HORNS

Daniel Radcliffe has made some interesting career choices since casting off his Harry Potter psyche, and his role in Alexandre Aja's romantic/comic/horror fable is no exception. Adapted from a novel by Stephen King's son Joe, this rather bizarre but completely absorbing thriller is the tale of a young man who, after he is wrongly accused of killing his girlfriend, turns into the Devil. Literally.

With the whole of the small town baying for his blood since he was acquitted for the murder of his childhood sweetheart through lack of evidence, Ig Perrish wakes up one morning with horns literally sprouting out of his forehead.  As he tries to get them removed he is somewhat surprised to discover that instead of people freaking out at the sight of them, they all immediately feel the need to impulsively over-share their darkest secrets with him. When Perrish realises the power the horns have given him he deliberately sets out to confront people to see if this compulsion to tell him the truth will help him discover who the actual murderer is.

It's a painful journey as part of what he uncovers is the knowledge that his own parents confess that they not only believe he is guilty of the crime but they actually want him to disappear for good. 'I don't want you to be my son anymore' his mother cries.  The only 'good' person who cannot even physically see the horns is Lee, his best friend and now a Public Defender who has been on Perrish's side the whole time.

As he starts piecing the puzzle together of what really happened on the fatal night, Perrish's horns get bigger and bigger and the story takes on even more of a Biblical context with scenes of writhing serpents coming to his aid.   Then as the tale finally reaches the part where the murderer is revealed it becomes a full-on horror story with Perrish relishing his incarnation as the Devil himself.

A rather wonderful Radcliffe is really at home in the part and convincingly plays the distraught boyfriend who steadfastly refuses to be intimidated by the hostile locals.  He is supported by fellow Brits Juno Temple as Merrin the poor dead girlfriend, and Max Minghella as Lee his childhood friend, and the cast is rounded off with James Remar and Kathleen Quinan as his parents and David Morse as Merrin's distraught father. Blink and you may miss the cameo appearance of the irrepressible Heather Graham as a very sexy waitress who suffers a snake attack for making up stories about Perrish. 

Aja, best known for the very scary 'The Hills Have Their Secrets' insures that this movie too is very bloody indeed (too much for my personal taste) but he also peppers the script with some very comic scenes verging on the bizarre which lighten the proceedings at time. Its wonderful setting on the Pacific Northwest adds a level of real beauty to the piece, but with a running time of 2 hours it is at least 30 minutes too long.

★★★★★★★

BIRDMAN

Ex-Batman actor Michael Keaton must have felt more than a touch of deja-vu in the title role of Alejandro G. Inarritu's brilliant dark comedy about an actor trying to redeem his career by staging a serious dramatic Broadway debut after his career as a movie comic-book hero has faded.  The movie filmed almost entirely in the St James Theater on West 44th Street starts as Riggan Thomson (Keaton) is about to begin previews of a play that he has adapted from a Raymond Carver novel, which he has both directed and also stars in. Having the camera follow the actors at close quarters as they rush around the theater gives the movie the illusion that the whole proceedings are just one big single take. It's an inspired idea and succeeds in keeping the adrenaline flowing at a rapid pace throughout the whole piece.  

Riggan's nerves are very raw as he has sunk everything into this production from his reputation to every single cent from the Bank, and he is racked with such self-doubt about the production being a success.  The play's cast include Lesley another film actor making her Broadway too, and Laura who is also doubling the role with also being Riggan's on/off lover too. The third member of this four-handed drama is such a hammy actor that when an accident (!) incapacitates him, Laura persuades Riggan to re-cast the part with Mike a well-known and popular stage actor who just happens to be her current boyfriend.

Mike is possibly the most talented actor of the play's cast which he is happy to remind Riggan at every single opportunity, but he is a bit of wild card who can behave erratically on and off the stage. He however isn't the only problem that Riggan has to face. There is Sam his teenage daughter just released from re-hab who he has misguidedly employed as his personal assistant. When she is not rebuking her father for ignoring modern phenomenon of social media try and boost his sagging career, she is having inappropriate sexual relations with Mike. Also girlfriend Laura announces she is pregnant just before the curtain rises too. 

The deeper the mess that Riggan seems to find himself too, he resorts to listening to the voice of his alter-ego and he has also convinced himself that he has this superpower to move inanimate objects by the power of thought alone. 

