Category Archives: Movie Review

UW Reel Love LGBT Film Fest, Day 1: “Boy Meets Girl” and “Love is Strange”

boymeetsgirl_Still002

The UW-Madison’s Reel Love LGBT Film Festival, now in its fourth year, is still the only Wisconsin film festival (and one of the few campus-based festivals nationwide) exclusively devoted to films with gay, lesbian and transgender subject matter.

The free, 15-film festival runs Thursday through Sunday at the Union South Marquee Theatre, 1308 W. Dayton St. Once scheduled in the fall, the festival has moved to the spring this year, and offers another terrific collection of new films, including many Madison premieres, that show the wide range of LGBT filmmaking out there. Whether you like broad comedies, tender dramas or hot-button documentaries, they’re represented at this festival.

Each day during the festival, I’ll feature a new review of one of the films playing that day, along with capsules of the others and links to my previous reviews where available. For a full schedule, visit wudfilm.com. And, once again, it’s FREE, people!

“Boy Meets Girl” (9:30 p.m. Thursday) — Ricky is probably like a lot of girls living in small-town Kentucky, dreaming of heading to New York and pursuing her career as a fashion designer, and maybe hoping to find Mr. Right along the way.

Well, there’s one thing different about Ricky; she’s transgender.

Writer-director Eric Schaeffer’s sparkling comedy presents Ricky’s identity as a simple fact of life, no different than her best friend Robby’s masculinity. If we’re expecting to see a film about how a small Southern town rejects a transgender person in their midst, instead this is a warm film where everyone accepts Ricky as she is. And, by extension, so should we.

Much of this has to do with the witty writing of Schaeffer, an indie-film veteran (“If Lucy Fell”) who at times in his career has strained too much to be overtly cutesy. Here, his tone works, combined with a terrific performance by Michelle Hendley as Ricky. With her sly drawl and sure sense of self, Ricky is an instantly appealing character.

The plot follows Ricky’s dalliance with a local Southern belle, Francesca (Alexandra Turshen), yearning to experiment a little before marrying her straight-laced boyfriend, who is serving in Afghanistan. Schaeffer keeps the film bouncy and bright, shifting from humorously frank discussions about sexuality between Ricky and Robby to more tender scenes between Ricky and Francesca.

At times, “Boy Meets Girl” seems like it’s trying to hard to educate the audience about the transgender community. But then, given the rare nature of the film, maybe it has to. The deeper value to the film is simply showing us a transgender person who has the same hopes, dreams and fears as everybody else.

loveisstrange

“Love is Strange” (7 p.m. Thursday) — My full review is here. In Ira Sachs’ drama, the arrival of gay marriage isn’t the salvation for a longtime couple (Alfred Molina and John Lithgow). In many ways, it’s the start of their problems, as Molina’s character gets fired by the Catholic school he works as a music teacher at, forcing the couple to give up their expensive Manhattan apartment and move in with friends.

Sachs’ poignant drama shows how easily the gears of life can turn against us when we least expect it, and the support network of friends and family that we take for granted can suddenly become so essential. The performances by Lithgow and Molina are wonderful, and Sachs includes some wonderful moments of visual poetry, including a final shot that might make your heart burst.

 

“She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry”: You really have come a long way, baby

ShesBeautifulWhenShesAngry-_tix

“She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:27, three stars out of four.

During the civil rights movement, scores of women stood up for what was right. And, after that, they weren’t inclined to sit back down again when it came to their own rights.

Mary Dore’s illuminating documentary “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” looks at the feminist movement of the 1960s, celebrating what was achieved but also being pretty frank about where it fell short. Dore could have done more to connect the struggle to the ongoing battles for women’s rights today, as well to so-called “third wave” feminism. But as a galvanizing document of its time, “Angry” hits the mark.

Continue reading →

“GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem:” An Israeli wife fights in a court divorced from fairness

gett3

“GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:55, three and a half stars out of four.

For the first five minutes of “GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem,” we never see the woman who gives the movie her name. Instead, co-directors Shlomi and Ronit Elkabetz film from her point of view, so we see her view of her attorney (Menasheh Noy), her estranged husband (Simon Abkarian) and the three-member religious court of rabbis that will decide her fate. But never her.

Continue reading →

“While We’re Young”: Middle age is wasted on the middle-aged

Ben Stiller and Adam Driver in While We're Young

“While We’re Young” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:34, three and a half stars out of four.

If youth is wasted on the young, middle age is definitely wasted on the middle-aged. Think about it. You have the experience and wisdom to know what truly matters, and the resources to go after it. And yet you waste all this time either mooning over your vanished youth or living in fear of the old age to come. Or waste time hunting around for the cardboard sleeve to your “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” CD.

Continue reading →

“Effie Gray:” Losing sense and sensibility in a loveless marriage

effie gray review dakota

“Effie Gray” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. PG-13, 1:48, two and a half stars out of four.

On a train ride, Effie Gray (Dakota Fanning) remarks to John Ruskin (Greg Wise) that sharing the train compartment together is the first time they’ve ever been truly alone together.

They’re already married at this point. That would seem like a red flag.

