Albert Nobbs (2011)

Wow. I really hated this movie. My mom had this to say: It had no redeeming quality.

Albert is a woman camouflaged as a man in Dublin around 1900. He works at a second-rate hotel and zealously saves and counts his money, hoping to buy a tobacco shop some day. Albert was abandoned at 14 (when a girl), and then attacked by five men. At this point she started wearing men's clothes for a job, and never stopped hiding. Albert no longer remembers being a woman, and is incredibly damaged. To me, this was a huge problem in the movie. It was made clear that Albert was damaged, but I never understood how he had managed to survive to his presumed age of 45 or 50. This is a person who cannot relate to others in any way, has no humor, no ability to converse, yet has worked in many different cities as a waiter and deals with the public constantly. He also doesn't understand male / female relations, which seems unlikely and unreasonable. How could he live in a hotel and be so ignorant of the world? How could he be so ignorant and not have been taken advantage of before this?

Most of the rest of the characters are unsavory. The acting is often decent, but the characters are generally unlikable and the narrative is so choppy that I never felt invested in anyone.

Janet McTeer is a lesbian (Albert does not appear to be gay, but certainly not sexual), who lives in camouflage also, but is happy about it. She is not really hiding, but has carved out a life that works for her in a time and place that is not sympathetic to who she is. This amazes and perplexes Albert to no end, leading him / her to think that perhaps she could have a different life as well. This leads to tragedy.

The ending blows. Mom and I thought of several alternate (and equally depressing) endings that we felt would have been more true to the story and characters. Anyway, I would not recommend this to anyone.

My Week With Marilyn (2011)

You can pass on this one unless you are a huge Marilyn fan. It is not a particularly good movie, though it is prettily shot. The costumes are decent, the editing is simple, and Judi Dench is great.

However. The two leads, Marilyn and Sir Laurence Olivier, are horribly miscast. Michelle Williams is a really good actress, but she misses this. From the voice to the facial expressions to the body (she is padded) and her body language, she is all wrong. My mom was most taken aback at the voice, and I was most disappointed in the body language. Michelle Williams missed both horribly.

Kenneth Branagh was laughable as Olivier. He played him like his Harry Potter character, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, was a stage actor. It worked well in Harry Potter, but not here. I am astonished that these two are getting nominations at all; I will be far more astonished if either wins anything.

Hugo (2011)

I am not a fan of Martin Scorsese. I have detested a decent amount of his recent films. I thought Gangs of New York was particularly awful.


Well, he has made up for it all with Hugo. This is a gorgeous film about a boy orphaned in 1930's Paris who ends up living in a cavernous train station. He is taken in by his uncle, who manages the station clocks, but the uncle is a drunk who quickly disappears. Hugo stays in the station on his own, secretively maintaining the clocks in the hopes that no one will notice him and send him to the orphanage. With him he has one memento of his father, a beautiful automaton. He and his dad had been trying to fix it when his father died. Hugo believes that the machine contains a message from his father, and if he fixes it, that message will be revealed.


The art direction is marvelous and seamless. Every bit of acting is perfect. Famous faces fill even the smallest roles, but they are not allowed to dominate or divert attention from the direction of the film. The pacing is wonderful. Even the smallest acts are allowed to develop and unfold without rushing the scenes. The tiniest of details are considered, whether the silent movie posters on the wall of the make-believe theater (Judex!) or all the pieces of clock mechanism, both big and small.

I loved this film!

Iron Lady (2011)

If Meryl doesn't win this year, there is no justice and the Oscars are a big colossal joke. OK, that's my gauntlet. I already suspect (and half know) the Oscars are a big joke, but if Meryl wins, I shelve my suspicions for another year.

This movie is not perfect - far from it. The editing is odd, there are unusual closeups and fadeouts and weird breaches of narrative. Nevertheless, none of that matters. There is no one better than La Streep. Sometimes I think, what about Judi Dench or Cate Blanchett or Helen Mirren? Nope, sorry gals. I love you all, but you're not Meryl. I sometimes forget that, but refreshing my memory is only a movie away. Whether playing Julia Child or a devil in Prada, Streep is better than everyone else out there.

