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Archive for the ‘Art house fare’ Category

“SHAME”: The job of sex

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , on January 20, 2012| 2 Comments »

Michael Fassbender

“SHAME” My rating: B (Opening Jan 20)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: NC-17

The words “sex addict” are never uttered in Steve McQueen’s “Shame.”

This isn’t one of those social-problem films where a shrink swoops in to explain our hero’s condition and tell us how with therapy and the support of loved ones a sufferer’s life can be turned around.

We’re not even all that sure that Brandon Sullivan, the film’s protagonist, wants to turn his life around.

When we first meet Brandon (Brit actor Michael Fassbender) he’s lying in his bed after a sexual encounter. We hardly get a glimpse of his partner, who is dressing to leave. In fact, she doesn’t matter. Certainly not to Brandon.

As he gets up to walk to the bathroom we take him all in — stark naked from head to toe.  It’s blatantly in-your-face, with Fassbender’s pendulous manhood advancing directly toward us.

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“CORIOLANUS”: Bard in the Balkans

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , on January 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Gerard Butler, Ralph Fiennes in "Coriolanus"

“CORIOLANUS” My rating: B- (Opening Jan. 20)

122 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The rarely-performed plays of Shakespeare pose a problem for film adaptations. Lacking the familiar plots and Bartlett’s-heavy dialogue of a “Macbeth” or “Hamlet,” these minor works force filmmakers to come up with a creative presentational style if they’re to hook a modern audience.

With that in mind, director/star Ralph Fiennes makes of Shakespeare’s Roman play “Coriolanus” a modern-dress political fable about patriotism, loyalty and class warfare.

It’s quite well acted and if the text itself isn’t terribly compelling, the movie’s semi-documentary visual style and the political parallels Fiennes draws between ancient Rome and our own time engage both the eye and the intellect.

The plot centers on the Roman general Caius Martius (Fiennes), who has defeated the rebel forces of Aufidius (Gerard Butler). For his great victory the Senate renames him Coriolanus and names him Consul of Rome. But before getting the job the newly-named Coriolanus must gain the approval of the citizenry.  And that’s no small task, since he’s an aloof patrician who views everyday Romans as worthless rabble. Early in the film we see him turning back starving rioters who have attacked a government warehouse demanding to be fed.

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“CARNAGE”: Touchy-feely to the death

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

Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Cristoph Waltz

“CARNAGE” My rating: B  (Opens Jan. 13)

79 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Wickedly funny and maddeningly claustrophobic, Roman Polanski’s “Carnage” is a sort of pretention-free “No Exit” in which four characters are trapped in a hell from which there appears to be no escape.

Actually it’s a nicely-appointed Brooklyn apartment owned by Michael (John C.Reilly) and Penelope (Jodie Foster).  Visiting are another couple, Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan (Christoph Waltz).

Nancy and Alan’s 11-year-old son Zachary has ended a playground argument by smashing Michael and Penelope’s son Eliot in the face with a stick.  Now the parents are coming together to make amends in a nice, civilized fashion.

Good luck with that.

Almost from the beginning you can tell that this attempt at reconciliation is not going well.

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“THE IRON LADY”: Her coolness

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , on January 13, 2012| 1 Comment »

Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher

“The IRON LADY” My rating: B-  (Opening Jan. 13 at the ** theaters)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

By now we should be thoroughly inured to Meryl Streep’s transformational abilities.

Even so, her performance as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” comes as a shock.

Yes, she gets immeasurable help from an unsung crew of costumers, hairdressers and makeup artists. But as with any Streep performance, the magic goes far deeper than the surface. The way in which Streep’s Maggie Thatcher moves, holds herself, speaks — it is little short of eerie.

Streep’s believability in the role goes a long way toward ameliorating the movie’s biggest drawback — namely that director Phyllida Law (“Mamma Mia!”) and screenwriter  Abi Morgan (“Brick Lane,” “Shame”) are deeply ambivalent about their subject.

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“TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY”: LeCarre’s people

Posted in Art house fare, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Gary Oldman as George Smiley

“TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY” My rating: B+ (Opening January 6 at the Glenwood Arts)

127 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Gary Oldman is often described as an actor’s actor…which in his case apparently means an incurable ham.

Oldman’s career is heavily weighted toward over-the-top, push-too-far performances. Sometimes this is forgivable, particularly when he’s in a bad movie and his fierce scenery gnawing is the only remotely entertaining thing in sight.

Too often over the years, though, I’ve found him to be a jarring pothole in a movie’s narrative highway.

Now I can happily report that in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” Oldman gives a marvelously restrained, subtle and carefully modulated performance.

He plays British spymaster George Smiley, the owlish Cold War protagonis of several John LeCarre novels — a role essayed by Alec Guinness in the 1979  PBS adaptation of “TTSS.” And he is quietly wonderful.

