MOVIE REVIEW
Greenberg (2010)
Wilson Webb/Focus Features
"Greenberg" is Ben Stiller's "Punch-Drunk Love." That romantic comedy from 2001 starred Adam Sandler as an awkward, unhappy man who, while embarking on a bizarre project, falls in love with a blonde. This time, Mr. Stiller is Roger Greenberg, a carpenter with undefined mental-health problems, who returns to Los Angeles to house-sit while his brother's family is on an extended vacation. This goes great until some people show up unannounced in the pool. Rather than talk to them, Roger rattles around anxiously, peers out from behind some curtains and calls Florence (Greta Gerwig), the family's assistant.
Continue reading “Reality Bitten” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Milk of Sorrow (2009)
Olive Films
It is a peculiarity of the Academy Awards that a film's nationality often eclipses its filmmaker in the Best Foreign Language Film category. So it was not director Claudia Llosa who was named when "The Milk of Sorrow" was the dark-horse entry in last year's Oscar. Instead, that honor went to Peru. For some films, this would be less appropriate.
The movie begins with a black screen and the voice of an old woman singing about a rape. This is Perpetua (Bárbara Lazón), whose death forces her daughter Fausta (Magaly Solier) to reassess how she copes with her world. Fausta was born in the middle of Peru's recent terrorist uprising/civil war, and suffers from what is casually referred to as the "tit illness" — the pain and suffering her mother experienced before her birth transmitted to her via breast milk, and translated more metaphorically for the title.
Continue reading “The Mother of All Fears” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Highly Strung/You Will Be Mine (2009)
Little Stone Distribution
With an English-language title like “Highly Strung,” one expects Sophie Laloy’s film to have either a tennis or a string-quartet setting. It’s actually about Marie (Judith Davis, no relation to Judy), a pianist who must move in with Emma (Isild Le Besco), a family acquaintance her own age, in order to afford her university studies. Marie is disorganized but intensely committed to her studies, and soon — to her surprise — these include a sexual awakening. This awakening is without direction until the night Emma rescues Marie from a violent man in a club. Marie is very grateful, but Emma wants more. One thing leads to another, pretty much as you’d expect.
Continue reading “Steinway or the Highway” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Whip It (2009)
Darren Michaels/
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Drew Barrymore clearly remembers what it is like to be 13. She knows how difficult it is at that age to balance the wishes of your parents — who want the best for you but still treat you like a baby — with your own interests, your desires and your friends. She knows that teenage girls worry about growing up; and who they are; and how they think they are not ready for all the changes coming their way. She understands it’s scary not feeling like you fit in at school; or having to work a loser job; or having a fight with your mom.
Continue reading “Roller With the Punches” »
TELEVISION REVIEW | 'THE UNLOVED'
Channel 4
Lucy (Molly Windsor) doesn’t say much, because she is too busy watching. She has learned to keep her own counsel, to follow closely what is happening around her and to pay attention to all the clues she can pick up. She lives with her father (Robert Carlyle), who clearly loves her but who equally clearly isn’t a good dad. When she comes back empty-handed from an errand, he beats her with his belt. We hear the beating, but don’t see it — but we do see Lucy lying in a stairwell for a night and a day, unable to move. Once she recovers, Lucy has the composure to go to school, sit through classes and eat a hot lunch before telling her teacher what has happened.
Continue reading “Not a Care in the World” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Horses (2010)
DCD Media
In 2004, Liz Mermin directed “The Beauty Academy of Kabul,” in which she followed a few fearless American hairdressers who decided to empower Afghan women through cosmetology. At one point, one of the students was asked about the future for women in her country now that the Taliban were not in charge. The student replied something along the lines that although she had a lovely husband herself, it was pointless to think that women would ever have equality with men since they would never allow it. The westerners fell into a stunned, depressed silence, and the eager-to-please student asked if she had said the wrong thing.
After that experience, it’s no surprise that Ms. Mermin has in her new film turned her back on people almost entirely. Filmed over a year at an Irish racing stable, “Horses” follows the fortunes of three horses belonging to a trainer named Paul Nolan, and explicitly identifies itself as a documentary where the animals are the stars. For obvious reasons, this doesn’t quite work.
Continue reading “Courses for Horses” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (2010)
ゼロ・ピクチュアズ
Haru (Hikari Mitsushima) has her own apartment and a university schedule she used to enjoy, but for the most part she is drifting. All her education should have been building up to something, but she no longer seems to know to what. Her ambivalence about her future has also infected her personal life: Her boyfriend bores her; she dresses sloppily; and when she first meets Riko (Eriko Nakamura) in the park, there’s an embarrassing incident over a tampon.
Riko still lives at home over her parents’ dry cleaners, and works for a medical company which hand-manufactures replacement body parts such as limbs, of course, but also ears and breasts. She explodes into Haru’s life like a mash note filled with confetti, but Haru is so passive that she only comes along for the ride. Their relationship is a source of happiness for both of them, but Haru can’t decide what it means to her.
Continue reading “Out on an Artificial Limb” »
MOVIE REVIEW
OSS 117: Lost in Rio (2009)
Seattle International Film Festival
Before James Bond, there was Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath. It’s little known in the English-speaking world that, shortly before Ian Fleming began writing the Bond novels, a Frenchman named Jean Bruce wrote more than 90 books about France’s best secret agent. There was even a series of movies made about agent OSS 117 in the ’60s, although they didn’t attract much international attention. Since the successful reboot of Bond, the OSS 117 movies have been revived. The first one, “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies,” came out in 2006 to huge French acclaim and surprise global success despite the terrible title. “OSS 117: Lost in Rio” is the first sequel.
Continue reading “Casino Royale With Cheese” »
Kerry Brown/Sony Pictures Classics
The year 2009 has been an unusual one at the movies. Enormous blockbusters and children's animated series have held their usual sway at the box office, but they have done so while actually being good — and some of them have even been British. Women have been more visible in movies, as actresses and also behind the camera. I am so happy that women directed three of the movies on my list. What unexpected feminist joy! Things are also changing when a movie such as "The Hangover" — on the surface a totally macho film — is really about men failing miserably at taking a quick break from the women in their lives. The fact that two on my list are animated is also a surprise — when Hollywood seems determined to devise totally separate films for every possible marketing niche, it's wonderful to see that quality family films will always have a market.
Continue reading “Getting So Tired and Emotional, Baby” »
MOVIE REVIEW
White Material (2010)
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival
Isabelle Huppert has developed a very particular niche. With “The Sea Wall,” “Home” and now “White Material,” she is the go-to actress to hold a French family together in an unusual, isolated home environment, preferably in a foreign country. In “White Material,” the home is a coffee plantation in an unidentified African country, although it’s clearly based on Uganda. Maria Vial (Ms. Huppert) lives with her slacker teenage son Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), her ex-husband André (Christopher Lambert, of all people), his new African wife (Adèle Ado), their child, her ex-father-in-law (Michel Subor) and a variety of staff. War has broken out, with ethnic hatred stoked over the radio and people are starting to die. Fires have been started; there’s smoke rising in the distance; and bodies are starting to appear. Anyone with any sense is taking what they can carry and getting out.
In those circumstances, who would ignore a personalized warning to evacuate shouted from a helicopter? But nothing will make Maria budge: The coffee crop is one week from harvest. She personally hires a new group of workers and does her best to focus on the harvest, while simultaneously developing a peculiar relationship with the wounded leader of the rebellion, known as the Boxer (Isaach De Bankolé).
Continue reading “Out of Nowhere in Africa” »