Secret Agent Gal Movie Reviews

Melancholia: Kirsten Dunst dances with doom - 5 stars

Lars von Trier casts a spell over you in Melancholia, a visual masterpiece about apocalypse and humanity. Kirsten Dunst stars as a Justine, a runaway bride.

After the film’s enigmatic prologue, Justine and her groom Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) arrive hours late for the wedding reception. Their white limo gets stuck on the trail leading to the secluded estate of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland).

The well-to-do murmur as the couple arrives. Servants bustle. A wedding planner (Udo Kier) frets. Petulant guests fight private little wars. Upstairs, a little boy sleeps.

Depression sinks Justine as the night drags on. All is not well and she knows it. The wedding seems little more than an exercise. She struggles with the niceties. What’s the point?

Claire and John want Justine to be happy. Her illness becomes rude, an inconvenience. “Sometimes I hate you so much,” Claire tells her.

Assembling under the night sky, the merrymakers launch hot air balloons scrawled with best wishes and messages of love.

Justine lashes out, confronting her man-hating mother (Charlotte Rampling) and pound-of-flesh boss (Stellan Skarsgard). A co-worker (Brady Corbet) assails her. Justine tries to shield her unsteady father (John Hurt) from her mother. When Michael mentions having a family someday, she balks.

Fleeing her wedding bed, Justine rides off on a golf cart, gown trailing. Alone she finds peace, watching the stars.

Melancholia joins a flurry of “end times” films. The end of civilization as we know it seems etched in our collective unconscious. Change is in the air. The Occupy Wall Street movement and increasing awareness about economic and environmental issues are dawning.

While The Tree of Life is hopeful and redemptive, Melancholia focuses on approaching devastation. Terrence Malick sees humanity as a grand experiment, a wondrous part of the universe. Von Trier examines our shortcomings and how we face death.

You might view von Trier as a cynic. We’re simply not worth redeeming, he suggests. Let’s start over.

This is a masterful interpretation of the writer-director’s own battle with depression. The illness takes on universal significance.

Dunst boldly conveys the female archetype. In one of Melancholia’s most striking moments, she skinny dips in the night, bathed in the blue light of the looming planet. In a black pastoral scene, the bride runs in slow motion. Brown goo pulls at her hem, trapping her.

Humanity is plagued not by locusts, but by mental illness. Claire suffers bouts of anxiety. She too feels death approaching. Just in case, she keeps a bottle of pills locked away in a drawer.

Claire nurtures her son Leo (Cameron Spurr). Justine dotes on her nephew too. Only with the boy does she show any real warmth.  

If Dunst portrays The Female, then Sutherland plays The Male. John is the rock of the family, the sensible breadwinner. Yet by the end of the film, his actions take a bizarre turn.

The planet Melancholia will be a “fly-by,” John declares. That’s what the scientists say. Childlike, he tracks the spectacle by telescope. Leo shares his fascination.

Horses stir in the stables. Abusing nature is one of our sins. Justine beats her horse Constantine when he stops moving. He is trying to tell her something. Finally she stops and looks skyward.

Melancholia unfolds like a dirge to the strains of Wagner. Cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro achieves a visual hypnosis that is exhilarating. Cosmos, eros and anguish hum.

The bride is considered a symbol of life and fertility. Justine longs for the relief of death.

Dunst won the Best Actress award at Cannes for this role. Melancholia is winning numerous prizes, including Best Film at the European Film Awards.

You can fear death. You can try to escape it. You can die a hero, returning home.

If you like Melancholia, you might also enjoy: Take Shelter; Another Earth; 2012: Time for Change; The Tree of Life.

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Melancholia   2011  /  R  /  2 hours, 15 min

Cast Overview: Kirsen Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard, Kiefer Sutherland, Stellan Skarsgard, Jesper Christensen, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Udo Kier, Brady Corbet

Director:  Lars von Trier

Genre:  Drama, Sci-Fi 

 

Take Shelter: Michael Shannon digs deep to save family - 5 stars

Take Shelter is a fever dream of a thriller. It plunges you into anxiety and hope, victory and defeat. With humanity in trouble, sensitive everyman Curtis LaForche (brilliantly played by Michael Shannon) is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares.

Director Jeff Nichols lets you decide what this film is about. In an age of uncertainty, Curtis’ dark night of the soul feels universal.

