'Married Life' movie

Patricia Clarkson and Chris Cooper live the Married Life.

Watch the trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/married-life/31060/main

Married Life is a small, low-keyed film that may not make it to your neighborhood theater. We saw it at a small theater that specializes in showing independent and foreign movies. Although the four leads are well known for being in popular movies, their good work here won't make this charming film a blockbuster. If you like plot twists and turns that challenge your expectations, this sly movie is for you. When it's over, you'll be thinking about the motives behind certain events and why some didn't happen the way you would have expected.

   The movie takes place in 1949, the year of my birth and seemed faithful in decor, costumes, and hair styles for that era. Chris Cooper plays a husband who's married to Patricia Clarkson but wants to be with his younger mistress Rachel McAdams. Pierce Brosnan portrays Cooper and Clarkson's best friend and falls for McAdams. Who shall finally be with whom is what moves the plot along to its ending. Brosnan's narration adds details to the story's leisurely pacing as it fills in gaps about character motivation without revealing too much.

    Married Life reminded me of a film noir  classic of that period but not as dark and heavy minus an obviously suspenseful music score.  This is part of its appeal as you first think it might be that kind of movie with its voiceover and how the plot turns to murder. How it's all resolved is what keeps you interested. I would label this a performance driven film that slowly pulls you into the plot. For a perceptive review, read: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080313/REVIEWS/946422508

My Love Affair With Joni Mitchell

  I'm proud to say I finally own every one of Joni's CDs. That must make her my favorite female singer. KD Lang comes close as well as Babs. So why this almost obsession with Joni? Usually when I like a certain author or filmmaker or musician, I will get or see everything that they have out there. So this explains my form of obsession/compulsive disorder. She strikes a sympathetic cord in me that I can't really explain at this time, maybe later. I admire her as an evolving artist who fearlessly ventures in new directions without concern of sales or popularity.  She may have lost fans along the way but picked up new ones and kept the faithful who continue to explore her music. 

     I was a fan in the 60's when she arrived on the music scene offering her 'hippy-type' folk songs of love and yearning. I thought she was above the rest with her haunting lyrics that stuck in your head and that high trilling, thrilling voice at times. For some unknown reason I lost interest in her during the 70's. I wasn't   aware she changed her style, making her lose radio air time as her later, mature work was considered 'uncommercial.'   Then as we moved away from vinyl to cassettes and to CDs, she became more distant.

      About six months ago I was browsing through the CD racks at Borders and noticed this large section of her music. I saw all these titles of her later work unfamiliar to me as well as new compilations featuring them. Since I don't own any of her CDs, I started with Dreamland, a nicely packaged collection spanning her career and featuring her paintings, another of her talents unknown to me. I've given this CD as gifts.  Then I followed this with two more collections of later songs, The Beginning of Survival and Songs Of A Prairie Girl. If you purchase all three, you have the 'Best' of Joni. Or so I thought.....

     Listening to these last two compilations reveals the growth of an artist from folk music to different genres:  jazz, rock, oldies. others.  This led me to acquire the rest of her CDs on shopping trips and as requested gifts. She's never afraid to try new forms as a composer, musician, and singer.  Listening to all of her CDs in chronological order is an aural journey into countless pleasures. . She never disappoints, she only amazes you in her daring. 2002's Travelogue is a symphonic reworking of her songs featuring her deeper but still poignant voice weathered from years of cigarettes. She's won many awards over the years and you can learn all about her on her website: http://jonimitchell.com/    She's profiled in a new book, Girls Like Us: Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon - And The Journey of A Generation, an upcoming acquisition for my obsession.

      if you only want another or one single collection, try Hits featuring her well known songs. It's a good starting point and will tempt you to follow it with the facetiously- titled Misses, a collection of lesser known but adventurous works. For a DVD concert, Painting With Words & Music is a must.

     Composer, musician, singer, painter...  She does it all and so well for over 40 years. She admired by her peers. Here's her being interviewed by Elvis Costello, a long time fan: http://www.elvis-costello.com/news/2004/10/elvis_costello_interviews_joni.html   Joni has been an inspiration to many including Herbie Hancock whose tribute to her, River: The Joni Letters, won the Grammy for Best Album of the Year.  She also won a Grammy for an instrumental on 2007's Shine.

      For my 59th birthday, I received, upon request, a four CD boxed set called The Geffen Years. Here's four albums from 1982 -1991 that were not well received at the time but after hearing them, I don't know why. It's an expensive collection my wife found for half price and worth every penny to me. Again each song demonstrates her marvelous artistry and her notes offer background to each one. It's time for a serious reappraisal of her later music.

  If you want to know more about Joni, ask away!

