DVD of the Week: Beasts of the Southern Wild

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Here’s a great movie unlike any you have seen before. A small girl and her dad live off the grid in a tiny hamlet on a Southern Louisiana tidal bayou. Responsible for their day-by-day survival by fishing and gathering, the dad is stressed, self-medicating and ailing. Then a killer hurricane threatens to obliterate their home, their way of life and them.

The story is told from the child’s point of view. The audience experiences both her reality as she understands it and, when she switches off reality, her imagination. In her mind, threats can take the form of prehistoric beasts called aurochs. Writer-director Benh Zeitlin shot the film from child height with a handheld camera, and used an entirely untrained cast. The result is a boisterous panoply that celebrates the indomitable human spirit.

In her first role, Quvenzhane Wallis carries the movie. She is on screen at least 70% of the time, and her performance is stirring. Zeitlin audaciously bet his debut feature on the performance of a six-year-old. He went all in and won the jackpot.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a special film, and one of my Best Movies of 2012 – So Far. Universally critically acclaimed, it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the first film award at Cannes.

Hitchcock: it takes two to make Psycho

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In Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren star as Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock as they collaborate on making Psycho.  It’s a glimpse into their relationship and their professional teamwork, both challenged by Hitchcock’s quirkiness.  In a very successful device, the serial killer Ed Gein (who inspired Psycho) appears as a character visible only to Hitchcock.

Of course, Mirren and Hopkins (beneath heavy makeup) are excellent as always.  Scarlett Johansson is very good as Janet Leigh, as are Danny Huston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jessica Biel and Toni Colette in supporting roles.  (The actor who plays Ed Gein, Michael Wincott, resembles Warren Oates, one of my favorite actors from 60s and 70s.)

Hitchcock is entertaining and even rises to exhilarating when Hitchcock paces the theater lobby at Psycho’s premiere, waiting for the audience to scream at the shower scene.

Movies to See Right Now

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Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

The strong autumn movie season continues.  In Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man.  I recommend the rewarding dramedy Silver Linings Playbook for its 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.

Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. 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.

Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a Daniel Craig’s more shopworn 007. The Paperboy is a deliciously pulpy crime drama, enhanced by a trashy Nicole Kidman and a canny Macy Gray.

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.

I haven’t yet seen the crime drama Killing Them Softly, which opens this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

This week, there’s no DVD of the Week.  There are too many good movies in theaters for you to stay home.

Life of Pi: wry and visually astonishing

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In Life of Pi, Ang Lee’s visually spectacular version of the Yann Martel fable, an Indian teenager is shipwrecked and must share a lifeboat for 227 days with a Bengal tiger.  This is no Disney tiger – it will eat the teenager if it can.  Packaged as a survivalist adventure, Life of Pi turns out to be a sage commentary on storytelling.

Over an hour of the movie is spent floating helplessly on the seas, but this part of the story doesn’t lag because of the wry humor (the tiger is named Richard Parker, for instance), the ever-present menace (said tiger) and the incredible spectacle created by Lee.  Life of Pi is one of the most visually astonishing films ever.  In scene after scene, we gasp at a flotilla of flying fish chased by torpedo-like tuna, a floating island filled with meerkats, nighttime views of bio-luminescent sea creatures and on and on.

And then there’s the tiger.  Almost all of the tiger footage is CGI – and I never for a moment doubted that I was watching a real tiger.  I saw it in 2D, but I imagine that Life of Pi might be even more magical in 3D, and one of the few 3D movies worth the premium ticket price.

Holy Motors: wild and puzzling

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Holy Motors is a wild and puzzling art film by the French director Leos Carax.  A man named Oscar (the pockmarked Denis Lavant) gets into a white stretch limo driven by a reserved elderly blonde and heads to the first of his “appointments” throughout Paris.  He emerges from the limo disguised as a contorted elderly beggar woman and panhandles for a while.  For his next appointment, he puts on a motion capture suit and acts out a sci-fi scene that culminates in reptilian space alien sex.  We see that the inside of the limo is his dressing room, and later learn that he is acting out scenes to hidden cameras for someone’s viewing pleasure.  Each scene is in a different genre – sci-fi, domestic drama, absurdist, crime action and even romantic musical.

