Love Is All You Need

Love Is All You Need is set up as a romantic comedy, and it is pretty much by the numbers. Only the numbers don’t add up to a top-tier successful movie – which has been proven by a weak box office. The film was directed by Susanne Bier – who won an Oscar in 2011 for Best Foreign Language Film with  In a Better World. To give you some idea of what the world’s film industry thinks of Bier; currently she is post-production of a film she directed called Serena which stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper which will open overseas in the fall.

We meet the two leads quite simply. Ida is a hairdresser employed ‘somewhere in Copenhagen’. She’s also been through a mastectomy and chemo for breast cancer. Her physician announces that things look under control (as in remission) but there’s no guarantees. And would she be interested in breast reconstruction. Ida says – no thanks – my husband hasn’t noticed that there’s only one.

But before you decide to stop reading any further – thinking this film is going to be about illness – it really isn’t. Ida looks wonderful in a blonde wig – the chemo has taken her hair. Ida is played by Trine Dyrholm. When she gets home from the hospital she finds her husband frolicking on the living room with a blonde bimbo half his age.

He explains that he was on his lunch hour. And this is Thilde from Accounting.

I don’t know if he should be called a brute, a lout, or just an idiot. Or all three as he tries to blame Ida by claiming that her illness was difficult for him too.

Then we meet Pierce Brosnan as a Philip, a rather successful British importer of fruits and vegetables (of all kinds). He’s kind of a dour guy. He’s never gotten over the death of his wife in a tragic accident years ago. He wears sorrow and sadness as part of his regular ‘look’. When one of the office ladies makes a play for him – he turns her down flat.

You gorgeous, sweet beautiful girl  - this is never going to happen. I’m a guy who has chosen to be by himself. Simple as that.

So Ida and Philip meet at the airport – in a not unexpected fender-bender. And the world is so small that:

1) They are both flying to Italy to attend a wedding 2) His son 3) Her daughter 4) Are marrying each other 5) At Philip’s villa estate overlooking Naples Bay in Sorrento, Italy.

Of course it is hate at first sight – we shouldn’t have expected any thing less. But the moonlight, and the sea, and the lovely flowers can make anyone feel good. Toss in Dean Martin crooning That’s Amore, which despite being something of a cliché, still helps set up a romantic film.

Dor

Let’s start with two women who live more than 500 miles apart. They don’t know each other, and have never met. They have something in common, and that is that each of their husbands have taken jobs overseas. The husbands leave on the same day from their respective locations. Left behind are the wives who have to live with the memories of their last nights with those husbands for an indeterminate amount of time.

As beautiful as the above and below images are, the next day, one of these women looked at a bus pulling out of a lot, and the other watched a train leave a station. At the moment they knew nothing about the other, nor had they any idea that circumstances overseas would bring them together in the future.

In today’s world where our films are filled with violence, explosions, drugs, and corruption, where our films are technological marvels with special FX, 3D, CGI, Imax, and so forth – it is refreshing to watch a film that makes you think and feel. In the words of the director:

Every scene is filled with drama. If it is not the actors and the script, then it is the location. If not the location, then it is the camera angles, and if not that – it is the lighting.

Aren’t those marvelous words? And don’t you want to watch a film that makes your heart beat faster, not from action but from emotion. A film that makes you think, feel, and care – and does so without simply battering the senses?

Sleepless Night aka Nuit Blanche

Lately it seems that I’ve been writing a lot of posts about cops and killers, and drugs and deep undercover agents. Blame it on the fact that films I really wanted to see like The Big Wedding, Oblivion, The Internship, and After Earth were all mediocre or worse. So I had to look elsewhere.

When this usually happens, I have a fall-back plan: when in doubt, look  towards films about breaking the law, or law enforcement. There’s something so familiar and comforting about detectives pursuing leads or cinematic shell casings falling in slow motion; you know,  like wearing a favorite sweater or tee-shirt. I’ve long since understood the real meaning of case files, full metal jackets, and I don’t necessarily find that time spent on stakeouts is tedious.

So how about one more – Sleepless Night aka Nuit Blanche. This time it is French cops, and French drug dealers. In Paris. The film opens with a heist. Two guys in a car, each wearing a balaclava to cover their faces, are going to take down a drug shipment in another vehicle. Things don’t go exactly right – a gunfight breaks out, one of the drug guys gets killed, and one other bad guys escapes. But , despite the hiccups, it is mission accomplished. They get the drugs, but of the two guys who pulled the job, one suffers a knife wound.

We later come to find out that these guys who did the heist are cops. We also come to find out that they were recognized. The lead cop, Vincent, played by Tomer Sisley, who’s middle name might be ‘Intense’, gets a call from the owner of the drugs – a night club owner called Jose Marciano. And his middle name might be ‘Sleazy’.

