Silver Linings Playbook

David O. Russell, 2012  (8.7*)

This is a surprising romance, better than I expected, largely because the screenplay is refreshingly different, with some witty and original dialogue, and because the cast is uniformly excellent, especially actress Jennifer Lawrence who was just 22 when she filmed it, the film is transported beyond the sum of its parts. As a result, Lawrence has already won 14 acting awards for this performance (and 43 in her short career – even though she started on tv at 14, she’s still only made about 11 feature films, with three more currently in production. Apparently she’s a natural – I didn’t realize that she was an amateur from Kentucky with no acting lessons and was literally discovered while walking on the sidewalk (at age 14) when I was stunned by her Oscar®-nominated performance in Sundance Winner Winter’s Bone, expertly and subtly directed by Debra Granik back in 2010.

Don’t forget that Natalie Portman was discovered at age 12 at a laundromat with her mom on a Saturday by a fashion model agent, invited to a photo audition on Monday, but was instead then sent to a movie audition for The Professional (aka Leon), and by Wednesday had the lead part in that cult-classic action film from Luc Besson. ..and she was excellent.

Lawrence as Tiffany (L) and herself on IMDB

Bradley Cooper plays a semi-psychotic young man, diagnosed as bi-polar, Pat Solitano, inside an asylum in the beginning, who we soon find out caught his wife in their shower with another man and nearly beat him to death in justifiable rage. He is now being released, but has a long list of jittery townspeople afraid of him, and a local blue that checks on him regularly. In what some describe as cruel punishment, he is forced to live with his parents to ensure his anger is at least being managed. His father, hilariously played by Oscar®-nominee Robert De Niro, who has shined lately in comedies as all you Fokker fans know (“I got my eye on you”), is high level OCD here, and makes book on all Philadelphia games – he’s particularly obsessed with the Eagles in the NFL. He blames losses and victories on the absence or presence of his son in the living room during the games, for he is banned from Veteran’s Stadium in Philly for life for constantly getting into fights with other fans.

His mother is capably played by superb veteran actress Jacki Weaver from Australia, who started in movies in 1968, and was a well-deserved supporting actress nominee for the vicious Aussie crime film Animal Kingdom (2010), in which she played the proud mother of four bank robbing and murdering sons –  she was also the family accountant. In this film she wasn’t given a very strong part to exercise her acting ability, but was still perfect enough to get her 2^nd Oscar® nomination. She’s won 14 awards for her acting in her career, in all honesty, too low a total for someone of her caliber – she deserves many more parts like the one in Animal Kingdom, for which she won 8 of those awards, including one from the National Board of Review. (Melissa Leo in The Fighter beat her out for the Oscar®that year – I preferred Weaver)

As soon as he is released, and still obsessed with getting back together with his unfaithful wife, he goes to a dinner at a best friend’s house, where he meets equally wacky Jennifer Lawrence, whose husband was a policeman killed on duty, a life changing experience that pretty much turned her into the local tramp. This begins what is one of the more engaging cinema friendships, with sharp enough dialogue that the actors seem inspired to give the screenplay their best; this is certainly a career best for Bradley Cooper, and he’s been rewarded with an Oscar® nomination for best actor, but has the daunting task of robbing master thespian Daniel-Day Lewis of this third best actor statue. (And he should be going for his fourth, as his creation of Bill the Butcher in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York is one of the most memorable in cinema history, and perhaps his best performance – certainly his most evil creation.)

The story likely moved a bit slow for some, and is perhaps a little Hollywood for others, but for me I enjoyed the slow evolution of the bizarre friendship between Pat and Tiffany (which at times is like that of Harry and Sally), and the growing understanding of his father’s obsession. There’s enough humor in the dialogue that the films keeps it spark while the story develops. It’s another gem for the Weinstein company, who has a knack for these indie films that turn into Oscar® winners. like The King's Speech in 2010 (which wasn't nearly as riveting to me as Winter's Bone). They bought the rights to the book, intending it to be produced first by Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, who both died in 2008. So it went to David O. Russell due to some personal experience in this mental arena, and he also wrote the excellent screenplay along with directing.

This now belongs on a short list of enjoyable film friendship-romances like Groundhog Day, Shakespeare in Love, When Harry Met Sally, A Room With a View, Annie Hall, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Philadelphia Story. Each of these is also a comedy, which I think helped them succeed, especially if you imagine each as a straight dramatic romance instead. Silver Linings is the type of film that often wins Oscars, and I think Jennifer Lawrence has to be the front runner for actress, while the film could win a few more, like director, picture, screenplay, though personally I prefer Beasts of theSouthern Wild for those three, and would love to see young Quevezhanie Wallis upset Jennifer Lawrence, who will have a long career and more Oscar® chances. [..and young Nazie is “the man”, while Jennifer is most decidedly “a woman”]

Silver Linings is the first film since 2004’s Million Dollar Baby to be nominated for the big five Oscars®: picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay, which won four of those (only Eastwood lost as actor, while Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman both won) – and the first since Reds in 1981 to get nominations for all four acting categories - none won, but Warren Beatty won his only Oscar® to date, as director.

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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

John Madden, 2011  (8.1*)

From the director of Shakespeare in Love (1998) comes a more serious film, as a disparate group of seven Brits go to India to live in the hotel of the title, not knowing it's not really open yet, due to the ineptitude of undercapitalized owner Dev Patel, who inherited it when his father died.. 

This is a comedy with some tender moments, and a little drama, but without sentimentality, and with Oscar winners Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy and the impeccable Tom Wilkinson in the cast, who is terrific here, it has a high degree of craftmanship..

IF anything, Dench has gotten even better with age.. I 1st saw her topless in Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in 68 and I've been a big fan ever since (she was a babe!) - her acting is even better now, as tv's BEHAVING BADLY added to the argument that some of her best work may even be for the little screen.. (I think of all the living actresses, I could spend my life with her 1st! sorry, Salma, Scarlett, and Sofia!)

