Category Archives: Movies

Holy smokes, this is a disturbing and creepy movie about a girl who escapes from an abusive cult. I don’t know exactly why I saw it — knowing it was about a cult — but it received such high praise that I think I was enticed. The film’s definitely effective in a chilling, spooky way. The girl, played by Elizabeth Olsen (yes, she’s the younger sister of the Olsen twins), is haunted by memories and paranoia of the cult (and for good reason!) after she flees and tries to regroup at her sister’s place in the Catskill Mountains. Creepers, you may never look at the Catskills in the same way again. The film is perhaps in the same disturbing realm as the film “Deliverance” crossed with “Helter Skelter” or something.

The cult leader is a freaky bad guy, eerily played by John Hawkes. You might recall Hawkes as the sweet, goofy “Bugsy” in the movie “The Perfect Storm,” but here his character is a scary nutcase who instills fear and delusion over his polygamous sect. The girl, Martha, makes a break for it luckily, but she’s so messed up afterwards, that she’s far from normal. Her sister and brother-in-law have their hands full with her staying at their house. Eventually with the flashbacks, the foreboding of the film’s ending works its way into a crescendo.

The small indie film is quite horrifying in a psychological way. I can’t say that I’d tell someone to see it. Most likely I’d tell them to run. But since that’s too late for me now, I’m sure its vivid portrayals and chilling story will stay in my head for quite sometime. Continue reading →

I’m glad I caught this documentary on the big screen as seeing it elsewhere wouldn’t quite do it justice. Credit filmmaker Werner Herzog for bringing a broader spotlight to the Chauvet cave in southern France, which has been closed to the public since it was discovered in 1994. I knew about the prehistoric art at France’s Les Eyzies and Lascaux caves, but didn’t know much about Chauvet’s, though its contents are dated to be about 15,000 years older and have been less disturbed than Lascaux’s. The cave’s entrance at Chauvet had been sealed by a landslide, and its contents had remained virtually untouched until its discovery. The cave paintings inside are the earliest known on Earth, dating from about 32,000 years ago.

Herzog’s documentary gives an awe-inspiring view inside the cave. The only light is powered by the film crew’s battery packs, which reveal hand prints, animal paintings and prehistoric animal bones amid the cave’s various chambers. A sense of wonder pervades the screen. Here is where our early ancestors came to paint and perhaps engage in ceremonial gatherings. What were they like? How did they live? The film spends a good deal of time examining the fascinating animal art on the walls and the cave’s contours looking for clues, as ominous or mysterious music plays in the background. In many of the paintings, the animals appear to be in motion, similar to drawings in animation. A number of the cave’s scientists appear in the film, giving insight into what their research has found; a couple of them come off more understandable or informative than others. One, for instance, explains that one of the rock artists, who left a hand print near the entrance, has a damaged finger and can be traced to another part of the cave as well.

For those interested in prehistory, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” offers a rarified, intriguing glimpse into the world of early man, where depictions of horses and cattle coincide with those of rhinos, lions and panthers, and hand prints coexist with cave bear bones and paw prints. It’s truly a world like no other.

For more on the cave at Chauvet, see Judith Thurman’s New Yorker article “First Impressions,” which prompted Herzog’s interest in the subject, and the official French site at: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/ Continue reading →

“The Ides of March” came in second over the weekend in box-office take-home; first was “Real Steel.” “Real Steel”? Come on people, get a grip! Of course, I had to flock to the Clooney, Giamatti, Seymour Hoffman and Gosling political drama on opening night. And I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a dark little flick about aides playing dirty on the campaign trail of a presidential race that includes a couple of plot twists that’ll grab your attention.

George Clooney is the candidate, Philip Seymour Hoffman, the campaign manager and Ryan Gosling, the media staffer, who causes havoc when he meets with the opposing candidate’s campaign manager, played by Paul Giamatti. Things go from bad to worse there, for Gosling’s character and his staffer girlfriend, played by Evan Rachel Wood, who’s involvement in the plot rings a bit stale by now in light of candidates of the past decade.

It’s the acting though that’s worth the ticket. Giamatti and Seymour Hoffman are superb as always, this time in roles that offer some real sparks from opposing sides. And Gosling is quite believable as the optimistic schmoe who gets duped along the way. In running for president, no one is truly clean, “The Ides of March” seems to remind us. So don’t be so naive!

In light of this film: Here are some of my favorite movies about U.S. politics: “The Candidate,” “The American President,” “All the President’s Men,” “Nixon,” “The Contender,” “Wag the Dog,” and “Frost/Nixon.” Continue reading →

I almost passed on “The Debt” because the local paper gave it a pretty bad review and just 2.5 stars out of 5. Eventually, I saw it anyways and found it much better than it’d been critiqued. A thriller about Mossad agents on a mission to capture a Nazi war criminal in 1966, “The Debt” kept me on the edge of my seat for about the entire film.

It starts in 1997 as the former agents, played in older age by Helen Mirren, Ciaran Hinds and Tom Wilkinson, are being honored for the success of the ’66 mission at a book event by two of the agents’ daughter. Mirren’s character, Rachel, reads from the book, recounting the heroics of the mission, but from her despondency, all appears not quite right.

