GAINSBOURG

 “Famous In France”

French director Joann Sfar has made a lavish biopic of France’s 60s pop music icon Serge Gainsbourg called “Gainsbourg”. The film’s psychedelic style is in keeping with the period in which Gainsbourg rose to fame, but it gives the movie a quality that can best be described as a mixture of Ken Russell with Fellini.

Gainsbourg’s success in Europe was never repeated in the U.S., probably because his songs were written and performed in French (although that didn’t stop Edith Piaf from becoming more widely known over here). His biggest hit was “Je t’aime… moi non plus” which he recorded with his wife Jane Birkin. Here on Billboard’s U.S. charts, the single reached a disappointing #69. Other than that, some Americans may also know Gainsbourg as the father of movie actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Drive

“Action At $4 A Gallon”

“Drive” is an intelligent, smartly conceived action film that takes off going zero-to-60 in the first frame. Ryan Gosling plays a character only known as “the driver”. His day-job is being a stunt driver for Hollywood movie productions. In his off hours, he moonlights as a getaway-car driver for bank heists and pawn shop robberies.

It sounds like the formula for a fantastic action picture, and it is. But when “the driver” meets Irene, a beautiful neighbor in his Los Angeles apartment building who is being a single mom while her husband is in jail, “Drive” becomes a beautiful love story. Irene is played by british actress Carey Mulligan with a spot-on American accent. When her husband returns from jail owing money to some nasty people, “the driver” gets involved in a scheme to save him and therefore protect Irene and her young son. His motivation is driven by his love for Irene.

“Investment Prophets”

Margin Call

To the average layman (those of us who don’t work on Wall Street) understanding the language of investment banking is like trying to translate hieroglyphics. But there’s no doubt that it would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall of a Wall Street boardroom on the eve of the 2008 economic collapse and watch the devious planning of greedy bankers that would ultimately cause the U.S. economy to crumble to its knees.

J.C. Chandor’s sensational new financial thriller “Margin Call” lets us do just that. It’s 2008 at an unnamed investment banking firm (but you can fill in that blank with names like Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs) and a team of senior executives are overseeing the systematic layoffs of more than 60% of their work staff. One of the employees being fired is Eric Dale (played by Stanley Tucci). As security escorts him out of the building, he hands a computer disk-stick to another employee and warns him to “be careful”. That employee returns to his office, boots up his computer and begins to study the data which causes extreme alarm.

The Music Never Stopped

“Musical Chairs”

Supposedly based on fact (a case study by Oliver Sacks called “The Last Hippie”) Jim Kohlberg’s film “The Music Never Stopped” is a missed opportunity to tell an important story about the healing power of music. That’s because this rather serious subject is treated like an 80s disease-of-the-week made-for-TV movie.

Set in 1986, the story begins when two parents reconnect with their estranged son Gabriel after he’s lost his memory as the result of an operation to remove a brain tumor. Lou Taylor Pucci must be the luckiest actor alive to have landed the lead role of Gabriel without much acting experience or credits. His performance is laughably bad. His beard is worse.

Well known character actor J.K. Simmons plays Gabriel’s father as though he were Mike Brady of The Brady Bunch. It’s small consolation to know that his goofiness eventually becomes endearing in the end as he finally comes to embrace the 60s protest-rock music he once despised.

Winter In Wartime

“Those Amsterdamn Nazis”

The cinematography of “Schindler’s List” offered a weird contrast in showing us the beauty of black-and-white photography along with the ugliness of war. Martin Koolhoven’s new WWII Dutch Nazi drama “Winter In Wartime” is filmed in natural color, but looks as cold as winter with its ashen greys, whites and blues. Strangely beautiful to look at even as the ugliness of war is at its center.

It’s very near the end of WWII in The Netherlands when a young Dutch boy finds a wounded British soldier in the woods and attempts to help him. This draws the boy into the war, a concept that, in his young years, he’s first coming to understand. He makes it his mission to help the soldier escape, even if it endangers his family and creates sexual tension between the soldier and the boy’s sister.

Reportedly, this film is based on a 1972 children’s novel by Jan Terlouw. That’s a testament to how quickly European children mature. That a child can be the hero in a story with Nazis, guns and sex is a bit like putting Harry Potter in the real world and making him mortal!

