There's something about Jim Carrey that just never quite works for me. I always feel that he's showing off and doing too much hamming for the camera and sometimes wish he would just act normal (look - Robin WIlliams who is just as silly can play normal beautifully). I Love You Phillip Morris is his latest "serious" role where I am supposed to be wowed by his range and his ability to be serious - but again, all I see is over-the-top zaniness and annoying facial expressions.
In the film, Carrey plays Steven Russell, a guy who seems to be addicted to scams and breaking the law. He begins as a cop in some small town, but them comes out as gay and moves to Miami Beach. Down there, he realized that "being gay is expensive", so rather than working, he figures out ways to get injured and suing for his injuries. At some point he is convicted of insurance fraud and goes to jail. In jail, he meets Phillip Morris (Ewan McGragor) a smart gay guy who was arrested for stealing cars. They two fall madly in love and then spend the rest of their lives going in and out of jail, but always for love... or something.
This movie is basically The Mask meets Catch Me if you Can. Every time Steven has a chance to scam someone, he does. When he's released from jail and goes looking for a job, he forges his resume, gets hired as a firm's CFO and then embezzles money from them. It's all a bit much. Oh, wait ... I can't say it's too much because it's apparently based on a true story. Whatever.
Carrey is wound up so tight, when you see him release into a scene, he goes around so fast, it's hard to concentrate on what the hell is happening. You get your dumb Jim Carrey voices, and your tired Jim Carrey faces, and your silly Jim Carrey physical comedy, but not much else.
I get that the story is based on real events, but it's hard to like a character who is so dimwitted about crime. Does he not think he's going to get caught? Does he think that anyone will care how elaborate his scams are? (They're very elaborate.) You want to shake him and say "STOP!"
McGregor is good here, but it is sorta hard to figure out what the hell he sees in Steven. I guess the fact that they are madly in love (after five minutes of meeting) is enough for us to understand, but it doesn't totally work.
Mostly this movie is fun and easy, but it was frustrating how it kept going on and on and on with Carrey's 1990s jokes, never learning from his mistakes or doing anything differently. He tries one thing and he gets arrested, then gets out of jail and tries the same thing again and again gets arrested, and then a third time and on and on. It's sorta tired and silly.
Stars: 2 of 4
Monday, January 10, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Summer Wars (2010) (Sunday, January 9, 2011) (173)
Summer Wars is a good, but not great, anime movie about how the wold is in danger because of social media networks. In the film, there is a computer system called Oz (subtle) that seems to control everyone. It's like Facebook on crack. Everything you do is documented there and government stuff is run through there as well. Everyone in the world has an animated avatar that lives in Oz and interacts inside that world.
One day, Kenji, a dorky computer nerd who is a student but works for Oz doing some sort of policing, is asked by his female friend Natsuki to accompany her to her grandmother's house to pretend to be her fiance. Natsuki has a big family and her brother is apparently some legendary Oz gamer. While the whole family is there, Natsuki's uncle, Wabisuke, returns after years of living in America (boo!). It seems he left the family a long time ago after selling some of their land in a terrible deal. The family is not happy about his arrival.
But they don't have a chance to worry about him because as this is happening, Oz is taken over by some mysterious villain avatar called Love Machine (it's ironic) that eats code and other avatars and tries to take over the world via Oz. Kenji, Natsuki, her brother and the family have to get on their computers to fight Love Machine, lest he bomb Japan.
There is a very nice look to the animation here and lots of the shots of Oz are totally inspired by the art work of Takashi Murakami. I like this a lot. I also like that Kenji is a reluctant hero and that it's dorks and geeks who save the world, rather than supermen and strong guys. This is a nice change, though, I'm sure it's more common than I know in anime.
I think there is a bit too much that happens here, and the movie plays a bit too long for me. It's drags a lot in the third act and sorta loses its way a bit. The subplot of Wabisuke is nice for the family story, but feels like a hat on a hat when it comes to this program that's going to destroy the world. I get the idea that families need to stick together and that only together can we conquer tough things, but the story would have essentially be there without this character.
