Secret Agent Gal Movie Reviews

Our Idiot Brother: Paul Rudd loves mayhem in smart comedy 4/5 stars

 

Ned (Paul Rudd) tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth in Jesse Peretz’s sweet comedy Our Idiot Brother. Rudd’s good-hearted, biodynamic farmer is beset by bad luck in this warm, funny film.

Ned loves others to a fault. Is he really an idiot? Yes and no.

Rudd plays a genial hippie lacking in social judgment. He’s so naïve that he sells pot to a uniformed police officer at the Farmer’s Market one day.

After he is thrown out by his girlfriend Janet (Kathryn Hahn), Ned travels to Brooklyn to crash with each of his three sisters.

Elizabeth Banks (Avery Jessup in 30 Rock) plays Miranda, an ambitious reporter at Vanity Fair. Miranda insists that being an adult means lying and taking advantage of others. The innocent brother can’t relate.

 

Liz (Emily Mortimer) is a mousy, tired wife and mom. She’s unaware of the shenanigans of her film director husband Dylan (Steve Coogan). Ned puts two and two together and spills the beans.

Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) is a club performer who reaches a turning point. Natalie withholds information from her lover Cindy (pep-talking Rashida Jones), and this threatens their relationship. Meanwhile Cindy, who’s a lawyer, helps Ned with his legal problems.

Ned drives his sisters nuts by spilling their personal secrets. This turns their lives upside down. It’s not that he wants to hurt anyone. He just can’t conceive of a world where people hide things from one another.

 

Unfortunately, neither Peretz nor the script coax much depth from the sisters. Pushy Miranda, overwhelmed Liz and flighty Natalie remain one-dimensional.

Finally, Ned’s mom (Shirley Knight, wonderful here) is the one who opens her home to him unconditionally. Mournfully, he accepts.  

Janet’s breakup with Ned is tough love. Living a back-to-the-land lifestyle, she’s a sermonizing spitfire. Ned is heart-broken when she insists on keeping Willie Nelson, his golden retriever and best friend.

The born-again optimist is unable to match any cynical, mean vibes. Ned loses it during a game of charades with his disillusioned siblings. The scene shows how hard it is for him to be in the world.

Trying a new age solution, Ned meets a know-it-all teacher and passes out in a sweat lodge called “The Win Tent.” Although he often seems to fail, the idiot brother occasionally enchants those he meets.

Ned is happiest playing with his 7-year-old nephew River (Matthew Mindler). Liz and Dylan enroll River in dance classes, hell-bent on grooming him for admission to an elite school. What the boy really loves is learning Tae Kwon Do from his uncle and watching Pink Panther past his bed time.

Like Ed Helms in Cedar Rapids, Rudd gives a standout performance as an oddball character for our time. What would the world look like if more people were like Ned? As he shakes things up, lives are transformed and healed.  

Rudd’s raunchiest moment is when Ned tentatively accepts a three-way with an amorous couple. He can’t go through with it. British comedian Coogan is brilliant as Liz’s wayward hubby. His arse-backwards nude scene is terrific.

The smart, funny script was written by Evgenia Peretz (the director’s sister) and her partner Anthony Bregman. Do you like happy endings? Dog lovers will appreciate this silly but positive conclusion.

If you like Our Idiot Brother, you might enjoy: The Trip; Barney’s Version; Cedar Rapids.

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Our Idiot Brother     2011  /  R  /  1 hour, 30 min

Cast Overview:  Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, Steve Coogan, Hugh Dancy, Kathryn Hahn, Rashida Jones, Shirley Knight, T.J. Miller, Matthew Mindler

Director: Jesse Peretz

Genre:  Comedy

 

 

In a Better World *****

 

 

A father becomes a peacemaker in the Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning drama In a Better World.

Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier explores violence, courage and responsibility in this rich, mature drama, her tenth feature. She’s known for complex, well made films including Open Hearts (2002), Brothers (2004) and After the Wedding (2006).

Mikael Persbrandt (Everlasting Moments) stars as Anton, a surgeon working in a Kenyan field hospital. While he treats refugees, he’s interrupted by bloody emergencies as a local thug, Big Man, butchers pregnant women for sport.

Anton struggles to rescue his marriage to Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), also a doctor, who lives in Denmark with their two sons. Often away from home, Anton spends quality time whenever possible with 10-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard), a gentle boy who wears braces.

Elias is viciously bullied at school by Sofus (Simon Maagaard Holm) and his followers, who make anti-Swedish comments. School officials misread the dangerous situation and seem unable to take effective action. Anton urges his son to ignore Sofus. Fighting would accomplish nothing except to lower him to the bully’s level, he says.