Source Code

“Intelligent Sci-Fi Making A Comeback”

From “The Matrix” to “Minority Report” to “Groundhog Day”, the recipe for the new sci-fi thriller “Source Code” has a long list of familiar ingredients. But it’s served up with intelligence, humor and a lot of heart. Following “Limitless” only a few weeks ago, “Source Code” is evidence that thoughtful science-fiction is starting to make a strong comeback.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sort of military cyber-soldier. He wakes up on a Chicago commuter train that, in 8 minutes, will explode at the hands of a terrorist. In a cool bit of new time-travel physics, this explosion has already happened and everyone aboard the train has been killed, but Gyllenhaal is able to be sent back only as far as 8 minutes before the explosion for the purpose of identifying the terrorist before he can strike again later. His mission must be repeated over and over during those same 8 minutes until the terrorist can be identified. Saving the passengers or trying to alter the outcome is impossible since they are already dead. To explain more would be to give too much away.

Trust

“A Friend Behind The Camera”

When the cast of TV’s “Friends” moved their careers toward feature films, none of those results have been as shockingly surprising as David Schwimmer emerging as the director of one of this year’s strongest and most important films. “Trust” is a movie that every parent should require their teenage daughters to see before they are allowed to use the internet unsupervised. In fact, high schools everywhere should adopt this film as part of their acedemic curriculum.

“Trust” is the greatest movie ever made about statutory rape. It showcases a powerful performance by newcomer Liana Liberato as 14-year Annie Cameron who falls for a boy she meets in an internet chat room for teens. When they finally hook-up at a shopping mall, he is actually a 35-year old man and he seems to have her mentally trapped in a situation that soon becomes sexual.

Super

“Anyone Can Be A Hero”

Unfunny is not how a comedy would want to be described. A movie like “Taxi Driver” wouldn’t be considered a comedy. Yet in “Super” Rainn Wilson plays a Travis Bickle-type psycho in a movie that comes dressed up like a comedy yet has more violence than a Martin Scorsese picture.

Wilson loses his wife (Liv Tyler) to Kevin Bacon, so he decides to become a home-made crime-fighter. He’s as human as you and I, with no special powers, but he creates the masked and costumed character Crimson Bolt and runs through the streets yelling “Shut Up Crime!” That’s funny, until it becomes evident that he might be very psychologically disturbed.

Eventually he meets up with Ellen Page in a comic book shop and she recruits herself to become his sidekick Boltie. There’s real chemistry between them and some of their scenes together are genuinely touching. Their journey leads to a startlingly bizarre conclusion which, again, is not funny.

Insidious

“Insidious” is an old-fashioned haunted house thriller. And probably the loudest. The “gotcha” moments are jolting, but the quieter moments are more frightening for their visual creepiness. James Wan’s film has the mood and atmosphere of Dario Argento’s best films. Like Argento’s “Suspiria”, this film has a glorious shivery look to it.

A couple played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne move their family into a new house and suddenly strange things begin to happen. So they move into another house, but the strange things follow them. Soon they realize that the houses aren’t haunted. It’s their son who’s haunted.

From here they enlist the services of a sort-of Ghostbusters-like crew and things really start jumping. Character actress Lin Shaye plays the family’s psychic advisor and she does a far better job of explaining their son’s condition than I ever could. It has something to do with out-of-body experiences and a dimension called The Further. But it’s all just window-dressing to disguise what is actually an all-too-familiar plot.

Hanna

“A Real Spy Kid”

In 2007, 13-year old Saoirse Ronan received an Oscar nomination for her role in “Atonement”. She joined an impressive list of other child actresses who have been recognized by the Academy such as Jodie Foster, Tatum O’Neal and Abigail Breslin. Ronan’s nomination had me scratching my head. I didn’t get it. But after seeing her as the lead in Joe Wright’s new assassin thriller “Hanna”, I now think Ronan’s career trajectory will be more Jodie than Tatum.

In this astonishing new film, Ronan plays a 16-year old world-class-trained assassin named Hanna. Raised by her father, an ex-CIA assassin in exile played by Eric Bana, Hanna has never seen the outside world. She lives in the snowy woods in what looks like a cozy gingerbread cottage where her father has been relentlessly training her her whole life.

