In the Loop: I thought this political satire about a bumbling British minister and other government officials with varying interests fighting to control the conversation in the run-up to a US/UK declaration of war was a hoot and a half. (Also, breaking: Anna Chlumsky neither died nor got fat!) Highly recommended.
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Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: This Spanish comedy, Pedro Almodovar’s big one, is a speedy crime caper/farce with surrealist undertones. Brightly colored, nutballs, fun all the way through. Recommended.
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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee: The lengthy chronicle of Pippa Lee, former wild child, current long-suffering wife in a May-December marriage, future cougar. The movie is primarily a Robin Wright Penn vehicle, and the acting is good, but there’s too much cartoon and cliche stuffed into this woman’s life for it to come off as honest. It’s not terrible or anything, but there’s no need to go out of your way to see it. Not recommended.
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Sherlock Holmes: Probably not a winner for die-hard Holmes fans, but a really entertaining movie for the rest of us, in which Robert Downey, Jr. alternately solves crimes, boxes, drinks, bickers adorably with Jude Law, jumps through obstacle courses involving (among other things) scaffolding, barrels and boats, and frequently removes his shirt. As the friend who hosted a screening of this put it, this movie is a lot better than it ought to be. Recommended.
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Bright Star: This period piece about the doomed love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawne has been, I think, unfairly overlooked. The performances are lovely, and it’s worth watching for Paul Schneider alone, who’s terrifically smarmy as Keats’s best friend, Charles Brown. It’s a sentimental and overwrought tragic adolescent romance, true, but it ought to be: it’s about Keats. Recommended.
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The Invention of Lying: I suspect that Ricky Gervais’s original idea for this comedy had a lot more to do with inventing religion (the bit of this left over is clever and pointed) and a lot less to do with wooing Jennifer Garner’s character, but the movie in its finished form is a dumb, formulaic rom com organized around a joke that’s stretched too thin. Not recommended.
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Robin Hood: How on Earth did the makers of this film manage to turn ‘robbing from the rich and giving to the poor’ into a carrying case for conservative Randian propaganda? Of course, plenty of movies whack you over the head with liberal ideology, and the message would have been forgivable had the film been entertaining at all. Russell Crowe isn’t wasted on such fare, but Cate Blanchett made a serious misstep here. Not recommended.
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An Education: I expected to be infuriated by this movie, but it’s a well-written piece about a precocious high school senior in London in the 60s who becomes involved with a skeezy older man. The heroin is charming, but the most interesting people in this movie are the various adults with varying motives tugging her in different directions. Particularly outstanding are Alfred Molina as the limited father, and Olivia Williams as the concerned English teacher. Recommended.
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Broken Embraces: Almodovar again, this time with a much heavier film about an aging, blind filmmaker who is made to relive the doomed love affair that altered the course of his life. I had made an assumption at the beginning of the movie that spoiled what was meant to be a late-revealed twist, but it wasn’t just that that made the movie feel long, slow and largely uninteresting to me. The movie is for film fans, with references aplenty, homages, and clever stylistic choices, and yadda yah, but I’m not smart enough to appreciate all that – to me, the characters were cliches and the story was slow, and I couldn’t get myself to care much about it. Not recommended.
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Maitresse: First, a bit of explanation: the way in which I select movies and books alike is to keep a very lengthy, running list of titles that came recommended from any number of sources, and to close my eyes and point at random whenever I’m ready for a new one. I like variety and to be surprised, and I don’t usually look into whatever the movie or book is ahead of time. So it comes to pass, occasionally, that I find myself unexpectedly watching a guy get his scrotum nailed to a 2×4, as my roommates try to have their dinner. I do enjoy the French art house flicks, but Maitresse would make Bertolucci blush like a school girl. In addition to the scrote thing, and numerous other kinky sex acts, many featuring the bare-assed Gerard Depardieu and an assortment of anonymous French masochists, I also got to see a live horse actually slaughtered on camera (much more disturbing than the BDSM stuff).
Behind all the kink, Maitresse is a surprisingly simple, even rather sweet love story, and the metaphor of Ariane’s apartment – the peaceful, comforting upstairs apartment occupied by nurturing house-husband Depardieu, contrasting with the hidden, seedy downstairs in which Ariane makes her living by inhabiting a character that thinly veils her own deep fears – is well done. But in the end, the lengthy, indulgent scenes of sexual violence take center-screen here and overwhelm anything of substance the movie might have to offer. Not recommended.
