Love Is Strange

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Ben & George have been together forever but are newly married. Their wedding is small and joyous, and also the catalyst for George’s dismissal from the catholic school where he teaches music. They can’t afford their home on Ben’s pension alone, and the two suddenly find themselves homeless. Friends and family scramble to take them in but this being New York City, where no apartment is bigger than a breadbox, Ben and George are separated. This is a love story that shows us how patient and enduring love must be. With no prospects in sight, people who were happy to toast them at their wedding are less happy to share their homes. There’s chafing on both ends (Ben clashes with his nephew’s wife, played by Marisa Tomei, when they’re both trying to work from a cramped home every day). They feel displaced and disoriented; their hosts feel increasingly put-upon. It’s sad and sweet and melodic – the soundtrack is divinely full of Chopin.

Director Ira Sachs is slow and meandering. It’s painful to watch the tenderness and the intimacy decline into homelessness and despondency. Just when they’ve vowed to share their lives with each other, they can no long afford to share so much as a bed. This is a pretty bittersweet movie, more universal than you may think. The husbands grapple with their emotional health, and aging, and navigating the strange and complicated NY housing market, which is what finally made me realize how mis-titled this movie is. Their love is a lot of things, but it is never strange.

Two Days, One Night

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The brilliant Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a woman who’s returning to work from sick leave only to find herself fired, apparently because her co-workers voted to receive their much-needed yearly bonuses and sacrifice her employment in return. She’s got one measly weekend before they vote again, so she makes the rounds and many humbling appeals.

This is a really interesting movie because while it presents a genuine hurdle, beautifully simple but so timely, it’s also a great hypothetical. Would you give up $1300 in your pocket to save someone else’s job? If she was a friend? If she was a stranger? If she’d do the same for you?

Solidarity: what the fuck does it mean to you? Are you a team player, or are you out for number one? Would you be more comfortable betraying her by secret ballot? Could you look her in the eye and tell the truth? Can you put your desire for a new patio above her need to feed her children?

We know that Sandra’s been away on medical leave. It’s hinted that it may have been mental-health related. And of course the work of convincing people, some she’d consider friends, to not ruin her life just to pad their own, is humiliating. She doesn’t want to beg. She’s riddled with doubt. But the fight also seems to strengthen her somehow; she seems invigorated.

The Dardenne brothers are known for sensitive, brooding work, but this is their first venture with an A-lister. Cotillard, for her part, doesn’t look like a star in this movie. She looks like a harried, anxious woman. Jean-Pierre said of her “Hiring such a famous actress was an additional challenge for us. Marion was able to find a new body and a new face for this film.” Although I’ve always found her to be stupidly talented, watching this movie back to back with Midnight in Paris, where she plays a woman infamously beautiful, it’s clear that part of her talent is in adhering chameleon-like to her characters.

I really liked this movie and am heart-broken to have watched it alone (I’m Oscar-cramming before vacation) because I need to discuss it. Have you seen it? How did you measure up?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

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Maybe my expectations were too high. Which is a bit weird to say because Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a comic book movie, so basically I should have known what I was going to get. And as a comic book movie, it does its job. It gives us lots of really fast and strong heroes who jump out of planes and off buildings, endless bad guys with unlimited bullets who shoot at those heroes for half the movie, and a head bad guy with a mask and metal arm who may not even be the mastermind behind all this mayhem. What it does not give us, and why I was ultimately let down, is any real change to the formula that we have seen from Marvel in its ten (ten!) movies and counting. It’s all the same and it’s getting a little tired.

