Winter DVD Roundup - or, A Fistful of Netflix

So, I haven't been watching quite as many films as I was at this time last year, but I still have quite a few that I've watched in recent months and not bothered to talk about. So here are some brief thoughts on some of them.


Margot at the Wedding
10 x the cringe and 1/2 the humor of Baumbach's last film. Interesting characters, great acting, and beautiful, but sometimes I wonder if every story really must be told.

In the Valley of Elah
Good performance by Jones, not as predictable as I expected. I thought the ending pushed it a little bit, but this was Paul Haggis, after all.

Reign Over Me
Don Cheadle plays a dentist looking for a life outside his wife, kids, and job. He's on the edge of finding it in the mouth of lonely patient, but instead takes on Adam Sandler's Charlie, a 9/11 widower who proves to be more than he can handle. Good story, small surprises here and there.

Introducing the Dwights
Yet again, another movie with Brenda Blethyn as a domineering mother. But she does it so well. This film from Australia was cute at the same time that is was tough, but I didn't really buy the girlfriend's character - a little too clingy and neurotic for him really to fall that much in love with her.

When Will I Be Loved?
Most of my peers on Netflix pretty much trashed this picture, but Roger Ebert gave it a glowing review, which is why I rented it. Ebert likened it to jazz, with Neve Campbell as the soloist. Well, I think he's right. But consider the fact a lot of people don't like jazz. Generally, I think jazz is usually okay.


Respiro
Last month you may have read my review of Emanuele Crialese's more recent film, Golden Door. While this didn't reach the same level of magic, I am still left with some vivid images, and I want to visit Lampedusa. Interesting note on oral fixations: Both films open with boys holding foreign objects (e.g. rocks or birds) in their mouths.

Cautiva
A believable, well told story from Argentina. A teenager struggles with identity after learning that the people who raised her are not her birth family and in fact may have had a hand in her parents' deaths.

Clean
Somewhat disappointing story of a woman's struggle to kick the needle when her rock-star husband ODs and her in-laws get custody of her son. I think I liked all of the characters except the protagonist. And I didn't think her music was so great.

Rocket Science
Funny, awkward. You think you know where it's going, but you don't.

The Feast of Love
Hmm... I remember really liking the book, but the movie just didn't do it for me. It was full of stereotypes of love, both good and bad. Portland was pretty, and Morgan Freeman was soothing and wise as usual as the narrator, but the rest of the characters were shallow and undeveloped - a result of poor adaptation, I think.

Something the Lord Made
Over the past year, I have developed growing fondnesses for both Mos Def and Alan Rickman. That enough might make me watch this again and again. I do always like the hidden historical dramas, and this one is pretty cool, because we realize that this wa s pretty recent history, so we're able to reflect on issues of race, ethics, and science and how things have changed in 50-60 years.

The Motel
As if being a fat adolescent isn't hard enough. This kid doesn't have a dad and lives in a hot-sheets motel. Pretty neat little indie flick.

Princesas
How does a middle-class woman become a prostitute? And then what does she do when she falls in love? Sad story with some happy moments, and a lot of good music from Manu Chao and others.


Beyond the Gates
Another Rwanda story, but this one from the point of view of a young, idealistic British teacher. No matter who is telling the story, I always cry my eyes out.

Un Air De Familie
I was hoping for the bright, quirky joy that I've seen in Cédric Klapisch's more recent films, but this one was a bit of downer most of the way through. I did really like Agnès Jaoui as Betty though, and it made me want to drink whatever she kept ordering.

Hawaii, Oslo
Truly unique story taking place over a brief summer night, day, and night again in Oslo.

Rescue Dawn
I liked seeing Steve Zahn in a serious role. I'm not sure he was any good at it though. Christian Bale was good - almost the grown-up super-version of the survivor he played in Empire of the Sun.

Hard Eight
Here's a ranked listing of PT Anderson Films from my favorite to my least favorite.
1)Magnolia 2)There Will be Blood 3)Boogie Nights/Hard Eight (tie) 4)Punch-drunk Love

This Is England
One of the best movies I've seen in the past year. This kid was good.

The Girl from Paris
Have I mentioned I want to live on a farm? Make that a farm in France.

normal lives on the big screen

So, thanks to a friend who knows my appreciation for the cinema, (thanks Alyna!) especially the free variety, I scored some free tickets to see pretty much any movie I wanted from Fandango. So I picked one that I'd been wanting to see for months, but hadn't yet pursued.

The Savages was a genuine story of two people caring for and dealing with their dying father, even though they've got their own shit going on. Hoffman's Jon and Linney's Wendy are both sort of stuck. Jon's stuck in his comfortable college-professor/writer career, which is so much his focus that he lets the love of his life leave the country with hardly a blink. Wendy temps, steals office supplies, writes plays, sleeps with a normal-looking married man with a dog, and tells a few not-so-little lies to make her life sound more exciting.


Their estranged father's common law wife passes away, and her family leaves him high and dry in Sun City, AZ. So Jon and Wendy bring him back to Buffalo to a nursing home, and with for him to die.

If this were a predictable film, they would get to know their father more, become better siblings to each other, and become fast friends with all of the nursing home's staff and residents. But it's not, and it's full of little unexpected bits, that are completely genuine and believable.

