Was The Ghost Writer overlooked because of a backlash against Polanski?

I'm surprised at how "The Ghost Writer" has been almost entirely overlooked and underappreciated. Maybe it's a backlash against director Polanski? True, it did pop up as an also-ran on a few Best Movies of 2010 lists (would have made mine as well had I seen it sooner), but I can't remember anyone seeing it or talking about it - yet it's a movie that should have drawn a solid commercial response, and if he'd only been able to cast a more box-office lead actor there's no reason this smart, provocative suspense film shouldn't been as successful as the Bourne films, for example. In fact, it's much smarter than the Bournes, let alone the Bondses. The Ghost Writer, based on a book by Richard Harris (I think) and not to be confused with the Philip Roth novel, is about guy hired to ghost the memoirs of a former British PM closely modeled on Tony Blair - big supporter of the U.S. and of the Bush admin. The first-hired ghost was found dead, apparent suicide, weeks before publication deadline. Obviously we know the writer is in way over his head, and strange his world gets increasingly threatening as he learns that the manuscript he's working on is top secret and as it's reported that the PM is under investigation as a war criminal. There's CIA involvement, complex relations between the writer and the PM's very powerful wife, lots of interesting and completely credible plot twists, very good tense sequences, and a powerful conclusion. Worth noting that all this accomplished with no high-tech high-jinx, action-comic car chases, or deadly explosions. A very literate thriller that kept me guessing and thinking and, at the end, wondering: how much of this could be true?

Best (not recent) movies I saw in 2010

A few days ago I posted notes on the 10 best movies I saw in 2010, but that top-ten list was all of recently released films (released either in theaters or on DVD in 2010 or late 2009 maybe in some cases). But a true best-movies list should also pay homage to some of the classic or at least not-recent movies I saw during the year, so here are notes on the 5 best older movies I saw in 2010, some of them classics, one a seldom-seen but ought-to-be classic, and two too recent to be classics but really good movies that have slipped through the cracks of critical acclaim and ought to be better-known. Here's my list, in alphabetical order:

Cinema Paradiso. I saw the tedious, bloated 3-hour "uncut" version, and I recommend you ignore that monstrosity and find the original 90-minute version and watch that. The original Cinema Paradiso is a charming picture about a boy from a small town, where the entire social and cultural life centers on the movie theater, who goes off to the big city and becomes famous but loses touch with his origins, and returns home for a funeral and finds that everything has changed - and then, that amazing ending!

I Was Born...But. Ozu's 70-year-old silent about two schoolboys boys and their relationship with their father. By today's standards, the story is slow and the somewhat stagy - but still far, far ahead of so many other stilted silents - some beautiful shots of the family gatherings, of the two boys in the landscape of the industrial suburbs of Tokyo, of their father walking the boys to school. You can see the beginning of Ozu's sensibility - which will culminate in great Tokyo Story.

Lantana. Australian. ca 2002? One of those movies with multiple point of view, several strands to the story, you're not clear how or if the strands will intersect, then ultimately the whole design become clear to you. Unlike so many movies and TV series with "surprises," the surprises and twists in Lantana are all credible and in character. And the film also has a serious dramatic dimension. On the surface, it's about a murder investigation, but it's truly about people coming to terms with marriage and trust and faith and infidelity.

Red Road. This Glasgow-set picture from ca 2006 is taut and grim and graphic and very much accomplishes its ends of holding our attention from the first mysterious frame - protagonist Jackie watching multiple screens of video surveillance as part of a police/security anti-terrorism system - and hitting us with various twists and surprises along the way, building to a bang-up conclusion that challenges our assumptions.

Rome Open City. Filmed in the late 40s in what is obviously still a war-ravaged Rome, mostly on location settings, on the cheap, while another, Rome Open City is about resistance to the Nazi occupiers. You're always on edge watching this movie. Anyone could be arrested or shot at any time. The reality of the film is brutal. In so many similar movies, you know the lead characters will survive, because they're stars - but here any character can go at any time. Totally worth watching.

A sendup of the art establishment: Talk about easy targets!

Many years ago I saw a documentary about the artist Bruce Naumann, an eccentric minimalist, and I was convinced that there was no such person, that he was a hoax invented by fellow-artists, that his entire corpus and existence was a form of performance art (the term didn't exist then). Over the years, I've seen so many references to Naumann (even the name suggests No Man, right?), and I even have a book about him, that I've come to accept he's a real person - unless someone has been playing this real person for an entire lifetime. The film "Enter Through the Gift Shop" plays with that same concept - part documentary, part mockumentary, about a filmmaker named Thierry Guetta who sets out to document the work of street artists and becomes a successful street artist himself. The film is in itself a work of street art, in that the career of Guetta is clearly a fabrication and a sendup of the commercial success street artists and the gullibility of the art establishment and of the public. Okay, but unfortunately, it's not that funny a sendup and it's been done before. If Spinal Tap had not existed, never mind Best in Show et al., this would be a better movie, but it's hardly the kind of groundbreaking work of cinema you'd expect from the highly creative and brave and unconventional street artists - the real ones - whom we meet in the film. In fact, the documentary footage of the street artists is by far the highlight of Gift Shop, and I wished I'd watched a real full-length doc about their work, not this hybrid.

The 10 Best (recent) Movies I Saw in 2010

A friend of mine was recently telling me about his new 55-inch flat-screen with 3D. I told him I didn't really need a 3D screen - most of the movies I watch are just barely 2D, as will be obvious to anyone who reads my list of the 10 Best Movies of 2010. These are actually the 10 best (recent) movies I saw in 2010, some of which were made or released in 2009 - but mere mortals, as opposed to film critics and industry insiders, can never see all or even most of the good movies in the year of release. Note the NYT recent 10-best lists: how many of those movies are not yet released? How many have opened in NY and LA only? Also, like most people these days, I see most of my movies @ home on DVD. Anyway, this list does not include a few of the true classics and recent classics that I saw this year, which may be topics for a future post. Here are the 10 best movies I saw this year, none in 3D, listed alphabetically:

Headless Woman. Argentine. It's a story of fate and of moral and ethical decisions. Short, not pretty, totally compelling, and haunting.

The Hurt Locker. One of the few American movies on my list, and one of the few "hits." 2+ hours of complete tension and engagement, without a sense of exploitation, gratuitous violence, or video-game extravagance. It feels totally real, genuine, as if you're in the boots of the men on the ground in Iraq.

Mother. Korean. It's a great movie because of its exploration of characters and relationships, and because of the mother's gradual and surprising awakening as the movie progresses. Great movies (and novels) are about crisis, collision of forces, leading to growth, change, knowledge - and this is the epitome.

Precious. Here's one I liked much more than I thought I would. Really strong acting by the leads, and for once a movie doesn't blame everything on the unfeeling social workers and the crushing bureaucracy of the system. The social agencies do help, and Mariah Carey, surprisingly, is terrific as a thoughtful but tough social worker.

Revanche. Austrian. Though this sounds like an action picture - and it does have some very tense scenes, a robbery, a chase, a lot of graphic sex - it is a surprisingly deep and thoughtful movie, with a lot of exploration of the spiritual angst of the characters (obvious echos of Bergman) and a very credible portrait of a criminal couple who are obviously losers.

The Secret in Their Eyes. Argentine. Definitely jumps to the top of the list as the best movie I saw in 2010, even one of the best of the decade - a totally compelling story with lots of surprises and an absolutely terrifying ending.

The Social Network. The only big-budget film on the list. It's as good as the hype. The tone and the playing is exactly right, down to the small scenes - the two rich jocks coming to Larry Summers and expecting his help is a great moment, as is the already-famous first scene of the movie.

Summer Hours. Very French. A beautiful film, and not only because of La Binoche - the whole movie, the look, the acting, the very smart script, just loose and open enough to keep you thinking and guessing, but very nicely structured to bring you through the course of a year, summer to summer, in the life of one family. This one struck many personal notes for me.

The White Ribbon. Austrian. A geopolitical allegory, without the allegorical trappings. Beautiful to watch in a strange and mysterious way (it's in b/w), and some of the scenes of nastiness and marital strife and verbal cruelty are painful to watch and powerful and make Bergman look like a Disney cartoon.

Winter's Bone. An American indie makes the list. A totally captivating movie especially because of the work of its star, Julie(?) Lawrence, young actor who captures the plight of this 17-year-old nearly overwhelmed by the responsibilities of her life - invalid mother, two young sibs, dad on the run, no money, no social or family supports (at least so it seems). You'll never again, when visiting the Ozards, wander unannounced into a meth lab.


The also-rans, in no particular order, include: The Maid, 35 Shots of Rum, District 9 (waiting for the sequel), Gomorrah (The Wire via Italy), In the Loop (very funny! - wish I had a comedy for the Top 10, but this isn't quite up to the level), Lorna's Silence, Ajami, and the strange Mexican-made Silent Light.

No chases, no guns, no special effects - just an exciting movie : Red Road

"Red Road," a Glasgow-set picture from ca 2006 (by Andrea Arnold?) is taut and grim and graphic and very much accomplishes its ends of holding our attention from the first mysterious frame - protagonist Jackie watching multiple screens of video surveillance as part of a police/security anti-terrorism system pervasive in Britain - and hitting us with various twists and surprises along the way, building to a bang-up conclusion that challenges our assumptions. Actress playing Jackie is in virtually every scene, and she's really strong and courageous, especially in the extremely graphic sex scene near the conclusion. Movie not for everyone - the grimness of Glasgow in this and other pictures, e.g., Trainspotting, is a well-known off-putter - but Red Road is much more tense and realistic and vivid than any number of crappy crime dramas and thrillers that rely on car chases and shootouts. This one done with no special effects, nothing high speed, no guns or weapons of any kind. Basic plot line is that Jackie, through her surveillance, spots the man now out of prison who killed her husband and child, and she sets off to exact revenge. Here come the spoilers, so stop here if you might see the film: The only downside to Red Road is that it's practically impossible to believe that Jackie or anyone short of psychopath (which she is not) would embark on a revenge plot that involves having sex with the target and then charging him with rape. Also we do feel a bit manipulated by the film, in that we are strongly led to believe that the target was a "killer" out of jail, when in fact he turns out to be a former drunken driver, now trying (not very effectively) to reform - film wants to have too many things both ways. Those quibbles aside, though, it's a really intelligent film, shot with great economy and using real Glasgow street locations, and stands up very well alongside the many much-better-known dark American indie films of recent years.

