The Village Barbershop - Drop In For A Trim

The Village Barbershop - Art (John Ratzenberger) is struggling. He's never recovered from the death of his wife eleven years ago. Now his partner has just died, his barbershop is failing and the barbershop's sleazy landlord is trying to evict him as Art avoids his problems with beer and gambling. Gloria (Shelly Coles) is struggling too. She's living in a small trailer with a truck driver who shows up twice, once to go to the bathroom and run, once more to dump her, leaving Gloria homeless, penniless, jobless and pregnant. Gloria is not avoiding anything. She solves her housing problem immediately by towing her ex's trailer right out of the park, then responds to Art's ad for a new barber. Sparks fly in the job interview, but Gloria parlays her spunk and business sense into a dual role as the savior of the barbershop and a surrogate daughter who helps Art pull his life back from the edge of disaster. As the landlord strikes one last time, Art recovers just fast enough to support Gloria in her own moment of crisis and ...guess how it all ends.

Writer/Director/Producer Chris Ford is making his first film, and it's a nice study of characters overcoming real life adversity. The reason Hollywood doesn't make many pictures like this any more is because mass audiences find them boring - and The Village Barbershop does stretch on somewhat predictably at times, with those double and triple helpings of adversity. Do not let this scare you away. The Village Barbershop does some things exceptionally well. See it whenever and wherever you can find it. Art is a well written, well played character, a grumpy stoic who breaks out with small moments of personal vengeance even before Gloria and Josie (Cindy Pickett, an old friend and new romance) begin to crack his hard boiled shell. Shelly Coles shines as Gloria, bringing not only zest, but credibility to a character that seems too good to be true on paper. Mr. Ford includes recurring comedic elements that will keep the film lively enough for most viewers. Art's one woman neighborhood watch from across the street, his running war with the party animals next door, his surveillance of the local Chinese restaurant/brothel and his counterattacks on his landlord using anonymous porn as ammunition all earn enough laughs to make As Good As News wish that Ford would try his hand at a comedy next.

Mongol - you khan steppe on in

Mongol is a love story, but no one will confuse Sergei Bodrov's Oscar nominated epic tale of Genghis Khan's early years with a chick flick. The blood flows freely in one stunt filled combat scene after another as Temudjin (the Mongol who will become Genghis Khan, played by Tadanobu Asano) is born the son of a khan, but loses all when his father is murdered as they return from selecting Temudjin's future bride. Temudjin, only nine years old, is thrown into a life of deprivation, at times slavery. In a survival of the fittest world, Temudjin is different. He values his wife Borte (Khulan Chuluun), listening to her counsel and reuniting time after time when one nightmare after another forces their separation. He respects the Mongol god. He leads by example and shares the spoils of combat with his men. Eventually he builds an army large enough to challenge Jamukha (His blood brother and former ally) and unite the Mongol world. The film ends as Temudjin is poised to begin the world conquest that will engrave the name Genghis Khan in history.

The battle scenes include massive armies on horseback, spread across the steppes, who fight with swords and pikes. It's as if Temudjin is killing Orks in a fourth Lord of the Rings spectacular, but Director Bordov is very effectively using real stunt men and extras, not computer animation, and the only special effects are some extra gore. The director is Russian, the three leads are Chinese, Mongol and Japanese and I don't know what language the actors are speaking (the version I saw had English subtitles). Long stretches of dialog are very guttural and this combines with the location shots and soundtrack of Mongolian throat music to create a real feeling of the steppes from 800 years ago. Many scenes rely heavily on cuts between facial expressions with very little dialog (think Russian spaghetti Western). Chuluun thrives on this approach, playing Borte with a face that is somehow simultaneously stoic and expressive.

Mongol may have one battle too many, but I enjoyed it. So will most audiences, but stay home if you can't stand the gore.

In real life Genghis Khan's armies went on to conquer most of Eurasia with ferocity, horsemanship and innovative battle tactics, the original shock and awe. They held a massive geographical area with a small army by leaving few troops behind. A conquered city would be allowed to run itself, subject to some basic laws including payment of taxes to the great Khan. The mere prospect of a return visit from a Mongol army was enough to keep most cities in line.

