The Monk: Grade B

B

The Monk (2011)

Vincent Cassel, Déborah François, Joséphine Japy; Director Dominik Moll. (French, subtitled).

The 1796 novel, by Matthew Lewis, is a classic of gothic fiction. It has all the elements that define the genre, including dank stone medieval buildings, mistaken identity, magic, hidden passages, murky candlelight, mysterious dreams, romance, incest, class distinctions, and a subtle anti-Catholic message.

The story itself is also well-worn. A baby is left on the doorstep of a monastery. The monks take him in. He grows up to become the head monk, a pillar of harsh religious virtue, but racked by satanic obsessions, mainly sexual ones, and finally he “cracks,” giving into his growing madness and committing unspeakable sin.

Even for someone who doesn’t know the genre or the story, this is an enjoyable movie, mainly because of the astonishing acting performance of Vincent Cassel. But in addition, the whole story is told realistically, without melodrama, so the characters seem empathic and approachable. The cinematography is eye-candy, and the medieval sets and costumes are totally convincing. Although there is little dramatic tension, the movie is so well-made that it will keep you glued to the screen.

Haywire: Grade B

B

Haywire (2011)

Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas; Director Steven Soderbergh.

This derivative spy + martial arts film follows a standard plot we all know well. Covert government operative Mallory Kane (Carano) is on a “job” in Barcelona that goes bad. The operation was betrayed, ultimately we learn, by somebody at headquarters, so there is a mole in the agency. Whoever it is, they are now bent on taking her out too, so she is on the run from government agents even while she must discover the mole and exact revenge. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Nevertheless, there is a comfortable familiarity about it, like hearing a fairy tale you know well. And what raises this version just a tiny bit above average is Carano, who is a genuine, world-ranked martial arts fighter, so performs the fight scenes without wires and without that annoying micro-editing that actually doesn’t let you see anything. So the fights are convincing, surprising and enjoyable. And it doesn’t hurt that she is good-looking.

On the down side, she can’t really act, but you don’t expect fine acting in a genre spy thriller. The big name actors sleepwalk through their performances, so no acting thrills there either.

Also on the plus side though, the chase and action scenes are written and directed with wit and style. More than once, sudden and unexpected action took me by surprise. That’s good directing. The trapped-and-barely-escaping trope is repeated endlessly but the frenetic pace, good cinematography, and originality kept me engaged even though it should have become monotonous. You should expect sequels.

The Invader: Grade A

A

The Invader (2011).

Isaka Sawadogo, Stefania Rocca, Serge Riaboukine; Co-writer and Director Nicolas Provost. (French, subtitled).

Amadou (Sawadogo) is an illegal immigrant into Belgium from some unspecified country. He works construction jobs for an abusive, exploitative boss. He spies a wealthy woman (Rocca) who has some shady construction contract for his boss, and follows her. Turning on the charm, he gradually persuades her to go out with him, and a hot sex scene follows.

It is just marginally plausible that she would agree to that relationship but Sawadogo carries such on-screen charisma and charm, and Roccia projects a steamy hidden desire and arrogance, so we believe it. But when she discovers he is actually just a common worker, and illegal at that, she wants nothing more to do with him. He, however becomes obsessed with her and stalks her. Finding her social and economic world utterly closed to him, he turns violent. He kills first his boss, then several others.

I don’t actually remember how it ends. Badly, no doubt. But the message I took away was about how frustrating it would be for an immigrant with no resources to get a foothold in a foreign society that wants only his labor but not his humanity. Living cheek to cheek with the mainstream society, there is nevertheless an invisible and impenetrable barrier to realization of the promise and dreams that spur immigration in the first place. That frustration is enough to turn a victim into a enraged killer, at least dramatically.

It takes a bit too long to tell this story and the pace does sag in the middle. But the acting is excellent, the music quite good, and the story line, while not entirely convincing, nevertheless manages to convey a serious social commentary.

Cracks in the Shell: Grade B

B

Cracks in the Shell (2011)

Stine Fischer Christensen, Ulrich Noethen, Dagmar Manzel, Christina Drechsler; Co-writer and Director Christian Schwochow. (German and Danish, subtitled).

