drama

Infinitely Polar Bear

Posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

Ah, the ups and downs of growing up during the pre-divorce Seventies, not only in a single-parent home but also with a bipolar dad. Directed and written by former The Larry Sanders Show writer Maya Forbes, Infinitely Polar Bear is a warm look back on a less than ideal situation.

Imogene Wolodarsky and Ashley Aufderheide as the lucky daughters create a believable chemistry that works really well with the subject matter. Mark Ruffalo’s performance is outstanding even if it probably isn’t one for which he’ll be remembered—his character’s antics are laugh-out-loud funny at times, and he gives his character (Channing) a loveable dorkish quality. I enjoyed Infinitely Polar Bear: it was funny and touching at once—much like an Afterschool Special.

(Landmark Century) B

http://sonyclassics.com/infinitelypolarbear/

Love and Mercy

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(USA 2015)

Easily the saddest story I’ve seen this year, Love and Mercy chronicles the beginning of Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s head trip and his later courtship with his wife, Melinda (Elizabeth Banks). I seriously doubted John Cusack as Wilson—even more because he looks nothing like Paul Dano, who plays young Wilson. My doubts proved wrong, because it works. Paul Giamatti plays a wonderfully evil physician with power of attorney over Wilson. Flashbacks to earlier days are effective and purposeful, unlike Saint Laurent. I have no idea how much was accurate literal history, but it thoroughly engrossed me.

Director Bill Pohlad’s previous films include Brokeback Mountain, 12 Years a Slave, and Wild.

(Landmark Century) A

http://www.loveandmercyfilm.com

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

American Horror Story: Coven director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s adaptation of the 2012 novel of the same name by Jesse Andrews, who wrote the screenplay. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a simple and underwhelming story, really, with a punchy if morbid title: a self-deprecating goofball teenager named Greg (Thomas Mann) is forced by his mother (Connie Britton) to hang out with prickly classmate Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who is sick with leukemia. Greg’s mother thinks it would be a “nice” thing to do to “make her feel better.”

Rachel is on to Greg, though, and she resents his pity. Nonetheless, the two go through the motions of faking a friendship to get their mothers—Molly Shannon plays Rachel’s mom—off their backs. After Greg introduces his buddy, Earl (R.J. Cyler)—the two of whom make parodies of real films with titles like “Senior Citizen Cane,” “My Dinner with Andre the Giant,” and “Rosemary’s Baby Carrots”—the three develop a friendship. Greg and Earl set out to make a movie for Rachel.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl easily could have gone off the rails and become an insipid little mess, but it doesn’t. It holds together quite well, probably because it’s full of funny (and cringeworthy) moments despite its sad subject matter. Two things make this film exceptional: the acting is superb, and the script nails teenage boy angst with laser precision.

(AMC River East) A-

http://meandearlmovie.com

Saint Laurent

Video posted on by moviebloke

(France 2015)

Ah, the dark side of genius. Saint Laurent is packed with eye candy and has an awful going on visually—but sadly, that’s all it has going for it. A line from Saint Laurent (Gaspard Ulliel) himself sums up the problem concisely: “I like bodies without souls”—the soul of Saint Laurent being somewhere else. Not here in this film.

I was bored, which is a crime considering the real-life material director Bertrand Bonelli had to work with. Some of his choices are puzzling—the temporal chopping effect going back and forth through time is more an annoyance than anything, and I’m at a loss as to why he devotes so much time to seemingly trivial events like a board meeting in New York and a drug trip in an apartment. Who gives a shit, and why would they? Ulliel as young Saint Laurent is charming, full frontal and otherwise; but not even he can elevate this pedestrian slice of an interesting life.

(AMC River East) D

http://www.sonyclassics.com/saintlaurent/mobile/index.html

Welcome to Me

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(USA 2014)

What happens when a middle-aged bipolar lady (Kristen Wiig) on disability wins $89M in the California lottery and buys her own talk show about herself? One would expect hilarity to ensue, but the opposite happens: Alice Klieg makes a bigger, sadder mess out of things. Money really does change everything. Can she repair the damage?

I love Kristen Wiig, but she can go overboard on stupid. That’s what happened here: Welcome to Me is stupid but not all that funny. While the subject matter is darker, the ending is neat and predictable. It tries to make a grand point about mental illness—I suspect—but the effort falls flat. Here’s to the next project.

One big positive: the supporting cast. James Marsden and Wes Bentley as the scheming Ruskin brothers and a surprise appearance by Tim Robbins as Alice’s therapist are nice touches. Joan Cusack as Dawn, the cunty producer annoyed by Alice from the outset, is by far the best character—and probably the best performance here.

According to her bio on IMDB, director Shira Piven is the older sister of actor Jeremy.