Elias is befriended by Christian (William Johnk Nielsen), a quiet, intense boy who moves to the area after his mother dies of cancer. Christian advises Elias to fight back so others won’t dare pick on him.

Christian corners Sofus in a school bathroom one day, beating him with a bicycle pump and holding a knife to his throat. Horrified Elias looks on. Police are called, but charges are dropped when they are unable to find the knife.

It’s attack or be attacked, Christian tells his father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen). He accuses the man of wanting his mother to die. Claus tries to explain his complex emotions during his wife’s painful decline.

 

At the park one day, Anton breaks up a fight between a boy and his youngest son as Elias and Christian watch.   Suddenly Anton is insulted and slapped by the boy’s father Lars (Kim Bodnia).

Anton walks away and attempts to forgive. He swims off his anger later in the cold lake of his summer home. Elias asks his dad why he is such a wimp. Anton next tries to craft a teachable moment, revisiting Lars with the boys.  He speaks out and is slapped again.

Christian builds a pipe bomb using internet instructions, planning to blow up Lars’ van. Outwardly calm and serious, he urges Elias to accompany him. The explosion will happen early Sunday and no one will be hurt, he promises. Reluctantly, Elias agrees.

Back in Kenya, Big Man has been seriously wounded and is brought to the hospital.  The warlord orders Anton to save his leg, and offers him a bribe. The surgeon treats him because he must. When villagers take matters into their own hands, Anton is a helpless witness.

A flawed man struggling to live his truth, Anton chooses peace and surrenders the satisfaction of being right. He can’t change the world, but he can be present and loving. In a Better World suggests that all children belong to us.

Bier skillfully manages many story elements to craft a majestic film. Morton Soborg provides stunning camerawork. Screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, composer Johan Soderqvist and editor Pernille Bech Christensen lend their talents.

If you like In a Better World, you might enjoy:  Win Win; The Kids Are All Right; Precious.

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In a Better World     2010  /  R  /     1 hour, 53 min

Cast Overview:  Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, Markus Rygaard, William Johnk Nielsen, Bodil Jorgensen, Elsebeth Steentoft, Martin Buch, Anette Stovlebaek, Kim Bodnia

Director:  Susanne Bier

Genre:  Drama, Thriller, World Cinema

Language:  Danish and Swedish with English subtitles

 

 

Of Gods and Men *****

 
 

Seven French monks face death as civil war sweeps through a mountain village in Of Gods and Men.

Xavier Beauvois directs the true life drama which won Best Film at the Cesar Awards (France’s Oscars) and the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2010.

The Trappist monks offer compassionate service in the rural Algerian highlands. They raise crops and sell honey. Elderly Brother Luc (Cesar winner Michael Lonsdale) gives medical care to the poor.  When a child’s shoes are worn, he provides a new pair.

Extremists slit the throats of Croatian highway workers one day. Villagers run to tell the brothers. Tensions rise between Islamist insurgents and a corrupt government. France’s colonization of Algeria, years after the country regained independence, still rankles. Foreigners are not trusted.  

In this can’t-look-away film, Beauvois focuses on the inner and outer lives of the monks, who were kidnapped during the 1996 civil war and later executed.  No group admitted to the slayings.

Love and devotion are genuine. Cinematographer Caroline Champetier (also a Cesar winner) captures the monks’ emotion, movement and conversation close up in the beautiful, meditative mountains. The film was made in Morocco.

As violence spreads, the government orders the monks to leave the country. The men debate their fate. They have long accepted their Islamic brothers and sisters.

The monks are radicals too, believing that reconciliation is possible. Daily service, prayer and devotion fill their days. The community’s prior Christian (Lambert Wilson) reads both the Koran and the Bible.

Ego is almost completely subdued among the brothers.  Chatter doesn’t fill their dinner hour. Instead, they listen to scripture readings as they eat in silence.

Wilson told The New York Times that the actors went on retreat in the French Alps to prepare for their roles. "We spent a few days observing the monks, eating in silence with the other people who were going on the retreat, and then we started singing. And that was really the best preparation. We learned Gregorian chanting. We learned liturgical singing as a group. This is really what got this group of French actors together."

Known for his performances in the Matrix trilogy, Wilson usually plays romantic and lighthearted characters.

After a terse showdown with Christian on Christmas evening, a terrorist leader designates the abbey as protected. To Beauvois’ credit he transcends stereotypes.

When a wounded jihadist is brought in, Luc treats him as he would anyone else.  The act of charity must be kept secret or the group risks government retaliation.  

