Mother of Exiles

Drama behind the drama: as of Wednesday I knew this would be opening in Madison, but as you know, I need a car to get there, and it's not car-rental time for a while. It didn't seem likely to open in the burbplexes, and indeed Thursday I was able to confirm that suspicion. But what about the Cine--and why no Cine listings yet as of Thursday? Finally, and happily, the listings showed up yesterday. And so I start the day on the D13 bus . . .

The Visitor

Cine

A gem, another quiet gem from Thomas McCarthy, who gave us The Station Agent in 2004 and who--who knew?--was that familiar face at the start of Baby Mama who flees a first date in a cab when the dinner talk turns to procreation. Turns out I've seen him in more than a half-dozen movies, including some of my favorites from recent years, but I don't remember anything he's done in front of the camera; the stuff he writes and directs, though, sticks.

It figures that a guy who wasn't afraid to give the first lead role to 4-foot-5 Peter Dinklage wouldn't hesitate to do the same for 60-year-old Richard Jenkins, aka the Man with the Craggiest Face in the Biz. "Who the hell is Richard Jenkins?" you ask? Trust me: you'll know him when you see him. Let's see--going back 20+ years, he's the doctor who tells the Woody Allen that he's not dying in Hannah and Her Sisters; fast-forward a decade or so and he's the shrink sick of hearing the Ben Stiller character whine about his lost love in There's Something About Mary; perhaps the closest he's been to famous is as the paterfamilias of a funeral home family who gets killed in the first few minutes of Six Feet Under but still manages to give the series some of its most indelible moment of its five-year run.

Anyway, McCarthy is 2 for 2 in his gambles, and now the follow-up question for Jenkins, as it unfortunately remains with Dinklage, is: Will anyone else ever give him more than 15 worthwhile minutes on screen?

But I digress. This film skates close to the edge of the kneejerk-liberal-proselytizing hole in the America-as-haven-for-immigrants ice, but balance is another gift McCarthy has demonstrated in his two-film writing/directorial career. As with Agent, he does it in part through flawless casting--Haaz Sleiman and newcomer Danai Gurira, both beautiful as the young couple of "illegals," Tariq from Syria and Zainab from Senegal, whom Walter (Jenkins) finds in his apartment, and Hiam Abbass, beyond beautiful as Tariq's protective (and rightly so, it turns out) mother. It is a story that so invests you in the characters that you're constantly rooting for a way to avoid the inevitable end.

Another reason to like the film: Walter is rarely without a glass of red wine at hand, even when eating his breakfast cereal. Another reason to like Tom McCarthy: he thanks seemingly everyone from The Station Agent, including My Future Wife Patty Clarkson and my friend and former upstairs neighbor Stephen Trask. One film every three or four years isn't much output, but if McCarthy can nail it like this every time, I'm happy to wait.

OK, so I'm out of there at about 2:30, with 2 hours before I need to be at Showcase North Haven for my next flick. And it's a beautiful day--about 5 hours of which I've already committed to being in a dark room. So what the hell--it's only a couple of miles--why not walk?

Uh, the answer to that question would be "Because you've never walked it before, you've bused it only once, and you didn't really pay any attention then--in short, because you don't fucking know where you're going! An hour and three quarters--and two against-the-masculine-grain requests for directions--I finally arrive at NoHa, footsore (I figure I probably turned that 2 miles into 5) and sweaty, and declaring myself deserving of a Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip and Cookie Dough milkshake. Eh--gotta walk about 6 miles a week from Sunday for the Connecticut Food Bank Walk Against Hunger (including the walks to and from the Walk), so call it training.

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

NoHa

Hey, we got a theme: America's treatment of the teeming masses, even when the representatives of those teeming masses have been here for a generation or more. And in its way--its way incorporating lots of drugs, pubic hair, and Neil Patrick Harris--this is just as serious a treatment of the issue as is The Visitor. It is a sweet-spirited grossout movie, often a very funny one, and sometimes an irresistible one. It is also subversively patriotic, and its depiction of our beloved commander in chief is certainly the most sympathetic in any of the several films I've seen that touch on the war or terror. OK, the sympathy is largely a function of his sharing his really dynamite weed w/ our boys, but still.

But seriously: what was the deal with that threesome in the audience who sat in the front row, one guy sitting between the one woman and the other guy in monsignorial drag? They laughed a lot--though not at the "God's vagina" line from the Pineapple Express trailer; I was looking--but the dude's threads looked so real--and remember: I used to serve Mass for a monsignor.

The Forbidden Kingdom

NoHa

Who the hell is Michael Angarano, and why does anybody think he needs to be in a movie with Jackie Chan and Jet Li? I wonder what sorts of transformations this story went through en route to become what it is--a hundred-minute adrenaline rush occasionally slogged down by the obligatory romance between the South Boston kid and the Chinese ingenue-turned-assassin by the massacre of her family and village.

Gorgeous Chinese locations, fantastic fight choreography (including one between the stars, who of course must have a brief initial period of antagonism to justify same). Probably most satisfactorily viewed after spending some time with Harold & Kumar, or maybe scoring some of that Pineapple Express.

Trailers

In addition to the following, also saw a red-screen version of the Hamlet 2 trailer--a mildly amusing bit from Ms. Shue about her casting-couch history, plus Amy Poehler saying "The so-called Supreme Court can suck my balls." Just noticed a disturbing pair of numbers: 129 IMDb raters give this flick an average of 5.3 out of 10. Tom compare current films, that's better than Prom Night but worse than 88 Minutes. I cling to the principle that people are idiots.

• The Dark Knight--Have I already previewed this? Well, all that needs to be said is: 5.
• My Best Friend's Girl--Like the song, skeptical about the film. Isn't Jason Biggs's 15 minutes up? Not to mention the inexplicable Dane Cook.
• Meet Dave--This is probably gonna be awful, but hope springs eternal that Eddie Murphy will rise again.
• Tropic Thunder--Desperately want this to be good, but have to report that the trailer is not promising.