For simplification – translated from the French to the film’s English subtitles to a familiar from TV, street vernacular:

Jose: Yo, Vincent, this is Jose Marciano. I want my stuff back.
Vincent: I dunno what you are talking about -
Jose: I got your kid. We picked him up outside of his school. Gimme my stuff, and you get your son back…

Serge Riaboukine as Jose Marciano

Do you need any more of an intro?

The Iceman

Long ago, in 1939, Eugene O’Neill penned a theatrical play called The Iceman Cometh. It was a dramatic play about drifters and alcoholics whose days would reach a high point when and if they were able to score a free drink. Below the surface, O’Neill was really discussing disillusionment and despair and the flaws within the American ideals.

In 1973, The Iceman Cometh was produced as a film with Lee Marvin, Frederic March, Robert Ryan, and Jeff Bridges.

Then, in 1986, Val Kilmer played a fighter jet plane pilot called Iceman, in the hit film, Top Gun, which starred Tom Cruise. While the O’Neill play can be considered a tragedy, Top Gun was about something else – becoming an adult with responsibility set against the back drop of a testosterone filled adventure about brash young men in the US Navy and the expensive war machines they piloted.

Now in 2013 we have a film called The Iceman. Michael Shannon stars as contract killer Richard Kuklinski who worked in the Metropolitan New York area from the late 60′s until his capture in 1986. Yes, Kuklinski was real, and he died in 2006 in a New Jersey prison while serving out five consecutive life sentences. In fact, HBO did documentaries on him in the early 90′s and the early 00′s, so we are not going to be talking about suspense.

Rather this is a chilling tale of a seemingly decent husband, father, and provider for his family. His family had no idea about what he did for a living as he told them he was in finance, or more specifically, currency exchange, which required him to often work late into the night because of overseas markets. These were total fabrications of course. Literally, he was the man who left his home in a leafy suburb in Northern New Jersey, in a suit and tie in the morning, and came home late at night with proverbial blood on his hands. On a regular basis.

Kuklinski confessed to at least 100 contract killings, and authorities suspect that the number could have been as high as 250 or more.

Shannon seems born to play this role. Kuklinski at times, seemed cold and unable to connect with people. He also contained plenty of bottled up rage which could explode at any time. He was quite fearless which is what made him attractive to a minor mob boss called Demeo, played by Ray Liotta. When one of Demeo’s button men, played by John Ventimiglia, started to push Kuklinski around, Kuklinski stood his ground. Demeo noticed. He made Kuklinski an offer he couldn’t refuse – Demeo said come work for me [and kill] or we’ll make you unemployed and you’ll be unable to provide for your family. With no choice, Kuklinski signed on as an assassin.

Killing Them Softly

America is not a country. It’s a business. Now fuckin’ pay me!

So ends the film, Killing Them Softly. I’m not going to tell you who said that line, or the circumstances surrounding it. What I will tell you is that Killing Them Softly opened last November 30th, and was directed by Andrew Dominick who also wrote the screenplay which was based on the George V. Higgins 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade.

Now Cogan’s Trade was set in Boston and in the 70′s. Dominick’s film is set in 2008 and in or near, an unnamed city, which as it turns out is New Orleans – but you’d never know it from the buildings, bars, or restaurants.

Dominick sets up a theme within the movie that is that the US economy was tanking in 2008 – we have Obama, Bush, and McCain telling us as much as we see and hear them on the TV’s which show up in all the bars throughout the movie.

While things were going south on Wall Street and Main Street – the same thing was happening within organized crime. Times were tough. One mobster, Markie Trattman played by Ray Liotta, was running a protected poker game. Which he decides to rob himself by bringing in two outsiders. We learn this in flashbacks.

Now no one would be dumb enough to take down a protected card game, so Trattman went undetected. He had to take a beating but basically he walked.

Top: As Johnny Squirrel Amato
Bottom: As Johnny Sack Sacrimoni

Then, in the present, another underworld figure, Johnny ‘Squirrel’ Amato, played by Vincent Curatola (Johnny Sack in the Sopranos) decides to take down another of Trattman’s poker games. He correctly figures that Trattman got away with it once, but would never ever be able to convince anyone that he wasn’t involved in the second heist. Only Amato hires two ex-cons who look like they lack the smarts to make it happen.But they do pull it off and get away clean.

The mob decides that something must be done. The mob’s middleman, called Driver and played by Richard Jenkins meets with the hired gun, Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt). His job will be to find the two mutts who pulled the job, and to get them to roll over on who sent them. But Jackie doesn’t want to do a double. So he calls in another gunman, Mickey, played by James Gandolfini, once known far and wide as Tony Soprano.