Each monk must decide whether to stay or leave.  Christophe (Olivier Rabourdin) struggles with fear and anger more than the rest. 

The men don’t want to be martyrs, they decide. But where else will they go when they are so needed here?  “It is mad to stay, like it is mad to become a monk,” says Christian.

 

 

In one of the best scenes, the group stands during morning prayer and sings loudly as a military helicopter hovers overhead, filling the monastery with a terrifying racket.

Towards the end, Luc breaks out two bottles of wine for dinner.  Wordlessly, he plays a tape of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.  The monks smile, tears glistening. The music swells as does their passion to follow Christ in selfless service.

Of Gods and Men is worth seeing twice for its nuance.  It is the best movie exploration yet of silent devotion in a complex world. Beauvois, who co-wrote the script, captures simple sanctity and dramatic tension. Films covering similar territory include Silent Light, Into Great Silence and Hadewijch.

The film is loosely based on The Monks of Tibhirine by John Kiser.

If you like Of Gods and Men, you might enjoy:  Get Low; 127 Hours; The King’s Speech.

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Of Gods and Men   2010  /  PG-13  /  2 hours

Cast:  Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, Jacques Herlin, Loic Pichon, Jean-Marie Laudenbach

Director:  Xavier Beauvois

Genre:  Drama, Historical Drama, Foreign Film, True Stories, Movie Based on the Book

Languages:  French and Arabic with English subtitles

 

 

Get Low ***1/2

 
 

Felix Bush is throwing a funeral party, and he’s the guest of honor.  Robert Duvall plays a country hermit with a secret in the wry indie drama Get Low.

Duvall’s ornery Felix, based on a real character in 1930’s Tennessee, parallels the actor’s own uncompromising portrayals of faith as he sees it.

Duvall, who turned 80 in January, has created stark portraits for nearly 50 years, from mentally ill Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) to his Oscar-winning role in Tender Mercies (1983). In the latter he played Mac Sledge, an alcoholic country singer whose faith is tested when his daughter is killed.

The actor’s career turning point was his role in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), where he played calm mob consigliere Tom Hagen.

Duvall wrote, directed and starred in The Apostle (1997), playing a Pentecostal preacher who struggles with temptation. Unable to sell the script, he financed the project himself. His character Sonny Dewey loves God with fervor, even after killing his wife’s lover with a baseball bat.

Get Low’s Felix is seeking forgiveness for a crime he once committed.  He’s savored his pain and guilt in a backwoods cabin for 40 years. As the townspeople tell it, he’s a loon known for his tirades and “shoot first” policy towards any trespasser (or visitor) on his land.

The crime is not revealed until late in the movie. The only clues we have are a faded photo of a beautiful woman (who he talks to each night), and Mattie Darrow (lovely Sissy Spacek), another woman from his past. Mattie has just moved back to town and knows Felix better than anyone, or so she thinks.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Duvall said that when he prepared to play the man, he captured “a great sense of solitude” and let it “off-handedly lay there within the character.”

 

Spacek's chemistry with Duvall is tender and tentative.  Mattie and Felix were old flames, apparently. His deference to her femininity, burnished by age, is touching.  Mattie tells her friends he was one of the most fascinating men she ever knew back in the day.

Suspicious and grouchy, Felix is a droll joker who wants to take responsibility for his past in his own way.  He asks a preacher (Bill Cobbs) to speak at his funeral party, but rejects the reverend’s idea of how he must atone.

Get Low Director Aaron Schneider won a Spirit Award for Best First Feature.

Felix spars with funeral parlor director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) who is eager to make money in the midst of the Depression.  Wonderfully deadpan Murray keeps us guessing about his true motives. Lucas Black plays Quinn’s assistant Buddy, a young husband and father who captures Felix’s heart.

Despite its twisty misadventures, Get Low never rises from a plain-spoken flatness. It peaks when Felix finally presides over his own funeral party, surrounded by those who fear and despise him. 

If you like Get Low, you might enjoy:  Biutiful; The Company Men; The American.

Get Low   2009  /  PG-13  /  1 hour, 42 min

Cast Overview:   Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Gerald McRaney, Bill Cobbs, Scott Cooper, Lorie Beth Edgeman

Director:  Aaron Schneider

Genres:  Indie Drama, Dark Comedy, Drama Based on Real Life

The Kids Are All Right *****

 

The Kids Are All Right can open your heart and change your mind. Stereotypes melt with natural acting, arch comedic timing and an honest but not overbearing point of view. Here is a form of family – and it’s genuinely all right.

