drama

Nightcrawler

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(USA 2014)

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a creepy robot-like unemployed thirty-nothing scamming for any work he can get. He quickly discovers he is good at “nightcrawling”—trolling L.A. for accidents and deaths that he can record and sell to a sensationalist local news station.

Like Taxi Driver, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler paints a scathingly dim picture of urban American life with broad strokes of emotional and moral vacancy. It’s an interesting idea and boasts decent performances, but it moves too slowly too often. Perhaps it was intentional, but something about the look rings hollow and low budget. It didn’t leave a strong impression on me, but I can see Nightcrawler as a late night TV staple for generations to come.

(Home via iTunes) C+

http://nightcrawlerfilm.com

’71

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(UK 2015)

’71 is French television director Yann Demange’s finely crafted drama of a British soldier (Jack O’Connell) sent to Belfast to keep the peace amongst the rioting Catholics one day in 1971. After getting separated from his troop during a melee exacerbated by a child running off with a gun, he spends the next 12 hours or so fending off a band of IRA militants intent on killing him. The action is shot up close and in the dark, and the pace is perfectly nerve-wracking. More than just a “war movie,” ’71 is a thriller jammed with suspense and psychological drama that examines human nature and the instinct to survive.

(AMC River East) B+

http://71themovie.com/#/trailer

Cool Hand Luke

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(USA 1967)

Who cuts the heads off parking meters in a drunken haze? Who sidesteps prison kingpin Dragline (George Kennedy) and bluffs his way through poker? Who paves a road in one day, and comes out of solitary confinement whistling? Who eats 50 hard boiled eggs, but manages to inspire his cellmates to eat rice for him? Fucking Cool Hand Luke (Paul Newman), that’s who. This classic prison drama is based on the 1965 novel of the same name by Donn Pearce.

The last time I saw Cool Hand Luke, I was in high school. I don’t remember it moving so slowly. Despite its many charms, a great story certainly not being the least of them, I got bored. What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. “Plastic Jesus,” however, is awesome.

In 2005, the United States Library of Congress deemed Cool Hand Luke “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

(Home via iTunes) B

Funny Girl

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(USA 1968)

Barbra Streisand classic: ugly duckling Fanny Brice (Streisand) makes her way to the top via the stage. In the process, she meets a hot mystery man (Omar Sharif) who is not what he seems. A lengthy Technicolor melodrama in some ways was ahead of its time.

Despite its merits, I got bored: Funny Girl is long, winding, and corny. Plus, Babs gets on my nerves after about an hour and a half. I’ll stick with Madge—her movies suck, but she’s more fun and has more bite.

In 2016, the United States Library of Congress deemed Funny Girl “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

(Evanston Century) C+

Fathom Events

http://www.barbrastreisand.com/us/film/funny-girl

Match

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

A ballet instructor (Patrick Stewart) at Julliard grants an interview to a “grad student” (Carla Gugino) doing research for a dissertation on the history of dance. Accompanied by her husband (Matthew Lillard), the interview takes a bizarre turn when the topic of the dance scene in 1960s New York City and one of its members is raised.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking story based on director/writer Stephen Belber’s play of the same name, Match ponders sexuality, family, career, and the consequences of choices made in the context of these. Somehow, it’s fun to watch Stewart play an aging gay man who keeps a jar full of his fingernail clippings.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B+

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/match/

Band of Outsiders [Bande à part]

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(France 1964)

Jean-Luc Godard’s adaptation of Fool’s Gold, a 1958 novel by American author Dolores Hitchens. Two bad boys, Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur) convince Odile (Anna Karina), a pretty but simple classmate  in their ESL course, to aid and abet their robbery of her sponsor (Georges Staquet). Beautiful black and white shots of mid-Sixties Paris, old cars and clothes, and an iconic dance scene (not to mention a nine-minute long run-through tour of the Louvre) are big pluses. However, the overall pace was too slow and the plot uninteresting for my post-Modern sensibilities. Godard himself called it his least favorite film of his, so it’s not just me. Whew.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) C-

https://www.criterion.com/films/291-band-of-outsiders

Leviathan [Leviafan] [Левиафан]

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(Russia 2014)

A small village Russian fisherman (Alexey Serebryakov) spars with a corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov) hellbent on taking his land. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev packs into two hours a ton of melodrama with political and religious undertones. I wish I knew more about Russian history and its current climate because suspect it would have helped me appreciate Leviathan more. Beautifully filmed in drabulous greys and blues, it sure is purty. The audience got on my nerves with their talking and cellphones going off.

(Music Box) B-

http://sonyclassics.com/leviathan/

http://www.palacefilms.com.au/leviathan/

Two Days, One Night [Deux jours, une nuit]

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(Belgium 2014)

Two Days, One Night—that’s all the time factory worker Sandra (Marion Cotillard) has to save her job. On the weekend before her return to work after a leave due to depression, she learns her coworkers are casting votes on Monday to decide her fate—management devised a scheme to eliminate her position. She makes a humiliating sojourn visiting each coworker one by one to persuade them to relinquish their bonuses so she can remain on the payroll. Along the way, Sandra sees the best and worst of humanity, herself, and the impact that one’s choices have on others.

For a simple story, Two Days, One Night is full of suspense and commentary on economics and class. It has a quiet way of keeping one on the edge of his seat.

(Music Box) A-

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/two-days-one-night/

Still Alice

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Julianne Moore is on a roll, and Still Alice keeps her rolling with one woman’s losing battle against a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Taking a more subtle approach to its subject matter, Still Alice is often difficult to watch even if it isn’t heavy-handed. Episodes of Alice, for example, repeating the same conversation to her son’s date at a holiday meal she prepared, getting lost jogging, wetting her pants because she forgets where the bathroom is, and making a video on her laptop instructing her future self, step by step, how how to commit suicide have an increasingly gnawing, foreboding effect as they pile up. The denouement, however, is restrained: the ending is as subtle and quiet as the rest of the film.

Moore is brilliant, taking us with her as both mind and body break down before our very eyes. She gives a wow performance that evokes sympathy and empathy. Still Alice is so clearly her Oscar stab, with a built-in standing ovation– after Alice lectures about memory at a conference and forgets what she was saying. Alec Baldwin as her husband plays an asshole, a role he has perfected. Like the story itself, though, he plays it with a subtle touch. Ironically or not, he’s totally forgettable here. So are her kids (Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, and Kristen Stewart, though the last has a few shining moments). A more apt title might have been All About Alice.

(AMC River East) A

http://sonyclassics.com/stillalice/

A Most Violent Year

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Not gratuitously violent as the title might imply. A Most Violent Year is not entirely what I expected, but I liked it. Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), a gangster who’s not a gangster, runs a “clean” operation selling gas. Someone’s got it in for him, though, and a mystery unfolds slowly and deliberately with a few nail biting turns.

It’s a film that makes one think, and I left trying to define “clean.” A Most Violent Year did an outstanding job capturing without going overboard the look and feel of the really early still-70s 80s– before big hair, funky sunglasses, and shoulder pads. Props to Jessica Chastain, who played Morales’s wife with dead-on Jersey mob daughter fabulousness.

(AMC River East) B+

http://amostviolentyear.com