• it’s been a long long time since I wrote anything for this blog
• no one reads this blog
• I don’t have a job
• I’ve never owned a pair of cowboy boots

But today of all days (Rex Manning Day? I don’t know) none of that matters.  Especially because of the epic review I’m about to write of the last two movies that I saw in theatres, both of which starred Ryan Gosling and neither of which I’ve had time to fantasize about whilst masturbating.  But I digress.

When I first saw the poster for Drive, it was in Manhattan and it was one of the posters with Carey Mulligan in it alone.  It caught my attention with it’s pink script and extreme closeup and I remarked that it looked like a poster for a Lifetime movie.  Of course, when I found out that Ryan Gosling was in it and it was, in fact, an actual movie I wanted to see it.  I didn’t really know anything about it except the stars and that “There’s no such thing as a clean get away.”  Okay.

Turns out Gosling is a mechanic and stunt driver who has these really cool driving gloves with holes over the knuckles and lives alone.  For extra cash and most likely for the thrill of it, he acts as a getaway driver for criminals.  One day he meets his neighbor, Carey Mulligan when she’s having car trouble and gives her a ride home and then, OMG, they’re in love.  Then, before they ever fuck, her husband (oops) gets out of jail and naturally all hell breaks loose, as it were and the whole thing moves from a kind of angsty movie about driving cars fast to a sticky, graphic, stylized bloodbath (but nary a nipple in sight, sigh).

Like, I know that it’s a cliché in movies, love at first sight, jumping, rushing in to an unexplained spiritual connection that transcends ‘dating’ and goes deeper than ‘sex.’  I get that that’s a thing.  BUT.  When you’ve got a character who time and again displays his lack of sympathy for fellow human beings, who revels in his solitary life and you’re going to give him a love interest (a mother, no less, as if) that he not only gives up all those things for, risks his life for, well you MIGHT want to give us a MOMENT where you explain what is so GODDAMN SPECIAL about this lady!  But no, she’s just pretty.  I mean, she’s definitely pretty.  But she works at Denny’s and just thinking about her makes me want to yawn.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Ryan Gosling as much as the next girl.  But I can’t help but feel that a lot of his acting talent is derived from his ability to widen and narrow his eyes.  That is, a lot this film consisted of him and Carey Mulligan staring at each other.   I don’t even really mind watching Ryan Gosling staring at things (ryangoslingstaringatthings.tumblr.com don’t take it my idea!) and the truth is that I enjoyed watching this movie, even the parts where people were having their brains splattered all over the inside of motel bathrooms.  But there really wasn’t much to it.

Still,

The Ides of March, on the other hand, has a political-thriller plot that certainly bills itself as “substance” and a dreary Cincinnati backdrop that wouldn’t be considered “style” and yet, it makes me angry just thinking about how bad this movie was/is/continues to be/will always be.  With a cast brimming with at least what Hollywood tells me is talent (Gosling, Clooney, PSH, Giamatti, Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, the guy from Social Network with the eyebrows) you’d think that it would be difficult to fail!  And yet!  Every scene was hackneyed, boring, predictable, stupid.  Lacking any charm, humor, suspense, realism, meaningful characterizations, believable dialogue.  ALL OF THOSE THINGS WERE MISSING.

Here, let me recount to you my favorite scene.  It’s before Evan Rachel Wood and Ryan Gosling have sex.  They are having drinks at a bar, sitting across from each other with their faces very close to one another.  This is the dialogue (I’m only barely paraphrasing):

 

ERW: How old are you?

Ry: How old do you think I am?

ERW: Ummm [bites lip] 30?

Ry: You think I’m 30?!

ERW: Ooh, sorry.  How old are you?

Ry: I’m 30.  [pause] How old are you?

ERW: How old do you think I am?

Ry: 21.

ERW: I’m 20.

Ry: That’s young.

ERW: Too young to fuck a 30 year old?

 

Oh hey, that was PAINFUL.  Evan Rachel Wood wants to FUCK Ryan Gosling (I approve) and it’s not sexy in the least!  It’s retarded!  (also, get some bronzer, girl – I know you rock that peaches & cream look but shit you’re so pale!)

