Nebraska

Maybe it is not a classic but Alexander Payne gives us a very solid story of old age, family ties and memories in Nebraska.  Woody Grant (excellent Bruce Dern) is aging fast and thinks he has won a lottery in a small Nebraskan town.  He tries to walk from his current home in Montana until finally his son (Will Forte) takes pity on him and takes a few days to drive him there.  Thus begins a road trip and a sort of revival of the father-son relationship with the son in this case being the carer or minder.  He learns a lot about his father over these few days and has all the frustrations of looking after a slightly senile old man.  The mother Kate (excellent June Squibb)  joins them in their hometown of Hawthorn, Nebraska as the relatives and family friends left there begin to circle to see what they can get of the old man’s imaginary winnings.  Beautifully shot in black and white this is a very human, very authentic movie which shows us human foibles and slices of mid-western American life from the Second World War to today.

★★★★ +

Jimmy P.

Unusual offering about the mental issues of a Blackfoot Indian, discharged from the war and under treatment at a Veteran’s home by a French anthropologist who very much dabbles in Freud with a dash of Jung.  Benicio del Toro holds the central character together well despite a rather tedious vocal delivery.  Mathieu Amalric is the counsellor who has his own past and demons.  Intellectually it is challenging and also interesting in its dealing with the Indian psyche but the main problem is that the film is rather too pedestrian in its pacing (not helped by Howard Shore’s score) and somewhat over pedantic in its point-making (the use of symbols a la Freud and dream analysis is constant). So, credit to Arnaud Desplechin for making a different type of movie, above all one that would be useful for study purposes.  However, entertainment-wise it dragged towards the end.

★★

Saving Mr Banks

The behind-the-scenes battle between Mrs P J Travers, the writer of Mary Poppins and Walt Disney wishing to acquire the rights to film it. It is actually quite watchable but with the proviso that it smacks of manipulation throughout.  Emma Thompson does an excellent job of recreating the rather bitchy Travers who is hiding a lifetime of secrets under the brittle shell of a British dame.  She was in fact Australian.  Tom Hanks is fine as Disney but perhaps a little too mellow in parts.  Paul Giammatti, Jason Schwartzmann and others make a good team for the Disney bunch even if their handling of Travers is not too credible at times.  The other half of the story, interwoven with the Disney period, is that of the heroine’s childhood in Australia with her alcoholic and fantasy prone father, played effectively enough by Colin Farrell and the aunt (Rachel Griffiths) whose arrival to put order in the family as the father lies dying and the mother tries to kill herself is the inspiration for Poppins.  All together it makes up an interesting anecdote which I was curious enough to see once but wouldn’t want to repeat.  There are good scenes and some perceptive moments in the script, but the artifice of the world of Disney is also clearly evident.

★★★

Red Sky (Kokkinos Ouranos)

Greek film by Laya Yourgou about two men who run a banana and tomato growing greenhouse on the southern coast of Crete and both fall in love with the same woman, named Cordoba, played by Finnish actress Pihla Viitala.  Her character is German and much of the film is in a correct English.  This summary is about the most interesting thing about the film although the photography is good and the actors attractive.  Not a disaster but nothing to go next door for.

★ +

También la lluvia

Iciar Bollain is a Spanish director and actress who brought us the powerful Te doy mis ojos.  She has hooked up with Paul Laverty, screenplay writer for Ken Loach and apparently her efforts are moving increasingly in the direction of social and political commentary.  Here, the film is about a film being made in Bolivia about the Spanish conquest and the wicked treatment doled out to the native Tainos.  Well, here we are 500 years later and things haven’t changed much.  The government is trying to privatise the water and the locals are up in arms because it will cost fortunes they can’t afford on their subsistence wages.  One of the local actors is a lead in the film and by spending more time demonstrating and being arrested, he is putting the shooting of the film at risk.  The director, an egoistic Sebastian (Gael Garcia Bernal) and producer Costa (Luis Tovar) are irked by this and behave very much like their ancestors in the conquest.  Towards the end, Costa starts to understand the demands of the locals but only to some extent.  So the film throws up some interesting topics to debate which are done so in the course of café chats between the actors.  This artifice is not completely out of place and is well matched by the scenes of street protest and the scenes of the film which are a throwback to Werner Herzog.  At the end of it all, the film feels a little false in parts but has enough good features to make it watchable.

