The Sapphires

When I first saw the poster for The Sapphires I thought, “What is this? I’ve never heard of this. Chris O’Dowd is in Girls, right?” Then I saw the trailer and thought, “Okay, this is going to be fun, definitely some great soul music.” And after watching the film itself, my first thought was “I love this!” as I danced my way up the aisle to the credits music.

I don’t know why this movie doesn’t seem to have much press or why it isn’t being talked about, but it’s fantastic. It’s full of emotions: sadness, hope, love, jealousy, forgiveness. And of course it’s full of soul, and music, and dancing. It’s one of those movies that builds from a slow steam to a rolling boil– much like the songs they sing. The Sapphires about a lot more than I expected: race, identity, politics, war, while at the same time being a story about following a dream and finding your voice. It’s subtle, funny, sad, lovely, and you’re gonna want the soundtrack.

The Sapphires is now playing at Images Cinema through Thursday 5/23. Please visit our website for showtimes and details http://www.imagescinema.org

~Anna

Place Beyond The Pines

 This is a photo taken on set, not a still from the actual movie. Gosling and Cooper are the stars of Place Beyond the Pines, however they are only on screen together for mere moments. There is something in this image I find irresistible. It’s probably the way Bradley Cooper is slouching and shrugging, with his belly sticking out as he seems to be saying, “I just really think my character would be eating a donut right now” to Ryan Gosling who is very serious.

And on that note, let’s get serious. Place Beyond the Pines is about fathers and sons.

That’s it. Really. (But I mean it in a good way!)

For a movie that is 2 hours and 20 minutes long, this may seem like a simplistic description, but that’s what it all boils down to for me, and the father-son theme is a complicated one.

The story is structured into three parts: 1. Ryan Gosling, 2. Bradley Cooper, and 3. their sons. This organization creates an interesting tension and flow– events and details build on each other into a complex web of actions and consequences, all the while asking the biblical question: must sons pay for the crimes of their fathers?

While the men are full, rich characters whose every decision effects the others, the women in Pines are inconsequential. They bare the children, try to talk sense into their men, and look very pretty when they’re sad. This usually bothers me in movies– when they focus only on the male characters and the poor women are scattered to the sidelines with hopeless pleading looks on their faces– but in Pines I feel the focus is so strongly on the powerful Father-Son theme, that I am okay with it.

The performances by Gosling and Cooper are excellent, and it’s worth it to see the movie just for that. And there is so much more that is good in this film, like the delicately beautiful cinematography and music, that there’s really no reason not to see it.

And if you didn’t like Derek Cianfrance’s last movie, Blue Valentine, don’t worry. I loathed Blue Valentine and really liked Pines. I’m planning to come back and see it again with my dad.

Place Beyond the Pines is now playing at Images Cinema through Thursday 5/9 (a two week run!). For more details and showtimes, please visit our website http://www.imagescinema.org.

~ Anna 

Say “Yes!” to NO

Say “yes!” to NO. It really is a charming and funny film with pointed social commentary. More charming and funny than a film about the Pinochet referendum has any right to be. And it stars the adorable Gael García Bernal (Amores Perros, Motorcycle Diaries, The Science of Sleep, and countless other films).

The film is about a young, hip ad executive, René Saavedra in 1988 Chile. A referendum is being held to decide whether Augusto Pinochet will remain in power, Yes or No. René is approached by the opposition to work on the No campaign, and he initially refuses, but after seeing their approach, focusing on the negative, using his advertising chops, he conceives of a radically positive approach, looking to the future of Chile, with a catchy jingle and all.

The filmmakers go to great pains to recreate the look and sensibility of the eighties. James Mahon, Williams College professor of Political Science, who spent time in Chile in 1988, confirmed many of the period details at the post-film discussion with Dan Williams on Saturday.

The film is in Spanish with English subtitles. Don’t let the subtitles dissuade you! It shows through Thursday, 4/25.

Ginger & Rosa

Sally Potter’s latest film, Ginger & Rosa, is beautiful from the first moment to the last. The protagonist, Ginger, played expertly by Elle Fanning (the comparisons to Meryl Streep are not an exaggeration), is a teenage poet living in 1962 London. She is deeply frightened by the threat of nuclear catastrophe, and this, combined with more personal tensions, creates a taught wire for the movie to walk across. The writing and images both soar and glide gracefully through the story, weaving in and out of darkness and light.