As for Tom Wilkinson, I've never seen even an avg performance from him, you very soon forget he's acting in any role he tackles - he's superb here, steals the acting kudos.. Nighy is good again as usual, Maggie Smith doesn't have much to do, and Dev Patel is easily the most overrated actor in the cast, the other Indian actors are all better in fact (he's an over-actor)

The rest of the hotel's name was "For the Elderly and Beautiful", and the story is from the novel THESE FOOLISH THINGS by Deborah Moggach. Like most, the literature is, no doubt, deeper and richer than the film, which is fine, just not overpowering.

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The Artist

Michel Hazanavicious, France-Belgium, 2011 (8.5*)
Best Picture (AA, BAA)

Having won 114 awards so far, second only to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, you would expect this film to be one of the truly great cinematic masterpieces of all time. For me, it’s a good but not great film, not as good a 2011 film as Malick’s The Tree of Life, or Refn’s Drive, but I’d put it in the tier after that (with Midnight in Paris, The Help, Rango, and Ides of March). Most of the film is silent like it’s 20’s film star, George Valentin – even though it’s more like an enjoyable and rewarding romance in the tradition of classic 30’s films like My Man Godfrey, The Awful Truth, and My Favorite Wife (40’s?). Of course, by now familiarity makes this a fairly predictable ‘boy meets girl’ story.

Director Michel Hazanavicious, who also wrote the screenplay, has created a long overdue homage to films of that era which was also shot in the style of those films, including the same 4:3 aspect ratio of 35mm prints, and of course, black and white cinematography. Of course, we're not forgetting Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon, which treaded similar ground regarding creating a visual reference to a classic cinematic style of the past.

The story is nothing new – it combines the boy meets girl story with the “rags to riches” and “riches to rags” stories of it’s two stars. Jean Dejardin won an Oscar (and 13 other awards) for his portrayal of fictitious silent film star George Valentin who bears an uncanny resemblance to the story of Douglas Fairbanks (except for a little average dancing), who was a swashbuckling action star and top box office draw in silent films, but, like many others, who never really made the transition when sound pictures arrived.

His real-life girlfriend, Bérénice Bejo, (photo above) steals the film for me as a young extra, and won seven acting awards for her Oscar-nominated performance as Peppy Miller, who catches George’s fancy in a ballroom dance scene in one of his silent films after stumbling into him outside a movie premiere for all the photographers to catch before that. He’s so immediately struck with her that he has trouble completing a simple scene, but the two part when the filming ends and follow their own career paths.

.. but, of course, George cannot shake her from his mind. At the same time, sound arrives to films, at which he scoffs, like many, thinking it will never catch on with the public – just like I didn’t think 3D would after so many failures in my lifetime.

His studio mogul, played by John Goodman, welcomes the new format but decides to can Valentin, thinking the new younger audience will also want new personalities talking, not aging silent stars. At the same time, Peppy Martin starts moving up the ladder to the stars, and her vivacious personality is a big hit, both within the story, and for Bejo in real life – in fact, for me, her energy, smile, and optimism steal the film as well as Jules/Georges heart.

Uggie is a Jack Russell terrier saved 

from a pound by trainer Omar Von Muller

There’s also a wonderful Jack Russell terrier named Uggie, claiming an award above, who adds welcome comic relief to what could have been a dreary story of the fall of a legend, from wealth to destitution. Uggie was also in Water for Elephants (2011), and What's Up, Scarlett (2005, comma required, lol). He obviously reminds most cinema fans of Asta, the spunky scene-stealing dog from the Thin Man series who starred in 14 films himself in the 30’s and 40’s, including My Favorite Wife.

For me, the one failing here is that half an hour into the film, Georges attends his first sound picture, because it stars Peppy Martin. At this point, director Hazanavicious should have introduced sound into this picture; unfortunately he did not, so we see an early talkie in silence, and we also do not hear the onscreen audiences reactions to the star-making film of Martin’s. By this point in The Artist, the gimmick of silence is wearing thin, and is not helped much by a dream of George's in which he hears the sounds of life but cannot talk himself. The only other sound in the picture is at the very end. I kept thinking that this would be a classic 30’s style film, but those all had sound, so instead this is more like an average 20’s film, very much like a Charlie Chaplin story, with lots of tear-wrenching pathos that keep it on the verge of tragedy, when it could have been more light-hearted and effervescent. It’s touted as a comedy, with a couple of dance numbers that are obviously not Astaire and Rodgers (though still fun in spirit), but spends 90% of it’s time as a tragic drama, relieved by a few humorous touches, mostly in the beginning of the story.

Definitely worth seeing, and an enjoyable if predictable story, but also overrated with this many awards. Malick's The Tree of Life (60 awards, including the Palm D'Or at Cannes) was a bigger hit with critics, and Drive (40 awards) was perhaps the sleeper of the year, both of which seemed closer to unforgettable cinematic art to me. But The Artist was definitely better than the dreariness of The Descendants, and was about on par with The Help, the two other films winning the most awards for the year; also with Take Shelter (31 awards), Woody's Midnight in Paris, and George Clooney’s overlooked The Ides of March.

Let’s hope that for Hazanavicious’ next film, he moves forward with time and adds sound so we can hear the laughter, the dialogue, and the dog barking.

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The Ides of March

George Clooney, 2011 (8.4*)

This is an intelligent political thriller with a few unpredictable twists. One would say the acclaim is due George Clooney, since he co-wrote the screenplay, directed the film with himself in a lead role.

His character is a new presidential candidate, whose idealistic follower Steven Myers, brilliantly underplayed by Ryan Gosling, is second-in-command of the campaign, which is headed by veteran campaigner Paul Giamatti. None of these men are saints, and over the course of the story we get to see each character in a more revealing light.

It’s hard to describe the film without giving away some important plot turns, but place this film on a short list of intelligent and adult political films, each revealing something about the process of government: Advise and Consent, All the President’s Men, The Queen, Executive Suite, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

This is one of the better films of 2011, for me in that "second tier", with Rango, The Artist, and Take Shelter.

