RIP Sid Caesar

AMC's The Walking Dead - "After" - TV Review

I bought the Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1 after Season 3, and there are lots of differences between the comics and the TV show. Up to this point in the comics, for instance, Dale and Andrea are still alive, and Merle & Daryl Dixon were creations solely for the TV show. Volume 1 ends right at Season 4's midseason finale, so when I bought Volume 2, I didn't have any idea where it was going to go.

This week's episode was very faithful to the comics, and as such, I really enjoyed it, and I'm excited for where the TV show's going to go from here. Carl's younger in the comics, and Chandler Riggs is obviously aging faster than the timeline for the show (we're about two years in, timeline-wise).  The character of Carl has evolved and I'm really enjoying it. I've seen a lot of Carl hate online, especially for his bratty behavior this week, but it makes sense for me. Carl's pissed, and teenage boys who are pissed lash out. I like butt-kicking zombie-shooting Carl. He's in a world where a normal childhood will never happen. The boy shot his mother in the head, for crying out loud.

By the end, Carl realized that he's not as tough as he thinks he is and he still needs his dad, and it ended on a hopeful note not only for Carl and Rick discovering they're not alone, but for Michonne to realize she's not going to go back to her unfeeling Season 2 self.

The Walking Dead's never been a perfect series. Season 2 required some endurance, but it all paid off in Season 3, and now I'm excited for where the rest of Season 4 is going to go.

In other TV viewing of mine:

Syfy's HELIX - I've watched the first episode, and I liked it enough to keep watching. It's further down my queue for priority, but I'm intrigued enough to see where it goes. The series takes place in a disease-research facility in Antarctica, where a new, deadly contagion may be on the loose. Billy Campbell (The Killing) stars.

Starz's BLACK SAILS - This felt like Deadwood at Sea more than anything. I like the idea of a young John Silver as part of the crew, and I imagine his path will eventually become the front-front of the series, but this show belongs to Toby Stephens (Die Another Day) as Captain Flint.

Weekend Box Office - 2/9/14

The LEGO Movie is the first big hit of 2014. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller had previous success with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street, and now this. This should make them 3 for 3 in getting sequels made to their movies.

The Monuments Men did okay, considering it opened opposite a juggernaut.  Vampire Academy had bad reviews and poor visibility.  Next week there's Winter's Tale and three 1980's remakes (RoboCop, Endless Love, About Last Night).

It's going to be another good year for animation. Three of the top eight are animation.  (Has to hurt for Jack Ryan to get out-grossed by a throwaway flick like The Nut Job.) Frozen has passed $900 million worldwide.

The Monuments Men - Movie Review

Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Bob Balaban and Dimitri Leonidas.
Directed by George Clooney.

★★½

This is an odd movie. All the ingredients are there to make a classic, a WWII heist thriller, a race-against-time, Over the Hill Gang type yarn. It just felt like key developmental elements were missing.

The Monuments Men was a real group but it was much larger than what the movie portrays. I understand narrative purposes for narrowing it down to eight conglomerate characters, but somewhere in there, director and co-writer Clooney forgot to make most of them characters.  Sure, Bill Murray, John Goodman and Jean Dujardin are good actors, but it's as though those men were told to just show up and "act" without anything to work with.

"George, what's my motivation?"
"Be more Bill Murray-ish."
"Thanks. Thanks for that note."

The opening scenes play like a "We're getting the band back together" montage like this is a sequel to something. Things like this made me wish someone besides Clooney had directed it, someone who could have stepped back and noticed these little problems.

The actual quest of the men is something we grow to care about.  Watching Nazis set fire to art brings the same visceral reaction of the books burning in The Name of the Rose, or the scrolls burning in Agora. Some much history lost.

The actors that come off best, mostly because they have something to work with, are Cate Blanchett as a French secretary working for the Nazis but really helping the underground resistance, and Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville as a recovering alcoholic who sees this mission as a redemptive chance to do something with his life. Kind of cool to see Lord Grantham hanging out with two of the Ocean's 11.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit - Movie Review

Starring Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Kenneth Branagh, Keira Knightley and Colm Feore.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh.