(Music Box) C

http://www.welcometomemovie.com

Monument to Michael Jackson [Spomenik Majklu Dzeksonu]

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(Serbia 2014)

After his wife leaves him, Marko (Boris Milivojevic) comes up with a way to revitalize his janky small Serbian town—and hopefully win back his wife, Ljubinka (Natasa Tapuskovic), in the process: he sets his sights on replacing a dreary old communist monument in the town center with something more exciting and “current:” a statue of the King of Pop, who he claims is attending its unveiling. You knock me off my feet now, baby…whooooo!

Monument to Michael Jackson is strange and wonderfully sublime, even if it is melancholy. The characters are realistic and fully developed, and the story is loaded with twists I didn’t see coming—like the reaction of many townspeople and the date of the unveiling (on May 25, 2009, the day Jackson died). I liked it, even with an ending that goes somewhere I was not expecting—at all. This definitely is not an American movie.

Director Darko Lungulov previously did Here and There, which I know from Cyndi Lauper’s title song for the soundtrack. Her husband, David Thornton, starred in it.

(St. Anthony Main) B+

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

http://www.monumenttomichaeljackson.com

 

Black Coal, Thin Ice [Bai ri yan huo] [白日焰火]

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(China 2014)

A suspended alcoholic detective (Liao Fan) is pulled back into the game when a gruesome murder is committed—and it looks a lot like the same case that got him suspended five years before. A woman (Gwei Lun-Mei) working at a dry cleaner holds the key to the mystery.

Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice (Daylight Fireworks in China) is a beautifully shot film noir drama. Everything about it is icy and cold: its story, themes, and style all bring a chill. One shootout scene at a hair salon wouldn’t be out of place in a Tarantino movie. Intricate and complicated, it’s a pity I was tired for it. I suspect I missed a bit of interesting subtext that would have made this even more enjoyable.

(St. Anthony Main) A-

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

http://www.fortissimo.nl/catalogue_lineup_title.aspx?ProjectId=fdb41202-f384-e311-93ff-b8ac6f1685e8

Beatles

Video posted on by moviebloke

(Norway 2014)

Four high school age boys in Oslo—Kim (Louis Williams), Gunnar (Ole Nicolai Myrvoid Jorgensen), Ola (Halvor Tangen Schultz), and Seb (Havard Jackwitz)—are not very different from most boys their age. They do things like steal hood ornaments from cars, get trashed at school dances, and stalk girls. They love the Beatles, so much that they each adopt a Beatles persona and hatch a plan start a band, the Snafus.

Based on Lars Saabye Christensen’s novel, Beatles is a sugar and salt (the name of a Snafus song) coming of age film. It’s sappy nostalgia celebrating a simpler time—think The Wonder Years with a cooler European bent. Set during the late Sixties, it hits a universal note that stops it from sliding into oversentimental dreck. I love all the Beatles references, and how well the film captures the feel of total devotion to a pop star. One scene in which the four boys stop everything to listen to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the day it comes out is gold; it reminds me so much of my own idols in the MTV era. Performances are strong all around. Beatles is not the kind of thing I usually go for, but it is easily one of my favorites from the festival.

(St. Anthony Main) B+

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

http://www.nfi.no/english/norwegianfilms/search/Film?key=103342

The Tales of Hoffmann

Posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1951)

OMG, what the fuck is this? Yes, it’s the operatic epic of Hoffmann (though I still have no idea who the fuck he is) and three of the loves of his life. But…dude, man, FUCK!

Written, directed, and produced by famed Brits the Archers–Michael Powell and Emetic Pressburger–The Tales of Hoffman is an old school movie they just don’t make anymore. Visually, a stunning Technicolor wet dream complete with elaborate dance numbers, lavish costumes, and big trippy-ass sets. It’s serious eye candy with a major gay sensibility (I have no idea whether Powell and Pressburger were gay or not). It’s impressive for its scale alone, and certainly is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

But what the fuck just happened? Clocking in at just over two hours, I thought The Tales of Hoffmann would never end. It’s pretty, but it’s long–it seems longer than it is. For me, it was probably sensory overload with not enough plot. Did I mention, what the FUCK?

(Music Box) D

http://www.rialtopictures.com/hoffmann.html

White God [Fehér isten]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(Hungary 2014)

Tara Fass of Huffington Post was right on the mark when she called Kornél Mundruczó’s White God “a thrilling and visceral fairy tale.” This particular fairy tale traces the parallel paths of Lili (Zsofia Psotta), a brooding teenager handed off to her father (Sandor Zsoter) for three months, and her dog, Hagen (switch hitters Body and Luke), after the two are separated when Lili’s father abandons Hagen on the street. The two main characters– girl and dog– become increasingly feral left on their own. They’re brought together again after a series of events culminating in a beautifully orchestrated over-the-top canine takeover of the city reminiscent of Hitchcock, Disney, and Tarantino. Think of Old Yeller on crack. Not what I expected, which is what drew me in and kept me watching.

Bonus: all of the dogs in the film were strays that reportedly were adopted after shooting ended.

(Music Box) B+

http://www.magpictures.com/whitegod/