Girl Detective

For our recent family car trip, my husband G. Grod and I rationalized the purchase of some new DVDs, since we were borrowing a DVD player from friends, and wanted some new things to distract 6yo Drake and 4yo Guppy. We also got a few from the library. For a few, I was surprised to see what worked and what didn’t for the kids and grownups.

Both kids and grownups:

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Kung-Fu Panda
Toy Story 2
Pinocchio
Wall E
Schoolhouse Rock

Grownups, not so much the kids:

Up

Kids, not so much the grownups:

Cars
Tom & Jerry
Scooby Doo
Yo Gabba Gabba

DVDs the kids refused to watch:

Free to Be You and Me
Mary Poppins (6yo Drake is afraid of the cannon)
Ralph’s World
Fraggle Rock

DVDs the kids watched that G. Grod and I want to, but haven’t watched yet:

Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (even if it’s only full screen)
Shaun the Sheep: A Wooly Good Time

After refusing to helm Spider Man 4 (a good choice, given Spidey 3’s current status as most recent really bad 3 movie, replacing Godfather III), Sam Raimi returned to his horror roots, but with a bigger budget, and the result was Drag Me To Hell, a solidly entertaining B movie. It’s a little bit funny, scary, campy and silly by turns, and full of gross-out effects. It does what it sets out to do, which isn’t high art. If you liked the Evil Dead movies, you’ll likely enjoy this, and appreciate seeing the Big Yellow Car again.

I’m not a Tarantino fan. I liked Pulp Fiction. Didn’t like Reservoir Dogs. Didn’t bother with the Kill Bills or Grindhouse because I didn’t want to deal with the OTT violence. So when Inglourious Basterds came out, I skipped it.

But the good reviews kept coming in. And the superlatives rained down on Christoph Waltz for his supporting role. And then Linda at NPR said that even though SHE didn’t like Tarantino either, she’d really liked Inglourious Basterds. So we bought it on DVD, and watched it.

I loved it. Thought it was great, and a far better Best Picture contender than Avatar was. More ambitious than Hurt Locker, yet still perfectly executed. Like Hurt Locker, too, it maintains tremendous suspense for long periods of time. The opening scene is astonishingly good and lasts about 20 minutes. And when the tension is resolved, it’s never in the way I thought it would be. The movie constantly surprised me.

Except for its scenes of over the top violence, like bloody gunfights and scalping scenes. By the end, I wasn’t even closing my eyes, looking at the ceiling, or watching through diamond fingers. I don’t consider that desensitizing a good thing, though. The rest? Fabulously entertaining. This shoulda been a stronger contender for best pic.

again. My husband G. Grod didn’t get to see The Hurt Locker, so when Barnes and Noble sent us an email saying that Oscar winners were 40% off, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. We ordered Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds and Up. Watching Hurt Locker a second time is interesting, as I could observe HOW the director sustained tension without feeling it so acutely as I did watching the first time. I think this is a superbly crafted movie that takes a tight focus on one character, yet has far-reaching implications. There’s no way I can walk away from watching it and think, well, that’s over. It lingers, and makes me feel uncomfortable, in the way that really good fiction does.

I borrowed Hidden from the library when it was mentioned by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips on At the Movies. They agreed it was a superior film to The White Ribbon, director Michael Haneke’s most recent film, an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film. Roger Ebert recently added Hidden to his list of Great Movies, so it moved to the top of my Must See list.

Daniel Auteuil is Georges, the host of a literary talk show. He’s married to Anne (Juliet Binoche) and has a twelve year old son, Pierrot. He receives anonymous videotapes showing surveillance of his home, and soon a series of violent childlike drawings. Who is sending them, why, and do they mean harm to Georges and his family? As the tension builds, it creates a widening gulf between the couple. Several times the director seems to be giving the viewers some part of answers, only to retract or call them into question later. In the end, the film is less about who sent the tapes than about how Georges falls apart while trying to hold things together. It’s also about the expectations viewers have from a film like this, and what our expectations say about what we want.

