Seven Foreign Five Domestic

Here is what I have watched on DVD since I posted my last list. They are listed in declining order as I rated them. The ratings I give are on my own number system explained previously in this blog.

Netflix must be reading my blog. After I complained about it being hard to get new movies, I received It’s Complicated on the first day of its release. As of this writing, I have 70 movies in my Netflix active queue and 23 in the saved queue. There are 309 in my library queue which I keep on a spreadsheet. I just weeded out my library list by re-checking the Netflix prediction on all those predicted 2.7 or lower. I dropped any movie that was now under 2.7 unless I there was something about it to entice me. There were a handful whose prediction went up slightly, but about 40 that I dropped. I guess this either shows my rating tendency is getting lower or I am watching more marginal films and wondering why.

My top rated films this time around include several newer independent foreign films made on modest budgets. Three of them were produced with assistance from American producers who want to encourage the making of more such movies. This type of non-governmental foreign aid seems like a winner all around.

Captain Abu Raed – 2008. This Arabic language movie was made in Jordan by a young Jordanian writer-director whose family moved to America when he was 13. It patiently tells the story of an older widowed airport janitor whose neighbor children in their poor section of Amman believe that he is actually a pilot. An older child makes it his mission to disabuse the younger ones of the lie. This 3.3 film teaches about how life throws us curves that can upset our dreams and how mentors can arise in unexpected ways.

Moscow, Belgium – 2008. This Belgian film was a pleasant surprise. I saw a preview on another foreign film DVD, and was enticed. I don’t recall having seen another film in the Flemish language, which sounded Dutch to me. We have the story of a 41 year old separated mother of three who is pursued by a 29 year old truck driver with his own problems. The cheating husband of course decides he wants to come back and the woman must make a choice. We have seen this plot many times, but this 3.3 telling rings true throughout and the acting is great, especially Barbara Sarafian, who plays the lead. Apparently she does lots of TV in Belgium, but only has one other film at Netflix, some sort of sex romp bomb. The young director and the male lead only have this film at Netflix. I’ll have to look into other films from this overlooked country.

Revanche – 2008. This 3.2 German film is set in modern day Austria and tells the story of an ex-con who works at a brothel, falls for a young prostitute, tries a crime to raise money to liberate them from oppression and then … what did seem like an erotic action thriller turns into something else, first a suspenseful drama and then a reflective character study about redemption. I found the people interesting to follow and realistically confusing about whether I liked them or not. Using the old Gene Siskel test – “do you care about them” – I would say that I did, but I never got attached enough to root for or against any of them. That is not because they were boring, but more that they were nuanced.

Black Balloon – 2008. Another movie with Autism featured, this Australian film was better at 3.1 than Netflix predicted for me. The first film of writer and director Elissa Down, it tells the story of the mix of joy and trouble in a family with two teenage boys, the oldest with severe Autism. Elissa knows her subject, since she has two Autistic brothers. This is a sensitive and intelligent film, well directed and well acted, especially by the two boys, Rhys Wakefield and Luke Ford. The confusing mix of sympathetic love and repulsive rejection is effectively presented.

It’s Complicated – 2009. This Nancy Meyers romantic comedy about older folks also touches on the dealings of adult children with their divorced parents. It is a fun 3 rated movie that doesn’t really teach us much but does show us a little character development, Meryl Streep finally concluding after ten years of being divorced she is ready to move on, Alec Baldwin beginning to realize he actually does hurt people with his genial jerk personality and Steve Martin being willing to take a chance with his gentle vulnerability. As for the acting, Meryl skips any accent and tones down the hand gestures as the movie progresses, Steve doesn’t have that much to do and only gets to goof off once, while Alec shows throughout that he has mastered the somewhat charming non-maliciously self-centered jerk role that he plays on 30 Rock.

Crazy Heart – 2009. Jeff Bridges did a good job with his role as alcoholic somewhat has been country singer, Bad Blake (no relation), but the movie as a whole didn’t have much going on to lift it above 2.9 for me. Mickey Rourke’s role in The Wrestler was similar, but that movie had more drama. Not being a country music fan didn’t help my rating either.

Dancing at Lughnasa – 1998. During the Depression of the 1930s, life in Ireland was even more economically bleak than normal. Five diverse sisters eking out a living in their ancestral home in the countryside are the prime focus of this 2.9 movie. The four male roles are also diverse, the illegitimate young son of the youngest sister, his charming but irresponsible no show father, a husband whose wife has run away and who is after the mentally challenged sister, and the brother of the sisters, a priest newly returned from 25 years missionary work in Africa, where he clearly had less affect on the Africans than they did on him. As the oldest sister, Meryl Streep once again overdoes the accent and hand gestures. The rest of the roles were well played. When the no show Dad pops in for a visit on his way to fight in the Spanish Civil War, he tells his son’s mother that they should all go away together, a suggestion she dismisses as unrealistic, but by the end of the movie, you have to think he was probably right.

Cloud 9 – 2008. What was different about this German film is that the adulterous heroine was 60 years old and her lover was 76. Elderly eroticism doesn’t seem destined for box office boffo. Being in their age bracket myself, I still felt like I was watching my grandmother. The 2.8 movie had its own pace and variations which was done well for the story, but the problem for me was one about which I have written here before, the lack of a back story. In order to understand characters and their motivations, I need to know at least something about where they come from and what they have experienced.

Towards Evening – 1991. One of Marcello Mastroiani’s last films has him playing a retired professor, widowed, an intellectual Communist with a sort of beatnik son and bohemian daughter-in-law, and an engaging 5 year old granddaughter who gets left with grandpa when her parents split. As the daughter-in-law wends her way into and out of the early life of the little girl and the old man, he begins to re-examine his life under the challenge of his daughter-in-law. What way is best to live, set in your place and ways like him, or footloose and fancy free like her? Unfortunately the DVD transfer is quite poorly done, and in spite of good acting and locations, this 2.8 Italian film never gets deep enough into its characters.

Enemies, A Love Story – 1989. This 2.8 film about a Jewish man who survived the Holocaust and ends up involved with three women never quite jelled for me. It was a heavy story, but seemed to be treated a bit light at first. The complications of the plot were actually plausible, given the turmoil of the times and the affect events had on the characters. But I never felt I knew enough about their individual pasts to really be able to empathize with them. I expect reading the Singer novel would fill that void.

Too Tired to Die – 1998. I’m not sure how this 2.7 movie got into my queue and then made it to the top. A low budget New York indie with a Chinese director, the film was definitely clumsy, but still interestingly quirky enough to hold me. A mix of comedy and drama, it deals with the “what if you learned you only had X hours to live” question. The funniest thing is the shockingly terrible Italian accent of Michael Imperioli from the Sopranos.

Falling – 2006. This film by a young female Austrian filmmaker, Barbara Albert, tells a story of five thirty something former school mates reuniting at the funeral of one of their teachers. The expected aspects of a reunion movie are present, wrapped in noisy music and fairly disgusting debauchery, without ever generating much interest in any of the women, about whom the 2.4 film does not really tell us enough to make us care. Nevertheless, the actresses all seemed good and the direction showed talent. Too bad about