Suspenseful and exciting from start to finish, Take Shelter portends the end. Depending on how you see, it will sweep you away with dread or faith. References to “the economy” and “fresh motor oil” lend timely foreboding.

A construction foreman in northern Ohio, tormented Curtis hides his condition from his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain). He seeks help from a doctor and a counselor, trying to quash his visions.

Shannon (Revolutionary Road; Bug) surrenders onscreen. Gangly, enigmatic and tortured, he remains a loving husband and devoted father to a hearing impaired child Hannah (Tova Stewart, sweetly perceptive).

Curtis wants to save his family at any cost. After visiting his mother (Kathy Baker), who’s institutionalized with paranoid schizophrenia, the quiet man understands that his curse is a gift.

March in step, Curtis’ best friend Dewart (Shea Whigham) and his brother Kyle (Ray McKinnon) tell him. Instead, he secures a home improvement loan to build an elaborate storm shelter. Curtis risks everything – home, family, and the health insurance needed for Hannah’s cochlear implant surgery.

Samantha (Jessica Chastain) takes refuge in family, friends and community. Love grounds and guides her. She sells her embroidery at tag sales to finance the family’s annual vacation.

Prolific Chastain (The Debt; The Tree of Life; The Help) creates yet another excellent character here in a spree of recent big screen roles. Samantha struggles to understand and stay with Curtis.

Natural disaster never looked so breathtaking. Adam Stone uses widescreen photography to see beauty in menace. Flocks of starlings, clouds and twin tornadoes loom. Real and impending catastrophes are colored by mystery and mental illness.

Nichols (Shotgun Stories) captures inner and outer worlds with authority and immediacy. His work is reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s, but with more ambiguity. It’s impressive that this is only Nichols’ second feature.

Tight, flawless editing by Parke Gregg enhances drama. David Wingo contrasts darkness and normalcy with his music.

End or beginning? The perspective of nature as a benevolent force ready to help humanity is missing here. It’s a worthy premise for another film.

If you like Take Shelter, you might enjoy:  The Tree of Life; Insidious; The Debt.

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Take Shelter    2011  /  R  /  2 hours

Cast Overview: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, Ray McKinnon, LisaGay Hamilton, Rogert Longstreet, Kathy Baker, Tova Stewart

Director:  Jeff Nichols

Genre:  Drama, Thriller, Suspense, Horror

 

Miss Representation: as media disses women, women speak out - 5 stars

The media trivializes and sexualizes women for profit according to Miss Representation, this year’s most important documentary by far. The disturbing eye-opener from Jennifer Siebel Newsom was featured at Sundance 2011, and recently premiered on OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

The film is filled with in-depth interviews and interspersed with images from print, television, the internet, rock, rap and hip hop videos. Women are seen in cat fights, vying for a man, and doing combat while barely dressed. They are portrayed as decorative, stupid, gold diggers, catty, manipulative, vindictive, and not to be trusted especially by other women, according to Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director of Women in Media & News.

“This notion that women are natural enemies vying for the prize of being most beautiful or the love of whoever is so counter to women in real life,” says Pozner.

“Not only are girls seen as objects by other people, they learn to see themselves as objects,” says Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. (Killing Us Softly). “Self-objectification has become a national epidemic,” according to Caroline Heldman, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Political Science at Occidental College.

Depression, eating disorders, lower ambition, and lower cognitive function results from self-objectification, Heldman says. Girls are less likely to run for office or to vote, she adds. Self-mutilation (hacking or cutting) among female teens is cited as a growing problem.

Digitally altered photos of women create a “more extreme and impossible” image of beauty, according to Kilbourne. Girls “end up measuring themselves against an impossible standard.”

Media content powerfully shapes society, say experts. It influences brains, lives and emotions, especially in children. Profit-hungry media outlets are seen as disregarding social responsibility.

Oscar winning director and producer Paul Haggis (Crash), believes women become “cartoons” as male studio chiefs and filmmakers “see the world in a certain way and so we often replicate the world that we grew up in.”

“We are a nation of teenage boys,” according to Carol Jenkins, Founding President of the Women’s Media Center. Advertisers target men aged 18 - 34 who are less likely to watch television. Thus hyper-sexualized female images abound in advertising and programming.

