Movies: Broken Embraces Under a New Moon

Look out! He's about to twinkle!

NATHANIEL ROGERS
Nathaniel would live inside the movie theater but for the poor internet reception. He blogs daily at the Film Experience.

YOUR FEATURE PRESENTATIONS
Given Towleroad’s generous coverage of all things Twilight (all things equalling shirtless wolf boys and wild haired Pattisons) I had hoped to share a few thoughts on NEW MOON for today’s movie column. No can do. I wasn’t invited. Curiously I had been invited to the press screenings of Twilight. Perhaps I’ve been too openly disdainful of sparkle-in-the-sunshine vampires or creator Stephenie Meyers’ retrograde sexual politics (I had quite enough of that in my own Mormon years, thank you). So, it’s not for me. If it’s for you, no judgments, enjoy with the millions of screaming girls and moms.

For the second flick I predict: better special effects, more flesh to make up for the pro-abstinence agenda and better acting. The latter is nothing like a risky prediction since the only way is up. Plus, Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen have joined the cast.
 
BROKEN EMBRACES, the latest film from the amazing Pedro Almodóvar and his current muse Pénelope Cruz is also opening. This is their fourth collaboration. May they make many more together.

The plot is a spiralling labyrinth of violent accidents, flashbacks, long-held secrets and films within films. The characters are typically Almodóvarian: a disabled filmmaker, a minor actress, a rejected gay son, an older abusive lover, a woman with too many secrets. Pedro Shows exquisitely but he can't stop Telling this time. But even if it's "minor" Almodóvar, his worst are better than some director's best. Few can touch him for memorable images and actress worship. And speaking of.... Penélope Cruz is still at the top of her game. This last run of performances (Volver, Elegy, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Nine and Broken Embraces) is just one triumph after another. How long can she maintain la perfección, anyway? 

MORE on Tony & Takeshi, Angelina Jolie, and A Single Man, AFTER THE JUMP...

Movies: Foxhole Messengers

NATHANIEL ROGERS

Nathaniel Rogers blogs daily at the Film Experience.

YOUR FEATURE PRESENTATIONS

George Clooney is a fox. You knew this already but now he's actually playing one onscreen. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a sly one and that's a description that happily fits all: character, star and movie containing them. Mr. Fox is living a peaceful life as a newspaper columnist but he can't tame the wild animal within. Some of the funniest gags in the movie play off this discord between the tendency of animated films to anthropomorphize everything and the character's realizations that they aren't behaving like animals of their species would. Fox wants to go back to stealing chickens and when he moves to a new home with a window view of three massive farms (belonging to the villains Boggis, Bunce and Bean), he just can't resist. Even if you aren't at all familiar with the book, you know how complicated it gets in the movies whenever a charming criminal decides to do one last big job. 

Roald Dahl's books have a rich history of onscreen adaptations from Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp's very different Willy Wonkas through Angelica Huston's sick transformation into the Grand High Witch in The Witches to the 90s animated version of James and the Giant Peach. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of the most successful transitions, merging director Wes Anderson's emotional affect, fondness for diorama like production design, and symmetrical compositions with Dahl's whimsical storytelling and sometimes ghastly humor.

Meanwhile at the movies, how did Ben Foster get that scar by his eye?

There's no answer, AFTER THE JUMP...

Movies: 'We Are All Precious'

NATHANIEL ROGERS

Nathaniel would live inside a movie theater but for the poor internet reception. He blogs daily at the Film Experience.

YOUR FEATURE PRESENTATION

You're barely a reel into Lee Daniel's Precious (based on the novel Push by Sapphire) before you begin to realize that maybe Job didn't have it so bad after all. Claireece "Precious" Jones is suffering. She's obese, she's a welfare mother of a disabled child, she's pregnant again, kicked out of high school, her parents abuse her, neighborhood kids taunt her. She's illiterate on top of that... as the twee incorrectly spelled opening credits foreshadow.

Before too long, though, "Precious" has enrolled in an alternate school for girls who are slipping through the cracks. She blossoms, as much as a continually trampled living thing can, under the guidance of a new teacher (Paula Patton). The further she steps away from her nightmare home life, the more she begins to see new possible futures. It's already hell at home but her abusive mentally ill mother Mary (Mo'Nique in an Oscar-winning performance... four months from now that is, just wait) is ready to drag her to the next circle when she realizes her meal ticket is transforming into a girl that might actually fly away.

Add a third party (Mariah Carey's weary social worker, miles from Glitter) to this tug of war for Claireece's soul, and you have an absolutely riveting drama. For all of the misery, the film is remarkably energizing.

Because Precious is so vividly felt, staged and acted (it's a sure fire Oscar contender) and because the tub-thumping for the movie comes from a bullseye as big as Oprah Winfrey, whose every recommendation seems to be treated with disdain in some corners (despite a track record  that's not entirely disdain-worthy... just hit and miss like anyone else's verbal thumbs up) reactions to Precious will undoubtedly be just as vividly delivered.

