The weekend, weekend, weekend. We won’t be seeing jack probably cause we’re still trying to keep up with the last bits of the very-excellent New York Film Festival (NY’ers should note the last screening of “The Wrestler” is this weekend), but there’s some decent stuff opening up.
Number 1 on our list of things you should see this weekend is Mike Leigh’s “Happy Go-Lucky.” The vibrant film is superficially chipper and has a dark and troubled meaty center via an astounding performance by Eddie Marsan who’s downright brilliant. Sally Hawkins is grabbing all the headlines and yes, she’s remarkable as well, but Marsan’s neurotically dysfunctional character and role is a knock out. We liked the film a ton when we saw it, but had issues with the opening. On reflection we like the film even more and its really resonated well. It’s got a stellar 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Also opening up this weekend is “The Duchess,” which we weren’t impressed with at all and Ridley Scott’s “Body Of Lies,” which is so masterpiece, but a capable thriller that surely wasn’t as bloated and dull as “American Gangster” was. Maybe not a return to form exactly, but at least an entertaining film. It’s nice to see a movie with Leonard DiCaprio where you can actually buy who he is and believe his performance. Russell Crowe’s subverting his leading-man status was fun to watch to. “The Duchess” has a 61% rating and “Body Of Lies” has a 54% rating.
One film that still falls flat is Guy Ritchie’s paint-by-numbers gangster/caper flick, “RockNRolla.” This tepid rehash says nothing new, fails to retain his crisp sparkle and falls far off the mark from his early work. He needs a new genre and a new style to try on. Ratings are mixed too and it has a 59% RT rating.
We would have liked to have seen Bill Murray in “City Of Ember” but we missed our screening, but don’t feel totally bad since it only has a low 47% rating. Reviews generally state that the film is for kids, so maybe we’ll wait for video, though we would like to hear and see Lavender Diamond’s songs in the film. They’re one of our favorite bands of recent years. We didn’t write a review for the “Good Dick,” but we saw it (ages ago) and it was ok, we suppose. Nothing amazing, though there were some decent moments. Maybe we’ll write a review next week. It only has a 55% rating though (probably around what we felt about it).
We really can’t believe that the mumblecore movement’s next flick, “Nights and Weekends” has an 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Joe Swanberg is kind of insufferable and grossly overrated (TimeOut New York rightly says he has a “painfully limited range.”). We will note there are only 13 reviews of the film though. We’re not saying that movement is total trash, we’ve seen some ok films from these guys, but we couldn’t even sit through “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” and had to eventually turn it off it was so excruciating and we’ll generally sit through anything.
Everything else this weekend (“Express,” “Quarantine” for example) are films we’d never bother with. “Rachel Getting Married” a film receiving rave reviews that we didn’t love (but didn’t hate), is still in limited release. Also still in limited release is the cheap, preaching-to-the-choir documentary, “Religulous,” by Bill Maher and Larry Charles. These guys practically use the same snake-like tactics and bias on their victims subjects that Fox News does.
