As Good as It Gets – Starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear

As Good as It Gets (1997)(DVD)  Directed by James L. Brooks, starring  Jack Nicholson (Chinatown (1974), Terms of Endearment (1983), Ironweed (1987), About Schmidt (2002), The Departed (2006), and many other films), Helen Hunt (Pay It Forward (2000), Then She Found Me (2008)), Greg Kinnear (Nurse Betty (2000), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Flash of Genius (2008)) and Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Boyz n the Hood (1991), Jerry Maguire (1996), American Gangster (2007)).  In this  thoroughly amusing romantic comedy, Jack Nicholson is magnificent as Melvin Udall, a misanthropic romantic novelist with obsessive-compulsive disorder, a role for which he deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Actor (1998) and  Helen Hunt, winning the Oscar for Best Actress (1998), is really very good as Carol, a waitress, and over-protective single mother.  Greg Kinnear is great as Simon Bishop, a dog-owning gay artist and Melvin’s (Nicholson) next door neighbor.  As Good as It Gets, classic nasty Nicholson, a critical and box-office success, though flirting with the difficult subjects of homophobia, psychological disorders and the difficulties of being a single parent, nevertheless succeeds in being an enjoyable, if somewhat sentimental, comedy. (PR)

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In the Valley of Elah – Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron & Susan Sarandon

In the Valley of Elah (2007)(DVD)  Written and directed by Paul Haggis (as screenwriter, Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008)), starring Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive (1993), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), No Country for Old Men (2007) and many others), Charlize Theron (Monster (2003), North Country (2005), Hancock (2008), The Burning Plain (2009), The Road (2009)), Susan Sarandon (The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Thelma & Louise (1991), The Lovely Bones (2009), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)), Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men (2007), W. (2008), Milk (2008), True Grit (2010)) and others.  In the Valley of Elah, a somber, complex and powerful film, portrays a veteran and father’s search for the murderers of his soldier son, and deals with issues such as the war in Iraq, post-traumatic stress disorder, racism, misogyny, and violence.  Tommy Lee Jones is excellent, rigid, harsh, cold, determined, Charlize Theron, as a police detective, is equally good, sober, human, perseverant, overwhelmed.  Susan Sarandon, in a smaller role, as the wife of Jones’s character and mother of the murdered soldier is very good, detached, distraught, lost; Josh Brolin, in a very small role as Theron’s character’s police superior, is, if briefly, perfect.  In the Valley of Elah is not an easy film, and includes some graphic, gruesome scenes in its portrait of alienated, morally lost Americans. (PR)

See our posts on the films The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and No Country for Old Men, with Tommy Lee Jones, and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, with Susan Sarandon.

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The Informant! – Steven Soderbergh with Matt Damon

The Informant! (2009)(DVD)   Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), King of the Hill (1993), Erin Brockovich (2000), Solaris (2002), Che (2008) and of course, Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) and others), starrring Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), the Ocean’s trilogy, the Bourne series, Syriana (2005), Invictus (2009)), and others.  Watching this satirical comedy, based on a true story, about international industrial price-fixing and a whistle-blower with bipolar disorder played by Matt Damon (who is, as one would expect, really quite good), one can’t help but laugh.  However, as The Informant! progresses Damon’s character, Mark Whitacre, due to his illness, sinks deeper and deeper into self-destructive desperation, and the comedy becomes increasingly difficult to accept.  No doubt this was the intention as neither the crime of price-fixing nor bipolar disorder are really laughing matters.  In the end, one feels uncomfortable with one’s initial, laughing, reactions and, due to the intimacy of the portrayal of Whitacre/Damon’s illness and its far-reaching and disastrous consequences, touched and saddened by his, and his family’s, circumstances.  A more complex film than one would, at first, think, given the marketing and comedic elements, The Informant! is a very interesting film indeed. (PR)

See our posts on the films Invictus and Solaris.

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Whatever Works

Whatever Works (2009)(DVD)  Directed by Woody Allen (Take the Money and Run (1069), Sleeper (1973), Annie Hall (1977), Radio Days (1987), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)), starring Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood (King of California (2007), Patricia Clarkson (The Untouchables (1987), The Pledge (2001), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Shutter Island (2010)) and others.  This comedy could be called “old-school” Woody Allen in that Allen says he wrote it in the 1970s, which one would hardly doubt, and in the very strong impression one has is that the main character, played by Larry David, seems so very autobiographical, which, for some reason, Allen denies; sixty-something year old, Jewish intellectual New Yorker marries a 21-year old, from, shall we say, another culture.  Rachel Evan Wood is quite good, as the 21-year old Melodie, and rather amusing, Patricia Clarkson, as her mother, is also good.  Nevertheless, and perhaps due to it having been written in the ’70s and being a particular product of the era, Whatever Works is rather flat, rather boring and rather formulaic, despite some very funny lines now and again. (PR)

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The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)(DVD)  Directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones (as actor: The Fugitive (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Men in Black (1997), Space Cowboys (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), In the Valley of Elah (2007)), with Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan (1998), Seven Pounds (2008), True Grit (2010)), and others; screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams (2004), Babel (2006), The Burning Plain (2009)), ; music by Marco Beltrami (3:10 to Yuma (2007), The Hurt Locker (2008)); cinematography by Chris Menges (The Killing Fields (1984), The Mission (1986), The Reader (2008), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)).  A vision of the American West, with a very keen eye for detail, and not too distant from that found in No Country for Old Men, also starring Tommy Lee Jones, looking at honor and morality, friendship and the relations between men and women, and man, his history, and the stark beauty of the vastness of Texas/Mexico border,  The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada can be darkly funny, and say as much without words as with them.  Tommy Lee Jones shows an extraordinarily deft hand in his directing, and his acting is, of course, superb.  Perhaps not for the excessively squeamish, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, is, nevertheless, a must-see film. (PR)

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