DVD review: “Life is Sweet: The Criterion Collection”

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When I first moved to Chicago in 1990, I remember seeing two movies that first year at the beautiful Music Box Theatre that changed my 22-year-old idea of what movies could be. The first was “35 Up,” which changed my idea of what documentaries could be. The other was Mike Leigh’s “Life is Sweet,” which showed me a new (to me) way of making dramas.

Leigh’s funny and touching working-class smorgasbord is out on DVD and Blu-ray this week in a new edition from the Criterion Collection. It’s the film that first put Leigh on the map, as he went on to make excellent films like “Another Year” and “Topsy Turvy,” and it has all the hallmarks of a Mike Leigh film, deeply-felt relationships between its characters borne out of months of preparation with the actors, a humane but not sentimental spirit, and an emphasis on small lives, quietly and unquietly lived.

The emphasis here is on a family, both ordinary and extraordinary. Andy (Leigh mainstay Jim Broadbent) is a chef who wants to open his own food truck on the side, while Wendy (Alison Steadman, then Leigh’s wife) teaches dance classes to children. They’re a fun couple — Andy is a dreamer and somewhat absent-minded, but devoted to his family, while Wendy is almost chronically daffy and exuberant. They have two children, twin sisters Natalie (Claire Skinner) and Nicola (Jane Horrocks). Despite looking so much alike that, for much of the first time I saw the movie, I thought I was watching the same actress in a dual role, the two sisters are completely different. Natalie is good-natured and stable, Nicola is a twitching, angry, anxiety-ridden mess. I found her hilarious in 1990; now that I have two daughters of my own, not so much.

The film follows some of the family’s schemes, such as that food truck, or a family friend (Timothy Spall) whose attempt to open a French restaurant ends in disaster. (One thing you notice now is that the foodie dreamers in “Life is Sweet” are merely ahead of their time in 1990 — that food truck would have them lined up around the block today.) But the real heart of the film is that family, as the family members approach Nicola with a mix of caring and exasperation.

The title of the film is presented in a cheery font at the beginning of the film, but its life-affirming nature seems like more of a challenge. Is life sweet? How can two sisters grow up in the exact same circumstances and turn out so different? The key to happiness, the movie suggests, is to find sweetness in the sour as well.

The Criterion edition includes a new gregarious commentary track by Leigh, which he opens by listing all the things his movie is about in alphabetical order (“caring, catering, central heating, chips, chocolate. . .”) as well as an extended 1991 interview with Leigh. There are also five short films that Leigh made for the BBC back in 1975 that show his wry take on working-class interactions in nascent form.

Instant Gratification: “The Intouchables” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix Instant

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Sure, I’m watching the new episodes of “Arrested Development” on Netflix like everybody else is. But eventually, we’ll get through them, or at least need a break from binge-watching them. And when that happens, the Instant Gratification column is there!

Pick of the week: “The Intouchables”: My full review is here. Not the Eliot Ness gangster movie “The Untouchables,” but the highest-grossing film in France, a slick and charming comedy-drama about a paralyzed tycoon who hires a street-smart Senegalese man to look after him. It’s high-concept ripe for a Hollywood remake (which is in the works), but it’s a well-acted crowd-pleaser that ultimately earns its emotional payoffs.

Documentary of the week: “Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters” — My full review is here. Cinematheque first screened this documentary in Madison, a fascinating look at a visual artist who creates cinematic tableaux that look like key frames from movies that were never made, equally informed by David Lynch and Douglas Sirk.

Action movie of the week: “Sleepless Night” — My full review is here. This 2012 French action film was a ton of fun at the 2012 Wisconsin Film Festival, all taking place entirely in a labrynthine nightclub as a desperate man tries to rescue his daughter from a crime boss.

Drama of the week: “End of Watch” — A visceral action film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as L.A. rookie cops who run afoul of a Mexican drug cartel, David Ayers (“Training Day”) made one of the sleepers of 2012.

Political film of the week: “The Revisionaries” — Teachers, parents and others interested by where Wisconsin’s education system is going might want to check out this 2012 documentary, which looks at the war over textbook standards in Texas between creationists and, you know, science.

“The Iceman”: Diary of a cold-blooded killer

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“The Iceman” is now playing at Point and Eastgate Cinemas. R, 1 hour 46 minutes, three stars out of four.

There isn’t a character that Michael Shannon has played that it seems like a good idea to screw with. Even one of his most likable recent characters, the loopy uncle in “Mud,” seemed like trouble.

