Ben Affleck knows Boston, which is the best thing about this crime drama about thieves desperately evading the FBI. The Town is a well made, satisfying Hollywood action thriller, but nothing more. The movie really had me hooked through the second act with the world of Irish professional criminals in Charleston, Mass. But the end of the movie wraps up everything way too neatly.
Ben Affleck the actor, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, and The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner are all good. Chris Cooper is excellent in a five-minute scene.
Ben Affleck proved in Gone Baby Gone that he can be a fine director, and hopefully he will reach that standard again.
Ajami is an ultra-realistic crime drama set in a scruffy neighborhood in Jaffa, Israel. The story weaves together Arab Christians and Arab Muslims and both religious and non-religious Israeli Jews. Everyone aspires to make a living and live in personal safety, but the circumstances and tribal identities make this very difficult at best. There are two trans-religious romances, but no one is going to live happily ever after.
It’s a film that doesn’t make any overt political statements, but shows what is from the perspective of individual of different backgrounds. Given their own experiences, it’s easy to understand the motivations of each character.
Ajami was co-writtten and co-directed by Scandar Copti, a Jaffa-born Palestinian, and Yaron Shoni, an Israeli Jew. After seeing the film, I was surprised to learn that it has no trained actors – all of the roles are played by real-life residents who improvised their lines to follow the story line.
Ajami was nominated for the most recent Best Foreign Language Oscar, was released earlier this year in US art houses and is now available on DVD..
Co-Director Scandar Copti discusses the process of using non-actors improvising within a script framework.
Drew Barrymore and Justin Long star in that rarity – a sweet, smart, funny and successful romantic comedy for adults. Screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe tries a novel approach that respects the audience- creating characters like the ones we know in real life, who talk and act like real people do. Instead of an implausible set-up, the conflict here is the real problem of a bi-coastal romance.
Her sister, played by Christina Applegate, is wound very tight for comic effect, but I know people like her. His friends are WAY eccentric, but their exaggerated quirkiness delivers laughs without distracting from the central romance. Going the Distance has the toilet humor of a guy flick, but both genders were yukking it up at the screening I attended.
The more I think about The Tillman Story, the more I admire it. And I am increasingly grateful that Michael Moore didn’t make this movie and degrade it into a screed. Instead, Director Amir Bar-Lev avoids the simplistic and satisfying formulas and respects his subject matter and the audience by letting the story speak for itself.
I thought I knew the story. Tillman left the fame and wealth of an NFL career to enlist in the Army post-911. He was killed in a firefight in Afghanistan. The Army reported that he was killed while heroically charging the enemy to save his comrades. It was later revealed that he was killed by fire from his comrades. Still later, it became clear that the heroic death story was immediately concocted by the military for spin control or, worse, propaganda.
I didn’t know that Tillman predicted that the Army would propagandize his death and smuggled out to his wife the documentation of his wish for a civilian funeral.
I didn’t know that Tillman crouched on a hill watching the bombing of Baghdad, and said, “This war is so fucking illegal.”
I didn’t know that Tillman was with the team that waited hours to “rescue” captured soldier Jessica Lynch (abandoned by her captors) until a film crew arrived.
The US military made a huge miscalculation: they assumed that the family that produced someone with Pat Tillman’s values would be satisfied with a phony narrative of cartoonish heroism.
The Tillman Story weaves three stories together: the making of Pat Tillman, how he died in Afghanistan and his family’s struggle to pull the sheets back on the US military’s cover-up. At its core, it is the story of people who insist on truth dealing with a system that operates on perception.
And here is a sharp insight from Mick LaSalle:
“By the way, “The Tillman Story” has an R rating because of language. Think about that one, too: Lies are rated G and can be heard around the clock on television, but try saying the truth with the proper force and you end up with a restricted audience.”
Soul Kitchen is an intermittently funny German romp that tries to find its way between clever humor and broad farce. It’s mildly entertaining but way overrated by critics because it’s a change of pace by trendy Director Fatih Akin (Head-On, Edge of Heaven).
The good autumn movies have started to roll out, and it’s time to go back to the theaters. This week I’m recommending Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Animal Kingdom, The American and The Tillman Story. I’ll be seeing Soul Kitchen soon and will have a recommendation on that, too. And Inception, Toy Story 3, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Get Low and The Kids Are All Right are all still playing in theaters. For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TVinclude Rebel Without a Cause, The Graduateand Touch of Evil, all coming up on TCM.
In this thriller, George Clooney plays an international master assassin. He lives a life of crushing loneliness. Anyone who gets close to him will either die or betray him. He is exhausted by years of perpetual vigilance, unnourished by human affection. I remember this loneliness from my own years as an international master assassin.
Clooney’s character is written and played well. This is a smart, arty film that transcends its hackneyed set-up: the assassin takes One Last Job and encounters some beautiful, available and potentially dangerous women who may be Up To No Good. The climax reminds me of the greatest assassin movie, Day of the Jackal.
In this Aussie crime drama, a high school kid’s mother OD’s on heroin, forcing him into her estranged family of brutal criminals, presided over by his sunny grandmother. Like many teen boys, he is terse in speech and impassive in demeanor. As he is plunged into increasingly desperate situations, neither the characters nor the audience knows what he is thinking in every instance. This, along with his peril, is the key to the movie’s success.
James Frecheville does an excellent job of making us care about a character desperately trying not to speak or reveal his feelings. Jacki Weaver is great as Grandma Smurf, an impossibly upbeat gal who can effortlessly put out a contract on her own grandson. Ben Mendelsohn is excellent as the boy’s most psychopathic uncle. Guy Pearce, in a supporting role as a sympathetic cop, is also good.
Will the teen safely navigate through the maze of his murderous relations? Will evil prevail? We don’t know until the final scene…and then some questions remain.
Written and directed by David Michod, Animal Kingdom won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
The film depicts some close range gunshot deaths with the appropriate amount of splatter.
This is the riveting real life tale of Jacques Mesrine – a French criminal with a portfolio of audacious heists and even more shockingly daring escapes. He became intoxicated by – and addicted to – his own notoriety, which he embellished with some left wing political posing. He saw himself as a modern Clyde Barrow and positioned himself that way in the media (without thinking too much about the final scene in Bonnie and Clyde). At the end of the day, Mesrine was just a vicious thug, although one with an unusual amount of bravado and luck.
Vincent Cassell brings Mesrine to life in a brilliant performance that does not glorify Mesrine, but inhabits a countenance that shifts instantaneously from jokey charm to cold-blooded hatred. American audiences may remember Cassell as the psycho Russian gangster in Eastern Promises and the suave Francois “The Night Fox” Toulour in the Ocean’s movies.
Director Jean-Francois Richet showcases Cassell’s performance with a series of outstanding artistic choices. The harsh violence is shown for what it is but not stylized. Richet makes strategic use of split screen that enhances the story without distracting from it. And when Mesrine meets his new girlfriend (Cecile De France) and she says that she’s up for anything, the movie immediately cuts to the two of them robbing a bank. Point made.
Richet and Abdel Raouf Dafri (screenwriter of A Prophet) adapted the screenplay from Mesrine’s memoir. Dafri has had a spectacular year in crime and prison dramas.
The entire cast is good, particularly Gerard Depardieu, who summons all his hulking menace to play a gang leader who is at least as dangerous as Mesrine.
Richet and Cassell return later this year with the second part of the story, titled Mesrine: Public Enemy #1.
