Pearl Jam Twenty: a good first 43 minutes…

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Just watched Pearl Jam Twenty on the PBS series American Masters.  It’s Cameron Crowe’s (Almost Famous) documentary on the formation and rise of the band Pearl Jam.  My initial test for any rock band documentary is whether it’s better than an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music.

The first 43 minutes of Pearl Jam Twenty is pretty good.  There’s the drug overdose death of the lead singer in Pearl Jam’s predecessor band (usually the fatal rock OD is AFTER the rise to stardom). There’s a wonderful video of an early performance where new lead singer Eddie Vedder unleashes the rage in his voice when angered by an overaggressive bouncer during a performance at a small club.  Finally, playing before a festival crowd of 60,000 for the first time, Vedder ends a song, gazes across the masses and inhales, literally breathing in the sweet smell of success.

But then the documentary tails off, and there’s not much in the last hour except for Vedder’s ad lib at an awards show cracking up Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant backstage.  If you’re a big Pearl Jam fan, then the last hour is probably worthwhile.

Blackthorn: Butch Cassidy rides again…through Bolivia

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What if Butch Cassidy had survived that 1908 shootout with the Bolivian army?  That’s the premise of this stylized Western starring Sam Shepherd as Butch.

I love Westerns, and I found this one to be satisfying but not exceptional.  It’s a beautifully shot film with sound acting.  Unfortunately, once we get past the inspired premise, the screenplay is pretty routine.

Sam Shepherd’s presence and features make him well suited to play an icon, whether Chuck Yeager (The Right Stuff) or Butch Cassidy.  Eduardo Noriega (so good as the drug smuggler in Transsiberian) reeks unreliability as the one person who has what Butch needs.  Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) has a gift for hangdog performances, and he gives another good one as the Wiley Coyote of Pinkerton agents.

This is the directorial debut of noted screenwriter Mateo Gil (Open Your Eyes/Vanilla Sky, The Sea Inside).  Gil has the directorial touch – he makes full use of the dramatic Bolivian landscape and engaging Bolivian cast.

Margin Call: Will the greedy survive?

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This is a taut drama about an investment bank facing the financial collapse of 2008.  In his first feature, writer-director J.C. Chandor (whose father worked on Wall Street) successfully creates a pressure cooker of a tale.

The story is compressed into a critical 24 hours in the life of the company.  It is set in darkened offices lit only with computer monitors that are gleaming with menacing graphs and spreadsheets.

Stanley Tucci is compelling as the bean counter who discovers an existential threat.  Kevin Spacey (also always good) is the corporate lifer who must clean up the mess.  Don’t overlook the depth of Paul Bettany’s performance as an amoral and personally empty corporate climber who is in it only for the sport and for the adrenaline, using his bonuses merely to keep score.  Finally, in Margin Call‘s most superb performance, Jeremy Irons oozes menacing confidence and power as the CEO who do anything to save his company.

Unfortunately, Chandor cannot create acting range for Simon Baker and Demi Moore, who are out of their depths among the otherwise fine cast.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DqFRsPrns]

All New: Movies to See Right Now

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Michael Shannon in TAKE SHELTER

The best of the current crop of films is Take Shelter , Jeff Nichols’ brilliant tale of a psychotic breakdown with Oscar-worthy performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain.  One of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

50/50 is an engaging cancer comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen.  Margin Call is a taut financial meltdown drama with superb performances by Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci.  The Ides of March is a fine political drama with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney.  Drive is a stylishly arty and ultraviolent action film with Ryan Gosling.

Blackthorn is a beautiful but flawed Western set in Bolivia.   Dirty Girl is a fun but unexceptional romp with promising newcomers Juno Temple and Jeremy Dozier.

You can still find The Guard, the Irish dark comedy starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, and Sarah’s Key, an excellent drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a journalist investigating very personal aspects of a French episode in the Holocaust. The Debt, with Helen Mirren, is a multigenerational thriller that addresses the costs of both truth and untruth. 

I haven’t yet seen Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In, which opens this week. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the Week is the heartwarming documentary Buck. Other recent DVD picks have been Incendies (the year’s best movie so far),  the very original teen misfit movie Terri, the delightful indie comedy Turkey Bowl  and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979).

50/50: what’s funnier than cancer?

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who has reliably excellent taste in his choice of movie scripts) stars in this cancer comedy.  Yes, cancer comedy.  Seth Rogen plays his buddy.  And it’s funny.  Pretty damn funny.

Writer Will Reiser takes the story from his own bout with the Big C.   Reiser’s real life friend Seth Rogen helped him through the ordeal.

As usual, Gordon-Levitt is excellent.  And, if you’re out chasing skirts while bald and weak from chemotherapy, who could be a better wing man than Seth Rogen?