A neurotic drama student (Christensen) is failing at her craft when she is unexpectedly cast in a lead role by an important director (Noethen). The director puts increasing pressure on her to go deeper into herself and let her emotions out. He also talks her into sleeping with him.

Then we learn that acting is really an emotional escape for the student, who is burdened by taking care of her mentally disabled sister (Drechsler – in an amazing performance) and dealing with the contempt of her angry mother. So the movie becomes a dark psychodrama, which is mirrored on the stage of the dark play the director is making. The student pushes herself beyond her natural limits. She wears her on-stage costume into the subway and tries to pick up men, to release her inhibitions even more. She eventually becomes a sort of zombie, inured even to self-destruction, all of which the director applauds as “genuine” acting. The other actors are not so sure.

Similarities to Black Swan are obvious, but this is not a me-too. As a psychodrama, it is very dark, but too confused to illustrate any clear moral lesson. The main attraction of this movie is the tremendous acting. The range of emotions conveyed is amazing. It is also an instructive film about the craft of acting itself. Not an uplifting film by any means, but well worth seeing.

Generation P: Grade B

B

Generation P (2011)

Vladimir Epifantsev, Mikhail Efremov, Andrey Fomin; Co-writer andDirector Victor Ginzburg. (Russian, subtitled).

This weird, dreamlike, hallucinatory film is nominally about the rise of the advertising industry in modern Russia. The protagonist, Vavilen, is an ex-literature student working in a newspaper kiosk when he gets an opportunity to work for an advertising agency that specializes in Western products. The main thrust of the ads is to identify and tap into the “Russian mentality,” whatever that is. Vavilen takes LSD, magic mushrooms, and plenty of vodka trying to fathom the Russian mind. The resulting ads are bizarre nonsense, usually very funny.

The substory, actually the main one in the end, is that nobody knows who is in charge of the ad agency. Powerful yet shadowy figures control all the money, and competition is routinely handled with murder.

So underneath the silliness of the advertising theme is a dark satire about the collapse of Russian society along with The Wall. The business world is lawless, corrupt, and violent. Vavilen learns that advertising creates not just an alternate reality for products, but also for politicians. There is no difference between news and advertising, between politics and products, between truth and spin. Ultimately then, the film is a scathing satire advertised as a surreal and farcical comedy. If I recall the "P" in the title stands for "Putin." This is a commentary on life under his regime.

The movie does not make a lot of dramatic sense, and some of that could be due to the fact that some of the cultural references are no doubt lost on a foreign audience. Still the translations are good enough to provoke laughter and understanding. The cinematography is excellent and the acting far above average.

Headhunters: Grade B

B

Headhunters (2011)

Aksel Hennie, Synnøve Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau; Director Morten Tyldum (Norwegian, subtitled).

The main character is Roger (Hennie), a successful corporate executive recruiter (“headhunter”), who is on the edge of financial collapse, living beyond his means to keep a trophy wife (Lund) happy. To supplement his income he steals and fences fine art. He learns that Clas Greve, an executive applicant (Coster-Waldau) has a major painting worth millions, and the plot is on. It turns out however that Greve is actually a hard-as-steel ex mercenary who does not take the theft kindly and pursues Roger, leaving a trail of bodies. The police get on to Roger and now are after him for murder. For the last half of the film, the most fun part, Roger is desperately on the run.

The story has too many logical flaws to be satisfying as a thriller, but as a kinetic action crime drama it is good looking, fast-moving, mostly original, surprising, suspenseful, and with a large dose of humor that ranges from dark and macabre to outright silly. It also has plenty of violence, blood, and gore. For all that, it is above average for the genre.

The Story of Film-An Odyssey: Grade A

A

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)

Narrator : Mark Cousins; Director : Mark Cousins.

This 15-hour documentary history of innovation in film was a television series in the U.K., and now, apparently is being distributed in cinemas more widely. I saw three hours of it at a recent film festival and was extremely impressed. When it comes out on DVD (presumably it will), I will snap it up immediately, and so should anyone who loves film.

