The Town: The Jury's In!

I had a fabulous weekend- went up north to central VT with my movie-going lady friends to visit our friend Karen who just bought a new home. It was a lovely weekend with the foliage peaking early in Vermont due to the dry summer and the colors are just beautiful. Some of the nicest I've seen in years. Karen's house is perfect for her, very comfortable and even her shy cat came out to say hello.

Since we're movie going people, of course we had movies on the mind. We promptly hied ourselves out to the Stowe Cinema to see The Town. (Did you know the theatre in Stowe serves alcoholic beverages?) But beware, it doesn't take credit cards. It's a nice theatre, the one we were in was small, but comfortable. No drink holders but there was a divider and we had a half wall in front of us which served a wonderful purpose- no one was in front of us to block our view and we could put our drinks on it. Of course, the movie wasn't crowded so we didn't have to worry about our view. Now, on to the movie, or at least background.

The Town is set in Boston and focuses on men who grew up and still live in Charlestown, a neighborhood of Boston. It is where the navy yard is (and the Constitution-the boat, not the document). Also the Bunker Hill Monument, even though the battle was fought on Breed's Hill. The buildings and architecture are quite lovely, the brownstone and brick townhouses and rowhouses are gorgeous. Upon restoration, quite desirable to those who want to live near Boston Proper.

A few other factoids:

• Around the 1860's, an influx of Irish immigrants arrived in Charlestown.  The neighborhood remained an Irish stronghold in the cultural, economic, and Catholic tradition. 
•  Throughout the 1960s until the middle 1990s, Charlestown was infamous for its Irish Mob Presence.  
• Charlestown's McLaughlin Brothers were involved in a gang war with neighboring Somerville's Winter Hill Gang, during the Irish Mob Wars of the 1960s.  
• On a summer night in 1992, George Sargent, 43, was shot to death outside a pizza parlor in Charlestown, Massachusetts. A few days earlier, he had provided information to police concerning criminal dealings in the neighborhood. As he lay dead on the sidewalk, no one called the police, and no one admitted to seeing the shooting. This response to the murder was typical in Charlestown. Members of the community were unwilling to share information that would facilitate homicide investigations because of their reliance on vigilante justice, fear of retaliation by criminals, and anti-police sentiment.  This is known as the code of silence.
• 
  
  This unspoken “code of silence” made homicide investigations extremely difficult. Between 1975 and 1992, Charlestown experienced 49 murders, 33 of which were not solved. The community was being overrun by the “Irish Mob,” a group of violent career criminals who ran a major PCP and cocaine distribution center. Because intimidated citizens upheld the code of silence, these drug traffickers were able to operate with virtual impunity.
  
  

Ben Affleck is the ringleader of a group of robbers who focus on armored trucks and occasionally a bank. Joining him is Jeremy Renner, recently released from a nine year stint in jail, a stalwart who truly enjoys his employment and eager to continue working. The other members of the group appear to be along for the ride, journeymen robbers, if you will.  The trouble begins when the gang robs a bank.  Jeremy Renner's character believes that the bank manager saw him.  Things go awry from there.  If I go on, I'll just spoil the plot for you and I don't want to do that.

I found there were several flaws with the movie.  Starting with the most obvious:

Ben Affleck still can't act.

Jon Hamm's talent is wasted as the FBI agent.   His part is poorly written and wooden.

The premise, or lack of one, that causes the FBI agent to focus on Ben Affleck's group.

The connection between Fergus the Florist (Pete Postlethwaite) and Ben Affleck's gang is unclear or indistinct.  This is due to either poor writing and directing or the very poor accents making the dialogue difficult to understand.  This was a problem throughout the film.

Poor direction:  Case in point.  During a scene between Affleck and Renner (who was the best thing in the film and brought it up a level in my opinion), they are having a very heated discussion.  Normally during this type of discussion, both parties talk over one another.  Here, they politely waited for each other to finish their sentences.  Very unnatural.

The best part of the film was trying to recognize all the places were the filming took place.  Especially fun was recognizing the florist, which is around the corner from my place of employment.  Many other sites were familiar as well.    Other than that, the movie was, as my late husband used to say, better than a nail in the foot.  I give it a B-.  Mostly because Jeremy Renner was so good. 

100 Voices: A Journey Home

This movie was shown nationwide tonight (September 21, 2010) at 7 p.m. my time. Not sure what time it was shown your time. Other than that, my understanding is that it will be on limited release in Los Angeles and New York City. Tough cookies for the rest of us. I found this a wonderful, remarkable film that should probably be required viewing in high school history classes. There is a lot of first person and second generation history going on in this film. Lots of oral history. Great stories. Moving family tragedy and rebuilding. All in the last 100 years. I have yet to tell you what this is about! I better get to it!

The Premise: Cantor Nathan Lam arranges an historic visit to Warsaw with 100 Cantors to sing at the Warsaw Opera House to bring back Jewish culture and, more importantly, Jewish music, to Warsaw and Poland. Warsaw was the "Center of the Universe" for Cantorial Music. This roughly translates to the "Vatican of Jewish Music". Joining the Cantors is Charles Fox, an American Jewish composer who wrote "Killing Me Softly" and "I Got a Name" among many others, and whose father was born in a small Polish town.