The ‘love’ stories in these two movies could be held up in some kind of film or directing or casting class as an example of chemistry (Ryan Gosling & Carey Mulligan stare at each other and it’s like, ooooh yeah) vs no chemistry (Ryan Gosling & Evan Rachel Wood fuck and it’s like, ho hum, yawn, is this movie over).

It was terrible.  So terrible.  Still,

Only, not really.

The Boys of Baraka is actually a documentary about a group of troubled young men growing up in Baltimore, in single parent (or no parent) homes who are chose to spend two years at a boarding school in rural Kenya called the Baraka school.  The film starts off by alerting you to a troubling statistic: that 76% of African American boys in Baltimore will not graduate from high school.  That is truly a travesty and a number that was really shocking to me.  It continues to follow 4 or 5 boys who apply (I guess — this part isn’t shown) to go to the Baraka school in Kenya.  They are all promising in some way: charming, precocious, creative but are being mishandled or simply not handled (read: suspended and ignored) by the Baltimore school system (but if you’ve see The Wire then you KNOW that they’re TRYING THEIR BEST) so off they go, probably many on their first trip out of the city to say nothing of their first time on an airplane  (oh, a little bit of backstory here might have been nice).  Some say tearful goodbyes to their mothers but some simply continue to cause mischief and create concern for fellow air travelers.  To be fair, the flight(s) to Kenya is a long one and I don’t know that twenty 11-14 year old boys from any kind of background is exactly what I would want on my plane either.

Once in Kenya, some of the boys are thrilled (their cabin accommodations are in many respects superior to their housing situations in Baltimore) but do need some time to adjust,  a few of them demanding to go home and one in particular (Montrey) continuing to start fights and cause trouble.  But after a few talking tos and heart to hearts with the (white) staff, they seem to get stuff figured out and by the end of the year, it seems like they’re all having a great time.  As a matter of fact, it gets kind of sad when they have to go back to Baltimore for the summer.  They all seem uncomfortable there, around their mothers and their old friends and ready to go back.

But then tragedy strikes and their parents are informed that the operations of the Baraka school have been suspended due to terrorism and security risks inherent in travel to East Africa.  Of course, the parents proceed to get indignant because WHAT are they supposed to do NOW!!  The response of the Baraka administrator is not even captured, but my response was “Are you kidding?”  True: It is totally sad that the boys won’t get to finish their second year in Kenya.  Also True: Going to Kenya and having a private education is not exactly a right that these kids have.  So sure, be upset and sad, but get angry with the Baraka school for something that is totally out of their control?  Um, really?

So the boys don’t get to go back but Montrey ends up at the best school in Baltimore anyway because he apparently is really good at math (surprise!  thanks for using this as some kind of, I dunno, through line, plot point, touchstone).

Mostly, the idea of the Baraka school is an interesting one.  It’s too bad it got shutdown (apparently for good).  But this documentary was not a particularly compelling portrait of either the school, Baltimore or the eponymous boys.  The filmmakers even seem to know this as they put the boys names up on the screen with them all the way through.  Perhaps if they had created any kind of fleshed out portrait of them we would be able to at least recognize and distinguish between them.  Which one has a dad in jail?  Which one has a mom with a crack problem? Oh, that’s the same one.  I think he has the learning disability too (BARELY ADDRESSED).  The one who wants to be a preacher is cute — what’s wrong with him again?  Does he become a preacher?  Wholly disappointing portrait of a provocative topic.

In happier news, Season 5 starts tonight (in my apartment)!!

Um, yeah.

So, Paul Dano works at a mattress store and he really wants to adopt a Chinese baby even though he’s not married and doesn’t even have a girlfriend or a very good job.  He has this friend who works in a lab with mice and a coworker who is played by the guy that plays Lester on The Wire.  Then one day John Goodman comes in to the store wearing a scarf and buys this retarded expensive mattress ($14,000) and says “Oh ho ho my daughter will be back later to pay for it.”  Naturally, his daughter is Zooey Deschanel (don’t worry, her character name is “Happy” in case none of this was sounding quirky indie enough).  Zooey and Paul make friends and then hookup and Paul is all “I like this girl” to his friend in the lab and Zooey is all “I’m not wearing pants” and isn’t this so precious.  At one point Paul goes home to visit his dad (Ed Asner) and they do mushrooms in the woods. Oh, I FORGOT, Zach Galifinakis is trying to kill Paul Dano.  Anyway, then he (Paul) finds out that he’s finally on the real list to go to China and get the baby!  Then he tells Zooey and she pukes!  But we don’t know if it’s cause of the baby or cause of the goat meat stew that Lester fed her!

