Although obviously Andersonian (Rushmore-ic?), The Squid and the Whale is not a movie that Wes Anderson could have pulled off. Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical film is too raw, naked, painful, and real. It fuses The Royal Tenenbaums and Ordinary People at a genetic level that Seth Brundle would appreciate. Although it acts like a comedy, the movie’s familiarity and truth will be as funny to many people as a slap in the face.
The youthful, idealistic energy of Woodward and Bernstein in All the President’s Men has been replaced by the grim realities of corporate journalism in writer/director Michael Mann’s The Insider. While the inexperienced Washington Post reporters put their own lives in danger pursuing a scandal that reached to the highest levels of political power, 60 Minutes disembowels a story that could bring the tobacco industry to its knees. The surprise is that Mann’s movie ends up being more of a human story – a touching, potent portrait of a man who did the right thing for the wrong reasons with a phenomenal performance at its center.
The recovering-alcoholic movie typically comes from earnest and intelligent filmmakers who – no matter their skill – find themselves stuck in the many requisite clichés; you simply can’t tackle the subject without them. Ken Loach’s fine, raw My Name Is Joe is richer than most movies of its type, but the formula just has too much baggage.
Adapted from Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, HBO’s Sharp Objects is a whole bunch of greatness that, finally, amounts to not much of anything.
Terrence Malick spent 20 years away from Hollywood, 10 of those bringing The Thin Red Line to theaters. The work that ended up on the screen clearly stewed too long in one man’s brain, and I expect the movie the reclusive director thought he made is actually quite different from the one I saw.
Much to my surprise, I can find no reference to the nearly universal cinematic “wedding-ring rule”: Any time a wedding ring is a prominent prop or visual motif in a movie, infidelity will be a central theme. The obverse: Any movie with infidelity as a central theme will feature the wedding ring as a prop or visual motif. I could offer dozens of examples, but the best might be Lantana, which is obviously about sexual straying but has a greater interest in marriage overall, especially the underlying, intertwined issues of trust and honesty. Although it’s nearly too blunt in its themes, the movie feels continuously right, nailing not only relationship dynamics but interred grief and pain. Throughout, it gets the tone, nuance, and scale of life correct.
A big part of the charm of Lost in Translation is that there is no epiphany and little character development; it’s a gentle, intimate study of two specific but relatable characters with the detail and resonance of a good short story. It approaches modest perfection.
It is in times of crisis that a person learns who his or her true friends are. Alejandro Escovedo discovered he has a lot of friends.
Here is a movie that so badly wants you to cry and to feel the heartbreak of emotionally stunted characters and to bask in their eventual breakthroughs that I did my damnedest to resist it. In America is one of the most shamelessly manipulative art-house movies you’ll ever find. It works surprisingly well.
The suspension of disbelief, to borrow a hackneyed maxim, is a privilege, not a right; you need to earn it. And last year’s holiday hit The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe doesn’t.
