Time to give a brief description of the plotline. Glenn Close’s character has had a terribly difficult time of it as a youth and young woman. In 19th Century Dublin, in order to get a job as a waiter in a hotel and support herself, she disguises herself as a man, renames herself, and lives that way for many years. Nobbs is withdrawn emotionally and has relatively little dialogue. Things are enlivened by a couple of events. One is the entrance of Janet McTeer, who also is posing as a man, Hubert Page. Page comes to the hotel and finds himself sharing a room with Hobbs. I have loved Janet McTeer since her turn as a Southern single mom in Tumbleweeds. Here she brings some life to the story, and richly deserves her Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. The other point of interest is Nobbs’ relationship with a much younger female hotel worker, played quite well by Mia Wasikowska. Parts of Nobbs come to life as this relationship develops, but Nobbs hadn’t earned my sympathy earlier in the movie, and so it wasn’t quite enough.

About Rodrigo Garcia: He has done an outstanding job directing contemporary female ensemble pieces like Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her, Nine Lives, and, most recently, Mother and Child. He has also directed quite a few television shows like Six Feet Under, Carnivale, and In Treatment – no small feat. I think that he just didn’t match up well with the genre of Albert Nobbs.

Anyway, a second opinion — I chatted with Will briefly about this film, and he said he liked it a lot more than he thought he would. So for viewers who enjoy period pieces, appreciate the costuming, the art direction, and the particular kind of dialogue that the best of these offers, maybe give Albert Nobbs a shot. Also, if you are curious about Glenn Close’s turn as a man and care about the scope of her filmography, roles in movies as diverse as The Big Chill, Fatal Attraction, and The Chumscrubber, check out what she’s up to as Nobbs. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/15/12

Based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who co-wrote the screenplay with Carnahan, it has Neeson playing yet another tough guy, albeit one contemplating suicide who works in Alaska killing wolves that threaten a team of oil workers. When the plane they all take home crashes, Neeson and six other survivors struggle against not only the elements, but a pack of grey wolves stalking them.

Neeson, unsurprisingly, is the film’s bright spot. His size alone makes him a commanding presence, someone you’re convinced could survive such a brutal ordeal. But he has a touching soft side, too. You hear the defeat in his voice in the opening scenes as he narrates a letter, and feel his compassion as, in the film’s best scene, he helps a survivor face his impending death.

To his credit, Carnahan (The A-Team) manages to wring some decent tension out of the wolf attacks themselves, and for the most part eschews explicit gore, staging the attacks at night or showing them from a distance. As well he does a solid job with the soundtrack, effectively creating brief moments of terror as wolves howl into the night or growl threateningly at the weary men.

The main problem is that, when the wolves aren’t attacking, the film attempts weightiness, which Carnahan doesn’t know how to pace. Scenes of the survivors discussing religion while sitting around a fire, or of an injured character quietly claiming he can’t continue, drag on and on and practically ground the film to a halt. The weak writing in these scenes only compounds the issue.

What’s more, the survivors (including Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts) are poorly defined, save, naturally, for Neeson, making it hard to care what befalls any of them. They’re basically just types. Roberts is the one with humanity, Joe Anderson the freaked-out chatterbox and Frank Grillo the aggressive challenger (and the only supporting survivor with any kind of depth).

Beyond that, the script creates too obvious a parallel to the wolf-pack mentality, there’s a little too much shaky cam for my taste, and, save for a couple shots, Carnahan fails to do much with the obviously breathtaking Alberta locale. What burned me the most, though, is how Carnahan ends the thing. I wanted to see Neeson punch a wolf in the throat. I had to imagine he did instead. – [DVD]

Action/Adventure/Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/15/12

Dreamed up by Max Landis and director Josh Trank, it follows a trio of Seattle high school seniors—outcast Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and popular kid Steve (Michael B. Jordan)—via Andrew’s camera (and, later, other camera vantage points) as they acquire telekinesis, and other abilities, after touching what we assume is an alien artifact.

The film is at its most fun as the boys use their powers for mischief—blowing up a girl’s skirt, scaring people in a toy store, shoving a BMW across a parking lot, skipping rocks. It turns downright exhilarating when they learn they can fly, soaring, and even playing football, among the clouds. Their teenage exuberance at this discovery is contagious.

But the dangers of having these abilities start to become apparent after Andrew playfully shoves a car off the road and into a river. Where Matt and Steve are well-adjusted teens, Andrew is angry, dealing with bullies, an alcoholic father (Michael Kelly) and a sick mother, and so his abilities cleverly reflect his bottled up hostility toward the world. Watch as he unleashes a roar of rage at one point close to the end, shattering windows and making the ground tremble.