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Take Shelter

Jeff Nichols, 2011 (8.5*)

An intense young man, brilliantly portrayed by Michael Shannon, begins having apocalyptic dreams, leading him to think a huge storm is coming. He slowly drifts toward his vision and away from his everyday duties. He begins to spend more time and money building a safe tornado shelter for his family behind their house. 

This descent into obsession could have been ineffective without a performance such as Shannon’s, in his most intense role since his Oscar®-nominated part in Revolutionary Road.

His wife is played by Oscar-nominee Jessica Chastain, who had an amazing list of films released in 2011: her nominated performance in The Help; the updated Shakespeare play about the Roman military, Coriolanus, directed by Ralph Feinnes; and perhaps her best acting, in Malick’s The Tree of Life. In my opinion, she was likely nominated for her least unique and most predictable performance.

Director Jeff Nichols handles this with a subtle hand, and the film won 31 awards for 2011, most of them at film festivals. Critics have rated it higher than fans, 85 from Metacritics, 76 from fans at IMDB, far too low, in my opinion – I’m with the critics on this one.

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Drive

Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011 (9.0*)

Ryan Gosling plays a man we see in the beginning of the film driving a getaway car for men pulling a heist. The audience is immediately sucked into this film by having it start in the middle of some tense crime action. We later find out that Gosling also works in a garage, and performs driving stunts part-time for films.

Early in the film we learn a little of his personal side as he helps a young mother, Carey Mulligan, who also lives in his apartment building, when she needs a ride after he car breaks down. (Mulligan's character has little acting to do in this compared to her brilliant role in An Education.) We slowly see Gosling as more than a heartless criminal, and realize his character may be more dimensional than most in crime films.

Interspersed with scenes involving Gosling’s character, we also learn a little about some small time organized criminals, a business owner played by Ron Perlman, and Gosling’s garage manager, played by Bryan Cranston (without the same passion and strength as his role on Breaking Bad). Cranston gets a shady mogul, superbly played by Albert Brooks in a rare dramatic part, to invest in a race car to be driven by Gosling. Brooks has won eight awards for supporting actor for his performance, but was skipped over for an Oscar® nomination.

The audience is slowly drawn into Gosling’s world, as he is drawn into that of Mulligan’s, whose husband is said to simply be away – we later find he was in prison after he is released. On top of that, he became connected with some rather despicable men while incarcerated, and to whom he is now in debt.

For me, this film has enough similarities to George Stevens’ western classic Shane to be inspired by it. It has an heroic outsider, Gosling, coming to the aid of a family facing criminals they can’t control, largely due to his attraction to the wife and her young son. His past is murky, like Shane’s, he may be a criminal himself, but not by choice, and at all times he tries to do the right thing, like a samurai warrior. He’s a warrior, but with a code of ethics and personal honor.

The pace is well maintained by Danish director Nicolas Refn. It never seems forced, slow, or too action-packed, there’s just enough of each element to make it a well-crafted film. In fact, I’m a bit surprised (and peeved) that it wasn’t nominated for best picture since they came up with nine, it could have just as easily been ten. I’m willing to bet without having seen but a couple so far that it was better than at least five of those nine. This is going to be considered a quiet, understated classic over time.

It’s currently ranked #237 on the IMDB top 250, and has won 38 awards out of 94 nominations. Only a handful of other films has won this many awards for 2011: The Artist, The Tree of Life, The Descendents, The Help.

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Downton Abbey

Jim Carter as the butler leads the servant staff (L), while

Hugh Bonneville as the Earl heads the family (R)

Brian Percival and Brian Kelly, directed four episodes each; several others directed two episodes.

Season One: 2010 (10*)
Golden Globe and Emmy Awards, best tv mini-series or movie
During the reign of England’s King Edward, estates of the wealthy aristocrats grew to their ultimate in wealth and power. By the first decade of the 20th century, there were 100 estates that owned over half the land in England. Their wealth came from owning huge amounts of land, then collecting rents from all those who lived on, farmed, or hunted on their land. The patriarch of the estate was usually given the title of Duke, Earl, or Marquis, and the property was always passed on to eldest male heirs, and by law, never to women. If there was no male son, the nearest other male relative became the heir, often cousins.

However, as all things pass over time, this class structure was about to change forever. Cheaper shipping allowed the importation of less costly agricultural products from India and the Americas, and the great estates were in decline, along with the manors or castles of the aristocratic families. The upper class still tried to maintain their lifestyles for as long as possible, or at least the appearance of luxury, which required large staffs of servants. The head cook had her assistant and kitchen maids; the head housekeeper had a staff of housekeeping maids; while the butler was the overall head of the staff, and there were also valets, and the lowest of the male order inside the house, the footmen. Outside the manor were also the gamekeepers and wardens, garden staff, and stables of horses to maintain.

All this cost a lot of money, and without the income from the land, many aristocrats sought new wealth from America. The generally accepted practice was to get a wealthy American heiress, usually the daughter of industrialists or bankers, to marry a titled estate owner, and thus gain a title to provide some hitherto unavailable social status in America, while providing the money to keep the estate going.

This is the setting of the story of one such manor, called Downton Abbey, headed by Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, in this work of fiction beginning in the year 1910, created and written by Julian Fellowes. Other works before have explored this system, notably the PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs and Brideshead Revisited, which actually starts after the era is past but whose story is told as a flashback to a time decades before. Upstairs failed to involve me, I found it boring and passionless.

Brideshead, from the novel by Evelyn Waugh, easily hooked me, largely with it’s terrific cast, which made an international star out of lead actor Jeremy Irons, and included Laurence Olivier, who won an Emmy for his performance as the patriarch, and Clare Bloom as his estranged wife, as well as excellent supporting performances from Julian Glover and the two actors who played the children of Olivier, Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick. This is a 'must-see' epic for fans of literature brought to the screen, and runs eleven hours overall.

