Sunday, February 01, 2009

Review: Last Chance Harvey

Review: Last Chance Harvey
Rating: **
Nonna's Rating: $
Rotten Tomatoes: 69%

Ironically enough, here's a movie I really wanted to like and recommend -- but I can't. Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson do an amazing job with an incredibly mediocre, trite, derivative script, but they can't pull off a miracle. I groaned audibly when Hoffman's character was prevented by circumstances beyond his control from showing up at their "Affair-To-Remember"-type rendezvous.

One insurmoutable problem in the film is that I sensed no chemistry between the soon-to-be-70 Hoffman and the soon-to-be-50 Thompson. But I don't fault the actors. The script calls for Thompson's character to fear emotional entanglements, to always withdraw from intimacy. Hoffman's character isn't exactly a relationship builder either.

Nevertheless, Hoffman especially still manages to have a few moments in which he takes this mediocre material and makes it soar.

Nonna's Ratings:
$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price
$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it

Review: Revolutionary Road

Review: Revolutionary Road
Rating: ***1/2
Nonna's Rating: $$$
Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

I had decided not to like this movie. Several friends told me it was depressing -- a downer. And I expected it to be imitative of Mad Men, the outstanding AMC series about the secret lives of ad executives in the early 1960s. In a way, it is like Mad Men. The story focuses on a marriage in trouble and people smoke and drink incessantly -- even while they're pregnant. But the movie transcends all this.

The story proceeds in a straightforward manner: a young couple meet, get married, move to the suburbs, discover that their dreams have dissolved, try to recover them,and fall apart. It sounds ordinary. It sounds dull and boring. It's not -- in part because Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio deliver excellent performance; in part because their story is the story of 50% of American marriages.

There is also a special time-long-gone poignancy in watching the lives of men and women of the mid-fifties -- men who had returned from war and women who wore dresses and heels to do their housework. I could not help but think of the lives of my parents and their friends -- their dreams and disappointments

My friends were correct. It's not a happy movie, but it is balanced in the way it refrains from assigning blame for what occurs to the husband or the wife. They are both culpable.

Kathy Bates as their neighbor/realtor is her usual marvelous self, but it is the performance of Micheal Shannon that is truly mesmerizing. Into the ordinary, suburban world of Kate and Leo, Shannon drops like an atom bomb, telling truth, pointing out inconsistencies and subterfuge. He definitely deserves his Academy Award nomination.

Nonna's Ratings:
$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price
$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it

Review: The Wrestler

Review: The Wrestler
Rating: ***1/2
Nonna's Rating: $$$$
Rotten Tomatoes: 98%

I'm sure you've had the experience. You see a movie, and for a day or so, you can't get it out of your head. The images haunt you. You feel compelled to discuss it with others who've seen it; you feel compelled to recommend it to those who have not. The Wrestler has been such a picture for me -- and I'm still thinking about it after one week. Mickey Rourke's painfully authentic performance, his ability to inhabit the character he portrays, continues to remind me of -- of all things -- the gift of free will. God gave us the gift of choice and, everyday, we make one choice after another.

"The Ram," as Rourke's once-famous character is known, has made those choices, one after another, in his years of taking part in the bizarre ballet of choreographed professional wrestling. He had made those choices in his relationship with his wife and his child. And, yes, in his later years, in the movie, he still can choose one way or the other, but something deeper and more compelling than simple habit steers him toward choices that continue to chip away at his soul. We can pretend he's a "fringe" person, someone who lives outside of whatever "normal" is, but he isn't. He's an Everyman transmogrified by a myriad of addictions, including one to the idea and the glory of what it is to be "The Ram."

This isn't an easy film to watch. The wrestling scenes are brutal and bloody, made doubly horrifying by the obvious good will, affection, and camaraderie the wrestlers show one another in their dressing room. Rourke's performance is the reason to see the movie. His often subtle emotions play across his face, a face hardly recognizable to that of the young man who starred in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Some critics have said that Rourke's performance is not remarkable, that it only mirrors his own life experiences, that it is just Mickey Rourke on the screen.

Well, I say, that's enough for me.

Nonna's Ratings:
$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price
$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it