Reviews

Writer-director Thomas McCarthy knows that even the smallest of choices can have a profound impact on ordinary lives. His latest movie Win Win, which played SXSW and returns to Austin theaters on Friday, proves McCarthy is a master filmmaker, taking an otherwise ordinary life into another profoundly moving film.

Paul Giamatti stars as Mike, a mostly content family man with a struggling law practice. Like everyone else these days, he's just one bad month away financial disaster. When Mike seizes an opportunity to ease the strain, the consequences include an unexpected addition to his household in the form of  teenager Kyle (Alex Shaffer).

Like other McCarthy protagonists, Mike's quiet existence is interrupted by a stranger's intrusions and reluctantly embraces the change. Kyle simply wants to see his grandfather (Burt Young), who now resides in a senior care facility, so Mike and wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) take him in until they can talk to his mother (Melanie Lynskey).

Despite a promising premise, Hanna tries too hard to meld "stranger in a strange land" with "spy versus spy" and trips over itself.

From the movie's opening shot, director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice) sets the bar high, showing Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) as a gifted hunter being raised in isolation and without modern luxuries. However, the story often makes illogical choices to drive home Hanna's alienation and unfamiliarity with the modern world.

Co-writer David Farr has experience writing spy thrillers, having penned several episodes of the hit British series MI-5 (aka Spooks) about the UK equivalent of Homeland Security, a combination of espionage and frothy drama. The script penned with Seth Lochhead tries too hard to be clever, with more brute force than subtlety, sapping too much tension from what is clearly meant to be intelligent thriller. Most everything onscreen is too obvious, from Cate Blanchett's cold-blooded spy-master, to Hanna’s isolation and her lack of practical education from the man who raised her to be lethally self-reliant.

When you've made an amazing first feature, it's hard to live up to it with your next movie. I am already hearing people fuss that Source Code, the new film directed by Duncan Jones, isn't as good as Moon, his feature directorial debut. Let's be frank: It's not. But you know what? It doesn't matter. Judging this movie on its own terms, it's a terrific ride.

It's hard not to think about other movies while watching Source Code, though. One of my colleagues described it as "Deja Vu meets Groundhog Day." Well, I liked both those movies, and while Source Code does fit that description ... what did I just say about judging a movie on its own terms? Thank you.

Source Code opens with wide shots of a train, accompanied by the kind of music that might remind you of a Hitchcock thriller or a Seventies heist movie. Yes, I've just invoked two more movie comparisons. Try to keep up. Jake Gyllenhaal's character wakes up on the commuter train and is terribly confused ... he's getting used to the setting at the same time we are. The woman across the aisle says she's his girlfriend Christina (Michelle Monaghan) and that his name is Sean, but he thinks he's someone else. And while he's trying to work it all out --

As much as I enjoy The Birdcage, the Americanized version couldn't hold a candle to the original classic French farce La Cage Aux Folles, in which the setting of the gay club in St. Tropez lends so well to the atmosphere and mood. I was reminded of this while watching The Concert (Le concert), a dramedy set in Russia and Paris. Writer/director Radu Milhaileanu and his collaborator Alain-Michel Blanc originally envisioned creating The Concert in English with American actors to appeal to a mainstream audience. However, the filmmakers decided that English would render the movie more artificial, and decided to shoot in the original languages of Russian and French -- a choice I wholeheartedly support, especially after watching The Concert.

The Concert focuses on Andreï Filipov (Aleksey Guskov), the janitor at the Bolshoi. He enjoys listening to the famed Bolshoi Orchestra, but not because he's a low-class worker aspiring to greatness that he can never hope to achieve -- in fact, 30 years ago he was the celebrated conductor of the Bolshoi. At the height of his fame he was fired for refusing to expel Jewish musicians in his orchestra as directed by Brezhnev, and several of his friends were sent to and later died in Gulag labor camps. Filipov retreats into his despair and alcoholism, with the painful memories of a concert that was never finished.

The most moving documentary I saw at SXSW this year is from Austinite Heather Courtney, although it's primarily shot in her hometown, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula: Where Soldiers Come From. I had more or less decided after The Messenger that I'd had enough of war-related features and documentaries, but I don't regret seeing this movie, not for a minute. The film had its world premiere at SXSW 2011.

Where Soldiers Come From follows three young men from their decision to enroll in the National Guard after high school, through their deployment overseas, and what happens post-deployment. Dom is an artist, and we see a lot of his graffiti-like art on the walls of an abandoned building in his hometown, before he leaves. He hangs out with his friends Cole and Bodi, and they all end up in the same National Guard unit, sent to Afghanistan to find IEDs (improvised explosive devices; aka bombs).

Filmmaker Kevin Smith is currently doing a national roadshow for his latest movie, Red State. Last night, I had the opportunity to catch the screening here in Austin at the Paramount. This is a must-see movie. The most difficult aspect of this movie is describing it. The movie has elements of a dark comedy mixed with intense action thriller sometimes bordering on horror. For what Smith claims to be his second-to-last movie, he has redefined himself.