Downton Abbey is worthy of all the praise and awards it’s receiving. Unlike the two previously mentioned mini-series, Downton is infused with a warmth unseen in previous stories. Fellowes has managed to capture the feel of Charles Dickens literature, with the wit and humor of Jane Austen. When the first telephone is being installed in the manor, the Dowager Countess (the granny of the family), brilliantly played by Oscar-winner Maggie Smith, remarks, “first electricity, now telephones; I feel as if I’m living in an H.G. Wells novel”.

The story begins with the news of the sinking of the Titanic, and the loss of the hand-picked heirs of Downton, both cousins of the Earl, who has only three daughters and thus no rightful heir of his own. Next in line is a third cousin, who is presently a lawyer in a mid-level corporate legal firm in Manchester – hardly an aristocrat, and someone not especially thrilled at the prospect of changing his lifestyle.

Veteran actor Hugh Bonneville, with

96 titles to his credit, has the role of

a lifetime as the Earl, Robert Crawley

We are swept into the life of the manor in the first five minutes, by following servants awakening and rushing off to their stations with some excellent camerawork that follows people from in front in unbroken shots until the camera turns to follow a different person. From then on you should be hooked on the story.

We see the arrival in the beginning of the new valet, Mr. Bates (brilliant, understated performance by Brendan Coyle) a man crippled from the Boer War, but who has been placed in his new position for being a friend of the earl from the war days, thus bypassing those inside the house who wanted to move up in rank. We are also introduced to the new heir, who meets a different form of disdain, seen as an outsider by the more traditional aristocrats, yet welcome by the younger set, represented by the earl’s three daughters, each single, with the elder two (Mary and Edith) competing as the first across the marriage line. The youngest (Sybil) is more political than social, interested in women getting the vote and finding careers, and uninterested in the traditional woman’s role of wife and socialite.

You know as you watch the dates progress toward 1914 that a world war is coming, so that adds an element of tension to the entire story, which is light on action, but deep in psychological complexity and subtle currents of social change.

British drama doesn’t get any better than this, it’s the ultimate Masterpiece Theater production, expertly filmed and acted. The cast is led by Brendan Coyle as the valet, Mr. Bates. The earl, Robert Crawley is played by Hugh Bonneville, who has a dignified sense of justice. His wife is an American, Elizabeth McGovern (one of the weaker actors), married for her money, needed to keep the estate going. Her money must remain with the estate, else Downton Abbey will not be able to continue.

The eldest daughter Mary, is played by a stern, almost cold-hearted Michelle Dockery. Her conniving, backstabbing younger sister Edith is portrayed as an envious wretch by Laura Carmichael. The youngest daughter, my favorite character, is played by the stunning Jessica Browne Findlay, a former ballerina, and the character with the most spunk.

The Earl's daughters, Ladies Edith, Mary, and Sybil

However, the acting kudos are being stolen by the veteran Maggie Smith, as the traditional and snobbish Dowager Countess, Violet Crawley, who is given the lion’s share of great lines. Dan Stevens is passable as the selected heir-to-be, Matthew Crawley, who has trouble fitting into the role of an aristocrat, largely because he’s never been trained to be an elitist, and would rather fend for himself and fulfill some useful career. Veteran actor Jim Carter also shines as the resolute and dignified butler, Mr. Carson, who feels responsible for maintaining a professional staff that can perpetuate this way of life as perhaps Britains contribution to civilization for as long as possible.

The first season has everyone’s appetite whetted for season two, currently airing on PBS, but I wait for the dvd release so I can view the entire season in one sitting. Season one is seven episodes, just shy of seven hours and worth every minute.

This has won 13 awards to date out of 45 nominations, including six Emmys and a Golden Globe, with seven of those awards going to creator and author Julian Fellowes. This has an extremely high rating of 9.0 by just 11,000 fans at IMDB; if it were a film, it would be tied with The Godfather at #2 there, only bettered by Shawshank Redemption's rating of 9.1. It is now one of just 40 perfect 10's I've given on this blog.

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Emma (Miniseries)

Jim O’Hanlon, 2009 (9.5*)
Masterpiece Theater version for BBC

There have been a veritable plethora of Jane Austen’s novels put to film, usually 3 to 5 per novel. In fact, this is the fourth version of Emma since 1972, beginning with another BBC miniseries, then a tv film with Kate Beckinsale, then the more famous film in 1996 with Gwyneth Paltrow (trying her best to affect a British accent, see our review here), then finally what I would call the definitive version – this one with the engaging Romola Garai. There was also the updated American adaptation, Clueless (1995), from Amy Heckerling, which retold the story with a spoiled Beverly Hills princess and a hilarious spoof of modern teens, starring a spunky 16-yr old newcomer Alicia Silverstone. (Ok, I confess, this over-the-top version is my favorite one to rewatch, but it bears few traces of Miss Austen.)

Romola Garai, whose name is the feminine version of Romulus, founder of Rome, comes from a Hungarian background, born in Hong Kong, and later relocated to England. Perhaps this outsider’s take on Austen gave her the necessary freshness and naivity that the role ultimately requires.

For the incogniscenti, Emma is born into aristocracy, and in this film Michael Gambon plays her doting and ultra-mindful father with loving humor – he frets about anyone even walking outside catching their death of something - in his mind it's best not to leave home at all. Emma’s mother died when she was “too young to remember her laugh”, and she’s remained by her father’s side ever since.

She’s grown up with a neighbor, a Mr. Knightly, who has been not only her brother-in-law, but like a brother, often scolding her like a parent for her insensitive improprieties. Jonny Lee Miller (yes, the one from the aborted Eli Stone tv show) turns in a remarkably effective and in tune performance as Emma’s longtime friend and confidante; one could argue that he’s the best cast male of any of Austen’s novels put to film.

Michael Gambon, Romola Garai, Jonny Lee Miller

Not being interested in romance, Emma fancies herself a matchmaking cupid after taking responsibility for getting her governess hitched to a wealthy widower nearby. Spurred on by this achievement, she spends the story trying to advise everyone in her sphere regarding romance, without any firsthand experience herself.

