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Archive for April, 2012

“THE SALT OF LIFE”: Dirty Old Men

Posted in Art house fare on April 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Gianni De Grigorio in “The Salt of Life”

“THE SALT OF LIFE”  My rating: B (Opening April 27 at the Tivoli)

90 minutes| No MPAA rating

The dirty old man has long been a generator of laughs. British comic Benny Hill made a career out of eye-rolling lechers; sitcom television is thick with thickening husbands who might dream a good game but no longer have the will or the skill.

Gianni Di Gregorio’s “The Salt of Life” might be viewed as an Italian “The Seven Year Itch.” But beneath the chuckles, something serious is happening.

Or maybe not. This is a very low-keyed, unassertive affair. You can view it as a pleasant toss-off or as a minor tragedy.

Writer/director Gergorio plays 60-year-old Gianni, involuntarily retired and now a househusband, holding down the fort while his wife goes to work and his daughter goes to college.

He’s a nondescript fellow whose dominant features are the prominent bags under his eyes. He looks like a cartoon Bassett hound.

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“THE DEEP BLUE SEA”: Suicide by boredom

Posted in Uncategorized on April 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Tom Hiddleston, Rachel Weisz in “The Deep Blue Sea”

“THE DEEP BLUE SEA” My rating: C (Opening April 27 at the Tivoli and Glenwood)

98 minutes| MPAA rating: R

Twenty years ago British filmmaker Terence Davies made two movies — “Distance Voice, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes” — that were masterpieces of personal cinema. Low budget but beautifully conceived, the films hauntingly examined Davies’ own boyhood and youth in pre-WW2 Britain. They weren’t dramas, really (there was no big dramatic narrative), but they created an indelible portrait of a way of life, a working-class existence in which the simplest things might provide the most profound joy. Simple things like gathering with friends at the pub and over a pint singing popular songs.

In a sense Davies has been trying to remake those movies ever since. Certainly that seems to be the case with “The Deep Blue Sea,” his adaptation of Terrence Rattigan’s 1950 play about a woman who has left her wealthy husband for a washed-up fighter pilot and finds that isn’t working out either. (more…)

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“THE FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT”: Funny, it felt longer

Posted in Popcorn movies on April 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Jason Segel, Emily Blunt

“THE FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT” My rating: C (Opening wide April 27)

124 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Movies made by Judd Apatow and his acolytes are guaranteed to deliver some hearty laughs.

You can also be sure that they will be afflicted with comedic elephantitis. They will go on. And on. And on.

The latest example of this wearisome trend is “The Five Year Engagement,” directed by Nicholas Stoller (“Get Him to the Greek,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) and written by Stoller and star Jason Segel.

Tom (Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) have been dating for forever. He’s a chef in a trendy San Francisco restaurant. She’s…well, I’m not sure what she does.

But after years of happy cohabitation, Tom finally proposes. All is blissful. They tell their families, they dive into wedding planning. It’s just cute as hell.

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“IN THE FAMILY”: A talent that might really matter

Posted in Uncategorized on April 20, 2012| 1 Comment »

“IN THE FAMILY” My rating: A- (Opening May 20 at the Tivoli)

169 minutes | No MPAA rating

“In the Family” is a first feature so meticulously made, quietly heartfelt and carefully modulated that feels like a revelation, like the arrival of a talent that might really matter. An American Bresson, perhaps.

Except…except that writer/director/star Patrick Wang seems unable to turn it off. “In the Family” runs for nearly three freaking hours, and while audiences might tolerate that excess in a big-screen epic, it’s an intimidating thing in an intimate family drama. Unless you’re O’Neill, and even then it’s iffy.

Still, I saw the film a week ago and it has stuck with me. It establishes its own rhythms and viewpoint, it took up residence in my head. That doesn’t happen all that often.

What Wang gives us here is a story about a gay family, and yet I hesitate to call this a “gay” movie because its concerns — and Wang’s obvious artistry — are so universal.

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“CHIMPANZEE”: Monkey business

Posted in Documentaries on April 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“CHIMPANZEE” My rating: C (Opening wide on April 30)

78 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

When Walt Disney began making nature documentaries back in the early 1950s, one of the first criticisms leveled at him was that he was anthropomorphizing his animal subjects.

The reviewers raved about the images captured by camera crews who camped out for weeks in the hope of catching an eaglet emerging from its egg or a stampede of lemmings committing mass suicide in a leap into an icy Arctic sea.