Do you remember being 13, 14, 15-years-old and feeling so afraid of something that none of the adults around you seemed to take seriously? Have you ever had a secret you held inside so that it hurt and rumbled like a bomb? That yearning to be both free and protected? I remember these feelings, and I remember being a teenage girl and all this comes out in Elle Fanning’s performance. From her brooding eyes which seem to go deep inside herself, to her exquisite laugh which is so bubbly and joyful, even squeaky– she creates a rich character who owns the screen.

The rest of the cast is excellent as well: Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendricks, Timothy Spall, Oliver Pratt, Annette Bening. Fanning and co-star Alice Englert (who plays Rosa) create that “girl-bond-world” which is so intense and consuming, and entrancing to watch– especially in their matching turtle-neck sweaters and long ironed hair. Sally Potter beautifully captures this girl friend relationship, in all it’s intricacies and explosiveness.

I found the following in the Personal Quotes section of Sally Potter’s IMDb page:

“[on the advent of many films exploring young female relationships] The sleeping giant awakes. It’s like people are suddenly seeing the power, the interior life that has come out of this great cultural silence. The stories haven’t been told, but it’s not as if they weren’t there to be told.”

This feels true to me– that we are finally seeing more stories about women in general, but also female relationships (more than just women friends talking about men), and I’m excited to see this giant awaken.

The only other films in Sally Potter’s ouvre that I have seen are Rage, Yes, and Orlando, and I would say that I like Ginger & Rosa the best. There’s something so complete about it– like when a poem has just the right amount of words or a dress fits just so.

Ginger & Rosa is playing at Images Cinema Friday 4/12 – Thursday 4/18. Visit our website for details and showtimes: http://www.imagescinema.org

~ Anna

Admission

At first glance, Admission  looks like a Hollywood formula romantic comedy. While it does have some formulaic elements, there are also subtle complexities which I was very drawn in by, and am moved to write about.

Last week’s Sunday NY Times described Admission as a “momcom,” a comedy about a woman in her later child-bearing years who has given her life to her career and begins to question her decision to forgo motherhood, and finds romance and mishaps along the way. This is a type of movie that is not new (see: Baby Boom), however the topic seems to be more common with each passing year.

Tina Fey plays a college admissions officer who is committed to her career and life as an (uptight) adult without children (and her long-term boyfriend who is the head of the English Dept.). Her own mother, played by the ravishing Lily Tomlin, is a free spirited super-feminist who fixes her own bike and lets her dogs hunt for their own food in the woods. Usually, I find this kind of characterization off-putting: One of them is uptight and the other is a free spirit! Hilarious! And in their first scene together, I began to cringe at this too-often used plot tool of a hippie mom having a straight-laced daughter. However, as the movie progressed I sensed a more complex relationship between Tina and Lily’s characters. I’m not sure if it’s in the writing or their expert performances which caused this, but either way I enjoyed it, and felt personal pangs as a daughter and a potential mother.

This parent-child relationship is the center theme of the movie for me, and is told through several different examples and their inter-weaving. There’s a moment for each parent-child pairing in which the child expresses, “Why don’t we ever do what I want?” and the parent realizes that they have been forcing their own dreams/ambitions/desires on their offspring. This is a complicated issue for both parents and children, and I think it will resonate with almost everyone.

As a woman in my late twenties, the idea of children and family is definitely on my mind. I think most women (and men too, although it’s a little different) face this decision at certain points in their lives: do I want to have children or not? For women, we have to decide by a certain age because biologically we cannot bear children after a certain point. There’s also adoption, however that is a difficult and long process, and requires it’s own set of complicated decision-making. And even if you know you don’t want children, accidental pregnancy can happen. Or if you know you do, you might not be able to. And how to we balance our careers with family? How do we make enough money to support that potential family? And what if we’re terrible mothers? And what if… So many things to worry and think about!

Last year Janet and I saw What to Expect When You’re Expecting (I know, what?! We’re indie film geeks but we like to see the occasional ridiculous chick-flick– sidenote: I have a problem with that label!). In a pivotal scene, Jennifer Lopez’s character declares, in tears, “I can’t do the one thing a woman is supposed to be able to do!” Yeah. That movie was AWFUL. The Times listed it among the other momcoms discussed in that article. That movie set women back about a million miles. Admission is very different– it’s entertaining while at the same time addresses similar issues intelligently. It’s not perfect, of course, but it did a solid job of making me think and feel things. And also laugh.

I haven’t even said a word about Paul Rudd and how adorable he is. But we all know that, right? Also my different thoughts on the whole “romance relationship” part of the movie…

I think I need to see it again.

