Philomena (***3/4)

Britain may not be as class-bound as it once was, but its history gives it a comfort with the topic. At any rate, class is a subject I’ve seen explored far more often in British films than in American ones. Some of the UK’s best known filmmakers, including Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, and this film’s director, Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, Dirty Pretty Things, The Queen) touch on class themes frequently. The story here is the reverse of the one in Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, in which the main character tracks down her birth mother. Here, Philomena (Judi Dench) is trying to find the son she gave up for adoption 50 years earlier. The two films aren’t otherwise similar, except in the way they bring together women who are not sophisticated with characters who are, and who are also better off financially. That other character is journalist Martin Sixsmith, played by Steve Coogan. Coogan also co-wrote the screenplay, based on a book by Sixsmith, who really was, as portrayed here, a former BBC reporter who had been forced to resign from a government post and was thus free to research the story of an Irish woman whose child was taken from her while she toiled seven days a week in a Magdalen laundry.

Another such laundry, a place where Catholic “fallen women” provided unpaid labor, was the subject of The Magdalene Sisters (2002), a bleak but moving film. Adding odd-couple humor and a kind of modern-day detective story makes this film much less bleak, but still moving. In the course of the story, Sixsmith comes to respect Philomena. It would be accurate, but make the story seem trite, to say that she has a different kind of wisdom that he does. Better to say that the film respects both of the characters, the cynical, atheistic Sixsmith, and the open-hearted Philomena, whose faith is unshaken by her betrayal by her church. The mystery of her son’s whereabouts is solved, of course, but in a way that is dramatically satisfying, somewhat bittersweet…and not at all trite.

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viewed 12/3/13 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 12/3/13; revised 1/24/14

The Heat (**)

The only novelty in this buddy-cop comedy is that both partners are women. Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy are the leads, one a by-the-book New York FBI agent with a reputation for smugness, the other a potty-mouthed Boston street cop who bullies suspects and superiors alike. No points for guessing who plays who. Forced together by circumstance, they’re trying to catch a drug dealer, and all credit to anyone who after seeing this, can remember much more of the plot than that. Since Boston has lately become a geographical representation of keepin’ it real (see Mystic River, The Town, The Departed, Gone Baby Gone), that’s where the action takes place. (Here, real should be understood as “working class/unpretentious” rather than “realistic,” which it ain’t.) It comes from director Paul Feig, best known for the overrated (but superior) Bridesmaids, and screenwriter Katie Dippold, best known for her work on the (far superior) sitcom Parks and Recreation 

McCarthy, as she did in Bridesmaids, plays another out-of-control character (though not necessarily a similar one), but in this movie that makes her the heroine rather than the comic foil. Here, threatening suspects always gets truthful intelligence (and is always the best way to do so), and adultery (albeit with a prostitute) is an offense punishable via extrajudicial means. Not merely distasteful, the movie also isn’t that funny, though McCarthy makes the most of the material. Feig mixes and matches scenes in which the women clash and scenes in which they bond, including the standard get-blackout-drunk-together scene. Villains come and go. An albino character is also on hand for the purpose of being mocked. At some point, both women are about to be tortured, but there’s no feeling that they’re scared, because there are no real feelings here. Nor is the way they get out of it especially original, believable, or surprising.

There is nothing truly awful about the comedy here. The set pieces can be funny when they don’t feel forced. However, besides being an excellent argument for drug legalization, this is a pretty pointless and truly formulaic Lethal Weapon retread.

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viewed 5/23/13 7:30 pm [PFS screening] and reviewed 5/24/13

16 Blocks (***)

Bruce Willis is a booze-addled cop trying to protect a witness (Mos Def) in this fairly intelligent thriller set in Manhattan.

Bruce Willis is a booze-addled, sleep-deprived cop who gets a chance to redeem himself when someone tries to kill a witness he’s escorting to the courthouse. Mos Def, as the witness, adopts what must be the most irritating voice since Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Truman Capote, but, like Hoffman, he’s interesting. The witness needs to testify by ten, so the usual formula would be that at 9:59, Bruce, having blown up half of Manhattan in the chase, shoots the bad guy, who has idiotically whipped out a rifle instead of surrendering to police, and whisks Mos (Mr. Def?) into the room with one second to spare. I suppose some people will be disappointed not to see that. Director Richard Donner gives the proceedings some of the qualities of his Lethal Weapon--a mismatched black-white duo (Mos Def is the optimistic one), a mix of suspense, action, and character-driven humor, though less of that. Willis gives a nice, low-key performance, and David Morse is good as his former partner, even if his character’s pretty standard issue. This one probably won’t win any awards, but as 2006’s first decent Hollywood thriller, it’s worth a look.

IMDb link

posted 9/9/13

The Matador (**3/4)

Pierce Brosnan is a past-his-prime hitman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with mild-mannered businessman Greg Kinnear. Likeable characters and an intriguing conclusion make up for a contrived premise.

When Hollywood screenwriters want to make a criminal likeable, as often as not they make the character a hitman (see Prizzi’s Honor, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, etc.) So it is with Pierce Brosnan in The Matador, which pairs him up with mild-mannered businessman Greg Kinnear. The first part, set in Mexico City, especially is reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino films, with its mixture of gaudy graphics, quirky/retro-cool soundtrack, and offbeat personalities. The violence, however, is much more toned down, and eventually the film settles down into a more or less likeable buddy comedy. Brosnan looks like a retired James Bond (which he is) with a constant two-day stubble. There’s something contrived about the scenario that I think kept me from rating this a little higher. But Brosnan and Kinnear make a nice pair, and the resolution of the story is intriguing.

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circulated via email 1/5/06; posted online and slightly revised 9/19/13

The original version of this review had The Grifters in place of Prizzi’s Honor. I had the plots mixed up.