Sometimes you have to live with a series for a while before it begins to make sense

The Canadian series "Intelligence" (2006?) season one pilot episode, a 90-minute take, gets the season off to a great start, full of tension and odd twists, sets up a really interesting antagonism between Vancouver major crimes unit leader and her chief underling, with lots of overtones of interoffice rivalry, rivalry between agencies, racism, sexism, and the strange relations established between cops and crooks when the cops recruit spies within various criminal gangs. Episode was very compelling, but like so many of its type pretty hard to follow at times, especially because of some of the low-budget casting and directing: minor characters who mumble and are rather indistinguishable, totally forgettable names (and faces sometimes), murky lighting in some key scenes, exceptionally elliptical plot exposition. Still, I got enough of it to follow the story line and to want to see more of the series, which will I think unfold some of these narrative creases. I felt the same way to an extent after the first episode or two of The Wire - with some of these series, you have to live with them for a while before you understand and recognize the characters and their life stories. To try to give a brief summary of the pilot: Mary (?) being recruited by Canada CIA has to bring with her a # of inside sources in Vancouver crime; staff develops a list of such; the list is stolen from deputy (Ted?)'s car; they have to bring all the sources in; leading crime figure (Reardon) obtains the list; deal-making ensues.

Tragedy, comedy, farce - and an ending that's much like Shakespeare : Final episode of Slings & Arrows

Last episode of final season of "Slings & Arrows" is a perfect summation of the three seasons of the series. It's sweet and touching, but not saccharine - and ends as I expected with some sad and wry notes as well, a true Shakespearean ending. To no one's surprise, they do manage to pull off a great performance of King Lear, with the dying Charles Kingman rising to the occasion. But this final performance is done outside the festival, in a church. Simply by running through this performance (and in Anna's case b attending it), the actors and crew put their contracts with the festival in jeopardy. And the surprise (spoiler!) is that Richard ultimately turns out to be a selfish prick. He fires the whole crew, brings in Derrin as the new artistic director, decides to make the festival much more commercial, appeasing his thuggish board chairman and retaining his job. Through the three seasons he veered from being an uptight businessman led around by a dominating woman to a sensitive guy who just wanted to be loved - and then in this final season we see that he's shallow and self-centered. So there's tragedy and comedy and face in this final episode: the season actually echoes Lear in some way, in that the characters have everything stripped from them. But unlike the tragic Lear, they do rise and survive: we see that Sophie/Sara Polley will go on and have a great career, Ellen and Jeffrey at last get married and they seem OK about moving on to new careers in Montreal, and the ghost of Oliver leaves (though he does seem to attach himself to Charles, as predicted). Very realistically captures the feeling of the end of a long run.

Could things get any worse (for the actors) in Slings & Arrows?

True to form, the 5th (of 6) episode in Season 3 of "Slings & Arrows" ends as other episode 5's did, with the entire cast and the entire New Burbage Festival at its nadir - everything going wrong and the problems seemingly insolvable on the eve of opening night: King Lear has been moved to the small theater, with the musical now on the main stage and the tensions between the two casts at the highest pitch; Charles, the old man playing Lear, has once again had a medical breakdown and literally attacked Ellen/Martha Burns on the stage, causing her to resign; Sophie/Cordelia/Sarah Polley as glum as she can get, at last tells her co-actor that she's been in love with him and he's broken her heart as he's pursued the star of the musical; the Lear understudy injured in a bar fight and on his way to the hospital. All this plus Jeffrey still in the throes of Oliver's ghost and the diva Barbara making life miserable for all. A lot to wrap up in episode 6! We all are sure that Charles will pull through with at least one great performance of Lear - his dying wish. Of course Sophie and the guy (he plays Edgar I think) will get together at last. I'm guessing that Ellen will make good on the contract she's signed for a TV series and leave New Burbage. Oliver will finally disappear - perhaps going off stage with Charles's ghost, as Charles dies? A shame this series has to end - but perhaps three seasons was all that the writers could draw from this materials, and it's better to go off too soon than too late.

The most demading role in the comic reportory? : School for Wives

We're really lucky to have nearby, in Warren, R.I., the amazing 2nd Story Theatre, where director Ed Shea puts on one terrific production after another, and last night we go to see the best one I've seen there yet, Moliere's "School for Wives," starring Shea himself and he really does steal the show, as well as serving as an inspiration to the many young (and not so young) actors in his troupe - a demonstration of all that can be done in a comedy. His role, Arnaud, has to be one of the most demanding in the repertory - not only a tremendous amount of material to learn, but all of it in rhymed couplets and all of it requiring pinpoint execution to keep the comic pace moving fast. Shea didn't miss a beat last night, and his inspiration I think brought the rest of the cast up to a higher level, with particular kudos to Tom Roberts, who not only played his part well but did an amusing prologue in verse that he wrote himself. The play is a curiosity, of course, dated, sexist, but still strangely contemporary - as the sexist old man who wants a pliable wife loses out in the end and the young couple - to nobody's surprise - end up in each other's arms. As is typical of the genre, the old many storms off the stage before the wedding - Shakespeare of course broke with this comic convention and often left the old man alone on stage till the end (e.g., Antonio), for an added S'ean touch of pathos and wistfulness. Moliere far more traditional, a play with a comic plot well engineered as a Swiss watch and with the pleasure in the witty versification (Wilbur's translation is incredible) and, in this production, Shea's slightly Brooklyn-tough-guy version of the old French fool, Arnaud.

Very touching words in Slings & Arrows: Then you'll have had a life

Back to "Slings & Arrows," episode 4 of season 3, as the production of King Lear goes into preview and there are major problems with the lead, Charles,who is increasingly ill and unable to manage his lines and cues. Now, everyone in the cast knows how severe the problem is - the understudy seems woefully incapable of stepping in, and it's obvious that Charles will play the part, eventually - there's no other way this drama could work itself out satisfactorily - but in this episode the production is at its low point, director Jeffrey has no easy answer (he's amazingly solicitous toward Charles), he's still tormented by Oliver's ghost, who's offering no particular help. The talented Sarah Polley plays a very dour young actress cast as Cordelia, and she's particularly out of spirits as the crazy musical, East Hastings, has become a big hit. She'll have to end up with someone, right? Maybe one of the guys from the musical? Though there are many dark elements in this episode, Slings & Arrows is obviously a work of high comedy, and it'll have to end with everyone coupled off - and with Jeffrey's demons put to rest (probably Oliver will go off in discussion with Charles - either dead of nearly so?), though in true Shakespearean fashion there may be some wry notes at the end, too, one character perhaps left alone - an Antonio, Malvolio, or Jacques. Very touching scene: the Lear cast gathered in the bar after preview canceled, and the two elderly gay Brit actors try to console Polley, telling her she will have a great career, and she will also have plenty of "cockups" like this night's disaster, but that's good, because then you'll have stories to tell, then you'll have had a life. Very touching words, and very true.

It simply defies comprehension: Shutter Island

Doesn't Martin Scorsese make great movies? Yes, when he can get out of his own way. There may be a great, or at least a good, movie lurking somewhere inside of Scorsese's miserable "Shutter Island," but to get there you'd have to strip away layers of mannerism and pretension and just tell the story. Too many dream sequences. Too many flashbacks to the trauma of a soldier (DiCaprio) who liberated Dachau and saw the horrors. Too many scenes in which ghost of wife (Michelle Williams) appears in dream of fantasy. So strip all that away and then what? (Spoilers to follow - have to talk about end of story) This is a story so Gothic and convoluted that it defies comprehension, let alone credibility. At the end, we face two possibilities: Leo has spent two years in a psychiatric prison and the entire film, in which he sees the hospital as evil and criminal, is his distorted vision OR Leo is right that the hospital is run by a cruel doctor engaged in mind experiments and he has been victimized and imprisoned because he's approached the truth. Either way, Scorsese has broken a fundamental compact that a filmmaker establishes with his audience: when there are obvious visual/auditory clues that some scenes are dreams or visions, we have to believe than that the other scenes are real and not hallucinatory. This film is all over the place, and never clear to the audience, or maybe to anyone else, as to what scenes are real. It's a confusing mess. If it's meant to be a massive conspiracy against DiCaprio, I could have accepted that - but with so much unresolved ambiguity about which characters are real, which are just his own visions, in fact about whether the entire fir hour of the film (his arrival at the hospital as a U.S. Marshall assigned to investigate an escape) ever actually happened, the movie just pushes the audience away rather than engages us on any level, neither emotionally nor intellectually. A grand failure. Finally, this was obviously not filmed in the Boston Harbor Islands (where Lehane's source novel is set), so why even bother to retain that idea as the setting - just makes the movie even more ridiculous for anyone from New England.

Almost impossible to describe how bad this film is

"I Love Your Phillip Morris": How do we even begin to discuss how bad it is? It would be easy just to dismiss this mess of a movie with a throwaway line: it proves once and for all that movies about gay conmen/lovers/prisoners can be just as horrible as movies about straight conmen/lovers/prisoners. A big step toward equality on screen. This Jim Carrey vehicle reels about from comedy to pathos and hits none of the notes correctly. It's told in the first person, Carrey narrating the story of his life as a con man and impostor, a story apparently based on a real person's life and memoir, but with who knows with how much embellishment? Lot of parallels here to Catch Me If You Can, by no means a great movie but Citizen Kane compared with Philip Morris. In Catch, the hero is likable and fun and charming, in this one he's odious and cruel and selfish - but I guess we're supposed to be laughing at Carrey's jaunty behavior and faux naivete (a much older version of The Truman Show, with Carey now seeming idiotic as he greets coworkers). One scene after another is preposterous - the sex scenes, his childhood flashbacks, his meeting his birth mother, on and on. Then the movie becomes a gay Shawshank: Hey, prison can be a lot of fun if you're a gay guy, right? Insane. Out of prison, Carrey/Steven Russell dupes a lot of rubes improbably, but with no levity, no sense of fun. Then it becomes a tearful Philadelphia story, all would be OK if Carrey could maintain his relation with the much-wronged eponymous Phillip, but we don't believe a moment of it, nor do we care a moment for either character. This film is beyond hope.