This is a film that deliberately frustrates and confuses the audience, hailed by many critics as great, but by others as a nasty mind game perpetrated on the audience by the director. There is a scene of brief, graphic violence that happens so quickly it’s probably not possible to cover your eyes from. The scene is meant to shock, and it does. Haneke is proud of his ambiguous film. He has said that he wanted a film that viewers would walk about and remember, not dismiss once their questions were answered.

With me, at least, he succeeded. I spent a good deal of time reading material on the movie after I saw it to better understand it. I do, or at least I think I do. Roger Ebert’s Great Movies entry and the BFI’s Sight and Sound article on it were the most comprehensive and helpful to me. And while I can’t say I enjoyed the film, I do admire it and appreciate its complexity. It’s not many films that prompt me to further study and investigation as this one did.

Was District 9 ever an Oscar best-picture contender? Probably not. But it’s a solid little sci-fi film, which evokes tension and fear in spite of its low-budget effects. They aren’t bad, but they’d certainly not in the same league as Star Trek’s or Avatar’s. Speaking of that latter blockbuster, NPR writer Linda Holmes wrote that District 9 did a better job telling a nuanced, provocative story about alien invasion and fear of the other than did Avatar.

District 9 advances the thesis — graphically and imaginatively, if with comparatively cheap-looking visuals — that violent mistreatment of entire populations is per se immoral. And it advances this idea without suggesting that the targeted population should prove itself first — prove that it is a superior society, better in tune with nature, less violent, prettier.

And I agree. Avatar looked great, but had a tired story about noble savages and greedy human invaders. Evocatively set in South Africa, District 9 turns that premise on its head. Aliens come to Earth, but they’re sick and starving, not invading.

In his first role ever, Sharlto Copley is tremendous as the bureaucrat in charge of relocating the aliens. He’s like Michael Scott from The Office, until things go horribly wrong. This film reminded me (pleasantly) of a grand story from Torchwood or Doctor Who, and of the low-budget high-thrill 28 Days.

Anvil the Canadian metal band was an inspiration for young metalheads who went on to bands like Guns N Roses, Antrax, and Metallica. Yet Anvil never made the big time. This documentary, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, follows the band, led by lead singer Lips and drummer Robb Reiner, both now in their 50s, as they continue to pursue their dream of heavy metal stardom.

Directed by a former fan, this is a surprisingly sweet homage to this little-known band, and the movie pays tribute to its fictional fore-runner, director Rob (no extra b) Reiner’s classic, This is Spinal Tap. It also reminded me more than a little of last year’s The Wrestler, though it’s much more affectionate and hopeful. Quite charming, actually.

Duplicity has Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, the director of Michael Clayton, and a heist-type caper. Yet it doesn’t quite come together; it’s not nearly as fun, sexy, cool, or clever as it thinks it is. I wish I could have that time back. I had better things to do with it. Like laundry.

I saw Avatar in regular 3D rather than schlepping to an IMAX 360, or paying extra to see it in IMAX on a flat screen, which friends warned was a waste of the upcharge. I went in expecting a trite story, and Cameron didn’t disappoint. This is one of the oldest, most-told tales ever:

Dumb young guy comes into strange situation, and is educated by hot, ass-kicking chick. (Matrix) He doesn’t speak her language, but she’s a princess, and he wins her though she was promised to another. (Pocahontas, and the guy even has the same initials as John Smith.) He’s sent in as a spy, but switches allegiances when he recognizes the nobility of the “savages” and organizes them to fight back.

One of my favorite movie reviews ever was of Moulin Rouge, in which the critic said something like, if the story is cake then it’s stale as can be, but, oh, how divine is the frosting! The same holds true, here. Even Cameron has made some of this movie before, like Giovanni Ribisi in the corporate tool role that Paul Reiser played in Aliens. The story is stale, but Cameron’s visuals and the 3D are fresh and exciting. Initially I was sitting in the center of the theater till the rude people behind me wouldn’t stop talking. I moved closer to the screen, and the 3D effect and immersion was intensified. The 2 hours and 40 minutes passed quickly. There was a long scene near the end with Sigourney Weaver that should have been cut, but the rest didn’t feel bloated. Worthington, with his Russell Crowe-ish hidden-Aussie accented growl, is compelling as the messiah figure, and Zoe Saldana makes a terrific warrior princess.