The problem is, I’m a comic book guy and an action movie guy. I should have enjoyed this movie a lot more than I did. I’m still excited to see Avengers 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. But now I’m a lot less excited. I wonder, am I just going to get a rehash of what I’ve seen before like I did in Captain America 2, a story that really begins at the same place it started without advancing the greater plot I thought was underlying these movies in the Marvel Universe? Before watching this movie I had felt that maybe I should go back and watch the Captain America movies as well as the two Thor movies, but now I feel confident I don’t need to and certainly don’t have any desire to since this movie was so forgettable and so self-contained.

shield punch

Is this just a middling installment in the Marvel movie juggernaut? Or is it a sign that we’ve used up all the good ideas for now and it’s time to wait for the inevitable reboots of all these characters, since their origins are the only stories from which Hollywood can consistently make decent movies? I guess we’ll have a better idea in just a few months because Avengers: Age of Ultron opens May 1 and Ant-Man follows shortly after. My gut says making a movie about Ant-Man is overkill at this point, and then I look and see that there are 16 more Marvel-related movies (including Fox and Sony ones) scheduled to come out between now and 2019. That’s way too many. One a year might be too many. The worst part is, I know there are better movies to be made that have been passed over in favour of these big-budget, low-risk, no-art movies. I would like to have seen those and 18 more Marvel movies, plus whatever DC is doing, is a poor trade and a loss for all of us.

Big picture aside, I’m still not satisfied with what I was given here. This movie is a tolerable distraction but leaves you with nothing memorable. It gets five indestructible shields out of ten.

Virunga

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I cried.

Virunga is a national conservation park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which houses the world’s last mountain gorillas. The rangers who work there risk their lives to protect the park and its primates from poachers, war, and Big Oil.

Director Orlando von Einsiedel first travelled to the Congo in order to document the park’s positive impact on development and tourism, but within 3 weeks of arriving, M23 rebels were pushing into the area.

Within the park is a “gorilla orphanage”, two words I’d never put together before in my life, and which struck a really emotional core in me. One of the orphaned gorillas has only one hand; his stump is a reminder of the conflict in the region of which he has been victim. Am I so inured by images of war-wounded children that it now takes a maimed gorilla to give me pause?

One of the rangers talks about “une grand tristesse” – a great tragedy – of finding a pack of gorillas slaughtered in the jungle. It was thought that if there were no more gorillas, there’d be no more need for the park. But with so many threats to the park, who was the culprit? Soco International, a British oil company, certainly seems like a guilty party. But the rangers and villagers put aside the investigation to mourn the majestic creatures. If you’ve ever wondered how many pallbearers it takes to carry the corpse of a slain gorilla, this film has the answer.

Meanwhile, it’s not just gorillas who are dying. 130 rangers have given their lives in the service of this park. To many, Virunga is a symbol of hope, a way to heal their “pays cassé”, their broken country, a positive contribution to a country’s questionable legacy. The four gorillas who live in the orphanage are given love, and a surrogate family. But when the rebel army moves closer and bombing can be heard, a gorilla curled up in the fetal position is such a pathetic sight, one that stands in for so many other images of tragedy, that you can’t help but be moved.

The film plays out urgently – the rebellion taking human lives as the Congolese army flees; Soco bribing rangers to exploit a protected World Heritage Site, stealing yet more resources from an area that has nothing to spare. There is drama and tenderness in equal measure. I guess what got to me is that it shows quite starkly the best and worst of human nature, and it leaves it in our hands as to which side will ultimately win.

You can stream this Oscar-nominated documentary on Netflix. If you’d like to learn more about what you can do to help the park, please visit www.virungamovie.com.

Obvious Child

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I hated the first 3 minutes of this film, and then loved the next 81.

Donna (Jenny Slate) is a confessional comic; she spills the dirty details of her life to a small audience in the back room of a dingy place. Not everyone in her life can handle being the subject of her standup, and the truth is, I could barely tolerate it myself. It was the usual stuff: I have a vagina, I’m Jewish, etc etc. But. But when she leaves the stage, she’s enormously funny. You get the sense that her stand-up will in fact take off one day, maybe even one day soon.

But not today. Because today she’s been “dumped up with” and she’s drinking and she’s oversharing, which is the only kind of sharing she knows how to do. With a microphone and a whine. And like, 17 shots. Cut to: drunken one-night stand, which leads to pregnancy, which leads to an abortion.

But a funny abortion! Okay, it’s not so funny. It’s actually dealt with pretty realistically, but with the kind of wit and truth that bathes the subject in a new light. Refreshingly unapologetic. And oddly becomes something of a romantic comedy, because who doesn’t take a date to the abortion clinic on Valentine’s Day? And P.S. – if you do, do you bring flowers?

