How I Live Now (***)

This has all the hallmarks of a teen coming-of-age movie. Sixteen-year-old Daisy (Saoirse Ronan)—don’t use her given name, Elizabeth—is a New Yorker sent to summer with relatives in Wales. With mild-self-loathing (we hear this as whispered injunctions) buried under an obnoxious exterior, she’s the perfect candidate for a big learning experience under the guidance of her country-living relations, consisting of a mother and her three kids, and how convenient that the oldest is handsome, age-appropriate, and not actually biologically related to her. But wait, what’s this about a bombing in Paris, and the mother being an expert in World War III planning?

I didn’t mind at all the combination of sci-fi adventure story and teen romance. Do threats of martial law quash desire? Not at all. What was jarring was the way the story requires fresh Daisy to transform from snotty girl who can barely sit in a messy car to lovelorn teen to plucky self-starter in about a week. Perhaps Ronan is channeling her role as another Daisy, this one a teen assassin, in Violet & Daisy. I suspect, however, that the effects of compressing a novel (by Meg Rosoff) into feature-length movie account for the whiplash transformation, as well as the too-brief appearance of the mother character, whose job sounds rather interesting. Alas, we never learn what she was working on, or exactly why Britain may cease to exist. We do learn that the UK government will be pretty darn efficient at organizing things if the shit ever hits the fan. An intriguing premise, aided by director Kevin Macdonald’s great use of rural landscapes. At the end, we get the usual lessons-learned voiceover I was expecting.

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viewed 11/14/13 7:05 at Ritz Bourse and posted 11/14/13

Simon Killer (***)

The edgy title perhaps misrepresents a film that is largely a character drama, though of a dark character. The film is physically dark, too, making its setting, Paris, look much less appealing that in just about any film I’ve seen. American Simon (played by cowriter Brady Corbet) is hanging out there after a bad breakup. Now moping to his mother via Skype, now picking up a prostitute at a sex club, he’s both pathetic and a little creepy. It’s a curious combination; while Simon’s not a villain, I rarely found him sympathetic. This is as much an effect of the film’s style as Simon’s behavior. I was curious as to what would happen, but not sure what I wanted to happen. For similar reasons, the film may not appeal to a broad audience. However, it’s effective, and I did enjoy being surprised when I thought a plot point, such as the encounter with the prostitute, would take the film in one direction, yet would lead in another. The way director Antonio Campos handles the language barrier is also noteworthy. Simon speaks halting French, and so the dialogue switches between English and French in a way that seems realistic but is rarely seen in American films.

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viewed 10/22/12 7:15 pm [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and reviewed  10/31/2012

My Week with Marylin (***)

In 1956, the 30-year-old Marilyn Monroe traveled to England. Then at the height of her stardom, she was there with her newest husband, Arthur Miller, to make a romantic comedy with Laurence Olivier, later released as The Prince and the Showgirl. Like Me and Orson Welles, this adaptation of diaries by Colin Clark is about a big star seen through the eyes of a young showbiz aspirant. But Welles was never uncertain of his own gifts, whereas Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), at least as portrayed here, was confident in her stardom, but not of anything else. Welles tries the patience of his acting company with his arrogance, Monroe with her insecurity. She arrives late on the set and flubs her lines. Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), who’s directing the film, cannot hide his impatience, whereas young Colin (Eddie Redmayne), hired as a third assistant director but actually a gofer, can’t hide his infatuation. Her acting coach, Paula Strasberg, is there to prop up her confidence and further irritate Olivier.

Both Williams and Branagh are credible, which is especially good in Williams’s case because, without seeing Monroe as a star, one might simply see her as childlike and immature. Olivier is inclined to the latter view, though he recognizes her onscreen presence. As Colin puts it, Olivier is a great actor who longs to be a movie star, and Monroe is a star who longs to be an actor. Both have dramatic personalities that make this a pleasant, though minor, film.

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viewed 10/29/11 at Prince Music Theater [Philadelphia Film Society screening] and reviewed 10/29/11

The Guard (***1/4)

“What a beautiful fucking day,” exclaims Brendan Gleeson at the start of this Irish comedy-drama, and few actors can muster such depth of feeling in uttering such a sentiment. The paunchy actor plays Sergeant Gerry Boyle, who finds himself temporarily partnered with an FBI agent (Don Cheadle) when some international drug smugglers, and a murder victim, wind up in his ordinarily quiet hamlet.

There are elements of a mismatched buddy comedy. When Boyle, speaking of drug smugglers who use submarines to avoid detection, says you have to admire their ingenuity, the agent says drily, “No, you don’t.” Quite a lot of the humor is dry here, as when the one of the smugglers, who’s English, corrects the others, who are Irish, on the matter of the nationality of philosopher Bertrand Russell.

The story also has the fish-out-of-water element, as one character actually points out. The FBI man’s introduction to Boyle involves racial insults, and his attempt to do some sleuthing on his own—it’s the sergeant’s day off, which even a murder investigation won’t impede—finds the locals pretending to only speak Gaelic. It’s unclear whether his race or his being an outsider has more to do with this.