The documentary begins over a hundred years ago with the early development of movies by the Lumiere brothers and others, continues through the silent era, into the modern era, and even projects what the future of movies will be thirty years from now. The whole history includes thousands of clips from movies around the world, while Cousins explains why each movie was important for understanding film as an art form. Viewing it gives you a new appreciation of movies.

What you get however is Mark Cousins’ particular point of view, which is not Hollywood-centric or necessarily oriented toward popular tastes or commercial interests. Nothing wrong with that. However, while he does focus on the artistic and technological aspects of filmmaking, there is something vaguely unsatisfying in the omission of the sociological meaning of movies, how they capture and affect the popular imagination and influence culture.

Furthermore, being an American, I am most interested in Hollywood movies, which Cousins does cover fairly, but not completely enough for my taste. Instead, he spends a great deal of time on movies from around the world, showing clips from really excellent movies I have never even heard of, much less seen. I had no concept of what African films look like in several countries, for example.

That world-film education enlarges my appreciation of the art form, yet such films have limited to zero distribution, negligible influence on modern mainstream filmmaking, and will probably never be seen by me or by most people. That doesn’t mean such films should not be highlighted, only that when choices have to be made, some of Cousins’ are idiosyncratic, to say the least.

On the other hand, his world-film survey does an excellent job noting important and influential films from Iran, China, Russia, India, Mexico, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere, films that have been distributed and seen widely and have been overtly influential, and yet are often overlooked by Western audiences. For that emphasis, Cousins is applauded.
Despite the reservations noted above, this history is so good, when it becomes available it will be a must-see for all film lovers and required viewing in all film schools.

Best Movies I saw in 2011

Best Movies I saw in 2011

Movie	Grade	Find the review archived in 2011: Month/Day
Machete	A	1/5
RED	A	1/29
You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger	A	2/19
Welcome to the Rileys	A	2/20
Revolucion	A	3/1
Jack Goes Boating	A	3/19
Fair Game	A	4/18
The Man Who Wasn’t There	A	6/5
My son, my son, what have ye done	A	6/20
Midnight in Paris	A	6/27
Rango	A	8/9
The Beaver	A	8/28
Driver	A	11/5
The Mill and the Cross	A	11/14
The Turin Horse	A	11/14
Melancholia	A	12/6
The Social Network	B	1/14
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work	B	1/31
Howl	B	2/1
Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity	B	2/6
For Colored Girls	B	2/11
The Last Circus	B	3/8
The Last Three Days	B	3/12
Conviction	B	3/12
The Secret in their Eyes	B	3/17
Mock Up on Mu	B	3/26
Please Give	B	4/24
Cave of Forgotten Dreams	B	5/29
Rabbit Hole	B	6/6
The Company Men	B	6/19
Small Town Murder Stories	B	8/23
Bridesmaids	B	8/23
Source Code	B	8/23
Moneyball	B	11/5
Dream Home	B	11/14
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life	B	11/25
Inside Job	I	6/5

The Smell of Success: Grade C

C

The Smell of Success (2009)

Billy Bob Thornton, Tea Leone, Ed Helms, Kyle McLachlan; Co-writer and director: Michael Polish.

This is a silly trifle of a movie, but I wanted to review it because it has been so thoroughly ignored, despite having some hidden virtues. It is about a group of salesmen in Kansas, led by Thornton, who work for Rose’s Manure, and sell the stuff to farmers. Old Man Rose dies and his daughter (Leone) from New York City, takes over the company, with the aim of pumping up sales then selling it.

The film is an example of screwball comedy, a genre characterized by witty repartee, usually a romantic relationship, a satirical emphasis on social class distinctions, with farce and slapstick. It was a style of movie popular in the 1930’s during the Depression, so ordinary people could watch the upper crust get their comeuppance and have a laugh at their expense. Perhaps the filmmakers thought it was time to revive the genre during the current Great Recession.