This is a fun movie, but nothing brilliant. It has some lovely visual elements in it and I liked the animation a lot.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
One day, Kenji, a dorky computer nerd who is a student but works for Oz doing some sort of policing, is asked by his female friend Natsuki to accompany her to her grandmother's house to pretend to be her fiance. Natsuki has a big family and her brother is apparently some legendary Oz gamer. While the whole family is there, Natsuki's uncle, Wabisuke, returns after years of living in America (boo!). It seems he left the family a long time ago after selling some of their land in a terrible deal. The family is not happy about his arrival.
But they don't have a chance to worry about him because as this is happening, Oz is taken over by some mysterious villain avatar called Love Machine (it's ironic) that eats code and other avatars and tries to take over the world via Oz. Kenji, Natsuki, her brother and the family have to get on their computers to fight Love Machine, lest he bomb Japan.
There is a very nice look to the animation here and lots of the shots of Oz are totally inspired by the art work of Takashi Murakami. I like this a lot. I also like that Kenji is a reluctant hero and that it's dorks and geeks who save the world, rather than supermen and strong guys. This is a nice change, though, I'm sure it's more common than I know in anime.
I think there is a bit too much that happens here, and the movie plays a bit too long for me. It's drags a lot in the third act and sorta loses its way a bit. The subplot of Wabisuke is nice for the family story, but feels like a hat on a hat when it comes to this program that's going to destroy the world. I get the idea that families need to stick together and that only together can we conquer tough things, but the story would have essentially be there without this character.
This is a fun movie, but nothing brilliant. It has some lovely visual elements in it and I liked the animation a lot.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Country Strong (Saturday, January 8, 2011) (1)
Note: This film had a limited release in 2010 for award consideration, but never played in New York City until this weekend. The New York Times ran their review of it on Friday, January 7, 2011 and as a result, I consider it a 2011 release.)
I was hoping this movie would have some good country music in it and be sorta trashy and fun to watch. It did have good music, but most of it was only partial songs and the story was mostly trashy and not really fun, so I didn't get what I wanted at all.
As the film opens, we see Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) in a rehab clinic outside of Nashville. Her orderly is Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund) a hot wannabe musician, playing bars in and around Music City. The two have become friends (and maybe more) over the months she's been in the clinic. Her husband James (Tim McGraw) is her manager and wants to get her back out and on the road as soon as possible.
James sets up a three city tour for her to get her legs back and signs up Beau (who she says is her sponsor) and a young country-pop starlet Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester, Blair from Gossip Girl) to open for her. The four of them go on the road, first to Houston, then Austin and finally in Dallas. As the tour goes along (I mean, it couldn't be all that long, right? It's only three shows!) lots of stuff happens when different people have sex and Kelly proves to be not totally recovered.
It was frustrating to me was how writer/director Shana Feste used music throughout the film. This is a music movie. It's not really a movie about mental health or alcoholism (as much as those appear here). It's a movie about the business of Nashville... and the music is the business. But all we ever get is the first few bars of the songs and, maybe if we're lucky, another bit of the song later. Why she couldn't have treated the songs like full works that might help move the story along or give us insight into stuff is beyond me. (I now realize how well Scott Cooper mixed music with story in last year's Crazy Heart.) On top of this, she has Tim McGraw in the film in a particularly non-singing role. I guess it would be confusing to have him as a singer and Kelly as a singer (because then it would be like his marriage to Faith Hill), but it would have been better for the soundtrack, to be sure.
What was even more frustrating is that the big title song, Country Song, that Kelly sings at her big show in Dallas, is total country pop junk. By the point in the film when we hear it, Beau has already waxed poetic about the good ol' country music he grew up with (Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylan Jennings, Patsy Cline) and how cross-over stuff is silliness. He and Chiles performed their amazing duet Give in to Me and we love their old sound. But what we get from Kelly is junk. (Interestingly, that YouTube clip is a full version of the song that is not in the version of the film that I saw... I saw the first few lines and then there was a cut to some stuff happening back stage and then a cut back to the end of the song. Seeing it now complete, I realize it's a really, really great song.) Feste underlines the point her character makes, but seems to do it without knowing what she's doing. Her heroine is singing exactly the stuff that her hero is saying is junk... but she's doing it positively. Weird.
