Dogs Bark

From Santa Fe To Tucumcari - - Sweetwater (2012, USA) - - 22 April 2014

Recommended. Word is . . . I never met a lady vengeance movie I didn’t like. But then I still haven’t seen I Spit On Your Grave. I have seen Hannie Caulder and The Quick And The Dead and I enjoyed them both, despite a pair of ridiculous stories. I thought, as did Sundance, that Sweetwater wasn’t bad at all, watched with tongue firmly in cheek. Just seeing January Jones (Mad Men) in a purple gown, an ex-soiled dove with talons of steel made my hour and a half. Sweetwater was written by the Miller Brothers (Touching Home), Logan and Noah, the former at the helm. Like another pair of movie-making bros, their enthusiasm shines bright. Ed Harris (The Hours) and Jason Isaacs (The Patriot) chew a little scenery and compliment the droll Jones. Several of ex-apprentice Brad Shield’s camera shots are stirring. A very good movie for such a young crew; I look forward to their sophomore effort.

Wouldn't Hoe Corn - - The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012, Belgium) 13 April 2014

Not recommended. Here’s the thing . . . and it’s important. If you make a movie about cancer, children or suicide, you’re writing a check to the audience. There are too many folks out there in the darkness who've actually experienced some of that. If you’re good, even those who haven’t are going to feel bad. Before the lights go up, you better make good on that paper. The Broken Circle Breakdown does push all these buttons. It also throws in some lovely bluegrass songs, surprisingly well sung by Belgians, primarily Johan Heldenbergh and Veerle Baetens. The first half of director Felix van Groeningen’s (The Misfortunates) story is very nice and I had hoped that the payoff would be somehow connected to the power of beautiful music to overcome sorrow. At one point that connection to the misery of Appalachia is mentioned, but it never paid me back for watching a child die.   

The Alchemy of Unhappiness - - Le Passé [The Past](2013, France/Italy/Iran) - - 6 April 2014

Strongly recommended.  Demonstrating that his Academy Award for A Separation was no fluke, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi roars back with The Past, another brilliant unraveling of marriage. As before, no one’s totally innocent or unredeemed, making for a tense, painful viewing. Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) - - looking even more now like Natalie Wood - - is at the heart of the drama, an onion that takes the entire 140 minutes to unpeel. Actually, the plot is convoluted enough to be mildly distracting. As Bejo’s daughter, Pauline Burlet, last playing a ten-year-old Edith Piaf (La Vie En Rose), aches her part into the camera. The male actors - - Tahar Rahim (The Prophet) as Bejo’s current boyfriend and Ali Mosaffa, as her ex-husband - - lend solid support. The Past was nominated for a Golden Globe, the Palm d’Or and was offered by Iran to Oscar, who inexplicably passed on a nomination.  I’ll give it a nod.

Review of a Comely Attraction - - In A World . . . (2013, USA) - - 3 April 2014

Recommended - - In a world where the shoddiest of stories is endlessly regurgitated, one bold actress/writer/director, desperate for recognition from her peers, offers a bold new idea boldly going where no film has gone before. Yeah, baby! But indeed, I actually was moved by the trailer of In A World . . .  to watch In A World . . . Character actress Lake Bell (Childrens Hospital) builds her own bicycle, creating a female voice-over artist battling her own father, an arrogant one-night-stand and the ghost of real-life legend Don LaFontaine to provide the voice of God for the trailer of a Hunger Games-like blockbuster. In A World . . . is fluff and total rom-com goofiness but it has a good heart. If you like mocking Hollywood stupidity, you’re in the right field-of-view but if not . . .  prepare yourself for another world, a world where the rules turn savagely against you . . . and so on and so on.