During the countdown to the opening night of the play there are manic scenes straight out of a comic farce. Such as when a near-naked Riggan is accidentally locked out of the theater's stage door midway through a preview and must stride through the packed crowds of Times Square in just his underpants to get back in. Then there is the encounter in the bar next to the theater when he has a contretemps with Tabitha the NY Times Theater Critic who tells him she has vowed to give him the worst review in history to ensure the play is a flop as she bitterly resents Hollywood celebrities invading Broadway which she considers is her holy grail.

However, convinced that Mike will yet again upstage him on the play's opening night and firmly believing that he is about to lose everything, Riggan finds some inner strength to add a totally unexpected twist that shocks us all and wins him rave reviews from the Times after all. 

Throughout this whole process Riggan is still completely obsessed with his past playing the infamous Birdman that brought him fame and success and has unquestionably shaped who he has become on so many levels.  In the end he accepts the inevitability and simply gives in and let's him take over completely.

This is one amazing joy ride of a movie that never lets up both delighting and confronting the audience for the entire 2 hours. Inarritu's has imbued this, his 5th feature, with his extraordinary impassioned imagination that as, is his raison d'etre, is evident in every minute detail of the movie.  The stunning cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki) is nothing less than breathtaking. and it's accompanied by constant bursts of jazz drumming from Antonio Sanchez.

Keaton's very raw and brilliant performance as Riggan is what really makes the movie soar.  He literally exposes himself in a role that could easily be conceived as based on his own life with a career that has hardly been in ascendant since his last Batman movie twenty years ago.  Here he shows what a remarkable and honest actor he really is as he totally captures every nuance of this fallen star who wants to rise and fly again.  I'd go so far as to suggest that this is a career best for Keaton,  a fact which will be borne out when the Acting Award season starts soon.

He however wasn't alone up there on the screen and was complemented in particular with two powerful performances from the remarkable Emma Stone as Sam, and the ever wonderful Edward Norton as Mike.  Nods also to Naomi Watts playing Lesley, Andrea Riseborough as Leslie, a very low key Zach Galifianakis as Riggan's manager, Amy Ryans as his ex wife, and also Lindsay Duncan as Tabitha.

I would hesitate to declare that this is director/co-writer Inarritu's best ever movie as the four memorable ones that proceed this (especially 'Amores Perros') are quite brilliant.  However it was good enough for me at least to consider the thought for more than a moment. He is nothing less than a cinematic genius who continually successful pushes the boundaries of our imagination and gives us something remarkably refreshing and unique that is always such a sheer joy to experience.

★★★★★★★★★★

LOITERING WITH INTENT

Thirty something-year-old Raf and Dom are best friends and are actor/bartender/waiters who are slowly realizing that they seem to go on fewer and fewer auditions these days, let alone actually book a acting gig. When one of their female acquaintances mentions that her wealthy boss is looking to catch a tax-break by investing a few hundred thousand in a movie, they quickly respond without hesitating that they have written a treatment which would be perfect for him. It would also be perfect for them too as it has two leading roles just for them.  Small snag is that they haven't actually written a single word, but nevertheless they still accept her commission to deliver a finished script within 10 days.

Unable to even get started in their noisy Manhattan apartment, the pair adjourn to Dom's sister Gigi's remote country retreat in upstate NY.  The trouble is the place is anything but quiet, especially when a very drunk Gigi crashes their seclusion, hotly followed by Wayne her manic-angry boyfriend who she is trying to escape from.  Wayne brings along his nice-but-dim brother Devon who's presence annoys the budding writers/would-be movie stars even more when they discover he has landed himself a lucrative Reality T Show without any effort at all.  Raf also carries more than a torch for Gigi who was once his girlfriend, so he goes out his way to try and insure that she chooses him rather than reunite with Wayne.

There is also Gigi's friend Ava who's living in a studio nearby and hangs out doing their garden wearing the skimpiest of clothes, and is more than a distraction for Dom.