It’s up to the audience to connect the dots – and some dots are just not connectable.  As confused as we are, however, we keep paying attention to try to figure it all out.  Carax’s success here is that he keeps surprising us with stuff that no audience could anticipate.  However, if you need a linear and comprehensible story, you will hate this movie.

I don’t think that I would enjoy the film a second time as much without the element of surprise.  And some of the episodes work better than others.  The motion capture and absurdist segments were riveting, and I loved Oscar leading a head-banging accordion orchestra through the nighttime streets.  The deathbed melodrama didn’t work as well for me, and when Kylie Minogue’s character burst into song in the romantic musical, I gagged. I did appreciate the impressive visuals, the loving shots of Paris and the many homages to films of the past.

Spoiler Alert:  To give you an idea of how wacked out Holy Motors is, here’s the synopsis of the absurdist episode.  Oscar leaves the limo dressed as a filthy and demonic troll, uncovers a man-hole and descends to the sewers under the streets.  He pops up in the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the gravestones are engraved with websites.  He rampages through the cemetery, eating the flowers left on the graves.  He crashes a fashion shoot and bites off the fingers of the photographer’s assistant.  He then licks the armpit of the supermodel (Eva Mendes), smearing it with blood, picks her up and carries her off to his lair in the sewers.  There he rips off some of her gown and refashions it into a burqa.  Then he sits her (burqa-clad) on a bench, takes off his own clothes and lays next to her with an erection.  Wowza.

Silver Linings Playbook: strong story, humor and Jennifer Lawrence

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In the rewarding family dramedy Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper plays Pat, a guy who is trying to conquer his mental illness without medication, and it’s not working out well for him.  Although his mom springs him from a locked psychiatric facility, he is prone to violent meltdowns.  Worse, he still has the delusion that he can get back with his estranged wife; but it’s clear that his marriage and his teaching career have been irretrievably wrecked by his past behaviors (and there is the matter of restraining orders).  He meets a young widow (Jennifer Lawrence) who also has enough issues to know her way around the menu of psych meds, and his life changes in ways that he can’t anticipate.

The fine filmmaker David O. Russell (The Fighter, Three Kings, Flirting with Disaster, I Heart Huckabees) invests the first half of the film is establishing the seriousness of Pat’s disorder and the impact on his family.   Russell applies enough humor to keep this part bearable, but it can discomfort folks expecting a regular rom com.  But this is the key to the film’s success, because he makes the illness realistic and the opposite of cute.  If the plot followed the usual rom com arc and pacing, the film would be phony and insulting.

It’s difficult to describe the brilliance of Jennifer Lawrence’s performance.  Her Tiffany is at once volatile, damaged and enticing.  Lawrence demands the focus of the audience in every scene.  She was justifiably nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for Winter’s Bone, my pick for 2010’s top movie.  This performance is as least as good.

We also see Robert DeNiro playing Cooper’s father as a guy who is just as crazy as his son, but neither diagnosed or medicated.  In another outstanding performance, Jacki Weaver (Oscar nod for Animal Kingdom), plays the strong and long-suffering mom who must steer her hair-trigger son and tinderbox husband away from self-inflicted disasters.  John Ortiz is wonderfully appealing as Pat’s henpecked buddy.

It’s worth seeing Silver Linings Playbook for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance alone, but I recommend the film overall for its strong story, topicality and humor.

Movies to See Right Now

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LINCOLN

Everyone should see Lincoln, in which Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis push aside the marble statue and bring to life Abraham Lincoln the man. It’s a top-of-the-line political thriller, and one of the year’s best movies.

Argo is Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. 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.

Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a Daniel Craig’s more shopworn 007. The Paperboy is a deliciously pulpy crime drama, enhanced by a trashy Nicole Kidman and a canny Macy Gray.

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.

Paul Williams Still Alive, an affecting documentary about the songwriter, omnipresent in the 70s, but not now, is available on Video On Demand. The poignant French geezer comedy All Together is also available on Video On Demand.

I haven’t yet seen the highly anticipated dramedy Silver Linings Playbook, Ang Lee’s visually stunning Life of Pi or Hitchcock (with Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johannsen), which have opened this holiday weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is the hilariously awful Troll 2.

In the next two weeks: 2012’s most promising movies

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LIFE OF PI

Lincoln, Argo, Flight and The Sessions have been in theaters and three more of 2012’s most promising films open in the next week or so.

Silver Linings Playbook won the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and looks to be a crowd pleaser that will be in the running for the Best Picture Oscar.  It opens today.

So does Life of Pi, Ang Lee’s visually spectacular version of the Yann Martel fable.

Next weekend, we’ll get to see Killing Them Softly,  a stylishly violent crime movie with Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins and Sam Shepherd.  It was a big hit at Cannes.

Here’s the trailer for Silver Linings Playbook.

Stream of the Week: Troll 2 – really the worst movie?

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I love movies that are unintentionally hilarious – at once both undeniably bad and entertaining.  Troll 2 has recently gotten some buzz as the worst movie of all time”, largely because of Best Worst Movie, a 2009 documentary about how horrible and funny Troll 2 is.  It may not be the worst, but Troll 2 belongs in the conversation and has earned a place in my Bad Movie Festival.

A white bread suburban family vacations in the mountain village of Nilbog (“Goblin” spelled backwards, get it?) in which all the locals are vegetarian predator goblins who can take the form of regular humans.  The goblins are able to turn humans into vegetative matter (a green slime) that the goblins can ingest.

The movie was made with very primitive production values by a non-English speaking Italian crew and a non-Italian speaking Z-list American cast.  Inept acting and directing aside, the screenplay is probably the source of the most laughs.  There’s the dead grandpa Seth who keeps appearing to the boy, the boy’s saving his family by urinating on the family dinner, the make out scene so “hot” that it pops popcorn and so much more. Another of the funny aspects of Troll 2 is that it is completely unrelated to the movie Troll and has no trolls in it.

Troll 2 is available on Netflix Streaming.  You can see some of the finer bits of Troll 2 by doing a YouTube search for “You can’t piss on hospitality” and “Troll 2 O my God”.  Here’s the trailer.

 

As to Best Worst Movie, it’s very entertaining.  There are some squirmy scenes with cast members whose mental health issues have since worsened.  The Italian director is a jerk who, although happy to bask in Troll 2‘s new found cult status,  is narcissistically unwilling to acknowledge its badness.  But the goodhearted goofiness of star George Hardy, a cast of good sports and Troll 2‘s cult following dominates, and Best Worst Movie is fun to watch.  Best Worst Move is available on DVD.

A Royal Affair: Denmark sticks its toe into the Age of Enlightenment

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The historical costume drama A Royal Affair begins when a teenage noblewoman is married off to a mad king.  The king benefits from the companionship of a new doctor.  The doctor is a man of the Enlightenment, and finds a kindred spirit in the young queen, which leads to… Amazingly enough, all this actually happened in late 18th century Denmark.

It’s a romance and tragedy of operatic depth, and, unfortunately, operatic length.  It would make a gripping 90-minute film, but A Royal Affair slogs through 137 minutes.   As a result the sharpness of the tragedy becomes dulled into mere grimness.

A Royal Affair is a showcase for the charismatic Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen (After the Wedding), who plays the doctor.  Mikkelsen is probably best known as the James Bond villain with the tears of blood.  Newcomer Mikkel Boe Folsgaard cleverly plays the mad king by focusing on his lack of impulse control and his involuntary giggle and growls.

A Royal Affair won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and is considered a contender for the Foreign Language Oscar.