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.
It’s going to hard to find Terri in theaters, but it’s well worth it.
On July 28, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast The Battle of Algiers, the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters. Although it looks like a documentary, it is not. Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching strategy councils of each side. Urban insurgency and counter-insurgency are nasty, brutal and not very short – and we see some horrifically inhumane butchering by both sides.
Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency. In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders.
In addition, Criterion is about to release The Battle of Algiers in one of its magnificent DVDs.
It’s not often that I get accused of being too high brow, but my friend Steve has criticized my heretofore well-regarded list of 10 Best Prison Movies for not including Women in Chains (1972). Women in Chains is part of the subgenre of women-in-prison exploitation movies. A prison setting offers a filmmaker the possibility of violence, sex and S&M to exploit. With women’s prisons, nude shower scenes and catfights are added to the mix. Steve fondly remembers this aspect of Women in Chains. But, Steve, it was a made-for-TV movie, so it couldn’t have been THAT racy.
My own guilty pleasure from 70s prison exploitation films is 1971’s 1,000 Convicts and a Woman, which I saw in a drive-in during a misspent evening of an otherwise upstanding youth. 1,000 Convicts and a Woman doesn’t make BigBustOut because it’s not about a women’s prison. Instead, the oversexed daughter of the warden returns from finishing school and moves into the men’s prison. Played by vamp-eyed blonde Alexandra Hay, she immediately begins to tease the incarcerated, with forseeable results.
The cream of the crop are still the sweet, funny and thoughtful comedies Beginners and Midnight in Paris, along with the riveting documentary Project Nim. Buck is a wonderful documentary about a real-life horse whisperer with a compelling human story. All four are on my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread). So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller. The Trip delivers some chuckles. Turkey Bowl is a delightful indie comedy available from iTunes. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times explores journalism’s evolution in an age of new media, and I recommend it for hard news junkies.
In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.
I haven’t yet seen Sarah’s Key or Road to Nowhere, which open this weekend, or Tabloid, which opens widely. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
On July 23, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting 1978’s Midnight Express. This film is so gripping that, thirty-plus years after its release, you can’t hear “Turkish prison” without immediately thinking of Midnight Express. It’s probably done more to keep American kids from bringing drugs into Turkey than any other factor. Midnight Express is based on a true story, and is amped up considerably by Oliver Stone’s screenplay. Nominated for six Oscars, it won two.
TCM is also showing Cool Hand Luke on July 23. Both are on my list of 10 Best Prison Movies
Potiche, the delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery, is the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine Deneuve (as if she needs one). DeNeuve plays a 1977 potiche, French for “trophy housewife”, married to a guy who is a male chauvinist pig both by choice and cluelessness. He is also the meanest industrialist in France – Ebenezer Scrooge would be a softie next to this guy – and the workers in his factories are about to explode. He becomes incapacitated, and she must run the factory.
Now, this is a familiar story line for gender comedy – so why is it so damn funny? It starts with the screenplay, which is smart and quick like the classic screwball comedy that American filmmakers don’t make anymore. And the cast is filled with proven actors who play each comic situation with complete earnestness, no matter how absurd.
Director Francois Ozon, best known in the US for Swimming Pool and 8 Women, adapted the screenplay from a play and has a blast skewering late-70s gender roles and both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Gerard Depardieu plays the Communist mayor, who is both the husband’s nemesis and the wife’s former fling. Two of the very best French comic players, Fabrice Luchini and Karen Viard, shine in co-starring roles as the husband and his secretary.
Beginning on July 22, in Sarah’s Key, Kristen Scott Thomas stars in another French film, this time as a journalist tracking the story of a girl during the WWII roundup of Jews in France. Co-stars Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) and Aidan Quinn.
Also on July 22, 1970s cult director Monte Hellman presents Road to Nowhere, just after he turned 79 on July 12. His signature is the hard-edged road movie.
On July 29, we’ll have another showcase for Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) in The Guard, an Irish dark comedy about a lowbrow cop happening upon an international drug conspiracy.
On August 5, we’ll see The Names of Love, in which Sarah Forestier has gotten great buzz for her performance as a flighty lefty Frenchwoman who seeks to educate and convert conservatives by sleeping with them.
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.
The cream of the crop are still the sweet, funny and thoughtful comedies Beginners and Midnight in Paris, along with the riveting documentary Project Nim. All three are on my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
Buck is a wonderful documentary about a real-life horse whisperer with a compelling human story. If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread). So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller. The Trip delivers some chuckles. Turkey Bowl is a delightful indie comedy available from iTunes. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times explores journalism’s evolution in an age of new media, and I recommend it for hard news junkies.
In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.
Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times takes advantage of insider access to the newsroom and editorial conferences at the Times to explore the transition from the Era of Print Media to the Era of New Media Age. Bopping between topics like WikiLeaks, Gawker.com, Iraq coverage, the Tribune Company bankruptcy and ProPublica, Page One is kind of all over the place, but I recommend it for hard news junkies (such as myself).
Fortunately, director Andrew Rossi recognizes an appealing character in NYT media columnist David Carr and lets the idiosyncratic and passionate, yet highly professional, Carr carry most of the film. Rossi also makes the exceedingly wise choice not to predict how journalism will evolve in the new environment.