Deregulation has enabled a few powerful conglomerates to control the U.S. media. The boards of directors of these conglomerates are overwhelmingly male. In an internal memo, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner wrote, “To make money is our only objective.”

Anything goes in television programming at all hours thanks to relaxation of FCC restrictions on adult content.

Electing more women to public office will allow them to shape public policy with their perspectives, insights and experiences. “Women make up 51% of the U.S. population yet comprise only 17% of Congress. Female presidents have been elected in 67 countries, but not in the U.S.” The film is filled with such alarming statistics.

“We’re shortchanging voices that are urgently needed in public forums,” says Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ. Devanshi Patel, a student who ran for Youth Governor of California, offers a refreshing perspective. “Leaders are just servants to people,” she told her mother.

Aren’t sexy women strong? Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) portray women who exploit their sexuality in order to be empowered, says M. Gigi Durham, Ph.D., author of The Lolita Effect. Such a heroine is “very much objectified and exists for the male viewer.”

Meanwhile the series Commander in Chief, which starred Geena Davis as the first woman president of the United States, was cancelled after one season. Oscar winner Davis says that “only 16% of protagonists in films are female.” Davis, the founder of See Jane, disputes the myth that “things are getting better” for women in film.

The media ignores older women, Miss Representation asserts. “Women in their teens, 20’s and 30’s are 39% of the population, yet are 71% of women on TV. Women 40 and older are 47% of the population, yet are 26% of women on TV.” Feminist organizer and activist Gloria Steinem explains, “A patriarchal system values women as child bearers. Period.”

“Only 7% of directors and 10% of writers in film are women,” according to the film. “The average number of news stories about women and girls is less than 20%.”

Strong women are described in news reports according to how they look or how emotional they are. What they say or do is virtually ignored, as seen in media portrayals of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Many prominent women detail their experiences. Powerful images of women in entertainment flash by. These include Oprah Winfrey; Judi Dench; Jada Pinkett Smith; Ellen De Generes; Glenn Close; Sandra Oh; Mariska Hargitay; Julianna Margulies; Tina Fey; Edie Falco; Meryl Streep; Annette Bening; Julianne Moore; Naomi Watts; Gabourey Sidibey; Salma Hayek and Charlize Theron.

Newsom ends Miss Representation with a call to action and a vision of a better world for our daughters and sons.

If you like Miss Representation, you might enjoy: The Whistleblower; The Kids Are All Right; Fair Game.

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Miss Representation    2011  /  NR  /  1 hour, 25 min

Cast Overview: Corey Booker, Margaret Cho, Katie Couric, Geena Davis, Rosario Dawson, Dianne Feinstein, Jane Fonda, Paul Haggis, Lisa Ling, Rachel Maddow, Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice, Gloria Steinem, Daphne Zuniga

Director:  Jennifer Siebel Newsom

Genre:  Documentary

Beautiful Boy: mass murderer reaches feuding parents - 4.5 stars

After a campus murder-suicide spree, Kate and Bill Carroll call their son Sammy to make sure he’s all right. Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. Not only has Sammy died. He was the shooter. Director Shawn Ku’s searing emotional drama Beautiful Boy is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Produced after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, Beautiful Boy captures what films so rarely do: a change of heart. Maria Bello and Michael Sheen fascinate as agonized parents forced to open their hearts to each other just to survive.

As the film opens, Kate and Bill sleep in separate beds. Bill wants to move to his own apartment and start over. Kate tries to reunite the family one last time by proposing a Miami vacation.

They stayed together for Sammy’s sake. When he calls them for the last time, Sammy sounds distant and withdrawn. Bill hangs up and goes to bed. Kate persists, asking the 18-year-old how he is. As he rambles on about snowflakes, she listens. Freshman year is hard for everyone, Kate reassures him. The boy has always been different, quiet and sensitive.

Bello (A History of Violence, and now Detective Jane Timoney in television’s Prime Suspect) is stunning. Her evolution as an actor is clear as she balances rage, honesty and heartbreak. She unleashes a firestorm of denial, grief and coping.

Sheen (the London stage veteran who played David Frost in Frost/Nixon) is excellent as a man of long-suppressed emotions who hardly knows himself. Bill moves like a robot each day between home and office. Already an emotional fugitive, he flees further within after the massacre.