Then we find out Zooey is actually pregnant because of the time that they had unprotected sex (WTF) in the back of her dad’s station wagon (WTF) in a parking garage (ok, that’s hot).  But before that, she had stopped calling Paul because she doesn’t want to be a mom to a Chinese baby, so instead she went back to dating the sugar daddy she had before and decides to move to France to go to cooking school.  When Paul finds out he is devastated.  But then, get this, Zooey decides to get an abortion because her sugar daddy boyfriend doesn’t want to deal with a baby and her dad isn’t going to give her any more money because he hates the new boyfriend.  But just as she’s calling the clinic, Paul is calling on the other line and she realizes that she DOES want to have his baby.  So Paul takes his name off the adoption list, Zach Galifinakis murders the sugar daddy boyfriend and when the baby finally comes out it actually looks Chinese!  Happily Ever After.

*Please note, I fell asleep after the part when Zooey pukes, so I may have, um, made up some of the rest of the story.   Apologies.

Hey but have you heard Gigantic by the Pixies? Cause that song is great.

But last night’s double feature, followed by a Q&A with Tarantino himself, was by far the most anticipated.  Not to sound completely lame and sooo cliche (I am completely lame and sooo cliche but shh) but Pulp Fiction is the reason I went to film school.  I don’t like writing it down or sharing it.  I feel pretty fucking lame about it, but that shit blew my mind when I was finally allowed to see it — I must have been, I dunno, 13 or 14? To this day (that is, to yesterday), despite all my viewings of it on DVD in various stages of stupor, I had never seen it on film, in a theatre full of people.  So the prospect of that was very exciting.

I’m not going to review Pulp Fiction.  I have no desire to and I never have.  I’m sure it has flaws but I don’t see them.  I just like it.

Inglourious Basterds was easily one of the best — if not the best — movies that I saw last year.  It’s epic and funny and creative and beautiful.  I don’t just mean, technically beautiful (which it is) but Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent are possibly two of the most classically, not quirkily gorgeous women, like, ever.  Maybe that’s not true, but both of them are captivating.

So, between the two screenings (well, actually right after Inglourious Basterds started — I don’t understand how so many people showed up at 6PM and stayed straight through until it ended after 1AM — don’t they have jobs?), a friend and I snuck out to grab a bite at the Pig & Whistle next door to the Egyptian.  No sooner had we ordered a drink from the bitchiest of waitresses (seriously, everyone that works at that place is a cunt, sorry, but it’s true) than Quentin himself walked in, looking lost.  He doesn’t wander though, he walks with purpose.  He was wearing weird dark blue pants, a hoodie with a bright green hood and greed Adidas with no socks.  Basically he looked like a homeless person.  He found the woman he was meeting, a thin blonde with wavy hair and proceeded to drink what looked like a Greyhound (good choice) while she interviewed him.  Maybe 10 minutes later, in walked another familiar looking face who walked over and shook his hand.  It was none other than Max Cherry himself.  It was a surreal Hollywood moment.  Then Max and his wife(?) sat down across from us, my friend grabbed a couple of snapshots and we left to watch the end of the movie.

Max Cherry Decides What To Eat

A Q&A followed at which I think Tarantino was kind of drunk.  I don’t know, it was interesting hearing him talk but I was so fucking exhausted by that point it was kind of like “ummm…ok, I need to go to bed.”  Still, it was slightly more interesting than the other time I had seen him when I just stared at him from across the room at Good Luck Bar.

God, the wheels really fell off of this post at some point didn’t they?  Oh well, at least I wrote.

