September can sometimes be seen as a burn-off period, certainly more so in recent years. Summer's over, awards season isn't back, and the industry insiders are focused on the film festivals in Toronto and Venice. That doesn't mean there aren't some gems to be found:
Nurse Betty
release: September 8
dir: Neil LaBute
pr: Steve Golin / Gail Mutrux
scr: John C. Richards & James Flamberg, story by John C. Richards
cin: Jean-Yves Escoffier
An abused housewife has a mental break after witnessing her husband's murder - now she thinks she's a nurse from her favorite soap opera, and is headed to Hollywood to meet the star! Also the hitmen who killed her husband are on her trail.
Daffy film. I expected it to be darkly funny, I didn't expect it to be possibly brilliant. It's a movie about how false we all feel in our "roles": where we live, what we do, we just know there's something else, something more for us, this is not who I am, this is not the life I am meant to live. Betty is the small-town waitress, a neglected and mistreated housewife; of course she adopts the persona of a soap opera nurse, the long-lost love of the star. The star, by the way, is Hollywood actor George McCord, annually discontent with the direction of the show; Betty's sudden appearance has the promise of danger, improvisation, excitement, something to shake up the monotony, something to challenge him as a real actor, to prove that he's not a Daytime Star, but a serious artist. Hitman Charlie is trailing Betty to eliminate a witness, but he's put a lifetime of disappointed hopes and deferred dreams onto her, he's ready to retire and he's made her the fulfillment of that personified, a benevolent goddess who will understand him as the soulful poet he is at heart, not just the hired killer he's made his career being. I guess it's definitely brilliant, and brilliantly performed, and what a troupe of supporting co-stars: Harriet Sansom Harris, Allison Janney (one of my favorite performances from her!), Tia Texada, and Crispin Glover are especial favorites.
Paragraph 175
release: September 13
dir: Rob Epstein / Jeffrey Friedman
pr: Janet Cole / Michael Ehrenzweig / Rob Epstein / Jeffrey Friedman
scr: Sharon Wood
cin: Bernd Meiners
Documentary about the post-Weimar German government - especially the Nazis - targeting homosexuals.
From its opening, it lets you know that this will not just be a tragic story about unjust targeting, but about men and women who enjoyed life despite the laws, who saw no shame in love or lust. We get stories of people who went along to get along, people who left, people who fought back, people who barely survived. Most heartbreaking is one tale of a young man who goes to rescue the Jewish boy he loves. Stripped-down score is very effective.
Duets
release: September 15
dir: Bruce Paltrow
pr: John Byrum / Kevin Christopher Jones / Bruce Paltrow
scr: John Byrum
cin: Paul Sarossy
An estranged father-daughter pairing, a carjacker and his too-eager victim, and an unlikely couple make their way across the US to Omaha for a national karaoke competition.
Priority watch for me, I still remember driving around with Mom and Dad and the sisters, hearing Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow's version of "Cruisin'" on the radio many times - it charted! Figured it would be more of a Best in Show or Altman-esque patchwork thing, but it's less all-encompassing or more...just three separate plots. Two of which are dull, one of which is frustrating. Unfortunately, one of those two involves Lewis and Paltrow, the least engaging father-daughter pair I've seen since Luxury Liner's Jane Powell and George Brent. The other dull one involves Maria Bello and Scott Speedman, whose plotline feels like an afterthought, uninteresting, undeveloped. Ah, but the one where Paul Giamatti has a nervous breakdown, abandons his family and career to do competitive karaoke, and teams up with his surprisingly talented escaped con who carjacks him, that's a movie! Not that it's convincing or satisfying as a story, but it's at least new and interesting, and the chemistry between the two makes it feel more worthy than it is. However. I cannot, in all good conscience, recommend this movie, despite their performances. It's not the worst thing - that would at least be interesting - it's just...cinematic beige.
The Fantasticks
release: September 22
dir: Michael Ritchie
pr: Linne Radmin / Michael Ritchie
scr: Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt, from their play
cin: Fred Murphy
Single fathers have pretended to be rivals so their kids - a son, a daughter - will fall in love in rebellion, a match that just makes sense. Things get complicated when a mysterious carnival comes to town.
Based on the long-running 1960 musical, filmed in 1995 but did not receive a release until 2000. That makes sense, it looks like a mid-90s film. A nice movie with good songs, wonderful sets and costumes that embrace the non-reality without coming off too stagey, and great performances from Joel Grey, Jonathan Morris, and Brad Sullivan. Manages to capture an indescribable magic, a witchcraft.
Urban Legends: Final Cut
release: September 22
dir: John Ottman
pr: Gina Matthews / Neal H. Moritz / Richard Luke Rothschild
scr: Paul Harris Boardman & Scott Derrickson, from a plotline and characters by Silvio Horta
cin: Brian Pearson
Film school students fall victim to a killer recreating urban legends.
I honestly would have liked this more if the men didn't all look the same, with their bubblegum-pink lips and dirty-blond mid-cuts and blue eyes. I guess that's part of the fun. Campy fun, enough. I don't know. Feels like by this time, the slasher genre from only four years previously was already starting to feel creaky.
The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy
release: September 29
dir/scr: Greg Berlanti
pr: Mickey Liddell / Joseph Middleton
cin: Paul Elliott
The lives and loves of a group of friends in gay mecca West Hollywood, many of them members of a softball league sponsored by the restaurant where many of them work.
Not inaccurate, but plays everything very safe, very TV-friendly, by which I mean they're horny enough but tastefully, inoffensively so. That's fine, I guess, but it does make everything feel toothless, and certain twists (a sudden death! a drug addiction?) feel less organic and more like checked boxes. But its heart is in the right place, so can one really object? I don't, really, it's just...not very interesting.
Girlfight
release: September 29
dir/scr: Karyn Kusama
pr: Sarah Green / Martha Griffin / Maggie Renzi
cin: Patrick Cady
A girl who boxes???
Yeah, that's the plot, and it rules. Michelle Rodriguez's first performance is also her best, as a teen who finds an outlet for the anger she feels at home and at school, an outlet that grants her a power over others, sure, but also her own destiny. Great tension between her passion and (a) how it upends her home life, with her ex-boxer alcoholic father wanting her boxing success for her brother, but her training means she can also take on Dad, as well as (b) her romance with another teen boxer, a male, who likes her and supports her when it's easy but then has to reassess when there's a chance she's better than, or at least as good as, he is. Love the score, love the cinematography, love the performance from Jaime Tirelli as her trainer.
No comments:
Post a Comment