But they strenuously objected to Disney’s tendency to ascribe to these wild creatures human motives and human emotions, as if animals acted out of choice rather than out of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Funny how things don’t change.
“Chimpanzee,” the latest of Disney’s new line of wildlife film, is sometimes so astoundingly beautiful that you wonder if it’s for real or if some of those images (lighting strikes, a fog-enshrouded rain forest) haven’t been sweetened with a big fat dollop of computer enhancement.

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“BULLY”: Lonely at the bottom

Posted in Uncategorized on April 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Alex…one of the victims of “Bully”

“BULLY”  My rating: B (Opening wide on April 13)

99 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Bully” isn’t a particularly artful documentary, but there’s no question of its effectiveness.

Lee Hirsch’s film actually should be called “Bullied,” since it’s not about the perpetrators of classroom abuse but about the victims — the geeks, the gays, the goofy kids who go through life with a metaphorical target pinned to their backs.

Thus “Bully” doesn’t even address the “whys” of bullying. It’s all about the emotional and psychic pain it inflicts…and it more than proves its case.

Hirsch concentrates on five cases of bullying. In Sioux City, Iowa, he hides a microphone on young Alex to record the abuse piled on him every day on the bus ride to school. Hirsch — who served as his own cinematographer — also employs what seem to be hidden cameras to capture the slaps, punches and pushing (either that or the young bullies are actually showing off for the filmmaker).

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“CHICO and RITA”: Hot nights in Havana

Posted in Art house fare on April 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

"Chico & Rita"...not for the kids

“CHICO & RITA” My rating: B (Opening April 13 at the Tivoli)

94 minutes | No MPAA rating

Animation has so long been the domain of the family crowd that when we encounter something aimed at grownups (“Persepolis,” “Waltz With Bashir”) it’s easy to go overboard.

The Irish-made, Spanish-language “Chico & Rita” is a musical love story spanning a half-century. It was one of the films nominated this year for the Oscar for animated feature, but lost to “Rango” (which isn’t precisely a family film, either, though kids no doubt enjoy it).

“Chico…” is clearly not for the kids. Not with animated nudity and sex. And in any case, this effort from directors Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba is about emotions way over the heads of children, who will quickly grow bored.

But for music- and romance-loving adults, it’s a small feast.

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“THE KID WITH A BIKE”: Angry young man

Posted in Art house fare on April 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Cecile de France and Thomas Doret

“THE KID WITH A BIKE” My rating: B

87 minutes | No MPAA rating

Nobody ever seems like they’re acting in the films of siblings

Jean-Pierre and Luc  Dardenne. Everything is so natural and unforced

that any actorish method would stand out like a pimple on the face of

the Mona Lisa.

Maybe that’s because the Belgian duo invariably center their films on

children, usually portrayed by untrained first-timers who are so good at

just being that acting would be superfluous.

The troubled title character of “The Kid With A Bike” is Cyril (Thomas

Doret),  who as the movie begins is living in a group home for

youngsters.

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“LOCKOUT”: Yippee Kay-Yee Part II

Posted in Uncategorized on April 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Maggie Grace and Guy Pierce in “Lockout”

“LOCKOUT” My rating: C (Opens wide on April 13)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There are moments in “Lockout” — usually when Guy Pearce is channelling his best “Die Hard”-era Bruce Willis —  that you really wish this Aussie actor got better material.

“Lockout” is easiest described by listing the movies it rips off: The original “Die Hard,” “Escape from New York,” the first “Star Wars”…it’s not so much a movie as a laundry list of references.

The writers and directors — James Mather and Stephen St. Leger — start things off with a nifty sequence. Pierce’s character, a CIA agent named Snow, is tied to a chair and being roughed up by a goon. Between deafening punches, Snow cracks wise. He’s cocky and funny and sardonic. An Energizer Bunny with a steel jaw.

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“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”: Long night’s journey

Posted in Art house fare on April 6, 2012| 1 Comment »

Yilmaz Erdogan and Firat Tanis in "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia"

“ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA” My rating: A- (Opening April 6 at the Tivoli)

153 minutes | No MPAA rating

I cannot begin to explain how “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” does what it does.

That’s part of its greatness, the way in which it slowly worms its way into our consciousness and blossoms, not in big melodramatic moments but in little ripples of thought and suppressed emotion that create a mood unlike just about any film I can recall.

After a brief prologue that shows three men drinking in what appears to be a run-down car repair shop, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s unforgettable drama begins at night in the rolling hills outside a medium-sized Turkish city.  In a wide shot we see three pairs of headlights in the distance. They finally pull to a stop and men get out, some in uniforms, some carrying shovels, a couple in handcuffs.

We soon surmise that this is a police investigation. Two men have been charged with murdering a third; this expedition was organized to find the body.

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