A Little Bit of Heaven (**3/4)

It’s a funny thing that there’ve been two comedies about getting cancer in the last year. This one, set in New Orleans (but with a too-generic soundtrack), is even a romantic comedy, since Kate Hudson’s character, Marley, falls for her doctor (Gael Garcia Bernal) even as he tries to save her. No, it’s not as sappy as it could have been, and Hudson is bubbly and likeable even as she continues to make her role in the classic Almost Famous seem a fluke. But certainly a comparison with 50/50, last year’s cancer comedy, leaves this a bit wanting.

While movies based on true stories are certainly not always better, in the case of 50/50 the characters and situations had such specificity to them that it was no surprise to find out its screenwriter actually lived much of it. In this case, the supporting characters are given a trait or two but function more as a prop for the main character. Her mom’s (Kathy Bates) trait is not letting Marley be independent; her dad’s is being distant (literally and figuratively). The doctor character’s trait is that he can’t tell a joke. Also, he’s Jewish and Mexican — Julian Goldstein. (Had the movie been told from his point of view, it could have been called Marley and Me.) Marley apparently falls for him because in the beginning of the movie she’s telling us, in voiceover, how she isn’t interested in a long-term relationship, so you know what that means. (Is it cliché or contemporary if a woman plays the part of the reforming philanderer?)

First-timer Gren Wells also includes the sort of medical scenes you could have assumed, a barf here or there, making sure that Hudson gets to keep her hair, although she bravely eschews make-up (or wears very little) in several scenes. The director, Nicole Kassell, previously made the challenging The Woodsman; it’s hard to imagine the same person directing a movie in which Whoopi Goldberg has a goofy cameo as God, or, technically, God as imagined by one cancer patient, or maybe just a vivid dream. I wouldn’t say that the comedy, romance, and cancer clash, but they don’t always mesh either. Given the plot, the movie tries too hard to be sweet, on balance, especially the ending. But the pace is good and some of the dramatic/emotional moments work (probably more than the comedy or romance), so…average.

IMDb link

viewed 5/3/12 7:30 pm at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 5/7/12

Tuba Atlantic [short] (***1/4)

This absurdist, Norwegian mini-fable about a seaside-dwelling eccentric given six days to live is not for every taste, particularly the tastes of those who mind seeing birds harmed. Naturally, the codger decides to spend his last days ridding his vicinity of the seagulls whose constant presence ruins his tranquility. However, the unexpected arrival of a teenage girl, while not deterring the former project, inspires him to complete another one that began long ago.

IMDb link

viewed 2/17/12 9:35 at Ritz Bourse [Oscar-nominated live-action shorts program] and reviewed 2/18/12

Le Havre (**3/4)

I’d guess half of the French movies I’ve seen take place in Paris, and none in the port city whose very name means port. Technically, it may not be French, as its producer, director, and writer is the Finnish Aki Kaurismäki (The Man Without a Past). The less-familiar setting would seem to suit Kaurismäki’s seemingly stylizing rendering of the place. Although the film provides just enough hints to give the setting away as present day, or close to it, everything about it seems designed to make the place seem frozen in some time where people still use rotary phones (or have none, in the case of the main character), smoke in hospital rooms, and have never heard of a chain restaurant, or any sort of chain. Here a man can still make a modest living shining shoes, then toddle off to the pub while his wife contentedly cooks dinner for him.