The Third Wheel: Luke Wilson is a bumbling cubicle slave who is determined to go on a date with the sexy and successful Denise Richards.  Everyone in his office, including Ben Affleck (who is at his douche with a goatee best) is pulling for him and even have a party where they place bets on, like, whether or not he will get laid or something like that.  But then, on their date, Luke Wilson hits this crazy homeless guy (played by the movie’s screenwriter, Jay Lacopo) with his car.  This is where we started to fast forward.  The guy is fine, but wants money for his crystal animals that were broken in the accident, so he gets in the car with them.  As far as I could tell, the guy keeps showing up wherever they are on their date and putting salt in the Luke Wilson’s already meager game.  Then Matt Damon makes a cameo as Denise Richards’ ex-boyfriend.  I watched this part on regular speed.  I love me some Good Will Hunting-era Damon.  Then I guess they probably fall in love or something and there is a quirky break dance scene while the credits roll.

I don’t like Denise Richards, but I can tolerate her.  She has a weird robot face and I find her to be a bad actress.  Young Luke Wilson I can more than tolerate.  He is gorgeous.  Superdouche Ben Affleck I LOVE.  Jay Lacopo, who you have never heard of and went ahead and wrote a huge part for himself in his own movie, is INTOLERABLE.  I literally could not even stand to look at his face.  Is he supposed to be crazy?  Retarded?  Homeless?  I don’t even know.  He’s just wearing some stupid beanie with a perpetually confused look on his face and you just know he was so fucking satisfied with himself.  HATE YOU.  FAST FORWARD.

The Breed: A group of sexy friends, played by actors who are a good decade older than their characters are supposed to be, find themselves in a remote cabin being attacked by rabid(?) dogs all while two of them are brothers who have both fucked Michelle Rodriguez.  Questions this raises:

1. Are the dogs rabid?  Did we fast forward through that part?  Because without a good reason presented, I really don’t want to watch dogs get hit with baseball bats.

2. Did this blonde suck someone off to get this part?  She’s some utterly noncute version of Amy Pohler and did not want to look at her face.

3. How much does it suck to be Kate Hudson’s unfamous brother who looks vaguely like Steven Weber?

4. Is Michelle Rodriguez sexy?  I’m kind of scared of her.

Henry Poole Is Here: Luke Wilson, 10 years later!  I was on board with this one from the beginning.  Luke’s aged a little, but isn’t Verizon Commercial Fat yet.  He  buys a house and intends to drink himself to death.  I can get behind this idea.  But then his weird neighbor decides she can see Jesus in the stucco of his house and he goes on a walk with her other neighbor Radha Mitchell (whose daughter who has that weird movie quirk where she doesn’t talk until, like whatever yawn) and then I guess it was like, he has cancer (OR LUKEMIA, the prospect of which I could not stop giggling about) and thinks he’s going to die but I think maybe the Jesus water stain saves him or maybe he just stops drinking I really don’t know PEACE OUT.

From the redbox, we rented never-released-to-theaters, Ben Stiller starring The Marc Pease Experience.  Those two descriptors together are less that encouraging, but despite my pulling for Animal Planet: Puppy Party, we rented it anyway.  Directed by Todd Louiso (Love Liza) and co-starring Jason Schwartzman and Anna “Up in the Fucking Air” Kendrick, this little indie-ish high school theater comedy was a steaming pile of WTF.  Schwartzman is the eponymous character who still maintains his high school a cappella group, with whom he dreams of making a demo, lives in his dead grandmother’s condo, and is still traumatized by a failed performance of The Wiz from 8 years earlier.  He is dating Meg (Kendrick) who is a senior at his alma mater (though they make sure to mention she is 18).  His hero is the music teacher, Jon Gribble (Stiller), who promised to produce his a cappella album — but that was when he was in high school and he actually is just a smarmy loser asshole.  Also, he is fucking Meg which is completely gross and entirely disturbing.

