La Jaula de Oro (***1/2) [screening]

The title, meaning “the golden cage,” sounds pretty and poetic, but the film itself is an unsentimental look at three teenagers heading north from Guatemala. We never learn why they’ve decided to leave, or what they’re leaving behind. With vague hopes of a better life in the United States, and dreams of snowflakes, they make their way through Mexico, like thousands of others using the tops of trains as free transportation. This route was also portrayed in 2009 fine Sin Nombre, which wove in a story about gang rivalry. This movie is less heavily plotted, and quieter, though many of the same perils are illustrated. A major turn in the plot does occur midway, but this only emphasizes the film’s strong theme, which is the role of luck. Some of the train riders will make it north, some will get sent home and give up, or perhaps try again, and some will meet worse fates. Sara, one of the teens, disguises herself as a boy to avoid some of those risks, but some cannot be controlled.

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viewed 10/21/13 6:50 at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/21/13

Sleepwalk with Me (***)

The comedian Mike Birbiglia is perhaps best known to the several million listeners of public radio’s This American Life (including me), which helped popularize the autobiographical monologues that he had done on stage. The show’s host, Ira Glass, is a producer and cowriter of this film. The particular problem Birbiglia has, in which he sometimes acts out his dreams while still sleeping, has already been a basis for a stage show, a comedy album, and a book. It is one of the three plot pillars of Birbiglia’s film, in which the character he plays is called Matt Pandamiglio. The other two pillars are Matt/Mike’s efforts to transition from a dead-end bartending job to success as a New York-based standup, and his erstwhile eight-years-and-counting relationship with his girlfriend (Lauren Ambrose).

Of the three, the sleep disorder part may be most interesting to those who haven’t already heard about it on the radio or the stage. For those who have, getting to see the La Quinta Inn where a certain episode occurred may be a bonus, but the visuals render it unfortunate, not funny, as it is in story form. Other dreams, shown from Matt’s view as if real, are funny, though. The comic-on-the-road segments are welcome, that being relatively unexplored turf in cinema. I do suspect, however, that where Matt’s breakthrough seems to follow easily once he starts doing more personal material, Mike’s probably involved more stops and starts and hard work than is seen here.

The relationship plotline, with Matt as the commitment-phobic guy (if I can oversimplify), is the most familiar one, and the one that takes up the biggest chunk of the film’s 90 minutes. It’s not a bad portrait of a relationship that’s become merely comfortable. Matt says everyone thinks “the best thing about my life is my girlfriend,” which is a nice line. He feels pressure because his sister is getting married after a much-less-than-eight-year courtship, but still won’t move forward. Carol Kane and James Rebhorn have a few scenes as the parents; Rebhorn is funny as the well-meaning yet mildly irritating father.

Gluing these three themes are connecting segments with Mike/Matt narrating as he drives along, telling the audience to turn off cell phones and, in one case, apologizing for the stupid thing his younger self has just done on screen. “I know,” he says. “I’m in the future, too. ” This way of putting it is as least as good an example of his bewildered-by-his-own-life sensibility as we get in the movie. It’s a line from his stand-up act. If you’re not big on radio programs and podcasts, this warm comedic drama is still worth your while, and goes down as easy as Birbiglia’s puppy-dog voice and mien. But look online for the This American Life episodes that feature Birbiglia for what is still the best introduction to his brand of idiosyncratic, yet easily relatable humor. Look especially for the one about his adolescent desire to make out with a girl, a subject absent from this movie but that might well be the basis for another one.
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viewed 9/12/12 at Ritz Bourse [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/12–14/12

The Trip (**3/4)

There should be a name for the modestly burgeoning subgenre of film/movie wherein the stars play fictionalized versions of themselves with the same names. My Dinner with Andre did this 30 years ago. Neil Patrick Harris did it in the Harold and Kumar movies. Larry David does it in his HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe combine all of those (well, not so much Harold and Kumar) and you roughly get The Trip, wherein British TV stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon riff on whatever comes into their heads, especially imitating celebrity voices, as they motor around and overnight in the inns of northern England.

Also, they look at some nice scenery and eat some nice nouvelle cuisine, frequently cut in geometric shapes. They regard the fine food with near detachment, making the loving attention the camera pays to it an ironic contrast. How closely this parallels the real Coogan I don’t know, but there is a somewhat serious side in which Coogan weighs the possibilities of the United States, where a larger market and an American girlfriend beckon. I suspect the film might have worked slightly better in its original form as a six-part television series. In long form the minimal plot makes the movie seem long, but it’s often enough amusing, at least if the notion of 40ish Englishmen bickering in the voice of Michael Caine about which of them has the better Caine imitation amuses you. It also offers a perspective on adult male friendship that’s different from that of a typical buddy film, perhaps because these are such distinct personalities.

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viewed 6/14/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/17/11

Everybody’s Fine (***1/4)

Back in 1990, when people didn't have cell phones, digital cameras, or e-mail accounts, Giuseppe Tornatore made the follow-up to the classic Cinema Paradiso. Nineteen years later, widower Frank (Robert DeNiro, in the role Marcello Mastroianni played in the orginal) still doesn't have those things, and views his adult children in the hazy glow of their childhood selves. For many years, he has related to them through his wife, who died eight months earlier. And so he sets out on journey that could easily be sentimental, but for most of the movie’s length remains more subtle. Only toward the end, with a present-day DeNiro having an adult conversation with the pre-teen versions of his children, do things start to get sappy. The movie runs on about ten minutes long after everything has been resolved, as if the American audience must be reassured that everything really is just fine.