Kyle Gallner (CSI: NY; A Nightmare on Elm Street) perfectly captures depressed, troubled Sammy. His eyes say so much more than he does. Television news reports reveal that he slayed 21 before killing himself.

Besieged by reporters, the devastated couple hides in their own home before taking refuge with Kate’s brother Eric (Alan Tudyk) and his wife Trish (Moon Bloodgood). Trish’s alarmed, well-meaning questions only intensify their pain.

Healing begins. As each moment passes, even mundane chores become accomplishments. Michael Fimognari creates intimacy and a dream-like aesthetic with a hand-held camera. Ku wrote the screenplay with Michael Armbruster.

Beautiful Boy is an autopsy of a marriage. Kate and Bill grow closer and careen apart. They lash out at themselves and each other. They collapse in exhaustion.

Perfectionist Kate is a proofreader. She edits the couple’s media statement, allowing Bill to face a horde of reporters himself. Kate also inspires an opportunistic young novelist Cooper (Austin Nichols).

Kate is relentless with herself and everyone around her. Trish gets upset when her house guest begins “fixing” their home and reading bedtime stories to their little boy. The Carrolls move to a motel.

Bill’s pain is primal. He tells his boss (Bruce French) that he has no friends. Meanwhile Kate rifles through Sammy’s bedroom. She reads his school papers. Grasping for answers, Kate and Bill are left with uncertainty.

Everyone is touched in some way by the incident. Even a motel clerk (Meat Loaf Aday) learns compassion when the vilified mother and father seek refuge. They become real to him.

“I don’t believe in monsters,” Ku says on the film’s website. Beautiful Boy not only made me empathize with the parents. It reminded me that I am my brother’s keeper.

If you like Beautiful Boy, you might enjoy:  Rabbit Hole; Blue Valentine.  

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Beautiful Boy    2010  /  R (language, sexual situation)  /  1 hour, 40 min

Cast Overview:  Michael Sheen, Maria Bello, Alan Tudyk, Moon Bloodgood, Kyle Gallner, Austin Nichols, Meat Loaf Aday

Director:  Shawn Ku

Genre:  Drama

Everything Strange and New: an ex-bachelor confesses - 5 stars

 

A family man endures a mid-life crisis in Everything Strange and New, Frazer Bradshaw’s drama that simmers beneath middle class life in North Oakland, California. The film was nominated for Best First Feature at the 2011 Spirit Awards. It's now streaming online.

Jerry McDaniel is Wayne, a husband and carpenter yearning for the carefree days before his two sons were born. Wayne and his homemaker wife Renee (Beth Lisick) enjoyed each other much more then. Wayne didn’t yet know that she had a mood disorder. Renee lashes out at him often, usually about money. He reminds her to take her meds.

Their mortgage is now higher than what their home is worth. Adulthood becomes a monotonous struggle. Yet when Wayne takes his family to a restaurant, or reads a bedtime story to the frolicking four- and five-year-olds who ignore him, he seems like the perfect dad.

Everything Strange and New shows house after house in a low income neighborhood along Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard. Wayne stands on a rooftop, looking out over other rooftops like Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man. For a brief moment, I feared that he would jump.

Set in a liberal, economically depressed area, the film is punctuated by sudden, exultant strains of a post-modern jig. Melancholy is lightened with daily routines. Kent Sparling wrote the outstanding score. Saxophonist Dan Plonsey performs.  

Where’s the excitement, the sense of new possibilities? Wayne goes out with his buddies for beers after work.

It’s “easy to forget” how much he loves his wife and sons, and how much they love him. Meanwhile he renovates a Victorian home for another unseen family. The camera lingers at a window. Outside is a tree. You can imagine how beautiful the space will become, and sense the memories it will hold.

Bradshaw finds hope and possibility in everyday images, startling you with the avant garde. When Wayne opens the front door one day, he hears Renee talking to the kids. Like a stranger, he stands and listens. The eerie, alien moment lengthens. Who are they? Who is he? He turns to leave.

 

Wayne tells his friends Manny (the late Luis Saguar) and Leo (Rigo Chacon Jr.) that he wants to study electrical engineering. “I think I missed my calling,” he says. “It’s not about being happy all the time,” Manny tells him. “It’s about being happy more than not.”