Go, expecting a bad movie that looks good. But go, because it won’t be nearly as cool if you’re not in the theater seeing it in 3D.

Brighton Rock was one of the final entries in Take Up Productions’ excellent Brit Noir series. Based on a Graham Greene novel, it’s about a small group of gangsters in vacation destination Brighton, England. The gang is led by cold-eyed, smooth-faced Pinkie, played chillingly by Richard Attenborough, whose age belies his capacity for cruelty. (And who bore a distracting resemblance to my brother-in-law.) When he kills a man, two women remain who know more than he’d like. One is innocent girl Rose, a waitress. The other is sharp-voiced and initially boozy Ida, who the dead man had tried to use an an escape. She doesn’t believe he died of a heart attack, as the police report states, so she begins to investigate, which leads her to Rose:

Ida: Now listen, dear. I’m human, I’ve loved a boy or two in my time. It’s natural, like breathin’. Not one of them’s worth it, let alone this fellow you’ve got hold of.

This was an exciting twist on the more classically American noir. While some broad strokes are the same, I enjoyed puzzling out a few of the particulars. Attenborough is chilling, and the ending tense as he tries to drag Rose down a path she refuses to see coming. The ending is fittingly ironic. Some see it as happy. While it’s less dark than the one IMDB says was intended, there’s more bitterness than hope. Lesser known than The Third Man, Brighton Rock is very good and worth seeking out, especially as a remake is due later this year.

I was in the mood for a good romantic comedy, and It’s Complicated at the cheap theater with real-butter popcorn fit the bill. Meryl Streep has been divorced from Alec Baldwin for 10 years after being married for 20. They have 3 grown kids, and he has a lissome trophy wife and her strange 5yo son. Streep is a very successful bakery owner, and has a really swank home that she’s inexplicably getting an addition for, so she can build the kitchen of her dreams. (The current kitchen is more than enough for most people’s dreams.) Steve Martin, admirably toned down, plays her recently divorced architect and tentative love interest.

The complications of the title occur when Streep and Baldwin get drunk and have a one-night stand while attending their son’s graduation. He’s unhappy in his marriage, so he thinks it’s great. She’s enjoying herself, but is more hesitant, especially as she gets to know the architect.

Streep is charming, Baldwin is hilarious, and John Krasinski is both as their future son-in-law. I found Martin immensely likable, which I almost never do. The theater where I saw it was packed on a Saturday night, and I missed many of the lines because of all the laughter. At the end, the audience burst into spontaneous applause. By no means perfect, it was enjoyable and a crowd pleaser. I’ll definitely rent it when it comes out on DVD. And kudos for casting Baldwin, 9 years Streep’s junior, as her love interest! How often does that happen?

The 1940 version of Gaslight, released in America under the title Angel Street, almost ceased to exist. When George Cukor remade it in 1946, MGM tried to have all copies of the earlier film destroyed. The remake, which starred Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten, was good, but I think I like the original more. It’s less stylized, which adds to its aura of menace. The film starts with the murder of an old woman, then years later a newly married couple move in. The husband, Anton Walbrook, is exasperated by his wife, played with trembling exactitude by Diana Wynyard. She fears she’s going mad, yet it’s he who is manufacturing evidence for it, as well as flirting with a manipulating housemaid and disappearing each night. This is a well-crafted suspense film, worth seeing especially if you enjoyed the remake.

I watched my first Disney princess movie with the boys when I took them to see The Princess and the Frog this weekend. But surprise–the heroine isn’t a princess! Tiana–the first African-American princess, about time!–is a hard-working girl from a poor family who is saving to open her own restaurant in New Orleans. The prince is a handsome twit, and some voodoo magic turns him into a frog. While some of the broad strokes are predictable (boy ends up with girl, bad guys are punished, etc.) several of the details are not, and those are what make it charming. My boys, 6yo Drake and 4yo Guppy, loved it, and laughed throughout. They didn’t find the scary parts too scary, though my husband G. Grod and I had a hard time explaining where the bad guy went (he got dragged to hell by demons.)