Continue reading →

“Wild Tales”: Argentine anthology film appeals to our animal instincts

wildtales2

“Wild Tales” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:55, three stars out of four.

The six short films that make up Argentine writer-director Damian Szifron’s anthology “Wild Tales” might be episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” with their macabre overtones, twist endings and explorations of the dark side of the human condition. But here, the “twilight zone” the characters pass through isn’t some supernatural no man’s land, but the thin line between civilized and savage behavior. And many characters don’t just pass through — they happily leap through.

Continue reading →

“The Gunman”: The Penn isn’t mightier than the Neeson

THE GUNMAN

“The Gunman” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate and Star Cinemas. R, 1:55, two stars out of four.

Apparently, if you’re a veteran Hollywood actor, you get your AARP card at 50 and your action movie franchise at 55. Sean Penn is actually still a spry 54, but looks simultaneously world-weary and gym-rat buff enough to follow in the footsteps of Liam Neeson (“Taken”), Kevin Costner (“Three Days to Kill”), Pierce Brosnan (“The November Man”) and a host of other Bad Dads looking for a late-career boost at the box office.

Penn’s foray, “The Gunman,” was even directed by Pierre Morel of “Taken” fame. And Penn also produced the film and co-wrote the screenplay, and gives a performance that’s effectively lived-in at times, so he’s not just cashing a paycheck here. Unfortunately, the swipes at emotional depth and global relevance here only underscore how deeply dumb much of the rest of the movie is.

Penn plays Jim Terrier, ostensibly a security consultant working in the Congo in 2006 to protect aid workers from rebel forces. Except he’s also a mercenary getting paid by a wealthy mining company to arm the rebels and remove any obstacles to their plans to strip the country of its rich natural resources. In a genuinely haunting opening sequence, one of those obstacles turns out to be a government official who won’t play ball with the mining companies, and Terrier puts a sniper bullet through him.

Flash forward eight years later, and Terrier is still in the Congo, only now, feeling guilty and chastened by the wet work he used to do, now he really is a genuine aid worker. The tortured nature of his mind is illustrated by the frequent headaches and patches of memory loss he experiences, a byproduct of concussions suffered after years spent around gunfire and explosions. (Yes, “The Gunman” is that rare action film that takes time to make points about third-world development and head trauma. I’m surprised they couldn’t work in a message about affordable health care, too, but maybe they’re saving that for the sequel.)

the-gunman-sean-penn

When a trio of gunmen try to take Terrier out, he somehow figures that he’s being targeted by someone who doesn’t want evidence of that 2006 killing to be revealed. He goes after his former mercenary teammates, including the wry team leader Cox (Mark Rylance) and mining company liaison Felix (Javier Bardem) looking for answers. And, of course, kill the waves of assassins on his tale. Along the way he picks up old flame Annie (Jasmine Trinca), who he left behind when he first fled the Congo, but she exists largely as a prize for the men to fight over.

Morel certainly knows his way around an action sequence, and the brutal, close-up fistfights in “The Gunman” are urgent and well-shot. But the rest of “The Gunman” really drags, criminally bogging down good actors like not only Penn and Barden, but Ray Winstone as an old buddy of Terrier’s and Idris Elba as an Interpol agent, in tough-guy dialogue and clunky exposition. Compare that to last week’s Bad Dad action thriller, “Run All Night,” which used its veteran actors so well that it was a shame when the good conversation was interrupted by gunfire.

Bardem tries to goof around a little, and Penn tries to put some weight behind Terrier’s eyes. But any good acting in “The Gunman” is done despite the film, rather than because of it.

“Run All Night”: Liam Neeson makes the mean streets a little meaner

Run All Night

“Run All Night” is now playing at Point, Eastgate and Star Cinemas. R, 1:55, three stars out of four.

At this point, the question is not whether Liam Neeson will kick ass, but what sort of ass he will kick. Albanian ass, as in “Taken”? German ass, as in “Unknown”? Midair ass, as in “Non-Stop”?

Or Irish-American ass, as in his latest action thriller “Run All Night,” although “Run” takes some pains to worry about things like acting, characterization and texture. Why, it’s almost a full hour before the first ass gets kicked.

Continue reading →

“Jauja”: Viggo Mortensen wanders in an existential desert

jauja

“Jauja” has its Madison premiere on Saturday, March 7 at 7 p.m. at the UW-Cinematheque screening room, 4070 Vilas Hall. Unrated, 1:50, three stars out of four. FREE!

Lisandro Alonso’s “Jauja” is shot in a boxy 4:3 frame that used to be the standard for movies. But interestingly, the edges of the frame are rounded, the colors deeply saturated, making each frame look like an old photo you might find in a shoebox in your grandfather’s closet.

That anachronistic out-of-time sensation suits “Jauja” well, both for where it’s set, and where it’s going. Argentinian director Alonso is known for experimental films with little dialogue and slippery narrative rules. At first, “Jauja” seems like a much more traditional sort of film, with lots of dialogue and a big star (Viggo Mortensen) in the center. But don’t be fooled.

Continue reading →