'Loitering with Intent' is an entertaining easy-on-the-eye romantic comedy with a very good ensemble cast.  The standout performances are from Marisa Tomei as the erratic Gigi and the reliably wonderful Sam Rockwell who makes you laugh every time he opens his mouth. The script was written by actors Michael Godere and Ivan Martin who also play Dom and Raf, so this maybe is a case of art repeating life. Neither of them seem that fazed or surprised when they lose the movie deal and the girl.  

★★★★★★

THE LIFE AND MIND OF MARK DEFRIEST

Gabriel London's absorbing new documentary tells the hard-to-believe astonishing story of the man who has been dubbed 'the Houdini of Florida' and who has been incarcerated for almost 40 years for simply stealing his father's tool box and then defying the Prison Authorities ever since.

Mark DeFriest was born on August 18, 1960. A tough kid that saw more than his share of Reform Schools, he did however posses an extraordinary talent for fixing anything remotely mechanical.  He was just 17 years old when his father died, and after falling out with his step-mother DeFriest collected the tools that he had been left in the Will. However this had not yet been probated so she called the Police and had him charged with theft. This shockingly got him a 4 year jail sentence and the start of a lifetime behind bars.

A month later he made the first of his many successful escapes only to be re-captured after being caught hot-wiring a friend's car.  This was just the beginning of a cat and mouse game he played with the Prison Authorities who, exasperated by his many breakouts, took their rage out on DeFriest by continually getting his sentence extended and making his life as unbearable as possible.  Among the stunts he pulled was putting LSD in a staff coffee pot so that he could make a run for it when the Officers were high. He also fashioned realistic looking zip-guns from arts and craft materials, but as he says looking back on all these incidents 'nobody in here has got a sense of humor'.

Far from it and they ensured that DeFriest has spent 27 of his 34 years in jail in solitary confinement.  He has also been subjected to untold brutality by countless Guards who he claims, tortured him on numerous occasions using mace and fire hoses etc. He was also sexually abused and gang raped by other inmates.

In the early 1980's after escaping three times in lees than two years he was sent to the Florida State Hospital for treatment. Five out of the six court appointed psychiatrists confirmed that DeFriest was incompetent to be charged with a Felony  – citing symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – but a single doctor, the director of the Forensic Unit, Dr. Berland, testified that DeFriest was faking mental illness. This cleared the way for him to plead guilty and receive a Life Sentence even though he never physically harmed another human being.

Now decades later Dr Berland is invited back to examine DeFriest by his lawyer who has serious concerns about his mental condition. Berland not only accepts that his early diagnosis was completely wrong but he is prepared to provide proof and testify before the Parole Board as he believes DeFriest is genuinely psychotic and needs treatment.

The other person that features prominently in this tale is DeFriest's second wife Bonnie. Thirty years his senior, they met through a prison penpal scheme in 1994 and she became his champion and the motiving force to try to restore his sanity and re-gain his freedom.  The later part of the movie focuses on her and DeFriest's lawyer as they prepare for two crucial meetings with Florida's Parole Board.

London's film makes no attempt to be partisan about what is obviously a grave injustice and expects us to completely accept that the colorful DeFriest is always telling the truth. There is no attempt to get the Prison Authorities take on any of DeFriest's escapades or on his imprisonment which ensures our sympathies are not tested at all.  When his last appearance before the Parole Board (made up of political appointees) ends up as a disastrous farce, any doubts we have about the unfairness of this case quickly dissipate.

DeFriest is only one of 200,000 mentally ill people in the US who are in jail. In his case, having exhausted nearly every avenue open to him, his only hope now is a clemency petition that his elderly wife and his lawyer are pursuing on his behalf. If it has any chance of succeeding will eventually be up to Governor Rick Scott, which sadly cannot give anyone much hope that justice will ever be done.

★★★★★★★★

KUMIKO THE TREASURE HUNTER

Kumiko a disheveled 29 year old real loner ekes out a living in Tokyo as a lowly office secretary before returning each night to the cramped messy apartment she shares with her pet white rabbit.  She has discovered an old VHS tape (in what we assume is a dream sequence) and now spends every waking moment replaying it over and over again.  It's a very fuzzy copy of the Coen Brother's movie Fargo and she keeps returning to study the scene in which Steve Buscemi buries a briefcase stuffed full of cash in a deserted snowy field in the middle of nowhere.

