Blogging from Cinequest: A Little Help

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A Little Help is a Jenna Fischer vehicle that illustrates the depth that Fischer can bring to even a shallow character.  In this dramedy, Fischer is suddenly widowed and must reassemble her life and support her quirky 12-year-old son despite the intrusions of her shrill, micro-controlling sister (Brooke Smith) and their chilly mother (Leslie Anne Warren).  Fischer’s biggest challenge is helping her son navigate social life at his new school, where he has told a preposterous lie on his first day.

Kim Coates steals every scene as a medical malpractice attorney.  Ron Liebman sparkles as the blowhard father.

Writer/Director Michael J. Weithorn made the very smart decision to hold Fischer’s character accountable for the bad choices she has made in her life.  If she were instead written as a completely innocent victim, the story would have lapsed into cliche.  Instead, it’s a pretty good movie and a fine showcase for Jenna Fischer.

Nora’s Will: A Suicide, a Rabbi and a Pizza

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In this wry Mexican dramedy, a long-troubled woman ends her life, and her ex-husband and adult son start uncovering some jarring family secrets.  The son is out-of-town, so the ex is stuck with resentfully planning the funeral with the interference of an obnoxious rabbi.  Did I mention that Nora’s Will is set among orthodox Jews in Mexico City – who knew?  The frustrated ex-husband finally offers a ham, bacon and sausage pizza to the orthodox rabbi during Passover, and somehow all the Jewish cemeteries in Mexico City become unavailable.  After many chuckles, there’s a sweet ending.

This week’s Movies to See Right Now

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Oscar winner Natalie Portman and Natalie Portman in Black Swan

You can still see Oscar winners True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter and Oscar nominee Another Year. They are on my Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom. Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy.  Kaboom is a trippy sex romp.  Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Fish Tank. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV this week include D.O.A. and The Searchers on TCM.

And more upcoming movies

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I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions.  This month we’ll see the singer/songwriter documentary Troubadours (first aired March 2 on PBS), the tragic Cannes hit Of Gods and Men (Des Hommes et des Dieu)( releasing widely March 4) and Abbas Kiarostami’s The Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) with the luminous Juliette Binoche (releasing widely March 18).

Here’s the trailer for Carancho, which will release widely on April 8. Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this sexy and violent noir thriller.  Stars Ricardo Darin of The Secrets of Their Eyes and Nine Queens.  Won Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

The Movies I’m Looking Forward To page also features Hanna, Potiche, Jane Eyre, Restless, The Tree of Life, Tabloid, Cold Weather, Boxing Gym and American Grindhouse.

DVD of the Week: Fish Tank

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First-time actress Katie Jarvis plays Mia, a damaged and angry young woman from the British lower class.   Her party-girl mom is the second-worst mother in recent films (after Mo’Nique’s role in Precious).   Can Mia use her passion for dance to escape her grim surroundings?   Mom brings home a new boyfriend and everything changes.   Michael Fassbinder, starring soon as Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, is great as the mother’s boyfriend in Fish Tank.

Criterion has released the DVD.

This year’s Oscar dinner

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Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. You can read more at Oscar Dinner.

Planning this year’s Oscar Dinner proved challenging (despite being a great year for movie Food Porn).  Fortunately I received some great suggestions from my readers.

Here is my menu for Oscar Dinner 2011.

COCKTAILS AND STARTERS

First, the pièce de résistance:  Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone.

We will be floating the ice sculpture in an Appletini Punch for The Social Network. I read that, after seeing the film, Mark Zuckerberg made the Appletini the official cocktail of Facebook.

Pistachios from Inception. It looks like the guys are sharing a bowlful of pistachios while assembling the team in Mombasa.

Beer Nuts from The Fighter.  Amy Adams’ bar looks like a beer nut kind of place.  I am told by a New Englander that the Eklund-Ward clan would be drinking Narragansett, but I can’t find ‘Gansetts in California, so a MGD or PBR will have to do.

Tortilla Roll Ups from Toy Story 3. This is inspired by the all-time funniest movie scene involving a tortilla: Mr. Potato Head executes a prison escape by putting his facial features on a tortilla that can slide under a door.

DINNER

Cowboy beans from True Grit. Obvious and right out of the movie.

Steak and Organic Roast Vegetable Salad served with a Petite Syrah from The Kids Are All Right. The Mark Ruffalo character serves steak (he mists it with truffle oil)  while hosting the family at his house.  Earlier, he brings a bottle of Petite Syrah to dinner, which impresses the Annette Bening character (before she drinks too much of it too fast).  We see organic strawberries from his restaurant’s garden, but I can see his menu featuring a nice salad of roasted veggies.

DESSERT

Coffee from Inception.  From the Parisian cafe scene.

Sheet cake from Black Swan. (We will not vomit it back up.)

English toffees for The King’s Speech.  They’re English and we will have difficulty speaking when we are chewing them.

(I decided not to skin my own squirrel for Winter’s Bone and not to recycle my urine for 127 Hours.)

Kaboom: A trippy sex comedy

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Director Gregg Araki created the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin, but here he’s just having fun.  In the first hour of Kaboom, I lost track of how many characters had sex with each other – it’s just about non-stop and guy-on-guy, girl-on-girl, guy-on-girl, guy-and-girl-on-guy, etc.  I would characterize the sex as casual, but that would make it seem that the characters were having even a modicum of difficulty in finding partners.  Anyway, the chaotic sexathon is fun and very funny.   The last twenty minutes takes the film into a campy version of a paranoid apocalypse film, before an abrupt (and I mean abrupt) ending.  Did I mention the bad guys in the animal masks? It’s fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Cedar Rapids

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Cedar Rapids is surprisingly winning comedy about a guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience.   Helm plays a character whose sincerity and decency elevate his guileless cluelessness.  There are excellent supporting performances by Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and the irrepressible John C. Reilly.

This could have been a much courser and a lesser movie in the wrong hands.  It’s directed by Miguel Arteta, who also brought an appealing sense of humanity to the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.

Movies to See Right Now

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Another Year

You can still see True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter and Another Year. They are on my  Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now. The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom.  Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Animal Kingdom. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.

Movies on TV this week include Tom Jones, The Silence of the Lambs and All About Eve on TCM.