Most people either love Jane Austen or think she’s overblown and trivial; after all, most of her novels are about little more than whether a single woman will ever get married or not. However, primary plots aside, Austen’s forte was in painting a picture of both aristocracy and the common people within their spheres, society’s affect on individual happiness, usually influenced by idle gossip and speculation of outsiders.

This version of Emma was so wonderfully cast that it’s now easily my favorite Austen work put to film. A rather long work at around 270 minutes, it does give the novel ample coverage; it’s been described as Austen’s most complex plot with the most relationships. Emma grows from child to woman before our eyes, yet it’s her childish innocence that makes her so likable, even though Austen herself said of all her heroines, Emma is a person she wouldn’t like herself.

The outing to Box Hill

In this production, she is surrounded by a well-cast supporting group of characters. Blake Ritson was funny and dead on as the local preacher Mr. Elton. The chatty but well meaning Miss Bates was perfectly played by Tamsin Greig. Perhaps only Laura Pyper as Jane Fairfax was too tepid to exhibit even a brief glimpse of personality, dominated by her aunt, Miss Bates.

If you like Austen, you should love this; if you like the BBC’s Masterpiece Theater, this is another stalwart entry in that long-enduring and endearing series. It may not have the wonderful subtlety or complexity of Downton Abbey, but then it’s a novel from a century and a half ago, so in that regard it’s amazing, and a tribute to Austen, that it’s still able to enthrall audiences this far removed from her period in history. No film can capture the beauty and artistry of eloquent prose, but this mini-series in four parts comes as close to Austen as any other to date.

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Five Minutes of Heaven

Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009 (8.4*)
Sundance Awards for directing and screenplay.

Based on a true story of the troubles in Northern Ireland. A Protestant worker is ordered to leave a shipyard in Lurgan by Catholics. In retaliation, a teenage gang of four, members of the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) orders a Catholic to leave, a man named Griffin. The youths decide to kill him, even though he’s scheduled to leave the yard anyway in just a week.

When they show up at Griffin’s house, unknown to them, the senior Griffin has left the house, but his eldest son is watching tv in the living room, while his younger brother is kicking a soccer ball on the sidewalk out front. The masked hitman, Alistair Little, approaches, looks at the kid on the street staring at him, an image which will haunt him later, and still shoots his brother through the front window and kills him. Nine year old Joe Griffin not only witnesses the attack from just a few feet away, powerless to do anything, but his own mother blames him for not stopping the killing. Both his parents die soon afterwards, neither recovering from the loss of their oldest son.

Thirty-three years later, after serving a 12-year prison term, Little and Griffin are approached by a documentary television show, who sets up a meeting between the two men. Veteran star Liam Neeson plays Little as an adult, who is now a successful politician in Belfast. Griffin is an embittered man still living in the same town of Lurgan, though now he’s married and has two beautiful girls. Due to losing his entire family over the killing, Griffin has never forgiven Little, and wants, as he puts it, just "five minutes of heaven", when he can confront Little face-to-face and kill him.

James Nesbitt (Bloody Sunday) steals this film as Joe Griffin. Even though he’s now married with two children, years of torment and anguish are etched on his face in nearly every scene. He makes the audience feel his pain on a visceral level, without ever giving a false note – one feels that Nesbitt himself has gone through something similar in his own life. He steals the acting kudos from Oscar®-winner Liam Neeson in this small film produced by the BBC for television. In all honesty, he has the far meatier role, as a contrite Alistair Little seems almost resigned to giving Griffin the chance he needs for vengance. It’s a crime that Nesbitt wasn’t nominated for both a BAFTA and an Oscar® for best actor, it’s one of the best performances of the last decade.

Nesbitt with one of his 7 acting awards –

he won 3 for Cold Feet (1997),

and two for Bloody Sunday (2002)

This film deserves a far better rating than the 6.7 given at IMDB (by only 6,000 viewers). More people should watch this film, and all the other good films on 'the trouble' in Northern Ireland. There are excellent films on this subject, notably Bloody Sunday (2002), the Cannes Palm d’Or winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), and for PBS, both Naming the Names (which remembers the victims of Bloody Sunday) and Frontline: Behind the Mask: The IRA and Sinn Fein. Probably the first great film on this subject is John Ford’s classic, The Informer (1935), for which Victor McLaglen was awarded the Oscar for best actor.

Not being from Great Britain, those of us in the U.S., and probably the rest of the world, need to see the films on this subject so we can better understand the history of violence and repression there.

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Lost Horizon

Frank Capra, 1937 (8.2*)
Exotic, unspoiled locales around the world have always appealed to the more daring individuals of more populous regions, such as Europe; just look at the nationalities of all the famous explorers. In 1923, Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel was the first known westerner to enter the forbidden Tibetan city of Lhasa. She then published her accounts in her 1932 book Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

Shortly thereafter, novelist James Hilton wrote a short novel about a flight of western travelers that crashes in the Himilayas, and the survivors are rescued and taken to a fictitious hidden city in a mountain valley, called Shangri-La. Basically, this is a story of an exotic utopia untouched by civilization and the ills of modern society. The westerners are treated like welcome guests, and their’s is an adventure of a lifetime.

Frank Capra went out of character for this film of adventure and fantasy, starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, and Edward Everett Horton as the crash survivors, and Sam Jaffe miscast as a Tibetan spiritual master. It's contains none of Capra's homespun humor, nor is it a glimpse at classic Americana. A newer partially restored version has the entire soundtrack, but some scenes are filled in with only still images. It looks like the Hays Commission deleted scenes where people were simply talking, but within their bedrooms - innocent enough unless you're under the cloud of censorship.

The story may also be taken as a metaphor of a spiritual quest to find one’s center within, away from the distractions of the material world. Often we get a peek at this realm, and find it difficult to return due to life circumstances. Like the beautiful Australian film Walkabout, this utopia may exist in one’s past, and you can either remember it nostalgically, or make the physical effort to return to the same location where you once found bliss.

