Thursday, January 31, 2008
January and February is always a tricky time for movies. It is the awards season and the British cinemas are full of the potential Golden Globe/Oscar winners. Why tricky, I hear you ask? Well, basically because yer Pynchon is forced to decide which movies have legs and will stay in the Cineworld on Broad Street (I am brassic at the moment, as always after Christmas, so my monthly Unlimited card is mighty useful) for more than one week, so that he can see the movies that do not have legs, first.
Last weekend I counted 5 movies I would have liked to have seen. Damnation!
For precisely the reason illustrated above I chose to see "The Savages" and "In The Valley Of Elah". Pretty good call by me, I say, modestly. "The Savages" has gone and "In The Valley Of Elah" is down to two showings a day.
"The Savages".
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney play Brother and Sister Jon and Wendy Savage. Jon is laidback, pragmatic and a realist. Wendy is neurotic, brittle and dissatisifed. When, for various reasons, Jon and Wendy's estranged Father loses his home, the Brother and Sister are forced to face the realities of dealing with an ailing parent that they barely know.
I think that "The Savages" is a great movie. A brilliant little gem. How far can you go wrong with great performers like Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a really black, pointed, funny and incisive script by writer/director Tamara Jenkins. Admit it. Not very far wrong. "The Savages" says important things about family, responsibility, self sacrifice, dreams and aspirations. The only movies that really matter are movies about people and "The Savages" is definitely about people.
Philip Seymour Hoffman has got his Oscar, but I feel kind of sorry for Laura Linney. She is one of the best actresses in the world, with three Oscar nominations in eight years ("You Can Count On Me", "Kinsey" and this one) and three strikeouts. (I know it isn't really over until the fat lady sings, and I would love to dream it might happen, but does anybody really believe that Laura Linney is going to win this year for "The Savages"? No, I didn't think so.) I know awards shouldn't really matter, but they do, and something for Laura Linney is well overdue. She does not do flash. What she does is quality and quality should count.
"In The Valley Of Elah".
"In The Valley Of Elah", Paul Haggis' worthy directorial follow up to his Oscar winning movie "Crash", is only a reasonably good thriller, but hits it's stride in much the same way as "Crash", as an exploration of the current state of the American psyche. The Iraq war itself is a character in this movie and casts a giant emotional shadow over everything that happens.
What has the Iraq war done to America? How has the conflict affected the emotional state of the young men and women involved in the war? What will be the final cost, to a generation of Americans, of Iraq?
Top notch performances from Tommy Lee Jones as a serious, grave and dignified ex-soldier trying to find out what happened to his son, and also by a glammed down Charlize Theron as a single mother and detective, sidelined and dismissed by her male colleagues. In fact, not a bad performance by anybody in the cast, even if Susan Sarandon as Tommy Lee Jones' wife is a little underused.
"In The Valley Of Elah" is haunting and powerful and has a stark final image that speaks volumes.
Last weekend I counted 5 movies I would have liked to have seen. Damnation!
For precisely the reason illustrated above I chose to see "The Savages" and "In The Valley Of Elah". Pretty good call by me, I say, modestly. "The Savages" has gone and "In The Valley Of Elah" is down to two showings a day.
"The Savages".
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney play Brother and Sister Jon and Wendy Savage. Jon is laidback, pragmatic and a realist. Wendy is neurotic, brittle and dissatisifed. When, for various reasons, Jon and Wendy's estranged Father loses his home, the Brother and Sister are forced to face the realities of dealing with an ailing parent that they barely know.
I think that "The Savages" is a great movie. A brilliant little gem. How far can you go wrong with great performers like Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a really black, pointed, funny and incisive script by writer/director Tamara Jenkins. Admit it. Not very far wrong. "The Savages" says important things about family, responsibility, self sacrifice, dreams and aspirations. The only movies that really matter are movies about people and "The Savages" is definitely about people.
Philip Seymour Hoffman has got his Oscar, but I feel kind of sorry for Laura Linney. She is one of the best actresses in the world, with three Oscar nominations in eight years ("You Can Count On Me", "Kinsey" and this one) and three strikeouts. (I know it isn't really over until the fat lady sings, and I would love to dream it might happen, but does anybody really believe that Laura Linney is going to win this year for "The Savages"? No, I didn't think so.) I know awards shouldn't really matter, but they do, and something for Laura Linney is well overdue. She does not do flash. What she does is quality and quality should count.
"In The Valley Of Elah".
"In The Valley Of Elah", Paul Haggis' worthy directorial follow up to his Oscar winning movie "Crash", is only a reasonably good thriller, but hits it's stride in much the same way as "Crash", as an exploration of the current state of the American psyche. The Iraq war itself is a character in this movie and casts a giant emotional shadow over everything that happens.
What has the Iraq war done to America? How has the conflict affected the emotional state of the young men and women involved in the war? What will be the final cost, to a generation of Americans, of Iraq?
Top notch performances from Tommy Lee Jones as a serious, grave and dignified ex-soldier trying to find out what happened to his son, and also by a glammed down Charlize Theron as a single mother and detective, sidelined and dismissed by her male colleagues. In fact, not a bad performance by anybody in the cast, even if Susan Sarandon as Tommy Lee Jones' wife is a little underused.
"In The Valley Of Elah" is haunting and powerful and has a stark final image that speaks volumes.
Labels: Movies
# posted by Pynchon @ 9:24 pm 
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Phillip Seymour Hoffman is one of the few actors whose movies I almost universally dislike. I can't quite put my finger on it it, other than to say there must be something about him that irks me, as he's not a poor actor and the movies he chooses certainly aren't too shabby either.
I do like Laura Linney, though.
I do like Laura Linney, though.
I'm pissed. Savages was playing at one one theater in town (we have about 20 theaters) and I didn't get to see it before it left. It looked good I thought from the trailers.
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