The Visitor arrived a little late

The Visitor - Chuck Rose's symposium usually screens films before general release, providing fodder for reviews here at As Good As News before a film's tidal wave of publicity crests. Last night's class featured The Visitor. Although it's playing in New York, The Visitor has not yet been released in New Jersey and select areas within North Dakota. By waiting, Mr. Rose was able to schedule Writer/Director Thomas McCarthy and Producer Mary Jane Skalski as guests for the post film Q and A. Shockingly, the Times and other critics did not await the New Jersey premier to release their reviews, which were consistently favorable. As Good As News won't cover ground that's already been thoroughly trampled. In brief, The Visitor has no box office stars, no Hollywood ending, but inspired casting, a moving story and the wisdom to leave the "s" off Visitor[s] and let Richard Jenkins find his rhythm as the title character re-inhabiting his own life make this film well worth seeing.

Yella -

Yella - Yella (Nina Hoss) is running from a failed company and a broken marriage -including a stalking ex who plays on her guilt. She finds work in a new town, but accepts a ride to the station from Ben (Hinnerk Schoenemann), that very angry ex, who hijacks Yella and drives off a bridge into the Elbe. Both Yella and Ben somehow emerge to reach the shore. Yella grabs her bags and catches the train, leaving the unconscious Ben on the river bank, but for the rest of the film she's haunted by the sound of water, an ominous caw from a lone crow and a foreboding rustle of wind.

The new job is a fiasco, her putative supervisor Ott-Schmitt is fired for misconduct on the day of Yella's arrival. Yella's quick witted reaction to the mess reveals a strain of amorality and a naive intelligence, traits that will define her fate. Yella steals a document pouch from Ott-Schmitt's former office at his request, then withholds it from Ott-Schmitt until he offers her a comparable job at his next company. But the pouch contains only cash, Ott-Schmitt has no future, no ability to get a job, much less offer one. Yella's negotiation was doomed before it began, and she ends up on the side of the road.

Adrift back at her hotel, Yella is recruited by Philipp (Devid Striesow), a venture capitalist negotiating to buy a stake in a start-up company. Philipp asks Yella to assist him as, essentially, a prop in a key meeting. She surprises him by discovering a real flaw in the target company's balance sheet, allowing Philipp to cut a better deal. Yella does not seem surprised, or disillusioned, when she learns Philipp is getting paid under the table by his buy-out targets to give the targets a sweeter deal at the expense of his employer. Despite her ability to spot real problems in the target companies and negotiate like a veteran, Yella remains naive when it comes to Philipp. Even after she knows he's a crook (who she could control by threatening a report to his employer) she accepts a fee that's a small fraction of the value she's producing and is terrified she will be dismissed when Philipp tests her and finds she is willing to take a "forgotten" 25,000 euros.

Ben reappears in Yella's room and she runs to Philipp. Romance ensues and for Yella it's the real thing. Phillip's dream is to amass enough kickbacks to buy a company he's identified as a unique opportunity to make millions - all to avoid being a suburban family man with a child, a garage and a green jaguar, the very picture that seems to call to Yella. But Yella's been separated, bankrupted, stalked, drowned and fired - and she's ready to cling to Philipp, even when he's fired after his employer discovers his scheme. Yella pushes too hard to make Pilipp' dream come true with one last big score and the results are disastrous, then eerie.

Director Christian Petzold shoots against spare backdrops and lingers on Yella. Nina Hoss holds the audience with an effective, understated performance that adds grace to an otherwise uninteresting film. Something may be lost in cultural translation (this is a German film with English subtitles), as Yella's trek from guilt and failure in her home of Wittenberg in the former East Germany across the Elbe to flash, cash and moral disaster in the former West Germany means more to a German audience. Other reviewers have hailed the film's metaphysics, but the repeated omens and alternative ending added little for me. The title link will take you to one of many reviewers who felt otherwise. If you want a film about an accountant caught up in a con game, As Good As News recommends The Producers.

Juno - Queen of the Blogs

Juno - Bloggers rejoice. Diablo Cody, proprietress of The Pussy Ranch blog, has spun the ultimate post - the screenplay of Juno, an extraordinarily funny movie that takes a thoughtful and interesting look at teen pregnancy and related phenomena. Juno, both the movie and the character played by Ellen Page, take off before the opening credits and never stop. Juno chugs a half gallon of Sunny D, strolls through a rampaging cross country team into an entertaining animated credit sequence, emerges and remorphs to human form, enters the Quickie Mart and buys a pregnancy test kit. This transaction is utterly and completely over the counter, as clerk Rainn Wilson sells "Fertile Myrtle" Juno her third test kit and explains the result isn't going to change, a prophecy she confirms immediately in the Quickie Mart bathroom.

