Feb

9

On the Popcorn Aisle — 9 February Offerings 

Fool’s Gold –starring the effervescent charmer, daughter of Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson and the hunk-a-hunka Matt McConnaughey, tried too hard, was a meld of recent Nicholas Cage and Harrison Ford adventures, but somehow failed to ignite–despite charming central characters and mumbly-peg villains who were no more scary than a Saturday-morning kiddie show–any discernible tension or suspense. It was nice looking at the chemistry between Hudson and White Teeth-and-Pecs–but the whole event failed to ignite, despite derring-do on seaplanes, graveyards, grotto caverns, sunken treasure salvaging and a raft of sunny shots of the Caribbean.

Donald Sutherland, estimable in dozens of films, never convinced with his British accent, his spoiled daughter’s ditziness wore thin as soon as she alit from her chopper on Sutherland’s yacht, and the plot holes–how did the trio of brigands find the two salvagers on the island in the pitch of night, without making a sound as they stole up somehow on them? How could Matt escape death umpteen times with merely a chaste scrape over his eyebrow, when others would have severe and debilitating brain damage from head trauma?–left many observers cynical throughout. (I turned and watched their expressions.) Nice scenery, though.

A favorite of mine, though at first I was reluctant to even attend –fearing the documentary would be… icky– Praying with Lior has won world plaudits for its longitudinal film-history of Lior Liebling, a Down Syndrome child of Rabbi Debra (Devorah) Bartnoff. Rabbi Bartnoff died of breast cancer when Lior was still quite young, 6, but director/producer Ilana Trachtman continued the filmography of this charming child in his somewhat unconventional—but lovingly Jewish– family setting. Lior’s father, Mordecai Liebling, a nationally known rabbi and former director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, remarries, a sensitive Lynne Iser, his three siblings struggle to varying effect against the constraints of having a ‘special’ child in the family, and Lior persists with courage, wit, humor and goodwill. Mostly, the elder two manage very well. This viewer was haunted by the youngest daughter, who plaintively tells the camera that she never gets attention, because her brother has always merited the spotlight, in his trajectory to having a bar mitzvah despite his learning disabilities. Bluegrass and klezmer, the ancient Hebrew liturgies and daily prayers, make this a melodic outing perfectly suited to the thrust of Lior’s life: Bar Mitzvah speech and Haftarah. Perhaps most important, Praying with Lior has been hailed for encouraging greater involvement in faith practices for persons with disabilities. Lior shows it can be done—beautifully. Held over an extra week in NYC.

Caramel is a more charming, more surprising, “Steel Magnolias,” set in a Beirut that is pretty much like Boca Raton, from the look of it. It frames the film in cameos of women frequenting, loving, living and working in a beauty salon. The beauteous salon owner, Layale (Nadine Labaki) is in an unhappy affair with a married paramour. Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), engaged to a Muslim, agonizes over what will happen when he learns she is not a virgin. There are doctors for that, as the girlfriends bring her for a slight ‘repair,’ just as the practice of plastic surgery runs through the film, the way it might in Rio. Jamale (Gisele Aouad), an aging actress, still gorgeous, competes desperately with younger women for TV commercials, and seamstress Aunt Rose (Siham Haddad), cares for her demented elder sister, Lili (Aziza Semaan). Rose poignantly sacrifices a potential marriage to a distinguished gentleman because of her obligation to Lili. The film winds through the lives of these women, in Arabic—though they are all Christian—and French (English subtitles) in a way that is entirely involving. Most startling to this viewer, of course, is the normalcy of their lives and concerns, without a whiff of the jihadism or chaos we have come to associate, unfortunately, with today’s Lebanon. Excellent being transported back to the lovely looking one-time Beirut, “the Paris of the Mid-East.”

The most heart-warming, and quirkiest, film of the past month is the Israeli film, The Band’s Visit, which takes as it departure point the befuddlement of a musical troupe from Egypt in a forgotten Israeli town. How the eight men in powder-blue oompa-pa uniforms conduct themselves among the little-town inhabitants of Beit Hatikvah is never less than enthralling, instructive, gently amusing and enjoyable. No politics intrude. Just the courtly graces and manners of these lost musicians as they try to get their bearings, find their way through the night, and make plans for getting to the correct city for their inaugural cultural center performance. It pleased from the moment the men arrived on a lonely bus in the broad, deserted spaces of nowhere, and continued through gentle love affairs, near-misses, instructional aids to having a romance for the painfully geeky and shy. Utterly charming.