Since the late 1800’s, there have been many accounts by westerners of this little-explored region of earth and it’s philosophies, until during the 60’s it blossumed into an international cultural movement, generally called The New Age. The allure of the Himilayas and it’s mountain people have had a profound effect on western civilization, whether intentional or not. This story was an early entry that added fuel to that fire.

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards for 1937, including picture (a year when there were 10 nominations, the winner being The Life of Emile Zola), it won two, for film editing and art direction.

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy

Noomi Rapace, her biopic, and as Lisbeth

Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Denmark - Sweden - Germany - Norway
Niels Arden Oplev, 2009 (7.8*)
I’m reviewing these together because after you’ve either read the novels or seen the trilogy, you realize it’s just one long story about the heroine, not three distinctly different stories.

Actress Noomi Rapace made a star of herself and created an indelible screen image in punk hacker Lisbeth Salander, the subject of this crime trilogy from the famous novels by Stieg Larsson. I haven’t read the novels, but like most transcriptions to screen, you lose a lot because you’re getting a lot of other artists to interpret a solo work from the mind of one person, and the medium is also being transformed from one of linguistics and the mind’s imagination to a series of images filtered through the minds of others – the screenwriters, the cinematographers, the editors, and the director. All form a collaberative committee on a film, overseen by the director’s vision, which often changes during the process.

Some may find these films a bit too explicit, they show a woman who’s the victim of abuse, and it’s not for the squeamish. Some found this exploitive, others found it a frank depiction of the misygony in society, and how women in general are the victims of sex crimes perpetrated by sadistic men – unfortunately there’s never a shortage of these at any time in history. For me, I found the films to be more about a woman empowering herself by using her brains and street smarts to stand her own ground. In many regards, I found these films similar to the theme of the powerful French film Chaos (2001), from director Coline Serreau, which I’ve called “the ultimate women’s power film”, and one which had me standing and applauding at the end.

The series begins with a man convinced a relative was murdered and he employs a disgraced journalist, expertly played by Michael Nyqvist, and a criminal computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, to help him unravel the mystery of some grisly murders in the distant past.

The first film won 13 awards (and Rapace won three for actress), including a BAFTA for films not in English (the equivalent of foreign language film at the Oscars). Rated 7.7 at IMDB, and 76 from Metacritics – that’s probably about right, though the cinematography and music are first rate, and actually make each film better. Some think it’s a bit long at 155 minutes, and there’s a longer 180 minute version from Sweden.

The Girl Who Played With Fire
Daniel Aldredsen, 2009 (7.2*)
The second in the series begins to unravel the mystery of Lisbeth Salander’s life. Her father may have been a Soviet agent, that’s part of the mystery. Journalist Blomkvyst of Millenium magazine (Nyqvist), who exposes the corrupton of the establishment, is investigating sex trafficking in Sweden, and the two themselves become the targets of the powerful in return

This film has more action, and is also compelling but is really setting you up for the concluding film, which provides closure to the entire series.

This film is not as compelling as the other two, and was only rated 6.9 at IMDB (fan votes), and 66 at Metacritics. This film and the third didn’t win any awards, and only garnered five nominations between them.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Daniel Alfredson, 2009 (8.0*)
[Rated 7.0 at IMBD and 60 at Metacritics]

This film was the most riveting of the three for me, perhaps because it was the least violent. Without giving anything away, it becomes a battle of wits between two viewpoints – to put it in normal cinema jargon, the good guys and the bad guys, but using their minds rather than weapons or martial arts.

However, depending on how you feel about certain issues, these sides may appear the opposite to other people. It’s almost like politics - if we agree with a rebel, they’re freedom fighters; if we disagree, they’re terrorists. That's why we have a legal system, at least for civilians.

We see the entire mystery unfold as the journalist uncovers the clues himself. Another long film at 147 minutes, it still didn’t seem overlong; it’s a complex psychological story that demands thorough examination and revelation. The third film brought closure to the story, and in an intelligent, credible manner. Those who stick with the entire trilogy should feel justified in the end.

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Performance

Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell, 1970 (8.5*)
Roeg was also cinematographer

This is #326 on our Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net, all polls. Former cinematographer Nicolas Roeg shared directing credit on this one, beginning a career that included some visually stunning films.

Performance woke me up when I first saw it. In the beginning, gangster Chas Devlin, played by James Fox, appears to be running from some other criminals, and needs to disappear quickly. He finds an ad for someone wanting to rent a room to a lodger. He literally walks into the mansion and life of a jaded rock star Turner, Mick Jagger – who, by the way, when first seen is listening to late 60’s rap music, in this case “Wake Up, Niggers” by the Last Poets (who were absolutely great, and ground-breaking; I have both their lp's on vinyl), likely the fathers of modern rap, because this sounded just like rap music today, which hasn’t progressed much at all from the late 60’s.

With the help of his two bohemian girlfriends (Anita Pallenberg and Michèle Breton), Turner slowly ensnares Devlin in his hedonistic world.

So a story that begins as a crime thriller, becomes an existential tale of two men beginning to share lives and personalities, each providing something the other needs, an escape from a reality that’s no longer tolerable to either psyche, for different reasons.  For me, this is what elevated this story beyond the mundane, and probably why it’s still ranked as highly in polls today.

James Fox, a criminal on the run

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Splendor in the Grass

Elia Kazan, 1961 (8.6*)
Ranked #1003 on our 2011 update of the Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net, all polls.

Not considered one of Kazan’s best, certainly not when compared to On the Waterfront (1951) or A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) bw, or even up against A Face in the Crowd (1957), or his first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), this film of a 50’s high school romance still stands up well today, and seems to speak to a universal audience from any era. This list of films shows what a great director Kazan was, if you can get past the HUAC hearings and just judge his art on its own merit.

Warren Beatty made his film debut as a popular, wealthy, and handsome high school senior, Bud, of course also a star athlete – the quintessential American dream in a man, and for his film debut, gives a sensitive and believable performance. He was the younger brother of actress Shirley MacLaine, and before this was best known as the boyfriend of Tuesday Weld on The Life and Loves of Dobie Gillis on tv, playing a popular, wealthy, and handsome high schooler in that romantic comedy.