Juno quickly navigates some pregnancy ABCs, cracking wise all the while. She tells the baby's father, Bleeker (Micheael Cera), enlists sympathy and assistance from her best friend Leah (Olivia Thrilby), crosses a one girl pro-life picket line at a local abortion clinic, switches her goal from abortion to adoption, finds prospective adoptive parents through the local pennysaver and tells her own father and step-mother. The pace finally slows, a little, as Juno interviews the would be adoptive parents. The husband, Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) is cool. The wife, Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) is a little desperate, but it seems like a nice home and Juno closes the deal on an "Old School" closed adoption.

Life as a pregnant high school student is no picnic, but Juno still has her best friend Leah, taking things a little too calmly, but always on her side. Juno doesn't know quite what to do with Bleeker, and Bleeker is listening to everything Juno says but hearing nothing she means. Mark Loring is a musician who seems to be getting along too well with Juno and not well enough with his wife. When he announces he's moving out to a loft in the city, Juno faces a new round of choices. What will happen to the baby, to Juno, to Juno and Bleeker?

Diablo Cody was "discovered" as a blogger and submitted the Juno script as a demo to establish credibility so she could pitch herself as screenwriter for a different movie - one based on her book Candy Girl, a humorous look at her year as a stripper. Juno has a lot in common with Judd Apatow's recent successes (Knocked Up comes to mind for some odd reason), but Cody is a feminist Apatow on speed. Like Knocked Up, the story has a warm hearted core and much of the dialog is the kind of buddy banter that Apatow has mastered, but with Juno it's not just buddies who banter it's everyone, everywhere, led by Ellen Page. It's not just banter either, a few of the funniest lines are completely ordinary statements, placed and timed to get yet more laughs. The dialog has everything you wish you had said when you are thinking about a conversation the next day, and more. Even if it's too smart to be true at times, you will be laughing too often to notice.

If Juno were just a comedy it would be well worth seeing, but Director Justin Reitman and Cody take on teen pregnancy with originality and warmth as they present fresh characters that are fully developed despite the fast pace of the story. Cera is awkward and believable as a very young man who loves Juno and wants to do the right thing, if she will only tell him what that is. Juno's Dad and Step mom, JK Simmons and Allison Janney, create likeable, memorable characters in limited screen time. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner also establish their characters quickly, as Bateman's charming cool slides credibly into a flawed indifference while Garner's desperation ultimately makes her seem like a real mom. The real character is Juno, and only a feminist could write the world through Juno's eyes as well as it's done here, a feminist who respects her character's choices. Juno starts out talking a blue streak, a very sophisticated and funny blue streak, when she's scared and clueless. She winds up making decisions that work for everyone. Juno knows very well that she's named after the queen of the gods, Jupiter's one and only wife. The cross country team circles constantly, a presence somewhere between a Greek chorus and Erronius from "Forum", but the thundering herd of male runners never fails to part smoothly for Juno.

This will be the last pre release film review posted here until February. Top picks from this Fall are Juno and Outsourced. Others well worth seeing, are Ira & Abby, Look and The Cake Eaters. Love In The Time of Cholera features a timeless character. Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Grace is Gone, Amexicano, Canvas and Orphanage are all films that As Good As News recommends, but not on a night when you seek something light.

Today's One Answer Only

21. Across - Grouch: grump

Grouchy grump, like today, up too late last night writing the Juno review, and like the day As Good As News posted Lost Plan Dynosaur Rant.

Grace Is ......Why Don't We Talk About That Later

Grace Is Gone -Stanley is an orderly, organized, buttoned up kind of guy from Minnesota. His walk is a little funny, but he's a manager in a Homestore. He's married to Grace, an army sergeant stationed in a war zone. He knows when and how to tell a nosey support group to back off and if there's some strain at home, at least he believes he's in control, until two soldiers knock on the door with the news - Grace is gone.

Stanley has trouble comprehending Grace's death himself and he can't find a way to tell his daughters. In a blend of procrastinating panic, a need to recreate his own relationship with the girls and a desire to grant them a few last days of simple happiness, Stanley asks the girls what they want to do. He shocks them by granting 8 year old Dawn's request for a trip to the Enchanted Gardens' Theme Park in Florida.