The action element is also not neglected, although it’s saved for the ending. But, more than anything else, the film is a character drama and a vehicle for Gleeson. Boyle can seem like a bumpkin one moment, then show another side in the next scene. The agent tells Boyle, “I can’t tell if you’re mutherfuckin’ stupid or mutherfuckin’ smart.” In quoting this, I may falsely suggest that this is a rather broad film, but in general it’s understated and realistic. Boyle, a single man, is prone to insulting coworkers and committing certain victimless crimes from time to time, but has a soft spot for his dying mother, Croatian widows, and Disney World. It takes the length of this brief movie to reveal his true nature, and writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin McDonagh) lets the character percolate until the satisfying conclusion.

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viewed 9/8/11, 7:15 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 9/8/11

Cairo Time (**3/4)

There’s a nice feel to this drama. Patricia Clarkson plays a Canadian who’s supposed to meet her husband, a UN worker, in the Egyptian capital. He is delayed, and so she is alone, but finds herself sometimes in the company of her husband’s Arab friend (Alexander Siddig), who had met her upon arrival. The nice feel comes from Clarkson, a fine actress who registers a both a sense of being lost and a tentative openness to the unfamiliar. It comes from a lot of nice scenery. And it comes from the way Ruba Nadda’s film is shot, with lots of scenes of quiet, calmness, sunsets, and desert. And from Siddig’s gentlemanly, dignified character. And from the subtlety of things not being said. For me, there were at least one too many scenes of meetings in coffee shops with things not being said. But, a nice feel.

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viewed on video June 2013

The Karate Kid (***1/4)

I suppose the title will irritate some, given that Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han teaches the kid (Jaden Smith) kung fu, not karate. The kid’s mom (Taraji P. Henson) confuses the two, and even after watching this movie I’m not sure of the differences myself, but Chan is Chinese and the movie takes place in China, where kung fu is the reigning martial art. Even so, there’s an unmistakable fidelity to the 1984 film of which this is a remake.

Both characters feature handymen who employ repetitive tasks as ways to build strength and discipline. And both save the boy from a bully trained by a cruel master, only to train him for an inevitable showdown. In the 1984 version, Pat Morita’s Miyagi says: “Karate for defense only.” Han says that kung fu is for “making peace with your enemy.” As Han, Chan displays far less of the physicality than in his straight action (or action-comedy) roles, but is extremely likable. In the title role, Jaden Smith has very much the cocky-yet-charming persona of his dad, Will Smith. The only other prominent role, a quasi-love interest for the boy, is charmingly played by Chinese newcomer Wenwen Han.

There’s no getting around that the storyline is still completely formulaic, though that won’t bother the target audience. The message of nonviolence is nice, even if the kids will probably forget about it as the movie builds up to the inevitable revenge ass-kicking. But the novel element that most justifies the remake is the transplanted setting. While the Americans attend an English-language school, and most of the dialogue is in English, you can, more than in most Hollywood films set abroad, surmise that there are interesting places different from the United States, people who don’t speak English, and faraway places worth visiting. (The locations include both Beijing’s Forbidden City and the Great Wall.) Perhaps Chan’s participation—or the Chinese government’s—ensured that the Chinese come off as neither quaintly charming nor wisely exotic, excepting that Han seems to have magic healing powers.

Silly title or not, the new Kid’s all right.

(My rating is kind of from the point of view of a younger person, but the movie was still fairly enjoyable as an adult.)

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viewed at UA Riverview [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/2/2010

Scoop (***1/2)

? The second of Woody Allen’s trilogy of London set films is a lighter, more comic affair than the previous Match Point. Just as that film harkened back to the themes of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Scoop has an element of Manhattan Murder Mystery, specifically a snooping amateur sleuth (Scarlett Johannsen) plowing over circumstantial evidence with a reluctant male accomplice. In this case, she’s an aspiring reporter who, tipped off by a dead guy, teams up with a middling magician (Allen) to investigate whether a handsome aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) might actually be a notorious serial killer.

+ Johanssen’s girlish character, in contrast to her femme fatale in Match Point, has a nice chemistry with Allen, in a father-daughter kind of way. I quite enjoyed the way she’s torn between a desire to solve the mystery and plain desire. The resolution of the mystery, while not as clever as in Match Point, is satisfying. All the while, Allen’s magician babbles comically (to me) throughout. For example, he nonsensically calls everyone he meets, “a credit to your race.” That would appear to be, in every case, the Caucasian race.

- Allen’s concept of the afterlife, a boat carrying away the recently departed with a hooded Grim Reaper as the silent skipper, is amusing, but having a dead reporter (Ian McShane) inexplicably feeding the heroine information is a mildly lame deus ex machina. Other plot points, like the way the snooping reporter coincidentally spots someone who’s supposed to be out of town, seem overfamiliar. Allen’s magician babbles (tiresomely, I’m sure, to some) throughout.

= ***1/2 If Match Point was the Woody Allen movie for people who didn’t like Woody Allen movies, Scoop is one for the fans. Allen’s magician provides a stream of nervous schtick, and the whimsical tone is not unlike his 1990s films such as Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Even the female lead has some typical Allen mannerisms/dialogue. When he says that they need to put their heads together, she replies that “you’ll hear a hollow noise.” Funny stuff.

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