Archive for category: Reviews

A sweet movie, perhaps a little overacted by Richard Jenkins, who didn’t have to be such a sad sack in his work but who, nevertheless, gave a haunting performance. Best were the starring roles given to the Arab son, Tariq, and mother, Mouna, both of whom lit up the screen. The immigration part of the story was all too real, as we know from experience with our own deported Jamaican housekeeper in New York; and the ending, with some shreds of hope in a sad and very frustrating situation, hewed closer to life than any other movie seen this year.

Another story from the desolate, barren, culture-free northern fringe of America, where folks are just getting by, or trying to, by hook or crook, in this case crook. Melissa Leo gives a sensational performance, lying to her son, batting her eyes at a cop, exhibiting the determination of desperation, constantly balancing the need to cut corners with a conscience.  The Indians on the  Mohawk ‘res’ are treated sensitively, starting with the phlegmatic Lila, who puts the plot in motion and, in the story’s subtle arc, finds her sight and her way. In the end, it is the bleakness of the northern New York border town and the emptiness of the frozen river that stick, a black-and-white film despite its color.

A down-to-earth retelling of what has to be one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Climbing Everest or robbing Brinks seem mundane compared to walking on a wire suspended between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I cringed in my seat, not surprisingly, at photos of Philippe Petit peering off the roof, and smiled out loud at video of his other feats, on Notre Dame and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. What made the movie truly rich, though, was the cast of characters who formed his team, especially Jean-Louis Blondeau, now with white hair and black eyebrows, cooler than any American could ever be, and their relationships, more interesting and real than, say, Ocean’s Eleven. Petit himself, wirewalker, magician, storyteller, provocateur, made you wonder why it took someone 33 years to make this movie.

Far more enjoyable than I had any reason to expect, because there was this underlying story of human relationships, motivations and emotions that carried on through the cartoon razzmatazz. The fact that three earthbound characters – played skillfully by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman – knew Batman’s identity provided the link between those two worlds. And the fact that the Joker’s acts of violence, though hardly realistic, were all so technically primitive also countered Batman’s flights of fancy. But minute-after-minute there was a surprise, a new bit of deviltry, another wrinkle to fathom, and this kept the mind totally engaged and the enjoyment quotient high. And in terms of realism, was this really that much farther-fetched than The Departed?

Before it sank under the weight of its implausibilities, I was hoping that this French psycho-thriller would, Cache-like, leave its mystery unsolved and leave us drifting in a world of unknowable terror. Instead, it went the Fugitive route and had its pediatrician hero, Alex, outrunning and outwitting the entire Paris police force and, worse, gave us a five-minute confession by a heretofore minor character explaining all the mysteries, largely by introducing two people who hadn’t before appeared on-screen! Except even this didn’t explain everything, which made me guess the movie was based on a book, where everything had more time to be laid out. Whenever a movie plot leaves out key facts, or throws in facts that just don’t fit, it is usually because the screenplay is based on a book or, even worse, “a true story.” When screenwriters are left to their own devices, they have better odds of crafting something plausible. As The New Yorker and my daughter both said, it’s a good thing this movie was in French, where the language was pretty and all the people were stylish. But plot trumps patina, and this plot was a dud.