October 26, 2007
New At The Movie Parlors
One big, serious film; one adventure doc; a couple soft life-changers; a Steve Carell comedy. All in all, a fine mix for the first real weekend of fall.
Reservation Road: Mark Ruffalo and Joaquin Phoenix star as a man who hits a boy with his car, and the father of that boy. Ruffalo's character feels the guilt grow as Phoenix slowly freaks out. Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox are winning the World Series and the rest of their town is celebrating (this is set in 2004, but it looks like life is imitating art - go Sox!) Sounds autumnal, brood-y, and a bit "In the Bedroom" - esque.
Check out our interview with Director Terry George. [Trailer] [IMDB]
Deep Water: Doc about the first solo round-the-world sailing competition, which took place in 1968. Tilda Swinton narrates, so that's promising, but what's even better is that one of the producers was also responsible for the awesome "Touching the Void". [Trailer] [IMDB]
Lars and the Real Girl: A man (Ryan Gosling, who sure has done a good job of not falling into teen-idol hell) becomes smitten with a life-size sex doll. The people around him decide to play along. Written by Nancy Oliver, author of various "Six Feet Under" eps. [Trailer] [IMDB]
Dan in Real Life: Steve Carell is a widower with three daughters who hasn't felt the sting of Cupid's arrows in a while, and when he does - ah Gods, no! - it's with his brother's girlfriend. (Who's played by Juliette Binoche, so who can blame him?) Has Mr. Carell got his groove back? Reports say, not quite. [Trailer] [IMDB]
Bella: An apparently very well-done movie about one New York day that changes a couple people's lives and makes them reconsider things. We typically feel like this description is an invitation to smushy sentimentality, but word is "Bella" manages to handle the question of abortion with a bit more realism than, say, "Knocked Up", which makes us want to see it. [Trailer] [IMDB]
Hannah Takes The Stairs: A movie about a girl in the throes of a post-grad crisis, and the ins and outs of her days. Done mostly as improv, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending. [Trailer] [IMDB]
The Comebacks: A joke sports film about joke sports films (viz, "Dodgeball"). Our vote: Just stay home and watch "Dodgeball" instead. [Trailer] [IMDB]
Saw IV: Really?
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Deep Water looks good, but anyone interested should know that Donald Crowhurst was not necessarily the most interesting competitor in that race, at least not compared to Bernard Moitessier, a bad-ass French zen acolyte who built a cast iron boat with a telephone pole for a mast and could have handily won the race, but dropped out becasue he didn't want to stop sailing. (But since I also grew up as a 'weekend sailor' I can attest to Crowhurst's insane underestimate of what it would require to pull it all off.)
Lars and the Real Girl is good and wacky. It's too bad that Ryan Gosling has apparently turned into a diva and got hiself thrown off The Lovely Bones.
Dan in Real Life sounds like The Family Stone and 40-Year-Old-Virgin thrown into a blender. I like both of those movies, but like carrots and eggs, I'm not sure I want to drink a smoothie made of those two ingredients.
And Reservation Road is a total Debbie Downer, which is not necessarily a bad if you're into that sort of bawl-fest.