MORE on Precious and other films, AFTER THE JUMP...

Movies: Michael, Matt, Gore and Bette

NATHANIEL ROGERS

Nathaniel Rogers hopes you'll dress up as a movie character for Halloween. He blogs daily at the Film Experience.

YOUR FEATURE PRESENTATION

This Is... not the weekend for new releases. Horror films Paranormal Activity and Saw XI topped the box office last weekend and should continue doing well over the holiday with no new scary movies going wide. Unless you count This Is It, which brings Michael Jackson back from the beyond for his next concert tour. And yes, he does perform the zombie dance from Thriller. I'm not trying to make a joke here, it's just that reel commerce on the heels of real tragedy is scary for some of us. Others will undoubtedly love seeing the legend back in action.

Opening in limited release: The House of the Devil, Gentlemen Broncos, and The Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day.

BONUS FEATURES

Coming Soon: School Ties 2!

I'm kidding but that's all I could think of when I saw this new frame of Matt Damon. (Damon lost that weight from The Informant quickly, no?).

MORE, AFTER THE JUMP...

Movies: Amelia Crashes, Dafoe Flashes, Pinchot Bashes

NATHANIEL ROGERS

Nathaniel Rogers would live inside a movie theater but for the poor internet reception. He blogs daily at the Film Experience.

YOUR FEATURE PRESENTATION

If you’re going to make a film about an aviatrix, it better soar. Mira Nair's AMELIA seems to understand this with reverent voiceovers about flight sprinkled throughout. It even begins by prepping for liftoff as we see Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank) waving from her plane’s wing, about to embark on a historic flight. Unfortunately it's the historic flight, as in her last. Argh! The movie has opted for that musty old biopic framing device: Start at the famous end, jump backwards in time to see how it all began, count down with us to the famous celebrity death! When a biopic begins this way, you have to worry that it has nothing fresh to say, being closer in spirit to a Wikipedia entry than a movie.
 
From that initial take off, complete with an overzealous score that assumes every moment's a climactic one, Amelia the film zooms through Amelia the person's rise to fame as if we all know every detail and can't wait to get to that doomed flight. Though clearly in a rush to get there, it feels like it's crawling rather than flying toward its final destination. There's no window view into this woman and the storytelling discards abundant opportunities to actually show us about what it would have been like to be this hugely famous trailblazer. Shouldn’t a film about a woman who broke gender barriers in the workplace and also resisted them at home with an open marriage feel fresh or even electric in its daring?

You could blame the director but Mira Nair once made great movies like Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding so that's no fun. Let's blame the actors!

MORE Amelia, plus: Willem Dafoe's penis, Montgomery Clift's eyes, Hugh Jackman's charisma, AFTER THE JUMP...

Movies: Wild Things On Screen

NATHANIEL ROGERS

Nathaniel Rogers would live inside a movie theater but for the poor internet reception. He blogs daily at the Film Experience.

NOW PLAYING

This weekend's big deal is Spike Jonze's adaptation of the Maurice Sendak classic WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Jonze's keen visual imagination first won hearts in the realm of the music video and transferred well to the cinema with the absurdist instant-classic Being John Malkovich in 1999. Despite that Oscar-nominated debut effort, Jonze has only made one other feature film since then (Adaptation, 2002). This return to movie theaters has been a long time in coming and infamously troubled. The production stories roughly fall into the familiar camp of 'fiscally nervous studio vs. man with an expensive vision'. Pray that the director figured out a way to bring this beloved but minimalist classic to full movie life.

In addition to Wild Things, Jonze also made a documentary about the gay artist behind this children's classic. HBO is screening Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak to coincide with the film's release. According to the LA Times, the film is a wonderful informal portrait of an unhappy but entertaining man.

For all the cleverness and sharp-eyed originality in his work, Sendak turns out to be an unhappy guy, haunted by what he calls a "permanent dissatisfaction" in his life. Unwanted by his parents ("I was not intended -- it was an accident," he insists) and blessed with few social skills, he spent most of his time as a child alone, sitting at the window, drawing children playing in the street. He adored his older brother and sister -- he still talks about them with awe today -- but he was always an outsider, especially once he realized that he was gay, not an especially easy sexual orientation for a children's book artist in mid-20th century America.

As he bluntly puts it: "I didn't want to be gay. It was yet another sign of isolation. It was something that you hid.... It was extremely bad news."

Hopefully the genius artist has since found some joy knowing he's penned classics that continue to inspire other artists (not just Jonze) and will outlast us all.

Prince of Persia without Jake Gyllenhaal, Gerard Butler's bad taste in movies, and Heath Ledger's last role, AFTER THE JUMP...