Every time she views the clip she freezes the tape so that she can measure the distances in between the fence posts in the field so that she can work out precisely the spot when the treasure is hidden.  One day she attempts to steal an Atlas from the library as it contains a map of the town of Fargo in Minnesota, and when caught by the Guard she explains that she is on a 'mission' like the Spanish conquistadors who searched for treasure in America. The poor befuddled man looks at Kumiko thinking that she must be bonkers.  By now, we know that she is for sure.

When her Boss pisses her off again at the Office, Kumiko exacts her revenge on him by stealing the company credit card to buy a plane ticket to Minnesota in search of the cash which she is convinced belongs to her.  First however she has to set her rabbit free which is not as easy as she thinks but totally hilarious (for us) to watch.

When she lands in the U.S. without a scrape of luggage and barely speaking any English at all, Kumiko hasn't the faintest idea of what to do or where to go.  Relying totally on the kindness of strangers she somehow makes it onto a Greyhound bus heading north, but when this breaks down, she gets out to walk along the near-desolate highway in a snow storm.  

At first rescued by a sweet old lady, and then later by an exceptionally caring policeman who takes her under his wing although he hasn't a clue what this lone Asian woman is doing wandering the wintery streets wearing just a bedquilt over her city clothes. His idea of helping is taking her to the local Chinese Restaurant where he hopes the owner can translate for him as he thinks all Asians speak the same language.

The surprising ending is as bizarre as the rest of this wonderfully absurdist comedy and finishes the whole ridiculous movie on such a high note.  This third movie from brothers David and Nathan Zellner, by far their best yet, is very loosely based on a news story from 2001 when a young unknown Japanese woman was found dead in a snowy field in Minnesota. How the Zellner's overworked vivid imaginations converted this into to their outlandish tale is hard to fathom, but this ridiculous oddball story makes for compelling viewing if your tastes veer to anything remotely ludicrous.

Rinko Kikuchi (Oscar nominee for 'Babel') is completely beguiling as the solitary young woman who has lost all sense of reality as her blinkered vision is set firmly on her extraordinary obsession. Perfectly dead-pan, her performance is pitch perfect and a joy to behold. David Zellner not only directs the movie that he co-wrote with his brother, but plays the benevolent Minnesota cop who os so clearly out of his depth dealing with this alien traveller.

Beautifully photographed, this rather sad tale may baffle you at times, but will keep you intrigued until the very last frame.

★★★★★★★★

Featurette - Meet the Artists for Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter on TrailerAddict.

LOW DOWN

The renowned jazz musician Joe Albany was the only white pianist to have ever played bepop with the great Charlie Parker.  It was height of the success that Albany achieved but something that is merely hinted at in this new sobering biopic that focuses more on the musician's struggle with his addiction to alcohol and drugs that eventually killed him at the age of 64 in 1988.

The movie written by Albany's daughter Amy-Joy and based on her memoir, starts in 1974 when the two of them are holed up in a Hollywood flophouse living hand to mouth alongside hookers and other colorful characters.  Amy, a teenager, is aware of her father's problems as he has been in and out of jail for most of her life but she still complete dotes on him. She is his biggest, and at times his only, fan.  Albany released on parole, still risks being re-committed as he continually relapses the moment he gets some money in his pocket.  One day the couple get a visit from Amy's strung out alcoholic mother who is happy enough to be there when she gets her own way, but she soon quickly disappears again back to her own squalid apartment and the Bar where she drinks her self to a stupor most days.

After Albany is arrested again for parole violations Amy takes refuge with her tough but kind maternal grandmother who still stands by her son regardless of the trouble he gets into. The next time he gets released he breaks the news to them that he is running off to Europe away from the long arm of the law and where his musicianship is respected.

The story picks up two years later when Albany arrives back in LA without any warning to crash at his mother's tiny apartment again. He has enjoyed some considerable success in Europe having made several recordings but then gets deported ignominiously for possession of drugs.  Amy now a young lady still lives with her Grandmother and  has her first boyfriend. He's also a musician but a result of regular beatings from his stepfather suffers from epileptic fits. Albany is sympathetic with his plight until the night the Police arrest the kid for mistaking a fit for a drunken rage, and Albany high as a kite, lets the whole family down yet again.  