Here she plays Margaret Thatcher, and it's hard to even see Meryl for most of the movie. All you see is Margaret. Pick up Capote and watch the difference between good acting and Meryl Streep. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is great as Capote, but you still see him in the role. I thought, what a great job imitating Capote. (And I wanted Heath Ledger to win for Brokeback, so there you go.) That is not the way with this film. I felt that I was watching a documentary. From the mannerisms to the voice, Meryl is not just Margaret Thatcher, but a very old woman living in her memories.

Everyone else is fantastic too - Jim Broadbent and Alexandra Roach in particular.

Margin Call (2011)

I thought this movie would suck. I figured it was basically another Wall Street do-over. And I am often reminded that low expectations are a wonderful thing.

When the movie hit the best of the year lists from many critics, I tried to get it quickly. No luck! Everyone wanted to rent it, and with good reason. It's a claustrophobic little nightmare about the day of reckoning, truly less than 24 hours, at a Lehman type firm. In the middle of the night an analyst realizes that the risk profile for the firm's current portfolio is fucked and the firm is under water. He wakes up his boss, who wakes up his, and by 3AM there is a boardroom full up higher-ups deciding what to do. Their decisions are not pretty. The impact for the individuals involved, the employees, the firm and the entire market is nuts.

Most of the movie takes place in a couple of offices, a conference room, an elevator, a parking garage. It reminds me of a play in that regard, and it works really well here. The director, J.C. Chandor, is a newcomer. We need to pay attention to him. The cast is uniformly great. Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey - usually a movie with this many stars is crap. But not here. Enjoy it.

A Better Life (2011)

This is good movie for a lot reasons. It has great acting, first of all. You don't get to say that about too many films. And to that you get to add that it shows you a slice of L.A. that is not usually represented in films. We have a father and son, played by Damian Bichir and Jose Julian, who live on the dad's salary as a gardener. He works under the table, paycheck to paycheck, and they get by. His son was born in the US, and dad has been here for almost 20 years, so the U.S. is home. Nevertheless, they are well aware that dad could be deported if he is in any way noticed by the authorities. Say for a traffic stop. So he doesn't have a car. He tries to get legal papers, but the money spent on that attorney is long gone. His son attends his neighborhood high school, which is remarkably similar to a prison. None of this is portrayed in a dramatic or particularly sympathetic manner, it put forward factually. This is how they live.

One day dad has a chance to buy a truck and thereby change his life dramatically. With the additional money he could move to a better neighborhood and get his kid in a better school. He buys the truck. Here the movie enters a Bicycle Thief plot line for a while, which is fine, but it did distract me. I suppose there is nothing really original left in film, but I would have liked a different path to this ending. The story does move back to a more original plot line, and it never disappoints again.

Bichir is nominated for an Oscar for his performance. If he won it would be great, far better than George Clooney or Brad Pitt winning. I still would like to see Gary O win, but Dujardin will probably take it if George Clooney doesn't. Dujardin is my second choice.

Tree of Life (2011)

I was really hoping I would not have to watch this one, as I am not a fan of Terrence Malick. But it was nominated, so I'm watching it. I am disinterested and have already fast forwarded over the creation of the earth part. I think that's OK. I'm about an hour into the film now and we're just starting to have a bit of story, though that doesn't mean mood wasn't conveyed early on. The father in this film (as played by Brad Pitt) is a menacing presence from the get-go, and by using Sean Penn to play the adult version of Jack, we know the oldest son turns out to have issues.

Story line is not a Malick focus. I tend to think about the Emperor's New Clothes when I watch his films. I am perplexed at the critical raves. If you like beautiful cinematography, though, pick this film up. That's about all I've got.

Lost in Austen (2008)

This alternative take on Jane Austen's P and P is a worthy rental. It was a British mini-series (four parts, I believe, running at a total of 180 minutes - on one disc!). The modern-day protagonist finds herself with a John Malkovich - like door behind her bathtub through which she inadvertently trades places with Elizabeth Bennet just before Mr. Bingley moves to Netherfield.