The script is easily the worst part of this movie. It jumps around from place to place with no explanation and never really has a good focus. At some point in the middle it seems that the tension is built on not knowing if Beau will end up with Kelly or Chiles... but this doesn't feel very important. It almost feels like Feste started writing a bunch of scenes, but never had a bigger outline and didn't know exactly how she's get from one to the next. (Also, someone has to explain to me how Kelly and Beau got on that damn train in Austin and then got off and back to town all in one day. That was weird.)
This movie would have been a lot better if it was just about Beau and Chiles. He's the emotional core of the film (Hedlund is really great as an actor and a singer) and he's the one we identify with. It could have been a movie about the duo on the road, put together against their wills but over the days they grow to fall in love. The whole Kelly part was unnecessary and a waste of time.
The whole movie is really not great, but it was nice to be introduced to Garrett Hedlund and to find out that Leighton Meester might have a career outside of Upper East Side soap operas (she's really good!). I wish there had been more music and I wish the script had been better. I'm glad for the one duet... at least I got that.
Stars: 2 of 4 (it would have been fewer stars without the one song)
I was hoping this movie would have some good country music in it and be sorta trashy and fun to watch. It did have good music, but most of it was only partial songs and the story was mostly trashy and not really fun, so I didn't get what I wanted at all.
As the film opens, we see Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) in a rehab clinic outside of Nashville. Her orderly is Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund) a hot wannabe musician, playing bars in and around Music City. The two have become friends (and maybe more) over the months she's been in the clinic. Her husband James (Tim McGraw) is her manager and wants to get her back out and on the road as soon as possible.
James sets up a three city tour for her to get her legs back and signs up Beau (who she says is her sponsor) and a young country-pop starlet Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester, Blair from Gossip Girl) to open for her. The four of them go on the road, first to Houston, then Austin and finally in Dallas. As the tour goes along (I mean, it couldn't be all that long, right? It's only three shows!) lots of stuff happens when different people have sex and Kelly proves to be not totally recovered.
It was frustrating to me was how writer/director Shana Feste used music throughout the film. This is a music movie. It's not really a movie about mental health or alcoholism (as much as those appear here). It's a movie about the business of Nashville... and the music is the business. But all we ever get is the first few bars of the songs and, maybe if we're lucky, another bit of the song later. Why she couldn't have treated the songs like full works that might help move the story along or give us insight into stuff is beyond me. (I now realize how well Scott Cooper mixed music with story in last year's Crazy Heart.) On top of this, she has Tim McGraw in the film in a particularly non-singing role. I guess it would be confusing to have him as a singer and Kelly as a singer (because then it would be like his marriage to Faith Hill), but it would have been better for the soundtrack, to be sure.
What was even more frustrating is that the big title song, Country Song, that Kelly sings at her big show in Dallas, is total country pop junk. By the point in the film when we hear it, Beau has already waxed poetic about the good ol' country music he grew up with (Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylan Jennings, Patsy Cline) and how cross-over stuff is silliness. He and Chiles performed their amazing duet Give in to Me and we love their old sound. But what we get from Kelly is junk. (Interestingly, that YouTube clip is a full version of the song that is not in the version of the film that I saw... I saw the first few lines and then there was a cut to some stuff happening back stage and then a cut back to the end of the song. Seeing it now complete, I realize it's a really, really great song.) Feste underlines the point her character makes, but seems to do it without knowing what she's doing. Her heroine is singing exactly the stuff that her hero is saying is junk... but she's doing it positively. Weird.
The script is easily the worst part of this movie. It jumps around from place to place with no explanation and never really has a good focus. At some point in the middle it seems that the tension is built on not knowing if Beau will end up with Kelly or Chiles... but this doesn't feel very important. It almost feels like Feste started writing a bunch of scenes, but never had a bigger outline and didn't know exactly how she's get from one to the next. (Also, someone has to explain to me how Kelly and Beau got on that damn train in Austin and then got off and back to town all in one day. That was weird.)
This movie would have been a lot better if it was just about Beau and Chiles. He's the emotional core of the film (Hedlund is really great as an actor and a singer) and he's the one we identify with. It could have been a movie about the duo on the road, put together against their wills but over the days they grow to fall in love. The whole Kelly part was unnecessary and a waste of time.