Natalie Wood plays his less wealthy girlfriend, Deenie, from the wrong side of the tracks to Bud's bigoted, narrow-minded, capitalist father, honestly portrayed by Pat Hingle in his most memorable role - he was so good you wanted to hit him with a baseball bat. I don’t think it was Beatty’s debut that surprised people, it was the full-bodied performance by Natalie Wood, in what for me is a career-making performance that proved she was more than just another pretty face, and she was undoubtably that.

In this story, amid the pangs of youthful desire, Bud is first having his advances denied by Deenie, who, of course, has marriage in mind and doesn’t want to be a ‘bad girl’. Then we see Bud’s slutty older sister who gets drunk, then literally has men lining up for a chance with her. We begin to get the idea that this is a more complex film romance than most. Later, when Deenie finally wants to go the distance because she fears she may lose Bud, he backs off, no doubt psychologically damaged by his dysfunctional family. As a result, Deenie has your standard teenage nervous breakdown.

This movie grew on me over time, and though not Kazan’s best, it’s still better than 95% of the movie romances, thanks to the power of William Inge’s original play and Kazan’s great touch with actors. His films produced more Oscar® winning performances is history than anyone except William Wyler – Wyler leads 13 to 8, so even Kazan is a distant second to the great Wyler.

I find this film to always be honestly touching, and it speaks to those who did grow up on the wrong side of the tracks (for me, right next to both the railroad tracks and an old cotton mill). Like many Kazan films, it says a lot about class bigotry and alienation within our society, which is especially tough for teenagers to deal with because they’re just gaining the experiences that progress them into adulthood, and don’t have the wisdom or patience to withstand the prejudices of adults that are often taught to their children as well.

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Before Sunset

Richard Linklater, 2004 (8.2*)
This film was a small, pleasant surprise for me. This one follows Linklater’s Before Sunrise, made nine years earlier with the same actors. In that film, an American traveler, Ethan Hawke, meets a young Frenchwoman from Paris, Julie Delpy, and for at least one night, sparks fly. Yet somehow the film failed to involve me, it just didn’t seem to cut much beneath the surface to let me feel much for the characters, and it was just a two character film.

In this sequel, set nine years later, Hawke is now a published novelist at a book signing at a small Parisian bookstore. After answering a few questions about writing, he spots Delpy off to the side waving at him. You can tell by his face he's both excited and surprised; he wanders over, they very much want to catch up, but Hawke has a flight at the airport and must leave by 7:15 that evening, hence the title. They have to say what they will, and reveal their emotions or hide them, all before sunset. What follows is loose and free examination of what’s been going on in each of their lives and minds since that previous chance meeting. This time, the characters have more passion, more depth, and more chemistry onscreen.

I thought this film was engaging and credible, these are the kinds of relationships in our lives that eventually disturb many of us. The quick ones with lots of chemistry between a couple are who otherwise destined for different geographical locations, at least temporarily. Often they may intend to reuinite but more often do not, and this film makes an honest and easy-going attempt to give us all the same idea – what if we could reunite with a former lover from our past, when our passion was only extinguished by distance and time.

The script, with believable dialogue, was co-written by Linklater and his two stars, which makes me wonder if much of it was improvised; it has that feel. Delpy herself also sings one of her own songs onscreen while playing acoustic guitar, and a couple more on the soundtrack, and they’re not bad – kind of simple and folky like another Marianne Faithful. It seems apparent from the lyrics that she either wrote the song for this film, or as a postscript for the first film. She also gives the better performance here, her character was the more involving with more emotions to show. In fact, this is my favorite performance by Delpy to date.

Linklater often employs a moving camera backing up while the two actors walk forward, following them through the city streets, or even into a river boat. Paris is a beautiful set for a film, and here almost serves as a supporting cast member. This keeps the film from being as static as two people just sitting and talking in a café, which they do briefly, more like My Dinner With Andre, which was boring compared to this film. This story makes us wonder exactly what happened to these characters in the nine year interim, and what will happen in the next two, after this reunion. One of the better screen romances on film, certainly one of the most credible.

This is Linklater’s highest ranked film, currently at #418 on our 2011 update of the Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net, all polls. His others ranked are Dazed and Confused #530, Waking Life #687, then Before Sunrise #752.

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Army of Shadows

Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969, France (9.0*)
Based on truth, as both novelist Joseph Kessel and director Jean-Pierre Melville were both in this army themselves. An excellent (and low-key) war film without the histrionics of most, Army in the Shadows takes the French men and women of the Resistance as its theme, at a point near the end of the war when the Resistance movement and Nazi intelligence about its work and staff are both firmly established.

This film will likely give most of the modern filmgoers a history lesson into the daily movements of the Resistance. Here we are shown the more mundane aspects of fighting a war from within, such as the ladies who operated safe houses for members on the run, as the Gestapo can torture enough members to gain intelligence on others. We also see aristocrats whose estates played host to small aircraft used to smuggle collaborators in and out of France. Unfortunately, we also witness the fate of those who crack under pressure or torture.

This a fascinating expose of the gruesome realities of heroism and the struggle against occupying armies, which of course also included moments of hopelessness and failure of nerve, as even the stout feel hidden eyes on every movement. Events test this hidden army, eventually each one finds themselves up against his or her personal limit of bravery and endurance as this struggle continued for years with no end in sight, at least during the time setting of this film.

Led by Simone Signoret in perhaps her best performance, and also starring Paul Meurisse and Jean-Pierre Cassel, this is one of the finest French films for craftmanship of acting and directing, and is Melville’s masterpiece. His crime films are excellent but none pack the emotional or historical weight of this story. You won’t find a better film about the Resistance in all of cinema.