I really like Slate on the Kroll Show, and director Gillian Robespierre knew she had the chops to handle a title role. Donna is a sometimes exasperating character but Slate pulls it off and is magnetic in every scene, whether petulant, snarky, or earnest.

I jotted down so many brilliant lines, all worth quoting, but I’m refraining for your sake, so that you may enjoy them from the right voice. But there are also fart jokes, which have no business even existing. So this is not a perfect film, but I was really won over by it. I’ll take the lows with the highs. I was charmed by Obvious Child, even if there was very little obvious about it. And I expect big and bigger things from both Robespierre and Slate in the future.

Brick

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Back in December, I reviewed Mysterious Skin, Looper, and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and made no secret of my Joseph Gordon-Levitt bias. It all started with Brick. I exited the theater when I first saw it back in 2006 certain that this was an actor to watch out for and refusing to listen to my friend’s allegations that this was in fact the same kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Watching it again nearly a decade later, Brick feels a bit like a feature length high school video project- complete with an extremely low budget and a high school serving as the unlikely setting for a Maltese Falcon-style detective story. JGL plays a loner named Brendan who must navigate the seedy underworld of his school to solve his ex-girlfriend’s murder. The dialogue, music, and twists seem to come from a bizarre 40s noir. Instead of a meddling cop, we get a nagging vice-principal.

Just like in the Leonardo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet, first time writer-director Rian Johnson (who JGL later worked with again on Looper) relies on the anachronisms in the discourse to make an old story feel new. This gives him an excuse to tell a pretty straightforward detective story without it feeling like just another detective story. I’ll admit his style takes some getting used to and I was completely thrown off at first back in 2006. But once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to get caught up in Johnson’s surreal picture of a modern high school. Sure, they don’t talk like real teenagers but they never do in the movies anyway. At least Brick is fun to listen to.

Brick runs just a little bit longer than the novelty of Johnson’s gimmick and there are a couple of times too many where he uses self-parody as a bit of a crutch. The film really works best when it’s reminding us that the darkest of secrets can be hidden within the walls of our publc schools. You’ll either love the film’s style or you’ll hate it but JGL sold it for me. He always strikes just the right note and, like the movie itself, has one foot in the past and the other in the present. He has the look of a modern troubled teenager with the soul of Sam Spade. Nearly a decade later, I am still always looking forward to his next project.

Railway Man

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Meet Colin Firth. Actually, for the next 108 minutes, you can call him Eric Lomax. He likes trains. He uses his vast train knowledge to woo women. On trains. He’s a man after Matt’s own heart. Matt likes trains. But wait! Just when you think you know where this movie is going, it turns from a movie about a guy who loves trains “a train enthusiast” he calls himself, into Unbroken, with slightly more trains.

Like Unbroken, Railway Man is based on a true story. Unlike it, this guy turns out to be pretty broken (although if we’re being honest, so did the guy in Unbroken…yes, they’re very brave during the war, but they go home really sick and deal with their crap for the rest of their lives). During the rest of Lomax’s life, he failed to really deal with the flashbacks and the PTSD symptoms so when he meets Nicole Kidman (call her Patti) and marries her in quick succession, she’s pretty surprised by his violent dreams and his sobs and his emotional distance. He won’t talk about what’s happened to him, but whatever it is, it’s killing him. Patti goes to his friend and fellow vet to hear the story – how they were captured and lived in a Japanese camp as slaves, building their railway under horrid conditions. Lomax was singled out for all kinds of abuse, and it turns out that all these years later, his captor and abuser is still alive.

The abuse we witness through flashbacks is disturbing and disgusting, but it’s also presented to us in a rather understated fashion. Because the movie is halved by into two time periods, “during the war” and “after”, we don’t get much (or enough) of either. It turns out be so similar to Unbroken (which I saw first, though this one preceded it in theatres) that it’s basically just the British version – with trains (sorry, couldn’t resist).