The whole movie is really not great, but it was nice to be introduced to Garrett Hedlund and to find out that Leighton Meester might have a career outside of Upper East Side soap operas (she's really good!). I wish there had been more music and I wish the script had been better. I'm glad for the one duet... at least I got that.
Stars: 2 of 4 (it would have been fewer stars without the one song)
Sunday, January 2, 2011
The Worst Films of 2010
So 2010 was a very good year in bad movies. There was a lot of garbage released. Most of it was from Hollywood, though there were a bunch of independent movies as well.
One note I want to make is that Birdemic is one of the most sublimely horrible films I've ever seen in my life. It might be worst than Tommy Wiseau's The Room (and possibly worst than Troll 2, though I've never seen that). Every part of it is terrible, the story, acting, direction, music, editing, sound editing and special effects are so bad it seems like it has to be a joke... but if it was a joke, they wouldn't be so convincingly terrible. I gave it its own section of the list because it deserves it. It is the Michael Jordan of bad movies.
Eat Pray Love was totally offensive too, so that gets 1A. In a normal year it would be the worst of the year, but it was unlucky enough to be released the same year as Birdemic - a true masterpiece of shit!
Oh - and Oliver Stone is the big winner with Wall Street 2 and South of the Border both on this list. He had a heckuva year!
The Bottom Ten Films of 2010:
1 Birdemic: Shock and Terror
1A Eat Pray Love
2 The Runaways
3 Black Swan
4 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
5 Twilight Saga: Eclipse
6 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
7 The Last Airbender
8 Salt
9 Dinner For Schmucks
10 Greenberg
Honorable Mentions:
Middle Men
South of the Border
Alice in Wonderland -3D (I don't know where this blogpost went. Sorry. The movie sucked.)
Enter the Void
Shutter Island
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Hereafter
Fair Game
The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector
Holy Rollers
Somewhere
Valhalla Rising
One note I want to make is that Birdemic is one of the most sublimely horrible films I've ever seen in my life. It might be worst than Tommy Wiseau's The Room (and possibly worst than Troll 2, though I've never seen that). Every part of it is terrible, the story, acting, direction, music, editing, sound editing and special effects are so bad it seems like it has to be a joke... but if it was a joke, they wouldn't be so convincingly terrible. I gave it its own section of the list because it deserves it. It is the Michael Jordan of bad movies.
Eat Pray Love was totally offensive too, so that gets 1A. In a normal year it would be the worst of the year, but it was unlucky enough to be released the same year as Birdemic - a true masterpiece of shit!
Oh - and Oliver Stone is the big winner with Wall Street 2 and South of the Border both on this list. He had a heckuva year!
The Bottom Ten Films of 2010:
1 Birdemic: Shock and Terror
1A Eat Pray Love
2 The Runaways
3 Black Swan
4 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
5 Twilight Saga: Eclipse
6 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
7 The Last Airbender
8 Salt
9 Dinner For Schmucks
10 Greenberg
Honorable Mentions:
Middle Men
South of the Border
Alice in Wonderland -3D (I don't know where this blogpost went. Sorry. The movie sucked.)
Enter the Void
Shutter Island
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Hereafter
Fair Game
The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector
Holy Rollers
Somewhere
Valhalla Rising
The Best Films of 2010
I've heard a lot of people say that 2010 was not a great year for movies and that ticket sales were down, partly because there wasn't anything out there that appealed to moviegoers. I think that idea is both right and wrong. This was a bad year for Hollywood movies. There are none on my Top Ten list and only one in my top 29 movies of the year (Toy Story 3).
At the same time, I think 2010 was a great year for movies, filled with lots of really great pictures. When it came to boiling down my list, I couldn't cut it off at a Top Ten with a few honorable mentions. I had to list all 19 of them - because I like them all and they all deserve another mention. 2010 was a great year for foreign films and eight of the top ten are foreign. Three are French, two are German, one was Portuguese and one was Greek (I'm not sure I had seen a Greek movie before Dogtooth). The Oath was made by an American and produced partly by PBS (dirty socialists!) but is about two Yemeni men, so that's only partly "American". Winter's Bone is deeply American.