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viewed 11/19/09 [PFS screening at Ritz East] and reviewed 11/19–12/04/09

Up in the Air (****)

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viewed 12/15/09 at Ritz 5

Away We Go (***)

Expecting couple John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph decide to audition new home towns in this pleasant comedy-drama. It ranges from broad comedy—they visit a couple of wacky relatives and friends—to wistful romance, without becoming clichéed. Stops include Tuscon and Montréal, less common film settings. Krasinski (of NBC’s The Office) brings a low-key charm to the role, while Rudolph, whose only other lead was in Idiocracy, shows some dramatic skills. She’s one of the very few Saturday Night Live veterans who I’ve seen do something that didn’t just seem like an outgrowth of a skit. The two actors seem like a real couple, and another thing I liked was that in the whole movie they never fight, even though they disagree. It’s nearly a cliché of any road movie that the travelers at some point have to have a big blow-up. Here, they just pretend to have one, in one of the lightly comic moments in which the movie is at its best.

Director Sam Mendes has a résumé loaded with heavy (pretentious, some might say) films—American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, and Revolutionary Road—but there is nothing to suggest that here. Partial credit goes to married novelists Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, who make mostly successful screenwriting debuts. Mendes doesn’t make the movie any sort of a travelogue; instead, he reminds us that sometimes the most satisfying part of a trip is arriving home.

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viewed 6/11/09 (screening at Ritz East) and reviewed 7/16/09

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (***1/2)

Woody Allen famously said, “The heart wants what it wants.” But what if the heart doesn’t know what it wants? Such is the case with Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johanssen), two friends on a Spanish summer holiday who get an unusually frank proposition from a native painter (Javier Bardem). The promise of kinkiness between Johanssen and Penelope Cruz in the ads probably accounts for Woody getting his widest opening (no pun intended) in years. The kinkiness is on the mild side, but mainstream moviegoers discovering or rediscovering the aging director will find one of his more engaging comedy dramas, especially if they like Spanish guitar or the design work of Antoní Gaudi.

It’s a meditation on love rather than duplicity, the common theme of his preceding London trilogy. Practical Vicky gets pulled along by free-spirited Cristina, but finds herself questioning her own ideas about relationships. Bardem has a European sort of macho about him, employing quiet confidence rather than swagger. It seems to me that, as Woody has appeared less in his own films, he’s been more free to create different sorts of male leads. For that matter, the tone is different from the director’s earlier work. The light comedy is more reminiscent of an Eric Roemer film than, say, Annie Hall. The most overt humor is when Cruz, as the painter’s volatile ex-wife, comes into the picture, but there are no one-liners. Maybe Woody should keep traveling the world to make movies; at 72, he has subtly reinvented himself once again.

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viewed 8/19/08 at Ritz 5; reviewed 8/19/08 and 8/26/08

Into the Wild (***3/4)

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Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (**3/4)

? This is the big-screen debut of the TV character created by Sacha Baron Cohen as part of Da Ali G Show. In that HBO reality show, Cohen transforms himself into three outlandish characters who interact with celebrities and others who aren’t in on the joke. The movie version incorporates a plot whereby Borat, said to be a Kazakh journalist, travels from his homeland, a misogynistic, anti-Semitic backwater, to make a documentary about the USA. (Hence the mangled syntax of the title and the cheap TV-style graphics we see.) Bookended segments take place in this fictional version of Kazakhstan, where Borat jovially introduces such figures as the town rapist and we get to see the annual “running of the Jews.” Most of the movie is a quasi-travelogue, with Borat and his manager meeting Americans in red and blue states.

+ A lot of the movie is flat-out hilarious and prompted a lot of laughter at the preview screening I attended. In the “real people” segments, Borat has it both ways. It’s funny when the people are shocked by Borat’s attitudes and/or ignorance, and funny (if disturbing) when they seem to agree. In other cases, such as when he appears on a local TV news show (which apparently aired), the people are just bewildered or made uncomfortable by the “Kazakh” customs such as men kissing on the cheek. I’m sure some people would be offended by all the anti-Jewish remarks of the sort not usually seen outside a Holocaust drama, but given that they emanate from a character who’s basically a buffoon (and played by a Jew), this seems an obtuse view.

- I was a fan of Da Ali G Show, and I think I still would rather watch that. The “documentary” segments only serve to accentuate the artificiality of the part added for the movie, which is to say the plot. I would have been happy if all or nearly all of the movie was just unsuspecting people talking to Borat, without all the stuff about having his money stolen and such. Although Cohen never breaks character, Borat does engage in some Jackass-style antics that, while comical, don’t seem like anything even an ignorant, anti-Semitic misogynist would do. All that being said, there was one particularly funny (if disturbing) sequence with Borat getting into a naked altercation.

= **3/4 [original rating **1/2] Cohen’s characters make me a little uncomfortable, either because I’m embarrassed for him or for the people he’s fooling, not all of whom deserve it. If you like this kind of humor, which is really a variation on shows like Candid Camera, that might not bother you, nor will the uneven plot.

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