The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke is as good as they say in this comeback bid, and so is Marisa Tomei. And director Darren Aronofsky offers a surprisingly self-effacing and empathetic look at a working-class New Jersey environment, where the aging hero and heroine have the exotic but ordinary jobs of professional wrestler and bargirl pole-dancer, good at what they do and heartfelt in it, though well past their prime. It’s all show biz, and these folks are troupers. Got to be, living from performance to performance, within a close and closed-in community. Mickey’s got specs (as well as pecs) and a hearing aid, but is still willing to give his body and soul to his bloody art. Marisa can definitely still shake that thing. The film manages to stand a number of cliches on their heads, without stooping to redemption or resolution. It feels real but doesn’t push it too far. (2008, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-81.)

Tell No One

Guillaume Canet’s French adaptation of an American thriller by Harlen Coben plays like an insanely complicated mash-up of Vertigo and The Fugitive, delivered with the blithe incomprehensibility of The Big Sleep. But like the current American remake of the brilliant British miniseries, State of Play, it tries to incorporate just too much conspiracy and mystification into two hours, though with a cast that makes it well worth watching. How can you quibble with a film that deploys such Francophone pulchritude as Marie-Josee Croze, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marina Hinds, and Nathalie Baye? There’s a pleasing array of male character actors as well, led by Francois Cluzet looking a lot like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man. He’s a pediatrician still mourning the murder of his wife eight years previous, a case in which he was the prime suspect, and is again now that two more bodies have been unearthed. This film makes no concession to an audience’s desire to figure out what the hell is going on, but if you stick with it, a lot of kinetic energy covers the implausible gaps in the story. It’s the classic Hitchcock situation of someone pursuing the evildoers while being pursued by the police himself. And while it has a ton of ’splainin’ to do in the final reel, it doesn’t feel like a complete cheat. Generally I look for a French film to do more than out-Hollywood Hollywood, but the result here is fairly satisfying. (2008, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-82.)

Nothing But the Truth [etc.]

Topical subject and notable cast notwithstanding, this Rod Lurie film essentially went straight to video. Kate Beckinsale is a character similar to Judith Miller, the NYTimes reporter who went to jail rather than reveal her source in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. The latter type is played by Vera Farmiga, and the two have some good toe-to-toe scenes. Matt Dillon is the special prosecutor who keeps putting the screws to the reporter so she’ll reveal her source, and Alan Alda is her white-shoe defense attorney. Though Kate is undoubtably more heroic than Judith was, and her prison time harder, she does have her ambiguities, and other views get fair expression. I’m not sure about the fictional displacement of the story to an imaginary Venezuelan assasination attempt and U.S. retribution, nor about the story’s final twist, which is fair but raises as many questions as it answers. But for the most part, this is a cleanly executed political thriller, with a conscience. (2008, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-64.)

To tie up loose ends: I wanted to confirm my assertion about Milk that the documentary was better, so I re-watched The Times of Harvey Milk (1983), and indeed it is so. Not that Gus Van Sant’s film was without value, but in comparison to the Oscar-winning documentary, it strikes me as something unnecessary, like his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. Of course it’s an important message and reaches a wider audience through the celebrity of Sean Penn’s performance, but most of the story’s impact is lifted directly, and little is added by appending drama to docu-.

Somewhere I read a favorable remark on The Americanization of Emily (1964), so when I saw it coming on TCM, I recorded it. Since the story is about an American serviceman and English servicewoman during World War II, and I am the product of just such a meeting, I got around to watching it quite promptly. I can’t go so far as to recommend the film, but it is an intriguing odd duck indeed. It’s hard to imagine a cynical black comedy about D-Day after we’ve seen Saving Private Ryan, but I suppose writer Paddy Chayefsky was trying to cash in on the then-current bestselling success of Catch-22. James Garner comes across as too nice for the “dog robber” he plays, in the vein of Milo Minderbinder. And Julie Andrews, looking for a change of pace between Mary Poppins and Sound of Music, is too prim and not tart enough, as the driver who is escaping the ethic of courage that took every male in her family and looking for a fling with a certified coward. Director Arthur Hiller does little to liven up the proceedings or fine tune the performances, so the tone is wobbly throughout, while Chayefsky is trying satirically to undercut the glorification of war. The widescreen black & white is reminiscent of then-recent classic The Apartment, but Hiller is not Wilder enough for the job.

Reprise

There’s lots to like about this energetic Norwegian film by Joachim Trier, but I suspect I’m just too old to remain enchanted with the self-dramas of artsy twentysomethings. I respect the homage to classics of the French New Wave like Jules et Jim (in my top five of all time), and it’s cool to see how international cultural artifacts of the ’90s played in Oslo (even though I only know Joy Division, e.g., through its portrayal in several movies ). There were lots of inside references in this story of two friends just out of school, sending off the manuscripts of their first novels, to varying effect, both in fantasy and in reality, which are sometimes hard to sort out. The two friends are appealing, and their cronies fitfully amusing, along with a Bjork-lookalike girlfriend. I was happy enough to go for the ride, but I didn’t catch every twist and turn. And in the end I didn’t care all that much. (2006, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-79.)

Vicky Cristinia Barcelona

Thankfully Woody Allen no longer appears in his own films, with touristic footage of European cities filling in for some of his more annoying shtick, but there is still a shallow, nihilistic worldview at work in his films, so when they’re not funny they’re pretty bleak, in a way that is assumed not earned. So everything and everyone is pretty and well-heeled, if ultimately emptied of significance. He doesn’t abuse Scarlett Johansson as badly as in recent films, but still makes her into a pretentious bubblehead. Luckily the other three principals are not so easily moved around like straw people. Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are pretty hilarious as the hot-blooded artist couple, with whom the post-graduate Americans, Vicky (an effective Rebecca Hall) and Cristina, fall in during their hot Mediterranean summer in Barcelona. There’s an intrusive narration that one wants to take as ironic, but no, really, it’s just that flatfooted -- I wonder if Woody could have sold it in his own voice? In no way a hardship to watch, this film was in no way moving or illuminating. (2008, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-70.)