Mr. Brooks

It has been awhile. I mean a whole LONG while since I've thought that Kevin Costner made a good movie. This is a great little movie and Kevin was delightful in it. But he didn't direct or meddle with the screenplay - he let Bruce Evans do all that. He did help produce so it got made independently - which also helped. But mostly, he did what he used to do before he got to be all that and a bag of chips. He ACTED and really damn well.

So Kevin plays Mr. Brooks - entrepreneur, philanthropist, artist, loving husband and father- all around evolved human being in Clark Kent specs and bow ties. He just has one little addiction - he really likes to kill people. When the 12 steps fail him, and he gives in to that nagging little voice in his head (gleefully brought to life by none other than William Hurt!) he is caught on film by a creepy peeping tom (Dane Cook) who is so excited by the whole thing that he decides to blackmail Mr. Brooks into letting him tag along on his next adventure. Is this twisted enough for you? Cuz it gets a whole lot more complicated.

The story is deliciously convoluted as our hero (!) dodges the detective (Demi Moore,) deals with his demented fan, digs his equally dangerous offspring out of her mess and battles his personal demons. Our Mr. Brooks may be tortured but he is NOT dull and it all comes together in a tidy little way that left me grinning. Well written, original thinking for a thriller and Kevin, Dane and William are having so much fun! Kudos! Check out the clever website here.

Reign Over Me

Movies about male friends tend to be of the a.) sophomoric toilet humor variety or b.) buddy movies about men forced to be together by virtue of the job or the insert your silly circumstance here. It is a rare thing indeed to watch a film devoted to the concept that even a real man can need a friend... in the 'traditionally left to the girlfriends' sense of someone to talk to as well as hang out with. It is also the rare film that allows men to have emotions... I mean other than the seven deadly sins. (Anger, lust, greed, pride, yup... those are all approved for the guys. Just skip the mushy stuff.)

In this lovely little film, Alan (Don Cheadle) is all overachiever and full of the angst of the perfect life - successful business, beautiful clingy wife, gorgeous kids - when he bumps into his college bud Charlie (Adam Sandler.) Charlie's a mess having lost his family on 9-11 and is living on the edge. By reconnecting with each other, both men find something they've lost along the way.

With an unexpected supporting cast (Liv Tyler, Jada Pinkett Smith, Donald Sutherland) Reign manages to only seem a trifle contrived and Mike Binder threw in some humor to lighten the load. And both of the guys handle the mushy stuff masterfully. There's also the value added glimpse into the world of post traumatic stress, unfortunately common these days. Check out the website here.

Once

I've never been a fan of musicals. The whole concept of people spontaneously bursting into song on a street corner always struck me as, well, odd. People don't behave that way on average, so at the very least it's contrived, and most musicals have lyrics that are, by and large, hokey and forgettable. That said, this is what a musical should be. Read that: this is a story about musicians and their music plays a role in the story. And as I believe all artists put themselves into their art, we come to know these people through their songs. And it's wonderful.

Our guy (Glen Hansard) meets our girl (Marketa Irglova) while playing on the streets of Dublin. He's a vacuum repairman who is airing his painful breakup in the songs he plays on the street corners, she's an immigrant with a past of her own. Together they make music - and through a tempestuous week she pushes him to record his songs and to heal. There isn't a Hollywood ending here, just real emotion and some fine tunes.

Wish more films were made like this, with real people acting like real people. Okay, they are talented people, but none the less. Glen Hansard is the frontman for the Irish band The Frames and he and Marketa have recorded together before, hence the chemistry, I suppose. Needless to say the soundtrack is awesome. Check out the website here.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

The fun thing about civil wars is that whole "brother against brother" mojo. That always gets their heart strings... at least in the movies. Doesn't matter where you set that story line. In The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the story is set in Ireland circa 1920. The people of Ireland have been trying to cast off the yoke of the British Empire for some time and they are tired of occupation, and all the senseless violence and random humiliation that goes with it. (Insert your favorite current event reference here.)

