Revolutionary Road

First Hit: A wonderful film about the roles we play, the dreams we have and our attempts to live them.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio play April and Frank a married couple living in the suburbs in the 1950s.

The crux of the film is that they both feel trapped in their current life and they want a change. Because of how they met, there is an initial underlying belief that they both view change and how one lives their life the same way. However, when it really comes down initiating and living the change, their beliefs are very different and when this fact raises its head; their relationship starts to fall apart.

Kate plays April and a strong powerful woman stuck in a time when women weren’t supposed to be strong and powerful. She wants to live life more fully and not the life of a housewife stuck in a jail called their suburban home on Revolutionary Road.

Leonardo plays Frank as a man willing to sacrifice his life to work for a company his father work in. He does this so that he can have this nice suburban home with two kids and an incredible wife. It is a role he feels safe with but unhappy in.

Frank hates his job and it is going nowhere. Scenes in the office with his co-workers and scenes at the train station with hoards of men, all looking the same, walking from the train to work are priceless. April convinces Frank they can live their dream if he willing to leave the country. Frank is up for the idea until he gets offered a promotion with more money. April sees her life and dream slipping further away which is complicated by a pregnancy.

This is film about being trapped and what do people do about it.

Sam Mendes directed this wonderful, direct, beautiful, poignant look at a 1950s couple riding on the razors edge of living their truth or a role. Just as he did in American Beauty, another one of my favorite films, Mendes gets powerful and startling performances out of his actors. And the visualizations are mostly spot on. The only hit on that is that the fluorescent light fixtures in one of the hallway scenes were fixtures from the 1990s. I loved the “four-holer” Buick Frank drove because it was just like the one we had growing up. Winslet in just two short months has appeared in films where she has given two incredible performances. Although this film is about both of them and their relationship, it is Kate that carries the power in this film. She is amazing in how she changes her character through this film. DiCaprio is very good in this film. To me this is his best ever acting performance. He uses his natural youthfulness and glibness to full advantage here. Another great performance in this film is by Michael Shannon the son of the real estate agent who sold them the home on Revolutionary Road. He visits them from a mental hospital. The great thing about his scenes is that he takes them over and delivers ringing truths about April and Frank’s predicament.

Overall: An outstanding and beautifully executed film about life, despair, and change.

Doubt

First Hit: This is a very well acted film about a very sensitive subject and because we are left with doubt, it is aptly named.

Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams are extremely gifted actors and in this film you see, watch and know why. They embody the characters they are playing.

Hoffman as Father Flynn is being accused of inappropriate physical sexual contact with one of the students in the school associated with this Catholic Bronx church. The accuser is the school principal Sister Aloysius Beauvier (played by Streep).

Sister Aloysius is a stern strong willed taskmaster and makes it a point to terrify the students into her view of how they need to act in the school. She has some suspicions regarding Father Flynn but when Sister James (played by Adams) tells her of a couple of incidents she noticed regarding Father Flynn and Donald Muller a young vulnerable black boy she begins her relentless campaign to get him out of the school.

When Father Flynn explains the incidents they are perfectly plausible but Sister Aloysius doesn’t believe him. This story becomes one of wills and the strength of wills because there is no evidence and the film gives you not one bit of additional clarification. There is no evidence.

The acting by Amy Adams as the innocent Sister James adds to her ever increasing list of strong performances. Regardless of the genre, she is a very capable strong actress. Hoffman is outstanding as Father Flynn. You believe he is Father Flynn. And Streep, continues to show her power as an actress that becomes the character, taking on yet another accent, and making a believer of me.

Overall: A very interesting film of introspection, faith, tolerance, and doubt.

The Wrestler

First Hit: Mickey Rourke is phenomenal as Randy “The Ram” Robinson an over the hill aging wrestler doing the only thing he knows how to do.

I was mesmerized by this film from the very opening scenes.

The film is shot with a roughness and edge that complements and accentuates the characters in the film.

This is a story about people we may have watched in person or seen on TV. We always knew the wrestling matches were choreographed but this never meant that these men didn’t suffer in pain from their efforts in the ring.

This film shows this suffering, the underside of their body abuse, and the deep comradely among the men who actually fight and promote the event. Randy was once the top wrestler and with age he has slipped little by little into the forgotten world of has-beens who fight in front of small, but adoring, crowds.

There is one scene where he and some other once famous wrestlers are at a autograph signing and mostly they just sit there in silence in an empty room while a hand full of fans come through and get a “polaroid” picture and autograph. It is such a telling scene of how time has passed them by.