So the film descends into ever darker territory, though remains completely compelling, as Andrew spins out of control, killing neighborhood thugs, ripping out a bully’s teeth, inadvertently blowing up a gas station and blowing a hospital room to pieces. It all culminates in a fantastic finale, a super duper showdown between Andrew and Matt that involves, among other things, the Space Needle, a city bus and an exploding helicopter.

Dialogue isn’t the film’s strong suit, to be sure, but it more than makes up for it in other ways, especially in how Landis and Trank are constantly able to have us see Andrew, who’s almost always with camera, via mirrors, the camera of a cute blonde girl (Anna Wood) Matt likes, hospital security footage and the like. Their most ingenious method, though, is having Andrew use his abilities to make his camera float above the action. (The bloody-nose-something-is-wrong conceit is also neat.)

Not to dilute the contributions of Russell and Jordan, who are solid, nor Trank’s skill at inserting convincing effects amid all the handheld mayhem, but none of this would have worked without DeHaan. Resembling nothing less than a young Leonardo DiCaprio, the 26-year-old perfectly and beautifully embodies bullied-teen misery. The only difference is that, when this teen becomes enraged, he can crush a car simply by closing his fist. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 5/15/12

In Michael, a pinched faced nebbish of a man goes about his day. He does errands, cleans his house and yard and when he smokes he does so outside. His job at an insurance company is the most “lonely guy” of clichés and our initial impression is of a closed-off individual. This set, bland, routine to his life is very necessary when the viewer is shown the boy, Wolfgang, who this man, Michael, keeps prisoner in his basement.

In a bright room with toys, books and a kettle to heat water for soup, Wolfgang spends his day. This is why the shutters on the windows that close at a precise time every evening are industrial grade and a battering ram would be needed to break down the door to Wolfgang’s. Michael has methodically prepared for keeping this young man captive. Nothing unspeakable is ever really shown, just chilling implications.

Early in the film, Michael takes the boy on an outing and you wonder why Wolfgang doesn’t just bolt. What unfolds is a study of almost masterful mind control. Michael constantly takes steps to keep the boy in line, but also placated. They do chores, eat upstairs at the table, work a puzzle, throw snowballs. Michael seems in these moments like an overly dour father. It’s when he’s alone, laughing at a horror film as he lays on his couch or in awkward explanations with his family that he seems his most monstrous. We squirm at the massive disconnect and lack of conscience he needs to maintain this subterfuge. The boy’s room is always stocked with supplies, especially when Michael takes a days long ski trip, but he also prepares for any eventuality as when scouting the woods for a grave.

We’re never taken far into Michael’s psyche. There are no hints of abuse or trauma that led him to this. He just wants to have this boy. When an interview with a doctor about pedophilia comes on the television, Michael frantically shuts off the power to Wolfgang’s room. He isn’t upset that a mirror has been held up to his actions, but more that there could be a break in his mind control.

Michael is the first time directing for Markus Schleinzer who’s been a casting director for films like The Robber and The Counterfeiters, but also for director Michael Haneke and whose dark work this film bears the most resemblance to in its style and choice of subject matter.

The comedian Louis C.K. made an observation that if child molestation were more socially acceptable, there’d be fewer child murders. Nobody believes or wants this, and we’re conflicted about putting a sympathetic or “human face” on this most heinous of crimes, but put Michael alongside L.I.E., The Woodsman, and M as proof we’re long past the easy boogeyman in film.

A dance of memory and devotion set in 1960’s Japan, we see debts owed from love and friendship in Norwegian Wood. In spare narration, the film’s main protagonist Watanabe (Ken’ichi Matsuyama) tells the story of himself and his friends, the sweethearts Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) and Kizuki (Kengo Kora).  Kizuki and Naoko have known each other since they were very young and being together, along with Watanabe’s friendship, make life perfect until Kizuki commits suicide. The tragedy makes it seem that nothing can ever be right again.

Watanabe is attending college when Naoko, now twenty and fragile, tenderly reaches out to him, reveals a secret about her and Kizuki’s love, then disappears.  As Watanabe works two jobs, and the student unrest of the day passes him by, he meets and is quietly enamored of Midori (Kiko Mizuhara). Then Naoko contacts him from a sanitarium where she’s recovering from a breakdown and Watanabe tries to pull her back to him.