It’s all very quaint, and so it would be more accurate to call Kaurismäki’s style of storytelling simple rather than minimalist. Although the story has the aging shoe shiner (André Wilms) shelter a Gabonese boy trying to evade the authorities, this is no more a film about illegal immigration than, say, Taxi Driver, is about teen prostitution. It’s a decent story about decent people being decent. I would like it to have been a little more than that, but the film is never more, though never less, than pleasant. Perhaps the closest it comes is when the shoe shiner, short on cash to help the young man, enlists the aid of a local rocker called Little Bob, who plays himself. True to form, his music sounds up to the minute, if the minute is in 1977.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse 12/8/11 and reviewed 12/8/11

Biutiful (***1/4)

Moral complexity is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s thing, whether in his native Mexico (Amores Perros), the United States (21 Grams), or in Morrocco and Japan (Babel). Leaving no continent unconquered (except, so far Australia, notwithstanding his employment of Naomi Watts and Cate Blanchett), he’s set this in Barcelona, with Spaniard Javier Bardem as the lead, a single father hustling to earn enough money and prepare for his children’s uncertain future.

This has one of those beginnings that irritate me, with seemingly random scenes—an unseen couple whispering about a ring, a dreamy conversation in snowy woods—starting the film. Then we see Bardem nervous at a doctor’s office, “interpreting” for the dead at a funeral, negotiating over illegal street vendors, and so on. Somewhere in there is a half-naked woman make noise while another man tries to hush her up so he can talk on the phone. Yet this turns out to be not as tricky as it seems. For the first time, Iñárritu focuses mostly on a single character, although dancer turned actress Maricel Álvarez makes an impression as a woman whose mental health and drug issues have caused custody to be awarded to her ex-husband.

Bardem’s character is struggling with his own issues, both ethical and practical, and his crises in both areas, crises with little time to resolve, create an increasingly compelling narrative.

IMDB link

viewed 3/27/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 3/29/11

The Fountain (**)

? Darren Aronofsky (π, Requiem for a Dream) wrote and directed this ambitious film that centers around a doctor (Hugh Jackman) frantically trying to save his sick wife (Rachel Weisz) but also has segments set centuries in the past and future. Inspired by (according to news articles) the Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mayan mythology, and his parents’ cancer diagnoses, Aronofsky has created a philosophical work about death and rebirth and the idea of the eternal.

+ What most unites Aronofsky’s three features is their distinct visual styles. Even people who hate this movie (and there will be some) will marvel at its stunning visuals, which look computer generated but mostly weren’t. Most prominent are the future segments, which, I learned from reading, are supposed to be in the 26th-century but could just as well be in Aronofsky’s vision of heaven, or some fantasy world. A unique chemical process is responsible for many of these images, many of which show a tree that looks like copper with swirling branches. Abandoning the quick editing style that was prominent in Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky induces feelings of calmness here. The scenes in the 16th century are mostly dark and dirty, the ones in the present are insular and sedate, and the future ones are simply other-worldly. The actors are able to successfully tackle taking on very different personalities in the different parts, and also look different. Weisz is a regal queen in one part and a fragile writer in another. The scenes of her and Jackman together in the present-day setting are tender and intimate. (Weisz looks like she isn’t wearing makeup.)

- For me this didn’t quite work. I had the same feeling about it as π, which I admired for its heady mixture of science and philosophy but thought was too incoherent to warm to. I don’t necessarily want to be told what to think about a movie, but it’d be nice to know what the filmmaker was thinking. The idea of the movie could be that the actors are reincarnated, that they are metaphorically able to live forever, or something else, but there is too much that seems arbitrary about how the different parts of the movie fit together, and too much that seems extraneous. It’s hard to say why I didn’t like this movie more, but I think I just was not able to fit everything together in a satisfying way. There’s a lot of repeated motifs that also may make the movie seem slow for a lot of people.

= ** I heard a woman say, “I’m glad this was free,” as I walked out of the screening, and I think a lot of people will share her feeling. At the same time, I think a certain type of person will want to watch The Fountain again and theorize about what it means. Those who enjoyed the Matrix trilogy but thought it could have done without all of those action scenes, for example, may find much that’s intriguing. People of certain types of spiritual beliefs may find the movie a beautiful reflection of them. I’m a more literal-minded person and probably would have liked The Fountain better if it was a more straightforward science fiction film, set in the present day, about a guy trying to prevent aging.

IMDb link

viewed at PFS screening