The Class (Entre les murs) (France) (Canal+/Sony Pictures Classics) (2008) ****1/2 Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Lauren Cantet Cast: Francois Begaudeau
As The Class starts and you meet Francois, teaching French in a poor Paris suburb, populated mainly with immigrants of a variety of origins, you may think you know his character and you know where the movie will go: Francois is the french counterpart of Mark Thackeray (To Sir, With Love) or John Keating (Dead Poets Society). Correct. And wrong at the same time.
What makes Entre les murs different from the classic classroom movies is that all its characters are ultimately, deeply flawed. On one hand we have the children who at ages 13-15 already carry the stigma of their social status, of their ethnicity, of being judged before they are listened to. They are not just poor victims of circumstances though. They have a choice and a window of opportunity which some take, but most ignore. On the other hand, the teachers. They are, by the nature of their job idealists at heart but, after a few years of "fighting" troublesome pupils with little aspirations and no apparent respect for anything, become more cynical by the day.
And amongst them, Francois is the both the biggest idealist and perhaps the most flawed of all. He is rarely phased by his students insolence. He turns it onto them and uses it as a pretext to teach lessons in grammar and vocabulary. He teases back his students knowing that the most important thing is to get them involved in the class. He continues to learn from his students as much as they do from him. However, he is only human. And the kids are... real kids. Even though they may respect him at times, they will continue fighting, arguing, both amongst themselves and with him - after all at age 14, it's always back to kids vs. teachers. Francois can lose his temper and say things a teacher should never say. That only increases the rift. Some may be hurt in the process. But life moves on. Francois loves his kids and never wants to give up on them. They appreciate him but how often can a teacher change someones life? Maybe he will help a few. But there will be no standing on the desk screaming "Oh Captain, my Captain!" as a sign of loyalty to his efforts.
Francois Begaudeau plays the character that he created for his best-selling novel, inspired from his own life. The students are real students and the Cantet frames The Class almost as a documentary, filming through the entire course of a school year. All that, adds up to a Palme d'Or at Cannes and to one of the best movies of 2008.
RocknRolla (UK) (Warner Bros) (2008) **1/2 Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Guy Ritchie Cast: Toby Kebbel, Johan van Vuuren, Tom Wilkinson, Gerard Butler, Jeremy Piven, Thandie Newton, Karel Roden
Guy Ritchie may end up chasing his Lock Stock and, especially, Snatch fame for a long time. After an effort that noone really understood (Revolver), Ritchie goes back to the happenstance driven mobster genre, where several paths intersect in quasi-random ways, in a world that's toppling with deceit, violence and dry wit.
However, RocknRolla, while getting closer to Ritchie's successful early movies and having a great cast (how refreshing it is to see Tom Wilkinson as a big mobster), does not really manage to even compete with some of the newer entries in the genre that clearly also draw their inspiration from Ritchie's early work: Lucky Number Slevin or Layer Cake.
Finally, if you're a fan of Ritchie or the genre, then definitely watch RocknRolla. Otherwise make sure you don't miss this year's great In Bruges.
Looking forward however, to next year's Ritchie project: Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. That should be an interesting departure for Ritchie!
The Reader (USA/Germany) (Weinstein Co) (2008) ***1/2 Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Stephen Daldry Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Kate Winslet, David Kross
Every year has its "holocaust movie". Or two. And who other than the Weinstein Brothers to produce it and push it forward all the way to a Best Picture nomination? Add to it Kate Winslet naked for half the movie and looking old for the other half, and you have the prototypical Oscar nominee.
Oh, you will say, he's already made up his mind that he will hate this movie, before even watching it. No, not at all. And if nothing else, for no other reason that it was produced by two important man that passed away this year, as the movie was wrapping up: Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.
So, why should we watch The Reader? I'd say watch it, because it is the kind of movie which, if it was entirely produced in Germany, it would have been easily considered on par with and in the tradition of Sophie Scholl or The Downfall. It tells the story of Hanna Schmitz, an illiterate German woman, who rather volunteers to work as guard in concentration camps and later risk life imprisonment than reveal her lack of education. Michael Berg (Fiennes) is a young lawyer who, given his previous love affair with Hanna, manages to uncover her secret and is faced with a rather impossible dilemma: should he reveal the secret, realizing that Hanna would rather be accused of multiple murders than live in shame for her lack of education?