★★★ +

The Hunt

This chilling Danish movie marks a return to form for Thomas Vinterberg after The Celebration many years ago.  The story revolves around a kindergarten teacher in a small Danish town who is accused of exposing himself to the children.  We are told from the start that nothing happened and that it was the invention of a small girl (wonderful Annika Wedderkopp, who was miffed with him.  However the kindergarten head, the child psychologist and the locals almost all believe he is guilty and the lie grows and spreads, despite Lucas being part of their community.  Mads Mikkelsen is yet again great as a man who is dumbstruck by the moral lynching he receives and he struggles to deal with this. There are a number of very powerful scenes as he is rejected socially and when he has a melt-down in the local church.  Vinterberg has much to say about our Christian values and about the conflict that such judgements create inside us and inside the society.  Although the film could be faulted on small issues like the fact that Lucas never gets a lawyer to defend him and to organise the charges, the point Vinterberg wants to make here is that of social judgement and that because a crime might involve young kids, we immediately jump to firm conclusions and ones that we find hard to emotionally shake off.  A difficult very well crafted movie with excellent acting script and photography.

★★★★ +

Catfish

This is the film that spawned the MTV show where the hosts track down suspicious online friendships to see what the real story hiding behind the fake profiles is.  This happened to Yaniv Schulman and he and his brother and friend take us through their detective work to discover who was the real artist of paintings being made of his photography.  Was it really an eight year old?  And what about the 19 year-old sister who was falling in love with Nev?  Who is she really?  The results are surprising and show just how much lying goes on online as people try to create different personas for themselves.  This is neither a great documentary or even perhaps a clean one – you suspect there has been some manipulation of times and the revelation of facts but it does give us a fascinating ride.

★★★

 

Import/Export

Thanks to its very bleak outlook, there are surely many that would write this film by Austrian Ulrich Seidl off.  But as in Paradise:Love, this film which predates it shows Seidl’s determination to show the grim side of reality.  Here we see Olga, a nurse, forced to abandon her job in a Ukrainian hospital to seek money, first in an online sex racket and then in Austria cleaning for families and eventually in a very sad geriatric hospital.  It says as much about the callous treatment of the elderly in Austria as it does of the way the locals treat migrants and the picture is not nice. Then we have Paul.  Austrian and a security guard in Vienna, he is beaten up by local thugs (a gang of children of immigrants ironically) and after some issues with his debts, he agrees to accompany his stepfather on a tour of Slovakia, Moldavia and Ukraine to sell vending machines.  You couldn’t paint a bleaker picture of Soviet bloc housing gone rotten than Seidl does but he gives us all plus the sickening sexual games of the stepfather with local prostitutes.  I have no doubt that this happens and Seidl manages to present it both in a natural and an artistic way, even though his (ab)use of some of the actors is probably questionable.  These are largely non-professional but do an excellent job.  As a complete package, the film does work and has a good message.  It may be slow and not one’s cup of tea but that should not detract from its merits.

★★★★

El agua del fin del mundo

During much of this grim film I was wondering why it was made.  Maybe the credits suggest that it was to honour someone close to the director. I do have to say that it is no walk in the park. Adriana and Laura are sisters.  Adriana is dying and has regular blackouts requiring intravenous drugs.  Laura is struggling to make ends meet in a pizzeria and has put her life on hold for her older sister.  They decide to go to Tierra del Fuego for a last trip before Adriana can no longer travel.  Problem is they have no money.  Into the middle of this walks an alcoholic street busker played by Facundo Arana who falls in love with Laura.  The majority of the movie takes place in a dark wet Buenos Aires with constant setbacks.  Laura gets a cut in pay, her boss is robbed, Martin the musico has a constant look of disgust on his face and doesn’t stop drinking. Apart from a couple of scenes with raised voices, the same gloomy mood pervades everything.  Although Diana Lamas and

Guadalupe Docampo act well enough, the overall effect of this film by Paula Siero is depressing.  I hope she can do better for her second film.

★+

About Time

Latest offering from Richard Curtis of Love Actually and Notting Hill fame.  Typical sweet rather unrealistic view of England that everyone wants to believe in with a story about time travel and rectifying mistakes and/or living your life as each day is the last.  It is a film for the new agers!  Verdict?  Watchable as you would expect.  The first half is much better than the second as the hero Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) woos Mary using his supernatural talents.  The dealing with more serious issues of life gets rather more leaden in the last part and I wanted the film to end soon.  Good to see Bill Nighy and Lindsay Duncan in supporting roles, Rachel McAdams is sweet as the female lead.  Wet sentimental afternoon fare.

★★★