Movies we love... "Skyfall"  (2012)

Can't believe it's been four years since "Quantum of Solace," but we can report the wait for Bond 23 was worthwhile. "Skyfall" is quality entertainment in every respect from the Adele theme, to the use of such respectable actors as Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney. The amazing cinematography is deep and colorful, the music score gorgeous, and the story line is a virtual essay on the presence and nature of evil in the world, and on the inevitable darkness that visits the hearts of those warriors we send out to keep it at bay.

The heart of this story is "M" (Dame Judi Dench) who must face the consequences of past actions, the life and death decisions she has made in her years as director of British Intelligence Services. James Bond (Daniel Craig) too must confront personal demons as he takes on a new hobby... personal resurrection. Our villain (Javier Bardem) is frightening and psychologically complex.

Spanning the globe (as a good Bond movie should) with spectacular locations - Istanbul, Shanghai, Macau, lots of London, and finally the misty highlands and lakes of Scotland - this film is briskly paced and it continues to freshen the franchise. "Skyfall" and the two previous Daniel Craig outings have skillfully reinvented the 007 character, while at the same time paying homage to the entire Bond legacy from which it derives. Sam Mendes directs in fine style and has given us a new edition that shoots to the top shelf of the franchise. "Skyfall" is so satisfying that it leaves us wanting more. Please don't make us wait another four years.

Movies We Love... "The Artist" (2011)

The Artist   - directed by Michel Hazanavicius

How amazing is this? A 21st century film that is almost totally silent, filmed in black and white (in a standard frame format), and with a plot that is a virtual stew of Hollywood plot clichés, and yet which is probably the most entertaining and inventive movie of 2011. 

From Uggie the dog, to our two talented leads, French actors Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, to a wonderful supporting cast of veteran actors, all looking authentic as the silent screen characters they portray, Michel Hazavanicius has created an homage to the silent film era, that manages to be true to the form in almost every way, yet filtering and echoing it through our collective knowledge of all the memorable films of the past 100 years. Dramatic, supremely comedic, and with a deep sense of the power of the medium, The Artist, deserves every accolade it has received. A film to see more than once and to treasure alongside the great films of the past that inspired it.

Movies We Love... "The Arbor" (2010)

                                                    The Arbor  (2010)


On a street called "the Arbor" in a British housing development named Bradford Estates, Yorkshire, a young girl named Andrea Dunbar grew up in the 1970's and 80's, amid a life of poverty, family drunkenness, promiscuity, racism and abuse. At the age of fifteen she wrote a play called "The Arbor" which truthfully depicted what she knew firsthand. It was successfully staged - a couple of more were written - all in the local vernacular and touching on the same topics; one of the plays (Rita, Sue and Bob Too) was made into a film, and then, a few years later, the young playwright was dead - probably of a brain aneurism. She left behind three children, from three different fathers, the oldest of whom, Lorraine, was half Pakistani, which in the Dunbar neighborhood was a scandal.

Lorraine herself was a lovely girl, but her young life was a descending spiral of abuse, drug addiction, prostitution, and finally conviction for manslaughter for the death of her two year old son, Harris, who consumed a lethal dose of methadone one night and never woke up from a very deep sleep in the arms of his mother.

Now documentary filmmaker Clio Barnard has taken this material and produced a film of great impact, employing a controversial and innovative technique. Using hours of recorded interviews with members of the families of Lorraine and her late mother, she has actors portraying them in various stages of their lives, and in some of the original locales, but rather than speaking, the actors lip-synch to the actual voices of the interviewees. The effect is haunting, because the voices provide an intimate connection to the people involved, yet the various scenes look formally staged and sometimes theatrical. The lower-class accents are in some cases indecipherable and the manner of speaking is a kind of devolved English - for instance articles are frequently dropped and there is some slang and common profanity. But subtitles are provided and the words are never too difficult to follow.

Solemnly paced and at first seeming very disjointed, it doesn't take long to figure out the various family members and their relationships. We take their truthfulness for granted, even though, as happens in the case of multiple eyewitnesses, the facts don't always match up. With the accumulated detail of lives that seem destined for either chaos or disintegration, what results is very much like the pathos of Greek tragedy. Speaking from our personal viewpoint, the principal truth that we receive from "The Arbor" is this: that the sins of the father (or in this case, the mother) inevitably impact the lives of their children, and that sadness and hopelessness is pervasive in a milieu of poverty, lack of self-respect, free sex and frequent abortion, alcohol and drug abuse, and lack of consideration for human worth. Some might say it's insignificant that God, or religion, are never mentioned by any of the people involved, but for us, the absence of that spirituality is glaring. Indeed, in a society so terribly off-kilter, one has to wonder why?

