The Matchmaker: a character-driven gem from Israel

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Fascinating characters make good stories and good movies, and the Israeli gem The Matchmaker has them aplenty.   A middle class teenager falls into a very unusual summer job – the “spy guy” for a matchmaker based in a Haifa neighborhood where prostitutes and smugglers ply their trades.  His job is to shadow prospective brides and grooms to verify their suitability for a match.  The kid is a pretty normal teen with an affection for detective fiction and an emerging talent for writing, and we see the other characters through his prism.

The Matchmaker is set in 1968, when many Israeli adults were Holocaust survivors who refused to talk about the Holocaust.  Ironically, the adult conspiracy of silence means that the teen characters know less about the Holocaust than do other kids around the world.  Almost all the adult characters are emotionally scarred in ways the kids really can’t understand.

The matchmaker himself is a shambling, secretive and somewhat shady guy, with unexplained facial scars.  He is an uncanny, but not always perfect, judge of human foibles.  He advises his clients, “I find you what you need, not what you want”.  It turns out that matchmaking is his passion, but he makes his living from another, less legal business.

The matchmaker himself pines for a charming but extremely emotionally fragile woman who works with him.  There’s also a kind, beautiful and lovelorn woman who owns a theater and is a dwarf.  We also have an obsessive librarian who is even more tightly wound than we see at first.  Oh, and the kid’s best friend’s American cousin comes for a visit, and she’s smokin’ hot.

So The Matchmaker is a coming of age movie, but one unlike any you have seen because of the singular characters.  Credit goes to Director Avi Lesher, who adapted the screenplay from a novel by Amir Gutfreund.

DVD of the Week: Sleepwalk with Me

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As Sleepwalk With Me begins, the filmmaker lets the audience figure out three basic things about the main character.  First, he has the perfect girlfriend and, no matter what happens in his life, he will never do any better.  Second, despite her patience after being together eight years, it’s time for him to marry her or not.  Third, he is absolutely unready to make that commitment.

That filmmaker is co-writer/co-director Mike Birbiglia, a standup comic whose screenplay is based on his autobiographical one man show.  His protagonist’s unpromising career as a comedian is feeding his ambivalence to marry a woman whose career has already stabilized.  As he feels more and more relationship and career pressures, he develops REM Behavior Disorder – a rare and particularly dangerous form of sleepwalking.

The sleepwalking, of course, sets up some funny moments, as do the stumbling start to the standup career, the girlfriend angst and the usual maddening set of parents.  In a comic triumph, Birbiglia gently and intelligently milks the laughs out of each situation while never losing focus on the fundamental truth of each situation.

The girlfriend is beautiful, good-hearted, smart, sexy and full of life.  She is played impeccably by Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under. Starting Out in the Evening).  Veterans James Rebhorn and Carole Kane are excellent as the protagonist’s bickering parents.  Here’s a nice touch:  the pioneer scientist of sleep disorder science himself, Stanford professor Dr. William C. Dement, provides a funny cameo.

Movies to See Right Now

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Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

My top picks remain the same. 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.

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.

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

My DVD pick this week is the fun and funny Men in Black 3.

DVD of the Week: Men in Black 3

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Our favorite alien-zapping secret agents return in the delightful Men in Black 3.   We still have the yapping Will Smith paired with the Titan of Terseness, Tommy Lee Jones.  In this edition of the  sci fi comedy franchise, Smith must travel back to 1969 to save his partner and the world from a new odious and scary alien villain, Boris The Animal.  We get a Mad Men size dose of 1969, including Andy Warhol’s Factory, the Miracle Mets, the Moon Launch, some hippies and lots of skinny neckties.

The cast is all good, but the most inspired casting has to be Josh Brolin as the young Tommy Lee Jones.  Michael Stuhlbarg, last seen as the uptight depressive in A Serious Man, here almost steals the movie as a blissed out but hyper-perceptive alien.  Michael Chernus, so good in a serious role in Vera Farmiga’s Higher Ground, is excellent as a shady geek. Bill Hader is very funny as Warhol.

I’m usually not one for franchise movies, but MIB3 is gloriously entertaining.  BTW in the trailer (but not the movie) we briefly glimpse the torch-wielding Columbia Picture lady wearing MIB shades – very cool.

Movies to See Right Now

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LIFE OF PI

Three films on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far are now 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.

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.  Chasing Mavericks is a predictable and heartwarming true story that is just OK for most movie-goers , but is a Must See if you’re into surfing and/or have an interest in the Santa Cruz and San Mateo coast. Cloud Atlas delivers six fast paced stories set across six centuries with lots of movie stars playing multiple roles; it’s fun to watch, but it’s not as good a film as the ones listed above. A Royal Affair is an overlong historical costume drama with two fine performances.  Skip the forgettable non-comedy Lay the Favorite.

