Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
The “must see” films in theaters remain Winter’s Bone and Toy Story 3. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is good, too. For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
My DVD of the week is John Adams. For the trailer and other DVD choices, see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TV include The Firemen’s Ball, The Crying Game and Before Sunrise.
John Adams: The most overlooked giant of our Founding Fathers is the subject of this brilliant mini-series. Adams was a major player in forming the political consensus to seek independence from England, an important (if unevenly successful) diplomat during the war, a key political ally of George Washington’s and our nation’s first Vice-President and second President. Unique among the Founding Fathers, his day to day activities were frankly chronicled in hundreds of letters to and from his wife of fifty-four years, Abigail. These surviving letters comprise one of the most essential first-hand accounts of the founding of America, and, of course, also reveal much about the talented but prickly Adams and the Adams’ relationship.
To seal the quality of this miniseries, the Adams are played by the generally brilliant Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Giamatti captures the short-tempered, brilliant political strategist who understands the limits of his own personal popularity. Linney is perfect as the perceptive Abigail, who often helps John by pointing out that he needs to get out of his own way.
The series also, seemingly alone amid contemporary filmmaking, captures the era. It was a time when travel and communication took weeks on horseback or months by sailing ship and when smallpox inoculation was by blade instead of by needle. Day-to-day life is portrayed without romanticism or iconography. In particular, no one who watches the tar-and-feathering scene will again view this practice as quaintly comical.
I am not a Joan Rivers fan, but Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work won me over. Rivers’ compulsion to stay busy at age 77 by accepting every conceivable gig is fascinating, and her raw vulnerability makes you care about her. It also helps that Rivers is very, very funny.
Noomi Rapace reprises her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second part of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy. It follows one of my personal favorite films of the year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Lisbeth Salander is the best new crime drama character since Helen Mirren’s Inspector Jane Tennyson. And Noomi Rapace creates a Lisbeth Salander who is a lethal mix of damage and drive. Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth, as a tiny fury of a Goth hacker, is only 90 pounds, so she will lose a fistfight with a man; but she prevails with her smarts, resourcefulness and machine-like relentlessness. Lisbeth is always mad AND always gets even.
When Hollywood remakes the film, it will not cast Noomi Rapace in the lead, so you’ll miss the film’s essential performance if you wait for the American version.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo only has about one more week to go in theaters, so you should see it now.
indieWIRE has this article (with photos) on the almost 65-year-old Dame Helen Mirren posing nude for New York Magazine.
But don’t overlook the 1969 film Age of Consent, where Mirren plays about a third of the movie naked, and the other two thirds wearing nothing but the most threadbare and easily discardable short cotton dress.
Shot when Mirren was 24, she plays a teen wild child abused and neglected by a hateful aunt in the remotest Australian coastal settlement. James Mason, artistically blocked and on the run from his fame as a painter, shows up, and she becomes his muse. Age of Consent is available on DVD, Netflix streaming and occasionally on TCM.
The “must see” films in theaters are Winter’s Bone and Toy Story 3. For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
My DVD of the week is The Girl on the Train. For the trailer and other DVD choices, see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TV include The Third Man, Blue Velvet and Cool Hand Luke.
Winter’s Bone Director Debra Granik has delivered one of the year’s best American films – with just her second feature. Every moment of Winter’s Bone seems absolutely real and absolutely true. Granik shot in southern Missouri, and used local people, local homes, local clothes and local music – all choices that result in the film’s authenticity. Even the Army recruiter is a real-life Army recruiter. Similarly, the soundtrack is spare and pure – pretty much just the snapping twigs, chirping birds, barking dogs and sputtering pickups of the Ozarks; the audience feels the gripping story without the filmmaker layering on manipulative music.
Granik’s first feature, Down to the Bone, won acting awards for its star Vera Farmiga as a grocery clerk mom who undergoes drug rehab without support from her husband or employer. In both Winter’s Bone and Down to the Bone, Granik lets her actors act, most compellingly when they are not talking. Down to the Bone is available on DVD and Netflix streaming.