Director Lisa Cholodenko conjures an alchemy of female and male, new and traditional. When a filmmaker gives her characters the freedom to go all out, letting the story tell itself, it shows true maturity and mastery. She provokes thought without a sermon.

The film won two Golden Globe awards, one for Best Comedy Feature  and one for Best Actress in a Comedy (Bening). It also won a Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.

Perfect casting allows Cholodenko to realize her vision. The “momses” Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) are a couple with two children, wise 18-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and wayward younger brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson). An anonymous sperm donor enabled both moms to give birth.

What Nic and Jules don’t know is that Laser is keen to meet his bio-dad Paul (Mark Ruffalo). Joni (being of age) contacts the donor agency to arrange contact. Ruffalo is perfectly suited as the dude who eventually meets brother and sister at his farm-to-table restaurant. He turns out to be a socially conscious hottie and motorcycle-riding bachelor.

Paul becomes a wild card in Nic and Jules’ marriage, not a member of their family but suddenly an admired mentor to their children. Never married, he is awed and intrigued by his newfound connections. Paul feels at home in this alternative family, so moved by its love and belonging that he’d take a shortcut to having one himself.

Laser’s relationship with an abusive “best friend” is examined as Paul mentors. Seeking answers, Laser finds some affirmation as Paul explains his decision to be a donor. “Hey, I’m glad I did it.”

Joni dares to ride a motorcycle against Nic’s orders, and revisits her own friendships. Both Joni and Laser begin to discern and make decisions newly as they integrate a man into their lives. True and direct, Wasikowska and Hutcherson show they are two actors to watch out for.

 

Bening is hilarious as enigmatic Nic, an uptight, overachieving M.D. with a proclivity for just one more glass of wine. Jules (Moore) is a free spirit, a onetime architect who yearns to launch her own landscape design company. Moore explores many faces of Jules, from wholesome to aggressive. Together Bening and Moore create bona fide screen history.

The emotions and possibilities of “what if” become supercharged. Paul’s presence highlights strengths and vulnerabilities in Nic and Jules’ marriage.

Great direction, acting and writing (by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg) evoke an appreciation of family relationships and the resiliency of youth. In real life, Cholodenko and her female partner are parents of a donor child.

Love becomes apparent as the family drops Joni off at college. The film’s heartfelt crescendo focuses on marriage as a challenging work in progress.

If you like The Kids Are All Right, you might enjoy: Win Win; Terri; The Art of Getting By.

The Kids Are All Right 2010 / R / 1 hour, 44 min

Cast Overview: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson

Director: Lisa Cholodenko

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Indie

127 Hours *****

 
 

There’s a moment in the must-see drama 127 Hours where Aron Ralston (James Franco) straddles a spectacular rock formation in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. As the sun rises, the meaning of a man’s life is captured, along with the thrill of encountering the Absolute. It compels Ralston to plunge into the wilderness of his own being even as he daredevils over rocks and ravines. It’s a peak experience that flings him directly at life, death and eternity.

Accolades are piling high for Danny Boyle’s thriller based on Ralston’s memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place. The film was nominated for six Oscars and three Golden Globes. 

Franco won a Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, and was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe Award.

Franco becomes a force of nature on equal footing with wind, sun, earth and water. Convincingly he plays a cocky 27-year-old who doesn’t tell anyone where he’s biking and climbing that weekend, a lover of metal music and speed, a ladies’ man who is truly at home by himself in the elements.

What Ralston seeks (and Franco so eloquently portrays) is sabi, which can be understood as a longing for the Divine. It is that moment of grace, that discovery of beauty in the strange and mysterious.

Boyle’s film is unique as it focuses so well on both the extreme sports action and inner life of Ralston. The psychological suspense of this true-life adventure is intense even when we know how the story ends.

Franco canyoneers, meditates and hallucinates, recalling his almost fatal mistake of leaving behind a Swiss Army Knife. While trapped, he speaks with Source via his camcorder. It’s here that he dictates his bodily functions, regrets and dreams to his human family past, present and future.

What Franco learns is a core principle of sabi. It’s vital to maintain a healthy connection with those around us. It is in relationship where love can be found, where Source touches us tangibly and grounds us. The thrill of solitary spiritual experience, like anything else, can turn into a lair of self-importance, an addiction to danger.

 
At just over 90 minutes, the length of 127 Hours is just right. It’s a survival tale with more punch than Cast Away (2000) and Touching the Void (2003). This personal tale turns mythic alongside the petroglyphs and pictographs of the canyon. Most harrowing is the amputation scene where Ralston decides to save his own life.

