Worth seeing for the 2 leads - Dallas Buyers Club

First off, the 2 leads in Dallas Buyers Club make the movie and Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto definitely deserve awards they've won even if these are prototypical of the type of role all too often recognized: enactment of a character completely against type in this case a Texas redneck whose world view changes when he's diagnosed with aids and a cross-dressing man who becomes his friend. The leads aside the film aptly conveys the fears hat reds and confusions of the early days of the aids epidemic esp outside of the major coastal cities and large gay communities in particular. Also properly exposes the nefarious behavior of drug companies doctors and the FDA all either greedy or shortsighted bureaucrats. That said the movie is for me too schematic and even didactic. The change in personality occurs a little too easily I thought - compare the more subtle and nuanced change in a movie like The Crying Game - and the heavies are too heavy and the sympathetic doc played aptly enough by Jennifer Garner is built upon "every cliche in the book" - uptight doc by end loses the eyeglasses starts wearing attractive clothes etc.  It's a good and very sincere movie and worth seeing but as a narrative it falters and goes on for too long.

Not quite enough - Gandolfini's last film?

On the plus side, Enough Said, a light bauble of a rom-com movie that's a bit light on the com and veers precipitously toward the rom, has four totally likable stars sharing the billing, so it's an easy-to-watch 90 minutes: Dreyfus hasn't changed much over the years, and it's nice to see her so deftly play the role of a 40ish and independent LA-area divorcee looking for love but reasonably confident in her life and self-worth; good to see Toni Collette at last get a chance to be herself in full Australian, a talented actress going all the way back to 6th sense who doesn't have to overplay the part to hold the screen (a la States of Tara), C Keener appealing too in a rare performance as a self-centered diva - showing she doesn't always have play the likable good pal, and of course so sad to see Gandolfini in what I guess is his last role - never quite getting out from under the shadow of Tony Soprano but showing some versatility in as a good guy, sort of a nerd in love. All that said, there's really just so little to this movie - boy & girl meet, girl makes really stupid mistake, boy is hurt and breaks up, but both miss each other terribly and at last put aside pride and get together again. Sounds like about a million 1950s ballads, right? Of course a lot of relationships are exactly like that, and to its credit this film does not romanticize or sentimentalize like, say, As Good as It Gets or that stupid movie with Meryl Streep being courted by Steve Martin. You can actually accept Dreyfuss and Gandolfini as a likely couple - appealing, witty, but by no means glam or perfect. The awkwardness of their first date is handled very well, very credible. It's also one of the rare movies to actually approximate the look of a not-so-great middle-class LA apartment (Gandolfini's), if dreyfuss's digs are a little to H&G for a self-employed masseuse. There are bad marriages in Enough Said but at least not all guys are bad, it's not always the guy's fault. But despite its good intentions, Enough Said is so light that if you let go it will float away - there's nothing new, surprising, or terribly moving here - you can see where it's going with every frame - but if rom-com's your thing you could do much worse.

Completely blown away by 12 Years a Slave

No matter what happens at the Oscars tonight, and I'm predicting it will win best picture, best director, best supporting actress, best adapted screenplay, I was completely and absolutely blown away yesterday by 12 Years a Slave - entirely mesmerized throughout the film from first to last moment, well, that's not exactly true because I couldn't even watch the last moments as I sat in the theater, I'm not ashamed to say, and sobbed like a baby. Just an incredibly moving and sorrowful movie, told with great emotion and feeling and scope - sure, maybe a little over the top at times and, yes, this is not the first time we've seen the horrors of slavery on screen or on TV (remember Roots, the first great TV miniseries that had the whole country focused on this topic for weeks on end in the 1980s, I think), and yes a few of the elements of the film seem a little unlikely, even if it is based on a true narrative - hard to fully accept Solomon's complete naivete at the outset, when he follows two hustlers to D.C., and you have to wonder why there was not a more thorough search for him if he was truly such an established community figure in Saratoga, but laying all that aside, the movie is frightening and horrifying like a nightmare, well acted in every single role in my opinion - looking back on it I feel especially sad for those - Giamstti, Fassbender, et al. - who had to portray those horrible white Southerners, that must have been painful to do. More than any movie I've ever seen, 12 Years shows how the institution of slavery corrupted every moral value of the South, and maybe of the nation - these awful scenes of the young white gentry enjoying a masked ball while the slaves play the fiddle - those are as horrifying as the more brutal scenes of whipping, lynching. Of course this all is made more poignant in that we know that the main character is an educated, skilled, free man with a family back in New York - it's not a story of a "typical" slave born into slavery. If that makes it easier for us to ID with the protagonist, so be it - but it's equally clear that he suffers in the end knowing he may have escaped what so many continue to endure. Inevitably, this movie made me recall our visit to the amazing Rhett House in Charleston, where you can see first-hand the way the slaves lived in squalor next the lavish life of the "masters" - made all the more poignant because the house, at least, now, is a cobwebbed ruin (except for the gallery, where you can see the crappy "art" that the family bought on their many trips to Europe, including a statue, "First Tears," of a little boy crying over the body of a dead rabbit - I literally though I was going to vomit and had to leave the room - impossible to tell if the Charlestown Heritage Society understands that the gallery may be the most awful room in the museum). That said, it's impossible to leave 12 Years without being moved, disturbed, maybe changed - much like a visit to Auschwitz or a Holocaust museum, I imagine, though to date I have avoided any such visit.