I should say that you won't necessarily find a correlation between the stars I gave to the films and the relative rankings on the list. When making this, I listed of all the movies that are 3 or more stars and then ranked them in terms of how they sit in my mind today. In some cases I looked over my reviews and notes on them to refresh my memory. There might be movies with more starts in the honorable mentions than in the top ten itself. This happens when one movie gets better with time (I generally review things within a week or so of seeing them) and other things fade as I consider them more. So, yes, I'm aware, the stars might be confusing here, but you can ignore them. The placement on the list should supersede the relative star ratings for each film.
I had the pleasure of watching A Prophet three times in the theater (twice because I wanted to see it a second time and once more because I wanted to show it to a friend). It got better, deeper and more interesting with each viewing. I think it is one of the best films of the past decade and it will last for a long time as a masterpiece of filmmaking.
When I first saw The Human Centipede I thought it was fun and silly and sorta dumb. But it has stuck with me. I recently posted on my other blog some more thoughts I've had about it. I am proud to put that on my Top Ten list. I think it's a fabulous work of art and if it were a Samuel Beckett play, we would all think it was beyond brilliant rather than disgusting.
So here it is - enjoy!
The Top Ten Films of 2010:
1 A Prophet
2 Bluebeard
3 Everyone Else
4 Dogtooth
5 Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl
6 Mademoiselle Chambon
7 Human Centipede
8 Alamar
9 The Oath
10 Winter's Bone
Honorable Mentions:
Another Year
October Country
Four Lions
White Material
Inspector Bellamy
Lebanon
Secret Sunshine
The Strange Case of Angelica
Tiny Furniture
Spring Fever
Toy Story 3
Exit Through the Gift Shop
No One Knows About Persian Cats
Terribly Happy
Last Train Home
Boxing Gym
Marwencol
The Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (Again no link- stupid Blooger clearly hates me and my year-end list)
Fish Tank
At the same time, I think 2010 was a great year for movies, filled with lots of really great pictures. When it came to boiling down my list, I couldn't cut it off at a Top Ten with a few honorable mentions. I had to list all 19 of them - because I like them all and they all deserve another mention. 2010 was a great year for foreign films and eight of the top ten are foreign. Three are French, two are German, one was Portuguese and one was Greek (I'm not sure I had seen a Greek movie before Dogtooth). The Oath was made by an American and produced partly by PBS (dirty socialists!) but is about two Yemeni men, so that's only partly "American". Winter's Bone is deeply American.
I should say that you won't necessarily find a correlation between the stars I gave to the films and the relative rankings on the list. When making this, I listed of all the movies that are 3 or more stars and then ranked them in terms of how they sit in my mind today. In some cases I looked over my reviews and notes on them to refresh my memory. There might be movies with more starts in the honorable mentions than in the top ten itself. This happens when one movie gets better with time (I generally review things within a week or so of seeing them) and other things fade as I consider them more. So, yes, I'm aware, the stars might be confusing here, but you can ignore them. The placement on the list should supersede the relative star ratings for each film.
I had the pleasure of watching A Prophet three times in the theater (twice because I wanted to see it a second time and once more because I wanted to show it to a friend). It got better, deeper and more interesting with each viewing. I think it is one of the best films of the past decade and it will last for a long time as a masterpiece of filmmaking.
When I first saw The Human Centipede I thought it was fun and silly and sorta dumb. But it has stuck with me. I recently posted on my other blog some more thoughts I've had about it. I am proud to put that on my Top Ten list. I think it's a fabulous work of art and if it were a Samuel Beckett play, we would all think it was beyond brilliant rather than disgusting.
So here it is - enjoy!