One of the most haunting scenes you'll ever see on film : Restrepo

The National Geographic documentary "Restrepo," directed by Heatherington (?) and Sebastian Junger, is the best inside look at the war in Afghanistan that we're ever likely to get. We see in 90-minutes exactly what it's like to be in a platoon stationed at the most remote outpost, in the Korengal Valley near the Pakistan border. Some of the war footage is extraordinary - you don't see the incredibly exciting drama that we always see in scripted war movies, such as HBO's Pacific of the the movie Generation Kill, both excellent in their way. No, this is more vivid because the skirmishes seem so random, so out of control (couldn't help thinking of War and Peace, and Tolstoy's belief that all the planning and strategy ends when the battle begins). The scene in which one of the men is shot to death and we see the horrified panic of other soldiers is one of the most haunting scenes you'll ever see on film. Kudos to the team for living with the soldiers not only for the skirmishes but for the long tedium of warfare, for cutting the film to 90 minutes (must have been tempted to do a 10-part series with all the footage, but 90 minutes works), and for incredible bravery under fire and on the road (vehicle hits a mine at one point -another amazing scene). When you see this film you'll see why our presence in Afghanistan is a disaster - and not through any sermonizing or tendentiousness - you just watch the soldiers trying to ingratiate themselves with the village elders, after we've bombed their fragile homes and killed and injured people and livestock, and you just have to feel sick. We've been there before.

"This isn't a sitcom!": Slings & Arrows Season 3

Episode 3 of Season 3 of "Slings & Arrows" develops four plot lines: the old man playing Lear is increasingly ill and heading toward death, and now the cast is aware of this and may grow to tolerate his nasty abuse of young cast members, especially Cordelia/Sarah Polly; Jeffrey has to move out of Ellen's house because of increasing conflict with the diva, Barbara (not sure where this is going); Richard getting great joy out of this contribution to the musical production, esp when he shows up the idiotic director, Derrin; and romance builds between actor in Lear and star of the musical, kind of a miniature R&J taking place backstage (with Sara Polley keenly jealous). So in this season more than the first two the dramatic arc is building, but what I do miss is more of a role for Jeffrey - he seems to have no engagement in his production of KL, other than that he reveres the star actor, Charles? - but he lets him bully the cast and act like an idiot and says nothing, he shows no particular vision for this play. To me, some of strongest scenes in earlier seasons were when Jeffrey instructed the actors and drew out the characters, but that hasn't happened yet. At one point, amusingly, when Jeffrey threatens to sleep on the couch, Ellen (Martha Burns) cries: This isn't a sitcom! Of course not, but it shouldn't be a melodrama, either. And it's not - but let's hope it doesn't go there. As with all previous episodes, characters are very likable - even the idiots, in their hapless and amusing way - and the backstage behavior is completely credible, as anyone who's spent time around actors at work will verify.

The best of the 3 seasons of Slings & Arrows

"Slings & Arrows" Season 3, which centers on a King Lear production, reprises some of Season 2 with, once again, a bombastic lead actor who threatens to ruin the show and challenges director Jeffrey Tenant's authority, but in this case the Lear, as we learn, is dying of cancer and pleads with Jeffrey to go on with the show. This season so far looks to be the best of the three - with a lot of interesting tensions building within the cast - the actors hate the bullying of the lead, particularly his snapping at the lovely young Cordelia - and the actors in KL are facing off against the younger, hipper actors in Derrin's original musical, which the director in his usual way is in the process of subsuming to one of his latest artistic theories. Richard still trying to come to terms with his success - he's a good comic actor, his scene where he gets drunk and makes a pass at Anna is really very funny. Ellen fading a bit as a character in this episode, though I do like her a lot, she need to have a sharper role than that of the cast spokeswoman - perhaps something will develop with her friendship with new cast member, Barbara? Meanwhile, Jeffrey starts therapy with a minister; he's still haunted by the ghost of Oliver, but Oliver now has the capacity to dissolve and fade away, so we can kind of see where this obsession is going by the end of the season. I really enjoy learning about Shakespeare in production from this series - loved seeing the dramatic reading, in which Lear summarizes the entire plot, bringing it right down to its primitive elements.

The series matures and comes into its own: Slings & Arrows Season 3

Season 3 of "Slings & Arrows," the final season, appropriately concerns staging of King Lear, and is off to a great start. The director Jeffrey Tenant settling more into his role and becoming less of the cartoon figure he was in Season 1 and more of a talented director troubled by psychological demons, clearly some kind of depression - and as with many such diagnoses, his depression doesn't make sense to others as he's achieved great success and is in a solid relationship with Ellen, so this strand will develop. Also Richard, the producer, is more confident on some level, thanks to success of the festival, but also really uncomfortable with himself, with his subservience to the bullying board, with the pressure of the job. Like Jeffrey, he breaks down in tears. Meanwhile the play: the issue is whom to cast as Lear and Jeffrey opts for an unknown semiretired aging actor, whom we learn in last sequence is a drug addict, passing over a well-known actor, who punches Jeffrey in the nose in anger, kind of a reprise of the Macbeth casting from previous season but so what. To me most interesting parts of the series involve the actual direction and rehearsals and opening night, so I'm eager to see them start working with the play. The secondary production, again by that crazy pretentious academic director (can't recall name, Dennis?) will be a musical, so that should offer some great counterpoint. (Jeffrey asks Richard to be the artistic director on that one - for further weirdness.) Very promising start for this series, which gradually has matured and come into its own.

Strong ensemble cast and solid screenplay: The Kids Are All Right

"The Kids Are All Right" is not the kind of film I'd ordinarily see or even like but I have to admire how well made and well done this movie is - a rare example in today's world of craftsmanship and seemingly of teamwork: strong ensemble cast, well directed, sold screenplay, no pretensions, the film never calls attention to itself or wallows in technique - just a story about a family that is seemingly unconventional family (two lesbian moms with their two kids born one to each from same sperm donor) that really at base is entirely conventional, one partner a bit of a straightarrow overachiever and the other a nonachiever, stay-at-home, less bound by convention sexually and parentally - story takes place at time of crisis as older child (daughter) turns 18 ready for college and she and brother look up id of donor dad, then build a relation with him and he insinuates himself into the lives of the family in very damaging ways, which they rise above. High praise for Mark Ruffalo who plays the donor dad with cool insouciance. Julianne Moore and Annnette Benning play the moms very well - the don't overplay - Benning gets the better role, teetering on alcoholism, a long dinner in which she bonds with Ruffalo and sings Joni Mitchell and then all falls apart. She may get an Oscar for it. Daughter played by girl who starred in The Lovely Bones, and she deserves this chance to be in a good movie. Anyone else, by the way, getting annoyed at how the go-to occupation for dozens of movies all of a sudden is restaurateur, with a 2nd place going to landscape gardener? This movie has both.

Potentially a good movie, if director just trusted his materil: A Single Man

"A Single Man" is a truly disappointing movie because there's a kernel of a really good story in there somewhere and it's totally destroyed by Tom Ford's far over-the-top, over-determined direction, full of lengthy dreamy sequences of bodies floating in water, interminable swells of cornball music meant to lift us to a high realm of emotion, I guess, but totally offputting, flashbacks and quick cuts that are entirely confusing and make it impossible for him to focus on the good acting that he does elicit, at least from Julianne Moore (Colin Firth is good when he's not mumbling). If only he director had trusted his material and his actors and told the story in a straightforward way. But no; Tom Ford is I hear a great designer making his directorial debut. Terrific. Now I can't wait for the Martin Scorcese line of men's clothing. His sense of how to construct a film is like an ambitious film student circa 1970. And by the way how are we supposed to interpret the lengthy foreplay between Firth and one of his college students - hardly acceptable even in 1962 (when film is set) and certainly troubling today. Film is the story of a day in the life of a homosexual man completely distraught about the recent death of his 16-year partner. After flirting with suicide he (spoiler) ultimately dies of a heart attack - quite a day! Yes, it's a total downer and all rather improbable - but the potential for greatness is there in one sequence, the flashback to the phone call Firth received in which he learns of his partner's death and of the family's refusal to welcome/acknowledge his existence and their relationship. This is the profound sorrow - the suffering an outsider feels and the lie he has to live, and if the movie had really built on that in any serious way it could have been quite good, but instead it just wallows in sentiment. A good movie builds character an allows us to feel empathy but this heavy-handed movie just crushes the life out of its material and out of us.

A series about a tragedy that ends as a comedy: Sings & Arrows

"Slings & Arrows" Season 2 ends with a wry twist: though the entire season has been about staging a tragedy (Macbeth), well two actually (R&J), the series itself ends as a classic comedy, with all of the couples pairing off and stepping away into the night, leaving one older, effeminate man (Oliver) alone at the end (cf Antonio, Jacques, Malvolio). Perhaps too many strands to tie up to make it a great closing episode, but still a very good season - ending with a production of Macbeth in which Jeffrey wrings a great performance out of Henry (Macbeth) but keeping his off balance the whole night, changing his cues, his entrances, and his stage directions - the idea that his uncertainty makes him a better actor, less stagy. We'd seen this before in the episode where the understudy played the part so it's not as much of an insight as it might have been. Nice touches are seeing hunk boyfriend Sloan back in the bar and speaking the voice of reason - Jeffrey and Ellen are destined for each other. Also nice to see the old guy who'd played ghost of Hamlet, whom Jeffrey fired, now back and almost the voice of reason in the company - he's big enough to know he was wrong and to know talent when he sees it. Ellen's auditing never amounted to anything. As predicted, the idiotic marketing strategy worked, bringing a "youthquake" to the theater - and saving Richard's job. His relation with the bullying board chairman is rather funny and could be developed in season 3. We'll see.

An understudy steps in - for one of the best episodes of Slings & Arrows

Fifth episode of season 2 of "Slings & Arrows" is one of my favorites so far, as we are riveted by the understudy's performance as Macbeth, after Jeffrey fired the visiting star and huge egotist, Henry Breedlove. It's really exciting to see the understudy work his way through the play, uncertain of his cues and directions, the asst stage manager calling out to him, everyone in the wings tense, the understudy himself sweating, the scene of him approaching the stage walking through the gauntlet of cast members, great, like an athlete entering the arena. Adding to the tension, Henry and another fired and disgruntled actor are in the audience, Henry bitterly commenting, the other guy rising above his bias to note that the production is very good. Part of the beauty of this episode is its accuracy - it's not some Hollywood star-is-born nonsense, in that everyone knows, as Henry observes, an understudy can do it once, as his fear and audience sympathy lead to a higher level of engagement, but ultimately you have to get the star back in there. Which Jeffrey does - in a very smart scene he asks Henry back for opening night. Other plot elements kind of whither beside this main event - Ellen's audit is mildly funny as she treats her auditor like a therapist; the idiotic production of R&J is also funny, but we don't see much of it (nor should we); to nobody's surprise the publicist for the festival is revealed as a complete fake and goes to jail - and I think we can all see what's coming here: in episode 6 no doubt we'll learn that the insane publicity campaign will turn out to be a success and will draw young enthusiasts to the audience.