There are no winners in this movie in the end. Both Hanna and Michael are characters whose lives end up far from happiness. There is no feelgood sensation after the movie but, there is also no major lesson learned. It is simply the story of two tormented, ill-adapted souls. Winslet turns quite possibly one of her best acting performances as she blends into the background, becoming this low-intelect, hard working, proud woman who takes her job serious. Sometimes though even a simple camp guard job can lead to really hard decisions for Hanna: what do you do when your prisoners are locked in a burning building? Do you let them out and risk them running away? Or do you keep them in?
Rachel Getting Married (USA) (2008) *** Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Jonathan Demme Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mather Zickel
Anne Hathaway can be a lot more than a pretty, ditsy wanna-be fashion assistant (Devil wears Prada) and she proves her talent delivering one of the best performances of the year in Rachel Getting Married. Unfortunately, the movie takes a very dramatic premise - a young girl trying to rebuild her life after a reckless youth that lead directly to her little brother's death, and mashes it into a kumbaya hodge-podge of a multi-cultural, multi-racial family that has, at the same time, both all the dysfunction you would expect and all the proper love of life and diversity that, of course, the entire world would be better off having.
Rachel Getting Married is not a bad movie, but it could have been of those "little movie that could" which would deserve a mention on everyone's top 10 list, except it just falls short for me. If you can ignore all the contrivances though, you may consider it a small gem with plenty of drama and enough (dry) humor. Regardless, watch it for a glimpse at what Hathaway has to offer in the future.
Happy-Go-Lucky (UK) (Film4) (2008) *** Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Mike Leigh Cast: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman
Poppy is contagiously optimistic, no matter what life throws at her. She's also extremely quirky, often annoying in her attempts to make others smile a little. But she is neither naive, nor blind. She chooses to be optimistic about life despite being a single woman approaching 35, still looking for a "good man", she understands that the bursts of violence that one of the kids she teaches in elementary school come from some abuse that he is facing at home; she also senses the loneliness, the anger and the cry for help that Scott, her driving teacher, is trying to express. She is even taken aback as she understands the depths of drama that other people deal with, whether it is self-inflicted or dictated by life circumstances beyond their control.
Happy-Go-Lucky is a movie about wide-eyed, perennial optimism. And Sally Hawkins embodies this spirit with all her being, in a performance that earned her multiple praise and awards, including a Golden Globe. While everyone is discovering her now, Hawkins has over 20 roles in her career, including previous collaborations with Mike Leigh (Vera Drake). What remains to be seen is if she can use this role to propel her career or she will become typecast in quirky, romantic comedies. We hope for the former.
Doubt (USA) (Miramax) (2008) *** Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: John Patrick Shanley Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis
I cannot remember in recent years a high profile movie, at least as far as Oscar hopes are concerned, with a worse trailer. Having seen the overlong trailer so many times in the months prior to the movie's release, there seemed very little left to discover in the movie itself. Meryl Streep plays the strict nun, Sister Aloysius, bent on enforcing rules in the school and on proving that the pastor (Hoffman) has had inappropriate relationship with one of the altar boys. Streep is stricter than she was in Devil wears Prada, Hoffman is full of pathos in defending himself, Amy Adams is the ingenue.
And I was right - there is really not much to the story other than what you see in the trailer. Thankfully for Doubt, however, there is a lot more nuance than the trailer shows when it comes to the acting. Streep may go back to a repertoire of tricks, gestures and face expressions that she has mastered down to an art, but she can still make a character powerful, interesting and even somewhat nuanced. Hoffman has the same talent; Adams is growing into a talented actress proving that her stand-out performance in Junebug was no accident; Finally Viola Davis makes pain and desperation visible in her short but powerful scenes.
In the end though, Doubt doesn't quite reach a conclusion and Sister Aloysius's final doubting of her actions does not have nearly the impact that the movie tries to give it. In the end, we're not sure of anything either as viewers. But, at the same time, there are no life-altering decisions made, everyone more or less moves on with their lives and noone is truly affected. In this context, the humbleness of having doubt and the need for not acting without proof is not presented as anything more than a philosophical issue.
Tropic Thunder (USA/Germany) (DreamWorks/Paramount) (2008) ***1/2 Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Ben Stiller Cast: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr, Nick Nolte
Ben Stiller has a lot of fun writing, directing and playing alongside a star-studded cast in one of the wackiest comedies of the year. The script is full of absurd dialogue that is funny on its own, but it is the acting that makes Tropic Thunder an almost must see. Robert Downey, Nick Nolte are strong as expected, but the biggest surprise comes out of Tom Cruise as the money-hungry movie producer Les Grossman. Cruise is so over the top that it takes a couple of scenes to even recognize him, but once you do, you can't take your eyes off of him whenever he's on screen.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so if this doesn't convince you to see the movie, then you probably should skip it:
The Secret of the Grain (La graine et le mulet) (France) (IFC Films) (2007) **** Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Abdel Kechiche Cast: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi
Abdel Kechiche draws on his heritage to literally transport us straight into the middle of a family of Tunisian immigrants and watch their daily routines, their joys and struggles, as if we were sitting at the table with them. This detailed insight could be sufficient to create a compelling story. But The Secret of the Grain does more than that. It is a tribute to the struggle and sacrifices that the immigrant parents had to make in order to provide their children and grandchildren with an opportunity to be fully integrated in society and, despite hardships, always have food on their table.