Wondering: is Prince Naveen the hottest Disney prince? I think so.

Like Jason Reitman’s last movie, Juno, Up in the Air manages to be both a big and little movie at the same time. It’s neither an indie nor a big-budget star vehicle, but rather a character-driven investigation of personal dreams, despair, and interpersonal connection. It draws no conclusions and provides no easy answers, or easily understood characters. Clooney is sexy and charming, but no more so than is the captivating Vera Farmiga. Kendrick does a fine job in the role of the snippy newbie, and J.K. Simmons stands out, as always, even in a small role. This is more superbly crafted and acted than the average indie, and is more thoughtful than the average big-budget film. It’s not perfect; in the end it can’t quite balance its themes of bitter and sweet. But its attempt to do so is admirable, and worth seeing.

I thought everyone else would be watching the Super Bowl. But when I went to see The Hurt Locker at the Riverview, with a small tub of popcorn with real butter and a box of Junior Mints, there were plenty of other people in the theater with me. Alas, the normally stellar Riverview was having some trouble with the sound and the centering of the picture. The sound went buzzy, then unintelligible, just as the main character, played by Jeremy Renner, was introduced. They stopped, started, stopped and started the film again. The sound came back, but there was a chunk we missed. Ah, well, an excuse to see it again, which I’ll be glad to do.

The Hurt Locker is smart, gritty, and doesn’t hammer its themes home. It lets the viewer draw her own conclusions, and some of them are pretty shattering. Renner is excellent, as is the supporting cast, and there are a few cameos that had me saying, “Hey, it’s [so and so]!” Renner’s Will James is an Army detonation expert stationed in Iraq, and the tension that the director, Kathryn Bigelow, keeps up for the length of the film is impressive. Bigelow takes a tight, focused view on one soldier in a specific division, yet the work is probably one of the best on recent wartime; the themes are universal. Depressing, but real. And really, really good.

I watched best-screenplay Oscar winner Juno again with my husband G. Grod, who hadn’t seen it, after we saw it on Roger Ebert’s Best Films of the Decade. I’m not sure I agree with Ebert on that, but it is a sweet little film.

Ellen Page is not quite believable as the smart-ass, suddenly pregnant Juno, but Michael Cera is adorable as the geeky boy/friend (this is before he played that role into the ground), Olivia Thirlby is a dream of a best friend, J.K. Simmons is an awesome dad, and Alison Janney is a stepmom for the ages. Even though Juno, both the movie and the character, is too clever by half, with some mouth-crowding unreal dialogue and a plot seized and claimed by anti-choice groups, it nonetheless charms and entertains.

Funny, sweet and a little bit sad, I was surprised to find the best element of the movie was Jennifer Garner’s moving and unshowy performance as the hopeful adopter of Juno’s child. According to imdb trivia:

Jennifer Garner dropped her A-list salary to a percentage point agreement for Juno when it was expected to be a small, low grossing indie film, but the decision paid off when Juno became a breakout smash at the box office - giving Garner her best payday yet.

I did, though, want Garner to unpuff her lips and eat a sandwich or two.

Last weekend I tried to see Avatar, but it was sold out. Instead I saw Crazy Heart, and I wasn’t disappointed. Jeff Bridges is a drunk, has-been country singer who once played to stadiums and now gets booked to bowling alleys. When he’s interviewed by a pretty young journalist, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, they both see something in the other. Though what she sees in him, with his aging skin puffy with drink and his breath undoubtedly reeking of cigarettes, is more of a stretch than what he sees in her. The love scenes feel a bit creepy because of this, but maybe they’re supposed to. Also, look at all the rock star/supermodel pairings.

The movie covers no new ground; it’s a mash-up of two recent Oscar-bait films, The Wrestler and Walk the Line. It’s not happiness sucking and soul crushing, as I found The Wrestler, though. Instead, like Walk the Line, it’s got a charismatic lead character played well by the actor, supported ably by the female lead and actress, with good music, well performed.