★★★

This is the epitome of the standard, competent spy thriller. Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) is a Cold War hero moved to the 21st century, where Russians are still the main bad guys. This doesn't reignite the franchise any more than the Ben Affleck-led Sum of All Fears in 2001.

But it is in the hands of director Kenneth Branagh, who has shown he knows how to add a little fun to tentpoles. Ryan's origin, recruitment and training are all handled efficiently. When we get to the main case, when a lot of the suspense is happening on computer screens and thumb-drives, the pacing and direction are still tight. Branagh's got that Putin dead-eye stare down, and Costner's a fine mentor for Pine.  I didn't have a problem with Keira Knightley's acting but her character didn't feel consistent.

Pine's good, and I wouldn't mind seeing another installment, but based on the box office, I think that might not happen. It needed to gross $170 million worldwide to justify a sequel and today is when it passes $100 million.

The Place Beyond the Pines - DVD Review

Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta, Dane Dehaan, Emory Cohen, Bruce Greenwood, Mahershala Ali, Harris Yulin, Ben Mendelsohn and Robert Clohessy. Directed by Derek Cianfrance.

★★★

Ryan Gosling's been playing a lot of screwed-up guys lately. It must feed some need inside him. I picture him with a summer cabin with a torture room in the basement.

Here he plays a desperate father who turns to bank robbery to provide for his son.  His path will eventually cross with Bradley Cooper, a cop with a young son of his own.  We see their story for the first two-thirds of the movie, and I enjoyed every aspect of that.

Then it flash-forwards sixteen years to follow the sons, and we see how the choices of the fathers have affected their sons, and here's where the movie went a little sideways for me. It puts together some events that felt too contrived, and it took me out of the movie. There's a real cinema-verite vibe going on with it, and overall I liked it. I just thought the last third weakened the power from the first two acts.

American Horror Story: Coven - TV Review

If you're to judge a series by its season finale, then AHS: Coven was one pretty lame season. Like previous years, it was uneven but with plenty to enjoy, but I felt satisfied with the first two editions. The finale was fitting for the first one and perfect for the second one. Coven felt like the writers ran out of ideas a couple episodes too soon. The finale was a mess. With so many character who died and came back to life, the actual deaths had no impact. It was great to see Jessica Lange, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, etc., act off of each other. I just hope for next season they have a little better idea of what the end game is.

Weekend Box Office - 2/2/14

For the weekend of January 31-February 2, Ride Along has managed to stay on top for the third week in a row.  As we speak, Kevin Hart is furiously being edited into 300: Rise of An Empire, and he will now be Electro's sidekick in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Not really, but he seems ready to take that Melissa McCarthy step into stardom. The next Chris Tucker is here.

As far as new releases go, audiences didn't care about Zac Efron's Awkward Moment or to see how Kate Winslet celebrated Labor Day.

I think The Lego Movie is set up to open huge this Friday, and The Monuments Men will be a strong #2.  Vampire Academy will bomb.  Then next week we have three 1980's remakes opening. About Last Night (starring Kevin Hart) should have the biggest opening, RoboCop will open flat, and I can't really tell if anyone's intrigued by Endless Love. Never saw the 1981 original with Brooke Shields (and young Tom Cruise and James Spader in small parts), and the preview looks pretty generic now.

Seven of the top seventeen movies this weekend are nominated for Best Picture of 2013.

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014

Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, has died from an apparent drug overdose. They found a syringe in his arm and an envelope containing what they believe is heroin. We'll know more in the next few hours and days.

Seems like such a waste. He's been to drug rehab on at least two prior occasions.

He won the Oscar in 2006 for his work in Capote, and he's been in films as varied as Twister, The Big Lebowski, Boogie Nights, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Magnolia, Red Dragon, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Along Came Polly, Doubt, Moneyball, The Master, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. He's supposed to be in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay I & II, and I'm sure we'll hear soon if he'd finished his scenes or not, if they'll have to do some creative editing, or if they'll just replace him.

He seems to have a hard-living look about him. Even in his 30's he looked like he was 50. Drug addiction's a scary thing, and unfortunately when you have money, it's an easier beast to feed.

My Top Ten Films of 2013

I haven't seen Rush, Before Midnight, Enough Said, 20 Feet from Stardom, and some of these other films making top-ten lists, but of the 101 films I have seen, these were the best.

