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

After all, there’s something especially stirring about the great leaders who overcome profound handicaps and quell their doubters as they rise to the throne. It goes back at least as far as bow-legged Spartan king Agesilaus and limping Roman emperor Claudius, the latter being played memorably by Derek Jacobi, who in a nice reversal here gets to play skeptic to Colin Firth’s monarch. And certainly there are few handicaps more prickly and relatable than stuttering. It is a battle my own father has fought all his life–in his younger years he too had a speech therapist (who, as he wistfully recalls, resembled Marisa Tomei).

Colin Firth certainly earned his Oscar (though I think he deserved it more for last year’s A Single Man)–his stammers are impressively authentic. Geoffrey Rush, as Logue, hits just the right notes of professional compassion and humble wit. I’m particularly impressed with Helena Bonham Carter’s performance as Firth’s wife (a.k.a. The Queen Mother), having learned that she was simultaneously filming Harry Potter as Bellatrix Lestrange–a role more or less the polar opposite. Equally strong is the writing and direction. David Seidler’s script is warm, clever and sharp. Director Tom Hooper, with his cinematographer Danny Cohen, shot the film in a strangely appealing palette, contrasting pale wintry light with the diffuse orange glow of electric light. The score, by Alexandre Desplat, is nicely understated in its own right, also dovetailing nicely with the extensive use of Beethoven throughout.

The prominence of good ol’ Ludwig Van in the film was actually something I found especially potent, particularly in later scenes involving the onset of World War II. Beyond the music’s intrinsic power, it subtly reflects the fact that, during the war, the Allies appropriated the German composer as their own. In fact, the 5th Symphony (which is not featured in the film) was repurposed, almost literally, as the drumbeat of Allied victory (the letter “V” in Morse code is da-da-da-daaah). You might think I’m making a connection where none exists, but I keenly feel that The King’s Speech was intended in part to remind us that while Hitler monstrously and foolishly strove to exterminate the handicapped (Seidler’s own grandparents were lost in the Holocaust), he was finally overcome by leaders who themselves were handicapped. In a particularly nice moment between Firth’s George and Churchill (Timothy Spall), Winston informs his King that though he struggled with his own speech impediment, he eventually learned to “make an asset of it.” Wise words indeed. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Biography/Drama/History

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Kidman and Eckhart play a couple mourning the loss of their 4-year-old son, who only months earlier ran into the street and was hit by a car. During their struggle they lash out at each other, friends and family, and find new ways of coping, she by talking to the remorseful teen (Miles Teller) who was driving the car, he by befriending a pot-smoking member (Sandra Oh) of their support group.

The film was directed by John Cameron Mitchell, best known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and he proves very skilled with the technical details. He lights the film beautifully, his framing of shots is exquisitely precise and he utilizes a gentle score to provide the right note of sadness. As a result it feels more like a big-studio effort than an indie flick that took less than a month to make.

What it lacks is the necessary emotional intensity. Which is frustrating, because the script by David Lindsay-Abaire, who based it on his play, gets the words and situations right, like the awkward moments when people ask Eckhart if he has any kids or accuse Kidman of not being a mother. Or when Kidman sums up the bleak state of their lives by saying, “Things aren’t nice anymore.”

The problem, I think, is that Mitchell’s direction is a little too low-key, and so the scenes of Kidman and Eckhart letting go emotionally, be it arguing or crying, never feel as cathartic as they should. It doesn’t help that Kidman’s performance, which was touted as being this really raw thing, feels so controlled. She’s never less than good here, but I don’t think she dug down nearly deep enough in trying to convey her character’s pain.

Thankfully, the always-reliable Dianne Wiest is around to pick up the emotional slack. As Kidman’s mother, a woman still stung by the years-ago death of Kidman’s drug-addicted brother, she effortlessly communicates weary anguish, without sentimentalizing it. Her moments with Kidman are the film’s best, none more so than when she explains to Kidman that grief never really goes away, but it does change, and even becomes bearable, “like a brick in your pocket.” – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Director Peter Weir’s films can have an exceptional if not perfect melding of character, subject and setting. The best examples like Master and Commander, The Year of Living Dangerously, The Last Wave and even the flawed Mosquito Coast offset the trite efforts like Green Card. As locusts buzz in the Australian outback, unbearable tension is maintained through the whole of Picnic at Hanging Rock and in the thriller Witness, what could have been any other genre exercise for a paycheck, Weir crafts as fine a character study as anything by Kazan.

So why doesn’t The Way Back work?

The escapees’ daunting trek is not particularly composed in any real fashion through Weir’s and cinematographer Russell Boyd’s lens. It’s like a point-and-shoot exercise at staggering vistas. Through most of the film the prisoners head in a compass direction, there’s an aerial view of rugged terrain, and then they’re on the other side of the obstacle. Interspersed scenes of them inventively finding food and maintaining their humanity feel just that way… interspersed. The viewer is never invested in these tiny figures traipsing through a blizzard or into an approaching sandstorm.

Jim Sturgess as Janusz the Polish officer is fine. Saoirse Ronan as Irena, another escapee they pick up on the way, is touching and warmhearted and Ed Harris is his gruff and fatalistic best. All concerned fit the bill performance wise, but when the film keeps misfiring, there’s no character richness past a certain point. Other things, like knowing how to combat body lice in a gulag, are detail for detail’s sake. The flat ending is predestined.

In light of his body of work, this seems a stumble for Weir and it’s too bad. In these days of franchise reboots, we could use a truly visceral return to the film epic á la David Lean. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Adventure/Drama

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Hildegard was a 12th Century German nun who was, as far as we can tell from the scant historical record, an enlightened “renaissance” woman, at least as far as a nun born before the Renaissance can be called such. She yearned for more than the usual prostration and self-flagellation so common to the Church in medieval times; she loved nature, and believed music could be a true healing force. If you listen to her music, you may believe, too.

The film consists mostly of the daily routine in the abbey, with some nuns jealous and some supportive. Von Trotta wisely concentrates on the face of Hildegard, played by Barbara Sukowa (Fassbinder’s Lola and Berlin Alexanderplatz) and her glorious music. – [DVD]

Drama

Unrated

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11