The Fun Part: Prior to the beginning of the movie, the audience was treated to a "mini-concert" featuring several Cantors singing compositions written by Jewish American composers. Such as: Orange Blossom Special (with fiddler), Maria (from West Side Story), Blessing from Fiddler on the Roof, Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma! And OOOOHHHHH, did they sing it well!

Now the serious stuff. This is a very informative film. With lots of excellent music. Operatic, orchestral sounding music. And, from time to time, jazzy music. With personal stories, personal histories and very moving scenes. I especially loved the two ladies who survived Auschwitz and Birkenau, and were able to go back and "walk back in and walk back out". Nothing like a little chutzpah in life. I greatly admire these two ladies. And all the survivors who went on to make a life, a family, a community and continue to love after surviving such horror.

Most of all, the movie shed light on a tradition of which I was unaware, that became popular and, I found out, some Cantors had such popularity that they had groupies. Who knew?

If you find you have the opportunity at some time to see this film, I encourage you to do so. I found it informative, from a historical, musical and personal perspective. Maybe I've led a very sheltered life. I can tell you, my history and music classes never covered this.

Secretariat- Coming to a Theatre Near You on October 10th

I had the great good fortune, and a friend named Amy, to see the sneak preview of Secretariat last night. Amy was able to score free tickets for a group of us. She's connected. Want anything in town? Want to know what's happening? I ask Amy. She's my go-to person. Anyway, Secretariat will be released next month on October 10th, according to IMDB. I had never been to a sneak preview before. We were "wanded" and told to turn off our cell phones. No recording devices allowed. They weren't overly strict about anything as I sneaked in two water bottles and snacks. How closely did they check me? But on to the movie.

The movie, as you may have surmised, is about the horse named Secretariat. Some feel this is the greatest horse that ever lived, at least the movie states this point. The movie is "suggested" by the story of somebody. Not even "based on". This gave me a fit of giggles since Secretariat was a real horse, the events actually happened, the characters actually lived. So the statement that the movie was "suggested by" anything makes me wonder just how far off the facts it was going to be. Unfortunately, I was 15 when Secretariat was in his racing glory and had no interest in the Triple Crown.

The movie is produced by Walt Disney and rated PG. It's just two hours long. It runs a bit slow for the most part. Younger kids may lose interest, I felt myself wandering a bit from time to time. The excitement level increased during the scenes with the horse training and racing. The movie leads are Diane Lane and John Malkovich. Can I tell you how wonderful and funny Malkovich is? No, I don't think I can. He eventually tones it down but it makes the movie so much fun. Margo Martindale plays Miss Ham (you know you've seen her elsewhere and it bugged me but I've looked her up on IMDB so I'm happy now), Scott Glenn (Diane Lane's father) - he's familiar too. Fred Thompson also has a role. All in all, a nice movie to take the kids, especially the horse-obsessed girls to.

Will I see it again when it comes out in October? Sure- I plan on taking my nieces!

The Expendables- Such Fun!

The Ladies and I, and a hubby, went to see The Expendables on Labor Day. If you've seen the previews, I'll bet you expect to see most of the familiar action-adventure, blood and gore, shoot 'em up, kick ass guys all in one movie go after somebody for some reason. If they have to have a reason. The reason is probably incidental to the action, it usually is. Well, you'd be right. But it's FUN! Explosive, bloody, gory, kickass, sometimes witty, never taking itself seriously fun.

OH- Spoiler Alert- If you haven't seen Diehard 4 or some other movies, I might spoil them for you. But you've seen previews, how much can I spoil?

Now, I'm a Diehard fan. I laughed through Diehard 4. I mean really..... who says "You just took out that helicopter with a car!".... "Well, I was out of ammunition." And then Bruce walks away, I mean he WALKS AWAY... from a battle with a fighter jet. Seriously, this is not real life. He shouldn't have lived through Diehard 1. But I love John McLane despite his nine lives. (Just don't bother watching Surrogates- the hair should tip you off). But I've digressed and my point here is this: The Expendables was much more gory. I think it was gorier than Braveheart. I spent a lot of time yesterday hiding my eyes sort of, you know, hands in front of face and peeking through fingers. It was very, very graphic and tended to linger just a moment longer than necessary on the consequences of an action. I guess that was Sly's call. After all, it was his film. Oh, yes, Sly co-wrote, directed and starred in Expendables. Guess he was running out of money.

But back to the movie. Sly Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li (very funny and amusing, a nice surprise, his part was nicely written), Randy Couture and Terry Crews make up the team called the Expendables. When not dead set on mayhem, they hang out with a guy named Tool who is a tattoo artist: Mickey Rourke, looking like he hasn't recovered from his role in the Wrestler. Eric Roberts plays the nasty American, ex-CIA man who has taken over a tiny Island somewhere for his own gain. There are cameos by Bruce and Arnold. It's a wonderful scene actually, near the beginning of the movie: Bruce, Sly and Arnold. This scene alone is worth the price of the movie ticket. It's short but it's all I needed. Yeah, you'll come out of the theatre wanting more, but I'm easily pleased. I like puns, I like entendres.....
I like this film.