The Good Lie

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I have read and watched as much as I could about the Lost Boys – their story, though beginning in such tragedy, usually ends in quiet triumph but you never stop marvelling at it. One of my favourite books about the subject is called What Is The What by Dave Eggers, but if you’re more of a watcher than a reader, I think The Good Lie is faithfully rendered (by Canadian director Philippe Falardeau) and really quite moving.

It follows 5 of the Lost Boys (one actually a girl) who watched their parents, their village, and millions of their fellow Sudanese be slaughtered (though the movie goes a little “light” on these atrocities). Displaced from their homes, these orphaned children walked for hundreds of miles to reach a refugee camp where they grew up in temporary shelters wearing Americans’ cast-offs. After 13 years in camp, this group, now in their early 20s, are fortunate enough to land on one of the last flights to American (these flights dried up after 9\11).

Once in Kansas City, you can imagine that there is culture shock and a certain amount of homesickness. Reese Witherspoon eventually appears to help them find employment (a condition of their refugee status). Although technically billed a Reese movie to appeal to Western audiences, she’s in a supporting role. She is not there as a white saviour, but as a witness and sometime facilitator who can’t save them, but can certainly root for them as they save themselves. The actors portraying the Lost Boys are actual Sudanese refugees and what they lack in experience they make up for in earnestness.

This movie seems like one you ‘should’ see but it’s not a chore, it’s actually a really uplifting and heart-rending trip to Africa that you can make from the comfort of your own couch with a surprising amount of light-heartedness about it (ie, Matt kept shooting me weird, judgy looks every time I giggled). It’s actually one you’ll want to see and be glad you did.

Still Alice

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We wouldn’t even be talking about Still Alice, about a world renowned linguistics professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, if it weren’t for Julianne Moore. Michelle Pfeiifer, Julia Roberts, and Nicole Kidman all apparently passed on the part before anyone got around to considering Moore, which is baffling to me. Who among Moore’s peers is more up for the challenge? Who can play confused just as well as they can play sharp or as vulnerable as well as strong. Or, as Jay was right to point out in her review of Maps to the Stars, who else is so unconcerned with how she looks while she’s doing it? Because there are so many sides to her persona, we believe her as a respected academic, as a mother, and as a wife which is just as important as believing her as an Alzheimer’s patient. Because of Julianne Moore, we’re talking about Still Alice as an Oscar nominated film (Best Actress in a Leading Role).

The movie, as written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, may not be as beautiful as Away from Her or L’Amour but it gets it right mostly by not doing anything wrong. It’s never corny and doesn’t search for easy answers. This may not seem like high praise but I can imagine so many ways this could have gone wrong by being too pandering or by focusing on the disease instead of the person. I give it credit for not falling into these traps.

Julianne Moore is still the best reason to see Still Alice though. She’s been great since short Cuts but hasn’t had such a great opportunity to show it for years. Smart money is on her winning the Oscar.

If one asshole’s opinion isn’t enough, check out Jay’s review.

Finding Vivian Maier

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In 2007, real estate agent John Maloof acquired some negatives through the auction of an abandoned storage-locker. He was putting together a book on his Chicago neighbourhood and quickly realized these photos were irrelevant to his project, but he kept coming back to them because they were simply beautiful.

He has since bought up all of her work that he could, and attributed the photos to Vivian Maier, a woman almost impossible to nail down because that’s the way she wanted it. Intensely private, she spent her life working as a Nanny, faking a french accent, occasionally posing as a spy, and always, always, taking pictures. These pictures, over 100 000 went largely undeveloped and her work unknown. It wasn’t until after her death in 2009 that Maloof started soliciting attention for her photographs, and now she’s a street photography or significant interest.

This documentary seeks out the personality behind the photos but finds that Vivian Maier may have prefered to remain anonymous. We get conflicting reports from the children she helped bring up, the parents she worked for, the neighbours she shunned, and the only thing that everyone agrees on is that she didn’t want to be known, and probably would have hated the very idea of this documentary.

Her pictures are indeed worth all the fuss. You get the sense that Maloof is profiting quite handsomely from them, and that makes you sad for the woman who apparently died in destitution. You wonder who would go to the trouble of taking so very many photos if she never intended to show them to anyone, but we never know the answer. Vivian Maier remains unfound.