Head over heals for 'Up in the Air'

This time of year, studios release movies they hope will win awards. "Up in the Air" is a definite -- and deserving -- contender. My review is here: http://boomerlifemagazine.com/ver2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=357:up-in-the-air&catid=74:movie-reviews

Avatar, shmavatar

Looking for my brilliant and witty discourse on "Avatar"? Look no farther. Well, maybe a little farther. Just go here: http://boomerlifemagazine.com/ver2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=356:avatar&catid=74:movie-reviews

MST Alert!

Hey, fans of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Do you have a hankering once again to hear the comic musings of Mike, Crow and Tom Servo? You can catch them at 8 tonight at the Virginia Center Commons in a special closed-circuit show, making wild but not unerudite fun at a host of worthy Christmastime short subjects throughout the years.

It's a two-hour show, with a special price of $12.50. And it won't exactly be the old MST set-up -- there are intellectual property rules about such things. But it will be the guys themselves (apparently unseen) along with guest Weird Al Yankovic (also unseen) making their giddy comments about cinematic silliness.

And if you, like me, would rather see Joel than Mike, then you're screwed.

Rugby liberates the soul?

The first non-combat movie about Vietnam was “The Boys in Company C,” a ridiculous film about Marines playing soccer to survive the war. It was a flop.

But other movies came along later that explored the American adventure in Southeast Asia with considerably more success.

Now comes the first movie to deal with a subject of equal importance, South Africa after the era of Apartheid. And this one turns out to be about rugby.

“Invictus” isn’t as painful as “The Boys in Company C,” of course -- the people who made it could pile up their Oscars like beer cans. And several scenes have a strong emotional resonance. It is just that the rest of the movie is pure blather.

Morgan Freeman stars as Nelson Mandela, one of the saints of the last century. It is 1994 and Mandela has just taken office as president of South Africa after spending 27 years in a tiny jail cell (which is shown to us, fascinatingly but gratuitously). Mandela’s first order of business in his mind is to unite a deeply divided country.

With some justification, blacks and whites fear and hate each other (no mention is made in the movie of coloreds and Asians, the country’s other two formerly official groups). Mandela needs something the entire population can get behind, and he decides the perfect unifying force is rugby. With the Rugby World Cup scheduled to be played in Johannesburg the following year, the timing is perfect.

All Mandela needs is to get the almost entirely white national team behind him, and then the country behind the almost entirely white national team. So he elicits the help of the team captain, played by Matt Damon.

Even if you know nothing about rugby -- and that’s a pretty good bet -- you already know what is going to happen in this film. So the question becomes: How well is it told?

Clint Eastwood behind the camera is a good start, and on a relatively regular basis his sense of humanity shines through. But he often cannot cut through the simplistic sentiment and syrupy script by Anthony Peckham. Working from a book by John Carlin, Peckham is unable to meet the challenge of keeping Mandela a man. He yields to the temptation of putting Grand and Eloquent and Frankly Overstated sentiments in his mouth.

“Forgiveness liberates the soul. It eliminates fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon,” Mandela utters casually. When asked about the health of his family, he soberly says, “I have a very large family. Forty-two million.”

This isn’t a dramatization, it is hagiography. And the man is still alive.

It’s all a bit much for a movie that turns out to be about rugby. And although Eastwood gets some of the dramatic scenes right, he misses with the rugby. We have no sense of the progress of most of the games as they are played, and only a little of the final game. And the rugby action we see looks a bit restrained and tentative. Americans who are not interested in the sport will find their minds unchanged after watching the film.

A large number of excellent movies have been made about Apartheid, from “A World Apart” to this year’s “District 9.” And excellent movies will be made about the transition to majority rule. But “Invictus” doesn’t quite do it.

It comes across as a volume of “Post-Apartheid South Africa for Dummies.”

'Brothers' tries to raise cain, but it isn't able

The movies “Brothers” could have been are better than the one it turns out to be.

It could have been the story of one good brother who has his life together and a bad brother who does not, and how their lives change places as the result of loving the same woman. It could have been the story of how the good brother is killed in war and how the bad brother works through his survival guilt by falling in love with the good brother’s widow. Or it could have been the story of how the good brother returns from war so crazed by his experiences that he goes on a killing spree.

The movie’s trailer, incidentally, favors this last scenario. The psycho good brother is outside his house, gun in hand, confronting the police. He is so dangerous that his wife and brother are yelling to the police, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

What a great scene. And wouldn’t it be cool if it were actually in the film?

Instead, “Brothers” turns out to be about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the need for communication. It’s not a bad topic, but it could have been so much better. Considering the potential, the cast and the director, “Brothers” is a disappointment.

Tobey Maguire gets top billing as the good brother, a captain in the Marines who is a loving husband and father. Just as he is about to be redeployed to Afghanistan, he goes to bring his ne’er-do-well brother, Jake Gyllenhaal, back from prison. Things between them become tense when their father, Sam Shepard, lets them know that he prefers the good brother.

When the good brother is listed as killed in action, his wife -- played by Natalie Portman -- descends into depression. The bad brother decides to try to bring her out of it. The two grow close for the first time in their lives, and they have a positive effect on each other; the presumed widow finds happiness once more, and the bad brother turns good.

Up to this point, the story is at its best, but paradoxically the movie is at its worst. The actors don’t click together, the scenes don’t quite feel real. It is as if everything is slightly off-beat. Despite the exceptional cast (which also includes Mare Winningham as the brothers’ step-mother), the only natural acting actually comes from the young actresses who play Maguire and Portman’s daughters.