The many (too many?) plot lines in Slings & Arrows Season 2

As M observes, part of the fun of "Slings & Arrows" Season 2 is that we see multiple productions taking shape during the festival season: Macbeth (Jeffrey's show), R&J (the crazy European-influenced director), and now in episode 4 the original Canadian production with the temperamental playwright in charge. We learn about different aspects of theater and the life of the theater from each production - really funny watching the actors go through their exercises, in R&J reversing genders because of some crackpot semiotic academic theory the director barely articulates and in the original production they struggle through a staged reading as the director keeps throwing away his own script (he's hyper self-critical). Meanwhile, Jeffrey stands up to the vision of Oliver and determines come what may the Macbeth has to be his own production and not Oliver's - great, because what makes this duo work is or should be that they have very different visions of the play and of theater, and S&A loses sight of this too often. Jeffrery fires Henry/Macbeth, which will obviously lead to tensions, as they guy's a brooding egotist. Two other (too many?) plot elements as well, as Ellen is undergoing an audit of taxes (not sure what this brings to show) and engages in a sexual fling with her brother-in-law (I wish she hadn't, we were all beginning to like her), and Richard is going off the deep end with this crazy but funny ad campaign - perhaps this is being pushed too far toward the ludicrous. He has to stand up to them, as he did in Season 1 and as Jeffrey is doing in Season 2.

Looks like an indie but acts like a phony : Please Give

"Please Give" is a thoroughly disappointing movie, which has all the indie earmarks that would be make you think it will be an endearing and thoughtful ensemble piece - talented writer-director (N. Holofcener?) who did the really influential and appealing Lovely & Amazing some years back and a very strong cast including Catherine Keener (Holofcener started her career, in essence), Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, and the surprisingly good in an evil role Amanda Peet. It purports to be one of these simple movies of a few ordinary people and their intersecting lives, much like L&A. this time set in NYC, which is the first of many way-wrong notes. Keener & Platt run a little business buying furniture from the deceased, basically swooping in ahead of more formal estate sales - buying what the relatives see as junk and selling it at markup in a vintage store. The store itself looks not much better than a Salvation Army, and yet: these guys are living on, get this!, Fifth Avenue and are waiting to buy the apartment of their elderly nieghbor so that they can break through and double their space? On what planet do they live? This total lack of understanding of basic finances is a tipoff to the cluelessness of the whole movie, which on the one hand tries to convey the message that materialism doesn't matter, life is all about relationships, and on the other hand ends with a happy moment as Keener and Platt get the new apartment and make light of it, they buy their daughter the pair of designer jeans she's always desired, everyone's happy. Never mind that Platt just had a preposterously unlikely affair with Peet, that Peet is still nasty and heading dangerously toward alcoholism - these issues are brushed aside. Not that we need a happy ending - in fact, the highlight of the film is the eldery neighbor and her acerbic remarks about everyone and everything (How's the cake, Grandma? It's dry.). I like this kind of movie, but just because it looks like an indie doesn't make it any more honest that a phony Hollywood studio concoction. To work, an ensemble movie has to be honest and knowing about characters and their environment, and this movie is clueless.

Should a manic artist get psychiatric help?: Slings & Arrows

"Slings & Arrows" Season 2 (episode 3) picks up two plot lines: on the one hand, we watch Jeffrey and Ellen, the director and leading actress (and actually married in "real life") become a cozy domestic couple in Ellen's cute, spacious house - she cooking breakfast for him, waiting up for him, etc. They no longer seem like eccentric, temperamental theater people - more like a sitcom family from a 50s show. What's happening here? Well, the interesting element is that it's increasingly evident that Jeffrey is delusional. His "conversations" with the late director Oliver are useful to him in that they give him ideas about staging Macbeth, but it's also clear that these ar no longer part of a dramatic convention but are a manifestation of Jeffrey's instability - as is obvious when Ellen sneaks into the theater at night and we see the conversations from her POV: which is, Jeffrey walking around a bare stage talking to himself. As with other artist-geniuses, the question is does he need help, will he get help, should he get help? Will help cut off his creativity? Or will his delusions become a mania that will ruin both his art and his life? The tone remains comical and light-hearted so I can't quite see how the series will manage this issue. Meanwhile, insufferable egotist playing Macbeth is very funny, as he moves in on Ellen, and we're getting a subplot developing of an R&J production led by the idiotic director from Season 1 (obviously a fan favorite, whom they wrote into Season 2) and the very funny pr shop ("a brothel of ideas") that has come up with a crazy ad campaign for the festival. Richard, the business manager, remains the funniest guy in the series.

The 5th-grade production of Macbeth: An eerie highlight in Slings & Arrows season 2

The second season of "Slings & Arrows" will focus on the production of Macbeth, in which the "ghost" of Oliver will speak to Jeffrey and guide him through the production, in an eerie echo of the ghostliness of the play. In the 2nd episode we meet the lead actor, Henry Breedlove, and he's such a pompous ass - this will be great. We can see Jeffrey seething as Breedlove draws all the attention to himself and basically takes over the first table reading of the play. So the conflict between them will move the season along, all to the good. I'm still troubled by the lack of clear definition of Jeffrey and the late Oliver and their relation. I get that Jeffrey is a little mentally unbalanced and prone to outbursts when he thinks he's speaking to Oliver - what to him (and to us as viewers) is a conversation to others is a Tourette-like mania. But is Jeffrey a genius director? We don't see that. Was Oliver? At times he's written off as an old-fashioned, out-of-touch has-been, but elsewhere he's a revered figure and an inspiration to Jeffrey. It's just never made clear enough, and I think honestly that the writers want to have it both ways, whatever way will suit the needs of a particular scene of episode. A highlight of this episode was the 5th-grade production of Macbeth, all done in summary (no Shakespearean language) in its simplicity and in the innocence of the young faces makes the horror and spookiness and violence the play all the more real and frightening. When Jeffrey gets the idea to do the play on a thrust stage, we actually get a chill - who wants to be that close to Macbeth? Scenes of Richard meeting with a PR "branding" expert are great, too.

A tragedy that ends up as a comedy : Hamlet, in Slings & Arrows

First episode of Season 2 of "Slings & Arrows" is really or seems to be the final episode of season 1, as the crew wraps the production of Hamlet and indulges in a cast party and which there are various declarations of love, inebriations, fights, and spats - typical cast party. The tragedy ends up as a comedy, as the business manager apologizes for being such a shit, joins in the fun to sing a G&S aria, drunkenly talks about winning the drama award in high school, pledges a great season for next year. Jeffrey and Ellen get together, Kate and Jack leave together for Hawaii, all's right with the world. But on the horizon for the next season is a production of MacBeth, with all the trauma and superstition that evokes among theater people, so we'll see how it goes. The series continues to be warm and amusing, if not an absolute knockout - each episode does have its moments and its vivid sketches of character - perhaps especially of those on the periphery of the show, e.g., the stage manager and the executive assistant. Much of this episode concerned Jeffrey's working backstage during intermission giving actors "notes" for their final performance - some of whom are very resistant and just want to mail it in. Does seem odd to be giving these kinds of notes at the final show - in part it seems the writers just wanted to work in a few more points about Hamlet (OK) or else wanted to demonstrate that theater really matters in a big way to Jeffrey (I think we should get this point by now).

A revealing and entirely credible look at the evil of Bush-Chenyvil

"Fair Game" is fairly good - by no means great. On the plus side, this film about the Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson incident, in which Wilson wrote an NYT op-ed documenting that the GW Bush assertion that Iraq was buying enriched uranium (Bush made the clain in a State of the Union address justifying the invasion) was patently false, which led Cheney's team (Scooter Libby was the heavy and of course became the fall guy -Cheney himself never ever did anything wrong) to out Wilson's wife as a CIA operative and make their lives a living hell. The movie seems very closely based on the facts as we know them (I suspect it might have played up the importance of Plame in the CIA and her bravery), and it's entirely revealing about the Bush admin. I work in government and can assure anyone that there are plenty of times that someone in public life makes a statement or writes a piece that the agency head feels is very damaging and wrong - but our response is always to respond with reason in a public forum. I have never once heard anyone say: hey, let's go after him. Let's dish the dirt on his wife, etc. But it's entirely believable that Cheney et al. acted that way all the time, and if I never see the image of him or Bush again that will be just fine, the movie does a service in reminding us of their nefarious nature. On the down side, Fair Game stays on the surface of events. We rarely get a glimpse into the interior lives of Plame and Wilson - what made her choose such a career, how did they get together, what makes them tick? Naomi Watts (as Plame) and Sean Penn (as Wilson) are both really good, though, as they always are. Amazing the range of roles Penn has played recently.

More literary and intelligent that most American TV: Slings & Arrows

Ultimately, by the end of the first season, "Slings & Arrows" does win you (me) over, despite its flaws and limitations, as a real sweet story that does capture the essence of life in a provincial theater troupe (or among any group of actors, for that matter), that's funny at times, and that is actually quite insightful about Shakespeare and about directing on stage. In fact, the work the director, Jeffrey, does with his troupe, especially in episodes 5 and 6, is among the highlights of the series. Series hinted at the outset that Jeffrey was a revolutionary director, and in fact he's not - he's traditional, in ways that have probably largely vanished from stage direction and have definitely vanished from movie direction - in that he focuses on character, on helping his actors see who the character is, his or her condition, motivations, feelings. His doing so helps us understand Hamlet, too, which is great - made me think about going back and reading the play, or even seeing it live, if that were possible. As anyone would expect from scene one of this series, things will work out well at the end - theater will triumph, the evil Holly will get her comeuppance (I wonder if we'll see more of her in season 2? I do wish her downfall had been more dramatic, but still.) I am still troubled by a few elements - the lack of clarity about Jeffrey's character (would have been much stronger, I believe, if he didn't dress in all 6 episodes like a lunatic), and in Oliver's character. (Is he an old-fashioned out-of-it director or Jeffrey's mentor? Is he an old queen or a sexual rival? Series goes back and forth on this - as if it started out with one premise then modified that concept as series progressed.) Nevertheless, a lot of fun and way more intelligent and literary than almost anything on American TV. Oh, Canada!