I can sum up my feelings about The Marc Pease Experience is one simple phrase: I don’t get it.  It seems like it wants to be a parody of high school drama and music (I think this is what Glee is?) but Stiller’s character isn’t over the top.  He’s actually under the top.  That is, I think we’ve all encountered high school drama teachers (or whatever kind of teacher, like my world history teach who would absolutely FLIP if you called him “Mister” instead of “Doctor.”  I kind of had the hots for him, but again, another issue) who take themselves wayyy too seriously and completely get off on the fact that a bunch of high school kids think they are awesome because other adults realize what complete losers they are.  That idea is a little bit funny and is played to maximum ridonkulousness (with mixed results) in Hamlet 2, but here, Stiller is so subdued that it’s not funny, it’s just uncomfortable and a little bit sad.

There are a lot of things going on in Schwatzman’s character too with his delusional ideals about his a cappella group, the fact that he’s dating a high schooler (who is kind of a bitch to him) and has no family and is pathetic and sad but it’s all over the place.  Is it funny?  Is it sad?  Who the fuck is this guy?  And why is the movie named after him?  Huh??

Finally there is Meg about whom we know even less apart from the fact that she likes to sing and fuck older guys (change “sing” to “drink” and that’s a pretty apt description of…nevermind).  The fact that she’s dating Marc is one thing, he’s obviously sweet if lame.  The fact that she’s fucking her music teacher – and clearly isn’t all that into it – is so weird and gross.  But those feelings are never validated by anything that happens in the movie.  Gribble doesn’t get any comeuppance and Meg doesn’t have any epiphanies about self-esteem or fall in love with some cute high school boy.  It’s disturbing.  I was genuinely disturbed and grossed out.

The direction and editing are also completely confusing.  You’ll just be going along, all normal movie like, and then there will be an extreme close up of Marc Pease buttering his toast for 25 seconds.  I wish I were exaggerating.  I don’t…I just…WTF?  There is no reason for this shot to exist.  The toast doesn’t come back to play an important part in the story.  I do not understand.  Come to think of it, there is no reason for this movie to exist.

Some day I will stop getting excited about movies.  I will learn my lesson and go into even the most highly touted and slickly marketed film skeptical and broken.  Unfortunately this has not happened yet and in I went to see A Single Man expecting Tom Ford to translate his piercing stare and effortless style into something not just pretty but moving.

But of course.

He didn’t.

Yes, this story (based on a presumably monstrously depressing novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood) of a gay man in 1960s Los Angeles mourning his dead lover is — dramatic.  The idea of being forced to suffer in silence and secret because of prejudice is a depressing one.  But the subtlety of the subject matter — what is more subtle than the day to day process of grieving — is overwhelmed by droll, condescending voiceover, pointless quirks and dialogue and situations that are anything but subtle.

As the eponymous man, George, Colin Firth is sad eyed and straight faced.  More slender than normal he fills out his suits very nicely.  Julianne Moore, as his (pardon the expression) fag hag Charley is glamorously over the top with piled high hair and caked on mascara, but her truly dreadful British accent is too much to bear.  And the gorgeous gay men that not only fall all over themselves to get to George (yes, how depressing that must be for him) have not only the perfectly sculpted forms of actors, but the offputting feminine faces of model.

Finally, A Single Man falls into the trap that far too many modern period films and television shows (I’m looking at you, Mad Men) of giving  not just a nod to their contemporary era.  An oversized movie poster advertise, not something obscure or artsy but Psycho.  A newscast on the radio isn’t talking about the local school board or traffic conditions, it’s talking about the Cuban Missle Crisis.  Particularly in this film, the style is of the decade is so pervasive and well-done that there is no reason for these insulting shout-outs.

I didn’t enjoy this movie.  It is nice to look out, well-framed and just attractive.  I wouldn’t mind having it play on mute while I sipped Pinot Grigio on a third date.  But it’s not moving.  It’s not a good story.  It’s not even satisfyingly depressing.  It’s just kind of…suck.

The opening of The Burning Plain is similarly uncomfortable with a haggard and naked Sylvia (Charlize Theron) sucking deeply on a cigarette and kicking John (John Corbett) out of her room in the small hours of the morning.  Frigid and blank, Sylvia’s character is no mystery and when we shortly find out that her lover is also her employee at an upscale restaurant in addition to being married to another woman, Sylvia’s unfeeling attitude towards him is not a surprise.  But just as the drama is ramping up in this dreary Portland debauchery, we’re transported to New Mexico where an adulterous couple has been burned alive in a mobile home, leaving their children to pick up the pieces.  Without giving anything away, these two stories eventually catch up to each other and weave together.  

