Suffer the children

Polisse

Crit

A cop flick like none you've ever seen, following the Parisian Child Protection Unit, serving young people neglected, exploited, and otherwise failed by the adults in their lives and their society at large. Episodic, elliptical, sometimes even disjointed, but never less than gripping, and often brutally painful to watch. Cowritten and directed by Maïwenn, who also plays a photojournalist assigned to document the unit's work who becomes personally involved. A tough, remarkable film.

Or are you just happy to see me?

Gun Crazy

(1950)

Sometimes, I suppose, a gun is just a gun, but certainly not in this delightfully Freudian noir. Bart (John Dall) fits the titular description, but Peggy (Peggy Cummins) embodies it, leading the gentle-souled marksman around by his firearm. Third act drags pretty miserably, but the first hour races toward the couple's inevitable disaster.

SPQR

To Rome with Love

Crit

This didn't make my face hurt from smiling so much, as did Midnight in Paris when I first saw it, but it made me smile plenty, and it made me hungrier to return to Rome again before I die than that film or Vicky Cristina Barcelona did for their titular cities.

Contrary to most critics, apparently, I liked the Alec Baldwin-Jesse Eisenberg story the best, partly because I like when Woody gives us ghosts or something like ghosts, and partly because, come on, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page. Not that there's a story senza an engaging woman or two, and Penélope Cruz gives a bravura turn as a hooker.

But the most bella è Roma.

Trailers

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower--Nerdstory, seems notable mostly as a post-Potter breakout for Emma Watson.
• The Words--Another cross-chronological-parallel-love-stories story, with a plagiarism twist.
• Beasts of the Southern Wild--Oh, hell, yeah!
• Celeste and Jesse Forever--Exes as close friends? Implausible.

Macho macho men

Magic Mike

Crit

Ah, of all the things I love about the movies, maybe the best is that they take me somewhere I've never been and may never otherwise be--in this case, to a beefcake strip joint. And I gotta say, the stripping is good: sexy-funny, an eros firmly, you should pardon the expression, tongue in cheek. The only oddly straight-faced aspect is the emphatic heterosexuality, which is particularly odd given that the strippers often take the stage looking like Village People--and considering the story in today's Times today about the film's appeal for gay men.

It's an entertaining film, but ultimately a conventional one--the guy who thinks he has everything but is nothing without the love of a good woman.

Trailers

• The Apparition--Tagline: "Once you believe it, you die." Paranormal porn.
• The Watch--Bet this isn't as good as Attack the Block.
• For a Good Time Call . . . --More female empowerment via the sex industry, this time on the phone.
• Campaign--Wait, haven't we already seen Will Ferrell as a politician with no convictions?

Perforations

Your Sister's Sister

Crit

Yeah, we could make this one too--maybe we could make anything that has Mark Duplass in it. I mean, hell, anyone could make this: short opening party scene with maybe a dozen people, 2 or 3 with lines, then the entire film has 3 people in it, zero extras, and it's mostly in one location. Granted, it's a great location, a sprawling Pacific Northwest forest home, but it doesn't have to be that nice. You could definitely make this film for [mumble] thousand dollars, though granted not with Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt.

But I digress. It's a largely likable film, and if I had suspended a little more disbelief (seriously? they can all be happy with a solution that brings the eternal sore point into their midst forever?) and been a little more willing to accept pretty romcom conventional workings out, I'd have liked it largely. As is, the principals are engaging enough (though as I've mentioned before, I run hot & cold on Blunt, and here I was pretty lukewarm toward her) that I liked it pretty well. I can forgive the male-fantasy-of-sleeping-with-a-hot-lesbian bit because it goes so awkwardly and unsatisfactorily, though I can't be as tolerant of the tricking-the-vegan-into-eating-butter-as-a-funny-conspiratorial-joke bit.

Trailer

• Hyde Park on Hudson--Came in in the middle, but come on: Murray as FDR, Linney as his distant cousin and "confidante"? Oh, hell,yeah!

La femme du XXème

Midnight in Paris

(2011)

Having seen a candidate for my favorite film of 2012, and anticipating this year's Woody, which some are saying is better than last year's, I thought it was time to see whether this one holds up. Yes.

Lost in inner space

OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie

Crit

Bud Clayman is about the most appealing struggler with mental illness imaginable, at least for a documentary, and his story is more funny than sad, more inspiring than distressing. As he tells us in the opening moments, this is not a film about hand washing—his OCD has to do with "inappropriate" (violent mostly, but also sexual) thoughts that most of us have but don’t much fret, but his condition makes him gnaw on them like dog with a poisonous bone, and then too the other baggage enumerated in the subtitle don’t make things any easier for him. And yet he tries, and his trying is a triumph in itself.

This is also—is this going to be a persistent theme of my post–Scary Normal set life?--a film about filmmaking, complete with a visible boom in one shot, a nicely edited greenscreen scene, and an awkward pause to record room tone (though they cheat this one, giving a voiced-over reading of Bud’s grateful email to his crew).

Safety Not Guaranteed

Crit

Yeah, we could made this. OK, maybe we'd have needed another grand or two for cheesy special effects, but we coulda done it if that had been our screenwriter/director's vision.

A sweet, smart indy romcom, with Repo Man perched securely in its family tree. A small gem.

Trailers

• To Rome with Love--Why bother even showing me a trailer? I think it opens here Friday--hoping for an appropriate postwork showtime.
• Anna Karenina--Hadn't heard that this was coming. It's not Baz, but it has a Bazian feel about it. Unusual trailer in that it tells us who the screenwriter is (Tom Stoppard) but not the director (Joe Wright), though little of the language we hear sounds either Stoppardian or Tolstovian.