A movie that succeeds where thousands have failed: The Secret in Their Eyes

"The Secret in their Eyes" definitely jumps to the top of the list as one of the best movies of 2010, even one of the best of the decade - a totally compelling story with lots of surprises and an absolutely terrifying end (which I will not even hint at) - a story so smart, it succeeds where thousands of movies have failed, right from its premise: starts with an aging man whom we soon learn is a retired jurist (in Argentina) who's trying to write a novel that is obviously based on a case he dealt with when he was a court investigator (the exact roles of the officials not ever totally clear to an American viewer but it doesn't matter much); the case was a brutal rape-murder, and a lot of things went wrong during the investigation. So first of all its a police procedural and a really good one. Also a strange and tormented love story, as the man (Esposito) shows his manuscript to the fellow investigator whom he loved way back then - she plays a big role in the investigation, but their lives go off on separate paths, till now. So we see the novel he's writing, his present-day life as he reconnects with the beautiful former colleague, further investigations in the present, and the suffering he feels as he tries to capture the truth and to write a good book. Part of the beauty is that Esposito is obviously not a good writer, his manuscript leaves out all the important emotions, but we see that full story in this great movie that embraces the manuscript. It's about love and politics and vengeance - a total knockout that in a better world would have a wide audience.

What we learn about Hamlet from Slings & Arrows

Episode 5 of "Slings & Arrows" season 1 takes a turn toward the serious, and that's all to the good I think. The show is weakest in its attempts at high jinx in that the comedy is more subtle and restrained, the best elements are how accurately it captures the world of theater and of an acting troupe - in this episode we for the first time focus on the production of Hamlet and how Jeffrey will bring it to life, and we see some pretty good scenes of his directing - how he gets various actors to really understand their characters (or tries to), culminating in his excellent direction of Jack Crew, the action-movie star hired to play Hamlet (and draw in a crowd). I like these scenes a lot in that they teach us about the practice of theater and about Shakespeare, too, for that matter. They're hardly revolutionary - just a good director at work with a modestly talented cast - which does show the limitation of this largely likable series - the implication from the outset that Jeffrey is a genius actor-director who went off the rails is never made good on. He's no Hall-Sellers-Brooks-et al., just a pro. I'm not sure what to make of the ghost of Oliver appearing - it's a good device in some ways, but the series cannot really settle on the degree to which Jeffrey is insane or impaired. Maybe that's a strength, the ambiguity, I don't know - it's obvious that to other Jeffrey seems to be delusional and suffering from perhaps Tourettes. I think it would help if they had him look less disheveled, and would also help if he weren't such an obvious leading-man type. We'll see how it wraps.

A good series - but what's missing? Why isn't it great? : Slings & Arrows

At last Jeffrey Tenant (?) takes over as director of the New Burbage Shakespeare Theatre Festival's ill-fated Hamlet in the Canadian series "Slings & Arrows." Good, but bad. The pretentious and craven director they'd brought in, with his snide remarks and leather pants and idiotic theories - emphasizing the "rotten" in the state of Denmark - was really pretty funny. Jeffrey is meant to be a super-talented director who's had a nervous breakdown (while playing Hamlet) and fears getting back onto the stage. Well, that's obviously where he's heading - he will not only direct but will take the lead, as the action-movie star who's been brought in to play Hamlet can barely read his lines (Oh, you angles... Stings and arrows ... ). This whole schema would be better and stronger if we could really see that Jeffrey was and still is a great actor and director, but we never do really see this convincingly. Still, he's likable enough, as is the whole cast really - the greatest strength is how well the show captures the nuances of theater types outside of the production, from the aging star to the ingenue to the apprentice, the visiting celebrity, and even the crew and the business staff. Part of the drama in episode 4 concerns the battle for control of the festival board - and I have to admit the obnoxious and scheming business agent and his control-freak, middle-brow girlfriend, Holly, are my faves to watch. The series grows on you a bit as it moves along, but I'm always kind of wanting to push it a little harder and make it better - make Jeffrey a great director, raise the stakes for him and for everyone - which I never feel when I'm watching a truly great series.

I'm not saying ABBA writes better than Shakespeare... : Slings and Arrows

"Slings and Arrows" does kind of grow on you by the 3rd episode (first season), and though it's not great or raucous it continues to have its moments and to be very astute at its portrayal of the lives of theater people at the 2nd rung. One of the best elements is the developing relationship between the insipid Richard Smith-Jones (just like it's spelled), the business manager, and the corporate sponsor's representative, Holly Day, who's a driven, go-getter, middlebrow and who pushes him to take over the festival. In this episode, she carries him off for a weekend in Toronto where they'll, as she puts it, have a great dinner, see a show, and talk about our future. He's totally sick of going to shows, he tells her, but she's got first-row balcony for Mama Mia! That's different! They love the show, which leads to really some of the best dialog in the series, as they confess/agree that the problem is the New Burbage Shakespeare Theatre Festival puts on plays nobody wants to see, not shows like Chorus Line and Mama Mia! "I'm not saying ABBA writers better than Shakespeare or anything..." Richard remarks. Holly tells him she's working on a deal for a John Lennon musical. "I've already talked with Yoko." "Oh, no!" "Um, hm." Very good. Meanwhile, main story starting to gel around Jeffrey's struggle to overcome his fear of returning to the stage and his overall hatred of the festival. Idiotic director they bring in to take over Hamlet is hilarious - his idea is to emphasize the "rotten" in Denmark, and the state is littered with garbage. Though the series lacks the killer instinct, it does have its highlights.

Too many scenes in Slings and Arrows just fall flat

I want to like "Slings and Arrows" but it's just not as good, or funny, as it could be, or ought to be. Though they get the behavioral nuances of theater people dead right (or spot on, as theater people would say), and the skewering of the corporate-management sorts who want to run the Shakespeare festival as a profitable business is very funny and maybe even the highlight of the series, far too many scenes just include a few incidental comic lines or moments and then fall flat. For example, in episode 2 (season 1), there's the big funeral scene for Oliver, and the build-up is what will his rival director/former protege Jeffrey say? Everyone seems almost freaked out that he's been invited to speak, and there's a lot of build-up as he paces backstage and we hear snippets of the other speakers, all very ordinary, and at last Jeffrey speaks and, so what? He reads some "notes" that Oliver had given to the cast in some earlier production, and then he wanders off stage. This should have been a killer scene, it should have established Jeffrey's personality - we have to believe by this point in the series that he's a brilliant but troubled director who's going to take over the festival and change everything. His character has not emerged to the slightest degree. Similarly, Rachel McAdams plays an apprentice who's very sweet but also ambitious - and she tries out for a commercial and seemingly flubs the audition. Then gets the job. This is impossible. They should show her doing something crazy at the audition that shocks everyone and gets her the job. In short, this series has some nice moments but doesn't really know how to nail a scene that will really stand out in our minds.

Why Slings and Arrows could never be a U.S. TV show

It's perhaps surprising that nobody's done this before - a comic series about life in the theater - as you'd think actors and writers would know this milieu, but the fact is they don't know this milieu - probably 1 of a thousand American TV actors/writers/directors have any significant background in live theater. Of course it's different in England, and even in Canada, which as it turns out is where "Slings & Arrows" arises. It's about two theater troupes - not exactly rivals because they're so much on opposite ends of the spectrum - in a Canadian city obviously modeled on Stratford. The festival theater has corporate sponsorship - lots of jokes about, Hello! It's a business! - and lavish production values and a British director who's way burned out and a totally bored audience of worthies and swells. Across town, a another theater (they're both doing Shakespeare, and it doesn't seem as if the small theater is particularly avant garde) is being kicked out of its warehouse space for nonpayment of rent. The link is that the director at the small theater used to act for the British director at the festival until he had some kind of breakdown - it's an episode none of them talks about about, but it seems to be at the epicenter of the lives of several of the characters. Lots of Shakespeare references, which is fun (for me), and the crew gets so many of the types completely right, from the ingenue to the aging star to the earnest producer and the insidious corporate sponsor and the hangers-on - and the lives of actors after the show, centered on a lot of drinking.

Swinton speaks Italian! - and the world's weirdest sex montage: I am Love

Tilda Swinton speaks Italian (and a little Russian). That may be reason enough to watch "I am Love," which surprisingly places Swinton in an Italian-language, Italian-cast family melodrama. It's her movie, and she gives her expected totally powerful and controlled performance. It's also a really good movie, despite a few quirks. I'll be giving a lot away here, so if you plan to see the movie just stop now, but: I am Love is a story of a super-rich Milanese industrial family. The elderly grandfather announces his retirement at a b-d dinner and Lear-like, names son and grandson as his successors. Everyone's surprised he elevated the grandson. Swinton is married to the son, who's now the true power in the business, and plans to sell it. Grandson Eduardo sentimentally wants to hold onto the business - but his real attentions are to the high-end restaurant he want to set up with a friend, Antonio. Part of the fun of the movie is the ridiculously lavish house in which the Recchi family lives and the extraordinary food Antonio prepares, echoes of other great foodie movies like Eat Drink Man Woman. There are hints all along that Eduardo may have a homoerotic crush on Antonio but ultimately, to our surprise, Swinton begins an affair with the much-younger, "lower" class Antonio, culminating in one of the strangest, most graphic, least erotic movie sex scenes, including a montage of closeups of skin patches and insects on plants, set to the music of John Adams. Hard to even imagine, right? Ultimately, Eduardo dies in an accident and Swinton confesses she "loves" Antonio (it's more like a Lady Chatterly thing - pure sex, she hardly knows him). At the end, Swinton, now with short hair and dressed in track suit, takes off and leaves her grieving family. A liberated woman? Or a selfish bitch who ditches her faithful husband in time of need? I think the movies wants us the think the former, but it leaves enough room for us to wonder.

A really good movie that demands a lot of attention: Ajami

It was probably a mistake to watch the Israeli film "Ajami" on a Friday night when I was dead tired because this film was really quite good and demands a lot of attention, which couldn't really give it. Don't worry, I won't give the plot away because I can hardly remember it - I'll need some help. But I would say it's another one of the recent spate of movies that takes seemingly unrelated characters and events and over the course of the narrative pulls them together, as they intersect in violence and tragedy. Making this narrative structure even more difficult than usual, however, Ajami (which I gather is the name of a Palestinian West Bank neighborhood?), the film does not use straightforward chronology; rather, we see certain scenes that are hard to comprehend (even if you're awake!) and later see the scenes the build up to them or put them in context. Further difficulty for Americans will be the general unfamiliarity of the name and the locales - hard to understand which neighborhoods are in Israel, West Bank, Arab, Jewish, etc. Still - a very strong film that is taut and exciting and gives us a sense of what life is like among the many racial-ethnic communities living alongside one another in Israel/West Bank today. Story begins with a drive-by shooting of a Palestinian teen, in revenge for an attack against another Palestinian gang. Over the course of the movie we meet another Palestian man who is trying to negotiate peace for his family in this gang war and falls in love with the daughter of the neighborhood strongman (they're Christian Arabs, but this is not clear to us or at least to me till much later), a Palestinian living without papers in Israel and working in a restaurant, an Israeli police officer whose brother has been killed in the service, a Palestinian restaurant owner dating an Isreali Jew - almost all of these people come to a bad end, and the movie is about how and why this happens. It's in some ways about life in one particular time and place, but it strikes me that Ajami could easily be transported to any American city and the same story could take root and thrive.

