Reviews

It's not even 24 hours since I watched Extremely Close... and I can tell that it's full impact has yet to be felt. The brilliant acting on the the Oskar character's part as well as Max Van Sydow's miming performance stand out as does original storyline. I don't feel the movie took sentimental advantages although I was close to tears during certain scenes. For good reason, I thought. I found the puzzle the child was trying to assemble was also a puzzle for the audience to share. I couldn't tell exactly what was going to happen or why. I like that about the movie. I have a good friend who's child lost his dad at around the same age as Oskar, not to 9/11 but to cancer, and I couldn't help making associations and feeling for both of them. My heart was being yanked at for more personal reasons than other viewers, I'm sure. I'm not sure I'd recommend this story to my friend, though. It might be too difficult. The only part of the film I found implausible was the discovery made late in the movie about the mother. I don't want to reveal that here. That said, I'd highly recommend this one. Might even see it at home again when it's on DVD.

I've seen most of the contenders but at the moment, I am deliriously high on the on-screen Harvey Milk -- Sean Penn. I had just deemed Frank Langella my best actor pick until I found myself mesmerized by Penn for the entire two plus hour film. Milk is a fine movie in and of itself. A wonderful tapestry of political statement woven through a sweet love story. Harvey Milk was a force whose wits were enhanced by a little chutzpah, or maybe a lot of chutzpah, propelling him to get things done (an understatement). Armed with his compassionate heart he was/is a gay man's champion and an icon to his community. In his political struggle, he sacrificed his most cherished relationship for his bigger picture mission to dignify the gay community and lead them in reclaiming its civil rights. The story is hopeful. It's heroic and touching. But the hero of the two hour masterpiece is Sean Penn. I can't remember a film where he was this good. I've always admired him as an actor but I was never over the moon for him until now. Like classic chameleon, Streep, Penn disappeared into Milk. He brought depth to the character that transcends the standard of "great acting". As Slumdog Millionaire created a new movie standard category, Penn went beyond the normally impressive bounds of acting. Penn was Harvey Milk. Dare I say it? Is channeling too eerie a word to use or is that actually another synonym for good acting? I don't know. Frank Langella. I still adore your Nixon. It amazed me at how this handsome actor morphed into a despicable Nixon. Even though his body language was superb, his posture precise, Langella really did make Nixon a lot prettier than he was in real life. If you see nothing else, see Frost/Nixon and Milk just to see the tremendous competition for best actor. Oh, of course you've already seen Slumdog, right? That movie is so far off the charts that none of the others compare, even the best ones.

If you don't have a strong stomach, don't bother with Slumdog Millionaire. If you have a strong stomach AND a strong heart, this may be one of your favorite movies of 2008. It is now, one of mine.

It's Christmas time in the cinema. All the good movies are out or coming out. Oscar is waiting in the wings for his darlings to embrace him.

I am embracing Slumdog Millionaire. I have yet to see some of the top shelf films but at this point, I'd give this movie every award.

Almost any movie that is shot in India is inevitably filled with color. (Think Monsoon Wedding) In Slumdog, the palette is oranges, reds, yellows and golds waving like fabric against cardboard and tin huts in the ghetto. Miles and miles of them.

Clothes washing, bathing and swimming in polluted water. Shoeless, brown- skinned children chasing each other at the dump over mounds and mounds of garbage.

Squalor like most westerners have never seen close up. Or at all.

Slumdog Millionaire is about, Jamal, one of the unlucky boys who grew up in the Mumbai ghetto. Ghetto being a word too small to capture the vastness of this place. Early in the movie we witness the set up of the boy's life. Abject poverty, mother loss, he and his sometimes devious brother, Salim, ( I mean seriously devious) against the world.

Then we fast forward to the miraculous event in the boy's life where he becomes a winning contestant on India's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" show. But, how is it possible that this "slumdog" young man who serves tea for a living can know all the show's answers?

Swept away by thugs following his first night of winning, "authorities" try to beat an explanation out of him. He must be cheating.

Here's the most masterful part of the movie. Jamal, who has been through way too much for this torture session to have much of an effect on him, takes his interrogators through horrendous episodes in his life where he lived the answers to the questions on "Millionaire."

Superimposed in these scenes is the recurrent attention to a particular girl, Latika, to whom Jamal, is devoted since early childhood. It is this love, maybe the only constant in his life ,that provides the motivation that got him to the TV set and likely gave him a reason to live at all.

The story is painful. There are a lot of scenes where I was forced to look away. But, the beauty of it is equally impactful. Upon leaving the theatre I felt myself exhale for the first time in nearly two hours and was exhausted from holding all of the muscles in my body in a vice grip.

The characters are beautiful as children and as adults. The contrasting choice of paths chosen by the brothers, stunning.

There's some basic good and evil stuff. Love conquering all. But, never did I think the messages were trite.

It's how they're told that I find so remarkable.

I probably won't be able to watch Slumdog Millionaire twice but I strongly urge you to see it once.

It's storytelling at its very best.visit me at http://www.helpmewithmybook.com/blog. See you there!

Rachel Getting Married is about a wedding. Big surprise.

But, this wedding is such a close up of a dysfunctional family that it's sometimes hard to look at. Kym, the recovering addict sister character, is on leave from rehab to attend her sister's wedding and in her short visit home, stirs up a dizzying hornet's nest.

The movie could have been called "It's All About Kym" but that might have prevented you from paying attention to the flaws of the supporting family characters with their icy personas or enabling habits . Kym's history is textbook addict with stints in and out of rehab, accidents, and most importantly the bogarting of all parental attention for herself (poor Rachel).