Kudos go to Boyle and Simon Beaufoy for dynamic screenplay, and to Glenn Freemantle for sound design. Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak achieve alluring nature and special effects cinematography. Vast wilderness encompasses intricate detail. Over a hundred camera angles build momentum, intertwined with A.R. Rahman’s stirring music. Boyle assembled much of his Slumdog Millionaire team for this project.

Franco was nominated for Best Actor for this role. His death defying bravado and snarkiness is enhanced by the performances of Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn, two attractive hikers who join him briefly as he guides them and shows off.

In a recent interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, Franco spoke about desire to become a director. Franco is enrolled in graduate literature studies at Yale and is the author of a collection of short stories, Palo Alto.

Ralston’s book is worth reading for filmgoers who want to delve deeper into this gem of action and self-discovery. It’s reminiscent of Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, a lively addition to the nature adventure/inner journey genre. Ralston appears at the conclusion of the film.

If you like 127 Hours, you might enjoy: Winter's Bone; The American; Rabbit Hole.

127 Hours 2010 / R / 1 hour, 34 min

Cast Overview: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Treat Williams, John Lawrence, Kate Burton

Director: Danny Boyle

Genres: Adventure, Biopic, Drama, Drama Based on the Book

 

Eat Pray Love ****1/2

 
 
 

Julia Roberts finds herself - and we rediscover her considerable talents -  in a rare “movie-is-better-than-the-book” travel adventure, Eat Pray Love.

Screenplay by director Ryan Murphy and Jennifer Salt redeems the navel-gazing memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert. Revealing an inner adventure that drags at first, the film soon falls into natural rhythm as a world traveler faces her inner demons and searches for love.

Best of all, Eat Pray Love stars a Julia Roberts who shows up in nearly every scene. Abundant screen time allows Roberts to inhabit her character Liz, weave us into her anger and frustration, and reveal a radiant, smiling beauty. There’s no trace of the tight-assed Anna of Closer or Tess of Ocean’s Eleven. Instead we could be watching Mystic Pizza’s Daisy Arujo all grown up.

Roberts seems to be playing herself in the film which avoids becoming preachy or too New Agey. Instead Liz meets an array of honest, memorable characters as she learns to love herself during trips to Italy, India and Bali.

“Ruin is the path to transformation,” Liz finds. After a bitter divorce from sarcastic dreamer Stephen (perfectly played by Billy Crudup), she leaves a rebound-relationship with actor David (James Franco). Tarrying too long in New York City with her literary agent (Viola Davis), Liz finally she sets out, broke and alone.

The film’s rich atmosphere and scenery in all three countries is pleasurable. How big the world is, and how it puts our personal struggles into perspective.

In Italy, Liz indulges in food and abstains from sex. It’s her time to be in relationship with herself. She ruminates about her romantic failures while wolfing down Pizza Margherita in Napoli and enjoying prosciutto topped melon with a motley crew of natives and expatriates. The philosophical group, including new friend Sofi (Tuva Novotny), share interesting times, including a morning-after Thanksgiving turkey with extended family. What Liz takes away from her stay is gratitude – for her friends and for life.

A few pounds heavier, she heads to India and the ashram of David’s guru. Plunging herself into a regimen of chanting, vegetarian meals and 4:00 a.m. meditations, she meets Richard from Texas (raw, honest Richard Jenkins, a likely nominee for Best Supporting Actor). Filled with fear and skepticism, Liz is shown meditating just enough to give us the idea: accept whatever happens, and move on. Rushita Singh is memorable as a teenager who’s being forced into an arranged marriage.

Bali is where Liz reunites with a wise, eccentric shaman Ketut (irresistible Hadi Subiyanto) and befriends a healer Wayan (soulful Christine Hakim). It isn’t long before warm-hearted divorcee Felipe (Javier Bardem) nearly collides with the soul searcher. Roberts and Bardem are magical together onscreen.

Eat Pray Love is part of a new Hollywood tradition: the blockbuster film about self-discovery. The screenplay reportedly struck a chord with Roberts. The film’s team of producers includes Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

Eat Pray Love reveals an authentic side of Julia Roberts while it shows us how the real can become sublime.

If you like Eat Pray Love, you might enjoy: I Am Love; Wild Grass; Another Year.

Eat Pray Love 2010 / PG-13 / 2 hours, 15 minutes

Cast Overview: Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Richard Jenkins, James Franco, Luca Spaghetti

Director: Ryan Murphy

Genres: Self-Discovery, Adventure, Travel, Romance