House of Cards Season 2 did everything we could hope or expect

I suppose I should raise a spoiler alert here, but is there anyone who doesn't realize that Season 2 of the Netflix House of Cards will end with Kevin Spacey/Frank Underwood achieving his ultimate goal of rising to the presidency? Yes, the mechanisms of the plot are a bit hard to follow at times and, yes, some of the plot doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny - I honestly cannot figure out why the loathsome (an adj. that keeps coming up, I wonder why) businessman Tusk would rebuff Underwood's overtures to work in partnership and unseat the President and then, in the middle of his House testimony, after pleading the 5th on lawyer's advise, suddenly blurt out "He knew," the words that would lead to the impeachment and resignation? Why? What could Tusk gain by this? If it's to build an alliance with Underwood and later win a presidential pardon, why would he have dismissed U. so curtly when the two met in secret the day before? Anyway, no need to scrutinize the plot after all, as it was a truly exciting season that kept us thinking and guessing - like the great The Wire, it seemed that every word, every on-screen moment was important - it was impossible to say a word to one another during the viewing without hitting pause for fear of missing something telling or vital. Among the great elements in the last 5 episodes we see the incredible torment of Doug and the ex-hooker, Rachel, who has the info that can (and no doubt will, eventually) bring Underwood down; the increasingly hateful Claire Underwood, played almost too well by Robin Wright - suggest she get a truly likable, light, comic part for her next gig for fear of being typed as evil incarnate - especially as she manipulates both the extremely vulnerable young Molly, the foolish photographer with whom she'd once had an affair, and the naive and too-trusting first lady. He final exhortation to Frank U is great. And what about the kinky sex liaison that closed one of the episodes? With this play a role in Frank's final undoing, or was it just a little insight into his character, similar to the drunken gay pass he made in season 1? This season pretty much did everything fans could want or expect - completely entertained over the course of 13 episodes, introduced some new characters of interest, moved Frank along on his upward arc, and set us up for the great downfall (if it follows the 3-season model of the original) - all this without Kate Mara/Zoe Barnes, such an important character in Season 1 (a minor disappointment is that season 2 kept trying, and failing, to build up the investigative journalist angle - with the 2 post journalists shunted out of the picture, Zoe dead, and the newly introduced WSJ reporter not quite having such an interesting role because she doesn't cross any of the boundaries - we'll see what happens going forward; the death of Zoe is a ticking time bomb that will surely explode).

Why Season 2 of House of Cards is even better

Season 2 of House of Cards (Netflix 2013) continues in my view to be even better than the highly entertaining Season 1, as the two main characters, Kevin Spacey playing VP Frank Underwood and Robin Wright playing his wife, Claire, become even more devious and loathsome. What makes it better, in part, is that they're working side-by-side toward the same goal - the presidency, obviously - rather than apart and at cross-purposes in Season One. Though both seasons have focused on Spacey's careerist ambitions and his machinations in pursuit of same, Season 2, though episode 8, seems more focused and direct. The one element I miss is his manipulation of the media to achieve his ends - throwing Zoe Barnes under the train was a huge risk to the series, as she was such a strong character and was vital to Season 1 - but the series has moved along well without her - and of course her death hovers like a dark cloud over every moment in the plot: how long will it take before someone links her death to Underwood? The elaborate attempts by her ex-boyfriend, Post editor Lucas, have kind of foundered as a plot element; instead, a much stronger element has been the attempts to silence former call-girl Rachel who could tell a lot about Spacey's link to the death of Congressman Russo. But just as Spacey/Underwood tries to dig up dirt on everyone, at the end of episode 8 the story breaks in tabloids about sexual-romantic adventures of Claire (with that unctuous British photographer in Season 1). We can only imagine that the Underwoods will strike back big time - and will strike, somehow, at the next obstacle, the President. Claire, the most fake friend of all time, has persuaded the first couple to enter couples therapy - will she spill this info, will it damage the president, will it clear the pathway for Frank? The scenes of Wright/Claire with her fake earnestness as she pushes a vulnerable young woman to testify for a bill she's drafted on sexual assault in the military, are great and emblematic of her whole personality: a schemer, a poser, a fake who cares for nothing but herself and Frank, and maybe not even for him.

