Eva's 2011 Movies Most Worthy of Mention, in no special order             * means Herman saw it too.

 

1.       *The King’s Speech Dir Tom Hopper, with Colin Firth as George VI (aka Bertie), Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist, and Helena Bonham-Carter as the Queen. Guy Pearce plays  Edward, who renounces the throne for Wallis Simpson, making Bertie, the stutterer, King. Timothy Spall is Churchill. We both loved it. Even re-watching the trailer on the web is a pleasure. Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (David Seidler).

2.       Another Year © 2008 (UK) Dir. Mike Leigh, with Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Peter Wright, David Bradley and Martin Savage.   Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), a geologist and a social worker, are seen going about their daily routines in a context of marital content.  Their 30 year old single son (Oliver Maltman), a legal aid worker, and the new girlfriend (Karina Fernandez)  he brings home to his parents late in the film, are also well-adjusted.  But everyone else in the movie is a wreck, bleak, lonely, depressed, and morose.  It’s not a movie I’ll forget.  

3.       The Illusionist (Fr) by Sylvain Chomet (of Les Triplettes de Belleville fame)  A Jaques Tati aficionado would appreciate this more than I did.  I heard the protagonist cartoon character who plays Tati looks like him.  I loved the drawings and the largely Edinburgh settings, but I would have loved them even more if they had been cut into 15 five minute shorts shown to me before the next 15 movies I attended.    I like more plot in a feature.  Won the first César for best animated feature.

4.       Better This World. Disturbing documentary by Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway.  David McKay and Brad Crowder, foolish youths, were sentenced to way too many years federal time for allegedly concocting a terrorist plot against the Republican National Convention  in Minneapolis. Brandon Darpa, a decade-older former left-wing extremist who had leadership skills was an FBI mole who instigated David and Brad to demonstrate outside the convention, and then (unpremeditated by McKay and Crowder) go to Kmart to buy the ingredients for Molotov Cocktails.  They were then  double-crossed in the plea bargaining stage.

5.       *Saviors in the Night (Ger) Dir Ludi Boeken.  Adaptation of Marga Spiegel’s memoir about being hidden  in the open with her six year old daughter by a Catholic farm family, the Aschoffs,  in Westphalia 1943-45.  Her husband Menne  (Armin Rohde), a WWI hero, was literally hidden on the next farm because,  unlike his wife (Veronica Ferres)  and daughter, he looked Jewish.  I liked the bit at the end where  the real Marga and Anni (The farmer’s daughter), now old ladies, were on the film set commenting that that was more or less how it was.

6.       Of Gods and Men (Fr) Loosely based on what happened to a Cistercian monastery  in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s.  Nominated for 11 César awards.   When violence against foreigners by Islamic fundamentalists began the monks had to decide whether to stay or retreat to France.  We see each wrestle with the dilemma.   One reminisced about being back in France for his mother’s 80^th birthday, surrounded by siblings and nieces and nephews, but realizing that while he enjoyed the visit he was a fish out of water there. His home was with his community in Africa. In the end all eight stayed and kept running their clinic, praying and gardening  until they were marched off on a cold  night. Two survived, six were never heard from again.

7.       Win Win  Dir. Thomas McCarthy  (The Station Agent; The Visitor)  with Paul Giametti as Mike, a small town attorney who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach. Amy Ryan plays his wife. Kyle (Alex Shaffer), a   gifted athlete joins the hapless                                                                                                                                                                                                     team.  Mike’s co-coach and accountant (Jeffrey Tambour) is deadpan funny. Nit picks: Mike’s jogging pal since high school, played by Bobby Carnavale, looks a decade younger than Giametti,   Melanie Lynskey, cast as Kyle’s mother, is also too young.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

8.       Incendies (Canada) Dir Denis Villeneuve. I would compare this movie to The Crying Game though the surprising sexual revelation is  different. After the death of their mother, adult twin siblings Jeanne and Simon Marwan set out to find their father and brother, left behind in a Middle Eastern war zone before their emigration to Quebec. The film alternates between the 1980’s and the present.  It’s a mystery story, solved at the end.   