Tom Wilkinson- he keeps popping up

Well, here it is... I was watching Michael Clayton (soon to be reviewed, but don't wait for me, do see it), and I realized that I had been thinking that Tom Wilkinson has been popping up very frequently in movies I've seen in the last decade or so, or it least seems like it. And he's very good indeed in each one of them.

According to his IMDB biography, he was born in 1948 and has been a popular character actor. He first became quite popular with The Full Monty. Well, I ask you, who wouldn't? Actually, I did like that movie, he was a real teddy bear. He was fun to watch and quite daring after all. It's tough to find one's dignity when one is on line for the dole.

Here are some of his movies:
1997: The Full Monty
1997: Smilla's Sense of Snow (never saw it, couldn't finish the book)
1997: Oscar & Lucinda (guess I should see it now)
1998: Rush Hour- Oh- Jackie Chan!
1998: Shakespeare In Love, Tom was great!
2000: The Patriot- to tell the truth, I was watching Heath
2002: The Importance of Being Earnest- very good in that
2003: The Girl With the Pearl Earring- the Vermeer Painting as a movie
2004: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- Fabulous
Batman Begins- he plays Carmine- the bad guy, and gets all bat beat up!
The Ghost Writer- ok, I forgot to look up who he plays, but Eben Young is in that movie and Eben is absolutely wonderful. If you are a casting director, you should hire Eben.
And, after that, Tom Wilkinson.
Oh- and Tom was on the money in Michael Clayton. Scintillating performance. A must see.

Inception- A Film By Christopher Nolan

I need to give you a heads up- I love Christopher Nolan's work, at least the movies I've seen. There are a couple I need to get to. Mr. Nolan's first movie is Following and I haven't seen that nor have I seen The Prestige. I also need to see Insomnia, though I've seen bits and pieces of it. However, I think I've seen most everything else and I think he is just fabulous. Christopher Nolan is a director who also writes or co-writes most of his films. This includes:
Memento (based on a short story Memento Mori written by his brother Jonathan)
Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
AND.......
Inception

Inception has just come out during summer blockbuster time. I'm not sure why. But I am very glad it did. Considering all the usual movies that are out this time of year, it is quite delightful to have a serious, thoughtful, challenging movie that is well written, well plotted, emotionally enriched and has tons of battle-play and explosions. Its cinematography is gorgeous, the camera work very cool.....

It's Oscar material.

And the acting was good. Leo DeCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (he's not the younger brother on Third Rock from the Sun anymore), Ellen Page (Juno), Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy (the bad doctor from Batman Begins), Tom Berenger, the gorgeous Marion Cotillard, Pete Postlethwaite, and the inimitable Michael Caine.

Hans Zimmer was in charge of original music. Note that during the film, certain songs are played- these are Edith Piaf, the songbird of the French. Cinematography was once more in the hands of Wally Phister who has worked with Christopher Nolan before and their partnership is very much appreciated.

It's July and suddenly, I can't wait for Oscar Season. I loved this movie. Let's hope it doesn't get lost in the sands of summer.

Knight and Day

My friend Amy and I happened to have movie passes at a local theatre so off we went to see the latest Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz movie. (I'm not implying they do movies together a lot, the only other movie they've done together that I can remember is Vanilla Sky.) The movie hadn't received much in the way of good reviews but I was interested as it was filmed in Boston and I really wanted to hear more regional language screw-ups. After all, no one around here says: "and then, we were driving down the I-93". No. Around here, time is precious. We drive down 93. 128. The Pike. The Pike is the only highway that gets "the" before it, the "definite article". There is another little language anomaly that had me in giggles but I won't repeat it here. After all, I don't want to spoil it for you.

I will tell you this was not Cruise's or Diaz's best performance. I won't blame it on them. Tom and Cameron were clearly trying their darndest to entertain, be comic, goofy and deliver a delightful summer movie. The fault lies, not in the stars, but in the director and the screenplay.

The story revolves around a young genius inventor(to whom we are introduced late in the film) played by Paul Dano. If I have this right (and I hope I do), Paul Dano played Dwayne, the brother, in Little Miss Sunshine. If you haven't seen Little Miss Sunshine, do yourself a favor and see it as soon as possible. He is probably the best actor in there. At least, he is my favorite. And he does a very nice job here, for the limited time he is on screen. But I've wandered away from the central thought...... Oh yes... the story. It revolves around the young genius inventor, a group of agents who are purportedly protecting him, and an arms dealer who wants his invention..... that everybody believes is working.... and into this mix unwittingly wanders Cameron Diaz. Or did she? We all know what happens next. Mayhem. I love that word.

I very much enjoyed the movie. I laughed quite a bit. I had a lot of moments that were "Wait.... how did they get there from here? they can't do that!" It was fun to try to recognize different sites in Boston but they kept mixing it up. Overall, I'd give it a B- in general but I laughed a lot. Not always where the filmmakers wanted me to.