Each friend faces his own crisis. Wayne discovers Manny in his car getting a cocaine fix. Not long afterwards, Wayne is surprised when Leo comes on to him as they watch the game. Divorced father Leo says he’s not gay.

McDaniel’s heartfelt, quiet voice-overs reveal modern angst. Arms and legs swing from his tall, lithe frame. Playing the sad clown at a birthday party, he wears baggy overalls.

Bradshaw weaves experimental elements into the narrative in a natural, enigmatic way. Families pose for portraits. Traffic moves backwards. Wayne appears in his clown makeup, imagining what he would really like to be doing. The gently surreal, futuristic feeling.

McDaniel also played a clown in the video Sonata (2004). Lisick has directed, written and acted in several short films including Sinking State and Diving for Pears.

Bradshaw also served as cinematograper, writer and editor for this film.

If you like Everything Strange and New, you might enjoy:  A Serious Man; Barney’s Version.

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Everything Strange and New     2009  /  NR (language, sexual situations)  /  1 hour, 24 mins

Cast Overview:  Jerry McDaniel, Beth Lisick, Luis Saguar, Rigo Chacon Jr., Oliver McDaniel, Finnegan McDaniel

Director:  Frazer Bradshaw

Genre:  Drama, Indie

 

The Debt: Mirren, Chastain star in classy spy thriller - 5 stars

 

Classy and exciting, The Debt draws you in until the very last scene. John Madden’s film about an Israeli secret service mission is 2011’s best thriller to date. Excellent acting, screenplay and cinematography combine in this remake of the thriller Hahov (2007).

The arc of story is deepened with both mature and young versions of Mossad agents Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain), David Peretz (Ciaran Hinds and Sam Worthington), and Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson and Marton Csokas).

The story first unfolds in 1997 Tel Aviv. Rachel and Stephan’s daughter Sarah has written a book about her parents’ role in a heroic mission. Concern marks Rachel’s face at a book party and later during a television appearance.

The real action begins in 1965. The agents plan to capture Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen) and bring him to justice. With all the urgency of young patriots seeking to make history, they prepare every detail.

 

Mirren and Chastain provide The Debt’s moral center. Both are stellar and memorable. It is a real treat to see their work in tandem as the film explores truth and honor.

Mirren is precise and soulful as Rachel faces a crisis of conscience. When a shameful secret emerges, she is forced to return to service.

Fear and mourning don’t stop the mother and grandmother Rachel. She’s smart, gutsy and angry. Finally, she has a change of heart. Mirren fascinated me until the very last scene.

Prolific Chastain (excellent in recent notables The Tree of Life and The Help) is intense, passionate and athletic. Soon a love triangle develops as she lives in close quarters with David and Stephan.

Each agent has been damaged by the Holocaust in some way. David lost his entire family.

The team confirms that Vogel has changed his name and is a practicing gynecologist in East Berlin. Young Rachel’s visit to his office is sure to become a classic scene. Later, a huge scar on Rachel’s right cheek seems to symbolize Israel’s search for justice and healing.  

Capturing Vogel in broad daylight is suspenseful, but moving him to Israel proves difficult. With Nazi soldiers on high alert, the team hijacks a truck near a train station. Complications arise.

Young Stephan wants to save face after the botched mission. David goes along. Rachel objects and finally relents. Years later she tells Stephan, “I knew we’d be punished. I knew we’d have to pay.”

Award winners Mirren and Wilkinson set the bar high. Hinds makes the most of his tragic, brief appearance. Csokas brings young Stephan to life with swagger and sex appeal. Worthington (Avatar) sensitively portrays the deeply wounded David.

Called the “surgeon of Birkenau,” Vogel’s character seems to be based on Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele conducted human experiments during World War II, including changing childrens’ eye color. This caused blindness in many, a fact mentioned in the film.  

The Debt was adapted from the original movie by screenwriters Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan.

Madden (Shakespeare in Love; Proof) does a superb job with sustained suspense and riveting action. His film is intellectually satisfying and heartfelt.

If you like The Debt, you might enjoy:  Hanna; SALT; Incendies.

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The Debt     2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 51 min 

Cast Overview:  Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, Jesper Christenson, Marton Csokas, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Romi Aboulafia

Director:  John Madden

Genre:  Thriller, Drama

 

 

Missing Pieces: Mark Boone Junior kidnaps his way to love ****

 

Kidnapping meets romance in the indie psychological drama Missing Pieces. Director Kenton Bartlett’s feature debut asks big questions and answers them with mind-bending originality. I want to feel something real. I want to feel happy. Why is this happening? It's now streaming online.

