Movie Review Madness - Lion

Based on a true story, the movie Lion is up for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and also for Dev Patel as Lead Actor. This is a very worthy film – heartrending and uplifting too.  We first meet Saroo at age five (played so well by Sunny Pawar. His liquid brown eyes will melt your soul), and his big brother Guduu (Abhishek Bharate) is also so good. They are in a small town in India. Poor – they struggle to help their mother by stealing coal off the trains. With a small knapsack worth, they earn milk. Their mother works by moving rocks. The poverty is tough, but the family love is strong.

Guduu seeks night work and Saroo tags along, but falls asleep. Guduu leaves him on a bench, admonishing him to not leave. Well, the boy awakes confused, wanders on to a freight train, sleeps, and awakens as the train travels far – all the way to Calcutta. He’s lost, doesn’t speak Bengali, and after a few years of wandering, then being caught in an orphanage, he’s finally adopted by a couple in Australia (played by Nicole Kidman (also Oscar nominated), and David Wenham).

Flash forward and we meet a grown Saroo (Dev Patel). He’s well- adjusted and off to Melbourne to begin college. There he begins to re-think and remember more of his childhood and wants to find his real mother, brother, and sister. He loves his adoptive parents and doesn’t want to hurt them. But, this is his destiny and history and obsession.  I won’t tell more. I just promise you it’s excellent.

The film is lovely, well-acted, and will touch you on many levels. I highly recommend this film.  Lion builds through character, flashback, and a yearning until it roars.

Movie Review - Carol

Carol directed by Todd Haynes is a lush period piece set in the 1950s.  The cars are vintage. The sets are stylish. New York City absolutely shines. The stars are stunning.

Cate Blanchett won her Oscar for Blue Jasmine because she dominated the screen.  In Carol she has to share it with Rooney Mara and it’s worth it.  This is a low key artsy flick about forbidden love.

It’s very modest, unassuming, and totally hot.

Carol (Cate Blanchett) is rich, married, a mother, and yet very much on the prowl.  Therese (Rooney Mara) is young and working a Macy’s counter in the 1950s. Cate leaves her gloves. The rest is magic.

This is a complicated tale of a growing fascination and love.  Therese is almost engaged to a young man. Carol is married to the very rich and powerfully conceited Kyle Chandler. How could she resist?  And yet, her college friend (Sarah Paulson) provided complications in the marriage. Now Therese is bait. There’s a road trip where the women bond. It’s all done tastefully and discreetly and yet there’s Carol’s child involved.  Mental health issues. It’s a tough judging world in 1950s and Therese is collateral damage in the fight for love.

Rooney Mara is a gamine Audrey Hepburn. She’s young, beautiful, with huge soulful eyes and a soft manner. Cate Blanchett exudes style and rich knowledge. She’s dangerous and magnetic. What shall win out??  This is a very classically made film with good pacing, beautiful sets, and excellent acting. Nothing blows up, except a few hearts. Both performances are Oscar worthy but shall probably cancel each other out. Carol is just a really nice film, absolutely worth your time and effort. 

Movie Review: Side Effects

Side Effects stars Jude Law, Channing Tatum, Rooney Mara, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in a pharmaceutical thriller. Don't expect big things from this movie, but there are more twists and turns than a doctor's scribbled handwriting on a prescription. Channing is newly released from prison for insider trading. His wife, Rooney, suffers from depression. She is assigned Jude Law as her psychiatrist after she tried to drive her BMW into a wall. Is she suicidal? Can Jude help her and what did her previous doctor, Zeta-Jones, do for her.

Rooney Mara, in her teeny body with her large expressive eyes, seems to be a nutcase and grows more so as she's prescribed new meds. She can't focus at work, she can't sleep, or sleeps too hard and is up sleepwalking, sleep cooking, and yes..........sleep killing!!!! Who's responsible? Rooney, Dr.Jude Law, or the drug makers themselves? Suddenly, Jude Law finds himself having to defend his practice.

This is not just a movie about the evil drug companies. A large proportion of society takes anxiety medicine and there are huge dollar sums involved. Side Effects gets rather convoluted as it guides us along the trail of murder and money. For this time of year (often a dumping ground for stinkers), the movie is entertaining and has a great cast. I was suprised at various times, and wondered if I needed meds to figure things out. In the end, probably better to stick with popcorn.


Netflix Queue:

Ruby Sparks - a writer needs to conquer writers' block. But when he jots down the attributes of his dream girl, she comes alive.Things get weird as he tries to duplicate his early successes as a writer. This movie is quirky and amusing. It stars Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Elliott Gould, and Annette Bening

Undefeated - this Academy Award winning documentary is quite impressive. A white coach volunteers to lead a West Memphis high school football team that has never gone to a playoff game. We meet him as he starts to work with a group of eighth graders and manages to keep them in school on into high school. These are very poor young black men without fathers who are on a path to failure. However, football is their lifeline and this exemplary coach loves them, guides them, yells at them, and uses terms like character and team. It is quite a tale and you'll root for the Manasas Tigers to win.

Movie Review: Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The opening credits of the American version of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo are some of the most original, hottest, best I've seen since James Bond movies. Truly - the howl of a Led Zeppelin tune and the swirl of black is amazing. Trust me. You'll be drawn into this movie. Kudos to David Fincher, the director. I'll start with saying this movie is hard R - do not allow any children near the theater. Violence, sex, adult themes abound. That said - I've read the books (trilogy), seen the Swedish films (excellent with subtitles), and now I give this version a huge thumbs up.

Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a journalist, currently on the outs due to a scandal. However, he's hired by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate the forty year old murder of his niece, Harriet. The Vanger family is a mess - rich with Nazi history and no family member talks to each other even though they live on the same island. Trust me, there are issues. Martin Vanger (Stellan Skarsgaard) runs the business now and oh, is he twisted. Finally, Lisbeth Salander, our girl with the tattoo, piercings and goth hair (Rooney Mara in a transformational role) is a computer genius with social issues. There's so much more to her story - you have to read the books and see the movie.

The Swedish countryside is cold and forbidding. The search for a murderer is unrelenting. The performances are riveting. Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has many layers and is well filmed, well acted, and just really really good. No, not a happy Christmas family picture. But, if you want to think, feel, and experience a film - this is the one. Read Stieg Larsson's trilogy and see the movies. Quality abounds.