That intuition might have been right, but they made two critical mistakes. One is that the manure theme is pitched too low to be socially or politically satirical, or even, really, very funny. Most of the gag lines are pretty obvious: “Rose’s Manure: We’re number one in number two!” And worse, much worse. I admit, some of the joke lines made me laugh anyway. When the beautiful and sophisticated Tea Leone, in frustration, calls one of her salesmen “Shit-For-Brains,” I laughed, not because it is an original epithet, but because of the way she said it. But the relentless poop jokes wear you down, and even if they do make you chuckle, you realize there isn’t going to be any artistic point to the humor.

Secondly, the relationship between Thornton and Leone just isn’t. They are the romantic leads, and they even go to bed together (just wrestling, no sex). But there is no suggestion of a romance. Why not? Even if the movie was aimed at children 5 to 8, (and I don’t think it was), that should not rule out a romance. Maybe the omission was a far-too-subtle reference to the censorship codes of the 1930’s that forbade portrayal of any kind of sex. If that was the intent, it failed.

The film does have strong redeeming virtues. The cinematography is excellent, as are costumes (the period seems to be early 1960’s). The bluesy music is attractive. The artistic direction is distinctive, with a kind of sepia palette, reminiscent of O Brother Where Art Thou, that is perfect for the surrealistic scenes. And those are fantastic. The competitors, a chemical fertilizer company, parachutes crates of their product, and themselves, into cornfields and the imagery there is stunningly surreal. A kind of World War II theme emerges, and although it is not developed, it is a very creative twist. Acting: MacLachlan and his team, dressed like Men In Black, do a fair parody of evildoers, though not arch enough. Ed Helms is an inherently funny guy. Leone, I’ll watch in any movie. Same for BBT. So this movie has plenty of virtues and deserves to be seen, by adults, even though, as an overall artistic effort, it falls short.

Melancholia: Grade A

A

Melancholia

Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Alexander Skarsgård, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling; Writer-Director Lars von Trier.

This film is perfection of the art in every respect except one: editing. Its 2 hour, 15 minute runtime is not justified by the material. Not that I was ever bored, because the visuals took a grip on my eyeballs from the opening scenes and never let go. But the first half, focused on an elaborate wedding, verged on repetitive and tedious.

In the first half, Justine (Dunst) marries Michael (A. Skarsgard) in her sister’s home, so luxurious it would make royalty blush. Throughout this long segment, Justine is withdrawn and melancholy and finds no happiness in the wedding. But she is there, after all, in the appropriate costume, so she is conflicted. She arrives 2 hours late, then during the festivities, disappears to take walks on the grounds, retires to take a nap, and even takes a bath. She finds no pleasure in the social rituals of dancing, drinking, cutting the cake, exchanging the vows. Is it because she is clinically depressed? Maybe, but it is more like she just doesn’t see the point of the ridiculous ceremony. Her mother (Rampling) is explicit about contempt for all aspects of marriage, but Justine seems ambivalent. She can’t decide if she wants to be a member of the social community, with all its stupid, contrived rituals, or whether she is an existential monad, alone in the world, finding her own meaning. Her vacillation goes on far too long. I wanted to scream at von Trier, “Okay, we get it!” But I think he was trying to make the viewer feel Justine’s conflict, the endless, intellectually empty tedium of well-worn social ritual, and attraction to fabulous costumes, bright lights, fine food, and excellent music. I felt it, though I didn’t need such a long dramatization.

In Part 2 the story focuses on Clair, Justine’s sister, married to Jack (Sutherland). Justine stays on with her sister’s family after the wedding because she alienated her new husband on the wedding night and he left in confusion. Claire is worried about a new planet, called Melancholia (get it?) hurtling toward Earth, threatening total destruction. Jack assures her that all the scientists predict it will miss, and that “Melacholia will pass us by.” In other words, Justine’s rejection of the social rituals we live by will not hurt us, and death itself will pass us by, because we are together. Justine tells Claire however, that we will all die because the Earth is evil. Her melancholic diffidence now seems like stoic acceptance of humanity’s inevitable fate.