The Ram visits an aging lap dancer named Cassidy (played by Marisa Tomei) for dances and conversation. Like him she is caught up on her own world and struggles and trying to find her own way out of her life. Both of them have children and Ram has a couple of very powerful and revealing scenes with his daughter Stephanie (played convincingly by Evan Rachel Wood).

Other scenes that round out the character are when the neighborhood kids wake him up, from sleeping overnight in his van, so that they can wrestle with him.

And a scene where he reluctantly works behind a deli counter but slowly gets into the people he is serving and this beautiful fun kind spirit jumps out of him and you, as you watch this scene.

Rourke is so good in this film that he easily gives the best performance by an actor in 2008 – no question. He will probably get a nomination for an Oscar but his reputation may keep him from receiving it. Tomei is incredibly strong and also deserves a Oscar nomination. Her performance shows a depth and strength that is very compelling and out shines her mostly partially nude scenes. Darren Aronofsky directed this film with a clear vision and gives us a slice of life we rarely see.

Overall: Easily one of the 3 best films of the year. This is a must see film whether you like wrestling or not because it is a deeply inspired, well acted and moving slice of life.

Grand Torino

First Hit: I was put off and turned off by the continual use of derogatory terms use to describe people and their race.

In the past 10 years Clint Eastwood usually doesn’t miss with his direction and acting, however in this film I think he missed in both cases.

His character Walt has lost his wife and lives alone in a house he’s lived in for a very long time. The neighborhood is changing as families of Asians are moving in and as they do, new patterns and behaviors begin imposing their presence in Walt’s life.

Walt is grumpy and harboring deep pain from killing people while in Korea. When a gang of young Hmong’s start beating the young gentle boy next door because he isn’t part of their gang, Walt pulls out his Army rifle and threatens to blow their heads off.

At this point in the film, the whole thing switches to a form of Dirty Harry where Eastwood imposes his tough guy for righteousness right and wrong. Of course Eastwood becomes the hero of the neighborhood and there are funny scenes of him, at first, refusing their offerings of food to accepting them.

The real underlying story is Walt dealing with his past and how he decides to atone for his actions of killing.

Except to age him, Eastwood did little to stretch beyond his Dirty Harry character. Christopher Carley was really strong as the young parish priest Father Janovich. Additionally Bee Vang and Ahney were very good as the neighbor kids Thao and Sue respectively. The thing that turned me off along the group of Asians sitting behind me was the constant stream of derogatory words streaming out of Eastwood’s mouth. I think he could have easily made his point and kept the character within the character without the overkill.

Overall: This wasn’t a very good film, although watchable, the stream of insults and Dirty Harry orientation made it less of a film than it could have been.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

First Hit: I got bored waiting for this film to find legs and when it did it lasted too long.

I loved the premise of this film, someone whose body goes from old to young. It reminded of a conceptual story I’m familiar with whereas one is born old, as he lives he gets younger each day and dies as a twinkle his parents eyes.

However, I digress here because this film wasn’t as interesting as my memories of listening to this story. 

The premise is that Benjamin Button (played by Brad Pitt) is born in a body that looks 80+ years old. His mother dies giving birth to him and his father, for inexcusable reason, can’t stand this old looking baby and drops him off at home for aging people.

Benjamin is raised by the house attendant named Queenie (played by Taraji P. Henson), a young black woman who can’t give birth on her own. Benjamin looks old but has the curiosity of a child and slowly (very slowly) he gets younger looking as he gets older.

As a child he is befriended by a young girl named Daisy (who is played at various older ages by Cate Blanchett). We follow Benjamin through his life and slowly watch him get younger. We also follow Daisy’s life and watch her as she gets older.

They meet at middle age and have a wonderful fulfilling life, until Daisy gets pregnant and Benjamin leaves because he doesn’t think he can be a dad as he digresses into being a kid and baby himself (although his mind will be old).

David Fincher the director appeared to get caught into seeing just how subtle he could make the changes in Pitt’s getting younger and Blanchett’s getting older, therefore the film ended up being really long. The computers digitized both Pitt and Blanchett into looking younger than they really are for certain scenes and these shots make them glow (angelic like) when, looking angelic wasn't the intended effect. There is a lot of makeup used on both Pitt and Blanchett and, in fact, the 80 something dying Blanchett telling her daughter who her father is, is the base point of the film. Given that both Pitt and Blanchett are great actors; they did their best with an overly long, drawn out storyline that needed a good pair of hedge shears.

Overall: I was very disappointed by this film from the outset. The opening scenes were tepid and didn’t do much to set the stage. The film was, at least, an hour too long and there were multiple scenes in their entirety that could have been cut with no dramatic affect on the film whatsoever.