In “When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors,” Lisa Schwartzbaum from Entertainment Weekly notes why good performances are more likely to get awarded when they’re in good movies,

while acting is a combination of skill and art, an award-worthy performance is an amalgam of science, technology, and luck. And finally, what you think of as a great performance has as much to do with how much you enjoy the whole movie experience – the plot, the music, the quality of the snacks, the smell of the moviegoer to your right – as it does with one actor’s ability to cry and another’s to kickbox or crack eggs. Yes, they’re only movies, but sometimes everything works.

I think Crazy Heart is an example of a solid, well-done movie for which both Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal deserve Oscar nominations. Heck, even Colin Farrell is good in it, as a southern country star!

At NPR’s Monkey See, Joe Reid agrees and counts it among the five non-best-picture nominees that you should see anyway, because of its “strong performances and beautiful music.”

I initially heard about Chop Shop in an article by A.O. Scott, a film reviewer for the New York Times, on the new style of real-life movies, which he termed neo-neo realism:

Chop Shop….seems at once utterly naturalistic and meticulously composed. The main characters are Ale (short for Alejandro), an energetic 12-year-old, and his older sister, Izzy (short for Isamar), who comes to stay with him in his makeshift quarters above the car-repair shop where he does odd jobs. There is no back story – no flashbacks or conversations about how they arrived at this state of virtual orphanhood in the shadow of Shea Stadium – and, at first, only the whisper of a plot.

I more recently read Roger Ebert’s list of the best films of the decade, which includes Chop Shop, and the best films of 2009, which includes Goodbye, Solo, also directed by Ramin Bahrani. Ebert notes that all three of his films, which also include Man Push Cart, are well worth viewing. Since I find Ebert and Scott mostly reliable, I thought it was time to seek one out, and I started with the earliest, 2007’s Chop Shop.

Chop Shop is a beautifully shot, meditative (i.e. not fast-paced) film. Ale and his sister are sweet and heartbreaking. Yet the film isn’t dragged down by irony or bitterness. Instead it’s buoyed, not exactly by hope, but by a kind of philosophical shrug that life goes on, and there are pretty good things in it even among the junk. Recommended, if you’re in the mood for a small, well-crafted indie film.

I’d not heard of the holiday film The Bishop’s Wife until I started researching DVDs this season. Cary Grant in a holiday film? I’m in, and there was but a short wait for it at the library because it is a lesser known holiday classic.

Grant shows up in a suit (natch) and seems to know everyone’s name. He’s particularly kind to Mrs. Brougham, the bishop’s wife of the title, played by Loretta Young. She’s sad at Christmas, as her husband, played by David Niven, is preoccupied with sucking up to his new, wealthy parishioners in order to finance a cathedral. Grant offers to be Niven’s assistant, then reveals to him that he’s an angel. This angel works in mysterious ways, but the end result is satisfying if not surprising, as Niven becomes aware of just how much he has neglected home and at work. Grant spreads charm wherever he goes, making friends and looking good in a suit, even while ice skating! It’s hard to imagine him and Niven in opposite roles, as happened in the early shooting of the film. This is sweet, frothy fun with a great trio of lead actors. A worthy addition to the holiday DVD roster.

It was remade in 1996 as The Preacher’s Wife, starring Denzel in Cary Grant’s role, and Whitney Houston as the wife.

Yet another holiday classic that apparently passed me by, Miracle on 34th Street was another in my holiday DVD-buying binge. We shunned the colorized version for the original black and white. A kind, white-bearded man shows up at the Macy’s parade, and is conveniently recruited to replace the drunk Santa. He goes on to be the Macy’s store Santa, hired by single-mom Mrs. Walker.

Mrs. Walker lives at home with her daughter Susan (an 8yo Natalie Wood), in whom she instills her value for truth and proof. Both are suspicious of the old man, who claims to be Kris Kringle. But with the help of their fanciful neighbor, who fancies Mrs. Walker, they begin to come around. Santa is targeted by the mean-spirited company psychologist, and put on trial. You probably know the famous ending even if you haven’t seen the film, but it was a pleasure to see it in context. Sweet and fanciful, it’s deserving of its classic status, and was fun to watch with the family.