Granik and screenwriting partner Anne Rosellini were looking for a story that featured a strong female protagonist ans found it in Daniel Woodrell’s novel. Here are Granik and Woodrell on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Richard von Busack also has an excellent interview with Granik and Lawrence – click here and scroll below his review.
Thanks to David H. Schleicher of the Schleicher Spin, here is the blog of Marideth Sisco, the musical consultant for Winter’s Bone, and the lead singer in the pickin’ scene.
Winter’s Bone inspired me to think of other great movies set in a hillbilly milieu. If there is a Hillbilly Genre, these movies don’t fit because they aren’t about Being a Hillbilly. They are human stories that happen to be set amongst hillbillies. Winter’s Bone and Ulee’s Gold are about determined individuals determined to protect their families no matter the risk. Coal Miner’s Daughter is about an artist’s journey from naive teen to superstar. Harlan County USA is about a community banding together to find justice. And Deliverance is about men sharing an ordeal and secrets from it.
1. Deliverance: Four suburban guys seek a mild adventure – canoeing down a backwoods river before it is dammed. The adventure becomes an ordeal. The most horrible things happen to them, and they are forced to do horrible things.
I have watched this twice in the past few years, and it still really stands up today. In particular, the cinematography and editing are fantastic. Here is the famous banjo scene.
2. Harlan County, USA: This is the story of coal miners seeking a union contract with a hostile mining company. It won the Oscar as best documentary. Filmmaker Barbara Kopple embedded herself among the strikers and got amazing footage – including of herself threatened and shot at.
3. Winter’s Bone: A 17-year-old Ozarks girl is determined to save the family home by tracking down her meth dealer dad – dead or alive. The girl’s journey through a series of nasty and nastier Southern Missouri crank cookers is riveting – without any explosions, gunfights or chase scenes. Every moment of this film seems completely real.
4. Ulee’s Gold: In his finest performance, Peter Fonda is a rural beekeeper who must enter a dangerous underworld to track down his druggie daughter-in-law. Here is how Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert saw it.
5. Coal Miner’s Daughter: Sissy Spacek won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in this successful biopic. In an early major role, Tommy Lee Jones plays Loretta’s husband Mooney. Levon Helm, the Arkansas-bred drummer for The Band has one of his rare but compelling film roles as Loretta’s Daddy. Besides the performances, the movie works because Loretta must grow from nobody to star, girl to woman and hick to worldly.
The Girl on the Train (La fille du RER) is an absorbing mother daughter drama set in the Paris suburbs.
The young woman is Emilie Dequenne, the Belgian actress who won the best actress award at Canne when she was only 17 in the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta. In contrast to Rosetta, she doesn’t play a force of nature, but a slacker bobbing through life on a tide of random influences. She lives with her single mom (Catherine Deneuve), and they get along, despite the mother’s unwelcome tips on job hunting.
The daughter meets a guy, her life takes some resulting turns and then she makes a really bad choice. The mom seeks out an old beau, now a celebrity attorney to help fix the situation.
I missed seeing this in the theater because the trailer emphasizes a faked hate crime (and I wasn’t eager to see a topical movie). But the movie is not about the faked hate crime, which occurs late into the story. The story is character driven. The daughter drifts first part of the movie and is controlled by events until she finds herself in a desperate situation; she panics and sees the most stupid option as a solution. The situation then forces the mother to re-open a chapter in her life that she had chosen to close – how far will she open the old door?
It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2010 So Far.
See the rest of my DVD recommendations.
The trailer is out for The American, which goes into wide release on September 24. George Clooney plays an international professional assassin who takes One Last Job and encounters some beautiful, available and potentially dangerous women. From the trailer, it looks like at least one of these beautiful women is Up To No Good.