An homage to Huck Finn and to Bob Dylan : Kisses

By no means is it a great movie, but the Irish indie "Kisses" has a lot going for it and may foretell more good works from Irish cinema and from this writer-director. Story about two abused kids, boy and girl (about 12 years old maybe?), next-door neighbors in an industrial suburb of Dublin, who run away to the city to escape horrible families. Like most child runaway stories, it's improbable for the most part and meant to be so, but more than most it includes some really rough elements and some very exciting moments. Many times when I was sure the kids would not make it - though I knew in movie terms they would have to (though the ending is ambiguous and intentionally disturbing). Part of the time, as the kids romp through a shopping mall wasting $ on a buzz cut and new sneakers, thought no kids would behave that way, they'd be really worried about how they were going to get through the night. At other times, I accepted that they were just kids, impulsive and naive, and that they'd manage. There are homages here to the greatest runaway story, Huck Finn (they take a canal barge to Dublin), and echoes of other runaway movies such as the great Little Fugitive and, in a funny way, with two young people building a romantic bond as they course through the night, I was reminded of Before Sunrise. The main homage in the movie is to Bob Dylan - the boy is named Dylan, and he learns that his antecedent is a "musical god," and who would disagree? Great Dylan songs on the soundtrack and one amusing "appearance" of Dylan in the film itself.

Should you watch Season 1 after you've seen Season 3? : Breaking Bad

Watched the first season pilot for "Breaking Bad" last night for some reason; had already seen most of Season 3 (but none of seasons 1 or 2). M. is always curious about how these shows (which we sometimes pick up later in their runs) began, but I'm not, once I see where it's going have little interest in looking back. Someone once asked me: If you only had read the last act of Romeo and Juliet, wouldn't you want to see the beginning? Yes, but Breaking Bad is not Shakespeare. In fact, we enjoy reading/seeing great dramas multiple times, but even the best of television, for me, serves for only one round. Nevertheless, the pilot for Breaking Bad is quite well done and I can certainly see why the show was picked up and renewed. Amazing how most of the characters that I'd seen in Season 3 are introduced here; also surprising how little they change - even really good TV is mostly about types and characteristics, not about subtle character development. Pilot starts off with a very exciting and for first-time viewers bewildering scene of van careening through the desert, driver wearing mask, half-naked, bodies rolling around in the back - then we flash back 3 weeks and by end of pilot understand the scene: a meth lab on wheels. Personality and dilemma of main character established well. Friend Andy has noted to me that he could never buy into the premise of Breaking Bad, and I agree - idea that he would keep his cancer diagnosis secret from family and that he would embark on this crime path is not made credible in the pilot - and in that way I think it's almost better to begin watching Breaking Bad at a later point, when the crime history is a given, rather than a choice.

A ovie of brutal poverty, great acting, and some edges and surprises: Winter's Bone

"Winter's Bone" likes up to its reputation - a totally captivating movie especially because of the work of its star, Julie(?) Lawrence, young actor who captures the plight of this 17-year-old nearly overwhelmed by the responsibilities of her life - invalid mother, two young sibs, dad on the run, no money, no social or family supports (at least so it seems). The plot's a little hard to unravel at times, made even more so by the heavy accents of the characters and their tendency to underplay the parts and even to drawl. But the tension throughout is palpable, and the director, whose name I don't recall, does a great job creating a whole world - you've never seen true Ozark poverty portrayed so effectively in a feature movie, I guarantee. Every scene, every moment, seems wracked with cold and the anguish of rural poverty: the crappy little houses, the old cars, the ugly landscape, the old tires and broken-down toys littering the yards, the crummy T-shirts and tattered jackets everyone wears, most of all the people, many of them grotesque, full of threat and menace, overweight, unhealthy, it's a world of hell - and a very believable one, not like some of the ridiculous action features and their cartoonish ideas of evil - these characters seem to have grown right out of the land, like forces of nature. (And then again, in the midst of this brutal and mean poverty, one scene of stunningly beautiful music - which makes you think about this terrain and this world in a different way - a movie, and a place, full of edges and surprises.) Many people praise the source book, by Donald Woodrell (?), and I'm sure it's great though I'm in no rush to read it - 90 minutes in this setting was plenty. Some unforgettable scenes: gutting the squirrel, reaching into the cold water to grab the hand of a corpse. After seeing this film, you'll never again set off into the Ozarks to show up unannounced at a meth lab.

I want to like Bored to Death, but it just won't let me

You want to like "Bored to Death" (HBO) but it keeps promising to be good and then disappointing you (me). At its best, it's zany and witty with some good dialogue, a kind of likable nebbishy literary lead character (Jason Schwartzman) who manages to get the girls mostly through his wit, a role Woody Allen might have played 40 years ago. It also offers Ted Danson in a great role for him, a Clay Felkerish boulevardier and magazine editor - Danson continues to get better. Also some amusing name checks and cultural references - watch this show if you want to be reassured that you already know the most hip writers and directors. Also some good stunt casting here and there. All that said, Bored to Death just never comes together and never makes sense. The odd premise is that Schwartzman is a magazine writer, a blocked novelist, with a part-time job on the side as a private eye. He is completely and utterly unbelievable as a detective, and it seems that the writer (Jonathan Ames) has no idea how to blend these elements of plot and character into a unified vision. For example, shouldn't the plot lines link - he solves literary mysteries? He uses his writerly skills to solve mysteries? No, we just have two different characters living in the same body, it seems. His palling around with Danson makes no sense either; no magazine editor of Danson's stature hangs around with a part-time writer and a cartoonist (Zach Galif... - another poorly conceived character, never believable as an artist). Although there are many laughs along the way, the whole feeling is of three musketeers concocted by a screenwriter who have no relation to one another outside of this script. In a great series, you can imagine the characters lives beyond the frame. Not here. And, by the way, no serious writer ever tells someone: I can't hang out tonight, I have to work on my novel.

Season finales are often disappointing - but Friday Night Lights stil among the best

Though final season episodes are almost inevitably a little disappointing - hard to tie so many strands in 41 minutes, so they inevitably feel a bit burdened by the demands of plot, and are often either too arcane (Damages), too ambiguous (Sopranos), or, in this case ("Friday Night Lights") a little too sentimental - Friday Night Lights Season 4 remains among the best. I won't be a spoiler, but I exactly predicted what would happen to principal Tammy Taylor. As to the rest of the plot outcomes, I'll leave them unsaid. Just this: The season beautifully explores some key issues seldom treated effectively on TV or in any dramatic format for that matter: racial tensions (two rival high schools, white and black), moral ambiguity (several characters brush with crime and not all pay a price), friendship (friendship between guys portrayed accurately and sympathetically without recourse to vulgarity or Apatow-like pranks and snarky dialogue, funny as that may be in other contexts), teenage love (Matt's abandonment of Julie was surprising, yet ultimately seemed like just the kind of thing a confused and somewhat immature guy would do - and her sorrow is palpable), marital stress and happiness (Tammy and Eric Taylor cover the whole range of emotions from fury to tenderness all in a totally credible and sympathetic manner). Though most people will say the final game between E and W Dillon is the highlight, I think it's hard to top the Thanksgiving dinner at the Taylors, with the strained dialogue and the awkward toast. The excellence of the scripting, acting, and directing of this scene speaks for the subtle beauty of the whole series.

The inequities between East and West Dillon are criminal (Friday Night Lights)

Penultimate episode of Season 4, "Friday Night Lights," just great - as with many next-to-last episodes in seasons, it ends with just about everyone in trouble and with the sense that there's no way they can clear this up in one more hour. We'll see - but meanwhile I have to step back and admire at how effectively this is written, directed, and played - we believe in each of the characters, we actually like each of the characters, even the screwups. Every plot line is credible, and each is quirky enough and sufficiently unpredictable that you cannot see ahead around the bend - surprises happen, and they feel right and inevitable. To summarize where we are: Riggins brother at their highest point (new dad, new landowner) arrested for running a chop shop, Vince walks away from a gang revenge assignment and into Jess's arms, leaving Landry out in the cold, forces still gathering around Tammy trying to oust her as principal on trumped-up charges that she counseled a girl toward abortion, and most germane: East and West Dillon about to face off, the game made ugly by tremendous vandalism to the already pathetic East Dillon field. The inequities between these two schools are criminal, and I hope they will move that issue to the forefront before the season ends. I for one can't quite see what will happen, though I suspect Tammy will lose her job and nothing good will happen for Vince. Odd how some characters - Matt, e.g. - have been written right out of the series. Another oddity (goof): anyone notice that Coach Taylor calls Landry "Lance" throughout one scene?

You don't have to like football, but... : Friday Night Lights

"Friday Night Lights" Season 4 gets back on track (episode 10?) as Matt at last gets in touch with Julie and she tearfully tells him off, Vince witnesses a shooting while with his thug friends, and Luke finally breaks down and shows Coach his severely injured hip. Also, Riggins gets thrown out of his trailer and again is alone and troubled, sensitive tough kid with terrible luck. And most significant - fundamentalist forces in town (backed by Dillon boosters?) go after Tammy's job, accusing her of counseling a girl (Becky) toward abortion. In other words, a lot happening in this episode as season conclusion (obviously the Dillon E v W game) is on the horizon. Not sure why I find this episode better, stronger, but I think Becky is a weak character and a limited talent, so the episode of her struggle with her pregnancy did not ring true - hard to understand her hookup with Luke, hard to figure the level of her maturity as she comes on to Riggins, that whole plot line seems a little out of kilter - and how it's largely resolved - it was mainly used to set up Tammy. Also, story line seemed to be in danger of moving too far away from the field, which is ultimately at the heart of this series - I tell everyone that you don't have to like or even understand football to like FNL, but some of the best moments in the series concern the team and its players, and we don't know a lot about the E Dillon players - at least compared with how we knew the Dillon Panthers in previous years. This episode puts the team back in play.

