-Year Engagement.

King Kelly: a rip-roaring satire

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In the refreshing satire King Kelly, a girl strips for her webcam and aspires to become a sex website mogul.  Her monomaniacal brattiness leads to a series of bad decisions that drive her to leave her parents’ suburban Long Island  home for a madcap series of adventures, which are all recorded on a cell phone.

That the entire movie is shot on a cell phone is more than a novelty here – it enhances the urgency and chaos of the rip-roaring escapades as well as satirizing our current post-it-on-Facebook-while-it’s-happening culture.

The nuclear core of King Kelly is the main character of Kelly, brought alive in a full throttle performance by Louisa Krause.  Besides taking teen self absorption and selfishness to an unsurpassed level, Kelly combines it with astonishingly misplaced moral superiority and entitlement.  [And how do kids get to be so entitled these days?  Are there concierge suites in kindergarten where a child doesn’t need to wait her turn?]   King Kelly‘s genius is that the Kelly’s brattiness is not just unappealing, but so over-the-top as to be very, very funny.

King Kelly also satirizes our reality TV world where people are no longer capable of being embarrassed by any behavior on their part.

It’s original, funny and moves fast.   I saw King Kelly on YouTube VOD.

Hyde Park on Hudson: FDR was never so boring

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FDR was our first charismatic celebrity President in the era of radio and newsreels, a man who dominated his tumultuous times and who lived among a fascinating collection of characters.  It’s hard to imagine his life as boring, but it sure is in Hyde Park on Hudson.  Bill Murray is FDR and Lara Linney is his distant cousin and one of his mistresses.  It’s set mostly during the weekend that FDR entertained the King and Queen of England at his country home.  The problem is that the woman that Linney plays was a no-drama wallflower, and that the royal visit, while interesting, was a footnote to the history of the era.  The source material for Hyde Park on Hudson would have made a mildly entertaining one-hour segment on Masterpiece Theater – it’s not worth a visit to the theater.

Movies to See Right Now

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Charlie Hunnam and Olivia Wilde in DEADFALL

It’s the Holidays and three major releases are joining the great choices already in theaters. In Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man. Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. The rewarding dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has a strong story, topicality and humor, but it’s worth seeing just for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance. All three films are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Don’t overlook The Matchmaker, a gem from Israel or the solid thriller Deadfall that is flying under the radar this holiday season.

Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling. The Sessions is an uncommonly evocative, funny and thoughtful film about sex leading to unexpected emotional intimacy. Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism. A Late Quartet is a gripping drama with a superb cast led by Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The wild and puzzling art film Holy Motors has its moments, too.

The engrossing but overlong drama In the Family is more than just another social issue picture because of Patrick Wang’s authenticity as a writer and brilliance as a director. The indie odd couple drama Starlet packs a surprising emotional punch. In the entertaining Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren star as Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock as they collaborate on making Psycho. Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a more shopworn 007 from Daniel Craig.

The crime drama Killing Them Softly wastes an excellent cast on a run-of-the-mill gangster story. Skip the forgettable non-comedy Lay the Favorite.  The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril.

I haven’t yet seen the FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson, the critically praised French drama Rust and Bone or the Judd Apatow comedy This Is 40, which open today, or Tom Hooper’s all star epic Les Miserables or the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained, which open on Christmas Day. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is the singular comedy Sleepwalk with Me.

The Impossible: if you enjoy watching kids in peril

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In The Impossible, a family goes on a beach holiday in Thailand where a tsunami strikes and separates the parents (Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor) from each other.  Rescue operations after a massive natural disaster in a third word country are predictably chaotic.  The story is about each of the parents finding their kids, losing them, finding them again and looking for the other parent.  It is based on a true story.

If you enjoy watching human suffering, especially with children in peril (think Trauma:Life in the E.R.) and heartwarming reunifications, you may enjoy this movie.  That’s really all there is here.  It’s competently acted, but it’s just a standard kids-in-danger disaster movie.  The tsunami scenes are very good, but I did not find them as compelling as Clint Eastwood’s in Hereafter.

Oddly, Naomi Watts has garnered Best Actress nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes for this picture.  These seem more reflective of her fine body of work (Mulholland Dr., 21 Grams, Fair Game) than of her performance here, where she does a good job essentially playing a pinata.

I was very disappointed in The Impossible because director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez had combined for 2007’s The Orphanage, one of the best ghost movies I’ve ever seen.  But, The Impossible is at its core disaster movie, and it fails to rise above its genre.

Deadfall: Two killers, one shotgun and Thanksgiving dinner

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Deadfall is a solid thriller that is flying under the radar this holiday season.  Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are brother and sister running for the Canadian border after a casino heist.  They wreck their car and split up.  The brother sets off overland, leaving a trail of murderous carnage.   The local cops are on the alert, including the sheriff’s deputy daughter (Kate Mara).   Meanwhile,  a bad luck boxer (Charlie Hannum of Sons of Anarchy) is released from prison, impulsively commits another crime and is headed for his parents’ (Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson) remote northern cabin.  The sister hitches a ride with the boxer.  Everybody converges at the boxer’s parents’ place for an extremely stressful Thanksgiving dinner.

An essential element of this thriller is that all of the families are dysfunctional.   The siblings have survived a hellish upbringing, from which the older brother has rescued his little sister; unfortunately, he has emerged as a psychopath himself and has infantilized the sister.  The relationship between the boxer and his father has been poisoned by a long-festering dispute.  The sheriff resents and belittles his bright and highly professional daughter while doting on her idiot brothers.

The core of the movie is the evolving relationship between Wilde’s sister and Hunnam’s boxer.  Neither knows that the other is on the lam.  She cynically seduces him because he is useful.  But then she starts to fall for him, and, by Thanksgiving dinner, her loyalties are uncertain.

Sissy Spacek is brilliant as the boxer’s mom, who must steer over the wreckage of the relationship between her son and her husband, and who must then serve a Thanksgiving dinner to a volatile killer who is holding a shotgun on the other guests.  She is a great actor, and she’s as good here as in any of her signature performances.

The cinematography, characters, acting and the directorial choices by Stefan Ruzowitzky are excellent.  What keeps Deadfall from being one of the year’s best is some trite, TV movie level dialogue along the way.  Still, it’s a good watch.

Note: This is NOT the 1993 Deadfall, with Nicholas Cage even more over-the-top than usual.