Actually, the way in which they weave together, and the way in which I feel compelled to not give anything away, is one of the most irritating things about the film.  It seems to set itself up to be some sort of mystery, when to me the atmosphere, characters and storyline were much more those of a penetrating drama.  In this instance, the details being unnecessarily confusing becomes frustrating rather than rewarding.  When things are finally revealed and connections made, it feels like the filmmaker is looking directly at you and asking “Bet you didn’t see THAT ONE coming!” when, if you’ve ever, you know, seen a movie before, you most definitely DID see it coming. 

As a for instance, oh that’s so weird that she doesn’t want him to touch her boob I bet she had cancer and then 30 minutes later “I had cancer” comes out or her mouth and you wish you were the one who had cancer because if you were in the hospital at least you probably wouldn’t have to watch this movie because it isn’t even out yet and I assume in the hospital you have to settle for DVDs.* Arriaga is preoccupied with the complications of his characters, but rather than explore them, he seeks to disguise them in the complications of the story lines that don’t even end up being all that complicated,  just annoying.

The specifics of his characters’ problems could also be revealed in more subtle and organic ways.  When Sylvia (do you ever hear this name and not think of Sylvia Plath?  I personally don’t, and I think this is what Arriaga is banking on) walks up to the edge of a cliff, looking depressed and contemplates jumping over (we have to assume) it seems heavy handed and forced.  When the young girl, Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), who has watched her mother burn to death, burns herself without pain in that way that freaky chicks do,  it is much too neat and matter of fact and parallel.  It doesn’t seems real and therefore isn’t compelling.

What I really want to latch onto in The Burning Plain is the complicated mother/daughter dynamic, particularly the climax that this conflict often reaches when the daughter is an adolescent.  This is a universal struggle and I love the idea of it being explored.  I could embrace this theme if only there weren’t so much filler packed in around it and a general feeling of hostility and disappointment towards all the female characters.  Sylvia has numbed herself to pain and pleasure and has sex simply to feel anything.  She never seems sympathetic in her neutral colored J. .Crew outfits with her unemotional sexuality.  Even as her secrets are revealed, her redemption is too tentative to truly bring relief.  Mariana, the teenager, is similarly cold and unforgiving while her mother, Gina (Kim Basinger) is an adulteress, abandoning her children to meet her Latin lover in a trailer.  She dies without any redemption.  Even the wife of her lover, Nick (Joaquim de Almeida), is portrayed as somewhat heartless and not present for her children when their father dies.  For a story that tries to explore the complexities of women, it uncovers nothing but their faults and even goes so far as to exalt the father characters as affectionate protectors and providers while their female counterparts are only philandering and selfish.  It’s difficult to appreciate characters when it seems that the filmmaker himself has such contempt for them.  

There were some standout performances in the movie that served as pleasant distractions.  Joaquim de Almeida as Kim Basinger’s lover is penetrating and passionate, even pit against Basinger’s all too familiar meek and unhappy mother character.  The young actors were also breaths of fresh air, particularly Jennifer Lawrence as Mariana.  Though saddled with obnoxiously corny dialogue at times, she is bright eyed and sad.  

It wasn’t surprising to me to hear that Arriaga had spent over a decade working on the script for The Burning Plain.  It felt like it had been steeped in that kind of self-indulgence and that makes for an uncomfortable and unsatisfying viewing experience.  A film like this doesn’t have to redeem the human race, or even all of its characters, but when we’re forced to swallow a happy ending (ew) with no cogent explanation, what’s the point?

*can you get Netflix delievered to a hospital?

The 2008 awards season is now in its death throes, being as it’s 2009, but it still seems prudent to make some generalizations about what seems to be the most compelling fodder for “good” films last year.  One central theme that doesn’t seem to be getting old is the single, aging man, searching for something to bring meaning to his life as he starts to see his own mortality on the horizon.  The most obvious instance this year, of course, is Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, but the same elements weave themselves through Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and even arguably both of Kate Winslet’sshowcase pieces The Reader and Revolutionary Road.  Though it has garnered fewer accolades than most of these films, Joel Hopkins’ Last Chance Harvey, which went into wide release January 16th, is deserving of a spot on this landscape.

