Review: Juno

Juno: ***
Nonna Rating System: $$$

I actually saw Juno about a month ago and completely forgot to write the review. -- not that the movie was forgettable! Quite the contrary. It's as delightful as everyone seems to think it is and it manages to please teenagers as well as senior citizens. That, in itself, makes it a film worth seeing.

By now, everyone knows that Juno gets pregnant as the result of her first sexual experience. The father of the baby is Juno's good friend Paulie Bleeker, played by Michael Cera with the same blend of innocence and naivete he employed so effectively in Arrested Development. Juno recognizes that keeping the baby is neither in her or the baby's best interests. She decides to select the adoptive parents herself -- and then the story gets a bit more complicated.

Some have criticized the movie for making teen pregnancy "too attractive." They contend that the pregnancy seems to constitute only a minor interruption in Juno's life, a blip easily forgotten. There are, they argue, too few consequences of her irresponsible behavior. I can't agree with this assessment. The film makes clear to us, for example, that being pregnant generates all sorts of physical discomforts. In addition, Juno agonizes over her decisions about the baby and, finally, must deal with the fact that life often presents us with ambiguous situations for which we must make difficult decisions. After I watched the film, I thought, "If I had a teenage daughter and I wanted to talk to her about the possible negative consequences of sexual experimentation, I would take her to see this film and then sit down with her to talk about it."

Ellen Page's performance as Juno deserves the accolades being heaped on it. She manages to be funny and vulnerable at the same time. There is something very real about her performance. There were a few moments, however, when I groaned, when I realized that Diablo Cody, who wrote the screenplay, had put words in Juno's mouth that no teenager would utter. There were a few references which were joltingly out of place, appropriate for a 50 year old, but not a teenager. Nevertheless, Juno's smart mouth was generally a delightful entertainment. the film is definitely worth seeing. Go to the reduced price matinee. Take a teenager. You might learn something. I would have.

Nonna Rating System:
$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$ = Worth paying the Matinee price
$$ = Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it

Review: Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War: ****

Nonna's Rating: $$$$

Phillip Seymour Hoffman is reason enough to see Charlie Wilson’s War. A truly marvelous actor with the malleability of Robert DeNiro. Think of Capote, Magnolia, The Savages, and Boogie Nights. In Charlie Wilson’s War, Hoffman steals every scene he’s in – and he’s usually in scenes with Tom Hanks and/or Julia Roberts. Both of them, by the way, deliver fine performances in this film. Hoffman plays a CIA maverick, an operative so far down in the bowels of The Company that he really doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks of him – including U.S. Congressmen.

The movie is only about 90 minutes long, and it moves at a rapid pace, aided by snappy dialogue and rapid fire exchanges reminiscent of movies like His Girl Friday. And the dialogue is that good, thanks to the writing of Aaron Sorkin and the directing of Mike Nichols. I wanted to see the movie again just catch all the witty repartee -- and I just did. My Seabury friend Kristin and I are off on “Plunge,” a two week trip for future priests in which we immerse ourselves in the daily life of a church somewhere in these United States (we’re in DC). We decided to take a break tonight, have a quick dinner at Maggiano’s, and go see a movie. Washington insider movies almost always fascinate and even more so when you’re watching them in The District as we were. We’re staying with a couple whose next door neighbor knew Charlie Wilson. We’ll be having dinner with her on Sunday. That’s something to look forward to.

In the meantime, we have a delightful, funny, thought-provoking movie in Charlie Wilson, a much better movie than Atonement (sorry, Golden Globes). The movie focuses on the U.S.’s clandestine involvement in the war fought by Afghan rebels against the Soviets. When they movie finishes, there are no postscripts, no what-happened-to-so-and-so words flying across the screen. We’re not even reminded that the weapons we supplied to the Afghans became the weapons of the Taliban that are still being used against our troops. We don’t hear a narrator tell us that our failure to invest in education and infrastructure in Afghanistan and its consequences is similar to our failure to do the same in Iraq with its consequences. We’ve been told enough when Hoffman’s character says, “We’ll see.”