Ms. Price is very much out of place, with her stick straight and artificially colored hair, low-rise jeans and "landing strip" pubes. (We don't see them.) But she's stuck at Longbourne, so she tries to dance the quadrille and make sure everybody stays on track and matches up as Austen intended. And it wouldn't be a show if everything didn't get messed up. Darcy is even more of a dick than in the book, Wickham is NOT a cad, Caroline Bingley is gay (closeted, and still after Darcy), and .... so much more. It's a fun one to watch. Not at all perfect, but lots of fun for Austen fans. (BTW - Hugh Bonneville and Alex Kingston are Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and they do a fun interpretation of the famous parents.)

The Beaver (2011)

This movie is really tough. I am a Jodie Foster fan. I'm also a fan of Mel Gibson's overall body of work. Even the Lethal Weapon series was fun. I think they're a good team, and I like that Jodie Foster was trying to help her friend with this movie.

Nevertheless, it wasn't very good. This is a tragic subject - depression - but the tone of the movie didn't work for me at all. It was a bit fairy-tale like in the beginning, which felt false. It then moved into ugliness and tragedy, but still managed to have a decently happy ending. That was false.

Mel plays a husband and father who suffers from severe depression. He is mentally ill. After trying unsuccessfully to kill himself, he is "saved" by a puppet he found in the trash. Unfortunately, the puppet takes over Mel's life. It's almost a psychological horror film for twenty minutes or so.

The cast is good; the acting is good; the movie is bad. I would NOT recommend this one.

Beginners (2011)

This is a great movie. It had great acting, charming characters, and some of the most clever dialog I've heard in a while. I like that in a movie. It could have been better if everyone had NOT been so incredibly clever all the time. There is a costume party scene that had all the guests speaking to each other with Dorothy Parker - type wit. I would love to go to a party like that, but I find there is inevitably some buffoon going on about his ex-wife at great length who traps me in a corner.

Christopher Plummer plays Ewan McGregor's 72 year old dad. After his wife, Ewan's mother, dies, dad comes out of the closet. And he starts dating much younger men, hosting a lot of parties and donating his time to gay pride events. He is having a great time. And then he discovers he has cancer. Ewan's character is there for his dad, but he has his own romantic problems. It's a great story, and very well told. The acting is top notch. And if you want to watch people react perfectly to all non-perfect situations, this is the movie for you. I am going to try to channel these characters. They are very graceful.

The Artist (2011)

This is such a great time of year! There are so many amazing movies out. (Skip true January releases; anything released anywhere in the U.S. by 12/31 is an Oscar contender for the year. Late releases are positioning themselves as award hopefuls.)

I finally saw The Artist. This baby is a joy to watch. From the first frames I was amazed at how the director made a silent film in this day and age, and I was entranced. In the opening scene, we watch the Artist watching the audience watch him on the big screen at a movie premiere. We watch him watch himself. By changing the angles of our view, we watch the captivated audience react to shots and are able to watch the movie ourselves. This director, Michel Hazanavicius, is a genius. And then there's Jean Dujardin. As the silent film star we watch him get into character - again and again. It a stellar performance. I wanted Gary Oldham to win for Tinker Tailor, but the award should go to Dujardin. I think Clooney will win, but he is not the Best Actor this year.

The protagonist, Valentin, is a silent film star who loves life until talkies come about and he is out of a job. We watch him at the top and we watch his fall. I think this film may contain the most clever scene I have ever seen in a movie. Dujardin's character discovers sound is here to stay in a scene so subtle that you may almost miss it. But you won't. Think about this afterward. How did the writer and director know this would work? Did they try other scenes? Or did they always know this particular scene would be perfection?

Incendies (2010)

I think this was nominated for a best foreign film Oscar last year (2010), though it is hitting best of the year lists for 2011. This happens with foreign films. Canada submits its movie to the Academy (Incendies), but that doesn't mean it has found a US distributor. After the nomination, it's easier to get a distributor. I could be making this up, but I believe that's how I've read it.

Anyway, it is amazing. You will not see many movies that hit you in the gut like this one. This is not an uplifting film. For me, it increases my understanding of the hate that lives for centuries in towns or countries, between neighbors of different faiths or tribes. I think we live with a very thin veneer of civilization. This movie will not leave you with too much hope for change, but it's a great story with solid acting. The director did a good job moving between the present and flashbacks; between life in Canada versus life in a small middle-eastern village with bombs falling everywhere.