So it’s something to say that Richard Kuklinski, the hitman Shannon plays in Ariel Vromen’s fact-based crime drama “The Iceman,” is one of his most fearsome characters. The post-title cards say that Kuklinski is thought to have killed over 100 people in the ’70s and ’80s, and in looking into Shannon’s cold, dead eyes, you wonder if that’s lowballing it.

Kuklinski led a double life, both as a busy employee of the mob in New Jersey and as a loving husband and family man. We get a sense of that duality in the movie’s opening scene. In the first, he sweet-talks his future wife (Winona Ryder) on their first date; in the second, he slashes the throat of somebody who insults her in a pool hall.

Once local crime boss Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta) catches wind of Kuklinski’s “aptitude,” he brings him in as a contract killer. The film follows Kuklinski’s 20-year career, shooting, stabbing, poisoning a long list of victims. He approaches every job with a businesslike precision, his face betraying only a slight irritation at the the pleadings of his victims, like he’s remembering he forgot to pay the water bill. When one victim (James Franco in a cameo) prays for God to save him, Kuklinski sneers. “I don’t feel anything,” he says. “God must be busy.”

The case is peppered with good supporting work from actors who we both expect to see in a mob drama (Liotta, Robert Davi) and some we don’t, including David Schwimmer as a sad-mustached, jumpsuit-wearing rival hitman, and Chris Evans (“Captain America”), almost unrecognizable under scraggly facial hair as a freelance hitman who Kuklinski partners with.

Although “The Iceman” has a high body count, Vromen doesn’t wallow in the blood, focusing more on the characters than the violence they do. There’s no honor or nobility in this rogues’ gallery, just a parade of sociopaths and opportunists feeding on the innocent, and eventually each other. I don’t know that we root for Kuklinski to survive them, but we’re undeniably fascinated at his ability to do so.

We know the arc of “The Iceman” from “Goodfellas” and a hundred other mob movies. Things are good for a while, and Kuklinski is able to keep his life compartmentalized. But the syndicate starts to crumble, with the police closing in and mobsters plotting to whack each other before they get whacked first. The pressure starts getting to Kuklinski, most notably when DeMeo shows up at his daughter’s 16th birthday party.

It’s a testament to Shannon’s raw, gritty performance that even though we’ve seen him kill dozens of helpless people up until this point, we still feel for him a little as his family starts to see him for who he really is. Shannon could have gone for a much more showy performance, but he keeps Kuklinski largely reined in, the fury that occasionally ignites in his eyes more than enough to chill us. He’s not a psychopath, he tells himself. He’s a guy doing a job he seems frighteningly well-suited for.

What’s playing in Madison theaters, May 24-30, 2013

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This is the first week where more than one summer blockbuster sequel is duking it out at the box office for those Memorial Day dollars. Who will win?

All week

“Fast & Furious 6″ (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Cinema Cafe) — My review is here. Vin, Paul, the Rock and the rest are back in another case of vehicular mayhem. Loud, dumb fun.

“The Hangover Part III” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Cinema Cafe, Sundance) — While the F&F franchise seemed to hit its stride in “Fast Five,” the “Hangover” seemed creatively exhausted by “Part II.” Maybe that’s why they’ve ditched the “What happened last night?” structure and insisted this will be the last one.

“Epic” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Cinema Cafe) — Movies for little kids are few and far between until school gets out, so they’ll have to be satisfied with this all-star fantasy about a girl who gets shrunk down to the land of insects.

“The Iceman” (Point, Eastgate) — Michael Shannon looks appropriately menacing as the title character, a mob hitman with hundreds of kills to his credit, in this fact-based thriller.

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (Sundance) — My review is here. Mira Nair has made a thoughtful and complex post-9/11 thriller, about a Pakistani man who goes from Wall Street financier to radical Muslim.

Friday

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (8 p.m., Majestic Theatre) — The very definition of a cult classic, the 1975 musical gets the full treatment here, including appearances by the Velvet Darkness cast in costume and a “virgin sacrifice” before the show. Tickets are $5, which also gets you admission to see the band The Human Aftertaste at 10 p.m., describe as “the only live band and meat canning company in one!”

Monday

“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (9 p.m., Memorial Union Terrace) — Even though Steven Spielberg’s enchanting classic just played at Olbrich Park last week as part of the Moonlight Movies series, it’s a fitting kickoff to the Lakeside Terrace “Outta This World” series of outer-space and alien movies. The full schedule is here. Free!

“Fast & Furious 6”: Going along for the ride

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“Fast & Furious 6” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema and Cinema Cafe. PG-13, 2 hours 10 minutes, 2 and a half stars out of four.

Back when I reviewed the first “The Fast and the Furious” movie in 2000, I griped about the unreality of the film’s car chases. Surely a car wouldn’t really fly that high in the air after hitting a jump that small.