In film, young love can be an obsessive, one-note theme. An obsessive wants the object of that obsession to never change. The passion of young love must be an all consuming flame always. Both make for the shallowest melodrama because tempering either of these with ruminations gets away from the formula of romance. Perfectly composed with a rich palette of colors, and capturing the era with clothing crisp and bright and furnishings completely of the time, Norwegian Wood could be slagged off initially as foreign film young-people-in-mope with a lot of surface and no substance.

But the film quietly, elegantly goes about its business. Change is in the air, mainly between the sexes and Watanabe’s character battles against himself over his devotion to Naoko, his attraction to Midori and, let’s face it, how a young man steeped in his culture should handle himself. He does want Naoko. Not as she was, in their honeyed younger days of only a short while before, but he wants here well and he wants to understand what’s happened and he also wants his life to move on. There’s frankness and a lyricism to the dialogue (yes, we’ll just have to trust the subtitles, but that doesn’t take away from it) and when heartbreak happens to the characters (as with Naoko, her back is to us, yards away on a hillside) the restraint used draws us more into the moment then any Oscar-bait movie in recent memory. A tryst with Reiko (Reika Kirishima), a music teacher and fellow patient of Naoko’s, is not opportunistic sex for Watanabe, it’s closure for them both and her first step back into the world.

In the end this is what we do. You take time to remember. Effect what repairs you can on your heart. Then you go on. – [DVD]

Michael: Drama, Unrated, Austria

Norwegian Wood: Drama/Romance, Unrated, Japan

DVD Release Date: 5/15/12

The Concert

This kind of comedy is actually more typical of Britain than of France these days, resembling the likes of The Full Monty, Kinky Boots, and Pirate Radio. It’s still very much a French film, despite the predominantly Russian cast. The top billed performer in the film is Mélanie Laurent, best known Stateside as the charmingly vengeful Shosanna Dreyfus from Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds. As Anne-Marie Jacquet, the star violinist headlining the Paris concert, she is, at face value, more of a supporting player. Yet she all but steals the film in its final act, which packed a considerably heftier emotional punch than I expected after all the silliness in the first half.

I think most people will enjoy The Concert–it’s an earnest if fanciful crowd-pleaser. Fans of classical music, particularly Tchaikovsky lovers, will appreciate the main event. Those of you who, like me, were smitten with Ms. Laurent in Basterds will find her just as bewitching here. For a film that begins as such a wacky farce, it has a surprisingly potent and satisfying emotional climax. As rickety and clumsy as its construction may be, it reaches its destination in the end. – [DVD]

Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 6/14/11

I say half-hearted because Portman’s character never quite succeeds in winning our sympathies. This despite the fact that much of the film is spent discussing the tragic death of hers and her husband’s newborn daughter shortly after bringing her home from the hospital. Though she does make an earnest go at connecting with her older stepson, a predictably precocious and neurotic kid played by Charlie Tahan (who could build a career out of playing Steve Zahn as a kid), she doesn’t quite seem to like him. Not that her “competition” is much more likable. Her husband’s shrill ex-wife (Lisa Kudrow) does just about everything she can to sabotage Portman.

Though it labels itself a drama/comedy, The Other Woman really isn’t nearly as funny as it ought to be. It takes its world of wealthy New Yorkers, crippled by their own self-entitlement, way too seriously. Portman remains a skilled actress in my eyes, but the singular focus on her character, even to the point of awkwardly leaving other characters out of frame, hamstrings the film. All I can say is, if you’re in the market for a movie that is about 80% comprised of bitter recriminations hurled back and forth by desperately unphilosophical rich people, this is the picture for you. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/17/11

Blue Valentine

So that brings us to Blue Valentine. This movie was widely acclaimed as one of the best of 2010. The story is simple. It’s about the breakdown of a marriage. I’m told that it’s a little depressing, but I am never depressed by a well-made, provocative, and artful film. Cindy (Michelle Williams), is bright, pretty, and has dreams of going to medical school. Dean (Ryan Gosling) is a high school dropout whose mother split when he was young, and who now works for a moving company. You’re beginning to get the picture? They’re kind of mismatched, but they meet, have a romantic interlude, she dances and he plays the ukulele, and through pregnancy and destiny, they end up together. We get glimpses of the couple during various phases of their relationship – the film is edited with cross cutting over time periods, and in this way, the viewer understands their back story without the typical chronological order of most narratives. Credit Jim Helton, along with the other editor, Ron Patane, for not only making this style work, but for also enhancing how the story unfolds.