A mother in Canada has two grown children - twins. One day at the pool with her daughter, she has a stroke and dies within days. She leaves letters for her children telling them they have a brother and a father, and she would like them to find these men. While searching for their relatives, the children learn that their mother was a rebel, had been a prisoner, had seen things they could not imagine. It changes everything for them.

I was gripped. I recommend this one. Put it at the top of your queue.

Moneyball (2011)

Brad Pitt pisses me off. I try to NOT like him, but I can't make it happen. I really dislike his smug interview personality, but I often end up liking what he can do in films. Burn After Reading. Fight Club. Ocean's 11. He creates great characters. Oh well. I will have to reconcile myself with the fact that people are complex and my feelings about Mr. Pitt are probably not important in any case.

This movie is great. Brad Pitt is charming and likeable as the Oakland A's coach who basically tries to turn the 100 plus year history of baseball scouting and roster selection on its ear. This is based on a true story, so most of us have heard the plot line and know how the movie generally ends. Nevertheless, I was stressed out enough during the movie that I pulled out the laptop and looked up the end of the season for this team on Wiki. So they did a good job with the tension. The acting is uniformly good. Jonah Hill actually gives Brad a run for his money in the cute department.

I would much rather this movie win Best Pic than stupid old War Horse.

Attack the Block (2011)

Last summer I went to see Cowboys and Aliens, a singularly disappointing experience. That movie sucked in almost every way, and it had such potential! I really wanted it to be great, but the director, Jon Favreau, totally missed the mark in terms of tone, silliness and explosions.

I hope he's seen Attack the Block. This movie is pretty much exactly what he was trying to do. It is tongue in cheek, just the right amount of scary, the perfect amount of cheesy, and well-paced. The dialogue is great. It has awesome comic relief, and the editing moves the movie from scary to silly without hesitation. It really works. In this movie, a gang of 15 year-old street thugs are robbing citizens at knife-point when they are interrupted by an alien pod dropping into a nearby car. They kill the alien, who happened to be a female scoping out the planet's hospitable-ness. Killing her was a huge mistake, as the much bigger guy aliens soon follow to avenge her death. They really only care about getting our gang of thugs, so they are attacking the housing project, or the "block".

This movie is awesome, and Yahoo viewers gave it an average of 5.8 stars. Are people stupid? Or is it possible they couldn't understand the non-stop British slang? Do yourself a favor and run the subtitles for this one. You'll learn some new words.

The star is a kid by the name of John Boyega. He's awesome. Also, he is NOT Denzel's son, appearance notwithstanding.

Poetry (2010)

This is a Korean film, and I'm not sure there could be anything like it from the American film industry. Part of this is cultural, as the interpersonal relationships in Korea between male and female, rich and poor, and family members are different than in the US. People have different options when it comes to crime, although that might translate more closely to the US. One of the biggest differences, though, is the restraint in this film. Chang-dong Lee wrote and directed, and I will be checking out his other films. This movie relies on the facial expressions of the star and attitude and body language more than it does on dialogue.

The movie stars Jeong-hie Yun stars as Mija, a mid-60's woman who gets by on her social security and a part time job as a maid / caretaker. Her daughter has divorced and moved away to work, leaving her son to live with Mija. The boy is young, probably in early high school, and is sullen and rude with a strong sense of entitlement.

Mija's life is already tough, and then she learns she has the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. And then a huge family crisis develops. As the film starts, Mija enters a poetry class, and this class, this bit of relief or the distraction of art keep her grounded as the movie unfolds.

If you think you know where this story is going, forget it. This is not like something you'd have seen before, because I certainly haven't. Jeong-hie could get a best actress nomination for this. It would be deserved.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

Well, this one is quite interesting. First of all Keira Knightley is good in this film - really good. I usually find her annoying, as she uses an angry face and loud voice as an acting proxy in many films. That is not what she does here. She plays Sabina Spielrein, a Russian Jew with a psychological problem who ends up in the mental hospital where Jung was working.

This is a true story. By all accounts, Sabina and Jung began and continued a romantic / sexual relationship once she was out of the hospital (but still his patient). This violated ethics for Jung, but that is not the focus of the film.