It's more than a somewhat depressing story and one that has been stretched out too long by Cinematographer Jeff Preiss in his directing debut. Preiss had cut his jazz teeth on Bruce Weber's acclaimed documentaries 'Broken Noises' and 'Let's Get Lost' so his appreciation for Albany's music was a foregone conclusion, and one of the movie's best parts is the rather glorious soundtrack. Oscar nominee John Hawkes who looks uncannily like Albany was pitch perfect as the troubled soul who simply couldn't help himself and who, when sober at least, tried so hard to be good single parent. He was beautifully matched by a very mature performance by Ellie Fanning as Amy the girl who had to grow up too quickly. The triangle was completed by the superb Glenn Close playing dowdy for a change as Albany's blue-collared mother who knew she had to give up on her son in the end. 

This movie tells the story completely from Amy's viewpoint and doesn't attempt to provoke an ounce of sympathy for Albany its subject.  In part its like being a voyeur to one long cathartic experience for Amy to deal with the demons of her childhood, and I'm not really sure it succeeds.

★★★★★★

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

The remarkable life story of the world renowned physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking who was diagnosed with motor-neurone disease at the age of 21 years and defying medical prognosis of an imminent death went on to publish world-changing theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, turns out to be one of the most tender and romantic movies of the year.

This new biopic from James Marsh (Oscar Winning Director of documentary 'Man On The Wire') is based on the second biography written by Stephen Hawkins ex-wife Jane and focuses very much on how she enabled him to lead a full and rich life in spite of his crippling illness. Their story really starts when Hawkins, having won a First Honors Degree at Oxford University, chooses to transfer to Cambridge to do his post-graduate doctorate. Here he meets and immediately falls in love with Jane despite the fact that they seem like total opposites : she is studying poetry and is devout churchgoer.  When Hawkins discovers this last point he dryly remarks that he has a problem 'with the whole celestial-dictator premise'. Somehow their marked differences seem to actually unify them, partly because one of the Hawkins's strongest traits is his ability to be open to changing his opinions. None so more apparent when later on in life when he contradicted one of his most important theories and did a complete U-turn and actually proved that he got it wrong the first time around.

When Hawkins is forced to realise that all his clumsy physical missteps that culminate with him hitting his head during a sidewalk fall are because of the fact that he has this debilitating illness, it's Jane who has the inner strength to push Hawkins into both marriage and also into not giving up. Despite the fact the Doctors have declared that he will be dead in two years, the couple start a family whilst Hawkins finally starts his Dissertation. 

Hawkins rapid physical deterioration makes him completely dependent on Jane for even the most basic daily bodily functions. The only parts that seem untouched by this particularly pernicious illness are his brain and his wit, both of which sustain and enable him to be the brilliant and very funny quick-witted man that he is. However, with both her husband needing 24/7 help and two children to bring up too, Jane needs some support and relief.  She finds this in her local Church after joining the choir led by a handsome newly widower man.  Jonathan, still bereft after his recent loss, is at a loose-end so is happy to help Jane out with some of the tougher tasks keeping her family functioning which inevitably draws the two of them closer.  So much so that when she later gives birth to another son, there is talk about who the real father is.

By the time that Jane hires a nurse to help Stephen after he can no longer speak, their marriage which had finally been strained to near breaking point, now slowly moves to a separation and eventually divorce just as the movie reaches it's end.  There is one final scene of a graceful reconciliation when Hawkins is invited to Buckingham Palace to receive his Order of Merit from the Queen, which seems a fitting finish.

Marsh doesn't discount the vast body of Hawkins's work in the story but he places it a context that makes it easier to understand for those of us that cannot comprehend the many complexities of 'A Brief History of Time' and all his subsequent intellectual theories. He clearly shows the vast importance of Hawkins findings on blackholes and the boundaries of the universe with the reactions of the academic world and the acclaim and fame that accompanies all of this.

By focusing on the highly personal story of this remarkable man who could never had any of his achievements without the unselfish love and devotion of the exceptional woman, he gives us one of the most unique and compelling behind-the-scenes biopics ever. What raises it to being such an awe-inspiring movie however is the electrifying impassioned performance of young Eddie Redmayne as Hawkins.The defining trait of how brilliant he is in this role is that he has captured the very essence and soul of this great man as his body not only stops functioning but becomes so deformed. Without even realising it, you quickly appreciate that he has gone way beyond just capturing Hawkins's physical decline in this deeply thoughtful career-defining performance that is nothing short of breath-taking. He is so wonderfully brilliant that the images of him lighting up the screen remain with you for days after. He should start practising his acceptance speech for the many Awards that he will now be showered with.