What separates this from just another treatise on family and addiction is that Kym carries another traumatic experience so devastating that one can't even imagine surviving it. I won't reveal what this is but as heart wrenching as it is to view, it makes her tragic character more understandable.

Poor Kym.

As for the acting, the characters for Kym (Anne Hatheway) and Rachel(Rosemarie DeWitt) are so convincing that at times you really feel like you're watching someone's home movies. (Who would shoot movies like this, I'd wouldn't know!) So raw and true they were, but the role of their mother (Debra Winger) was so stiffly played and chilling that you wanted to just grab her by the neck and shake her. (which sort of happens in the movie) The father's (Bill Irwin) warm, fuzzy counterpart did just the opposite. In a word to all of them, brilliant.

For music lovers, the eclectic sounds running through the entire film were extremely well selected but at times you wanted to say, as the step-mother character did in one scene, "give it a rest, will you?" I love much of the internationally flavored music but couldn't stay dry- eyed during the groom's Neil Young serenade to his bride at the alter. Can you imagine?

This is a Jonathan Demme (Heart of Gold, Philadelphia, Something Wild, oh and a small film you may remember, The Silence of the Lambs, to name a few) movie who is in the habit of making great films. Rachel Getting Married is sort of documentary-like, but not really. I just think it's so artfully done that it captures real life with amazing poignancy.

If you have alcoholism or addiction anywhere in your family, I am certain that this movie will speak to you as vividly as a twelve step counselor. And, if you don't, you will see how completely crippling these diseases can be to everyone close to these diseases. What you will also see is what potentially leads up to acquiring them.

These diseases are treacherous and unforgiving, but familial love is an ingredient that may not be a cure but a welcome balm in the perpetual process of healing.

Go see it.

Bring Kleenex. (See more on http://www.helpmewithmybook.com/blog)

If you picture Helena Bonham Carter as a Jewish mother from the 1960's, beehive and all, that should be enough to make run to see Sixty Six.

Sixty six is the year. Bernie Reubens is the kid. The 13 year old kid to be exact. Bernie's the awkward, picked-on kid, the one living in the shadow of his popular older brother. The kid whose only luck is bad.

Lo and behold in his religious (Hebrew) classes, he learns that his impending Bar Mitzvah is the event that will change all that. For one day Bernie Reubens would be the center of the universe.

The quirky boy makes his Bar Mitzvah his obsession. In the backyard garage, he has a table set up, more like a shrine devoted to things Bar Mitzvah. Catering menus, a place setting, pictures, seating charts, everything to make this day his perfect one.

There's one glitch.

The World Cup falls on the same day. And, England could qualify for the finals. No one would come to Bernie's Bar Mitzvah if this happened.

Bernie makes it his singleminded mission to prevent England from competing in the finals. How he tries to do this is plain hysterical. Let's just say that there's some hocus pocus involved and tons of laughs.

There's another glitch. Bernie's dad's career takes a bad financial turn. Don't get me started about the father character. Played by actor Eddie Marsan, the odd elder Reubens is a cartoon-like character with amazing comedic timing. In a Mr. Magoo kind of way.

If I said what happens to Bernie is comedy of errors, I would be understating it. From bad to worse, and bad again, Bernie's day isn't looking like his dream Bar Mitzvah. But some bittersweet things happen between he and his dad. Enough to tug your heart. And, tug again.

Almost never have I been to a movie that made me laugh during the introduction and then tear up at the end. Even the credits are worth watching since the actors' names are superimposed over film footage of an actual '60's Bar Mitzvah, which happens, I'm assuming, to be that of the director's older brother. His was Bernie's dream day.

I only collect the odd movie DVD from the movies that I adore. As soon as this becomes available, it's mine. I'll have a Sixty Six party. Prerequisite, you must be born before that year.

Supposedly, Sixty Six is based on the director, Paul Weilland's life. I know some Brits who remember the World Cup of 1966 with special affection. And, I personally remember a variety of awkward boys confronting their manhood at many a Bar Mitzvah. (where I smoked my fist cigarette in the synagogue bathroom.) Then there's the dad stuff...more tugs. Go see it!

My sister, one of my best sources for literature that doesn't disappoint, told me that Brick Lane was one of her all time favorite books. I didn't get to it, but I did get to the movie.

After cinematically traveling to India via "Before the Rains" a couple of weeks ago, Brick Lane took me to Bangledesh. With continuous flashbacks to her home country, I followed Nazneem,a young Bangladeshi woman to the London ghetto in the early 1980's.

As was common in her culture, Nazneem left home at age sixteen to pursue an arranged marriage She has two daughters, who we meet as young teens, one of whom is as rebellious and difficult as any American teenager we've known (or been). Nazneem is dreadfully unhappy in her new life partly because she misses her sister back home. The other reasons have something to do with never having lived life on her own terms, losing her first born and a touch of early mother loss, too.

Let's just say that the different manifestations of love are examined in Brick Lane through the experience of Nazneem. How her heart opens and how she matures is unexpected. Without giving too much away, there is a drop dead gorgeous character named Karim who has something to do with it. Like a good book, and I suspect this is one, there are delicious surprises. Characters endear us in the end that we couldn't stand at first and others we admire, fall from grace. The story is rich.

So, I'll be getting my copy of Brick Lane by Monica Ali and will let you know how it measures up to this beautiful movie.

Weeks can go by without a worthwhile movie to see, but to have Before the Rains and Brick Lane in the same month. Now, that's a gift.