Archive

2013

Enough Said – 5 stars

November 3, 2013
2013, 5 stars, Comedy, Romance
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Enough Said is an engaging, touching semi-romantic comedy for adults in the target market of 40 to 60. The trials of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a middle aged masseuse, do not include keeping the sex drive hot with the advent of a new baby, or struggling with the fact that all of her friends are married while she is not. Rather, she is divorced, working, plagued by her daughter’s move from LA to NY for college, and the hunt for a man has been reduced to a mere occasional flare. But she meets a man, and his ex-wife, and develops a romance with the former and a friendship with the latter, initially ignorant of their connection. She is soon wise and makes the calamitous decision to use intelligence gathered from the ex-wife to evaluate her new partner.

Enough Said is a beautiful epitaph for James Gandolfini as the love interest, who plays a portly middle-age loner in angst over the departure of his own daughter to college with a subtlety and nuance that may well have freed him from the shackles of Tony Soprano once and for all (the Lord works in mysterious ways, and there is no greater example than having Enough Said released after The Incredible Burt Wonderstone).

Louis-Dreyfus is also impressive. There is no questioning her comedic chops (HBO’s Veep shows how effortless she moves in that milieu), but here, she draws deeper, and slowly reveals repressed fear and insecurity. Not in the paroxysm of a self-revelatory banner speech or after undergoing the withering but “true” dressing down of a gal pal in the penultimate act, but in ascending scenes of awkwardness, comfort, quiet resignation as to her actions toward Gandolfini, and then need.

The film also handles secondary characters with maturity. They err and recover, but we are not let off the hook by cartoonish villains or easy marks. This is a bit of a departure for writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Lovely and Amazing, Friends with Money), who was previously very tough on her protagonists and supporting characters in a manner that bordered on condescending. Still, in Friends with Money, Holofcener zeroed in on the casual iciness of an outwardly happy marriage between Catherine Keener and Jason Isaacs and her skill depicting the dynamics of couples has not eroded.

One of the, if not the best film of the year.

The Fall – 5 stars

October 15, 2013
2013, 5 stars, Crime/Mystery, TV
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This BBC 5 part mini-series is a taut crime story, lovingly detailed, and anchored by a powerful, understated Gillian Anderson performance. A serial killer is loose on the streets of modern day Belfast and he is targeting professional women of a particular physical type, who he tracks, monitors and then strangles in an elaborate, almost artistic ritual. Stella Gibson (Anderson) is brought in from London to perform a review. When the killer strikes again, she is assigned the case.

This is not a whodunit, as we are introduced to the killer in the first few moments. Instead, The Fall is a meticulous police procedural with a distinct take on Belfast.  Be it the ways of a tough neighborhood, the politics of the investigation or specifics of a crime scene, the feel is assured and authentic.  The characters are also very strong, in particular, the killer (Jamie Dornan).  While he is in no way sympathetic, he is unique in that we see him not only planning and executing his gruesome acts, but as a seemingly loving father and husband, and a conscientious civil servant (of all things, he is a grief counselor). 

The Fall was created by Alan Cubitt, who has credentials as a writer for the Helen Mirren series, Prime Suspect, and at first blush, Anderson’s Gibson and Mirren’s Jane Tennyson have some similarities. They are both Detective Chief Inspectors in a male-dominated profession and they both do not have a significant male others. There is where the similarity ends, as Gibson is in a new environment (the last Prime Suspect was almost a decade ago), one that is more friendly to women, but also one where male expectations and bias evince themselves in a subtler fashion. Anderson’s Gibson is also clearly more reserved and in-control than Mirren’s Tennyson, who was rock-solid on-the-job, but more vulnerable in her private life. Gibson is not vulnerable at all, but she is not brittle or overtly righteous. In many ways, she is a “first” for a female police lead, as male as any officer, certainly stronger and smarter than most, and emotionally detached without lapsing into copycat or bitch. When a married detective with whom she has casually slept with is investigated, and she is questioned as to the liaison in a manner different than a man would endure, she suffers the double-standard with a certain patience before matter-of-factly telling the investigator that the detective’s wife was her lover’s problem, not hers. She also has somewhat of a sexual kink. Not Clint Eastwood in Tightrope kinky, but a kink nonetheless, a true rarity for a female lead.

