Channelsurfing

Here are brief comments on some films I happened to watch on TV when I didn’t have a more carefully chosen DVD on hand.

I watched some of Tilda Swinton’s appearance on Charlie Rose (promoting I Am Love, which looks to be pretty good) and in the clips reel there was a great moment from Burn After Reading (2008, MC-63).  Since the Coen Brothers are back in my graces after A Serious Man, I thought I’d catch up with one of theirs that I had skipped.  Besides Tilda, you’ve got George Clooney, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins – what could go wrong?  But on the other hand, it doesn’t exactly go right either.  As so many of the Coens’ films do, this caper falls into the character of love it or leave it.  Unlike, say, The Hudsucker Proxy, I’m leaving this one, but with those players it was not a hardship to watch, despite its haphazard relationship with reality.  It’s either too wacky or not wacky enough, in its story of bumbling spies and cheating spouses in Washington DC.

I liked Sunshine Cleaning (2009, MC-61) a lot more than the film whose success it was trying so hard to emulate, Little Miss Sunshine -- largely for the reason I watched in the first place, the pairing of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, two of the more appealing actresses out there.  Christine Jeff’s film about two sisters starting a crime scene clean-up business showcases them pretty well, and certainly has its moments until it peters out into a pat resolution, touching the usual bases but never really scoring.

I gave a chance to actor John Krasinski’s debut directorial effort, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009, MC-44), because it was based on the writing of David Foster Wallace and had two alums of The Wire in its cast.  I advise you not to make the same mistake, though I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Julianne Nicholson, the woman interviewing all those hideous men.