There’s your set up.

Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Let’s start with a wealthy landowner/financier who we will call Harry Mandola, who imagines turning most of land in Mandola, a village (named after his family) in the state of Haryana, into a sprawling center of development including an industrial park, retail malls, and residential apartment towers also known as housing for the necessary labor and support business people. To accomplish this, the locals would have to sell their land to the government at decidedly bargain basement rates. If that fails, the government could acquire the land via foreclosures (which we shall call economic terrorism), or by underhanded activities such as scare tactics (which we shall call emotional terrorism), or outright criminal activities.

Once the corrupt state government has the deeds to the land, at the stroke of a pen, the land will be deemed a SEZ (Special Economic Zone) which is just another way of saying – we are now open for business. Then, via what will be almost assuredly be rigged bidding, Mandola will win the developmental rights, meaning he will put up the complex, over charge the government, and then kick back money to the corrupt State Minister.

The corrupt government official, Minister Devi, calls it progress for ‘the good of the country’, Mandola, the landowner/financier calls it a win-win. The rest of us call it coercion, extortion, and … white-collar thuggery, and we wonder if India has an equivalent to our own RICO statutes. That’s what’s going in Vishal Bharadwaj‘s film Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola which opened world-wide on January 11th, 2013.

The title refers to the three principal characters of the film. Mandola is the crusty and crafty gazillionaire who likes money, and as we will find out – he really likes to drink. Matru is his man-friday, factotum, majordomo, and right hand man whose main function is to make sure that Mandola doesn’t wander too far off course while under the influence of the liquid spirits. Bijlee is Mandola’s daughter. She’s a New Delhi college graduate who also studied at Oxford, in the UK. And, in case you were wondering, she’s not only brainy, she’s also beautiful.

The film has two other characters of importance. The aforementioned government Minister, and her adult son, Baadal, who, in something that can only be called an arrangement, is engaged to Mandola’s daughter Bijlee. The underlying reasons for that merger, sorry … marriage, are that the Minister wants to her son to marry into the wealthy Mandola family especially since Bijlee is Mandola’s only heir. And Mandola himself, has made his own daughter available as the proverbial ‘cherry on the top’ to make sure his business deal goes through.

So on the surface it looks like a win-win for all concerned. Except for the villagers. Except for Bijlee, who is any thing but the proper daughter.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness was directed by J.J. Abrams who not only already has, but will continue to attract deep pocket producers and studios for big budget film projects. By 2016, Abrams will have helmed 3 Star Trek movies, one Mission Impossible film, and the next Star Wars: Episode VII. So we can say his name and game are working.

Star Trek Into Darkness opened Wednesday night, and I caught the Thursday morning show here in Sarasota. I saw the 2D version rather than the more costly 3D IMAX Experience – but strictly speaking, that was more of a function of timing than expenses. I must tell you that the last Star Trek film I actually went to was Star Trek: The Voyage Home, released in 1986 – and that event happened because of a chance encounter with actress Catherine Hicks.

So let’s get it out there up front. I’m not a devotee of the original TV series or the Star Trek films. However I will admit to spending more time watching Deep Space Nine as well as Babylon 5 than I did Star Trek. But back to Into Darkness.

As the film opens – I was immediately thrown off by a chase which seemed to be lifted straight out of the original Indiana Jones – you know when Indy is racing through the jungle pursued by the locals wielding spears and blow-guns with poisoned darts. Only we weren’t on Earth, and the indigenous people chasing them looked like the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, only with charcoal ash colored skin. While Captain Kirk and his crewman raced for their lives – Spock had some things to do inside an active volcano.

Yes – inside a working volcano. Hot, hot, hot it was, but Spock didn’t even get damp. Not to spoil anything, but this is just the first 10 minutes of the film so it all works out and that’s your opening which also included the USS Enterprise submerged on the bottom of the ocean like any atomic powered submarine.

I thought the Enterprise was a space ship – but hey, what do I know? From there we have no place else to go but up, both literally and figuratively.

And despite that somewhat less than awesome opening set piece, the film does markedly improve. The USS Enterprise hardware is great looking as are the CGI manifestations of London and San Francisco. The main players: Chris Pine as Kirk,

Zachary Quinto as Spock,

and Karl Urban as Bones looked and sounded very much like the originals. That means I give kudos for the writing and the casting, as well as the acting. Keep in mind that the looks are very much more suggestive than exact – but still; it is amazing when you see them in motion rather than just photo stills. Chekhov, Sulu, Uhura, and Scotty didn’t fare quite as well as the others.