Farewell, My Queen – 8

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This French film brilliantly thrust us inside the Versailles court of Louis XVI: as the camera trailed through the candlelit corridors of power you could almost smell the perfumed wigs and taste the personal agendas. Needless to say, the suits and dresses, above all Marie-Antoinette’s, were sensationally beautiful; but by relying heavily on close-ups, director Benoit Jacquot avoided the distance one usually feels in costume dramas. And by focusing exclusively on a mere lady-in-waiting, the assistant reader to the queen, the film reduced one of history’s most important events, the French Revolution, to a story of people. Through Sidonie’s eyes, we

Habibi – 6.5

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An earnest and sympathetic look at the plight of two Palestinian lovers, deprived of their relationship, and ultimately their lives, by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and stranglehold on Gaza. The male lead, unfortunately, was not appealing by Western standards, nor was his conduct particularly commendable. His female love, on the other hand, was attractive, smart and fiercely independent – all qualities we could identify with – but there was nothing terribly original about her plight or the obstacles she ran into. What was original in this bare-bones production (there was no background score, for example) was its unflinching presentation of the Israeli subjugation of the Palestinian people. (MFF)

Cabin in the Woods – 3

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From time to time I venture outside my comfort zone, to check on a genre I normally avoid, when reviews indicate a work may have some unusual merit. Thus, I watched this “horror film,” one intended for the young adult mass market, not the independent adult. I can’t say it was a mistake, but, as was my experienc with the animated-film genre, I won’t be going back very soon. The characters were all quite watchable, but the alternate-universe posited by the story was so absurd as to be ungraspable. My emotions were never engaged; what I saw was an intellectual puzzle that made no sense on its terms or any other. Casting Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins in their roles was probably a mistake: it certainly made me take matters less seriously. And the question the film tried to raise at the end – is humanity worth saving? – was far too serious for this drivel.

Bullhead – 8

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Yet another criminal underworld is brought to the cinema: the world of Belgian cattle dopers. Nor are we familiar with Walloons as a different subspecies. But all this is windowdressing for the central portrayal of a man gone mad, a man obsessed with his body in compensation for what he lacks, a man who finally loses control and exposes us to his brutalizing, brutalized world. This is powerful, not pretty stuff, made the more interesting and watchable by the alien world it takes place in.

Kid With a Bike – 7.5

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A riveting psychological portrayal of a troubled 11-year-old boy, coming to grips with the loss of his father and, on occasion, his bike. He moves from sullen outcast to a slightly willing sharer in relatively short order, although it seems an age because of the Dardenne brothers’ slow pacing. Shots linger, which allows us to digest and savor and see time passing. The problem for me lay not in Cyril, but in Samantha, the natural beauty hairdresser who is instantaneously willing to bend her whole life to accommodate the troublesome (to put it mildly) boy, whom she doesn’t know and for whom she has no responsibility. Maybe she is just the artificial foil against whom we are to see Cyril’s story, but I could never get over the psychological void of her portrait.

A Separation – 9

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There are no bad people in this story, but (almost) all the people do bad things – the chief among them not telling the truth. There is always a good reason, one that seems, at the moment, more important than the truth. Seeing how each of the characters handles this personal dilemma is only one of many strengths of this marvelous movie, which deserves its Oscar win and was, in my view, the best film in any category at that event. The performances are so real as not to seem like acting, from the winsome 4-year-old to the grandfather with Alzheimer’s. Given chance after chance to explode in rage, whether at the person around them or their own fate, the main characters remain remarkably equable, which invites us into their minds: what are they thinking? what would I be thinking in that situation.  Although the judicial process on view may be uniquely Iranian, and the role of the specific religion is foreign, there is nothing uniquely Iranian about any of the behavior on display. Just yesterday, the Times reported that William Rehnquist had undoubtedly lied about a memo he wrote in order to get confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. And the New Orleans Saints coach, when confronted by NFL investigators, was no more honest than the father who said he didn’t know that the woman he pushed was pregnant. But what would happen to his daughter and his father if he was sent to jail? Isn’t that reason enough to shade the truth, a little bit?

Where Do We Go Now? – 8

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A comic but true-to-the-core depiction of Arab society in a small village where everyone knows, and gossips about, everyone else, usually at high volume. Meanwhile, below (or above) the frivolous surface, this smart movie presents the dichotomies of man and woman, love and hate, Christian and Muslim, life and death. All the actors are convincingly homespun, allowing the focus to rest on the pretty cafe-keeper, played by Nadine Labiki, the movie’s director. In this isolated Lebanese village, we are shown the need, and a way, to overcome petty divisions, even if we still believe this will not work in the bigger world out there.

