Movie Week

Another weekly roundup...

L'Enfant - ***1/2 - last year's top winner at Cannes, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. They continue to work familiar ground - the streets of Liege, Belgium, the story of the poor and beaten down - in this case, Bruno, a petty thief and his girlfriend Sonia, who has just had a baby. Bruno, unfortunately, will sell anything - and when he gets an offer for the baby, he takes it. Sonia reacts about as one would expect, and Bruno changes his mind - which sets in motion a chain of events that, perhaps contrary to expectation, prove redemptive. The influence of Bresson and Dostoevsky can be seen. It is a superb film, though the Dardenne brothers have become almost a genre to themselves by now - this seems a bit safe, within that genre. That is not quite a criticism.

Stoned - **1/2 - the last months of Brian Jones, founder of the rolling stones, possessor of one of the finests heads of hair on the 60s, and miserable victim of his success, drowning in his swimming pool. Was he drunk? Was he murdered? See the film and find out! Anyway - the film is mostly set in the last 3 months of Jones' life, when he was being fired from the Rolling Stones, and lounging about his farm, taking the piss out of the builders working for him, banging a Swedish girl, drinking himself to death... from that miserable period, it flashes back on better times with the Stones, with Anita Pallenberg, with Brion Gyson, with better drugs and sex... all of this in a 60s-style montage and covers of Stones covers... The real center fo the film is not Brian Jones (or Leo Gregory, who plays him) - it's Paddy Considine as his builder, Frank Thorogood - alternately tormented, befriended, condescended to by Jones, and loathed by the Stones' management and all the hippies around them... Considine comes off as the new Stephen Rea - something of a sad sack, with a hard streak just under the surface - his role in My Summer of Love felt similar - a guy trying to hold back his demons, one way or the other... not quite managing it. (There are other parallels to that film - the rich, spoiled brat seductively jerking the working class around - with similar results, though Jones fares less well when he goes under than the rich kid in the other film....)

Kelly's Heroes - *** - how many times have I seen this? Actually, a real question. some of it I have seen many times - it's been a fixture on TV through the years. All of it? I don't know if I ever have. But that's changed! found a cheap copy of the DVD, and who can resist? Clint Eastwood! Telly Savalas! Donald Sutherland as a hippy! Anyway - fun as it is - well, Lance Mannion wrote it up a couple months ago - his post says it better than me.