In “Fast & Furious 6,” as a tank flipped up on the highway, launching the woman perched on its turret over a gorge, and another man leaped from the other side of the divide to catch her in midair, I considered I might have been too hasty in my original criticism.

Forget real-world physics. The car chases and crashes of the sixth installment don’t adhere to the physics of my old Matchbox car races, when cars would do septuple-flips off the dining room table and into the litter box.

But that is much of the fun of the franchise since director Justin Lin (who was at the Wisconsin Film Festival a lifetime ago with his indie debut “Better Luck Tomorrow” in 2003) took over the “F & F” movies. “Fast Five” was unquestionably the best of the series, bookending a decent heist plot with two inventive and hilariously over-the-top car chases.

“6” doesn’t have quite the gonzo appeal of that giant safe smashing through the streets of Rio, but it does end with two lengthy and inspired action sequences, which is all anybody is in their seats for. It’s loud, dumb fun — sometimes too dumb for its own good.

After the $100 million heist of “Fast Five,” the heroes are enjoying their ill-gotten goods in extradition-free countries. But government agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) convinces them to reunite, this time on the side of the angels to take down an ex-Special Forces agent named Shaw (Luke Evans) and his team, who want to steal a thing. Really, it does not matter what that thing is, so why waste time explaining it?

Hobbs’ ace card is that one of Shaw’s team is Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), back from the dead and apparently suffering from amnesia. (They must be saving the evil twin plot for “F&F 7.”) So her ex-lover Dom (Vin Diesel), partner Brian (Paul Walker) and the crew are persuaded to take Shaw down so they can take Letty back.

For a six-film series that’s basically a series of tenuously-connected action sequence, it’s surprising how much “Fast & Furious” relies on its mythology, bringing back recurring characters and tying up loose ends. Dom and Brian’s team has gotten larger and larger with every film, and the movie hammers home its idea that this isn’t car thief ring, it’s “family,” every chance they get. A welcome addition to the team this time around is MMA star Gina Carano (“Haywire”), who plays Hobbs’ new partner and gets into one dilly of a fight in a subway station.

The film briskly moves along — there may be as many as a dozen separate action sequences before those two closing setpieces — only slowing down enough for some comic relief from Tyrese Gibson or Chris “Ludacris” Bridges (who have the only good lines in the film). And those setpieces — a tank vs. cars duel on the freeway, and a desperate chase to catch a plane that’s taking off, with cars ending up dangling off the plane’s wings like Christmas ornaments — are pretty great.

A coda contains a cameo setting up the villain for the next installment — it’s the one actor who should be in these movies by now but isn’t. I expect it’ll be about as good and about as silly as this one — this is a franchise that knows what it is and what it needs to deliver.

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist”: From Manhattan to the madrassah

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“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 2 hours 8 minutes, 3 stars out of 4.

In the mid ’00s we got a spate of films that looked at the post-9/11 world and tried to “make sense of it all,” both what was happening in the Muslim world and what was happening in America. Some were good (“In the Valley of Elah”), some were not (“Sorry, Haters”), all seemed well-intentioned. Then, right about the time President Obama was inaugurated, they seem to die down, as if a collective memory fog was descending on Hollywood. Who would want to go back there?

But the next generation of post-9/11 films, including “Zero Dark Thirty” and now “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” seems to be coming around, having the benefit of a little perspective to tell their stories. I came into “Fundamentalist” worried that it would suffer from the didacticism and stridency of some of its predecessors. But the film from writer William Wheeler and director Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding’) is smart and complex, as unwilling to cling to one ideology as its protagonist.

The weakest part of the film is its ticking-clock framing device. An American professor (and likely CIA agent) has been kidnapped off the streets of Lahore, Pakistan. A newspaper writer (and even more likely CIA agent) named Bobby (Liev Schreiber) thinks one of his fellow professors, a young Pakistani man named Changez (Riz Ahmed), might have terrorist ties. So, in a cafe, Bobby and Changez sit down for what shifts between a friendly conversation and a canny interrogation. Meanwhile, Bobby’s superior (Martin Donovan) is listening, ready to send the troops in to seize Changez at a moment’s notice.

It’s a little hokey, but the film gets much better once Bobby and Changez start to talk. Changez spins a fascinating tale of his life, a former financial analyst (“a Navy SEAL of finance,” in his words) who takes a job in New York in the late ’90s, fully committed to living the capitalist dream.  Kiefer Sutherland is terrific has his boss and mentor, who recognizes a fellow predator in his rising young star.