Red State opens with three high-school boys setting off for a sexual encounter they've arranged via a swinger's website. This encounter takes them to a trailer in the woods inhabited by Sara Cooper, played by 2010 Academy Award winner Melissa Leo. It doesn't take long to learn that Sara is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing.

After consuming drug-laced beer, the boys find themselves prisoners of ultra conservative preacher Abin Cooper (brilliantly played by Michael Parks). Preacher Cooper is based on the real minister Fred Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist Church (better known as the church that likes to protest funerals). The initial scenes of these kids being imprisoned takes you immediately (almost jarringly) from a happy-go-lucky Porky's type adventure to the realization that these kids are in Deep Bandini.

I have a confession to make: I really enjoyed Foo Fighters: Back and Forth, a new documentary by director James Moll that played SXSW this year.

Foo Fighters: Back and Forth traces the story of the band Foo Fighters from their start in 1995 to the recording of their current album. For those of you who don't know the Foo Fighters, it's the band David Grohl founded after the tragic death of his Nirvana band mate and friend Kurt Cobain.

One of the things I really liked about this documentary was how the story was told. Where a lot of documentaries are told using narration, this documentary was told using interviews of current and former band members. I really liked hearing the stories of the band from the people that actually lived it. I can imagine that Moll's background doing interviews for the Shoah Project has something to do with this.

This year at SXSW Film, I decided to spend less time in line and more at the satellite and smaller venues, and catching the Narrative and Midnight Shorts programs. Kudos to SXSW Film programmers Claudette Godfrey and Stephanie Noone who set up the short film lineup. Anyone who's read my AFF Selected Shorts or Fantastic Fest coverage knows I love the short film format, partly due to the small time investments for great rewards. I found myself on the edge of my theater seat in under 15 minutes for one film and brought to tears of joy by another in the next 15. Find out which films that I found were most engaging after the jump.

If you're not familiar with The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton, take a minute to read that link and come back. Sucker Punch is Zack Snyder's answer to that question after he OD'd on 'shrooms and spent a night watching Moulin Rouge, Charlie's Angels and Inception, then fell asleep to Heavy Metal. The result is a mishmash of great ideas that doesn't know where it's going. With just a little more follow-through, it could have been a hit instead of the critical flop it will ultimately be remembered as.

Emily Browning, best known for her role in Lemony Snicket, plays Baby Doll, a girl attacked by her greedy stepfather after the death of her mother in hopes of securing her fortune. Instead of fleeing, she defends herself and her sister from the evil man, but a stray bullet kills the sister and the stepfather puts Baby Doll away, paying a very nasty orderly at the hospital to make sure she is lobotomized and can never bother him again.

Just as the doctor is about to perform the procedure, she yells "Stop!" and the scene shifts to an alternate-universe version of the hospital where the patients are instead burlesque dancers, and the orderly is the gangster-owner of the club where they are all forced to live and perform.

Now, from this point, we're left wondering, is this the "real" story, and the mental institute just a sick fantasy cooked up for paying clients? Or are we in some kind of schizoid embolism a la Total Recall?  To confuse the issue only further, all the real action in Sucker Punch only happens in Baby Doll's mind when she dances. Her dance is so sensual, so captivating, that it freezes men in their tracks and makes her a hero to the other girls, though we never ever get to see her perform. Instead, we're transported to a third level of the dream where Baby Doll is a superhero fighting undead steampunk soldiers, giant robot samurai and angry mother dragons to the beat of reworked hits such as The Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams." These scenes are truly epic, and the movie is worth watching just for (and only for) them, much like Knowing was worth watching if only for the disaster shots. The action and the music are like the fresh tasty hot dog inside a rotten moldy bun.

In ninth grade I read Jane Eyre of my own volition; it wasn't required reading at my school.  The novel was dark and romantic, so of course I adored it. I watched the melodramatic 1943 classic with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles (and a very young Elizabeth Taylor in an uncredited role). I haven't re-read the novel since and was unsure what to expect from this 2011 Jane Eyre film adaptation.  Would any slight reference to Wide Sargasso Sea be made? (Answer: not really.)  I found myself inferring certain things from that parallel novel as I watched Cary Fukunaga's take on Charlotte Bronte's original story.

Mia Wasikowska plays our heroine Jane as undiminished, wistful and a sort of realist. "I imagine things I'm powerless to execute," she confesses to her employer's housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench!). In flashbacks, we see how Jane's young fire slowly dims in her dealings with a spiteful aunt (Sally Hawkins) and then with the teachers at the autocratic school to which her aunt sends her. Her first position after leaving school is as governess to a French-speaking orphan who is under the guardianship of the imposing, darkly handsome and slightly shady Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender).

You probably know the story of Jane Eyre from here, but the relationship between Jane and the Rivers family who discover her stranded on the moor is worth a mention. Jamie Bell's St. John Rivers is a striking figure -- the last movie I remembered seeing Bell in was Nicholas Nickleby, and he's certainly filled out since then!