When Hanna feels confident and ready to face her destiny, her father tells her to flip a switch on a device that will alert the CIA to their whereabouts. That signal is then picked up by CIA hardass Cate Blanchett who wants to hunt down and kill Bana. The international chase-to-the-death is on from the Arctic Circle to Germany.

The Conspirator

“Lincoln Assassinated Again”

It’s amazing that such a towering historical figure like Abraham Lincoln has not yet had a decent movie made that’s about him. Steven Spielberg’s got one in the works for next year in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln, so that strange missing link between Hollywood and history might finally have a resolution. There have been a few minor films about Lincoln nearly a century ago, and others in which President Lincoln is a supporting character in stories about The Civil War. But none that really ever focused on the man, his politics and his leadership of this nation through an extremely turbulant period.

Robert Redford’s new directorial effort “The Conspirator” is a story on the trial of the assassins. If that phrase sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s similar to the title of Jim Garrison’s book about the Kennedy assassination which happened almost exactly 100 years after Lincoln’s assassination.

Water For Elephants

“Robert Pattinson’s Sideshow”

The circus is often described as “the greatest show on earth”. But music video director Francis Lawrence shows that he’s incapable of cinematic greatness. His film version of the popular novel “Water For Elephants” is dull and lifeless. Even with ace screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (“The Bridges Of Madison County”) on board, Lawrence is more concerned with the visuals rather than with getting any real emotion to leap off the pages and on to the screen.

The casting of “Twilight’s” sexy vampire Robert Pattinson may have been viewed as money in the bank by producers, but Pattinson meanders through this movie in a zombie-like trance offering no romantic chemistry with Reese Witherspoon. When we meet Reese’s character, she is married to the villain of the story played with poisonous venom by Christoph Waltz. Waltz plays the owner of a traveling circus who employs Pattinson as a veterinarian to care for his mistreated animals.

The Bang Bang Club

“Action, Then Cameras”

“The Bang Bang Club” doesn’t offer enough bang-bang for your bucks. It’s an amateur version of a mature movie. It looks like the real thing on the surface, but lacks any real depth.

Ryan Phillippe plays real-life combat photojournalist Greg Marinovich. As a member of a gang of photographers, Marinovich finds himself competiting with his colleagues to get the best shot of the bloody action that surrounds them daily.

These wartime paparazzi are based in the South African town of Soweto in the mid-90s. Very little is explained about the politics of the conflict they are covering. They just follow the bloodshed the way Hollywood paparazzi follow Lindsay Lohan.

Their photos are then sold to the photo editor of a Johannesburg newspaper played by Malin Akerman. Almost as an obligitory element to the film, Akerman and Phillippe develop a romantic relationship that leads absolutely nowhere. Akerman’s British accent is so bad that it makes Madonna sound positively royal by comparison!

Last Night

“Europe In Manhattan”

Does Massy Tadjedin want to be Woody Allen? Tadjedin’s directorial feature debut “Last Night” is a four-character relationship drama taking place in New York. Three of the characters are from Europe and their accents seem to instantly elevate their IQ’s. It’s certainly refreshing to hear such intellectual conversation from a source other than Allen. Tadjedin has pulled off a near miracle here, losing points only for some ambitious yet pretentious editing that becomes annoying in several scenes.

But a conversational movie requires performances from actors that are so good we find ourselves hanging on their every word. Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington and Eva Mendes are three of those actors turning in top-notch dramatic performances. Each succeed beyond our expectations. Keira Knightly gives a tour-de-force that shows her at her Oscar-calibre best and more than justifies her recent Academy Award nomination for “Pride And Prejudice”.

Everything Must Go

“Making The Most Of A Bad Day”

Will Ferrell surprises us with some serious dramatic moves in his latest film “Everything Must Go”. Ferrell plays recovering alcoholic Nick Halsey on the worst day of his life. After being fired from his job, he returns home to find his wife has left him, locked him out of his house and has thrown all of his belongings out onto the front lawn. His response is to just sleep there on his favorite leather chair to the displeasure of his neighbors.

He drinks beer like a fish drinks water, that is until his cash runs out. With his credit cards not working, he finally decides to turn his plight into a massive yard sale. He befriends a young neighborhood boy to help him, smartly played by Christopher Wallace. He also strikes up a friendship with the pregnant woman moving into the house across the street, especially well-played by Rebecca Hall.