It’s a great character and Anderson has left a lot to develop.    BBC Two has renewed the series for a second season and I hope Gibson becomes the next Jane Tennyson, who carried us through 7 Prime Suspects.

Available on Netflix streaming.

Gravity – 4.5 stars

October 13, 2013
2013, 4 stars, Drama, Sci-Fi
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Alfonso Cuaron’s first feature since 2006 (Children of Men) is both a traditional, seat-of-your-pants thriller and a meditation on isolation and impending death. In the latter category, it more than succeeds. I saw it at an IMAX theater in 3D, and in an era of distraction, I’ve never seen such rapt attention given a film. The stillness of space transported the theater, and understandably so. The visuals are jaw-dropping, and Cuaron depicts space in such a unique manner, both expansive and claustrophobic, the viewer feels lost and vulnerable in the great unknown. At the end, the audience breathed a collective sigh of relief, satisfied but a little antsy to get out on the street. For once, the technological wizardry of Hollywood was employed in sync with the other elements of a film, rather than as it primary recommendation.

Now, I am sure even a lowly NASA intern might look at the technical specifics of the plot and chortle. Astronauts Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are working on a space station when debris from a destroyed satellite not only rips through their command but through near every satellite and space station in a line, as if all were posted on the same space highway. The catastrophe leaves them dislocated, and the only way back home is to propel themselves from the U.S. station to a Russiain one to a Chinese one, improvising along the way. Interestingly, of all the leaps the audience has to take, I was most confident you can’t use a fire extinguisher as a jet pack, but dammit if Bullock didn’t do just that, it seemed perfectly plausible while I was watching it, and it is “theoretically possible“. Regardless, niggling about what could and could not happen in real life is an indicator that you should have seen Captain Phillips.

If I have a criticism, it is on the meditation aspect, and even then, it is minor. Not that the film wasn’t well-written. Bullock’s journey from helpless to frantic to resigned to resistant is compelling, and she has collected some gravitas as she’s aged, transforming from spunky to flinty. Clooney, however, is badly miscast. His wisecracking, country music listening solid leader is formulaic, and he communicates a sly grin in even the most dire of circumstances. You need more than a really strong turn as Dennis Quaid in the role.

Still, at 90 minutes, the film doesn’t dawdle, and as solely a visceral joy, it’s one of the best pictures of the year.

Don Jon – 4.5 stars

October 6, 2013
2013, 4 stars, Comedy, Romance
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Joseph Gordon-Levitt directed, wrote and stars in this surprising romantic comedy about a New Jersey working class lothario who prides himself on an ability to bed the most beautiful girls at the clubs (the “dimes”) but maintains a more personal, lasting relationship with on-line porn.  When the dimiest of dimes, Scarlett Johannson, comes between Levitt and his smut, he is forced to make a choice, with the assistance of an older friend, Julianne Moore.

The picture starts out fresh and funny, getting the most out of Levitt’s conundrums and fetish, but it takes a sweet and slightly deeper turn as he comes to realize the degenerative, asocial impact of his choices.  Gordon-Levitt is a winning performer, and even as a slightly dim palooka, you invest in him. Johannson and Moore are also strong in support. In fact, the entire cast is sharp, save for Tony Danza and Glenne Headley doing a louder, less capable Robert De Niro/Jackie Weaver from Silver Linings Playbook.

In some ways, this movie appears to be the last thing a teen should watch, especially a younger one.  It is crude and deservedly R rated.  But I’m going to recommend it to my high school freshman son and senior daughter because it is original and clever and, as importantly, because it communicates a positive lesson about sex and love in a world where, well, you have porn stars wondering why they just aren’t accepted and the medical community searching for yet another clinical addiction.