The Top Ten Films of 2010:
1 A Prophet
2 Bluebeard
3 Everyone Else
4 Dogtooth
5 Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl
6 Mademoiselle Chambon
7 Human Centipede
8 Alamar
9 The Oath
10 Winter's Bone
Honorable Mentions:
Another Year
October Country
Four Lions
White Material
Inspector Bellamy
Lebanon
Secret Sunshine
The Strange Case of Angelica
Tiny Furniture
Spring Fever
Toy Story 3
Exit Through the Gift Shop
No One Knows About Persian Cats
Terribly Happy
Last Train Home
Boxing Gym
Marwencol
The Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (Again no link- stupid Blooger clearly hates me and my year-end list)
Fish Tank
Leaves of Grass (2010) (Sunday, January 2, 2011) (172)
OK - this one is simple: Leaves of Grass is The Parent Trap meets How High... or Up in Smoke (actually I have seen only a few pot-themed movies, so I'm not going to win at this one). At any rate, it's Edward Norton and Edward Norton... and Hayley Mills is nowhere in sight.
Norton plays identical twins Bill and Brady who are basically complete opposites of one another. Bill is a world-renowned, Ivy League professor of Classics and Brady is a redneck in rural Oklahoma who happens to be one of the best pot growers in the state (in the world?). Brady tricks Bill into visiting Oklahoma and then gets him to pull a Parent Trap so he has an alibi in their local town, while he goes up to Tulsa to take care of some dirty business.
You've seen this movie about a hundred times before: Eastern elite guy goes to rednecked wilderness, hates it, then falls for a girl (the magnificent Keri Russell), then realizes it's not so bad in the sticks. This one has more stuff in it about pot and a weird thing with Jews, but that's about it.
I really like Tim Blake Nelson as an actor (though this role is basically the same bumpkin he's played in the past), but he's just not fabulous as a writer or a director, as we see here. The story jumps around in totally weird and ridiculous ways, sometimes edging around logic, sometimes just being totally bizarre and absurd. The finale is so preposterous it is absolutely impossible to figure out how it comes to be. Some tangents are begun and then left to die along the way with no further mention. It's a really, really bad script (aside from being totally recycled).
One thing Tim Blake Nelson does well is get an amazing bunch of supporting actors into his film. Aside from himself, Susan Sarandon, Ty Burrell (though this was probably made before Modern Family), Steve Earle, Richard Dreyfuss and Keri Russell all have parts in this. Not bad for a teeny tiny movie. Russell is absolutely wonderful, as she always is, and once again begs the question: Why the fuck is she not acting more or in bigger things? It looks like the last majorish film she did was Waitress in 2007. That's crazy. She's fantastic (and beautiful). Oh, and Steve Earle is always wonderful and he should act more too... and play more music. I love him.
Whatever. This movie is nonsensical and goofy. I can't figure out if it really needs to be about pot or if that was just a really cynical decision someone made hoping weed would be some sort of draw for the indie/art house movie watchers in big cities. I'm sure there are people whose mouths would water at the sight of all the massive amounts of drugs shown onscreen. I don't really care. It's pretty dumb and very banal.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
Norton plays identical twins Bill and Brady who are basically complete opposites of one another. Bill is a world-renowned, Ivy League professor of Classics and Brady is a redneck in rural Oklahoma who happens to be one of the best pot growers in the state (in the world?). Brady tricks Bill into visiting Oklahoma and then gets him to pull a Parent Trap so he has an alibi in their local town, while he goes up to Tulsa to take care of some dirty business.
You've seen this movie about a hundred times before: Eastern elite guy goes to rednecked wilderness, hates it, then falls for a girl (the magnificent Keri Russell), then realizes it's not so bad in the sticks. This one has more stuff in it about pot and a weird thing with Jews, but that's about it.
I really like Tim Blake Nelson as an actor (though this role is basically the same bumpkin he's played in the past), but he's just not fabulous as a writer or a director, as we see here. The story jumps around in totally weird and ridiculous ways, sometimes edging around logic, sometimes just being totally bizarre and absurd. The finale is so preposterous it is absolutely impossible to figure out how it comes to be. Some tangents are begun and then left to die along the way with no further mention. It's a really, really bad script (aside from being totally recycled).
One thing Tim Blake Nelson does well is get an amazing bunch of supporting actors into his film. Aside from himself, Susan Sarandon, Ty Burrell (though this was probably made before Modern Family), Steve Earle, Richard Dreyfuss and Keri Russell all have parts in this. Not bad for a teeny tiny movie. Russell is absolutely wonderful, as she always is, and once again begs the question: Why the fuck is she not acting more or in bigger things? It looks like the last majorish film she did was Waitress in 2007. That's crazy. She's fantastic (and beautiful). Oh, and Steve Earle is always wonderful and he should act more too... and play more music. I love him.