'The Counterfeiters' Movie

Karl Markovics plays a Jewish prisoner asked to assist a Nazi scheme in The Counterfeiters.  Watch the trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/the-counterfeiters/30930/main

 I forgot that this German movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. I've forgotten what were the other choices but I recall that France's La Vie En Rose wasn't nominated and should have been and won over this one. Rose deserved its two Oscars for Best Actress and Makeup in recreating the tragic life of Edith Piaf so there was more than consolation for me in those awards. However my preference for the French film is not to detract from my admiration for The Counterfeiters.

Usually movies about concentration camps are emotionally draining in their portrayal of brutality and this one comes close.  What's different here and optimistic (for a lack of a better term) is how a talented group of criminals uses their skills to survive and the Nazi officer who treats them with special care because they are needed to fulfill his plan. The Nazis want to use these criminals to forge British pound notes and American dollars to finance their war effort and ruin their enemies' economies. The plot is based on a true story you can read about on the film's website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thecounterfeiters/

What's interesting here is the use of Tango music in this kind of movie. Since I'm a fan of Tango, I can see how it's used to make a point. There's so much give & take in playing and dancing Tango, it's used here to echo the symbiotic relationship between the prisoners and their captives. Each desires something of the other and how long they can continue this dance is what drives the story. The Nazis want their fake money and the prisoners want to stay alive and know they will live longer if they stall making it, either by poor work or sabotage. Pride, courage, deception, and teamwork must dance in unison for survival. Whose toes get stepped on is what holds your interest in this absorbing and well made film. If you're familiar with the horrors of the Nazi years, this movie will ring true as well as being a first rate drama about people making choices to survive under the worst of conditions.

 

The Counterfeiters will remind you of Schinder's List in a few ways and that's not a bad thing.  For a thoughtful review, read: http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/movies/22coun.html

 

I stand corrected by a co-worker about this movie. It's actually an Austrian film and Austria's first win for a Foreign Film Oscar.

'The Bank Job' movie

Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows in “The Bank Job,” a fast-paced, larcenous romp inspired by a 1971 burglary in London.  Watch the trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/the-bank-job/32256/main

Watching the trailer gives you the impression that this movie is a British comic caper about an inept gang of bank thieves but it's more than that. In fact the film turns nasty near the end as the gang realizes they are in over their heads.  Will they get away and with their ill-begotten goods is the question. I thoroughly enjoyed this small but well-crafted film and so will you if you're not adverse to hearing English accents and slang.

 

Jason Statham of The Transporter movies leads the gang. Here he's not dependent on fight scenes but still has his sardonic sense of humor.  His character is more rounded than usual and a pleasure to watch. The rest of the cast fills their roles nicely including David Suchet of TV's Hercules Poirot fame. I didn't recognize him at first because he looked completely different than Agatha Christie's detective or as the villain in Airforce One.  His voice kept nagging at me until the cast was listed only during the end credits. This time he plays a porn king who has his own agenda in retrieving the contents from his pilfered safe deposit box. Let's not forget the lovely Saffron Burrows who is blackmailed into hiring Statham and his friends but has her own plans.

 

Everyone is out for something in this highly entertaining movie. Who will be the winners and losers is what keeps you caring about their future as events collide at the conclusion of The Bank Job.

'Vantage Point' Movie

From left, Forest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox in the thriller Vantage Point.   Watch the Trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/vantage-point/26378/main

This movie is doing well at the box office. It's filling a void for fast-paced action/mysteries and also wants to play tricks with the viewer. The gimmick here is that the plot unfolds through multiple retellings of the same events. Dennis Quaid plays a Secret Service agent who fails to protect the president during an assassination attempt and races to find those behind it. Everyone is a suspect but who are the real perpetrators hiding in the ensuing confusion following the attempt. Nothing is as it seems as he learns while unraveling events with the help of video cameras and eye witnesses.

 

Here's where the gimmick overpowers the plot. Each retelling begins further in time than the last one and also propels it further, almost like leap frogs. but we learn more about the previous one. At first the repetition of  these flash backs became tiresome as the audience groaned a bit, including me. I read about this happening in theaters so it wasn't only us. But eventually the filmmakers wisely dropped them for real time as the story raced to the frantic conclusion.  All the previous events tie together, perhaps a bit too neatly, for a suspenseful chase scene that made you forgive the earlier editing hocus-pocus.

 

Performances were competent for this kind of movie and the plot was intriguing if you stuck with it. This movie demands your full attention as a lot of plot twists are crammed into this no frills story. Perhaps the only fault with the movies is that you're not allowed to think about what happens; the filmmakers do it all for you. But this shouldn't stop you from enjoying Vantage Point.