Flash back to 1966, and the three agents, played in younger years by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas, are sent to East Berlin with a plan to bring the Nazi “Surgeon of Birkenau” back to Israel to face justice. But what happens there is far different than the later version recounted from the book.

Turns out, for 30 years, the agents have agonizingly kept secret what really happened. But now one of the agents looks to come clean, just as a journalist is about to publish a scoop on the war criminal. The ending gets a bit crazy, but at this point it’s impossible to turn away.

The screenplay, though fictional, seems authentic, and is helped along by strong acting and by being filmed on location. Like “Munich,” another excellent film about a Mossad mission, it’s filled with nail-biting suspense. Interestingly, Ciaran Hinds plays in both of these films. As for those who liked Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington, who were great in this, look for them again in the upcoming “Texas Killing Fields.” Continue reading →

It helps to be a big baseball fan to thoroughly enjoy “Moneyball.” I really liked it; I didn’t realize I was wearing a baseball hat in there (a championship Giants hat from my sister), but as I looked around other people were wearing jerseys and hats, too. I warn that non-baseball movie-goers might find “Moneyball” a bit slow, long to take root and not much action (a lot were there for Brad Pitt, no doubt). But stats, lineups and subtleties are at the crux of baseball.

“Moneyball” explores how a team found a way to compete in a league where huge payroll discrepancies exist, from the New York Yankees with their million-dollar players to the Oakland A’s with far, far less. The movie goes back to the end of the 2001 season, when three of the A’s stars: Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and closer Jason Isringhausen became free agents and were pilfered by richer teams. Come 2002, what were the less-monied A’s to do?

Enter General Manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, and his fresh out of college assistant, Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill. They piece together a motley crew of overlooked players based on a statistical analysis of on-base percentage and runs scored. The A’s scouts think they’re totally nuts, and true to form, the team is awful in the first half of the season, compiling losses at an alarming rate. But somehow the little team takes hold and starts to come to life, eventually winning an incredible 20 games in a row, a record still in the American League.

Pitt as Beane and Hill as his nerdy assistant, are the gist of film, as they concoct a roster they believe can win. Both are great, and fill up the screen with anxieties, and at times humor. It’s mostly baseball from behind the scenes, from a GM who nervously listens to games only intermittently on a transistor radio, and who once was a player, too, with the inner scars still to show for it.

I haven’t liked a baseball movie this much, since perhaps “The Natural” in 1984. Kudos to director Bennett Miller (who also did “Capote”) and screenplay adapters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin who worked from the bestselling book by Michael Lewis. This reminds me: What are the best baseball movies in recent memory? I’d say: The Natural, Moneyball, The Rookie, Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. Continue reading →

What was I thinking? I guess I thought this movie might be summer fun and sort of capture some of the mystery or intrigue that the original “Planet of the Apes” films from 1968-73 had. This latest one is meant to be a prequel about how intelligent apes took over a planet (in this case Earth). But unfortunately I think fans of the original films and others will find it quite disappointing. My brother warned me not to go. Good grief he was right. It’s a far cry from the films with Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall. This movie feels so separate than those; it doesn’t seem in the same galaxy.

In the original you recall astronauts crash their spaceship on a strange planet in the distant future and find apes in charge. In this film set before that, geneticists looking for a cure for alzheimer’s inject apes with a drug that heightens their intelligence, enabling them to escape their cages and eventually run amok on Earth.

But the latest storyline gets pretty drippy and predictable: about a genetic company out for a buck, the cruelties of animal experimentation in medicine and a scientist with an ill father who breaks the rules. You might be reminded of the recent movie “Splice” perhaps and a few others. Also the computer-generated apes and effects lend it a cartoon-like feel, manipulating the star ape to be endearing and able to do anything. At some points it reminded me of the cuteness of “E.T.”

I’m a bit surprised that “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” got such favorable reviews in the papers. I guess for summer blockbuster fodder it’s pretty on par or above. But the original films were so much more than that; they were interesting and gripping and had something to say. Maybe it was because I was a kid then, but “Planet of the Apes” took me away to another place, it seemed real and scary. This one doesn’t “rise” to the occasion. Continue reading →

“In a Better World” just came to my neck of the woods though it’s been out a year and received high accolades for winning both the 2011 Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It beat out “Biutiful” with Javier Bardem twice among other strong nominees so that’s saying something.

I didn’t know much about “Better World” other than it was Danish, but it turned out to be quite a dramatic film, a bit more ominous considering the recent news out of Norway. It’s about two broken families who cross paths after their outcast sons become friends and get into trouble. In one family, the parents are on the verge of a divorce with the father spending long periods of time in Africa as a doctor in a refugee camp. Meanwhile their son is bullied and harassed at school. In the other family, the mother has just died, and the father and boy move to town, where the boy’s new to the school. Both of the boys going through turmoil become friends and start to act out in ways that pushes them to the edge of disaster.