9.       Bill Cunningham New York  Dir Richard Press.. Documentary about the career of the eponymous New York Times street fashion photographer. Bill rides his bicycle around  NYC photographing fashion as actually worn.  I love seeing someone who’s a master at  work he loves.  I do like to know a bit about the personal life of that person, like seeing his rent controlled apartment in Carnegie Hall, and the one he moved to after that ended.  But he should have put his head down and been at a loss for words about his love life like he was about his religion. I’m sure that would have been more truthful.  I liked the supporting interviews  (Anna Wintour, etc.)

10.    *Flash of Genius © 2008 Based on  a NYer article of the same title by John Seabrook. It’s the  true story of  Bob Kearns (1927-2005), an engineering professor at Case Western Reserve and father of six who invented the Intermittent Windshield Wiper and had the idea stolen from him by the Fort Motor Company. After a lawyer he hired (played by Alan Alda) disappointed him by recommending he take a $250,000 settlement, he represented himself and won a $10 million settlement, and, more importantly, recognition as the inventor.  But it had taken 12 years of obsession and cost his marriage.  Oldest son Dennis acted as a consultant on the movie.

11.    Pianomania. © 2009 (Ger-Austria) Documentary by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis. Here we get to watch a Steinway master piano tuner,  Stefan Knüpfer work with artists Lang Lang, Pierre-Laurent Aimand, Alfred Brendel, and some Korean comedy virtuosos  (think Victor Borgia).  Would have been fantastic as a 60 Minutes segment   but I would have wanted more.  As a feature film I wanted less. 93 minutes  but seemed longer.  

12.    *Ladies in Lavendar © 2009  (UK). Dir. Charles Dance, with Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Miriam Margolyes, Natasha McElhone and Daniel Brühl.  A beautiful young man who only speaks Polish washes up on a beach in Cornwall in the 1930’s.  Two retired sisters nurse him to health. He turns out to be a gifted violinist. The pub scenes are quaint. The houses, cars and costumes look terrific.The last scene is perfect.  Charming, upbeat.

13.   Buck. © 2011 Dir. Cindy Meehl’s documentary about the Horse Whisperer, Buck Brannaman.  Buck overcame a battered childhood to find his true vocation.    He travels around   giving clinics on how to train horses.  In this movie, unlike Pianomania, we also get a glimpse of the subject’s domestic situation. Robert Redford is interviewed about  The Horse Whisperer, on which Buck served as an invaluable consultant.  A good movie.

14.    The Topp Twins © 2009  (New Zealand)  Dir Leanne Pooley. Documentary about local cultural icons Lynda and Jools Topp  (b. circa 1958) who sing and do comedy and tell the story of their coming out. Their parents are interviewed.  We see pictures of them in childhood on the farm, and performing as young women. Recently Lynda helped Jools through breast cancer.  They are each in a committed relationship. Jools says of her 14 years with her significant other, “That’s 125 in heterosexual years.”  Today’s fact: In NZ “Ken” is pronounced “Kin.”

15.   Page One, Inside the New York Times © 2011  Dir. Andrew Rossi.  This is a subject well worth a feature length documentary. WikiLeaks is discussed, and the sad fate of the Chicago Tribune.  We see journalists at work. We see journalists agonizing over getting a story out in a timely fashion vs. waiting for more substantiation. Gay Talese, David Remick Julian Assange  and Carl Bernstein chime in.  I had not known  David Carr before.

16.   *The Black Balloon. © 2007 (Australia)  Dir. Elissa Downs. I chose this DVD at the library solely on the basis of Toni Collette being in it, and I was not disappointed. She plays the mother of two sons, 16 and 17 years old. The 17 year old is autistic and has ADD.  Unsentimental, harrowing, but still upbeat (My opinion.  Herman found it depressing).  Winner best film, best screenplay, best director 2008 Australian film Institute.

17.   Get Low © 2010 Dir. Aaron Schneider. A period piece set about 1930 in rural Tennessee. Felix, an old curmudgeon hermit (Robert Duvall)  approaches the town funeral director, Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) about holding his own funeral party while he’s still alive. The young assistant funeral director, Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black) does a lot of the leg work.  An old  black preacher (Bill Cobbs), knows  Felix’s burden of guilt. He advises  public confession.  A grandmother (Sissy Spacek) seems to go way back with Felix too.  I thought they might have been sweethearts once, but that was off  the mark. Music, props, cabin  are all  just right.