Missing Pieces investigates the brink of wholeness. Impressively crafted on a low budget, it’s a tale of dissolution and survival, a sly mix of Criminal Minds and the spiritual genre.

Mark Boone Junior (Memento; Batman Begins; Sons of Anarchy) is fascinating as David Lindale, a man whose life implodes after a head injury. With his mind and emotions fractured, he poignantly struggles to win back his exasperated ex-girlfriend Delia Greenly (Melora Walters). Soon his actions take a disturbing turn.

David seems gentle, but we don’t know what he’s capable of. Recovering from an accident, he has stopped taking his medication. While making his rounds as a delivery man, David meets Maggie Anderson (Taylor Engel) and Daylen Gordon (Daniel Hassel). With the sure insight of a damaged human being, he immediately recognizes that the two are missing pieces of their lives, too.

Using sparse, strong dialogue, Bartlett (who also wrote and produced the film) weaves in excerpts from a self-help tape. These represent David’s efforts to heal and to reclaim his life. The effect succeeds with preachy truisms like, “The only way to be happy is right here in this moment.” Loneliness becomes tangible.

David devises a plan: observe love. The world becomes his laboratory. If he can isolate two people and provide them with the right questions and instructions, can he reproduce the formula for happiness and love? Boone Junior reveals the monster within all of us.

Constant cuts to different lives and characters obscure the narrative. The logistics behind David’s grand experiment stretch belief. The harrowing journey runs a bit too long. Still this is a film worth seeing for its rich storytelling, challenging and original premise, and compassionate vision.

 

A turning point is reached when David realizes, “I need to give more.” He approaches Delia again.

Boone Junior creates an arresting portrait of despair and hope that anchors the film. Walters (Boogie Nights; Magnolia; Big Love) convinces as an aggravated woman who knows when it’s time to give up. Engel and Hassel debut with fine performances as Maggie and Daylen discover themselves and each other under extreme conditions.

Cinematographer Jonathan Arturo uses the camera in a full, free way that captures small, personal worlds in the context of sweeping, natural landscapes. Longing, fear and anger are evoked with a beautiful, understated color palette. Several scenes come to life like Andrew Wyeth paintings. Filmed primarily in Birmingham, Alabama, Missing Pieces was also shot in Colorado, South Dakota and Utah.                 

Richey Rynkowski (orchestrator assistant on Black Swan) creates original music that resonates and adds dimensionality.

Missing Pieces is a cry from the depths, a demand for answers from a seemingly indifferent Universe, a creepy trek towards self-actualization and love.

 If you like Missing Pieces, you might enjoy:  The Ledge; The Perfect Host; The Tree of Life.

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Missing Pieces     2011  /  NR /  1 hour, 57 min.

Cast Overview:  Mark Boone Jr., Melora Walters, Daniel Hassel, Taylor Engel

Director:  Kenton Bartlett

Genre:  Indie, Psychological Drama, Suspense

The Names of Love ***1/2

 

In a tribute to Woody Allen The Names of Love (Le Nom des Gens) stars a “political whore” who seduces one man at a time to create social change. Director Michel Leclerc’s dark romantic comedy stars Sara Forestier.

Forestier won a Cesar (France’s Oscar) as bawdy Baya in this Annie Hall-like take on love and identity. Baya is the daughter of an Alergian immigrant (Zinedine Soualem) who pours his heart into his paintings, and a former French radical (Carole Franck). Her half-Arab roots are her secret pride. An avid left-winger, she’s out to convert one “fascist” at a time.

Forestier traipses nude as Baya plies her body like a perky, bombastic tool. Wardrobe malfunction moments are oddly amusing and over-the-top. In a memorable performance, Forestier flits bird-like from one lover to the next. Baya was seduced by her piano teacher at age 12.  Since then, she’s never been the same.

Jacques Gamblin stars as straight-arrow Arthur Martin, Baya’s newest love interest. Arthur is a veterinarian who performs necropsies on dead animals. He cautions citizens to guard against the H5N1 virus. Baya bursts into the sound studio in protest while he’s speaking on a radio show.