Felicity Jones gives a quiet and powerful performance as Jane Hawkins, and there is impressive list of talented supporting actors like Charlie Cox, David Thewlis, Emily Watson and Simon McBurney.  

The script by writer (and novelist) Antony McCarten is peppered with some perfect moments of real humor and wit and it makes this such a uplifting tale even in the darker moments of the story. Evidently Jane Hawkin's first biography was written immediately after the divorce was not quite so full of sweetness and light, so it's probably a good thing they passed on to the happier, and presumably the truer,  version of this story.

Thanks to Eddie Redmayne,  this period drama will definitely feature on a few 'best movie of the year' lists.

★★★★★★★★★

KORENGAL

'Restropo' was an extraordinary documentary which was the ultimate in cinema vérité and the work of two intrepid and fearless filmmakers who chose to live through a grueling 14-month tour of duty with a company of American solders in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. It won Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger a Best Documentary Oscar Nomination but in 2011 only days after the Awards Ceremony Hetherington was killed whilst covering the war in Libya.

This new movie follows up on the Restrepo story using footage that the filmmakers shot back in 2007 and 2008 when they were with the Battle Company of the 503rd Infantry Regiment who were stationed in the remote Korengal Valley (known as the Valley of Death).  This time there is less emphasis on the daily gun battles but more focus on how these very young men have turned themselves into professional soldiers operating in the most dangerous of conditions.

Watching these young combatants bond so closely together thousands of miles away from home and knowing that each day may be their last, is a very powerful and moving sight. Some of them who have already served several tours of duty remark that no relationship they have in their lives back home will ever be this close. Junger films them off-duty rough-horsing with each other or just letting them wax lyrically about being trigger happy with the favorite choice of guns, and its tough to remember that some of them are still teenagers. One soldier takes pride in showing where his helmet was once the struck by a sniper's bullet, whilst another admits that he thinks it is always fun shooting people.

Junger takes pains to be completely unpolitical about the regions instability but the soldiers although willingly doing their duty to protect the valley's inhabitants, make no attempt to disguise both their distrust and distaste that these same men, happy enough to take American aid, also conspire with the Taliban too.  

Just like in their first movie, the most riveting parts are the 'de-briefing' interviews that Junger and Hetherington filmed with the men in Italy as they were en-route home.  Away from the battlefield their emotions range the whole gamut from those of regret and fear to an inexplicable longing to go back to the Korengal to do yet another tour of duty.  In fact somewhere along the line a point is made that the soldiers who just do a single tour before leaving the Army are usually the ones that have great psychological problems and greater difficulty in adjusting to a normal civilian life, than the ones that go back several times. 

It was probably not Junger's intention at all but the the overall message that one cannot help but take away from seeing 'Korengal' is the sheer futility of war in general, and this one in particular. However, lest we forget the ultimate risk that these men take, he includes footage of the memorial service of Juan Sebastián Restrepo one of the very first casualties and who this base is named after.

P.S. This exceptional movie will be the last of its kind that we can expect from Junger, as he revealed at the Screening I attended that since Hetherington's untimely death, he has stopped covering wars.

★★★★★★★★★

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

Marathon runner Otto Wall was so obsessed with his training schedule and winning trophies to impress Edie his young daughter, that he failed to notice that his wife Annie didn't share his enthusiasm for his passion or for him either.  When she asked him to join her for a session with a Therapist that he was even unaware she had been seeing, he was totally shocked to find himself ambushed and emphatically told that their marriage was over and he must move out of the family home immediately.

Now in his late 30's and struggling to come terms with not just the fact that he was single again, but also that he still had no idea why Annie was so unhappy and what had gone wrong in what had been a drama-free relationship.  He has to learn how to find women to go out with, and just as important, also what to actually do on each date particular as he makes some odd choices for potential partners. At least sex comes easy for him.  First with Stephanie a hot old flame who is recently divorced and is just looking for a no-strings fling, then there is young Mildred who likes to sit naked opposite him and get off without either of them touching each other. Then there is Debbie Spanger the fervent bible-basher who instant regrets how tempted she was to indulge in the ways of the flesh the very next day.

