The Selfish Giant (***1/4) [screening]

The friendship between two kids, called Arbor (Conner Chapman) and Swifty (Shaun Thomas), in working-class Bradford, in northern England, is at the center of this drama. With a prescription he only sometimes takes and that only somewhat calms him down, Arbor is what could be called a bad influence. As we are introduced to him, he’s a foul-mouthed 13- or 14-year-old who mouths off to his teachers. He’d rather be stealing metal and selling it for scrap. Swifty is his bigger, but gentler friend. The movie starts out all murky and chaotic, Arbor yelling at his brother, the two boys stealing wire for scrap — on a borrowed horse — then dealing with the unfriendly scrapyard boss, Arbor yelling at his mom, Swifty’s father yelling, the boys playing at wrestling each other. The story focuses more around midway, and it then becomes a surprising, almost sweet, tale, though never suggestive of its fairy-tale title, borrowed from an Oscar Wilde fable.

The subjects of the film and the non-romanticized portraits of them are reminiscent of Ken Loach films like Sweet Sixteen, but whereas Loach tends to highlight the desperation of his characters, suggesting implied messages about class and the unfairness of life, writer-director Clio Barnard keeps her characters in a world that seems more self-contained, though no less keenly observed. Presumably the scrapyard owner, presumably the selfish giant, is making good money, but he is of the same class. They live in a pitiless world, and pity was not my reaction to them or the other characters. I was not surprised that the two boys, neither an established actor, were from the same background as the characters. They’re quite convincing, and I had trouble imagining a posh kid from London mastering the unfamiliar accents (English, but very helpfully subtitled) and profanity-laced slang (“divs” was one insult I remember) that peppers the dialogue. Barnard’s previous film, The Arbor was a documentary about a playwright from the area in which this was filmed.  She seems to have absorbed the setting, and the scrub country and council houses and scrapyards provide enough visual imagery so as to be almost as memorable as the human characters.



IMDb link

viewed 10/23/13 7:25 pm at Rtiz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/24/13

The Well-Digger’s Daughter (***1/4)

This World War II melodrama comes by its old-fashioned quality in part because it’s a remake of a 1940 Marcel Pagnol film. Getting the period look isn’t so hard, but the movie’s strength is to remind us that it is values and culture, more than style and technology, that truly separates us from the past. The title character (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) is turning 18 as the story begins. She is “as kind as she is pretty” as her widower father and his younger friend agree. But, though she has spent time in Paris, unlike her four younger sisters, she is rather innocent. Her father (Daniel Auteuil) has only lived in the rural south and is rather traditional.

The story, which involves the debonair son of a prosperous shopkeeper, is not wildly original, but  the characters make a a strong impression. The showiest role is the well-digger himself, whose sudden changes of heart bring a measure of humor even as tragedy threatens. A lovely score by Alexandre Desplat captures the overall bittersweet tone. Auteuil, whose breakout role was as the star of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, adaptations of a Pagnol novel, here makes a strong directorial debut. With lush color missing from the original film, he brings out the bucolic qualities of the setting. Moreover, he allows the characters to emerge, especially in the crucial early scenes. Much of the tale hinges on the meaningfulness of two brief meetings of the girl and her young man. In lesser hands, this might seem corny. Mostly, it doesn’t.

IMDb link

viewed 8/5/12 4:15 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 8/9/12

Conviction (***)

A movie’s appeal really shouldn’t depend on whether the story it tells really happened to someone, but it probably does help here to know that Betty Anne Waters really did decide to go to law school, not even having finished high school, just to get her brother Kenny out of jail. This is the sort of inspirational role that Hilary Swank seems to have made a specialty of, and having heard the real Betty Anne, I can say she nails both the rural Massachusetts accent and the sense of, yes, conviction that keeps Betty Anne moving forward.

Betty Anne and Kenny were part of a large, unstable family led by an undependable mother, and Kenny (Sam Rockwell) was prone to getting in fights, which is one reason attention was focused on him after a 1980 murder. Director Tony Goldwyn and writer Pamela Gray, who previously collaborated on 1999’s A Walk on the Moon, include brief but effective flashback scenes that provide a sense of the closeness that the two siblings developed. Rockwell’s few scenes show the actor’s range. There is suspense in the way Goldwyn shows us the testimony that convicted Kenny, and then shows how the jury was misled.

The underdog story seems so tailor-made for a movie that it seems almost too perfect. There is a murder, but not a mystery. The good and the evil are clear. Other stories of wrongful conviction often reveal a series of well-intentioned mistakes, cops and prosecutors trying their best but making errors and false assumptions. Here there is only the actions of one reckless cop, who is well played by Melissa Leo, but an unambiguous villain. And Betty is an unambiguous heroine. Therefore we have a well-told story, but without elements that would make the film truly great or surprising.

IMDB link

viewed 9/28/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 11/16/10

Jack Goes Boating (***)

Philip Seymour Hoffman can seemingly act in any type of part, and it turns out he can also direct. Casting himself as a limo driver opposite the equally versatile Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone), he has crafted a quietly comedic adaptation of Robert Glaudini’s play about working-class New Yorkers set up by mutual friends. (Glaudini did the screenplay, too.) The movie focuses on the awkwardness of a new relationship between people too inarticulate, or too self-aware, for witty banter. Instead, the humor comes out of the awkwardness, like his kitchen mishaps. (He’s learning to cook, and swim, to impress her). Or her odd combination of shyness and directness. (In a bedroom scene, she says she’s not ready for “penis penetration,” which could be bad sitcom dialog but is funny because Ryan doesn’t say it that way, but like a euphemism is too hard to think of.)