The movie’s not too shabby, either. (more…)

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“BEING ELMO”: Unadulterated love

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged , , , on January 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY” My rating: B  (Opening Jan. 6 at the Tivoli)

80 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Documentaries can be many things, but sweet is not usually one of them.

“Being Elmo,” though, is just that. Sweet.

Kevin Clash, Elmo and friend

Sweet in the same way that a child bestowing a kiss upon a beloved grownup friend is disarmingly, heart-grippingly sweet.

The “Elmo” of the title isn’t a person. Not technically, anyway.

Elmo is a puppet of shaggy red felt, one of the Muppet characters who inhabit “Sesame Street” on the PBS network.

Physically he reminds a lot of Grover or Cookie Monster. His personality, though, is uniquely his own.  This is due entirely to the man who performs Elmo, Kevin Clash.

Clash is a black man, raised in borderline poverty in a not-so-good Baltimore neighborhood. But as a child he fell in love with puppets he saw on TV, began making his own (probably not the coolest pastime for a young man in the ‘hood) and by the time he was a teenager was a fixture on the Baltimore television scene.

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“LE HAVRE”: It takes a village…

Posted in Art house fare, tagged on December 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Andre Wilms and Blondin Miguel in "Le Havre"

“LE HAVRE”  My rating: B (Opens Jan. 30 at the Tivoli)

93 sminutes | No MPAA rating

I’ve never known quite what to make of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. I guess you could say he makes dour comedies (“Leningrad Cowboys Go America,” “Man Without a Past”), though in truth it’s sometimes hard to know if we’re supposed to laugh or not.

But there’s no missing the intentions of “Le Havre,” which might be described as a Communist fairy tale. However you describe it, it is the most audience friendly film Kaurismaki has yet produced.

In the French port city of Le Havre the graying shoeshine man Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms) plies his trade, even though he’s frequently hassled by the police and pompous merchants who don’t want him conducting business outside their swank shops.

In the nearby dockyards authorities hear noises coming from one of those big steel shipping containers. Inside are a dozen illegal immigrants from Gabon who have been locked inside and forgotten for several weeks.

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“THE ARTIST”: In a silent way

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , , on December 23, 2011| 2 Comments »

“THE ARTIST” My rating: B (Opening Dec. 23 at the Glenwood Arts and AMC Town Center)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

When everyone from the coastal heavy hitters to the Joe Blow bloggers declare a movie a masterpiece, you’re probably smart to take it with a grain of salt.

So it is with “The Artist.”

French filmmaker Michael Hazanavicius’ daring update on silent movies is wildly creative, often quite funny, extremely well acted and peppered with philosophical implications.

It’s also a bit too familiar, being basically yet one more variation on “A Star Is Born.”

Here silent film matinee idol George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) sees his career hit the skids even as vivacious newcomer Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo, the director’s wife) becomes a new audience favorite thanks to her embrace of the newfangled sound technology. (more…)

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“YOUNG GOETHE IN LOVE”: The poet as young gadabout

Posted in Art house fare, tagged on December 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Miriam Stein and Alexander Fehling

“YOUNG GOETHE IN LOVE”  My rating: B- (Opening Dec. 23 at the Tivoli)

100 minutes | No MPAA rating

Think “Shakespeare in Love” — German division — and you’ve pretty much got the number of “Young Goethe in Love,” a pleasant little romance about an artistic genius in his formative years.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is to German literature what Shakespeare is to English literature. Nearly 300 years  after his birth Goethe remains the single most celebrated and influential poet/dramatist/essayist in the German language.

But as  Philipp Stolzl’s film begins, young Goethe is facing early burnout. He shows up late to face a panel of educators who will rule on whether he gets his law degree; it soon becomes obvious that Goethe (Alexander Fehling) has spent most of his university years partying and scribbling fiction.

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“ANSWERS TO NOTHING”: Well, they got the title right

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , on December 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Dane Cook, Elizabeth Mitchell

“ANSWERS TO NOTHING” My rating: C

97 minutes | MPAA rating R

The multi-character, multi-plot melodrama can be very satisfying.

Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” the Oscar-winning “Crash” and Rodrigo Garcia’s excellent “Mother and Child,” for example, each scored big by following several plots united by a common themes (the alienating effects of modern life, race relations, parenthood).

Writer/director Matthew Leutwyler’s “Answers to Nothing” attempts something similar, giving us a sprawling drama unfolding in LA over several days in which the city is abuzz over the presumed kidnapping of a little girl.

But despite a cast of great depth and talent, there’s not much cinema magic here. Leutwyler and co-writer Gillian Vigman take a scattershot approach. They haven’t really focused on their themes — heck, they fail even to define them — and the resulting film seems adrift.

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