Anna Kendrick (so good in Up in the Air) plays the cringingly green psychologist assigned to help the patient face his 50/50 chance of survival.   Bryce Dallas Howard (excellent as the achingly fragile survivor in Hereafter) plays the girlfriend with the best intentions but neither aptitude for care giving or unlimited loyalty.  Angelica Huston plays not just another smothering mom.  They’re all very good – good enough to play against Gordon-Levitt and Rogen.  So are Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) as fellow cancer patients.

Take Shelter: digging his fingernails into sanity

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Michael Shannon (Shotgun Stories, Agent Van Alden in Boardwalk Empire) is perhaps our best creep actor.   And what’s creepier than watching a solid parent and spouse enduring a full-fledged psychotic breakdown?

Shannon plays the most grounded guy in America until he starts having terrifying dreams and then hallucinations.  One of his parents is mentally ill, and he is determined to resist a breakdown and protect his family.  Unlike in a lesser screenplay, Shannon’s protagonist is very aware that he may be going crazy and is digging his fingernails into sanity.

Shannon gave a breakthrough performance in Shotgun Stories, by writer/director Jeff Nichols.  (In the excellent Shotgun Stories, Nichols created a dysfunctional family with a father so dismissive of his offspring that he non-named them Son, Kid and Boy.)  This time, Nichols has given Shannon the role of a lifetime, for which Shannon should get a dark horse Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

You may have noticed that this is Jessica Chastain’s year (The Debt, The Tree of Life, The Help, Texas Killing Fields), and Chastain should receive an Oscar nod for her supporting performance as Shannon’s wife.  Chastain must react to her husband’s behavior, which starts out quirky, becomes troublesome and spirals down to GET ME OUT OF HERE.

Nichols, Shannon and Chastain have given us one of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5U4TtYpKIc]

DVD of the Week: Turkey Bowl

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This delightful indie comedy is set in a group of friends’ annual touch football game. Take a bunch of friends that haven’t seen each other for a while and put them in a competitive situation, and you’ve got a promising premise. Newcomer writer-director Kyle Smith pulls off a tight, well-paced 62 minutes of smart laughs.

The cast of relative unknowns is very good, especially Tom DiMenna and Bob Turton. At the screening that I attended, Smith said that the football game was tightly structured in the screenplay, but much of the dialogue was improvised by the cast.Smith financed the film with $25,000 that he earned from a reality TV show, and shot it over ten days in an East LA city park.

Smith is a native of Columbia, Missouri, and college football fans will note a very funny reference to an infamous Colorado-Missouri game.

After an earlier release on iTunes and VOD, Turkey Bowl is out on DVD.  Reward this bright and enterprising filmmaker, and rent this film – you won’t be disappointed.

I am adding Turkey Bowl to my list of Best Sports Movies to represent touch football.

DVD of the Week: Terri

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We’ve all seen the teen misfit movie.  But Terri has some originality and lots of heart.  Jacob Wysocki plays an overweight teen caring for his mentally ill uncle.  He doesn’t have much going for him until John C. Reilly’s school counselor intervenes, sometimes clumsily (who knows what will make a teen respond?).  Soon there’s a ripple effect among other troubled teens.  Screenwriter Patrick Dewitt deserves some plaudits for the authenticity of the teen characters.

Coming up on TV: M*A*S*H*’s precursor

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Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting Battle Circus (1955) on October 7.  It’s not a great movie, but Baby Boomers will recognize many similarities to 1970’s MASH.   Battle Circus stars Humphrey Bogart as a doctor in a US Army mobile hospital unit in the Korean War. As in MASH, there’s plenty of casualty-laden helicopters, smart ass humor, partying and nurse-chasing.

Of course, Battle Circus‘ story came directly out of the then-contemporary Korean War. MASH was adapted from the 1968 novel by Richard Hooker, who had served in such a unit 15 years before.  And, of course, Robert Altman framed MASH so that, although it was set in the Korean War, it was really about the Vietnam War.

(By the way, the novel and the 1970 movie were titled MASH, and the epic TV series was titled M*A*S*H*. )

 

DVD of the Week: Buck

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Buck is a documentary about real-life horse whisperer Buck Brannaman, an exceedingly grounded and gentle man who knows everything about horse behavior.  But the movie is more about human behavior,  about the disturbing crucible that formed Buck, and about what we can learn about people from their handling of horses.

Fortunately, Director Cindy Meehl realized that she had a great story and got out of the way.  The understated guitar-based score never becomes melodramatic.  And Meehl never lets the admiring talking heads elevate Buck to more than what he is, which is remarkable enough.  This movie could have easily been painfully corny or pretentious and is neither.  I’d happily view it again today.

Buck’s own background is so nasty that it would totally unremarkable for him to have emerged mean or emotionally crippled – and he is the farthest from either.  With some help from loving people, Buck has chosen to become something different from his apparent fate.  In this way, Buck could be a companion piece to Mike Leigh’s Another Year.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMm5uoZtXw]