Casa de mi Padre: (2012. dir: Matt Piedmont) You gotta love Will Ferrell, even if you don't like Will Ferrell, for his bottomless well of shamelessness and enthusiasm. Even if, like me, you have had minimal exposure to the Mex-ploitation film industry he's sending up, this is still an enjoyable romp. Entirely in Spanish with subtitles, you get everything you'd expect: the asshole yankee DEA agent (Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation, BRILLIANT), the flamboyant drug-lord and his newly-encroaching rival (Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, both having way too much fun), along with very funny pokes at magical realism (if nothing else, you have to see the Ferrell character's power animal) and filled to busting with continuity errors, bad timing, film glitches, buckets of blood splashed over slow-motion massacre scenes, subtitles which don't quite match the spoken words, even a scrolling apology from the second-camera assistant about why they couldn't use the fierce coyote-v-jaguar fight footage.
I laughed out loud twice, I think, but the rest of the time I was pleasantly amused.
Afraid of the Dark: (1991. dir: Mark Peploe) This is a low-key but truly harrowing double-story: about a boy going blind while trying to keep a grip on his life, and the same boy sighted but surrounded by blind people. The possibility of bloodshed lies around every corner, and the characters, having been well-written as normal, everyday people, seem terribly vulnerable and trusting. Utterly unconventional without descending into cleverness, chilling without sacrificing heart, and peopled by an astonishingly good cast (James Fox, Fanny Ardant, Paul McGann, Clare Holman, Susan Wooldridge, Robert Stephens, David Thewlis) speaking refreshingly good dialogue, it kept me on the edge of my seat right up to the end.
Deserter: (2002. dir: Martin Huberty) You watch it for Tom Hardy, sure, but it's also an interesting subject: a young Englishman of Romantic sensibilities (Paul Fox who, amazingly, seems NOT to have been spawned by the James/Edward Fox dynastical empire of acting talent) deals with a broken heart by running away to join the French Foreign Legion (La Legion Estrangere. Isn't that gorgeous?) only to find it a gruelling and decidedly unromantic row to hoe. The movie is lit, however, so that everything, --the desert, the medina in Algiers, the barracks, --everything looks beautiful, which you'd think would negate the point a bit, since the point (you'd think) would be the ugliness of reality. That's a red herring, though: really, this is a Hallmark-Movie-of-the-Week thing, designed ultimately to warm the cockles of your heart, convince you that the world is at last safe and warm and that destiny is in your corner, rooting for both your comfort and ultimate joy. That, in the end, all this which looks, at first glance, like chaos actually makes all kinds of sense, the fairy-tale, happily-ever-after, soul-mates-will-find-each-other and God-is-in-His-Heaven kind of sense.
I had hoped to learn some about the Algerian War of Independence, but this is all so simple-minded as to be a little insulting to everyone involved. (I did learn that when De Gaulle announced France would be pulling out and leaving the country to its own devices, the French Foreign Legion took over the airport and was on the verge of instigating a coup, which is interesting.) The worst of it is that there is a late, climactic moment between two great friends, a moment which ought to have been quite devastatingly effective, particularly since Tom Hardy was involved (and he is, as always, lovely in this). But because we are being led delicately by the hand as if children through a war-torn landscape bearing only the vaguest resemblance to anything in the real world, the moment passes without conjuring emotion. Or, anyway, conjuring something so small and un-upsetting that it bears only the vaguest resemblance to true emotion.
Recommended for Hardy completists only.
North Fork: (2003. dir: Michael Polish) An American town in the fifties is about to be drowned beneath a man-made lake. Pairs of men in identical gray business suits are dispersed to disearth the stubborn stragglers to higher ground. Simultaneously, a dying boy dreams his death-hallucination which brings the objects on his night-table to life.
An interesting monochromatic landscape, good cinematography, and a pace set at a daring but exact amble using a veritable battalion of very good actors cannot combat the boatload of whimsy involved, so particularly contrived as to be downright leaden, sinking the movie straight to the bottom where it thumps along, occasionally managing a raised flipper, but never rising into any true sign of life. Too bad. It was an interesting notion.
the Adjustment Bureau: (2011. dir: George Nolfi) A nice love story, care of Philip K Dick. Actually, I suspect much of the Philip K Dick has been filtered out, because it's a little too nice, a little too simple, but you can feel the author's sensibility still honored.
Pretty-boy Congressman David Norris is in the end-run for his Senate bid, and looking like a shoe-in when a frat-boy prank scandal threatens to end his political career for good. I should point out that this early part of the film, an accelerated, bullet-points-only view of his campaign, is masterfully done, giving us just enough to care about the guy, at the same time not hiding his insincere, politician side. (His campaign manager, wonderfully, is Michael Kelly, whom you'll recognize as Doug Stamper from House of Cards.) At this point we are introduced to a team of suited, tied, and hatted Men in Grey who are unknown to our characters but obviously pulling strings to move history in whichever direction suits them, including introducing Norris by apparent accident to Elise, who inspires him to give the speech of his life which puts him back on track to public office.
That's as much plot as I feel comfortable revealing. Suffice to say that Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are a good-time couple to hang out with; I've never enjoyed Damon's company so much. True, they do spend too much time running up endless staircases and opening doors onto terraces they just left, -- call it Philip K Dick, Escher-like, labyrinthine padding, --and the ending is far too tidy. Still, speaking as (on the whole) not-a-fan of romantic movies, this was my favorite in a long time.
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