Basically, this is a lonely-boy-meets-lonely-girl story that only peripherally allows glimpses into the sadness that would have preceded the events shown. But neither is it mushy, and in the parallel story of his best friend’s imperfect marriage there is a cautionary tale. There may come a day, the couple tell him, that you learn something unpleasant about the other person, and that will stay with you no matter what. The movie teeters on the edge of being dark, but only goes there in one key scene. It isn’t quite stagy, but it’s definitely like a play, or a short story. Those who like “small,” character-driven movies should enjoy it.

IMDB link

viewed 9/23/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/24/10 and 10/4/10

Looking for Eric (***)

If you’ve seen other films by the British director Ken Loach, you don’t expect him to make something whose plot reminds you of Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam. Loach is the director of realist dramas like the The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the Irish War of Independence, Sweet Sixteen, about a Scottish teen trying not to follow his mom to jail, and Bread and Roses, about the plight of Mexican office cleaners trying to unionize in Los Angeles. Allen’s film had him getting romantic advice from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart. Or at least the movie version of Humphrey Bogart. There are two Erics in this movie; one, a football (soccer)-loving postman (Steve Evets), idolizes the other, former Manchester United superstar Eric Cantona, an occasional actor (Elizabeth) who plays himself. Cantona, the character, is not a ghost, but an imagined presence who functions the same way. His function is to give courage to postman Eric, who is panicking at the thought of having to face the ex-wife he betrayed long ago.

The movie is more or less a comedy, but it still a Loach film and not actually much like a Woody Allen film. Or, at times, a comedy. For one thing, Loach worked with the same screenwriter, Paul Laverty, as on his other recent work. And Cantona’s role, though obviously tailored to the plot of the movie, is less stylized than the movie-star version of Bogart who coaches Allen. It’s the celebrity as regular guy, rather than a movie star, who’s giving advice. Finally, while some of the interplay of postman Eric and his working-class buddies, and some of the now-in-French, now-in-English advice of the football star garners a few laughs, a good deal of the film would fit right into Loach’s dramas. (Aside from the French, some dialogue may be tough for American ears to follow.) In what amounts to a third of the movie, Cantona is absent. His earlier presences seems like a gimmick glommed onto what should have been a straight family drama. But the ending brings the dramatic and comedic elements together in a way that more or less justifies the concept. This is not the best of Loach’s movies. The other, more overtly political ones, make a stronger artistic statement. But it shows some versatility.

IMDB link

viewed 4/10/10 at Prince [Philadelphia Spring Preview] and reviewed 4/?/10

Kinky Boots (***)

The predictably enjoyable story of the drag queen (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who resuscitates a shoe factory in working-class Northampton.

Kinky Boots falls into what seems to be a particularly English subgenre about groups of working-class folks who get involved with some vaguely prurient activities, in this case making boots for drag queens. It’s not as funny as The Full Monty, and not quite as touching as Calendar Girls, but it should appeal to the same audience. (Among non-documentaries, it had the second highest audience rating at the recent Philadelphia Film Festival.) Joel Edgerton is the new owner of his family’s financially strapped shoe factory who finds an unlikely savior called Lola, or Simon. Lola is played by the ever-versatile Chiwetel Ejiofor, who has, in the space of under four years, convincing essayed an illegal Nigerian immigrant in Dirty Pretty Things, a space villain in Serenity, a New York cop in Inside Man, and a London drag queen here. He sings well, too, in the several brief musical numbers, which include, of course, both “Whatever Lola Wants” and Kirsty MacColl’s “In These Shoes.” This movie was exactly what I thought it would be, the ending entirely clear within 15 minutes, but that was okay.

IMDb link

posted 9/3/13

Annapolis (**3/4)

Brooding James Franco stars as a working-class kid trying to make good at the Naval Academy. Never especially original but never stupid, it’s worth a look if you like movies about military life.

Brooding James Franco has already played James Dean in a TV movie, and seems to be channeling him in this angst-y tale of an underdog rebel who enlists in the Naval Academy to fulfill a promise to his departed, saintly mom and maybe, just maybe, prove something to his impassive father. Yeah, this movie won’t exactly wow you with its originality. There’s the semi-abusive commanding officer, the bonding with fellow recruits, the rigorous training. But, as I said about Glory Road, a movie full of clichés can still be perfectly enjoyable if it doesn’t lay them on too thick. So even though, for example, the subplot with Jordana Brewster as a potential love interest is pretty ho-hum, I’ll take that over that corny, up-where-we-belong crap any day. For me the most interesting part of Annapolis is when one of the cadets wants to snitch on his roommate for violating an idiotic, unfairly given order. Is this an honorable adherence to duty or mindless deference to authority? I’d have liked the film to tackle that issue, but here it’s just one of those things that can happen. It’s just an episode on the hero’s personal journey as he fights (literally­—he’s a boxer) to prove himself to his Academy superiors, his dad, and maybe, just maybe, to himself.

IMDb link

posted 9/17/13