Visually, it was believable too. From the surreality of the Arizona desert, to the messy reality of a Buffalo winter, to the messy clutter of apartments, houses and nursing homes, I felt like I was watching people and places I knew.

The Savages shows that even when you are not close to someone, it's still a hard decision to surrender to the fact that you can't care for them, and that a nursing home is a necessity. There's still guilt and resistance and a million other feelings. And experiencing these is ultimately what Jon and Wendy need to nudge them out of their ruts and get on with things.

soak them in ice water for 10 minutes a day

We all know I average about a two-week delay on my movie reviews lately.

So, a couple weeks ago, I saw Persepolis. I had been eagerly anticipating its release for months since I read the books last fall. I was a huge fan of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels, and I was excited about the story. But I was a little dubious that her simple drawings could translate into a feature-length film.

I was wrong. Her collaboration with the animators was brilliant, and added depth and character to the images. Speaking of character though, I did feel the film fell a little short in developing the characters from the books. But, that might just speak to my imagination as I read them.

I know that people have to make choices when adapting books to screenplays, and I wonder how they decide. Because one part that stood out as conspicuously missing from the film, was the friendship with the roommate in Vienna.

Anyway, it was a great story, a memoir of a different sort about family, identity, and home. I'm glad to see such a non-traditional film (cartoon for adults that is not from Japan) in so many theaters. And it's not as out there as The Triplets of Belleville.

Uma? Oprah? Whatever. (Enjoy my celebrity lookalikes)

Lost in Translation

With a beautiful title like Nuovomondo I think Miramax would have made out better if they'd stuck with the original Italian for Emanuele Crialese's story of a family's journey from Sicily to the U.S. Golden Door was a beautiful film, and deserved a nice round word like "Nuovomondo" to match its sensuality.

From the opening scene where I could almost feel the chalky rock in my moth as father and son climbed a mountain looking for an answer, the movie was filled with vivid pictures so rich I would almost feel them. Whether they were real, like the giant fish being hawked when the family arrived in the port city, or imagined, like the mammoth phallic carrot or the coins falling from the tree. Certain shots stand out too, like the pull out from the barren rocky terrain they call home at the beginning, to the awesome separation of the masses on the ships deck from the masses on shore as the ship departs.

As you know, I'm a big fan of the waif known as Charlotte Gainsbourg. She was an interesting pale contrast to the Italians on the boat, and I'm not completely sure I understand her character, but it was interesting.

One of the most unique features was pairing what I take to be Sicilian peasant music with a couple stellar Nina Simone tunes ("Sinnerman" and "Feelin' Good." The timing was really effective - which doesn't always happen when music from one time is injected into stories from another.

It's hard to imagine a life so hard that you would leave it for dreams of a land where rivers of milk flow for those who work hard. And we think we've heard every type of immigrant story, but this one is different in that it focuses not on the struggle to survive in the new world, but on the decision to leave and the journey itself. If you get a chance to rent this, I hope you like it, but it might be one of those bizarre tales that not everyone will find as beautiful as I do.

Do I need to report this to HR?

No trip to L.A. is complete without a celebrity sighting, right? Well, although the plane ride back with several members of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy would have fulfilled the requirement, we had already made the grade in Santa Monica last Monday. My friend Joe and I were blindly wandering the promenade half listening to people trying their luck at reality TV's latest regurgitation, "The Moment of Truth," while we waited for Erin and Jill to finish up at Banana Republic.

Suddenly, Joe was talking to a stranger, and asking him to pose for a picture, which I of course was asked to execute. Here you see the result, and if you watch the Office, you should recognize the actor to the right. I didn't, because I've only seen the show a couple times. I won't say his name here in case that violates some copyright law - I didn't get him to sign a photo release after all - but enjoy it, if you enjoy him. He's the one on the right, by the way. The other one is Joe.

And there was...

So I'm running a few weeks behind on my movie reviews. I caught an early Sunday matinee of P.T. Anderson's latest film, There Will Be Blood earlier this month. Although I often shy away from "historical epics" I am nonetheless always in pursuit of Paul Thomas Anderson, and Daniel Day Lewis. Neither of them disappointed with this film. Lewis was outstanding, even if he looked like Tom Selleck at times. Really one of the finest acting jobs I've seen in years. And there were some breathtaking shots, and the opening scenes, with their almost absent dialogue really drew me in.

I'll stop short of saying I loved it though, and it's because like Mr. A's other films (Magnolia being the exception) there was a point about 3/5 in, where I started to wonder if it was going to be too long... started to wonder if the movie was starting to take a turn for the bad and boring. This happened in Hard 8 and in Boogie Nights, and so I suppose I recognized the Anderson Fatigue for what it was, and accepted it. In the end, I found myself laughing at the absurdity of the story, and wondering how I got there, but all in all, it was a darn good flick.

I'm pretty behind on seeing movies too, and I know I have a lot of catching up to do. My goals this weekend are to see do my taxes, write my belated xmas thank-yous, and see Persepolis. Small goals, I know, and acheivable, but I have a way of letting the time slip by these days. Check with me on Monday.