Pictureland

This slightly better than average East meets West love story is really more about Patricia Clarkson time than anything else.   Ms. Clarkson has been an ever more busy actress in television and films since the mid-80's.   Her natural beauty, sultry-ish voice and deceptive range have often made her the most interesting thing happening on screen, especially in otherwise disappointing projects like Pieces of April and Shutter Island (the edgier roles in both of those films demonstrating some of that range, in contrast to the kindly souls she often plays, as with her character in Cairo Time ). Here she plays Juliette Grant, a writer arriving in Cairo for a rendezvous with her husband.  Unfortunately, his UN job has him detained with refugee camp crisis in Gaza, so his long-time co-worker, Tareq (Alexander Siddig) collects her from the airport.  As days pass and the husband can't get away - there ar...

Hey, look!  It's Michael Cera starring in a film version of a graphic and/or young adult novel!  What are the odds?  Well, yes, quite good, actually.   Roughly equal, it would seem, to finding Ellen Page in a coming of age film in recent years in which she plays the spunky protagonist.   While Ms. Page has made perhaps not so much a great leap as a small step from her roles in Juno , Whip It , etc., to Christopher Nolan's dreamscaping extravanganza, Inception , the mild-mannered Mr. Cera is called upon to don the hoodie once more in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World .   The good news in this case, as opposed to Cera's last such outing, the insufferable Youth in Revolt , is that he finds himself in the hands of Edgar Wright, the promising director of both Sean of the Dead and Hott Fuzz .  Faint praise though it may be, but Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is easily...

It's definitely not based on the Henry James novel of the same name, much as Anton  Corbijn's second feature does offer a creaky dialog between old and new world representatives, American assassin Jack, a.k.a., Edward Clark (George Clooney) and the priest (Paolo Bonacelli) of the small Italian village where the killer is hiding out.    Despite the fact that there are a few picturesque locations announced by on-screen titles, The American is in some ways a James Bond film without the geographic and plot line ADHD.   Most of the action, or deliberate lack thereof, takes place in one of those medieval Italian villages.  What it really does is convincingly show the psychological repercussions of a life devoted to killing,  something which the Bond franchise has at least touched upon since the arrival of Daniel Craig.   But as a compensation, both Jack and James operate in a world in which most all of the women are ridiculously gorgeous...

At a certain juncture in Get Low, long-time hermit Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) is made to look presentable for his funeral.  Not an unusual process you might think for any body readied for its last great ceremony, but  this particular old body is still alive.   Before the stalactite of beard is winnowed down to a wispy goatee, before the scraggly cascade of grey hair is cropped close at the back of the neck, funeral director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) makes sure that he gets a photo of Felix in full-on hermit guise .   Since Felix wants to have as many people attend his funeral "party" as possible, the funeral dierctor wisely has a photo taken that will match both the scant memories folks in his Southern environs might have of him as well as the outsized legends that have sprung up around the man.  When all of that barbering is complete, Felix is transformed from a prototypical old coot to someone who looks like he could p...

The Bay Theater, like the downtown oasis of the Black Cat Coffee House, was one of many pleasant surprises in Ashland, Wisconsin.   Ashland sits on the Chequemagon Bay of Lake Superior, on the northern edge of Wisconsin.   Ashland proved to be a much more laid-back base for exploring the region than quaint, hillside Bayfield, about 20 miles north.  Aside from the town itself, we ventured out to the nearby Apostle Islands and then eastward into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a near-idyllic afternoon in the spectacular Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. The theater itself, aside from the great marquee and upright, is a pretty generic affair once you get indoors.   Once a single-screen house with a capacity of 650, it's now subdivided.   The lobby, once you step beyond some bold green and black vitriolite in the entryway, is sadly nondescript, as was the small auditorium in which we watched a film.   ...

Like the Fendi and Raf Simons (Jil Sander) fashions in which its characters are adorned, I Am Love is positively draped in elegance.  The opening title sequence alone, a combination of lush cursive and cooly modern print over scenes of snowy Milan, urged along by the crisp, insistent rhythms of John Adams, is like an appetizer so rich you're not sure that you even need an entree.      Before big, black letters announced, "MILANO," I initially wondered if those wintry images might be of some modern Russian city, perhaps the home of I Am Love's main character, Emma Recchi (the ever-singular Tilda Swinton).  But this is not sundrenched Tuscany, rather the darker, colder northern Italian center of fashion and commerce.   As is the case with all representations of both nature and weather we see, frigid Milan mirrors the emotional winter in which Emma is living.   I A...

As it happens, the kids are alright.   It's the adults in Lisa Cholodenko's third feature film that could use some work. Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Benning) are long-time partners, women married and each raising a child produced by artificial insemination from the same donor.   As Nic's daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska) has passed her 18th birthday, her brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson) prods her to contact their biological father.   A meeting is arranged, the kids have varying reactions - as if falling into classical teenager/parent dynamics, it's the daughter taken with the handsome, laid back donor, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), while the son bristles at their differences - and their mothers ultimately find out about the meeting, to their varied chagrin.   As Paul begins to develop relationships with the kids, as well as a work relationship with Jules (she's a budding landscape ar...