Arthur’s French Catholic father (Jacques Boudet) runs a nuclear power plant and fought in Algeria. His mother (Michele Moretti) suppresses her Jewish identity and Auschwitz memories. The truth often bursts out, especially when she loses her papers one day.

Arthur travels back in time, but fails to change his parents’ decision to name him Arthur Martin. They masked his half-Jewish heritage by naming him after a line of washing machines. Deadpan Arthur is efficient and reliable, just like the appliances. Everyone he meets says so.  

 

The Names of Love plumbs identity while it weaves dark comedy around two taboos, childhood sexual abuse and The Holocaust. The film's mood is reflective, sad and occasionally amusing.

Arthur’s inner teen appears to chat with him about Baya. The adult wants to capture her free spirit for his own, but wonders whether it’s possible or even wise. Arthur’s dead grandparents return, urging him to remember them. In one scene, the son delightfully reimagines his mother’s past as she rides in her father’s taxi.

When Arthur introduces his parents to Baya, their dinner party erupts into near mayhem. Suppressing herself is not Baya’s strong suit. When her parents arrive for dessert, interesting complications arise.

Leclerc, who co-wrote the screenplay with his partner Baya Kasmi, mentions Woody Allen in the dialogue as he adapts the famed director’s “free love” style.

Watching the film can be challenging. White subtitles sometimes appear on a white background. Certain scenes are blurred for effect in a distracting manner.

A cameo by Arthur’s idol Lionel Jospin, a former French prime minister and Socialist presidential candidate, is featured.

The treatment of immigrants and non-Christians in modern-day France was also explored poignantly and tenderly in the romantic drama Welcome.

Baya and Arthur consider the future. How safe is it to be oneself in any culture or country? “We’re half-breeds,” Baya declares. “The day there’s nothing but half-breeds is the day there’ll be peace.”

If you like The Names of Love, you might enjoy: Midnight in Paris; Barney’s Version; 35 Shots of Rum; Welcome.

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The Names of Love (Le Nom des Gens)    2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 42 min

Cast Overview:  Sara Forestier, Jacques Gamblin, Carole Franck, Zinadine Soualem, Michele Moretti, Jacques Boudet

Director:  Michel Leclerc

Genre:  Romantic Comedy, Dark Comedy, Foreign Film

Language:  French with English subtitles

 

The Perfect Host ****1/2

 

Do we ever really know someone? Emmy and Tony Award winner David Hyde Pierce stars in a twisty, stylish crime thriller The Perfect Host, now playing on demand before it opens in theaters. Aussie director-writer Nick Tomnay’s fascinating romp explores misleading appearances and the jagged edges of personal psychology.

Hyde Pierce powers the low budget film’s comedic horror, showing the full range of his incredible acting talent. Best known as neurotic, ever-frustrated Dr. Niles Crane on television’s Fraiser series, Pierce (Nixon, Full Frontal, Spamalot and Curtains) is nice and oh-so-naughty here, transcending metrosexuality as he plays Warwick Wilson, a refined gay man throwing a dinner party.

Just as Niles desperately seeks the love of Daphne, Warwick burns for unconditional affirmation of his own worthiness. “Love me. Love me,” he says during a kinky scene.

Premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, The Perfect Host is a chess game of moves and countermoves. The story turns surreal in a posh, Los Angeles suburban home. The straightforward is suddenly turned on its head. We’re challenged to decide what’s real and what’s illusion. Survival is at stake as “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

Also excellent is Clayne Crawford (A Walk to Remember, 24) as John Taylor, an unlucky bank robber on the lam who rings Warwick’s doorbell. John steals a postcard from Warwick’s mailbox, pretending to be a friend of a friend. The crook is in for the surprise of his life. Crawford deepens his character with surprising humanity.

The first plot twist leads to surprising revelations about Warwick, John and Simone (Megahn Perry), the bank robber’s girlfriend. As characters veer into the unexpected, Tomnay skillfully keeps the Hitchcock-like action on track in this darkly funny exploration of human idiosyncrasy.

John Swihart’s original score suits the movie’s many moods and adds to the fun.

 

Grammy winner Helen Reddy, who topped the Billboard charts in 1972 with her women’s lib tune I Am Woman, delivers a strong supporting role as Mrs. Knight, Warwick’s concerned neighbor. Also starring are Nathaniel Parker as Detective Morton, and Joseph Will as Detective Valdez. Morton wants to take a cold case one step further.