Our brothers are young doctor Damien (the dreamy blue eyed Cillian Murphy) and tough talking Teddy (Padraic Delaney) who's hip deep in the local resistance. After a dose too much of what passes for British justice and against his better judgement, Damien joins the resistance as well. But as happens when ideals hit the cold hard wall of reality, one brother opts for compromise and the two become increasingly oppositional. And of course, high tragedy will follow.

Director Ken Loach delivers a poignant parable of the power of ideas and those willing to kill and die for them and Wind received the honor of Best Film at Cannes in 2006. Murphy always amazes. And Ireland is gorgeous.... Check out the website here.

Off the Map

I'm a little sensitive about movies that deal with mental illness. In our culture, stigma is in the groundwater and the mentally ill are usually portrayed as psychopathic killers (author's note: big difference between someone who's psychotic and someone who's a sociopath.) Perhaps that's why I found this little movie charming. This film explores a very real mental illness - clinical depression - in a gentle and sympathetic fashion.

Charley and Arlene Groden (Sam Elliot and Joan Allen) are not your average couple. With their precocious daughter Bo (a delightful Valentina d'Angelis,) they've elected to live "off the map," growing their own food and bartering for everything else in a tiny town in New Mexico. Charley has sunk into a deep and lasting depression for no apparent reason, and as Arlene struggles to hold the family together they are suddenly visited by the IRS for several years of failing to file income taxes. The agent (Jim True-Frost) finds himself enamored with the Grodens, particularly Arlene, and ends up staying on and pursuing his own demons right along with Charley.

Campbell Scott has directed a sensitive, magical look into the hearts of his characters. Elliot and Allen are perfectly cast as our starcrossed oddballs. It may require some suspension of disbelief, but this is a sweet little modern fairy tale about love and letting it be. More info here.

Death of a President

The controversy surrounding the release of this film in 2006 was brief, noisy and enough to spur my curiosity. Directed by Gabriel Range (who also co-wrote the screenplay,) this British made film broke a lot of taboos by depicting the fictional assassination of a living and sitting US President, George W. Bush. Hilary Clinton called the film, "despicable." The Bush Administration refused to comment. Reviewers were all over the place - calling it everything from a silly marketing ploy to real genius. It won the International Critics Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It never hit a movie screen in the US.

Although I spent a good deal of the film trying to figure out just what the message might be, I still found it intriguing. Whether you love the Deciderer in Chief or loathe him, it's bound to make you mighty uncomfortable to watch his assassination - a point that makes you wonder if the filmmaker took into account how that discomfort will effect your overall take on the film. It is, however, fascinating to watch how live footage is seamlessly morphed into an apparent documentary complete with the melodramatic real time interviews we all know and hate. (The state funeral must have been Gerald Ford.)

By the way, the message does finally become apparent in the last 10 minutes or so of the film - and it is a worthy one. So I guess I fall into the category of reviewer who found it worth the watch; it was just that thought provoking, even if it does push the limits of taste. You can see the lackluster website here.

Jindabyne

It's the rare director that can set a tone in the opening of a film and maintain that same tone through another 100 or so minutes. Ray Lawrence manages to keep you miserably uncomfortable from the first tense minutes as you watch something bad about to happen right through to the aching end of this haunting and beautiful film. I found myself biting my nails and squirming all the way.

Jindabyne happens to be set in a particularly bleak but gorgeous part of Australia, but it could have been anywhere. The central story line is one of four good old boys on a fishing trip who happen upon a young woman's corpse in the river, and opt to fish first and report later. Well, she was already dead now, wasn't she? The consequences of this thoughtless act then avalanche through the town - made all the more poignant by the fact that the dead girl is aboriginal (read this Mexican, Black, or Minority of Your Choice.)

Stellar performances from all concerned, including Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne, should be noted but it is the screenplay and direction that make this film amazing. Every character has an open wound; they are all profoundly human and all questioning their own motives in every tidy scene. Lawrence doesn't waste a minute or a line. In the end, you feel you know these people and you hurt right along with them. That's genius. Here's another review.