Just Okay:

Despicable Me 2
Epic
The Heat
Lee Daniels' The Butler
Monsters University
Nebraska
Pacific Rim
Star Trek into Darkness
This is the End

Good but not in my top 20:

42
All Is Lost
August: Osage County
Blue Jasmine
The Croods
Dallas Buyers Club
Ender's Game
The Great Gatsby
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Inside Llewyn Davis
Iron Man 3
Mama
Oblivion
Out of the Furnace
The Place Beyond the Pines
Side Effects
Stoker
Thor: The Dark World
Warm Bodies
What Maisie Knew
The Wolverine
The World's End

Honorable Mention:

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - I almost put it in my Second Best Ten list, but I can't get over how distracting and blatant the product placement was for E-Harmony, Papa John's and Cinnabun. It felt like Ben Stiller was striving for something that would be artistic yet mainstream, which is what makes that aspect so disappointing. Otherwise it's beautiful and makes me want to visit Iceland.

My Second Best Ten
(11-20, alphabetical):

Blackfish - This indictment of SeaWorld is tightly paced and a disturbing examination of how such confining captivity helped turn an orca into a serial killer.

The Conjuring - The best scary movie in a long time.

Her - Quirky, offbeat look at what our technology-saturated near-future may look like, about a man who falls in love with his artificially-intelligent operating system. It's as if Joaquin Phoenix never took two years off to pretend he was crazy.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - Francis Lawrence wound up being the right director to pick and carry the ball that started with Gary Ross. It's more focused, the action's better, the world's a little more realized, and even though the second book isn't as good as the first book, the second movie is better than the first movie.

Lone Survivor - A movie that's pro-soldier without being pro-war. This true story gives us a you-are-there feel to an Afghan operation gone wrong, with an unflinching look at just how hard it is to kill a man.

Philomena - What could have been a BBC TV-movie is elevated by the performances and chemistry of Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. It's not as simple as it may seem on the surface.

Saving Mr. Banks - It has more gravitas than the marketing would suggest, with several flashbacks to Colin Farrell as P.L. Travers' loving, fatally flawed father. It's not just about the conflict of collaboration and protecting an artist's vision, but about forgiving those we love. Emma Thompson should have been nominated for her work as Travers. Yeah, it took liberties with Travers and Walt Disney, but for what it actually is, I was touched.

The Wolf of Wall Street - This 3-hour tribute to amorality keeps growing on me. Martin Scorsese is in prime Goodfellas mode, but instead of mobsters, we follow brokers, who can be just as heartless and dangerous. Leonardo DiCaprio is ferocious in the role of Jordan Belfort, a remorseless s.o.b. who lied and cheated his way into millions of dollars. Good luck to the ClearPlay filter people keeping this longer than an hour.

World War Z - The undead overrun cities like over-angry army ants in this new take on the zombie apocalypse. Brad Pitt makes for a fine host with whom we want to globe-trot, and rather than bursting open for a third-act climax, it tightens into one of suspense, which makes the whole movie better.

You're Next - It may look like a typical home-invasion thriller from afar, but the filmmakers have more in mind, with sibling rivalry that doesn't pause even as people start dying, and one character who isn't who she seems once push comes to shove.  One of the funnier movies I saw last year.

And now...

... my Top Ten

10. FROZEN - Disney Animation has stepped up its quality lately, and this is no exception. It's a full-on musical, and rather than be about a girl, a boy, and a villain, the story centers around two sisters, and the problems that arise when one has the power to turn everything cold. The soundtrack's good, the cast is great (for their voice quality rather than their marquee value), and while we may know where it will "end" end, it takes an unexpected turn or two to get there.  Pixar can be Pixar, but Disney animation has lately rediscovered its own voice.

9. THE ACT OF KILLING - This is one of those documentaries that feels like it could help change the course of a nation's history. Reforms are underway in Indonesia, but this project started years before those began.  Director Joshua Oppenheimer dared get in with some of the mass-murderers from the 1965 uprising that resulted in over 1 million deaths, and had since been whitewashed by that nation. It really felt like what Germany might be like in the 1980's if the Nazis had won.

