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| "So, you mean to tell me I'm not 45?" |
Sorry, I don't know why I lapsed into speaking like Pearl Bailey. I blame the fatigue.
As always, these reviews appeared in ICON and are reprinted with permission.
The Company You Keep (Dir:
Robert Redford). Starring: Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Julie
Christie, Chris Cooper, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Terrence Howard, Anna
Kendrick, Brit Marling, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Elliott, Stanley Tucci.
After a domesticated radical
(Sarandon) turns herself in for her role in a 1970s murder, a feisty newspaper
reporter (LaBeouf) makes a stunning discovery: one of her accomplices, Jim
Grant (Redford), lives with his daughter in town. Grant then embarks on a
cross-country trek, reuniting with his former freedom fighter buddies (including
Nolte and Jenkins) in a last-ditch attempt to clear his name. Redford’s latest
politically charged pseudo-thinkpiece isn’t particularly insightful—newspaper
reporters can only see the main story, ideologies change when people are
involved—and it’s further hindered by the lack of a compelling central
character. LaBeouf’s changing view doesn’t register because he’s lectured into
enlightenment instead of seeing it himself, while it’s preposterous to have Redford
scaling fences and raising 11-year-olds. (Sorry. I don’t care how many jogging
scenes you show; I don’t care if you cast Sarandon and Christie to obscure that
he’s too old to have participated with the Weather Underground. Redford’s
presence screams narc.) The biggest asset here is the acting, which lends an
air of credibility that the movie’s content never achieves. [R] **1/2
The Place Beyond the Pines (Dir:
Derek Cianfrance). Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ben
Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Rose Byrne, Bruce Greenwood, Harris
Yulin, Mahershala Ali. Cianfrance’s follow-up to Blue Valentine again features
Gosling in a gloriously lowbrow role. He plays a stunt motorcyclist who tries
to connect with his infant son and his mother (Mendes). There’s no money in
staying straight, so he starts robbing banks. That ends at the hands of a
rookie cop (Cooper, whose stiffness is actually an attribute), who is
establishing his own legacy until he’s faced with corruption in his department.
Years later, the cop and robber’s teenage sons (DeHaan and Cohen) encounter
each other, not realizing that they’re weighed down by the past. Simultaneously
grand and mundane, Cianfrance’s epic account of escaping our own personal
mediocrity never offers you solid footing. You don’t know how these lives will unfold.
And that’s the point: Regardless of how we approach life, there’s no guarantee
we’ll get away clean. It’s refreshing when a movie can offer a lofty message
with good, old-fashioned tension instead of pretension. [R] ****
Reality (Dir: Matteo
Garrone). Starring: Aniello Arena, Loredana Simioli, Nando Paone. Luciano
(Arena) is the family ham, the guy everyone says should be on TV, a dream the
fishmonger hopes to attain by appearing on Italy’s Big Brother. When he nails
an open audition and makes the final round, Luciano knows he has it. He tells
everyone in the village it’s a sure thing. But as he waits for a phone call
that never comes, Luciano seeks salvation and looks for signs from the
satellite gods. Wonderful satirical drama is cutting and charming, surreal and
sympathetic. Garrone offers a tender look at a family man flailing toward something
better while lighting a match on organized worship, whether it involves a
church or a television. And Arena’s performance—his face, rough and rugged,
childlike and open—shows a man who is both invested and totally lost in the
lure of celebrity. He’s through the plasma screen. Director-writer Garrone (Gomorrah)
had to get permission from a judge to procure his leading man, a former Mafia
hitman who is serving life in prison. So do not expect to see Arena in too many
projects. [R] ****
Upside Down (Dir: Juan
Solanas). Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kirsten Dunst, Timothy Spall. On a planet
with opposing gravitational pulls, there are two worlds—an affluent top world
and a dreary bottom world. After discovering, Eden, his long lost love from up
top (Dunst), the bottom-dwelling Adam (Sturgess) longs for a reunion. Even
though he gets a job at her company, TransWorld, whose strangling corporate
conformity doesn’t feel satirical, obstacles exist. The two worlds do not
mingle and Eden’s amnesia has wiped out their memories. Still, Adam fights
against societal norms and neurology. Interesting take on the perils of class
distinction never finds its creative juice. Writer-director Solanas spells everything out for us—which starts immediately with Sturgess’ endless
pie-in-the-sky prologue—while the concept of an upside down world feels
unnecessary, not to mention a pain in the ass to watch. Adam and Eden’s story
works without that angle—just ask the makers of The Vow—and Solanas never examines
the logistics and challenges of living in this new world; he just puts old
problems in a new setting. A better movie could have been made with this
material. In fact, Sturgess’ concluding narration reveals one. That is not good.
[PG-13] **
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