I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions of some key late October releases. First, we have two romps, the sex comedy Tamara Drewe and the tongue-in-cheek actioner RED this weekend. Then we step up in class on October 22 with the Wall Street documentary Inside Job and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter. And October 29 brings us the eagerly awaited (at least by me) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.
The early buzz is that Inside Job may be this year’s best documentary and one of the year’s best films. Here’s the trailer.
Rooney Mara and Jesse Eisenberg open The Social Network
The Social Network is still the top choice in theaters this week. The birth story of Facebook is a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires. It’s a triumph for actor Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man), director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). It’s already on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.
Howl has a fine performance by James Franco, but is marred by an unsuccessful animation.
It’s Kind of a Funny Story is a light and wry coming-of-age comedy set in a locked psychiatric facility. It’s good-hearted fluff with a few chuckles and an unexpectedly restrained and heartfelt performance by Zach Galifianakis.
Without strongly recommending it, I can say that The Town is a satisfying Hollywood thriller. You can skip Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger.
My DVD of the Week is The Day of the Jackal, like The American, the tale of an international master assassin – only fact-based and even better. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TVinclude Mister Roberts, Repo Man and Arsenic and Old Lace, all coming up on TCM.
This is a light and wry coming-of-age comedy set in a locked psychiatric facility by Directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (Half Nelson, Sugar). It’s hard for me to find humor in psych wards, but this good-hearted fluff had a few chuckles. Keir Gilchrist and Emma Roberts star as the teens. But the film is more of a showcase for Zach Galifianakis’ restrained and textured performance, less Wild Man and more heartfelt – who knew?
My DVD of the Week is The Day of the Jackal (1973), like The American, the tale of an international master assassin – only fact-based and even better. In Day of the Jackal, French security forces are tipped off to a plot to assassinate President DeGaulle and they eventually figure out where and when the assassination will be attempted. But they don’t know who they are looking for or what he looks like. Without computers or cell phones, they must track down the unknown assassin in time.
Edward Fox is excellent as the resourceful and meticulously professional killer. So is Michael Lonsdale as the creative yet methodical cop leading the manhunt. But the real star is director Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons). As he showed in High Noon, Zinnemann knows how to tell a story and build tension, and the ending in Day of the Jackal is thrilling.
The Day of the Jackal has nothing to do with Carlos the Jackal of The Sundance Channel’s Carlos.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
I haven’t seen it yet, but Cannes audiences loved this 5-hour biopic of the 70s terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and the film was bought by IFC and Sundance Channel. The Sundance Channel is broadcasting it in three parts, this Monday through Wednesday, October 11-13. Set your TiVos.
Many see this as a star-making breakthrough for its Venezuelan star Edgar Ramirez.
Howl‘s filmmakers made a risky choice that pays off and a safe choice that doesn’t. The risky choice is to make the film about a poem, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, not a conventional biopic of Ginsberg or a courtroom drama about the famous obscenity trial. This is risky because poetry is not embraced by the mass audience; in our culture, poetry makes opera look like NASCAR in terms of popularity. Yet the movie is at its strongest in the segments where James Franco’s Ginsberg reads from Howl. The poem Howl – with its pain, rage, alienation and rebellion – is the best part of the movie Howl. Snippets of Ginsberg’s life and the trial are placed about to give context to the poem.
The unfortunately safe choice is using animation to interpret the poem. The poem evokes powerful imagery in the minds of the audience. Here, the animation is very literal, so we see – and are distracted by – the images instead of thinking them up ourselves. Maybe the filmmakers didn’t think that the audience would accept the unadorned reading of a poem. Howl is a long poem, but the filmmakers do an effective job in delivering it to us in segments. The language of the poem is not a shocking today as it was in the 50s, but definitely gets your attention.
Franco is great. Jeff Daniels has a small juicy part, but David Straithern, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker, Bob Balaban, Treat Williams and Allesandro Nivona don’t have much to do.
The writer-directors here are Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who made the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk., which is one of the great documentaries and one of the great political films.
Eddie Bracken surrounded by his new Marine pals in Hail! The Conquering Hero
Don’t miss this brilliantly funny movie. It’s one of Preston Sturges’ less well known great comedies. Eddie Bracken plays a would-be soldier discharged for hay fever – but his hometown mistakenly thinks that he is being sent home a war hero. Hilarity ensues. All the funnier when you realize that this film was made in 1944 amid our nation’s most culturally patriotic period. It will be broadcast on TCM on October 10th.
Baby boomers will also appreciate crusty William Demarest (the crusty housekeeper in TV’s My Three Sons) as the crusty Marine Sarge.
Make sure that you see The Social Network. The birth story of Facebook is a riveting tale of college sophomores that are brilliant, ambitious, immature, self-absorbed and disloyal – and about to become zillionaires. It’s a triumph for actor Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland and Solitary Man), director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). It’s already on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.
I’m still pushing the hardhitting documentary The Tillman Story. Without strongly recommending it, I can say that The Town is a satisfying Hollywood thriller. You can skip Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger.
My DVD of the Week, like The Social Network, is a classic send up of contemporary business history: Barbarians at the Gate. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
I’m featuring Hail! The Conquering Hero on TV this week. Other Movies on TVinclude Strangers on a Train, The Big Sleep and The Best Years of Our Lives, all coming up on TCM. Baseball fans might still be able to find Ken Burns’ The Tenth Inning on PBS.
Michael Shannon in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
In My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, Werner Herzog explores why an actor would re-enact a theatrical scene for real and kill his mother with the sword that he had been using for a prop. The short answer is because he was crazier than shit. This is based on an actual event. The generally intense and often creepy Michael Shannon plays the murderer, who has suffered a schizophrenic breakdown and is decompensating by the minute. The audience wants to tell his fiance (Chloe Sevigny) to run, not walk, away from him. His craziness is so immediately apparent, that there’s really no arc to the film, as we watch flashbacks from the prior year.
Shannon, who is now seen as the revenue agent in HBO’s fine Boardwalk Empire, is very scary. Incidentally, the movie belongs to that very small subgenre of films where Williem Dafoe (here the cop) does not play the creepiest character. Dafoe is also out-creeped by Brad Dourif, whose role apparently exists to show that entire family is crazy (like Arsenic and Old Lace).
I would rather recommend a great Michael Shannon performance in a much better film, Shotgun Stories.
The film had an extremely limited theatrical release early this year, but was not widely distributed. Available now on DVD.
The Social Network reminded me of another classic send up of contemporary business history: Barbarians at the Gate. Barbarians is the story of late 1980s corporate excess centered on the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. James Garner, Fred Thompson and Jonathan Pryce star as the duelling CEOs bouncing between corporate jets, boardrooms and must-be-seen-at charity galas with their egos and trophy wives. Barbarians at the Gate was originally broadcast on HBO and is available from Netflix.