As these guys were big movie fans, Oppenheimer and his crew took the approach that they'd have the original guys recreate what it was like in 1965, show on film how they killed people. They play along, and at the time to now they saw themselves as Jimmy Cagney, the Godfather, etc. They were gangsters, and they repeat throughout the movie that the word for gangster originated from "free man." To them, gangsterism is freedom. Freedom for themselves to kill whoever they want with no consequence, anyway.

Half of the crew is Anonymous, undoubtedly for fear of reciprocity from the men in power, most of whom have zero remorse and zero conscience about what they did. But good luck to Indonesia.

8. UPSTREAM COLOR - This experimental montage of a film worked for me, as I don't think this story could be told any other way. Writer/director Shane Carruth has gone to strange lengths in this metaphor for connections we have in life. Its elliptical narrative keeps the surface plot ambiguous, and to make it any clearer would damage the effect.

7. FRUITVALE STATION - I can think of no better way of honoring Oscar Grant III's life on film than by just showing a slice of his life, a normal, imperfect man trying to do right by his daughter, not knowing that he has less than 24 hours to live due to a stupid, overzealous cop. Writer/director Ryan Coogler is a talent to watch, and I'm glad this role is going to lead to bigger and better things for Michael B. Jordan.

6. PRISONERS - There's a lot going on in this kidnapping drama, and it's highlighted by strong "wouldn't mind if they were nominated" work from Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. It's about how far parents will go to protect their children, and Jackman is a brutal force, letting his beastly side come out in scary ways that Wolverine couldn't touch.

5. MUD - This coming-of-age drama in the rural South from Jeff Nichols evokes a Twain-like ability to comment on the complexity of adult behavior through the eyes of trusting youth.  This movie invites you to take off your boots and sit a spell, soaking in the atmosphere while never being dull.  Matthew McConaughey once again gives a good performance as a man being chased by his past, and the film has a lot to say about the power and fragility of love.

4. AMERICAN HUSTLE - David O. Russell's becoming the king of ensembles. After The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, this feels like a capper to a trilogy where he has announced his arrival. Everyone's having fun in this tale of con-artists, politicians, double-crosses and ambition. I enjoyed everyone but was most impressed by Amy Adams.

3. CAPTAIN PHILLIPS - Tom Hanks may have two Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, but I think is the best role of his career. Amazed that he missed out on getting nominated.  Director Paul Greengrass's urgent style compliments the tense proceedings.

2. GRAVITY - I hope you saw it in 3D on the biggest screen possible. This isn't a film to watch on an iPad. Director Alfonso Cuaron makes us feel like we're floating in space next to Sandra Bullock.  It's a very basic tale of survival where everything that can go wrong does, but in an age where the quality of television looked like it might surpass film, Cuaron reminds us why movies still rule.

1. 12 YEARS A SLAVE - It may not be one people watch over and over, but it feels like it'll stand the test of time as the landmark cinematic portrait of slavery, just as Roots does for television.  It's faithful to the autobiography of Solomon Northrup (which I read after), a free black man living in 1841 New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South.  Through the point of view of a protagonist who knows freedom, it allows everyone in the audience to feel the injustice of his plight, of this peculiar institution that was treated as normal by so many, from the otherwise good-hearted and pious (Benedict Cumberbatch) to the demented and cruel (Michael Fassbender).

August: Osage County - Movie Review

Starring Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Sam Shepard and Misty Upham.
Directed by John Wells.

★★★

You can tell this comedy/drama came from a stage play, and while some of its scenes are expanded out, most of it takes place inside the house, the deep house where three sisters grew up under a kind but alcoholic father Bev Weston (Sam Shepard) and a monstrous pill-popping mother Violet (Meryl Streep).

When Daddy goes missing, the three daughters - Barbara, Ivy, Karen - come home to offer support and dread the fights they know will happen.  Barbara (Julia Roberts) comes with her husband (Ewan McGregor) and teenage daughter (Abigail Breslin), though they are separated due to his recent infidelity.  Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) is the middle child who's never found anyone but plans to announce her new beau soon. Karen (Juliette Lewis) is the flighty youngest who's had numerous boyfriends/fiances but thinks she's found the right one (Dermot Mulroney), even though for him, she'd be Wife #4.