But then the planes hit the Twin Towers, and everything changes for the aptly named Changez. It would be easy for a film to overstate the shift in attitude that Muslims had to face, but “Fundamentalist” is subtle and believable in charting that change. Changez gets pulled aside at the airport every time he flies, receives dirty looks and epithets from passers-by on the streets. In the office, his co-workers whisper anti-Muslim sentiments to each other, and make nervous jokes when Changez decides to grow out his beard. Even his artist girlfriend (Kate Hudson) makes a ham-handed art installation about Islam. Changez, formerly on his way to being a titan of Wall Street, finds himself an outcast.

So he returns to Pakistan and takes a teaching job, and the film keeps us guessing how far his intellect and passion took him, if he became the thing that America suspected he always was. The film is helped immeasurably by Ahmed’s canny, sympathetic performance. Changez is no victim — he radiates confidence and intelligence in all situations, so clearly beyond the simple fundamentalism of both sides of the culture war.

The essential question of “Fundamentalist” is whether his intelligence and humanity keeps him from getting sucked into the undertow of fundamentalism. Once you get away from the kidnapping plot, the audience spends an engrossing time in the film finding that out.

UFOs (Ultra-fun Films Outdoors) descend on the Terrace this summer

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One of the best ways to spend a Monday night in Madison during the summer is at a Lakeside Cinema movie on the UW Memorial Union Terrace. Okay, one of the best ways to spend any summer night in Madison is on the Terrace, so I’m cheating a bit.

Still, the long-running free Lakeside series is a pretty much guaranteed good time. They set  up a screen by the lake, and people cluster around with their popcorn and beer. There’s usually a trivia contest or some kind of other giveaway before the show starts at dusk. And the Union has greatly improved the projection and sound in the last few years, so you can actually appreciate the movie, which wasn’t always the case.

Every summer program has a theme, and this summer’s is “Outta This World” — movies both serious and silly that feature aliens and outer space. It kicks off next Monday at 9 p.m. with “E.T. The Extraterrestrial.” Which I know just played at Olbrich Park as part of Madison Parks’ own outdoor summer movie series. But, come on, it’s “E.T.”

Then comes “Spaceballs,” “Alien,” the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and many more. It’s all free, so keep watching the skies! And the screen by the lake.

Here’s the full schedule. Visit union.wisc.edu/film for more information.

May 27: “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”

June 3:   “Spaceballs” 

June 10:  “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”

June 17: “Mars Attacks!”

June 24: “Alien”

July 1:  “Muppets from Space”

July 8:  “Men in Black”

July 15: “The Last Starfighter”

July 22: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

July 29: “Galaxy Quest”

Aug 5: “Little Shop of Horrors”

Aug 12: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”

Aug 19: “WALL-E”

Aug 26: “Total Recall” 

Sept 2:  “Space Jam”

Instant Gratification: “The Wrath of Khan” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix

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Every Tuesday, Instant Gratification brings you five movies currently streaming on Netflix Instant, most of which are new to the service. I made an exception for this week’s top choice, since I bet it’s of particular interest this week. If you have suggestions for movies on Netflix to recommend, let me know in comments.

Top pick of the week: “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” — Whatever you thought of “Into Darkness,” you should have left the theater hankering to see this 1982 film, unquestionably the best of all “Star Trek” movies. Action, humor, exciting cat-and-mouse combat between starships, and a truly great villain.

Drama of the week: “Leaving Las Vegas” — Nicolas Cage’s name may be synonymous with hammy acting now, but he deservedly won an Oscar in 1995 for playing an alcoholic deliberately drinking himself to death, with Elisabeth Shue playing against type as the prostitute who falls for him.

Comedy of the week: “Gregory’s Girl” — A charmer from Scottish director Bill Forsyth (“Local Hero”), about an awkward teen who wants to ask out a fellow player on his soccer team.

Foreign film of the week: “Flame and Citron” — This World War II film, co-starring Mads Mikkelsen of “Hannibal,” follows a pair of celebrated Danish Resistance fighters who showed no mercy in fighting the Nazis on their doorstep.

Foodie film of the week: “Big Night” — Green Bay’s Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci play brothers who own an Italian restaurant, preparing for a possible visit from the great Louis Prima. The last, wordless cooking scene in the film is a thing of beauty.

 

 

A few more spoiler-y thoughts on “Star Trek Into Darkness”

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I’ve loved the comments I’ve gotten so far on my original “Star Trek Into Darkness” review from last week, even though they differ widely from those who absolutely loved the film to those who were crushingly disappointed. To be clear, I’m somewhere in the middle — I enjoyed most of it as a purely fun ride, but ultimately felt somewhat let down by the missed opportunities. And, for the record, I say so as someone who is both a lifelong Trekkie and huge fan of J.J. Abrams’ first “Star Trek” film.