Wanderlust – 3

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Some thought that I rated last year’s Just Go With It inordinately high because of a puerile infatuation with Jennifer Aniston. As rebuttal, look at this rating: Jennifer was as adorable as ever, but this movie was just plain stupid. For some reason (their own lust?), the critics at The New Yorker, New York Times, Santa Barbara Independent all had kind things to say about this absurdist hippie spoof. For my part, I kept waiting for some payoff, even one joke to appreciate, but there was nothing here, just nothing. Alan Alda in a wheelchair was the only mildly entertaining character; the others wore out their welcomes shortly after introduction. When comedy bits are completely ridiculous, they had better be funny. These weren’t.

Pina – 6

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     The best use of 3-D I’ve seen yet: it was unobtrusive – no dancers kicking legs into our space – and simply made the dances come alive. Like the documentaries at the Film Festival, there was no plot and no dramatic arc, just a series of dances and interviews with the dancers. It didn’t take long to catch on to the choreography of Pina Bausch, even for someone like me who’d never seen it before, and her artistry is certainly worthy of respect, even admiration. But well before the movie’s end I was checking my watch, wondering how much longer it would be before I could congratulate myself for having absorbed this experience.

Top Ten 2011

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Top Ten 2011

2011 was, at best, a middling year, with no standout like No Country for Old Men, and among the Oscar favorites, all of which we saw, no favorite like Hurt Locker. I do count 15 very good movies that, in the ultimate test, I had no trouble recommending to others. Rather than rate them individually, which would involve too many close calls, I can stick to tradition by listing a Top Ten and will then add five runners-up. (I am not copying the NY Times critics, although astute observers will note that this was their m.o. this year, as well.)
The Double Hour. My top discovery from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, this Italian mystery-thriller did play in Edina for a week later in the year, and I would’ve liked to have seen it again, not only to judge the plot twist that flips the mirror at the end but to spend more time in the company of the two stars, who were both attractive and real in the manner of anonymous-to-me European actors.
Margin Call. The anonymous stars here stood for you and me, the regular people working under Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey. How would we fare in the crucible of a collapsing business? While the story was purportedly inspired by the demise of Lehman Brothers, it echoed in news stories for weeks to come. Together with Michael Lewis’s The Big Short , this film explained the implosion of the American economy – and the character of Wall Street – better than anything else that came my way.
Just Go With It. Frothy yes, but everything one could want in light entertainment: romance, humor, cute kids, hysterical secondary actors and the best and prettiest comic actress going, Jennifer Anniston. Adam Sandler infused the story with a kindspirited tone that allowed me to relax and laugh out loud, which I did at scene after scene, especially the one with the goat.
Of Gods and Men. At the opposite spectrum end from Adam Sandler, what could be more serious than a movie about monks in a foreign land, evaluating their vows in the face of rebel fanatics intent on their destruction. The cinematography, music, costumes and characters’ faces all matched the beautiful severity of the largely true story.
The Mill and the Cross. Answering my own rhetorical question is this reenactment of a Breugel painting. Making better use of silence than The Artist, the movie explains little while it wraps you into the world, and the horror, of daily existence in the year 1570. I could’ve done without Michael York and Charlotte Rampling, but the peasants captivated me as the movie confounded life and art, just as Breugel confounded 1st century Palestine with 16th-century Belgium.
Drive. A taut, tingling, stylish and supercool action thriller, with background drumbeat and technomusic that push suspense and violence that is shocking. Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan (the “It” actors of the moment) are brilliant, and generate their own electric charge without saying a word. The ending rather resembles Hamlet, surely no coincidence from a Danish director.
The Help. Along with Bridesmaids, the best female ensemble cast of the year, only this movie has a legitimate pedigree, a serious subject, an identifiable locale and a hard-won feel-good ending. To those who found it corny, I’m happy to show my softer side, and I trust some of these actors, if not the film itself, will be around come Oscar-time.
Incendies. The bridge between the West and the Muslim world is, today, one of the hardest and most necessary to cross, and this film vividly showed how hard that can be. It personalized the sectarian strife that tore apart Lebanon, making us imagine how different life in that world is from ours, while at the same time neatly reminding us that we do inhabit the same planet, if barely.
Bobby Fischer Against the World. A mesmerizing subject, told with appropriate drama and objectivity. The talking heads were uniformly insightful and the historic clips were fascinating, reminding us of a bygone era when the two most famous athletes in the world were the heavyweight champion and a chess player.
Super 8. E.T. updated for the video-game age, five youngsters making their own movie get caught up, a la Blow-Up, in bigger game. The kids were wonderful actors, except in their own movie, and the adolescent romance was the hottest love affair I saw all year. This movie was as full of cinema clichés as Hugo, The Artist and War Horse, but without taking itself seriously. What fun!
Honorable Mention:
My Week with Marilyn. No King’s Speech this year, but this came closest.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Next to Bobby Fischer, the best doc of the year.
Cedar Rapids. A feel-good farce, bested only by Just Go With It.
Jane Eyre. A perfect period piece, if less original than The Mill and the Cross.
Hanna. Second only to Drive for intense, non-stop action and stylishness.