With this movie, which is based on a Danish film, director Jim Sheridan makes a misstep. Sheridan has previously made the wonderful “My Left Foot” and “In America” (and also the 50-Cent atrocity “Get Rich or Die Tryin’), but here the sense of family dynamics eludes him. Although some of the scenes in the second half of the film do work well -- the best is a tense birthday party scene, and Maguire does Crazy Eyes better than anyone in the business -- Sheridan cannot string enough of them together to create the power he is looking for.

The harsh and unshaded lighting indicates that Sheridan used digital cameras, so perhaps he had to make this film on the cheap. That could be the problem, but it is more likely to be just that the story (by David Benioff from the original Danish script) goes astray.

You can tell, because the ending feels so weak. Two of the characters are more interesting than the third, but the ending is about the least interesting one. And this story needs a catharsis, yet the ending lets us down.

It’s a viable ending. It just isn’t cathartic.

'Everybody's' terrific

In a world of Transformers and vampires, it can be such a pleasure to see a movie made with maturity, delicacy and heart.

“Everybody’s Fine” is a movie for grown-ups. It’s about real people and real situations, where what isn’t said is more important than what is.

Giuseppe Tornatore made the original film in Italian back in 1990; it was moving and affecting, but not the sort of thing you would ever expect to be remade in English. For one, where could they find an actor to replace its star, Marcello Mastroianni?

It turns out that the perfect choice is Robert De Niro. I know -- duh, right? But in recent years, De Niro has slipped too easily into caricature. Yet in the new version of “Everybody’s Fine,” he reminds us why he can still be the best actor in America. You never catch him acting here, not for a moment, and he seems to truly live the role.

De Niro’s acting here is so good because it does not seem like acting.

He plays Frank, a lonely widower of eight months. At the film’s beginning, he is eagerly anticipating a visit from his far-flung children. But they all cancel. So he decides to travel and make a surprise visit to each one.

Surprise visits are never a good idea. In movies, they tend to reveal uncomfortable truths about everyone concerned.

In the intelligent script of writer-director Kirk Jones (based closely on the intelligent script of the original), these revelations are not overly dramatic. They are believable, even likely, and spring organically from the characters. That’s where the maturity comes in.

Jones, who is British, previously made “Waking Ned Devine” and the wonderful “Nanny McPhee,” and he is clearly becoming a master of his craft. His delight in the majesty of the American West -- and even the tacky magnificence of Las Vegas -- is matched by his delight in working with capable actors. Here he draws emotional performances out of his strong supporting cast.

Like De Niro, Kate Beckinsale has been inconsistent of late, but she returns to form her as one daughter, a Chicago advertising executive. Sam Rockwell -- always an intriguing actor -- affectingly plays a son, the conductor of the Denver orchestra. And Drew Barrymore continues to impress as a successful dancer in Las Vegas.

Their shaded, careful acting makes it clear to us that their characters are lying to their father. But what makes the movie work so well is that it is clear to the father, too, though he never says a word.

One scene alone rings a false note, which only brings into perspective how perfect is the rest of the film. The climactic lunch scene, which takes place outdoors, is a victim of cinematic overkill -- Jones manipulates the color too much, he has too much going on cinematically. Even so, during the scene De Niro never wavers.

It’s a fine piece of acting in a compellingly bittersweet film. The other actors are fine, too, and so are the writer-director and the cinematographer. In fact, everybody’s fine.

A solid A-- for 'An Education'

In 1961, when “An Education” is set, Jenny would have been considered a good girl gone bad.

At 16, she is tops in her class at a London school for girls. She is clever, engaged and eager to begin her life and experience the world.

It is when she meets a dark, handsome and vaguely mysterious older man that she realizes there is more than one way to experience the word. The conventional way is to go to Oxford, get an education and move on to one of the few professions open to women at the time. The other way is on the arms of a dashing, handsome and vaguely mysterious older man.

“An Education” (note the double-edged title) is generally lighthearted, a fond memory of youth, based on the memoir by English columnist Lynn Barber. To tell the truth, sometimes the story feels like it is bragging a bit, but that’s OK. Isn’t that the point of a memoir?

The revelation in this film is not the story (it’s unsurprising, as these things go) but the starring turn by Carey Mulligan. Mulligan plays the role of Jenny as if she were born to it; we believe her, utterly. She’s smart, sassy, worldly, innocent, romantic, bull-headed and prone to showing off by spasmodically speaking in French. N’est-ce pas?

Peter Sarsgaard is smooth and slightly oily as David, the older man who sweeps Jenny off her feet. David is sophisticated and wealthy; he makes his living, he says, by “buying and selling this and that.” His profession turns out to be a little less savory than that sounds, but to Jenny this added air of mystery only adds to his appeal. The only problem with this older man, at least for the audience, is that he is such an older man. David is twice her age, and Jenny is only 16. I generally have no problems with age differences in relationships, but David (perhaps unintentionally) comes off as a bit of a pervert.

It is to this picture’s considerable credit that it has amassed such a strong supporting cast. Alfred Molina stands out, as he always does, as Jenny’s disapproving, but easily co-opted, father. Rosamund Pike is a comic presence as a chic woman unencumbered by knowledge (in a coincidence, Pike played Mulligan’s oldest sister in the Keira Knightley version of “Pride & Prejudice”). Olivia Williams is surprisingly dowdy as Jenny’s English teacher, with Emma Thompson sublime in a couple of scenes as her headmistress.

Heading up the production with authority, compassion and understanding is Dutch director Lone Scherfig, who has a solid yet solid feel for the material. Scherfig keeps the tone light in what could easily come off as a heavy-handed and serious morality tale -- a decision that pays off with dividends from the contrast when the material does become weightier. Scherfig is known in this country for the lovely “Italian for Beginners,” and she scores another hit here.

Ultimately, “An Education” may seem a little slight -- perhaps the light tone keeps ups from taking it seriously enough. But for what it is, it’s fine. It’s a pleasant diversion, one with superior acting.