Violet's sister (Margo Martindale) comes with her husband (Chris Cooper) and son (Benedict Cumberbatch) as well, and meanwhile there's a Cheyenne housekeeper (Misty Upham) Bev hired right before he disappeared. Got our cast of characters straight?

Once everyone makes their way in and assemble, there's about a half-hour scene at the dinner table that's filled with verbal jousting and prodding, and years of resentment start to boil to the surface. Violet is an Oxycontin Joan Crawford, and she snipes sometimes just to see what the reaction will be.

There were times Streep was a little too hammy for me, but more often there are scenes where she just commands the screen, and yet she's a generous co-star. Every actor gets to have their moment, and most impressive to me was Julia Roberts. This is my favorite performance of hers to date. You can see all the anger and resentment from her childhood manifest in the vein popping on her forehead, and when she unleashes, there is genuine pain lashing out.

Another standout for me was Nicholson. She's mainly known for her TV work (Ally McBeal, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Boardwalk Empire) and here she's the wallflower/good-girl who's had enough of everyone taking her for granted. I would have been happy if she was a Best Supporting Actress nominee next to Roberts. (She'll also be on Sundance Channel's upcoming Red Road series with Jason Momoa.)

Maybe in the play Ivy was the oldest sister. There's a line in there where Barbara says Ivy is almost 50, and Nicholson's clearly younger than Roberts, so it pulled me out a bit. If they'd just changed the line to "over 40" it would've still been funny and I wouldn't be dedicating a pragraph to it.

Chris Cooper gets a great monologue in there. Cumberbatch shows off what a chameleon actor he can be. Martindale, Mulroney, Breslin, Lewis were all good. McGregor didn't quite work for me. He's just never been able to nail down an American accent and it's distracting.

Fruitvale Station - DVD Review

Starring Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer and Melonie Diaz.
Directed by Ryan Coogler.

★★★★

For a couple minutes after it was over, I just sat there, basking in the silence.

In 2009, a police officer shot and killed Oscar Grant III, who was laying on his stomach in the process of getting handcuffed. The officer later explained he thought he'd pulled out his Taser gun and accidentally pulled out his handgun. The event was recorded on a few smartphones, and outrage over the incident quickly spread.

Grant's story is another example of an unjustified death of a young black man, and had this movie been made 20 years ago, it'd probably be about the white lawyer fighting for justice in Grant's death. What we get here is the last 24 hours in Grant's life. We get to watch a normal, imperfect guy just living his life leading up a senseless, stupid mistake.

Michael B. Jordan (Chronicle, That Awkward Moment) is very comfortable in the role of Grant. Sometimes it feels like a hidden-footage film with us just following Grant around. We see him meet up with his friends, call his mother, play with his daughter, and just living life up to New Year's Eve. This subtle style just makes his fate more heart-breaking. Very moving.

And keep an eye out for writer/director Ryan Coogler. This is a fantastic full-length feature debut.

Blue Jasmine - DVD Review

Starring Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K., Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg. Directed by Woody Allen.

★★★

Woody Allen may be a pedophile-scumbag, but he's a good writer. It'd be nice to see if he's capable of writing a movie that doesn't have infidelity.

Cate Blanchett is the star of the show here as Jasmine, an upper-crust wife whose life is shattered after her philandering multi-millionaire husband (Alec Baldwin) goes to jail for his Bernie Madoff-level of fraud. The movie goes back and forth between two times, before the fraud was discovered, and how Jasmine's trying to piece her life together now. She goes to move in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), whose own life (and marriage) were ruined when they put all their money into one of her husband's schemes.

Blanchett earned her Golden Globe and SAG wins for this role. It's a great part, but she also makes the most of it. Sometimes good parts float other boats, and all the other actors play well off of her.

Seriously, is there a Woody Allen movie that didn't have infidelity in it?

Weekend Box Office - 1/26/14

Ride Along remained #1 at the box-office.

I, Frankenstein was the only new challenger, and moviegoers could smell the stench a mile away.  It should plummet as ignominiously as The Legend of Hercules.

Her - Movie Review

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlet Johansson, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt and Portia Doubleday.
Directed by Spike Jonze.

