Five Movies

Of all the dozens of movies that I have watched in the past month, I have had to good fortune to see five really good, very watchable movies. Movies are a passion of mine and my first and most important criteria for judging and recommending movies is "Did it entertain me?" I don't want to see movies that inform or enrage or move me unless they are first entertaining. Rather than go on at length above why am a movie fanatic who has never seen, among many others, Schindler's List but I have seen crap like Shortbus, let's cut to the chase.

No. 5 -- Knocked Up. A well done goofy comedy that has many honest and sweet moments like it's sibling The 40 Year Old Virgin. The movie is well cast -- apparently this same group of actors and this director worked on Freaks and Geeks together. I've never seen that show but I have heard it praised by intelligent people. There are some locker room jokes here that are hysterical; as base as you can get but funny none the less. The Web site that Ben (Seth Rogen)and his cronies are building is just the kind of thing that do-nothing slugabeds (like me ) would do. It's a site that tracks nudity in main stream movies and tells you when and what nudity appears. It helped that I knew every reference. I thought the writer and director did a nice job of taking a fairly soft handed approach when they could have gone over the top. Being the emotional sucker that I am, my eyes really welled up when the baby was born. I was entertained to the point of watching every second of the extra materils on the DVD -- which I do once every fifty movies.

No. 4 -- Crazy Love. I hate documentaries. The last thing in the world I want out of a movie is to be preached at my Michael Moore or shocked by the treachery of the Bush Administration. Of course there are exceptions: The Fog of War is beautiful even if you don't listen to Robert McNamara and Murderball was wonderful. Crazy Love is a jaw dropper. It's a pretty well know "love" story of a sexy New York woman, Linda Riss, and her crazy paramour Burt Pugash. Burt was madly in love with her from the first minute they met in 1959 but after a tumultuous start Linda discovered he was married. She dumped him and got engaged to another guy. Burt decided that if he couldn't have her no-one could, so he had two guys throw lye in her face. She was blinded and disfigured. Burt went to jail. The story of their reconciliation and subsequent twenty-eight year marriage boggles the mind. See it.

No. 3 -- American Gangster. Based on the story of Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, this is a smart, well-acted, adult piece of gangster cinema. Denzel Washington is his usual excellent self as Frank Lucas and Russel Crowe does a nice job as the "clean" cop who ultimately arrests him. Although this film has been criticized for being 15 minutes too long, I could have watched much more. One of the fascinating elements of the story was the clean and sober family man that Lucas was portrayed as while the honest cop couldn't hold his life together and was a womanizer. Ruby Dee was great as Lucas' mother and so were the ensemble that played his five brothers, particularly Chiwetel Edjefor. Although the real Lucas, still alive and in a wheelchair, was no doubt far less glamorous and intelligent than he was played by Washington, the moral ambiguity created by his "likeableness" makes the story play very well.

No. 2 -- Michael Clayton. George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton give very strong performances in this intellectual thriller. Clooney is Michael Clayton, the fixer for a large law firm in New York. When Wilkenson's character, the firms leading trial attorney, goes off his meds, he takes the side of the victims of toxic dumping by the firm's client. Clooney is called in to fix it. Tilda Swinton is the very neurotic general counsel for the client company. She is excellent. The plot plays out with dramatic twists that leave Clayton in a moral and practical dilemma. This is a very smart, understated thriller. I love that way Clayton ultimately cuts to the chase when he decided his course of action.

No.1 -- Lars and the Real Girl. What a beautiful movie! Ryan Gosling is out of this world as Lars. He's a acutely shy introverted guy who buys a life-size anatomically correct female doll whom he introduced to his family and friends as his girlfriend Bianca. Patricia Clarkston is wonderful as Dagmar the local physician who convinces Lars' brother and sister in law to ask the town's people to go along. If this sounds absurd and a jumping off point for raucous humor, it isn't. Somehow this is so well written and acted that you are caught up in Lars delusion and the love the towns people have for him that it almost comes off as understated. I had a lump in my throat the size of Cleveland at the end. It usually takes dramatic action from the get-go to really get me engaged in a movie from beginning to end. This was quite and smooth and at time touching and hilarious.

I recommend all five of this films.