The themes in the film are thus the most fundamental existential questions facing us, the inevitability of death, the meaning of society, the vagaries of fate, and the survival of the planet, making the movie intellectually and emotionally engaging, much more than mere eye candy. Acting by Dunst is phenomenal, and von Trier takes advantage of her beauty in some stunning, if gratuitous, shots. Acting is also very strong from the other main characters, especially Rampling. Sets, costumes: superb. CGI: perfect. Directing: flawless. It’s a masterpiece.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life: Grade B

B
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta, Doug Jones; Writer-Director Joann Sfar (French, subtitled)

Serge Gainsbourg was a pop singer-songwriter in France who enjoyed enormous fame in the mid 1960’s. Though virtually unknown in America today, this biopic is worth seeing because it is a visual feast, an auditory feast, and an acting feast.

Writer-Director Joann Sfar is a creator of comic books (or “graphic novels,” as they are reverently known) and his uninhibited, surrealistic visual sensibility dominates the film, especially in the first half, which covers the childhood of Lucien Ginsberg (real name) in Nazi-occupied Paris. The boy’s alter-ego is a huge balloon with tiny arms and legs, that follows him around, mocking his self-image as an ugly kid, and his Jewishness. The anti-semitism of the Vichy regime is noted, but the story line is really about the boy’s irreverent, iconoclastic, precocious, artistic soul, as he develops his talent as a painter. At times, his alter-ego is represented by an animated figure that swoops around Paris. These early scenes get an A+ for creativity and visual attractiveness.

But it is nominally a biography, so the boy becomes a man (suddenly, without incident), a piano player and song-writer who works sleazy bars and hopes to succeed as a painter. His alter-ego is now played, wonderfully, by a costumed icon with huge nose and ears (Jones), who follows him around and seems to represent his grounding, his center, who he really is (in his mind). Gainsbourg (the adult stage name) is played brilliantly by the relatively unknown actor Elmosnino. His presentation, always through a blue cloud of Gauloises smoke, is simply eye-gripping. In his own voice he sings in the style of ‘60’s chanson, and the songs are great. He cavorts with multiple women, including Bridget Bardot, wonderfully played by Casta, a sensation in her own right. He performs a fabulous reggae version of the Marseillaise, and as he becomes a huge star, also becomes a drunken fool who loses his compass.

During the last half of the film, the visual creativity that was so stunning earlier, fades, and the movie focuses on the psychological development of the artist as he loses his center but never despairs that, though others around him do. The last half runs far too long and dwells too closely, without insight, on basically an unattractive person, diminishing the overall effectiveness of the movie. Nevertheless the film is a work of art worth seeking out.

The Turin Horse: Grade A

A

The Turin Horse (2011)
János Derzsi, Erika Bók; Directors Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, (Hungarian; subtitled).

I only discovered Bela Tarr in 2006 when I saw his 1988 movie, Damnation (reviewed in this blog 11/27/06). Turin Horse was his last film. Like Damnation, this one is long (2.5 hrs), extremely slow, shot in beautiful black-and-white, and ultimately about the desperation of life under totalitarian (communist) rule in Hungary. It is utterly mesmerizing, depressing, and beautiful, but only recommended for viewers who are committed to film as an art form.

A poor, elderly, and disabled country farmer in Italy, about 1900, makes a meager living carting goods, his horse an old, gray, sickly mare. He lives with his daughter in a fieldstone house in a cold, windy, treeless land where a howling gale rages for most of the movie. It’s always winter, cold, and bleak in a Bela Tarr movie, because that’s how life was under communism. The storm is the harsh and relentless politics blowing through the land, the dust making the simplest movement a challenge. The man and his daughter eat boiled potatoes, fetch water from the well, stoke the wood stove, gaze numbly out the dirty window, and sleep. She spends a lot of time dressing and undressing her father, who has a bad arm. They both spend a lot of time harnessing up and unharnessing the horse. This goes on and on, repeatedly.

Scenes are re-enacted in excruciating detail, every day. After about three cycles, I inwardly screamed, “Please, God, no! Not another boiled potato!” But yes, it was another boiled potato, and we again watched it being prepared, served, and eaten, in almost real-time. The same for all the other daily chores. Over and over with tiny, tiny variations, sometimes only in the camera movements or angles.