The Counterfeiters goes Speilberg’s Schindler’s List one better. The true story of a crack printers team which, under the demands of their concentration camp commandos, precisely replicated first the pound sterling, and then, after much deliberate delay, the dollar, to finance the failing nazi armed forces in the waning days of WWII. It is never less than grittily engrossing, brutal, plain—but elevating, as it copes with the moral dilemma of living better than the other camp internees while helping to bring down the economies of the UK and the US.

Ira Sachs’ Married Life stars the ever-beguiling Pierce Brosnan and Patricia Clarkson, the beauteous Rachel McAdams in a restrained performance against the tight-lipped yearning of Chris Cooper. It is a meditation on the grass always being greener in someone else’s bed. As a hothouse study of how married couples make their peace with the barely acceptable versus the unattainable, it is a compelling exercise. The title is a-drip with irony, of course.

For the distaff side, I admit I was not offended by the latest Rambo, starring McCain’s main man, Sly Stallone, with a throng of slim, mean, muck-enrobed “Vietnamese” and sundry US hard-bodies from various TV shows. It features that unusual coda: The Americans get their men (and woman) and we are the undisputed good guys, limned against the nastiness and cruelties of the Viet Cong captors and whatnot. It doesn’t really matter what the plot is, but lots of heads pop off, blood spurts from bisected ‘enemies,’ leaping and special effects are well integrated with the endless monsoon rains, and no one is mud-free for a second in the whole 90-plus minutes. The movie is what it is, so don’t imagine you’ll get a meditation on the nature of moral depravity.

Teeth, a film that sneaks up on you, treats two subjects rarely handled in film today, amusingly mixes horror and fascination with v.  d.  and, um, castration in modern small-town America. Although it has moments few men would celebrate, it also pays back incestuous brothers, inamoratas and bad prom dates. It’s hard to recommend it to men, but women might find it diverting—no one loves and leaves this babe without serious, really serious, complications.

The Hottie and the Nottie, featuring Paris Hilton, Christine Laken and “the” Greg Wilson (that’s how he bills himself), is one of the worst films of 2008, and we’re just two months in. It is disgustingly misogynistic, worse even than the Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn vehicle, Death Becomes Her (1992). It’s the yuckiest of ugly ducklings (Christine Laken) made fun of for half the film for every conceivable ‘sin,’ like comedones, bad hair, poor skin, horrific teeth, moles, you-name-it, until the transformative swan is achieved, via Hilton’s ministrations and ‘help,’ to rope in a half-way attractive swain by twisting oneself inside out for the obvious consumerist view of “acceptable.” Laken remade is actually more attractive than Paris Hilton. No one in the screening I saw waited for the screen credits, and left the second it wrapped. Dreadful. My partner would have left in the first 5 minutes. Marion DS Dreyfus 20©08


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7 Comments so far

  1. Tom on February 10, 2008 12:44 am

    Caramel is an awful movie filled with socialistic overtones and disparagements of private property and capitalism.

  2. Lon Evans on February 10, 2008 3:02 am

    O.K.,

    So, the trite reiteration of popular culture becomes the last bastion of the defeated bull?

    Lord! Kate Hudson and Rambo? What’s up with that?

    Just when the misinformed should be girding for battle, they choose instead to melt into the simple comfort of the movie palace?

    What is up with that?

    As the (possibly?) only antagonistic bear willing to take on the herd, where’s the fun? Yo dudes, what happened to the big swinging dicks of but a few months ago?

    So you guys abdicate so easily? If so, maybe I should be picking up some calls, huh?

    Oh, too much fun, too much fun! Life would be so boring without the markets.

    Good Luck,

    lon

  3. steve on February 10, 2008 5:06 pm

    Ms Dreyfus: As always fabulous reviews and much appreciated.

    Fools gold is pure mindless fun and entertainment and that is what I expected. It seemed to me to be a cross between Captain Ron and Into the Blue, Three’s Company and I do not know what else.

    Impossible that it is to compare movies I submit this list:

    For Best movie of the year from the list of nominees for the Academy Awards in order:

    Atonement
    There Will Be Blood
    No Country for Old Men
    Juno
    Michael Clayton( I did not see it)

    Atonement: A classic British film with incredible cast and superb acting by Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan and Vanessa Redgrave. Fantastic directing, cinematography,lighting, set design and musical score.