In this context, Slimane Beiji, the 61 year old father of four, starts out as the focal point of a slice of life family drama - laid off from a ship construction yard cutting back on their workforce, he decides to pick up an abandoned fish-boat and turn it into an ethnic restaurant to serve his ex-wife's delicious couscous. But, despite the title, this is not about the grain, the couscous or the fish that he always gets from his friends fishermen and brings home to all his kids families. It is about a man whose joy in life is brought by his grandchildren and who cannot rest a moment without thinking of what more he can do to help his family out. As the movie goes on, at a slow pace, we get an increasing sense of fate at work and we see Slimane gradually become an iconic tragic figure one that could have been extracted straight out of Greek classics.
Habib Boufares' performance as Slimane is astounding in its subdued expression, while young Hafsia Herzi, one of the only professional actors in the movie, is a beauty to watch as Rym, the daughter of Slimane's mistress who sees him as her real father.
The movie's ending may seem a bit long and somewhat contrived, but in reality it transitions from pure drama into stylized tragedy. Every single moment in the first 3/4 of the movie is as real as it gets and every shot in the final part is a carefully constructed statement. Easily one of the best movies of the year
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Spain/USA) (Weinstein Company) (2008) **** Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Woody Allen Cast: Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Rebecca Hall
Woody Allen seems to have found a new groove and inspiration, personified by his latest favorite female lead - Scarlett Johansson (Scoop, Match Point) and, as his long career has shown him, there is no reason to not keep banking on that chemistry.
However, it is not Johansson (Cristina) nor Hall who plays the other title character, Vicky, who carry the movie. Acting-wise, Vicky and Cristina are merely the pretext for introducing bohemian, free spirited painter Juan Antonio (Bardem) and his vulcanic ex Maria Elena (Cruz).
But while one relationship may be the clear centerpiece of the movie, Allen manages to give equal attention to a range of relationships and quests for finding one's true calling in love or in life. Vicky centers her life around order and careful planning. She is convinced she found love and is about to get married to a very nice, successful man, buy together a house, settle into the security of the life she always imagined for herself. Cristina is the exact opposite of Vicky. She knows she has never encountered love but continues to seek fulfillment in anything that is exciting and edgy in life, as well as trying (in vain) to find her artistic voice: writing, photography, directing - a voice that also tries to express the despair of searching the intangible, ineffable love. Vicky's aunt has her own small drama - basically serving as a mirror into the future for Vicky should he follow her safe plans.
Juan Antonio and Maria Elena on the other hand, they show another kind of drama: they have found each other, true soulmates destined to share their lives, yet incapable of doing it so in harmony. They know what they mean to each other, yet the passion is so strong that it devours them. If Bardem is a continuous pleasure to watch, in his witty, insidiously seductive role, Penelope Cruz delivers another performance that steals every scene that she is part of, with intense delivery yet the same maturity that we saw from her in Almodovar's Volver.
VIcky Cristina Barcelona is part guilty pleasure, part comedy, part meditation on the struggle of finding one's identity and a satisfying relationship. Who else but Woody Allen would be more of an expert on the subject?
Wall-E (USA) (Pixar) (2008) **** Year: 2008 iMDB
Director: Andrew Stanton
Wall-E is a bold movie making attempt using animation as a means of expression. You surely know the basics: the main characters are robots; there is no spoken dialogue for the first half hour of the movie. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Wall-E reminds us of Chaplin's Vagabond, pays repeated tribute to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, is as militant on ecological themes as any of Miyazaki's best, it has some of the edgy sarcastic humor that Pixar used us to, yet it remains a classic, simple love story at its core.
Does this make Wall-E the best animated movie ever? Surely not. It is perhaps too styled for that and it lacks the genuine entertainment value that The Incredibles has. It may prove also too slow for the more impatient kids out there. But it does show us (once again) that animation is much more than just for kids and that Hollywood actors could be one day replaced by CGI counterparts that don't even have to look human to express emotion.