January Films, in Brief

As the new year begins - finally, a couple weeks with some actual decent films. A couple weeks in a row where there were films out I wanted to see and felt some keenness in the choices I made. Very gratifying. There may have been more good films in 2010 than I give credit to, but it certainly seemed as though there were a lot of weeks with nothing out I cared a whit for. Even in November and December, usually a good time for films. It's a great relief for this year's releases to start out much more appealingly. So here are some short notices - some of these films might get more later, if I get more energetic.

True Grit - 11/15 - the Coens on their best behavior, in some ways, thought he story itself is very close to their sensibility. A beautiful film, wonderfully played, a straightforward western perfectly executed. Oddly, given their love of comedy, it is less funny than the original - though more of a story, and a movie, less a star piece. Adaption or remake or not, though, it is all theirs - like all their films, it is a kind of celebration of the spoken word, the human voice, human faces, landscapes and skies, light and textures. Voices and faces especially, which is what makes their films almost infinitely rewatchable.

Rabbit Hole - 10/15 - story of a couple who have lost their 4 year old son in a car accident, some 8 months before the film takes place. They are not coping well. The man goes to group therapy (without his wife), which soon prompts a somewhat predictable plot point; she, meanwhile, stalks the boy who ran over their son, another somewhat predictable plot point... It would probably be churlish to note that the woman has a sister who is expecting her first child - as sisters inevitably seem to do in films about the loss of a child. It's churlish because in spite of the borderline cliched situations, the film is a carefully made, resonant examination of grief and recovery. It feels right - it feels very familiar, but the details and moments still seem to have life in them.

Blue Valentine - 10/15 - a film about a bad marriage shot in gritty realistic style that though honorable and well made in every way comes short, somehow. It's hard to say why - just that somehow, the blend of gritty realism, mopey whimsy, Cassavetes style melodrama and more conventional melodrama comes off as less than the sum of its parts. I don't mean to complain, though - it is a smart, well made film, a welcome attempt to tell a fairly honest, simple story, to show lives of regular people - salt of the earth! the working man! It even flirts with showing people working, which is bloody rare in American films. The performances are superb - the story is grim, without being over the top - the characters are interesting, sad, complicated - so don't take that griping too much to heart. I suppose what it comes to is that it's a bit too schematic in places - the ways neither of them wants to repeat their upbringing (he's from a broken home, and will do anything to preserve any kind of home; she's from a nightmarish "stable" home, and would do anything to spare her kid that kind of hatred.) That's maybe too neat (for instance) - though it's also accurate, so again - the quibbles are quibbles, doubts about a very good film.

Somewhere - 11/15 - I was a bit surprised to find myself really liking this film. Is there a backlash against Sofia Coppola? I don't know - I just come across the complaints now and then. Usually about all the time she devotes to the terrible suffering of privileged white folks. The problem is - she makes pretty good films. She has an eye, and she films what she knows - and while what she films may be limited (what she knows may be limited), she makes it live. This film starts and ends rather schematically (driving in a circle; walking toward something) - in between, though, it is surprisingly effective. The plot - a dissolute Hollywood star forced to take care of a precocious kid for a week - is old stuff - but it doesn't quite go in the directions these kinds of films usually go in. He does not resent the kid (then learn a life lesson); he does not do anything stupid and careless with the kid; he is, in fact, a decent father, when he chooses to be. And if he learns a life lesson - it was one we could see coming before the kid turned up. The emptiness of his life is clear enough without the kid, and it is clear enough that he knows it. So - I'd say it succeeds, in telling a story about someone nothing like normal people, but still making it recognizably human, and having a fair sense of the specificities of his life. The boredom and randomness of acting and publicity; the swarms of enablers around you; the endlessly freely available pussy (and cock, if you were so inclined) - oddly enough, it probably comes the closest to showing someone working for a living of all these films. A very strange kind of job - but a job.... And she has that eye - it's a slow film, but one that absorbs you into its rhythms, its imagery, and keeps you there. I liked it.