18.   Higher Ground © 2011   Dir. and lead Vera Farminga. I find religious attitudes  a rich subject.  This movie is based on Carolyn S. Briggs’s  memoir This Dark World. Corinne grew up on a farm with a healthily     irreverent mother and religiously indifferent father who did, however, send her to Sunday School for a couple of years during which she had a pious phase. Corinne next  encountered religion when, after a near-death experience, her husband  joined a small  fundamentalist  church.  She went along, getting immersion baptized, and centering her social life on the group.  The singing is great. We can see that this religion does sustain some of the believers through crises.  Corinne’s sister remains in touch though she rolls her eyes at the religious stuff. After about 10 years Corinne becomes disillusioned with the religion. She and her husband (who’s growing more rigid about it) separate, but they both still care for their three kids and respect each other.  Her poetic postman  disappoints. Thumbs up.  

19.   Hedgehog (Fr)  Dir Mona Achache. A faithful adaptation of Muriel Barbery’s novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog. When  Reneé (Josiane Balasko ) asks her friend,  Kakuro Ozo’s (Togo Igawa) cleaning lady, what his cats are named, her friend says “One is Kitty.  I can’t remember the other.”  “Levin” says Reneé, who’s already aware she and Kakuro share a love of Tolstoy.  Her friend’s jaw drops. “Yes! How did you guess?”  The Josse family cats are Parliament and Constitution. Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) plays Go in the  movie.   George Keilbach and I both enjoyed this.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

20.   *The Big Year. Dir. David Frankel. With Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson as three birders working on individual  Big Years—striving to see as many species as possible in North America in one year, typically 700+.  The critics panned this but Herman and I really enjoyed it.  Birders usually try for a personal best. I assume the filmmakers introduced the cutthroat competitiveness to add dramatic tension.  They used a birding expert as a consultant, so got the species right.  

21.   Moneyball © 2011  Dir Bennett Miller.  Dramatization of  the 2003 nonfiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game  by Michael Lewis. Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the G.M. of the Oakland A’s who applies the statistics of Bill James to building a team without superstars. I loved his nerdy assistant G.M. (Jonah Hill).  The manager is Philip Seymour Hoffman. Theo had just left the Red Sox so I was interested in the duties of a G.M. Theo was hired in 2002 after Beane declined.

22.   *Elegy  © 2011 Dir Isabel Coixet. I  chose this movie on the basis of the cast: Peter Sarsgaard (An Education), Ben Kingsley, Dennis Hopper, etc.  The sound track is by, among others, Bach and Beethoven.  And it is a quality movie.  The subject matter is not my favorite, though. David, a professor in his late sixties philosophically opposed to commitment throws an elegant  cocktail party every semester after he has given out grades to avoid harrassment charges. This time he moves in on the beautiful Consuela (Penelope Cruz).  His squash partner, who shares his philosophy, gets concerned when he sees that David is getting emotionally attached.  But he’s not so attached that he’s willing to accept Consuela’s invitations to meet her Cuban-American parents.  Inexplicably to me, she wants a real relationship with this liar. David’s long term squeeze (Patricia Clarkson)  is mostly wise to him, but he lies to her too.  His 35 yr old son, a physician,  hates him, but tries to talk to his father.   Mortality looms.

23.   *J.Edgar  © 2011. Dir. Clint Eastwood, with Leonardo di Caprio as J. Edgar Hoover, Army Hammer as Clyde Tolson, and Judi Dench as Edgar’s  mother. The film is faithful to the facts of the FBI director’s personality I gleaned from a biography I read a few years ago.  A fine movie much better than The Phoenix’s review said it was, but perhaps not living up to the expectations set by David Denby’s 2-page rave in The NYer. Seen in Rochester with the three Coopers. Herman fainted exiting the theater. He told the EMTs he’d thought well of J.Edgar Hoover until seeing this movie.