Those who love movies have reason to heartily dislike the last six weeks of the year. First comes a summer devoted to brain-dead movies that blow up, punch you in the face or expend thousands of rounds of ammo trying to kill a villain or two. Then fall appears but turns out to be a desert filled with the bleached bones of films that obviously disappointed even the people who made them.
The decks are being cleared by the industry, a word well chosen in this context, to cram all the films it has stored up for half a year into the holiday season. Like squirrels storing nuts for winter, Hollywood saves up anything that might win an award or attract revenue and then lets them loose all at once.
It is a train wreck, of course, as films designed to reel in families jostle with serious fare meant to appeal to Oscar judges. Often this means tear-jerking films about people with afflictions (this year, English mathematicians oddly enough), people overcoming other hardships or discriminations, soppy love stories and so forth.
Frequently the hype exceeds the value of the goods, rather like the Christmas gifts waiting under the tree. Disappointment awaits the hopeful movie-goer. Will the long-awaited masterpieces be as glorious as promised? We shall see, but most years, the answer is no.
Living in Podunk means you get the mega-movies, like the universally panned “Mockingjay, Part I,” at the same time as New York, Sao Paulo and Karachi, but the smaller movies can take a long time to arrive. Many never make it, not even on pay per view or streaming services. However, here’s a few I have seen lately as I’ve waited for the holiday deluge.
“Nightcrawler” I’ve already praised in a previous post. It may be Jake Gyllenhaal’s best work yet in a dark, unflinching look at big city TV news. Repellant and fascinating as a poisonous snake, it lingers in your mind.
I was ready to love everything about “Birdman” after hearing it repeatedly recommended, though the praise for the director’s audacity in shooting long steadicam takes following characters up halls and down stairs and out on the street was worrying. I was right to worry. The unnecessary artiness doesn’t add to the film but detracts from it.
I have always liked Michael Keaton very much. He and Ed Norton and the rest of the cast — Emma Stone, Naomi Watts and Zach Gallifianakis — are fine, but the film never seems to take flight as it seems to be poised to do. And the “you figure it out” ending is as annoying as the wandering camera. Directors should serve the film, not themselves.
I had a similar objection to Christopher Nolan’s overinflated “Interstellar.” He is addicted to “too clever by half” film making. Inside this bloated epic is a beautiful 90-minute fable about love, time and family trying to get out. Alas, it is swamped by fancy visuals, special effects, plot detours and dead-ends, a couple unnecessary mad scientists and sinister betrayals. It’s a shame. Jessica Chastain, who should have been the heart of the movie, is luminous briefly. Matthew McConaughey mumbles. Matt Damon, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Anne Hathaway, indeed everyone else except John Lithgow, is wasted and not really needed.
John Stewart’s “Rosewater,” about a journalist jailed in Iran, is earnest, slow and a lot less tense than it ought to be. It takes too long to get started, comes fitfully to life during the interrogation scenes, and ends rather inconclusively. It seems longer than it is. Gael Garcia Bernal is dull when he’s not being implausibly naive. Kim Bodnia as the ambitious torturer and Shohreh Aghdashloo, as Bernal’s mother, are great actors who overpower everyone around them.
“St. Vincent” is a likable Bill Murray movie in which he plays a misanthrope who is forced to reveal a vestigial humanity by a lonely kid next door. It’s “About A Boy” crossed with “Shameless.” For once, Melissa McCarthy is not loud and obnoxious, the comedienne version of Ethel Merman. Chris O’Dowd is a loveably eccentric, too good to be true priest. Naomi Watts, as a pregnant Russian pole-dancer and prostitute steals the film. She is cynical, sweet, wised up but not downbeat. She’s a wonderful actress who always lights up the screen. Her friend Nicole Kidman has the effect of dropping the temperature anytime she appears. Watts brings things to a boil.
Best for last. The relatively unheralded “The Skeleton Twins” is a darkish comedy starring Kristin Wiig and fellow SNL alum Bill Hader. She’s previously revealed acting chops, but Hader is a real surprise by consistently underplaying and doing none of the mugging familiar from his TV work.
The pair are a couple twins from a dysfunctional depressive family background. They haven’t seen each other for years and Wiig is about to take a handful of sleeping pills when she is interrupted by a call. She has been identified as next of kin of her brother who has attempted suicide. She’s forced to put down the pills and go do the right thing.
Hader ends up moving in with Wiig and her doofus husband who is nice, upbeat and clueless, charmingly played by Luke Wilson. He is completely unaware that his marriage is the Titanic and that it has struck the iceberg some time ago.
The gloomy twins are completely out of place in their idyllic home town and with anyone else except each other. Wiig is a dental hygienist and a scene after hours at the office where Hader pressures her to break out the nitrous oxide is a hoot. So is a scene at the town’s elaborate Halloween celebration where the twins may be more at home than in everyday life.
It’s a charming oddly hopeful movie about hopelessly screwed up people. With people so odd and self-destructive the film could have gone off the rails in many ways. Instead, it never puts a foot wrong. It’s a reminder that a small, carefully observed and expertly realized, heartfelt little world can be a lot more satisfying than a great, shambling, clumsy epic. In this case, at least, small is beautiful.