Room 237 – 0 stars

September 30, 2013
0 stars, 2013, Documentary
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When I saw there was a critically acclaimed documentary about The Shining, I purposefully read nothing about it so I could come to it fresh. Well, that was a mistake, because Room 237 has very little to do with the making of Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece. Instead, it fleshes out the interpretations of the film by a bunch of lunatics. To them, The Shining is about the genocide of the American Indian, or the actual Holocaust, or it contains hundreds of subliminal sexual images, haunted demons sexually attracted to humans, feeding off of them. Or it is about impossible interior design, or the real history of the state of Colorado, or when Barry Nelson meets Jack Nicholson, the file folder at his crotch level is really a boner.

I’m sure there are other interpretations, but I turned this stupid documentary off before getting to all of them. An utter disappointment, a colossal waste of time and shit sound to boot.

Insidious 2 – 3.5 stars

September 16, 2013
2013, 3 stars, Scary
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Horror Queers] The Villainous Cross-Dresser of 'Insidious: Chapter 2' - Bloody Disgusting

This is certainly the summer of James Wan. The Conjuring cost $20 million and has thus far grossed $270 million worldwide, and Insidious 2 cost $5 million and opened at $41 million this weekend.

The Conjuring is a vastly superior film, but Insidious 2 is not altogether bad. It starts off halting and awkward, and its fealty to following up on Insidious is both admirable and clunky. We pick up on the story right after Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) has returned from The Further, having saved his son in the process.  As we learn at the end of the first film, however, it is not Wilson, but someone much more sinister who returned in his guise. The film then moves on three tracks – Wilson, in the house, a threat to his wife (Rose Byrne) and kids; his mother (Barbara Hershey) and her investigators, trying to identify the entity that has taken Wilson; and Wilson himself, stuck in The Further, helpless. This all takes some time to queue up, and the speed of it all makes the picture stilted. In particular, poor Byrne is reduced to actually having to try and convince Wilson of the continuation of the terror, and his “Oh, honey, you just have to ignore the evil!” rejoinders are unintentionally funny.

But once it gets rolling, the film regains its balance, delivering some very good scares along the way, and Wan’s weaving of Wilson’s childhood, the first picture and the events we are witnessing is pretty skillful.  To Wan’s credit, those scares remain bloodless and gore-free (although the film is too dimly lit).

The World’s End/Hot Fuzz/Shaun of the Dead – 4.5 stars

September 6, 2013
00s, 2013, 4 stars, Comedy
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The World’s End, the third installment of Director/Writer Edward Wright and Writer/Lead Simon Pegg’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, melds their two prior comedies. There is the apocalyptic vision of Shaun of the Dead, as a troupe of 40-something high school mates (led by Pegg) take another shot at an epic pub crawl, only to learn that their pastoral hometown as been infiltrated, not by zombies, but by robots. There is also the town itself, which has become a sterile, cookie-cutter environment, not by the hand of the secret community beautification cult of Sandford, as in Hot Fuzz, but by aliens. All three films feature the great buddy tandem of Pegg and Nick Frost, Wright’s Abbott and Costello, but in The World’s End, Frost is the responsible member of the duo (a barrister, if you can believe it), until Pegg’s jabbering and the tenacity of the robots transform him into an unstoppable robot-killing machine.

These are great joy ride films, with inspired action sequences punctuated by some very funny lines. Forced to choose, I’d have to put Hot Fuzz at the top, if only for the best movie shootout ever, the beginning of which is below:

The Hugginns Movie – 4.5 stars

September 2, 2013
2013, 4 stars, Musical
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Backstory: after The Monster and Will Will Kill, the film world has been anticipating Will Larroca’s third feature, House of Blood.  I can report that principal photography began today.

But that’s not the news.  Apparently, Larroca had been secretly working in Europe over the summer . . . on a psychedelic musical: The Hugginns Movie.  He was not happy at all with the results, shelved the entire project and has been litigating to have his name taken off of it.  Still, a copy has now been made public and is setting up roots on the Internet.

Two words: mind blown.  I don’t understand Larroca’s objections, and I know auteurs can be idiosyncratic, but if he deems this a failure, I can’t wait for the film he deems worthy.