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

My DVD pick this week is the superb and important Beasts of the Southern Wild, which is currently #2 on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Starlet: an odd couple with a surprising bond

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In the indie relationship drama Starlet, a 21-year-old woman is living in a seedy part of the San Fernando Valley and working in an even sketchier industry, when she buys an old thermos from a woman sixty years older than she.  She finds a considerable sum of cash hidden within the thermos, keeps it, and, out of guilt, insinuates herself into the old woman’s life.  The octogenarian is initially resistant, but a bond grows between them; each has a need that is revealed during the movie.  It’s worth sitting back and going with the leisurely story, because the payoff at the end is surprisingly moving.

Model Dree Hemingway (daughter of Mariel and great-granddaughter of Ernest) demonstrates an engaging screen presence as the young woman.  In her first movie credit, Besedka Johnson is astonishingly good as the older woman, both formidable and vulnerable.  Stella Maeve is very convincing as the young woman’s nogoodnik roommate.

In the Family: debut of a brilliant director

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6-year-old Chip has two daddies, Cody and Joey.  When his biological father Cody is killed in an auto accident, Cody’s sister takes custody of Chip, and Joey fights to get his son back.  Writer-director Patrick Wang stars as Joey, and what makes In the Family more than just another social issue picture is Wang’s authenticity as a writer and brilliance as a director.

Wang uses long scenes shot by a static camera and an almost silent soundtrack to draw in the audience.   We watch Joey being told of Cody’s death through a hospital window and we only hear the passing truck traffic.  We see the kitchen when Joey and Chip come home after the funeral – Joey sits stunned, fingering the mail, and Chip, yearning for some normalcy, sets up beverages.  The film climaxes with Joey’s testimony at a deposition, mostly shot from the end of a conference table.  These are some of the most compelling scenes that I’ve seen this year.

The problem with In the Family is that it is 2 hours and 47 minutes long.  There are long films that need to be long (e.g., Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), but this isn’t one of them.  There’s probably a 130 minute indie hit somewhere inside In the Family.

It’s clear that Patrick Wang is a fine actor and an unusually talented writer-director (who needs to find an equally talented editor).  I’m certainly looking forward to his next work.

Lay the Favorite: purported to be a comedy

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What a disappointment.  Lay the Favorite, opening this weekend, sports a fine director, Stephen Frears (The Queen, High Fidelity, The Snapper), and a promising cast (Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Carroll Lynch).  But the story fails, and it’s just not funny.

Willis plays a Vegas sports gambler who apprentices a naive young thing (Hall).  They face the ups and downs of sports betting, his embittered wife, a welching better (Lynch) and a sleazeball bookie (Vince Vaughan).  Nothing in the story rings true.  Rebecca Hall, so good as the classy smart girl in Vicky Christina Barcelona, plays Florida trailer trash – even wearing Daisy Dukes throughout the whole movie – and it just doesn’t work.  Worse, Vince Vaughan takes his usual wild man to an even more manic level, which falls flat.

Skip it.

Killing Them Softly: almost as good as a Sopranos rerun

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In Killing Them Softly, a low-level gangster gets two hapless losers to hold up a poker game that is protected by the mob.  The mob, of course, brings in an enforcer to put things right.   Perhaps Killing Them Softly would have been a great gangster movie in the 60s, before Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and David Chase raised the bar.  It was a big hit at Cannes, but that crowd may not be used to watching The Sopranos.

We know what is going to happen in the plot.  Fortunately, we have some excellent actors, led by Brad Pitt in a character role as the ruthless and nihilistic mob enforcer.  Pitt’s enforcer brings in a trusted colleague, a hit man from New York (James Gandolfini) to help him out – but the hit man is emotionally damaged from a betrayed romance and can only focus on drinking and whoring.  Richard Jenkins plays an unusually squeamish mid-level manager in the mob.  Scoot McNairy (one of the “house guests” in Argo) and Ben Mendelsohn (the most psychopathic criminal in Animal Kingdom) are especially good as the doomed hold-up men.

As good as the cast is, there’s just not much here.  An attempt to intertwine a thread about the 2008 economic collapse and Presidential election is a misguided device that only serves as a distraction.

Coming up on TV: Anatomy of a Murder and its great jazz soundtrack

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Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting Anatomy of a Murder on December 9.  I love this film for its great courtroom scene, for the great performances by James Stewart, George C. Scott, Ben Gazzara and Lee Remick and for its exquisite pacing.  But today, I want to recommend it because of its great jazz soundtrack by none other than Duke Ellington.  It’s one of the few movie soundtrack CDs that I own.

The music perfectly complements the story of a murder investigation that reveals more and more ambiguity as it proceeds.  Stewart’s character relaxes by dabbling in jazz piano, and Duke himself has a cameo leading a bar band in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (of all places).

Here’s the music under the opening credits.

Here’s Duke Ellington’s cameo.