My biggest problem with the film is the ending, which obviously I couldn’t get into in my original review. So I wanted to take a little time now under the “Spoiler Alert!” banner to talk about that.

I can pinpoint the exact moment that “Into Darkness” lost me:

“KHAAAAAAN!”

Up until then, like I said, it was a fun ride. The film is Abrams’ chance to riff on the best “Trek” movie of all time, “The Wrath of Khan.” Benedict Cumberbatch makes a fine, imperious villain (although his level of villainy seems to vary widely depending on the needs of a given scene), and the film has great visual effects sequences, like the Enterprise in free fall, the characters inside clinging onto walls as the ship rotates helplessly.

I also thought the Kirk-Spock friendship was nicely developed, to the point where I thought recreating the iconic engine room death scene from “Khan,” the roles reversed, actually worked. It was one of those sweet-spot moments that Abrams shoots for — something that will work for general non-Trekkie audiences while giving a nod to the diehard fans.

And then, “KHAAAAAN!” Having Spock yell that completely disrupts the death scene, drawing lots of knowing chuckles in the audience I was with. More importantly, it’s just the worst sort of pandering to “Star Trek” fans, as if Abrams had a checklist of “Wrath of Khan” elements that he was briskly checking off. “Oh, they’ll want to see that!”

Well, no, not if it disrupts the emotional arc of the movie for what’s basically a cheap callback joke. For me, I think the “Star Trek” reboots work when they riff on the overall dynamics of the series and the relationships between the characters. But to recreate a specific line from a specific movie in that series — especially at such a dramatic high point — feels cheap.

And after that, the film descends into what I call the usual “chase-fight-dangle” — a big starship crash and an interminable fight on top of a shuttle, because that’s how these big action movies end, right? It’s another form of pandering, just now to the broad general audiences who expect that sort of thing.

I’ve tried to assiduously avoid comparisons to how “Wrath of Khan” did it because, I agree, “Into Darkness” should be allowed to stand or fall on its own merits. You can’t make a 1982 film in 2013 and expect it to work. But on its own merits, and despite being a lot of fun at times, “Into Darkness” doesn’t live up to the 2009 “Star Trek” reboot.

“Lore”: Over the river and through the Allies

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“Lore” is now playing at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:49, 3 stars out of 4. I’ll be doing a post-show chat after the 7:05 p.m. showing Monday in Sundance’s Overflow Bar — it should start about 9 p.m. if you just want to come for the chat.

“Lore” is unlike any movie about the Holocaust that I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s because writer-director Cate Shortland is Australian, not German, and so doesn’t feel the weight to exorcise demons and “tell the truth” the way many well-meaning films from Germany seem to.

Instead, Shortland has gone more in the direction of her first film, 2004’s “Somersault.” Both films are about teenage girls trying to navigate circumstances they clearly aren’t emotionally ready for. It’s just that, in this case, the girl is a Nazi.

Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) is a 14-year-old German girl who knows something’s very wrong when she gets home from school. Her SS officer father and mother are packing up, quietly panicked. The Allies are at the country’s doorstep, and the family needs to flee. The parents are quickly seized, and it’s up to Lore to guide her four younger siblings, including a baby, through the Black Forest to her grandmother’s house.

If that sounds more like a fairy tale than a historical drama, the comparison is deliberate. Shortland is almost Malick-like in her use of the natural world to tell her story, with long takes of the family trudging through dark woods and bright meadows, hiding in decrepit farmhouses, scrabbling for enough food to survive. Politics takes a back seat to survival.

Eventually, the siblings come across a young man named Thomas (Kai Malina), who has a six-pointed star among his papers. Thomas has had years of practice surviving on the run, hiding out, and he’s able to procure food and transportation for the family. But Lore has been trained all her life to hate Jews, and the film very subtly tracks her growing confusion over those prejudices, and her adolescent feelings towards Thomas.

One could have made a much more didactic film with the same story — German girl learns Jews aren’t so bad after all! — but Shortland is after something much more elliptical here. She ties Lore’s slow moral awakening to the universal transition of adolescence, as children come to realize that their parents don’t have all the answers, and come to rebel against those answers. It’s a tricky balanced to pull off, but “Lore” works, especially thanks to Rosendahl’s fearless, unvarnished performance.

Here’s a girl we should hate — I thought of her as the Nazi girl in “Schindler’s List” who nastily shouts “Good bye, Jews!” as Jewish families are rounded up — and yet we become deeply invested in her journey.