Moving toward melodrama in a series that doesn't need to go there

Episode 9 of Season 4 of "Friday Night Lights" OK but not up to standard as most of the others, as it brushes dangerously close to melodrama - we follow the Riggins-Becky-Lance subplot as Becky, 16 and pregnant, decides for an abortion, which kind of rocks the father, Lance, who's from a fundamentalist family and is wracked with guilt and concern. To me, this plot strand is stretched too thin and I don't care particularly about these characters, especially Becky, who is hard to read. At the same time, Vince's mom ODs and he struggles to send her to rehab and has to send her to a private facility at $4k - and the only way he can get that money is by edging back into thug life. OK, it's a good social theme and things like this happen all the time I guess, but again it seems a melodramatic element in a story line that's appealing because it generally takes on themes of ordinary kids and families and their ordinary lives - that is, the college trip and the spat over a girlfriend (described in previous post) much more moving to me and more thoughtful than the complex plot lines about life & death. Episode does give Tammy/Connie Britton and her writers to once again make her a fount of wisdom and clear-headedness, as Becky wisely goes to her for counsel. We'll see where this goes - Vince obviously headed for trouble as, strangely, the racial tensions among the older generation are healing as the old guys come together in support of the E. Dillon football team.

Very real, right, true to life : How can you not like Friday Night Lights?

Two examples of the excellence of "Friday Night Lights" (Season 4, episode 9[?]) in that it shows the way people really do act and (usually) not the way characters act on tv and in movies. Much build-up toward the tension between Landry, goofy and intelligent and very average white-guy football player, v Vince, excellent player, black, a step away from going back to juvenile detention (juvey). Landry's become really interested in a black girl in their high school who it turns out was a long-time girlfriend of Vince's and a particular fave of Vince's mom. We've seen a few scenes of Vince staring down Landry as he's begun to date the girl. Landry seems oblivious - keeps waving to Vince, etc. We expect a big showdown on the field, perhaps ruining the team spirit and sending Vince back to juvey. Landry goes up to Vince, says in his goofy way hey why don't ou hit moe or something or whatever you have to do cause I know you're angry and so on - and Vince pauses, stares, taps Landry on the chest with the side of his fist: as if to say, you're okay, end of story. Very real, very right. Similarly, Glen awkwardly confesses to Coach Taylor that drunkenly he'd tried to kiss Tammy. Taylor seems really angry. That night he asks Tammy, she says she meant to tell him - we're expecting some big and pointless fight, Coach says he's then kissed Glen by proxy, and this whole thing becomes a running joke between them - again, very true to life, very right. How can you not like this show?

Has any mother-daughter pair been better cast than Britton and Teegarden?

"Friday Night Lights" season 4/episode 8 brings us on the college tour with Tammy (Connie Britton) and daughter Julie (Amy Teegarden) and you have to wonder whether mother-daughter have ever been better cast - impossible to believe they're not truly related. Also, better scripted (and acted, for that matter, especially Britton) - any parent who's gone on one of these tours and lived through the process as ambitious daughter applies to top colleges and struggles with desire to leave hom and anxiety about doing so, will recognize that they get all the notes and nuances right. As noted, much of this season - and perhaps an underlying theme of the whole series - is getting out and getting away: who leaves the small town of Dillon and never looks back? Who'd drawn back to it? Who can never leave, and what does that do to them? The town has its beauty and charm, as we see when Riggins surveys the 25 acres he hopes to buy. He could, maybe, have a good life there, if he can stop drinking and stay out of trouble. And the camaraderie surrounding football is a (mostly) good quality, that brings people together, across class and (to a degree) racial lines. But we also see that it's a big world and Dillon's a small town. Amy will have to go, and she's able to go - but what about the others, some of whom count football as their only possible way out? We see a few issues developing on this sidelines, so to speak: The Riggins brothers getting into the chop-shop business, Vince staring down Landry as Landry starts to date Vince's old girlfriend, Lance playing through a serious injury sure to get worse.

Just One Kiss: The highlight of this episode of Friday Night Lights

Best scene in Friday Night Lights (season 4, episode 7?) has to be the teachers at (West) Dillon at a karaoke night - more more specifically, the aftermath of same, when bumbling young English teacher who's obviously long had a crush on Tammy (understandably) and obviously interested in her in part because she's out of reach - married, and in any case out of his league, he a confirmed nebish, embraces Tammy at curbside outside restaurant/bar, friendly, congratulating her on her award, she thanking him for the fun evening, and the embrace lasts just a moment too long and as they break he leans in to kiss her on the mouth and she pulls back astonished. Even better, she goes up to him the next day to talk about this - tells him not to feel bad or guilty but it can't happen again. That's just one of the things so smart about this show - they really know how to write for Tammy, making her the smartest and kindest person without in the least being wimpy or simpering or supercilious. She just always seems to know what to say to put things right. A cheaper, dumber show would have made a huge plot point out of this and would have her guilt and anger simmer and maybe the teacher would have done something stupid leading to a fight with Tammy's husband - stupid melodrama. But FNL writers understand how people should act and how they do act, and maybe nothing more will come of this kiss, but they used it very effectively to illuminate character and to create a revealing moment - revealing primarily about Tammy and her poise and wisdom.

Sorkin has found his perfect subject : The Social Network

Never was a big fan of Aaron Sorkin and The West Wing, though because M was an avid viewer I probably saw the equivalent of many shows just by passing through the TV room. My plaint was that all the characters sounded like smart screenwriters - nobody talks that way. But Sorkin has found the perfect subject for him in the geeky and intellectually arrogant Harvard world of The Social Network. These people - from all I know of them - really do talk like Sorkin, and it feels he has perfectly caught the inflections and the caustic syntax of Mark Zuckerberg (credit also to Jesse Eisenberg). Director Fincher who put me into a novacaine coma with Benjamin Button has figured out how to pace a story, too, with a fast narrative and very effective cutting from present (legal depositions against Zuckerberg regarding the provenance of Facebook) to past (as we watch as Zuckerberg step by step conceives the idea [or steals it?] and develops it). He's a horrible but troubled kid - amazingly, we learn not a single fact about his life before Harvard - and though the irony is a bit thick here we come to see the sorrow in his life, the guy who created the world's biggest social network, based on "friending," has not a single friend in his life - at least that's the Zuckerberg of fiction, the movie treads a line between biopic and pure fiction, and makes no attempt to be a true documentary. The tone and the playing is exactly right, down to the small scenes - the two rich jocks coming to Larry Summers and expecting his help is a great moment. Film should win lots of awards and one would hope a wide audience, though the theater was not filled.

Two social outcasts but with a weird twist: Kimberly Akimbo

Didn't know much about and don't know much about David Lindsey-Abaire but last night saw his (2000?) play, "Kimberly Akimbo," at the always good Second Story Theater (Warren, R.I.) - a fine production of a very good, unusual family tragi-comedy, a contemporary take on the Williams-O'Neil tradition of families tearing themselves apart - with the twist that in this case the only sane one in the family is the teenage daughter. The real twist is that the eponymous daughter has progeria, she's 16 but looks about 40 (played by a 40ish actor), though dresses and talks like a somewhat precocious teen (it's not broadly comic like Freaky Friday, but just touching and a little strange). Kimberly of course is a social outcast at school, and also facing her mortality - average life expectancy is 16 - and at the heart of the play is her relation with a geeky classmate who befriends her, another outcast. Lots of plays and movies have this theme, too, but handled very well here, with the odd twist of the obvious gap in age between the two actors. One of the best lines is K says people at school ignore her and her friend says he wishes they'd ignore him. One amazing scene: The two get a ride to school from K's alcoholic, bumblingly protective father. Don't touch her tits!, the father screams, leading to an argument about Dungeons and Dragons, finally, after much shouting, awkward silence and then: Look, we're here! Which brought down the house. Most touching scene: when K has to dress as her friend's grandmother (to pull off a clumsy bank heist), and she steps into the light in an old lady's dress and with a powdered wig and she really does look 70 or so, and everyone in the audience and on stage is startled and moved. Can he still be friends with her? Attracted to her? Or does this ruin everything for them? Very good play, sharp and lively production by Second Story.

Which actor in Friday Night Lights has matured the most?

Episode 6 season 4 of "Friday Night Lights" is somewhat quiet compared with many others, a transitional point in the middle of this season of episodes - the E. Dillon Lions begin to come into their own as a team, playing a heartening game and proud in defeat. Strangely, none of the players have fully emerged the way the players did on the Dillon Panthers in previous seasons, but there are tremendous plot opportunities in the racial tensions on the team, an issue rarely explored in previous seasons - the racial tensions regarding Smash Williams resided largely off the field. This episode more about people leaving Dillon, Lyla (Mrs. Derek Jeter) comes back for a brief turn with Riggins - I do think she's one of the weakest actors in the show - and then she's back to college leaving Riggins morose. I think she's out of his life for good, or ought to be - he's a guy destined for nothing good, I'm afraid. In parallel plot line, Matt takes off in his beat-up old car - there's nothing left in Dillon for him, now that his grandmother doesn't need him and all he's doing is delivering pizzas - except for Julie, but he knows she'll go off to college, too. Very sad moment, and very true to life, as so much is in this series. Landry increasingly emerging as a very good character, his dialogue with Matt as they toss around a football, after the funeral, just great - smart and thoughtful and boyishly awkward and true. Not sure what range the actor has, but seems to me he could potentially be a very good actor in a bigger part, especially with some comic possibilities. He's grown and matured as an actor more than any other in the series.

Every word and action is revealing and true to character: Friday Night Lights

What makes "Friday Night Lights (Season 4)" so powerful is that it's a wonderful balance between the expected and the unknown or unpredictable. As with all really good dramas, you find yourself thinking: what will he say? what will she say to him? In this case: how will Coach Taylor speak to his team? What will he say when Matt shows up at his house distraught? How will he speak to the two players arrested for fighting? Even more so for his wife, Tammy: what will she say to daughter Julie? And, in episode 5, what will Matt say at his father's funeral? There's always a bit of surprise, you can never quite predict what they will say - but once the characters speak and act, it seems so inevitably right that you can't imagine they could have said or done anything differently. Matt's eulogy, about his father pulling toilet paper off the shelf in the supermarket - tells us a great deal about Matt (his clumsy inability to come up with a real memory), the grandma (fussy, picky, cross, wrong brand of toilet paper), the dad (angry, impulsive, we see why he left home), most of all Matt's awkwardness in this situation tells us everything he says his dad was "funny" but this shows us a 6-year-old boy scared of his father's impulses - anyway, you could analyze this one scene for pages. All of the scenes are like this. It's not that there is never an extra word, which was the case with The Wire, but it's that every action is revealing of character and true to the essence of the character - kids, adults, all.