The Perfect Host (on Twitter @perfecthost) turns into a who’s who of crime and punishment. Based on Tomnay’s short film The Host, it maintains edgy action and bizarre fascination until the very end.

If you like The Perfect Host, you might enjoy: Shutter Island; The Ghost Writer.

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The Perfect Host     2011  /  R  /  1 hour, 34 min

Cast Overview:  David Hyde Pierce, Clayne Crawford, Helen Reddy, Nathaniel Parker, Megahn Perry, Joseph Will, Tyrees Allen, Annie Campbell, Indira G. Wilson, Cooper Barnes

Director:  Nick Tomnay

Genre:  Thriller, Suspense, Indie

Hesher **1/2

 
 

Just when we start to like Hesher, he talks about his balls at a funeral or trashes someone’s backyard for fun. Natalie Portman appears in and co-produces the indie mashup Hesher.

Hesher is an enigmatic drifter played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception; 3rd Rock from the Sun). Long-haired and dirty with a middle finger tattooed along his spine, Hesher is a juvie survivor, homeless wanderer and self-styled avenger. He drives a battered pickup truck that blares death metal music. An anti-hero who loves to blow things up, Hesher spouts filth, eats like a caveman, bangs chicks and watches porn.

Of course 12-year-old T.J. Forney (Devin Brochu) is fascinated. Hesher follows him home one day after T.J. throws a rock through a window at a construction site, accidentally dislocating the squatter. Hesher arrives at T.J.'s dysfunctional household not long after the boy's mom dies in a car accident.

Hesher's reluctant hosts are zombie-like. T.J.’s dad (Rainn Wilson of The Office) is whacked-out on anti-depressants. His grandmother (Piper Laurie, creepy, sly and sweet) is not all there, but manages to cook meals. “Life is like walking in the rain,” she says. “You can hide and take cover, or just get wet.” They let T.J.'s "friend" stay, not knowing he has threatened the horrified, spellbound pre-teen.

Wounded T.J. pilfers his dad’s money via an ATM, hoping to escape to somewhere better. The boy tries to buy back his family’s totaled car from an auto wrecking yard. The owner (John Carroll Lynch, consistently great) warns him to stay away. T.J. falls asleep in the wreck one night, desperate to feel his mom’s loving presence. Brochu is the saving grace of the film, a young actor to watch out for.

Set pieces, especially the pool scene, are original and memorable. The premise of Hesher is good. Yet the misfit’s bizarre behavior overpowers and detracts from the story.

 

When T.J. develops a crush on a plain, sweet convenience store clerk Nicole (a lovely role for Portman), Hesher offers unwanted man advice. Nicole struggles in her dead-end job and life. When she rear-ends another car while giving T.J. a ride home, Hesher comes to the rescue. “Some days a day is bad and you discover whole new ways it could get way worse,” Nicole laments.

When times get tough, is screaming and violence the key to recovery? Hesher blows up a bully’s car in the name of justice. When T.J. tells him never to do that again, the dude is temporarily nonplussed.

Hesher is a primal scream in a world where bad things happen to the good. His footfalls thunder like a herd of rhino. Anger guides him. We get it, but does he have to be so repulsive?

There’s principled disobedience, and then there’s Hesher. His venting doesn’t have a point. Any good that comes out of his visit to the Forneys is pure accident. Bad Santa he’s not.

Writer-director Spencer Susser has created an incoherent film with some fresh moments. Hesher’s heart may be in the right place, but he leads T.J. in immature and dangerous ways. The rebel's exercise of power is wrong-headed and pathetic. Everyone except grandma has forgotten his original self-worth and sacredness. They believe they are powerless, and so they are.

What were the producers thinking in making this film? A line of Portman’s dialogue could be her answer: “I really just did it for myself ‘cause I’m selfish. Sorry.”

If you like Hesher, you might enjoy:  I’m Still Here; Greenberg; Please Give.

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Hesher     2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 42 min

Cast Overview:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Devin Brochu, Rainn Wilson, Piper Laurie, Natalie Portman, John Carroll Lynch

Director:  Spencer Susser

Genre:  Indie Drama, Indie Dramedy