Dustin Hoffman, an actor that is probably no longer concerned about his own legacy (though  he may cringe a little at Mr. Magorium’sWonder Emporium), plays Harvey Shine, a failed jazz pianist and commercial jingle writer who travels to London for his daughter’s wedding.  Struggling to find meaning in his work and out of place in the wedding party, things are bad enough when his daughter, Suzy (Liane Balaban), tells him that she wants her stepfather, the improbably tan and impossibly charming Brian (an improbably tan and perfectly charming James Brolin) to give her away.  Harvey attends the wedding, smile pasted on, then dashes off to Heathrow to get back to New York in time for a meeting.  Meanwhile, Emma Thompson as single and cynical but charming Kate Walker is caring for her neurotic mother, being set up on blind dates by her co-workers and dreaming of a career as a novelist.  Naturally, they meet at the airport and despite Kate’s reluctance, the pair strike up the only kind of friendship that movies need: unlikely.  Immediately, there is a palpable realism about their interactions.  It isn’t the electric but ultimately fleeting sparks of a storybook romance.  Instead it is an understanding, laced with skepticism.  An instant trust underlined with pragmatism.  In short, something akin to real life.

Hopkins, whose only credits are a short entitled Jorge and a lauded but little seen feature called Jump Tomorrow (which appears to be based on Jorge), ambitiously wrote Last Chance Harvey with Hoffman and Thompson in mind.  The fact that they both agreed to be a part of the project speaks volumes about the strength of the script.  Both Harvey and Kate are the kind of sympathetic and well-developed characters that any actor surely longs to play.  Hopkins’ choices as a director are simple and effective.  As the pair stroll the streets of London, he lets the scenery and his impeccable actors tell his poignant story without interference. Hoffman especially makes easy work of defining himself as Harvey.  It takes only a few words and movements to establish the complex relationships that exist between himself and his daughter and his ex-wife (Kathy Baker).  As much as any of this year’s awards fodder, Last Chance Harvey is a simple story of redemption.  Admittedly, significant portions of the film are not comfortable to watch because Harvey is enduring an awkward struggle, but like his character, the film redeems itself with the one thing that no one seems to be able to resist right now: hope.

All of this is to say that if you swoon at the sight of quirky indie bad boy Sam Rockwell like I do, you will probably find Moon to be wholly watchable.  If you are ambivalent or hold any negative feelings towards him, well, you might not.

The year is…sometime in the not so distant future.  Sam Bell (Rockwell) is working alone on the Moon, seemingly mining resources for use as energy back on earth.  He spends his days in the station with no companionship besides intermittent video messages from the company for whom he works and his wife and daughter and a space computer voiced by Kevin Spacey.  As the film begins he is nearing the end of his 3 year contract and preparing to return home to earth.  Unfortunately, something goes awry and when he returns to the ship after crashing his moon-mobile (I’m certain there is a more technical term for this) he finds himself face to face with a hotter, meaner, better groomed version of himself.  At first it’s impossible to tell if this is real or if so much time alone in space with KevinSpaceyComputer has caused him to go insane.  We quickly realize that the former is true and the two Sam Bell’s have to both figure out why there are two of them and how they will get back to earth unharmed.

The premise of Moon treads familiar science fiction ground and while it is an intrinsically interesting idea, something is missing in its execution.  The pacing of the film is uneven: it’s slow to get started then throws a lot of information at you, rapid fire.  Combined with direction that is passable at best and characterization that never goes quite as deep as I wanted it to left Moon without the stakes that it needed to be a really good movie.  By the end, I was still interested but the amount that I actually cared about the outcome was slim to none.  It also suffered from overscoring which is admittedly a pet peeve of mine but makes it that much easier to dismiss dramatic events with a frustrated eye-roll. 

I enjoyed watching Moon, but it’s the kind of movie that you’re not going to keep thinking about when it’s over…unless you see it on Netflix and wonder “why wasn’t that movie better”*

*or, “Sam Rockwell has a hot ass”