Racism right out in the open: Friday Night Lights

Why so few people watch "Friday Night Lights" remains one of those unfathomable mysteries. Season 4 (?), as Coach Taylor takes over the East Dillon team, is just as great as the preceding seasons - very likable and wise and funny and credible characters, including all the high-school kids and recent grads as well as the adults, And in this season a whole new theme opens up, the history of racism, segregation, and unequal opportunity in Dillon, Texas. Up to now, though the show always recognized that the town had haves and have-nots and that the black kids on the team faced a particular barrier that the white kids do not (the black star running back is all but ignored by recruiters after a run-in with the law, which would not and did not happen to other players), this season puts the theme right out in the open. East Dillon High is a disgrace compared with Dillon, the resources and conditions are horrible - and what's more incredible, actually it's all to credible, is that nobody in the community owns this problem. The Dillon boosters continue to do all in their (ample) power to build a football dynasty and they let the other school - not just talking about football here - and its kids take the dregs and suffer. We see this in every community! It should be a crime, someone should go to jail for that. Football cannot and will not be the savior, but we can see how Taylor's dynamism will help build pride in the team and then, perhaps, in the whole East Dillon community, but they will face man struggles and confrontations along the way. Great series.

Moody music, mumbled dialog, grainy photography - do not necessarily make a movie a work of art

So we sit down with the fam last night to enjoy some good quality time watching a movie about a serial killer - and what do we get? A pretentious, crappy movie in which the villain (spoiler, I guess, but if you can't figure it out why are you even reading this?) turns out to be the evil SHOPPING MALL DEVELOPER! Gosh, why don't filmmakers leave these guys alone? All they wanna do is make shopping better and more convenient for everyone. So what if they clear away slum housing to build their palaces? Does that mean they also have to be child molesters, too? I'll never see a shopping-mall developer again without a shudder of fear, thanks a lot. The movie - "Red Riding Trilogy Part 1: 1974" - is allegedly, supposedly based on the story of the Yorkshire ripper of the 1980s, but a quick look at any reference will give new definition to the word "loosely," as this killer is a child molester and torturer, not a slayer of prostitutes. Just call it a series murder investigations and police corruption - at least that would be more honest. It starts off reasonably well, but becomes increasingly preposterous as the plot unfolds - one of those stories in which the improbable hero (in this case, a journalist eager for a scoop) - endures way, way beyond the possible realm of physical endurance, and ultimately you have to say: why don't the bad guys just kill him? They've killed everyone else? They obviously leave him alive just so that there will be a story. All the moody music, grainy photography, and mumbled dialog in almost incomprehensible dialect will not turn an ordinary police procedural into a work of art, sorry.

Two films we abandoned

Started and abandoned two movies last night, for two different reasons. First tried "You Kill Me," a supposed mob comedy with a fairly elite cast (Ben Kingsley stars) - alcoholic mob enforcer in Buffalo screws up a job and the boss sends him to SF to dry out. Why San Francisco, he asks? Because I said so, boss replies, and that's about the level of dialog and credibility. Nothing (in the first half-hour) was believable in any way - it was just a script writer's lark, some guys trying to latch on to success of other mob comedies that actually had some wit and some characters you could believe in for 2 hours or even 20 seconds. Finally gave up when Kingsley takes a job in a funeral parlor (have we ever seen that before?) and comes on to a client maybe a third his age and she's pleased about that. A Hollywood, and the aged male titans of the realm! Second we started is the somewhat renowned Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnes Varda's best-known film, circa 1960. It's actually fun to watch some of the great sequences of Cleo walking along the streets of Paris, looking great (she's a pop star) as Paris looks poor and dirty, as it did then still recovering from the war. Varda's camera follows her in long takes, shot from above, to a jazzy soundtrack (also some Bizet?). Compared with movies of its era, it's much more documentary in look, filmed on location, almost improvisational at times, lots of rough edges, shot as if in real time (two hours), and focused on the woman's POV by a woman director - and yet, today, after a half-hour, it seemed tedious, the wit highly dated, the tension flaccid - an important film of its day and worth watching if you have a lot of time and patience, but not a film that stands up well today, sadly.

A nearly great and nearly completely ignored movie: Lantana

"Lanatana" is a movie too good, too quiet, and too true to really ever find its deserved audience - makes you sick. This Australian film is one of those multiple point of view, several strands to the story, you're not clear how or if the strands will intersect, then ultimately the whole design become clear to you. LA Confidential did this well years ago; Crash won an Oscar for this a few years back, and I thought it was a pretentious, phony piece of crap (though I do like Thandi Newton, who doesn't?). Lanatana was low budget, and so much smarter than Crash and its ilk - following the story of a cop (Anthony LaPaglia) as he embarks on an affair and puts his marriage at risk, a psychiatrist (Barbara Hershey) who's grieving the death of her daughter and worried about the state of her marriage), a single woman (seductress, separated, dangerous), a young couple (stressed, tempestuous, sweet), a gay man (patient of Hershey's, comabative), a few others. The movie's so smart that it sets out some clues that each of the 4 of us watching thought we were following - we said, come on, this is so obvious, we thought the movie was heading toward trightness - then it surprised us in a lot of ways - and unlike so many movies and TV series with "surprises," these were all credible and in character. And the film also has a serious dramatic dimension. Yes, it's about a murder investigation (we see the body in the first frames), but it's truly about people coming to terms with marriage and trust and faith and infidelity. My only quibble really is the relentless jazzy mood music (I think Crash had this, too - why?). Otherwise a near-great and nearly completely ignored movie.

Why "Mother" is a great movie

"Mother" is a hugely powerful and totally engrossing Korean movie and though I'm not sure, I'll have to check this out, I believe the writer-director must also be the force behind the equally great (maybe superior) film Oasis. Mother is in many ways a conventional crime & punishment story - young man with significant mental disabilities (retardation, at the least) is accused of murdering a young woman and is clearly unable to defend himself in any way. His way over-involved mother, an impoverished vendor of herbs and unlicensed acupuncturist, takes up the case and investigates the facts to try to prove her son's innocence. I will not reveal any spoilers here for all should see this film. At times, the investigation does fall prey to the movie convention of many unlikely clues and hints falling easily into the hands of the investigator - though it does stay on the near side of credibility - unlike the utterly ridiculous plotting of Dragon Tattoo, for example. But more than the mechanism of the plot, it's a great movie because of its exploration of characters and relationships, especially that of the boy and his mother, and because of the mother's gradual and surprising awakening as the movie progresses. Great movies (and novels) are about crisis, collision of forces, leading to growth, change, knowledge - and this is the epitome. Could it be remade as an American movie, and (sad to say) find the audience it deserves? Possibly, though a big part of its beauty is its exploration of a Korean culture, poor, gritty, uneducated, that we in America never anticipate and don't often see.

Makes Bergman look like a Disney cartoon : The White Ribbon

Haneke's (sp?) "The White Ribbon" is a totally unusual and completely engrossing movie, even at nearly 2.5 hours, and I'm going to give a lot away so if you haven't seen it, do so before reading this any further. It's a movie in which evil doings permeate a small village in early 20th-century Austria (I think, maybe Germany) - the village doctor badly injured when someone sets up a tripwire for his horse, a boy abducted and abused, a boy with Downs severely beaten, a man hangs himself, a woman falls through floorboards to her death, an angry field hand destroys crops, a girl mutilates a pet bird, and so forth. There are implications that these evens are caused by one person, and as the movie progresses just about everyone in the village is suspect: kids are strange and mean, as in say Lord of the Flies or any of the movies about possession, the minister is a martinet and totally cruel to his children, the doctor is an embittered horrible soul, the baron is mean and a martinet, and so forth. Ultimately, it is clear that no single person could have done all these things, and you suddenly (or maybe gradually) realize that the whole village is sick and capable of any sort of atrocity - and all are responsible - it's a geopolitical allegory, without the allegorical trappings. Beautiful to watch in a start and mysterious way (it's in b/w), and some of the scenes of nastiness and marital strife and verbal cruelty are painful to watch and powerful and make Bergman look like a Disney cartoon.

Rules of the disaster genre : Fat people die, crude foreigners die...

Another entry in the movie as special effects marathon video game gone gargantuan is "2012," a ridiculously titled movie that will fall at the top of most alphabetical lists unfortunately. It's not a horrible movie by any means, although it ought to be - there are so many lines spoken with such grave earnestness that the script must be a hoot to read, if there even is one - because there are enourmous stretches with no words at all (good for foreign distribution!), just orchestral crescendos and amazing scenes of disgitalized disaster. The stakes just get higher with each one of these movies - back to The Day the Earth Stood Still or Godzilla, which would look so tame and lame today on through Titanic, through Independence Day and Armageddon - and now it's not a matter of seeing some buildings fall but here we see the Earth's core give way and the entire continent slides into the ocean, creating a new Waterworld (to summon another movie that was a disaster in every possible way). Guess what? It's fun to watch this stuff, for a while, until you (or I) eventually can't take any more - not from excitement but from torpor. Ugh, the plot line such as it is, so banal and so predictable - which couples will get (back) together, who will survive. Law of the genre: fat people die, crude foreigners die, sensitive/weak scientists die, lead actors survive, cute kids survive. I guess you could call this movie summer escapism, but it's escapism without a heart or a purpose - the few artful movies in the disaster genre do tell a good story and do get you to feel for the characters and root them on - but this one will keep you entertained and leave you with thrumming eardrums and that's all.

Exotic, Universal, Silent - Ozu's I Was Born, But...

Because it's Ozu, you know that one way another, even though it's a silent film (!) and probably 70 years old and a grain print and outdated in many ways - it's got to be at least worth watching once, and so it is with Ozu's "I was Born, But..." (great title!). Not a great movie but a valuable curiosity, both for its exoticism and its universality. Exotic: Japan in the 20s/30s looks almost like another planet, the suburbs (of Tokyo?) abject rural poverty, without even roads, just ruts for cars to go through, houses and buildings appearing randomly with no planning, like a spreading blight, yet families trying to make their lives clean and tidy - a picket fence and a doghouse, in the middle of nowhere! - and everywhere a chaos of poles and electrical wires overhead and most of all the trains, single cars, going back and forth all the time like a mechanical heartbeat, Ozu's true signature. As to the story, a sad and touching one of a family moving to the suburb, the two young boys having to fend off bullies at school, with no protection or sympathy from the parents who are only concerned about showing respect for the factory boss, a wealthy phony. The boys ultimately see through the dad and his pretensions and tell him he's a total failure, the family near breakdown, but then the boys realize dad is the best he can be, and there's a sweet reconciliation at the end - not a Hollywoodish thing where Dad would do something heroic, but just a quiet, unspoken understanding. By today's standards, the story is slow and the somewhat stagy - but still far, far ahead of so many other stilted silents - some beautiful shots of the family gatherings, of the boys in the landscape, of the father walking the boys to school. You can see the beginning of Ozu's sensibility - which will culminate in Tokyo Story - but he was a director with all the skills but yearning for dialog.