The film switches between scenes in Africa, where the one father copes with the bloodshed in the camp (and his family separation), to scenes in Denmark, where the sad, troubled boys decide to make a bomb. It’s disturbing for sure, but fortunately these kids turn out to be not as sinister as the attackers in Columbine or Norway. The parents seem to hold sway and come together in the end.

The music at times seems a bit overwrought in “Better World,” but the cinematography and acting capture the isolation and angst. It’s quite sad for sure, more sad than disturbing than two movies out now (“Beautiful Boy” and “We Need to Talk About Kevin”) that deal with the aftermath of a teen’s mass killing spree. It’s just too eerie and horrifying to see either of those any time soon. Continue reading →

Both my parents (who see a movie about once a year or less) and my mother-in-law saw “Midnight in Paris” before I did. It’s one of those little pleasers, perhaps especially to a certain generation, that gains steam through word of mouth-around-town kind of thing. Some folks tell their friends who tell others and they tell others who implore their adult kids to go and on it goes from there.

Woody Allen’s latest film is a clever, charming homage to the city of Paris and the golden age of the 1920s. It’s about an engaged American couple who visit Paris but start to drift apart when Gil, played by Owen Wilson, a struggling writer, falls for the city and wants to move there after marriage. Inez, played by Rachel McAdams, doesn’t share his romantic notions of the City of Lights, and plans instead for their life in Malibu. While Inez is out dancing with friends and tagging along with her parents, Gil opts to walk the city streets, magically falling into a kind of time portal at midnight that takes him back to Paris in the 1920s and all of the famous writers and artists of the day.

The film’s pretty funny from the start, poking fun at hopeless Americans in Paris, but gets a little zanier when Gil starts to meet his idols from the ’20s, including Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, T.S. Eliot, Dali, Picasso and many others. To appreciate the full scoop, it helps if you recall these giants of the ’20s, or the artists who came and went at Gertrude Stein’s salon. By the way, where was Alice Toklas, Stein’s long-time partner in it? The Hemingway character is amusingly funny, spouting dialogue as if from one of his books about Truth and Courage, War and Love.

Along the way, Owen Wilson does a wonderful job carrying the film as the doe-eyed, dream-filled, amusable Gil. His performance reminded me a bit of Woody Allen himself when he played in “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Annie Hall.” Owen was a hoot in “Wedding Crashers,” but he’s even better in this.

“Midnight in Paris” is perhaps Woody Allen at his least offensive. It’s a nostalgic, heartfelt romp with delightful shots of Paree, a bit safer perhaps than his film “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and more clever than his recent “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” which is also about a struggling writer. It shows that Allen still has it even when he’s far from his beloved New York. Continue reading →

This movie is sheer crazy and pretty outrageous most of the time (ding ding: “crude warning”!). Which isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable to sit through another zany wedding movie. Kristen Wiig sort of saves the whole kit and caboodle (just wanted to use that phase) as a maid of honor whose life has hit rock bottom but tries to pull off all the rituals that go with the territory; along the way she battles another of the bridesmaids for maid of honor status. Wiig’s face during the movie and the tennis scene alone are probably worth the price of admission. It could have done without the whole food-poison-gross-out stuff, hello?! you kiddin’ me. Some scenes fall a bit flat, like on the airplane, or the strange roommates (?!), but others find their mark: gotta go with the tennis scene (AC/DC!), and the Wilson Phillips singalong is a schmaltzy crackup.

Wiig is pretty hilarious. If you like her on “Saturday Night Live,” you’ll like her here. Her character, Annie, is a mess: broke, left by her boyfriend and living with wacko roommates. She’s on the precipice of a breakdown. It’s safe to say: the wedding duties send her over the edge. Good to see another “SNL” alum, Maya Rudolph, as the bride. (Her “Bronx Beat” skits on SNL still make me laugh just thinking of them. Oh god the one with Jake Gyllenhaal?!) Anyways it’s a bit sad to see Jill Clayburgh in her final role here. Here’s to you, Jill.

It sort of reminds me, which are the funniest wedding flicks in memory? If you had to pick for a desert island, they might include: “The Hangover” “Wedding Crashers,” “Four Weddings & a Funeral,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “The Wedding Singer” … and perhaps a light sprinkling of “Bridesmaids.” Continue reading →

This is a gem of a little film, which I thought was going to be solely about a wrestling coach and team, but it turns out to dwell more on family issues. The wrestling sort of comes in later. It’s about a small-time lawyer and high school wrestling coach (played by Paul Giamatti) who makes the dubious decision for financial reasons of taking on the guardianship of a elderly client whose grandson, an excellent wrestler, he stumbles upon after the kid winds up at his grandfather’s. But with his grandfather in a nursing home and his mother in drug rehab, the kid ends up living with the coach’s family and joining the wrestling team. All seem to be winning in this arrangement, until the mother shows up out of rehab and things begin to unravel.

Giamatti, of course is wonderful just as he was in “Barney’s Version,” and makes a good team with Amy Ryan as his wife, who recently played Michael Scott’s love on “The Office.” It is an endearing film that sneaks up on you and gets under your skin. It’s funny at times and also a drama about the family and what will happen to the boy on and off the mat. Continue reading →