The focus of the film was the problem for me. There are many story lines: the relationship between Jung and Freud (father / son type issues, jealousy, professional competition); the role of Sabina and Emma (Jung's wife) in his life, Jung's interest in spiritualism. There are many topics and not one dominant theme. I think any one of these topics could have been looked at more deeply. In particular I would like to learn more about Sabina. She left the hospital, entered psychiatry and became one of the first female psychoanalysts. She returned to Russia and practiced, and was eventually killed by the Nazis. That's quite a life, and it ended too soon.

The sexual problems in the beginning of the film are not introduced in a titillating manner, and they are resolved quickly. Cronenberg does not dwell on the sex, though the affair is a constant topic. This movie is more of a docudrama, and is brought to life with amazing artistry. The set direction and costumes are lovely. I would recommend this film to people who enjoy a learning experience. It made me think, which is a good thing.

Warrior (2011)

I may have a new favorite actor: Tom Hardy. He was great in Inception, amazing in Tinker Tailor, and he blew my mind in this one.

Here he plays Tommy Conlon, a wrestling champ now grown and out of the Marines. He comes home to his father, Nick Nolte, a 12-stepping alcoholic, and his estranged brother. Both men despise their father. This is the opposite of a happy family. I cannot express that enough.

The boys aren't talking, but they both manage to enter the world cage-fighting championships and make it to the final to fight each other. This is telegraphed throughout the film, so I'm not ruining anything here. The cage fighting is not the point in any case. If it were, the film would be screwed, because the older brother's path to the fight is laughable. Even I can see this. It plays out like a soap opera. I hated that entire part of the script. I also disliked the split-screens the director used, the music, lots of things.

But the characters and the acting kept me hooked. Until the end I was so excited about this film I thought I would watch it twice and probably buy it. Tommy Conlon is such a great character (thanks to Thomas Hardy) that I was gripped. The end totally fucked this movie up for me, though. I will never watch it again, but I cannot get it out of my head. I guess that makes it a good movie. It's hitting a lot of top ten lists, that's for sure. I would recommend this - it is way better than War Horse. And what a performance by TH. But I really hope you hate the ending as much as I did.

Waste Land (2010)

I think I need to buy this one. Maybe the best documentary I have ever seen is Man on Wire, which won the Oscar a few years ago. But this one is nearer to my heart.

Vik Muniz is a hugely successful Brazilian artist living and working in the US. He is still young, and he's made plenty of money, so he wants to make a difference. In the project documented, he decides to go to the world's largest dump, Jardim Gramacho (outside Rio), and work with the catadores to create art with them. The catadores pick through the garbage and pull out tons of recyclable material each day, which they sell to recyclers. This is their living, and it places them firmly on the very bottom run of Brazilian society. It's a filthy job. You have to see it to understand how filthy.

Vik picks a half dozen catadores and creates huge mixed media portraits of them, using photographs and garbage. The images are stunning, and unusual, and sold around the world.

This movie is about hope, and how hope and knowledge of a different life can change someone's current situation. It's also about art, and the difference between garbage and recycling, and the difference between self respect and the bottom rung of the ladder.

Restrepo (2010)

This is such a sad film. In this documentary, the men of the 503rd infantry regiment are followed for a year as they battle for a valley in Afghanistan. I imagine that this is the kind of movie where everyone will take something different from it, but I felt futility, despair and sadness that these young men spent a year in this valley. That anyone did. How is this fair to anyone? Why haven't we figured out an answer to war?

I suppose this is a must for war buffs, but I never want to see it again.

Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle (1999)

Thanks to my friend P for recommending this to me! I had never heard of this BBC production about Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Bell (pictured), his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. It is not perfect, but certainly loads of fun. Did you know that Arthur Conan Doyle went to school with one of the primary Ripper suspects?

If you are a Sherlock Holmes fan, or a Conan Doyle fan, or if you enjoy Ripper stories (not in a gruesome way), you should watch this one.

The Change-Up (2011)

Unwatchable. Please be alert for this Jason Bateman / Ryan Reynolds embarrassment in order to avoid it.

I believe Sandra Bullock surprised Ryan R. at the premiere of this movie as a friendly show of support. He must have been mortified.