Otto however is really looking for something more stable and long term than these women offer, and he gets quite excited when Lara, an old summer-camp crush suddenly reappears in his life as she could possibly just fit the bill.  The one snag is that this just may just interfere with all his efforts to get his relationship with Edie back on solid ground after she has blatantly sided with her mother after the separation.  

This refreshing new comedy/drama is the directing debut of Angus MacLachlan who wrote the award-winning 'Junebug' back in 2005.  It has imbued this movie with the same intelligent and gentle humor with characters and a plot that is so easy to relate too. The story is told very much from the point of view of Otto a semi-oblivious, but extremely likable man who may just let life slip by, and he is played by Paul Schneider in a delightfully understated performance.  Even when he is finally faced with the fact that Annie his self-centered and manipulative wife had been having an affair for almost a year his anger seems to dissipate quite quickly as if he suddenly realizes he never really knew her at all, and anyway he has finally figured what he wants out of life.

Great supporting cast with Melanie Lynskey as Annie, talented young  Audrey P. Scott as Edie, Amy Sedaris in a very brief cameo as Otto's boss, and Heather Graham in one of her far-too-infrequent roles as the sexy divorcee.  Kudos though to veteran actress Celia Weston in her hilarious scene-stealing turn as the manipulative and interfering Therapist.

This is the kind of delightful low-profile insightful independent movie that so deserves an audience beyond the Film Festival circuit and I so hope it finds it.

★★★★★★★★

ST VINCENT

Vincent, with no visible regular means of support and with not a single friend in the world other than Felix his rather mangy Persian cat, is a cantankerous old drunk.  When Maggie a newly single mother and Oliver her 12 year old son move in to the house next door, things get off to bad start between them and him, and it looks like they will be added to the long list of people who Vincent loathes.  Then one day when Oliver gets inadvertently locked out of his house when his mother is trapped at work, and Vincent becomes a reluctant babysitter.  

Always desperately short of cash, mainly due to his very unsuccessful gambling habit, when Vincent r realizes that looking after Oliver every night after school will actually earn him some money, he signs up for the job albeit begrudgingly.  However unbeknown to Maggie, Vincent sees no reason to change his normal routines and drags the boy around all his regular seedy and totally inappropriate haunts. When he discovers that the boy is being picked on at school he teaches Oliver how to break the bully's nose, which to every one's surprise he successfully puts into practice the very next day.

There are two people in Vincent's life that he actually likes. One is a pregnant Russian stripper called Daka, and the second is Sandy a elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's who lives in a Seniors Center.  As the story unfolds it slowly becomes obvious why these woman warrant special attention.  Eventually Vincent also starts to bond with his geeky charge and their relationship is really cemented when Oliver manages to change Vincent's losing streak at the race track. 

The unlikely center strand to the story is that at the Catholic School Oliver attends each of the pupils are encouraged to nominate a person from their everyday lives to be a Saint. Despite his drinking, gambling and hanging out with hookers, Vincent is Oliver's choice for canonization which seems an unrealistic fit with the Catholic Church, but this is the movies after all.

This debut feature written and directed by newbie filmmaker Ted Melfi is purely a vehicle for the great comic actor Bill Murray who specializes in playing old curmudgeons. He is unquestionably funnier than the movie itself, which although has some good comic moments, is just a little to sweet and syrupy which is not a good fit with Vincent's grumpy personna.  Melissa McCarthy has very little to do as Maggie, Naomi Watts as Daka seems as uncomfortable as we are listening to her silly Russian accent, and Chris O'Dowd is painfully unfunny as the School Priest. However young Jaeden Lieberher playing Oliver puts in a fine performance and there was excellent chemistry between him and Mr Murray.

It's not the laugh-out loud comedy it sets out to be , but it will have you grinning from ear to ear some of the time.

★★★★★★

GERONTOPHILIA

Nothing is ever what you expect it to be in the movies. None more so in this new one by edgy Canadian writer/director Bruce La Bruce whose art films usually cross over to pornography on some level. Given the combination of La Bruce's reputation and the controversial subject matter, this one started out against all odds as a very sweet and tender love story, almost shockingly so.  A sort of gay Harold and Maude.

