Peacock

In the first sequence of the psychological thriller Peacock, a young woman meticulously prepares a breakfast and, carefully noting the time, sets it on her kitchen table. As each movement is made with purposeful intent, she sets her hands, shoes, furniture in its place. She then walks up to her bedroom, sits at her vanity, removes her make up, hair and dress to reveal John Skillpa, played by Cillian Murphy. Nearly unrecognizable at the start, the actor's transformation is surprising. Following this, he is dressed in a suit, eating the breakfast prepared for him, then walking out the door. Stopping to pull a small treasure box out from under the porch step, he nervously looks over his shoulder at the bedroom window where we saw him dress earlier. Who could he be looking out for? He was clearly alone in his house.

John Skillpa, is a young bank clerk who, when no one's watching, dresses as Emma to recreate the daily routines of his deceased mother. But in the wake of a strange train accident which leaves the wreckage in his backyard, the politically driven townspeople draw attention to John and the supposititious Emma, whom the townspeople believe to be his new wife. While John is motivated by his need for privacy, Emma is driven by the need to feel socially connected to give truth to her existence. Neither personality is aware of what the other encounters in the course of his, or her, day. Eventually the two personalities clash, taking this emotionally disturbing story to a deeper, darker level.

Although I'm a big fan of Cillian Murphy and I've always known him to be very talented, I marveled at his performance as John / Emma. I cannot imagine that he wouldn't be recognized for the brilliant job he did in this film. As Emma, he is comfortably feminine and pretty. Emma's character is shy at first, but once aroused by the positive attention she receives from others, she is open and vibrant. John, on the other hand, is extremely tense. When his boss approaches him about a photo-op of the train wreck in his yard, the muscles in his neck protrude as his face revolts against a friendly gesture. Even more striking is the deep crease on the side of Murphy's face which remains throughout his performance as John, then disappears when he becomes Emma.

Despite the all star cast, including Susan Sarandon, Keith Carridine, Bill Pullman, Ellen Page and Josh Lucas, this film received almost no attention from media and went straight to DVD this month. This is a definite must see in my book. Its unfortunate that billions of dollars are being spent on ticket sales for films like Transformers and the Twilight series, two of the top grossing films of 2009, and films like Peacock cant even be found in a drive-up DVD rental box. Thank god for Netflix!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

This is a fantastic adaptation of Stieg Larsson's best selling murder mystery novel which I noticed so many women reading last year. The story follows Mikael, a journalist convicted of slander who, during the time he is waiting to serve his sentence, is hired by a man to solve the 40 year old case of his missing niece, Harriet Vanger. With the help of a young, damaged computer hacker, Lisbeth, superbly acted by Noomi Rapace, Mikael investigates the entire rich and powerful Vanger family, whom Harriet's uncle considers each a suspect.

From the starting credits to the final scene, this movie had me feeling a little tense the whole way through. Mikael and Lisbeth are unstoppable against the push back they receive from the elders of the Vanger family, some of whom are ex-Nazis. As they begin to measure the danger involved in the investigation, they get too close to back down.

This movie felt a little like a classic cat and mouse mystery, but a bit more brutal... think a John Grisham version of Silence of the Lambs. The mood was extremely dark, the temp was cold, and the emotion, well, after watching the anxious, depressed Lisbeth chain smoke her way through the film, I felt I needed a little psychotherapy or at least stiff drink to bring me back to normal.

A Serious Man

“A Serious Man” is not exactly what I expected to be the Cohen brother's next picture. After one of my favorite films, “No Country For Old Men,” and their next hit “Burn After Reading,” I hoped “A Serious Man” to be better, fresher than the last. Watching this movie in the comfort of my home on my big-ass TV, I found myself to be restless and impatient to find answers to the questions posed by the main character, Larry. Larry is physics teacher whose wife is leaving him for a man who has nothing more going for him than Larry (and if its not for money, looks or power, it seems to me a bigger jab than if she'd left him for someone more impressive, am I right)? Anyway, Larry tries to be a good husband, father and teacher, a Balebetishen Yidden (Yiddish for “good Jew”), but cant seem to get a break. He even tries several times to seek help from the elder Rabbi. Unsuccessful, he remains stagnant as the rest of world seems to move past him like a naïve child rolling down a hill on a bike with no breaks. Don't they know they're all wrong? Larry cant seem to be taken seriously by anyone. In the end, his pot-smoking jerk-of-a-son gets to meet with the elder Rabbi, only to send him off into the world with the lyrics to “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane. And Larry? Well, he doesn't get the answer to his life's questions, and the audience is left feeling basically hopeless.

In the first scene of the film, a tale is told in Yiddish of a couple who let a dybbuk, a ghost, into their home. I was completely frustrated by this tale, as it is never mentioned in the rest of the film and I could find no connection to the story or purpose for its use. Then I found Roger Ebert's review of the film on rogerebert.com (10/7/09), and he writes that Larry may be cursed because his ancestors let the dybbuk in their home. This made a lot of sense to me. Whether or not the Cohen brothers intended for the prologue to have this relevance is unknown to me, but I would like to think it had some meaning.

This film did not leave me feeling any kind of satisfied. It wasn't a bad movie. In fact, it was entrancing, funny, well acted, a little tense, and thought provoking. But if a film doesn't leave me satisfied, I cant recommend it.

Remember Me

So, I went to see Remember Me last night. It was the only movie playing now I hadn't promised to see with someone else, and since I was going alone, I figured I'd see a guilty pleasure: a sexy romance. Sexy romance it was, but this movie wasn't exactly what I expected. In the first five minutes of the film, the audience is shocked to near tears by a traumatic experience that later helps to explain the lead female Ally's character and situation. In the scene that follows we watch Tyler, played by Twilight's Robert Pattinson, mope around in a typical brooding teenage-angst fashion. The film quickly evolves as something more significant. Each character has his or her own place in the film and they're played well by seasoned actors, Chris Cooper, Lena Olin and Pierce Brosnan. New to film, Ruby Jerins, plays Tyler's much younger sister Caroline. Bullied by her grade-school peers, Caroline relies on her brother for support, while their father, much too busy with work, has emotionally abandoned his family.

I really liked that the relationship between Ally and Tyler didn't take up too much screen time. The audience sees what it needed to in order to follow the story. There weren't too many fillers, as I call them: montages of the couple doing daily "couple life" things... save for one unnecessary scene of them playing at the beach. Their part was full of realistic problems and emotions most people could relate to and perhaps feel nostalgic about. The attractive young couple had great chemistry and preformed well. All of these things legitimated the film's classification as a drama rather than a teen romance.

The part of this film I had a hard time with is its ending. I felt they used a cheap trick to manipulate the audience into crying. I'm not sure this was necessary to the story. Perhaps the writer didn't know how to end it. Before these final scenes are a series of uplifting displays that tell you "things are too perfect, so I know something has to go wrong." However, this particular thing is not what I expected, so should I give credit to the filmmakers for that? I'm not really sure. Overall, I really did like this movie... I was just a little disappointed in the ending.