★★★½

Jonze is a unique voice in cinema. He's only directed four movies, but each one (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, Her) goes places we don't expect.

This explores a near-future that shows the natural progression of the over-saturation of social media, where people are more and more socially awkward yet yearn for genuine human interaction.  Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a man who works at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, a company that writes heart-felt hand-written letters from one person to another. I love the irony of that, and yet it's something that seems like it would eventually be a successful site.

Theodore is one of the first customers of the new Artificial Intelligence Operating System, about ten generations past Siri.  Theodore's personalized OS is Samantha (voices by Scarlett Johansson), and she is programmed to fit Theodore's needs and personality, but as an AI, she learns and progresses in her own right.

It's funny, it's touching, and it's a movie Ron Swanson would hate.  "Just date a real woman, son." I've seen a lot of good movies lately. If only Hollywood would release them all year round.

Lone Survivor - Movie Review

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana, Alexander Ludwig, Yousuf Azami, Ali Suliman and Jerry Ferrara.  Directed by Peter Berg.

★★★½

The advertising keeps quoting Bill Simmons calling it the best war movie since Saving Private Ryan. Simmons is a sports guy, so it just shows how insignificant movie critics have become, at least to the marketing department. I'd say it's just a notch below Kathryn Bigelow's efforts, but it's worthy to compare to Black Hawk Down.

It's based on Marcus Luttrell's best-seller about the failed Operation Red Wings that resulted in the deaths of 19 servicemen. It's a tribute to those men, and it finds a way to be pro-soldier without being pro-war. It's angering to see how hard it is to become a SEAL, and how weird the rules of engagement are in Afghanistan, and how so many more lives would have been saved if they just had better equipment.

The soldiers' bodies take quite a bit of abuse, and from what I've read, they were pretty accurate about it. The comraderie of the four soldiers (Wahlberg, Kitsch, Hirsch, Foster) is engaging, and when the bad stuff starts happening, we still hope somehow they'll escape their fate. Kitsch has shown he might have a future in movies after all.

The Act of Killing - Movie Review

Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer.

★★★★

I'm not that familiar with Indonesia, I'll admit, but my goodness, this movie opened my eyes and made me want to learn more.

Indonesia went through a violent revolution in the 1960's, and an attempted Communist uprising was squashed, squashed so thoroughly it would never rise again, squashed because those fighting against the Communists were so brutal and sadistic that over a million people were killed.

The killers never faced any trial, felt any repercussions. Indonesia existed with the mantra of "The only good Communist is a dead Communist" and guys who enjoyed torturing and killing were able to do so with impunity.

Forty years later, a filmmaker approached some of the killers with an idea - they'd make a movie where they'd re-enact what they did, and they're given license to do it however they wish. What follows is so surreal. I know we're just getting a slice of life here, but imagine if Hitler had won World War II and let Al Capone run America. That's what Indonesia feels like in this movie.

These remorseless killers are now fathers and grandfathers. They still openly joke about all the people they killed. But the more they get into the project, well, it's remarkable how open they are, and where the journey takes them.

Philomena - Movie Review

Starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.
Directed by Stephen Frears.

★★★½

The Magdalene Sisters was a very powerful film exposing the horrors of the Magdalene asylums run by the Catholic Church, but it was also clearly made by someone who was furious with the Church. This film takes a more temperate, patient approach, and the issues are much more complicated than "nuns are evil."

Judi Dench plays Philomena Lee, a woman who confesses something to her daughter that she hadn't told anyone. When she was a teenage girl in 1952 Ireland, she'd become pregnant, and she was sent to a Magdalene asylum where they forced her to give her baby up for adoption. It was now his 50th birthday.

Steve Coogan plays Martin Sixsmith, a former BBC reporter who decides to taker her story as a "human interest" piece, even though the thought nauseates him. The two of them go back and forth between buddy comedy and moving drama, as they try to track down her son.

It's a great examination of where faith and forgiveness, without letting anyone off the hook either. It rises and falls on the chemistry of Dench and Coogan, and they're great. Coogan co-wrote it, and he's given himself probably his best dramatic part to date.

I saw it at the $2 theater. If it's still around, do yourself a favor and catch one of this year's Best Picture nominees on the big screen.