Both Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams got multiple award nominations, and Michelle got the Oscar nod. I really think that Ryan’s contribution to this film was equal to that of Michelle. His Dean is a familiar character – he’s playful, loyal, very boyish, and he drinks and smokes too much. A very telling line in the movie comes when Cindy, frustrated with what she perceives as Dean’s lack of ambition, asks him if he doesn’t ever think about having a job where he doesn’t have to drink at 8 am. Dean retorts that the fact that he can drink at 8 am is actually a great “benefit” of his painting job. He is hugely devoted to their daughter, Frankie, and he’s the kind of guy that cries over the loss of a dog, and bonds immediately with the other guys at work. Ryan totally inhabits this character. It’s a pleasure to watch him. He’s an actor with great range, and we have seen that he was as effective in Lars and the Real Girl as he was in Half Nelson. He imbues Dean with a soft vulnerability that is somehow and magically melded seamlessly with his blue-collar sensibility. We’re not given a tremendous amount of detail about how their love devolves. This is really my one gripe with the movie: not quite enough linkage of how the couple went from spark to lights out. I could have used more proof about why Cindy was over Dean, because in spite of his flaws, I romanticized him and was rooting for him. Of course, I didn’t have to live with him. But instead, Michelle delivers an achingly delicate, subtly breathtaking performance, totally complex in its simplicity and not readily definable. Her turn as Wendy in Wendy and Lucy could draw a comparison, but here, in Blue Valentine, she’s even more like a painting that invites interpretation.

Add great music (you’ll know Grizzly Bear after this film) and some great sets – bridges, buses, store entrances, and the best one: the Future Room in a cheapo motel where Dean hopes to reach back to the love and the sex that attracted them at first. And speaking of sex, there are a couple of somewhat graphic scenes—graphic enough to warrant the threat of an NC-17 rating, which was eventually and thankfully overturned in favor of an R rating.

There’s so much more. We see the portrayal of family relationships, a chance encounter between Cindy and her old boyfriend, the smarmy doctor offering Cindy a new “position”, and the initial meeting point of Cindy and Dean—Cindy visiting her grandma in a retirement home while Dean is moving in an elderly gentleman. This is one of the most poignant scenes of the film. I could go on and on, but before a spoiler occurs here, I’ll just say a big “See it”, and think of Derek behind the counter years ago at Video Station. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/10/11

The Illusionist

Like Tati’s other stories, this one is not strongly plot-driven. It is, rather, an establishment of setting and mood punctuated by endlessly clever yet understated comic setpieces. Though all of Tati’s films have an undercurrent of nostalgic melancholy, Illusionist serves up a sharper, more intimate sting, presumably due to the more personal nature of the story he wrote, and perhaps why he never could produce it himself.

This is a gorgeous film to look at. Chomet’s style of animation, both here and in Belleville, recalls Disney’s middle-period animated features from the 60′s through the 80′s, which were a riot of pencil-drawn spontaneity and dusky watercolor depths. His character designs blend sharply exaggerated caricature and naturalistic proportions. His use of computer-aided animation is more prominent here, but never heavy-handed or gimmicky. At one point, we even see the real Tati meet his re-animated counterpart.

It’s also plenty funny, but, true to Tati, more full of wise winks and smiles than belly laughs. Chomet and Tati share a love of visual humor–neither director’s films have much essential dialogue–teasing us, for instance, with a shot from behind of a Scotsman on a little motorboat, his kilt blowing in the wind. Or a nice little scene where the penniless magician takes a job at an auto garage and tends to a rich Texan’s ostentatious Cadillac–classic Tati, with Chomet’s satirical barbed twist (the license plate reads “B1G-A55″).

It’s appropriate that a film about a magician should itself be intrinsically and self-evidently magical. But I’m convinced that those who approach The Illusionist familiar not only with Chomet’s work but with Tati’s will find it downright exhilarating, as I did. Therefore I will end this review with an aggressive plug for Tati’s films–particularly 1967′s Playtime. To use my favorite facile tagline for it, it’s like the cinematic equivalent of “Where’s Waldo?” Be sure to watch it on as big a screen as you can–with Criterion’s Blu-Ray disc if possible. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Animation/Comedy/Drama

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 5/10/11

Jolene

Taken as a whole, Jolene is not without a sense of ironic reversals. Though she ends up being mistreated worst by the handsome, Christian charmer (Michael Vartan), she is happiest, safest and most fulfilled during her time with a Vegas mobster sugar-daddy (Chazz Palminteri). I suppose it’s all meant to be a parable of girl-power (stylistically I thought it echoed Thelma and Louise), but it really felt more to me like a rambling account of unrelenting misfortune. Still, Chastain turns in a fine performance, and her supporting players, even when they’re behaving monstrously, are fun to watch too. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 4/26/11