But this is exactly the point. The audience literally feels, viscerally, the hopelessness, the meaninglessness, the mind-numbing repetitiveness of that life. We understand experientially, in a way no narrative description could ever convey. That’s what makes the film an unforgettable artistic triumph. Yes, it takes a difficult 2.5 hours of nothingness to “get it,” but that’s a lot less than a lifetime.

A few things do happen, though. The horse gets too sick to work, and finally, the well goes dry. So they are doomed. They gaze numbly out the window into the winter storm. The final scene, of the two characters sitting at the table (over potatoes not boiled – no water), is pure visual poetry. They look somehow Christlike at that point.

The blurb for the film says that this old horse was the exact one that Nietzsche famously encountered in Turin in 1899. But that is a red herring that should be ignored. If the ads told you what the movie was really about (existential nothingness), you wouldn’t go.

The cinematography is extremely interesting and beautiful, the music hypnotic – deep bass and cello, repetitive, droning, beautiful, and soporific, in keeping with the tone. The visual images burn into your brain as you stare into the face of a human condition reduced to a mechanical numbness that strangely still retains its dignity. The portrayal is not completely realistic (e.g., who chops the firewood and cuts the hay for the horse; who maintains that stone house, etc.? Surely not the woman alone, and surely not the one-armed man). So there is a theatrical element to the storytelling, but the realism of the life somehow comes through that artifice brighter than actuality.

The Mill and the Cross: Grade A

A
The Mill and the Cross (2011)

Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling, Michael York; Director Lech Majewski. (Spanish; Subtitled)

This is a stunningly beautiful film by a legendary director, based on a painting by the Flemish master, Peter Bruegel, his 1564 painting, "Way to Calvary." You can see the painting online. The film is the story of how Breugel designed the work as he watched people and events in his medieval village, which had been occupied by hated Spanish mercenaries. So there is political commentary in the painting and in the film.

The painting shows Jesus carrying his own cross to Calvary, but somehow this scene takes place in Flanders in the 1500’s. The director uses a combination of CGI, green-screen, location shooting, and live actors to move seamlessly in and out of the painting, with fantastic effect.

A windmill on a towering rock is a metaphor for heaven, God as a miller, the massive wooden gears and wheels of the mill showing how heaven grinds humanity down, down, down, into flour-like dust.

Hauer plays Breugel, who explains his painting’s design to wealthy patron York. Rampling is Jesus’s mother, Mary, who keeps saying “I don’t understand,” as she watches the crucifixion. She represents a modern voice perhaps, speaking for the audience, who sees humanity of that time devoid of intellectual understanding, only passive acquiescence to senseless hardship. There were only the tasks of staying alive, until you were finally ground to dust. Nothing made any sense, not even religion, according to this painting and film. Only art might have made sense.

Dream Home: Grade B

B

Dream Home (2010)

Josie Ho, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Eason Chan, Hee Ching Paw, Kwok Cheung Tsang; Director Ho-Cheung Pang (Cantonese Chinese; Subtitled).

There is a movie in theaters now with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz called “Dream House.” A family becomes the target of a serial killer in that movie. I haven’t seen it.

This film is called Dream Home, and is from the point of view of a serial killer. A young woman has scrimped and saved for a lifetime to afford the perfect apartment by the sea. But alas, the building is fully occupied and nothing is for sale. Solution? Kill some occupants, creating instant vacancies.

In fairness, I need to say the victims are not just “killed,” for that sounds tidy. No, these victims are violently, bloodily slaughtered, using knives, boards, fists, and garrotes. This is an extremely violent, bloody, Hong Kong horror/slasher film. Nevertheless, I found it enjoyable.

One reason is that there is a balance between the young woman’s ordinary everydayness, at work, with her friends, with her family, versus her forays into serial murder, so you don't overdose. There is no attempt to provide psychological continuity between those two halves of herself. The movie plays it as if the gory murders were the most reasonable thing in the world for a person to do. There is no suggestion that she is a conflicted Jekyll/Hyde. So realism is out the window, but still, the story is marginally plausible.