You can't stop watching House of Cards

House of Cards, the Netflix 2014 American version (the original British is great, too), continues in Season 2 to be a must-watch feel-bad series, in which one character is more loathsome than the next but you can't take your eyes off them anyway, like watching a train wreck or snakes writhing. Based on first 4 episodes, I think Spacey and Wright are even better in this season, growing further into their roles - the the ultimate schemer and conniver as he rises through the Washington hierarchy and she the ice-cold careerist who will do anything to advance her husband, or, more accurately, herself. Some spoilers to follow: I admit I was shocked the Spacey/Frank Underwood through the reporter Kate Mara/Zoe Barnes in front of a Metro subway, killing her - this is roughly how season one of the British original ended, but I was sure they would not dispose of such an interesting character (and good actor) - but there you go - could she reappear in some way? dream sequences, as in The Sopranos? With Zoe gone, Claire Underwood's role becomes bigger, and at end of episode 4 she gives a stunning live TV interview (she is now the veep's wife) to CNN (they would never do this kind of profile interview live, not would they pursue so aggressively questions about why they never had children - but let's just accept the premise), in which Claire reveals that she has had 3 abortions and (lyingly) says one was the result of a date-rape by a guy who's now a prominent general (he did attack her, but the pregnancy was unrelated) - so another plot element gets launched. As with Season 1, some of the plotting is a bit Byzantine, and the attempt by newspaperman Lucas to link Zoe's death to Underwood is getting really weird, as he pursues a lead the would lead him to do some highly illegal espionage (he's walking into a trap - but I think he'd be smarter, or more cautious at least). Season 2 is often the testing point of the value of any series - they tend to get way better or way worse in season 2 - and Netflix has totally succeeded with Season 2 of HofC as you just can't stop watching.

Spy v Cylon: The Americans

Watched the first three episodes of the FX series The Anericans and it remains to be seen whether we'll stay with this or jump right into season 2 of House of Cards. The Americans is certainly entertaining and fast paced but, despite its loose approximation of certain actual events, it's a series that does not stand up to scrutiny. The less you think about it the better, but here goes. The real spy cases on which this is based involved, as I recall, people living in the U.S. who were Russian and living as Russians, but as grad students, business people, and so forth - nobody suspected that they might be sending info back to Soviet headquarters. This series takes that premise a megastep forward: certain young people were recruited in the USSR from childhood, trained in martial arts and in English, and sent to the U.S to live not as Russian immigrants but as native-born American citizens, though they are KGB agents trained to get info and send it back to the beloved motherland. This premise is ridiculous on a # of levels, not the least of which is it's almost inconceivable that these people who immigrated to the U.S. at age 20 or so, posing as a married couple, could Americanize so completely and thoroughly and invent an entire history (e.g., they have two children - was there never any talk about family background, home town???). Also, having gone to all that trouble, what kind of info could these people actually get? Isn't much more efficient to bribe U.S. citizens in the intelligence community to become double agents (this actually worked, obviously)? This series, and to a lesser extent Homeland (and also the recent British movie on a very similar theme - a Soviet citizen poses for her whole lifetime as a native-born Brit - wow, these guys are good at languages!) are really all based on the fear so well dramatized in Battlestar Gallactica. These spies are like Cylons: They live among us, look and act just like us, but they are alien and dangerous. That's what makes this series click, to the extent it does - it's creepy and odd, but on any examination it become pretty ridiculous - especially the uber-sexuality of the two leads and their seemingly supernatural ability to fight of large bands of armed assailants.