Movies We Love... WAR HORSE (2011)

     
                         "War Horse"  (2011)  -  directed by Steven Spielberg


   While some may find War Horse old fashioned and sentimental, we believe that it exhibits Steven Spielberg's greatest strengths - a sure directorial eye (with standout cinematography from Janusz Kaminski), good story telling, and fine work with a large cast. "War Horse" which is based on a poplular novel (and a play!) tells the story of how a thoroughbred stallion, gentled to the plow by a Devon lad named Albert, is then sold by the boy's father to the British Army at the outbreak of World War I. Albert wants to go with his prize horse but is too young. He vows he will find the animal when the war is over.

We follow the horse, Joey, through a series of misadventures: first as a British Cavalry officer's horse, then captured by the Germans, adopted into the care of two German soldiers (a pair of unfortunate doomed brothers), lost, then saved and befriended by an innocent French peasant girl, again conscripted by the Germans to haul artillery, a job of such hardship that horses can endure it for only days or weeks before dying of exhaustion, thrown into the chaos of trench warfare, and enduring a night of horror when, in a panic, Joey races through No-Mans Land and becomes entangled in a mass of razor sharp barbed wire. A scene in which a soldier from each side meet on the killing field in an attempt to free the proud animal is sure to be a classic.

Paralleling Joey's story, we follow Albert who has reached the age when he may enlist. When he too travels to the front, we know his path and that of his beloved horse are fated to cross, but will it be a sad and final farewell, or a return to the idyllic Devon countryside and a time of peace?

We have nothing but admiration for what Spielberg has achieved here. Working with a novice lead as well as seasoned veterans like Peter Mullen, Emily Watson and David Thewlis;  handling the action scenes with clarity and sureness (one battle scene in the trenches will remind you of the shock and horror of the Normandy Invasion scene in Saving Private Ryan) "War Horse" seems almost epic in its proportions, yet it remains an intimate story too, of the devotion a man and horse may share for one another, and the courage and endurance that try them both in time of war. Heart-wrenching yet inspiring, "War Horse" will remind you of some of the classic adventure films of Hollywood's past.

Movies We Love... "Take Shelter" (2011)

"Take Shelter" (2011)  -  Directed by Jeff Nichols,  starring Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain

Michael Shannon is, simply put, an acting god, and this is his picture start to finish, although Jessica Chastain playing another version of the loving wife she gave us in "The Tree of Life," certainly matches him scene for scene, especially in the second half of the film. In "Take Shelter," Mr. Shannon plays Curtis, a blue-collar worker who starts to have an increasingly bizarre series of disturbing dreams that to him seem real. Visions of approaching storms, destructive winds and viscous yellow rain like motor oil. Swarming clouds (murmurations) of starlings. Visions of attacks by unseen assailants who have apparently come to steal his little deaf-mute daughter. Dreams that his wife and dog have turned on him with homicidal intent. To him they seem real and with their cumulative effect, he loses sleep, his health deteriorates, and his life begins to unravel. He decides to renovate a old storm cellar, expanding it with plumbing and lighting and laying in supplies and survival gear. The cost of this in time and money begins to send both him and his wife over the edge. But he feels a compulsion to build a place of safety... it becomes an obsession.

The film is a puzzle because we are never sure if Curtis's dreams are prophetic. Is this film meant to be a reflection of our own uncertain times? Is Curtis a prophet? Or is he simply mad? Perhaps something terrible IS coming. We learn that schizophrenia runs in the family (his mother is institutionalized) and that alone could explain what is happening to him. His knowledge of that condition adds to his stress.

The visual look of this film is amazing. Anyone who has ever stared in awe at an approaching storm will find that element of hypnotic fascination in this disturbing film. Then there is the claustrophobic dimly lighted interior of the bunker in scenes that give us a feeling of being closed in and shut off. The carefully plotted build-up in tension is like a screw tightening slowly. And the ending of the film might leave you staring at the screen with a lingering unease. Did a movie ever give you nightmares? Did you ever have an ineffable feeling that things are about to get much, much worse. After viewing this little mind-blower, you may want to "take shelter" yourself.

Highly recommended for those who love the mysterious and the offbeat.