Skinny quiet cute twink Lake has a very pretty girlfriend albeit that she actually seems much more passionate about her favorite female revolutionaries such as Lizzie Borden and Ulrike Meinhof that she calls out to when she is making out with Lake.  He still lives at his home with his needy alcoholic mother who announces one night that she has swapped her job running a Strip Club to managing a Senior Centre. Go figure. She employs Lake to be an Orderly, and given the fact that his own bedroom is decorated by a life size photo of an ancient looking Mahatma Gandhi, we already know that he has a bit of a thing for old geezers.

What we don't know until after he gives a bedbath to one of the 80 year old inhabitants of the Home, that this could be more than just a passing fancy. This particularly elderly gentleman has been drugged into a comatose state, but when Lake helps him avoid being dosed up again, this retired old gay actor becomes a lot more animated, especially when tanked up by the martinis that his young admirer is now serving him up.  When the two of them are discovered together in a state of undress (fortunately the sex is off screen) although people are shocked, there is strangely no drama at all.  Nevertheless Lake still thinks it is necessary to stage an intervention and whisk old Mr Peabody off in the middle of the night so that they can be together for ever.

They undertake a road-trip where at every truck stop and if any man looks at the elderly gent who they assume is Lake's grandfather, he gets very paranoid and jealous and this sweet but silly story starts to lose some of its fine line of credibility.  As much as one wants to like this unusual story, La Bruce has not made it too easy with writing some painfully stilted dialogue that he handed to one very hammy old actor and a very inexperienced emotionless young one. I can only hope that his performance in his old lover's bed wasn't quite so limp. 

P.S. the only full frontal nudity that is in this movie it that of Mr Peabody : be warned.

★★★★★

ROSEWATER

This rather tense drama opens with Iranian journalist  Maziar Bahari been awoken by Investigators in his mother's house in Tehran and subsequently hauled off to jail. Then in a flashback, we see Bahari in London 11 days previously with his heavily pregnant English wife discussing his assignment from Newsweek Magazine to cover the impending Presidential Elections in Iran. They are both aware of the danger particularly as both his late father and sister had both been imprisoned by Ayatollah Khomeini for being communists.

When Bahari arrives in Tehran a chance meeting hooks him up with a young driver who zips him around the city on his motor bike introducing the Journalist to his own liberal minded friends who are concerned that the present corrupt regime will rig the Elections to insure that their Candidate running against the incumbent President fails completely. When their worse fears are realised and the Government falsely declares that the President has been reelected with a landslide majority, the streets of the city are overrun with hundreds of thousands of protesters.  The authorities react by sending out armed troopers to fire into the crowds, and when Bahari captures some of this on video which is shown on US TV, he has become a wanted man.

He is thrown into solitary confinement in Evin prison and is accused of being a spy for the CIA, the MI6, or any other Western organisation his captors claim are set on bringing the downfall of the Iranian Nation. Its a combination of paranoia and panic as the Investigator clutches at straws to make his claims stick. Bahari is blindfolded most of the time, and he establishes some sort of relationship with his tormentor..... known as Rosewater for his predilection for spraying himself liberally with the scent .... who seems to bumble his way through their daily sessions of interrogation without gaining any information or a 'confession' from Bahari after several weeks.

As time passes and 'Rosewater' is pressured by his Superior to get a 'result' he taunts Bahari more and deprives him of anything to read and feeds him with ant infested food, but beyond depriving him of his liberty and hope, he surprisingly never really resorts to physical torture that one may have expected 

This re-telling of the ghastly imprisonment of London based Iranian Newsweek Journalist Maziar Bahari in a Tehran jail for 118 days is the directing/writing debut of TV journalist Jon Stewart who's own celebrity rather overshadows that of his subject. Whilst Stewart does an admirable job, he still doesn't quite succeed in overcoming his main difficulty in maintaining the tension in a true story the greater part of which is just about these two men in jail, that we already know the outcome off, and that Bahari will survive. Gael Garcia Bernal however does an excellent job portraying the scared imprisoned journalist, and Shohrer Aghdashloo steals all her scenes in the cameo role of his mother.

★★★★★★★