In his long movie career, Christopher Plummer, the classic Canadian actor, has received only one Academy Award nomination. Only one! That was for The Last Station, a low-budget indie two years ago. But Plummer may well be nominated again this year for Beginners, a deeply introspective, wistful, dramatic triumph.
Ewan McGregor, portraying his son, is a Los Angeles graphic artist whose mother died a few years back. His father then came out, putting his personal information about being gay online. After the father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, the movie shifts between his slow death to his son’s subsequent lonely life with only a few friends and his father’s precocious Jack Russell. Then he meets a mysterious actress portrayed superbly by Mélanie Laurent, costar of Inglorious Basterds. Her fetching performance is skillfully underplayed, conveying an underlying melancholy. ER alumnus Goran Visnjic is poignant as Plummer’s boyfriend.
Director Mike Mills mines material from memories of his own father, and injects whimsical humor, as when the adorable pooch occasionally expresses its thoughts on his new master’s budding relationship. The pacing is quirky but deeply absorbing.
Submarine can’t create a likable mood for its ponderous story. It deals with an introspective student who wants to save his parent’s marriage and lose his virginity before he turns 16. This presents us with a rather trite premise, even though the tone of this one is stark. Yasmin Paige is not the nicest love interest you’ll see. She never smiles, and we’re wondering why she transfixes the young man. The film is so downbeat, we’re left wondering if anyone really cares.
The Last Mountain is a shocking documentary about the destruction of mountaintops in Appalachia by the Massey Coal company in Coal River Valley, West Virginia. The residents of that impoverished area, devoid of any political clout in the state capital, have had to endure daily explosions the company claims are necessary to get to the coal buried inside the mountains. The result has been clusters of brain tumors, autism, and other diseases caused by a relentless cascade of ash and other debris all over the valley. Filmmaker Bill Haney, whose 2007 documentary The Price of Sugar exposed the enslaved Haitian sugarcane workers in the Dominican Republic, has revealed another injustice closer to home. We meet several of the courageous townspeople and also a spokesman for the coal company, who gives its side of the debate.
Massey Coal was the company involved in the tragic loss of 29 miners in April 2010. It has been repeatedly fined for numerous safety violations. There’s a poignant scene in which residents, fed up with Massey’s destruction of the environment, trek to the capitol to meet with then-Governor (now Senator) Joe Manchin, only to come away dissatisfied and despairing over their failure to get any meaningful legislation to ban the odious mining practices of Massey Coal.
Haney never gets in the way of the story; he lets the people speak for themselves, leaving anyone with any sense of decency realize that a tragic injustice has been perpetrated. What’s most amazing is that this has been going on in this century, not some long-ago pre-union era when safety regulations were never even contemplated, much less enforced. It’s a compelling, powerful film.
The arrival of any Woody Allen movie is an event, especially in New York. His newest, however, has nothing at all to do with our beloved city. Midnight in Paris stars likable Owen Wilson as Woody’s latest alter-ego, a self-described hack Hollywood script writer, eager to write something meaningful. He’s on a prenuptial visit to Paris with his fiancée, portrayed by Rachel McAdams, and her parents, rich right-wing California conservatives. He’s understandably enchanted with the city and says he wants to move there with his future bride to write novels and just enjoy Paris in the rain. This, of course, doesn’t sit well with her.
I loved this film too much even to hint at any more of the plot, which quickly takes an astonishing turn and brings us along for a hilarious, brilliantly written journey of fantasy. I’ll only relent by saying some amazing characters turn up, brought to life with perfect casting of Oscar winners Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, and Marion Cotillard, and even the well-known spouse of a world leader. I urge you to avoid any other reviews that may divulge the plot twist. Experience it yourself! This ranks alongside Allen’s other masterpieces, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Vicky Christina Barcelona.
The First Grader is a true story set in Kenya about an illiterate octogenarian who’s received a letter from the president he’s determined to read for himself. When he enrolls in a small country school with first graders, authorities learn he’d been a Mau Mau, the revolutionaries who ousted British colonial oppressors. Former Kenyan TV anchorman Oliver Litondo’s performance evokes a world-weary determination to achieve a goal.
Bride Flight dramatizes the 1953 Air Race from London to Christchurch, New Zealand, won by KLM Airlines, and of a trio of young women aboard whose lives were forever altered. It’s mostly a flashback dealing with a secret adoption, an unhappy marriage, and a forbidden love. The Dutch cast and magnificent scenery make this a moving story of postwar survival and of lives begun anew.