Whatever. This movie is nonsensical and goofy. I can't figure out if it really needs to be about pot or if that was just a really cynical decision someone made hoping weed would be some sort of draw for the indie/art house movie watchers in big cities. I'm sure there are people whose mouths would water at the sight of all the massive amounts of drugs shown onscreen. I don't really care. It's pretty dumb and very banal.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Nora's Will (2010) (Saturday, January 1, 2011) (171)
Mariana Chenillo's Nora's Will is a lovely dramedy about the obstinacy of religion and old lovers. In it, Jose (Fernando Lujan) finds his ex-wife Nora dead from suicide in her apartment. The two were married for 30 years and now have been divorced for the past 20 years. They remained friendly over those years and he lives across the street from her in Mexico City.
As he begins to make arrangements for her burial, he gets wrapped up in the politics of her conservative synagogue. He has been particularly atheist and does what he can to thumb his nose at the rabbis and helpers who come to take care of her body. Meanwhile his son Ruben is caught in a messy situation with his father-in-law, a powerful man who is his boss and an important man in the synagogue.
This is a funny movie, with Jose acting the perfect devilish prankster. He orders a pizza with ham on it to annoy all the kosher men around the apartment. He tries to bury her in the Cemetery of Jesus and orders a gigantic cross-shaped casket as well as several floral crosses into her apartment. He does this as a passive aggressive act to combat the passive aggressiveness his ex-wife treated him and her family with throughout her life (and even in death).
In the third act, the film changes directions a bit and becomes more serious when Jose has to face facts and figure out a way to bury Nora. Many conservative cemeteries won't bury her because she committed suicide and Jose has to straighten up and figure out a way to make it happen, playing into the baroque politics of the occasion.
This is a lovely and small movie, but it allows Lujan to give one of the best performances of the year. He moves from being very silly to very sensible, always with a wink in his eye. We are delighted by his connection to his grand daughters and how he uses them to annoy his daughter-in-law and son. He is also very powerful as a hurt ex-lover when he realizes his wife might have cheated on him at one point during their marriage.
Chenillo has a very good, smart script here and also employs wonderful the cinematography of Alberto Anaya. This is a sweet little movie and one that packs a stronger punch than I was expecting it would. It is a much deeper film than it would appear on the surface and shows a lot of maturity on Chenillo's part. This is a grown-up movie in somewhat silly clothes.
Stars: 3 of 4
As he begins to make arrangements for her burial, he gets wrapped up in the politics of her conservative synagogue. He has been particularly atheist and does what he can to thumb his nose at the rabbis and helpers who come to take care of her body. Meanwhile his son Ruben is caught in a messy situation with his father-in-law, a powerful man who is his boss and an important man in the synagogue.
This is a funny movie, with Jose acting the perfect devilish prankster. He orders a pizza with ham on it to annoy all the kosher men around the apartment. He tries to bury her in the Cemetery of Jesus and orders a gigantic cross-shaped casket as well as several floral crosses into her apartment. He does this as a passive aggressive act to combat the passive aggressiveness his ex-wife treated him and her family with throughout her life (and even in death).
In the third act, the film changes directions a bit and becomes more serious when Jose has to face facts and figure out a way to bury Nora. Many conservative cemeteries won't bury her because she committed suicide and Jose has to straighten up and figure out a way to make it happen, playing into the baroque politics of the occasion.
This is a lovely and small movie, but it allows Lujan to give one of the best performances of the year. He moves from being very silly to very sensible, always with a wink in his eye. We are delighted by his connection to his grand daughters and how he uses them to annoy his daughter-in-law and son. He is also very powerful as a hurt ex-lover when he realizes his wife might have cheated on him at one point during their marriage.
Chenillo has a very good, smart script here and also employs wonderful the cinematography of Alberto Anaya. This is a sweet little movie and one that packs a stronger punch than I was expecting it would. It is a much deeper film than it would appear on the surface and shows a lot of maturity on Chenillo's part. This is a grown-up movie in somewhat silly clothes.
Stars: 3 of 4
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