“There’s a hundred thousand streets in this city. You don’t need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you’re on your own. Do you understand? ” — Ryan Gosling as The Driver in Drive
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The Debt (2010, USA) A solid movie, fictional but with the ring of truth, about former Mossad agents confronted with the inevitable consequences of a lie they told — and a mission they failed to complete — 30 years previously. The action occurs half in the present, half in the past, older actors spelled off by younger actors. I was impressed by how seamlessly it was all done. The scenes that take place in the East Berlin of the 1960s are chilling, particularly the Nazi war criminal gynecologist examining the young female Israeli agent in his office. The ending, with Helen Mirren facing down the old enemy all on her own, was a complete surprise. It’s a fascinating, suspenseful story … so much so that I want to see the original Israeli film of the same name, filmed in 2007. |
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A Better Life (2011, USA) Sad movie about an undocumented immigrant gardener in LA, trying to make a living while supporting and setting an example for a teenaged son whose friends and schoolmates are drifting into street gang life. What’s interesting is how much of the dialog is in Spanish: the scenes where the gardener talks with fellow immigrants and his sister are in Spanish with no subtitles. This is no impediment to understanding, however — it makes it real. Unlike some other movies about undocumented immigrants trying to make their way in the USA, this one doesn’t come across as propagandistic. It’s good, very much worth watching — but as I mentioned, hella sad. |
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Drive (2011, USA) There was more to this movie than I expected. I anticipated something on the order of Jason Stratham in The Transporter. Not so. Drive starts off classy, first-rate, even profound. Ryan Gosling achieves the perfect level of cool; Carey Mulligan is incredibly appealing; Ron Perlman is scary as hell. The tension, as Gosling’s nameless character is pulled back into crime, is gripping. But then the violence begins, and it’s so sudden, shocking, and vicious I lost the bubble. What movie is Nicolas Refn trying to outdo? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? And if so, why? Okay, if you can get past the gore, it’s a damn good movie. I had a hard time with the violence, but I watched it to the end and won’t forget it soon. |
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The Wave/Die Welle (2008, Germany) German with subtitles. A popular Berlin high school teacher conducts a week-long experiment in autocracy with his class, and the kids fall into fascism faster than you can say Lord of the Flies. A bunch of good young actors you’ve never seen before play the kids. The soundtrack kicks ass. The story’s plotted and filmed in a realistic and believable manner — and though the dénouement is also realistic and believable, it still manages to shock, as the teacher’s experiment blows up (pretty much literally) in his face and the kids realize they’ve gone too far. As a side note, it’s interesting to see just how far American culture has elbowed its way into Germany. Very glad I watched this one. |
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Margin Call (2011, USA) Margin Call is not, as you might expect, a documentary about the 2008 financial collapse. It’s a drama based on those events. As such, it helps us understand Wall Street’s detachment from real life, it’s unethical treatment of investors, and it’s ability to justify its own amorality. I guess I’m glad they made this movie: I now have a much clearer picture of who needs to be dragged screaming to the guillotine. If I didn’t know better, though, I’d almost think the director and producers wanted us to feel sorry for these sociopaths. My revulsion aside, this is an excellently crafted movie, full of suspense, seemingly quite realistic, and with a killer cast. Just keep in mind, when you watch it, what these bastards did to the economy, home values, and our 401Ks. If you’re going to shed a tear, shed it for Kevin Spacey’s dog, the only honest creature in the whole shebang. |
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Mysteries of Lisbon (2010, Portugal) This is a four-hour, two-disk movie, in Portuguese with subtitles. Netflix describes it as a movie about a famous Portuguese fictional character who lived a life of piracy. Alas, there’s no piracy in disk one … or disk two, for that matter. It’s a drawing room costume epic, and the story consists of one character after another confessing to a secret past. Society ladies swoon at the thought of sex, patriarchs force their daughters into unhappy marriages, some degree of incest may or may not occur, no one is who he or she seems to be. I managed to follow the narrative through disk one, but by disk two I’d totally lost track of who was who and how their secret pasts related to other secret pasts … and I was paying attention, I really was. Some reviewers rave about the sumptuous scenery, but I’m pretty sure the entire movie was filmed in three or four rooms at one old Portuguese estate. Apart from a few clever scenes, I thought the movie was on the whole cheesy, boring, and incomprehensible. |
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The Future (2011, Germany) A dreary art house movie about nothing in particular. It made me think of Eraserhead. I liked seeing Miranda July’s butt, but the narrating cat, who spoke in the voice of the odd little round psychic woman from Poltergeist, put me off. |
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Anonymous (2011, UK) If no one has so far been able to figure out who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, we’ll probably never know, but this quite entertaining movie delivers a ton of fun while playing fast and loose with rumor and speculation, and along the way gives us a fascinating look at what life, entertainment, and court politics in Elizabethan England may have been like. I enjoyed it, and I want more. Watching Anonymous made me hope someone is planning to make a movie of Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall … I would definitely watch that. |
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Elite Squad: the Enemy Within (2010, Brazil) This foreign movie has a lot of word of mouth going for it. I wasn’t aware of it until I saw it on the top ten list of DVD rentals in the local paper; when I looked it up on Netflix the popularity numbers were almost off the charts: 95% of critics and 92% of viewers liked it. A Brazilian cop movie, in Portuguese yet, with subtitles? This I had to see! And I did, and it was good … damn good. It’s about a high-ranking Rio de Janerio police officer who, at great cost to himself and his family, takes on widespread corruption in law enforcement and local government. It’s reminiscent of the 1973 movie Serpico: gritty, suspenseful, and filled with action. I was on the edge of my seat all the way through. I guess those Netflix numbers really do mean something, after all! |
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The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part I (2011, USA) Look, if you’re really into Twilight, stop reading now. My review is full of spoilers. Why? Because I hated it and want to ruin it for you. The first 40 minutes is all about a wedding between a cute human girl and a shovel-faced vampire plastered with white pancake makup. Then there’s a honeymoon and a fast-growing fetus. Some extremely fake-looking wolves run around in the woods. I was hoping for a Rosemary’s Baby moment, anything to leaven the movie’s relentlessly Christianist message (don’t surrender your virginity until your wedding night, girls, and no matter what kind of monster grows in your womb, never never ever even so much as THINK about getting an abortion). But alas the baby’s just a baby (though he does put mom through the wringer). Then the human girl turns into a vampire, and her baby gets a werewolf to protect it. Thanks, I’ll pass on the rest of the series. The nightly news is far more frightening. |
Paul’s DVD Hall of Shame
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Real Steel (2011, USA) CGI Transformers dreck, with a saccharine triumph-of-the-little-guy storyline. I haven’t wanted to strangle a child actor this badly since watching Macaulay Caulkin in Home Alone. What’s worse, between the makeup, the haircut, and the slack-jawed open-mouthed expression, Hugh Jackman seemed to be playing Adam Sandler. Watch it if you must, but leave your IQ at the door. The only calories here are empty ones. |