Admission opens tomorrow, Friday 3/22 at Images Cinema and will be playing for two weeks. Visit our website for more info and showtimes: www.imagescinema.org

~ Anna

Naomi Watts and The Impossible

I just finished watching The Impossible, and whew, that was intense. Some might question why a Spanish family from the true story would be replaced with a British one in the film, especially given it was a Spanish production with a Spanish director… but I’ll let that for others to wonder about.

Right now I’m still caught up in the emotions of it (I spent most of the movie trying to to cry). The film makes the story feel so immediate, allowing you to experience the emotions of the characters as they experience them, intensely, as they try to make it through a situation that seems impossible. And to me, when you want intensity, you hire Naomi Watts.

Naomi Watts became known to the world in a major way with Mulholland Drive (2001). You  might have seen her in Flirting in 1991 or Tank Girl (1995), but you might not have taken any notice of the best friend. Since breaking out, she’s been selective with her parts. She has a preference for intense, uncompromising roles (21 Grams, The Ring, Mother and Child), but she’s also really funny (I [heart] Huckabees). All of her movies aren’t great, but she is usually the best part of any movie she is in. Look for her as Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe in the coming year or so!

Side Effects

Side Effects opens with a wide shot of New York, and through a series of cuts, brings the viewer closer and closer to a shot of a window in a building with many windows. Through this window, we enter into the story. Through this opening sequence, my interest was piqued, and I started watching the film very closing. This opening sequence is just like the opening sequence of Psycho, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces. Stephen Soderbergh, it seems to me, assigned himself the task of making a film that incorporates many of the elements of Psycho, to tell a story of the current times about mental illness and guilt.

I wouldn’t have noticed the opening sequence if I had not just watched Psycho last month, and perhaps would not have taken notice of that opening sequence either, except that I watched a “Making of” DVD extra that talks about how Hitch wanted a crane shot of the city, in this case, Phoenix, to slowly zoom in, eventually to the window where we find Marion Crane and her lover Sam. It proved impossible, so instead, the film opens with a series of shots that close in on the window, just like in Side Effects.

Beyond this point, there will be spoilers.

Once we get into the action of the story, pretty quickly, Channing Tatum is killed off. It’s pretty rare for a big star like Channing Tatum to die so early in a movie, but is a tip of the hat to Hitchcock’s killing off of Janet Leigh’s character so early in Psycho. In both cases, the murder comes as a bigger surprise, because no one expects the biggest star to die so early on.

My least favorite part of Psycho is the psychologist’s speech at the end of the film. Pompously, he explains that Norman suffers from multiple personality disorder, having subsumed his mother’s personality into himself. So it is the mother part of Norman that is guilty for the murders.

It is clear from Side Effects that popular ideas about psychologists have radically changed since 1960. Instead of the psychologist of Side Effects “explaining” the strange things we’ve witnessed, Jude Law’s Jonathan Banks is more of a detective, retracing steps and trying to figure out what the hell is going on, like the private investigator in Psycho. And like the PI, Banks would have been collateral damage… except he manages to outwit everyone else. On the flip side, Victoria Seiberg, Emily’s first psychotherapist, expresses our anxieties about the profession.

A week element of Side Effects is the tawdry affair between Emily and Victoria, but I started thinking about it as a parallel to the relationship between Marion and Sam. Their onscreen chemistry is pretty much nil, and the reason for their secrecy (he’s in debt because he’s divorced!) seems pretty weak. Maybe in 1960 such a relationship would be shocking, but even Doris Day movies played around with the possibility of sex outside of marriage. Perhaps Soderbergh was poking fun at the “shock value” of a lesbian plot of insider trading. And perhaps Hitch was also making a bit of fun, what would have been centrally important in a mainstream film, the love interest, is just a small, mundane element of the larger picture.

The final sequence of Side Effects is a reverse of the opening sequence, starting at a window, and expanding out into the world. It doesn’t have the same power as Psycho‘s ending, which echos its opening, but instead of looking at the exterior of a building, looks at the exterior of a person. Norman is dressed as Mother, and there are successively closer shots,until we only see the fly on Mother’s hand, with her voice over, saying “she wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”

One element of Psycho that makes it stand apart today is the amazing performance by Anthony Perkins. Side Effects doesn’t particularly distinguish itself. Rooney Mara is good (she was excellent in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), but not uncanny. Jude Law was better in this than he’s been in a while, it was refreshing.

Side Effects is not the movie Psycho is by a long stretch, but it does beg the question, why would society consider the real Emily any less crazy than the pretend Emily?