Also, the murders are very creative, almost humorous. What I mean is that they are so gory and brutal, you can’t for a moment take them seriously. They are just real enough to make you gasp, and you will. For creative murders in the filmic art, you can’t beat these. I doubt that you have seen murder by vacuum cleaner, for example. Finally, the acting is better than not bad. So if you can get past some extreme violence and blood and guts, this is one of the better in the Hong Kong slasher/horror genre.

Drive: Grade A

A
Drive (2011)

Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Oscar Isaac; Director Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gosling is a young, impoverished, ex-con Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver for burglaries. He befriends a single mom neighbor (Mulligan) and maybe there is a romantic interest there too, but her husband comes home from prison and it is tense. Nevertheless, when the husband gets caught in an extortion deal, the driver agrees to drive for him on one last heist, which, predictably, goes wrong. But Gosling ends up with the money so now the mob is after him and Mulligan too. He fights to freedom in several gruesomely bloody scenes, but realizes he is “no good” for the girl and drives away into the sunset (severely wounded).

What makes the movie good is Gosling’s very quiet performance, which I attribute to excellent directing as much as excellent acting. The book is extremely terse, with not a single spare word, and that economy is transferred to the screen in spare dialog, a perfect artistic choice. Gosling has hardly any dialog, expressing his moods and thoughts through subtle facial gestures and big dramatic actions, like decapitating a guy by repeatedly stomping on his neck. Usually, it is only mature actors who have the skill and the courage to act quietly though. It is a pleasure to watch Gosling perform. Albert Brooks, who usually grates my nerves, does a completely believable job. Mulligan has a terrible, passive role, so she doesn’t have much to do but look beautiful, which she does well.

The photography is outstanding, including the difficult inside-the-car shots, and the music is tense but not too intrusive. The director keeps the action tension very high. The car chases are not too clichéd, but at times hard to follow, like how, exactly Driver got undetected to the freeway underpass to hide from the helicopter. The cars look and sound good, too, Bullet-esque for the Mustang. The main problem is the driver’s character, which unaccountably drifts from earnest, sensitive mechanic and friend, to cold-blooded psychopathic killer. In the end, he apparently realizes his own psychopathy and that’s why he leaves town, but that doesn’t explain who he was when we met him. It’s a violent, bloody movie, not for everyone, but a thoroughly entertaining action film.

Moneyball: Grade B

B

Moneyball (2011)

Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright. Director Bennett Miller.

Pitt plays Billy Beane, the real-life manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team in the early 2000’s. The team doesn’t have enough money to hire good players, so they rarely win. He discovers from an ex-stock broker/securities dealer (Hill), that it is possible to cheaply hire players with specific skills, rather than “all around” talent, much the way one evaluates derivative securities against specific screening criteria. Applying that formula to rebuilding the team, Beane came up with a winning A’s team, confounding all the traditionalist critics and skeptics (including field manager, Hoffman). Today, all major league teams use this method to evaluate players.

The story is told well, as a human story, not a technical one, showing how the self-doubts, risks, and courage of the characters plays out. Jonah Hill is a revelation as a serious dramatic actor. Pitt is not as good, playing his usual smart-ass Brad Pitt persona, and strangely, stuffing his mouth with junk food in almost every scene, to the point where it is disgusting, and simply not believable for a guy who still trains and looks buff.

Like junk food, this movie makes you feel good at first, but unfulfilled. There is not enough time given to the individual ballplayers and how their lives are affected by the mathematical strategy. They are hired and fired like the chattel they are, but they think of themselves as people. That’s a story in itself, but soft-pedaled here. There is surprisingly little baseball action in the movie, so it's not really a traditional baseball film. There isn’t much technical stuff either, few details on the method used to rebuild the team. It is nominally the Billy Beane story, but it is not a real biopic either. So what is left? A human drama with lots of nice pictures, nice music, good acting, dramatic scenes, but no actual nutritional value. Still, a must-see for baseball lovers.