Nonna Rating System:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price

$$$ = Worth paying the Matinee price

$$ = Worth a rental

$ = Wait for cable

# = Skip it

Review: American Gangster

American Gangster: ***1/2
Nonna Rating System: $$$$

American Gangster is stunning in that Ridley Scott sort of way. It doesn't hurt to have Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in your movie, even if they only have one scene together. Why is it that, so often when two major male stars are in a picture nowadays, they rarely have scenes together -- for example, DeNiro and Pacino in Heat?

In the end, it really doesn't matter. This is an excellent, complex film with meticulous performances by both actors: Washington, a drug kingpin whose private life is controlled, conservative, and drug-free and Crowe, a hyper-honest cop whose personal life is a shambles. In one sense, this is a classic Hollywood story: the cop no one listens to is convinced he can identify the who and how of the influx of drugs into the U.S. He is the only one who finally understands that the drugs arrive from Viet Nam in the false bottoms of metal coffins containing dead soldiers in body bags.

What makes the story original is the subtext of institutional racism that permeates the film: the white law enforcement establishment can't even begin to imagine that a black man might actually be the mastermind behind the drug trade in New York and its environs.

I always regret liking a violent film, but Scott doesn't ask us to revel in the violence here. He weaves scenes depicting the brutal, horrid reality of drug use throughout the movie. There's nothing pretty about these flashes of reality. We are confronted with the unspeakable consequences of drug use on individuals, families, children, and the neighborhoods they live in.

In 1971, my wasbund was stationed at Travis Air Force Base north of San Francisco. I did my grocery shopping at the Base Commissary which was next to the flightline. I often saw KC-130s from Viet Nam taxiing close to the Commissary parking lot after they had landed. One day, I just stood by my car and watched as soldiers got off a plane in their fatigues. Many of them kissed the ground. Some cried. After they had disembarked, the plane taxied and parked next to the base hospital. First, bandaged men were unloaded on stretchers, IV bottles attached to their arms. Then, the metal coffins were unloaded; they rested on the tarmac waiting for connecting planes that would take the bodies home. Some of them were headed to the East Coast. The film makes me wonder. Did some of those coffins contain drugs?

Nonna Rating System:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$ = Worth paying the Matinee price
$$ = Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it

Review: The Savages

The Savages: ***

Nonna Rating: $$

Sometimes movies are uncomfortably close to our everyday lives. Not too much danger of that from Spiderman, but The Savages is definitely too close to the bone for me. I'm not too sure that I'm being entirely fair to this film. It's well written and stars two of today's best actors: Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Throw in Philip Bosco, an older character actor you've seen a million times, and it's a nearly perfect little film which made me squirm.

Linney and Hoffman play a brother and sister who have no choice but to deal with their father's declining competence. I've played these scenes myself with my own father and siblings. That's why I find it so difficult to be objective about this film. And that, in turn, makes me think about how artificial it is to pretend that film reviews are objective at all. I completely understand why my personal experience is interfering to such a great extent in my evaluation of this picture. I, too, sat with my father as his cognitive abilities were being assessed by a series of questions administered by an assisted living administrator. I, too, tried to help him give the answers the questioner was looking for. I, too, was desperately anxious, worrying that he would be rejected as suitable for the facility. I, too, had to face reality when he was, indeed, rejected.

I also understand that siblings are often in different stages of denial, acceptance, anger, and grief. We all think that there must be a better place for our dissolving parent. We all think that there is a place where he can be happier. In many ways, this film is too real for me, so it's impossible for me to be objective. But what makes me think I'm more objective when I'm writing about Spiderman? Am I not also bringing my own experiences to that film? Experiences different from yours? Of course I am. So, all I'm offering here are occasional idiosyncratic opinions which you can choose to accept or ignore.

Nonna Rating System:
$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$ = Worth paying the Matinee price
$$ = Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it