    There Will Be Blood: Powerful and intense turn of the century view of the early years of prospecting for oil. Great set design, marvelous directing. Daniel Day-Lewis has no peer.

    No Country for Old Men: Dark and disturbing,chilling and extreme graphic violence. Coen Bros finest work even surpassing Fargo in my view. Javier Bardem role as a hired assassin beyond description. Tommie Lee Jones does excellent supportive work that is very complementary to the overall film. A role I could have seen Brando do minus the extra weight.

    Juno: Ellen Page as Juno. Her star is suddenly rising. Extraordinary acting. Reminiscent of Tatum O”Neil. Interesting and offbeat comedy about a 16 year old girls challenge with an unplanned pregnancy. Simple yet very refreshing view on the order of The Breakfast Club. Worth the time yet not of the calibre of the above mentioned.

    Final Note:
    Best animated movie to take your children to:

    Ratatouille

    Best feel good movies and/or fantasy

    Enchantment
    The Water Horse Legend of the Deep

    Best political movie:

    Charlie Wilson’s War

    Respectfully

    sl.

  4. Tom on February 10, 2008 8:24 pm

    Lon,

    Are you saying there’s some correlation between watching trite romantic comedies featuring Kate Hudson and betting on an upturn in the market? I’m not disagreeing, they just seem like non sequiturs. The correlation of beliefs is an interesting topic. Are believers in astrology or feng shui more inclined to believe in technical analysis, etc.?

    Anyway, I think people of any predisposition on the market will recognize that “The Hottie and the Nottie” is a work of cinematic genius, a poignant kaleidoscope of existential themes.

  5. Lon Evans on February 10, 2008 10:38 pm

    Tom.

    Absolutely. The romantic comedy is an idealized manifestation of reality. The for-ever-and-a-day bull carries a similar idealization. One of the more available indications of this penchant is the bull who accepts that he/she is fearful of market timing and so stays invested on the long side so as to avoid missing the bottom. It seems obvious to me that this individual isn't leery of market timing at all, but actively engaged in it, only at a far greater personal risk than an attempted timing would require. It is the "eventually" mindset.

    The romantic comedy, likewise, engages us with its own implicit "eventually." We know the guy and the girl are going to find true happiness, even though the going can seem a bit rocky at times. It is the poignancy engendered in the trials these two overcome that keeps us invested in their story.

    Thus the "optimistic" bull is no more a realist than would be a person who accepted the cinematic delight they were viewing to be a literal truth.

    Please understand that I'm not a "bear." I'll take either side of a trade if to do so portends success. I took my father out of the markets back in the early spring of 2002 as I felt the Dow was due for its fall, in light of the SNP and the NASDAQ plunges. We were up above 10000 when I went to cash. In early summer, I put his money back in play, somewhere in the low 8000 range. It took another year for the gambit to begin paying off, but when it did, as you know, it did big time.

    I'm in the same mode today, only I playing my own money and can take greater risks that those advisable for a 70 year old man. I went short at the end of the summer as the sub-prime debacle seemed to portend success for doing so. My assumption has been correct up to date. After some $150 billions in write downs currently on the books, it looks like we will be seeing another $250 in the next two quarters. How are the markets going to lift themselves when burdened with such weight.

    If a trader wants to embrace faith rather than reason, and sit in the dark all misty eyed in anticipation of the "Hollywood Ending," be my guest. I'm a bit more analytically inclined (don't get me wrong, I'm more the softy than most and much enjoy a good romance. At the age of 12, I sat straight through five showings of Disney's "Lady and the Tramp." The ushers began given me stern looks after the first three, though, thankfully, let me be). But markets feed on the soft; I'd rather do the feeding than be the feeding, thank you very much.

    Cheers,

    lon

    P.S.

    9:00 P.M. Central Time and the eeni-meeni-SNP is down seven handles. Think we'll test 1300 come morning?

  6. Russell Sears on February 11, 2008 4:51 pm

    Lon,

    “swinging …..”
    “honest hon …”

    Couldn’t the reverse be said about vulgarity? If you are looking for a reason why the world should go to hell, you’ll never lack finding one.

    “A man with a hammer” can work both for the pessimist and the optimist.

  7. Steve D on February 12, 2008 2:57 am

    In what may be a sign of a recession the hottie + the nottie only made a few hundred dollars per theater. Dreyfus was one of the few people in the world to see it!

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