The newly restored version on dvd was released in 2006 and won three new awards. The film has a rating of 8.2 at IMDB, which would place it in the top 250, but it doesn’t have enough ratings yet, with under 8,000 – so it’s rank in our compendium of polls would be much higher than the current 277, it would certainly be in the top 200. At Metacritics, it has a rating of 99, which would place it in the top 10 there, just after the 5-6 perfect 10’s, which include Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

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Crash (1996)

David Cronenberg, 1996 (8.0*)
You now need the year of this film as a designator, so it's not confused with the mediocre film (that came later) that won best picture of 2005 in a very weak year (when they were afraid of Brokeback Mountain as well).

Cronenberg’s Crash is the much more interesting one; this one pre-dated the terrible best picture one that resembled a tv show, and was based on SF author J.G. Ballard’s novel (he also wrote Empire of the Sun based on his childhood). In this bizarre story, a group of car wreck survivors are turned on by auto crashes.

After a car wreck in which Holly Hunter’s husband is killed in a head-on collision with James Spader he discovers a strange eroticism to the entire crash. They later get together for romance in a car [that's her on the dvd giving him a lap ride in the front seat!]. He then discovers a group of people who use the energy of these crashes to fuel a strange sense of eroticism. Some even re-enact famous crashes at clandestine events only known to the group itself. Those with scars and injuries, like Roseanne Arquette, become especially sensual in cars.

I’d say this film is more notable for James Spader getting to make love onscreen to Holly Hunter, Rosanna Arquette, and his (onscreen) wife Debra Kara Unger [photo below] in the same film, which I think is my favorite sex group yet in all of cinema.

J.G. Ballard is a very interesting author who once stole some Republican National Committee stationary and sent a memo to the convention that nominated Reagan, with an article on them he penned titled “Why I Want to F*** Ronald Reagan”. This was later published in a collection of Ballard's stories and articles with the story of how he acheived the singular feat.

Crash won 8 awards out of 12 nominations

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Adam's Apples

Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005, Denmark (9.1*)

This black comedy has one of the most insane casts since One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). A paroled felon, Nazi skinhead Ulrich Thomsen, who’s perfectly cast here (he just looks like an angry criminal), shows up at a clergyman’s church that serves as a halfway house for some released felons that really should be behind bars. Here they supposedly do community service, but they never seem to do any.

The new arrival soon meets a semi-terrorist Pakistani who holds up all Statoil gas stations because of some capitalist crime by the company against his father; apparently they stole their land to get their oil for nothing, which has happened since oil was discovered. This guy not only has weapons but knows how to use them, as some local crows find out the hard way.

The preacher himself (another fine acting job by Mads Mikkelsen who was the bad guy in the Casino Royale remake, but who has done many excellent Danish films) is a utopian anti-realist who admittedly sees the silver lining to nearly everything. After being beaten senseless for this optimism by the Nazi, he shows up at the skinhead’s door and calmly says “we’ll continue this discussion in the kitchen”. The kitchen is run by an over-sized and over-sexed man who seems to be stuck in his teenage years; he’s the most innocent of the entire group, yet his dirty mind goes into overdrive when a woman shows up.

The apples in the title pertain to the Nazi’s name, Adam, and an apple tree in the yard. Adam decides he’s like to bake an apple pie when the apples are ready. In the meantime, since this film is about whether it’s god or the devil that gives one misfortunes, the poor apple tree goes through hell on earth, nothing goes right for it, yet it’s fruit is the metaphor for the entire film.

Much of this questions the nature of the metaphysical, but in a humorous way. For awhile, you’re so taken aback by some events that you’re saying “what the heck is this?”, then after it’s all over you say “ok – I get it now”. There's a hilarious interchange about a portrait of Adolph Hitler that I won't spoil here, but this humor knows no bounds.

It has a magical quality that few films manage to pull off, without really being a fantasy so much like Field of Dreams or It’s a Wonderful Life or Heaven Can Wait. It’s magic is in it’s eccentric characters, none of whom are similar yet all of whom share the world of the preacher, and they all live apart from urban or even modern problems. Their problems are even larger really, as some unseen force seems to be attacking them whenever possible, especially the preacher – his personal history brings to mind the story of Job, just less extreme.

This won the best feature film award in Denmark, beating out one of my favorites, Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding. I’m not sure if I’d go that far, Bier’s film is one of the best acted in history (and also features Mads Mikkelson); all four major actors in that won best acting awards somewhere in the world, six total (the two women won two each). This was a great year for Danish films, to say the least.

This won 18 awards out of 30 nominations, including several audience awards (Sao Paolo, Warsaw, Wisconsin). Ironically, at IMDB, the fans rate this 7.8 (almost in the top 250), while the critics at Metacritic (36 in all), rank it just 51 out of 100. So average filmgoers like this bizarre film more critics, you’ll think it would be just the opposite once you see it.

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The Breaking Point

Michael Curtiz, 1950, bw (8.7*)
Well after To Have and Have Not (1944), which was loosely based on the Ernest Hemingway novel and which introduced Bacall to Bogart, this remake from famed director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) attempted to remain more faithful to the novel, and the author himself thought it was the finest cinema adaptation of any of his works. This was a much more serious and cynical treatment than the Hollywoodish original.

John Garfield is the small boat captain who’s not too particular about who hires out his boat, as he’s seeing some rough economic times, and he needs to make a boat payment pronto or it could e repossessed. He takes on a charter that definitely involves clandestine, illegal activity that may find him in over his head.

Patricia Neal turns in one of her best performances as the woman who drifts into his life from the other side of tracks (or other side of the harbor in this case), and her coy, self-assured demeanor seems more real than Lauren Bacall’s in the original (and I liked Neal even more), as if she’s honed this act on many men before now, and on a classier batch then Garfield. The two had an apathetic, jaded type of chemistry onscreen, which seems more likely given most Hemingway characters; Garfield treated her like a distraction, not an attraction.

The reason the film has been forgotten is that just before it’s release Garfield was called to testify before the HUAC in Congress, and the studio dropped support for the film and the actor like a hot potato, and Garfield’s career never really recovered, ending just two years later. Though Garfield is certainly no Bogart as an actor, in a way he’s even more of an average joe type of guy, so this is the perfect role for him.

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