Stanley starts the trip on a desperate edge, keeping up appearances when his daughters are watching but vulnerable to a complete loss of control. Gradually, Stanley loosens up, starts to listen and adds a playful peer dimension to his relationship with his daughters, especially the older Heidi, who not only senses a serious problem, but starts to confirm it with some investigation.

This is a simple story told with editing, cinematography and score free of distraction. Will Stanley hold himself together, will he build a deeper relationship with his daughters, when and how will the girls learn the news and how will the family react? Extraordinary performances by John Cusack (Stanley) and Shelan O'Keefe (Heidi) build a moving drama around these questions, each communicating volumes with small gestures. A few extra pounds and glasses may be as far over the top as John Cusack will ever get, perhaps it's his year for an Oscar. This picture succeeds completely on its own terms but don't expect a light evening, the happy ending is a superbly written, well delivered eulogy.

The Orphanage - Friendly Ghosts

The Orphanage - Laura moves into a mansion with her loving husband and adorable, curly haired adopted son, Simon. The new home is the orphanage in which Laura lived as a young girl, and her relationships with her son, her husband and the rational world will soon be tested in this gentle horror film. Simon has "normal"invisible friends, and the house goes bump in the night, but it's not really spooky until Simon meets the unseen Tomas while exploring a cave. Just as Laura tries to welcome two mentally challenged orphans into the home with an opening day party, Simon insists on showing her where Tomas lives. When Simon won't take no for an answer, Laura goes downstairs to the party without him. Simon disappears. Laura's search for Simon carries her into a paranormal tour of her youth and the sad history of the orphanage. Geraldine Chaplin shines as a medium in a brief but critical role that puts Laura on a separate path from her husband and the police psychiatrist. Ultimately Laura finds Simon, but this film creates two endings simultaneously, both plausible within the film's carefully constructed parameters, one rational , the other spiritual.

The Orphanage does many things right. Executive Producer Guillermo del Toro cashes in on his success with Pan's Labyrinth to give a first feature film opportunity to the director, screenwriter and editor. Belen Rueda takes on a very heavy load as Laura. Horror, suspense and dramatic tension rest almost entirely on her taking maternal love to another dimension in the face of peril, fear and rational counsel. She carries the burden with ease. Her performance, and the brief but pivotal appearance by Ms Chaplin, keep the paranormal plotline credible and allow the picture to survive a story line dry spell that bogs down much of the film's second half. There is no gore here. Shock is used sparingly to good effect and suspense builds slowly, too slowly at times, to a conclusion that works on at least two levels. The final scene is essentially an unnecessary epilogue, this picture should have ended with Ms Rueda's last scene.

If you like horror and don't need gore, if you want to see something a little different, if you just want to see a great, and beautiful, actress and practice your Spanish, then try The Orphanage.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly - Don't Pull The Plug

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly - Jean -Dominique Bauby emerges from a coma to learn that he has lost all brain stem function, is paralyzed from the neck down and can only think, hear, blink, and see with one eye. This is not an action picture. Julian Schnabel directs a moving film, based on Bauby's critically acclaimed autobiography. Jean-Dominique (Jean-Do for short, pronounced John Doe) was no everyman, before or after his stroke, unless every man can find reason to live in the most difficult circumstances. Much of the film is seen from his perspective, expanding forward and back from the moment he regains consciousness. The film includes a very effective, and funny, "interior dialogue" in which Jean-Do speaks to caregivers and visitors, who cannot hear him because, although his brain can speak, his vocal chords cannot. Jean-Do quickly recalls that he was the celebrity playboy editor of Elle, with three children, their mother (whom he abandoned for a mistress) who visits faithfully and a beloved mistress, who never arrives. His speech therapist develops a method of communication - she reads an alphabet reordered based on frequency of use and he blinks when she gets to his letter of choice. His first sentence is "I want death", but Jean-Do lives inside his memory and his dreams and even manages a surprising life in the present, retaining a sly sense of humor, building new relationships with his family and caregivers and laboriously, letter by letter, creating that autobiography.

The film is at its strongest when it stays closest to the book and the first person viewpoint. Jean-Do's humor, perspective, and sometimes poetic narrative carry the day. To be fair, the embellishments work too, each dream and memory sequence, each scene shot from outside Jean-Do's perspective, adds to his story. The scene in which the mother of Jean-Do's children must function as his voice in a telephone conversation with his mistress is a sledgehammer to the gut. The film's only significant weakness is the result of an editing dilemma. Each scene works, but some scenes drag the viewer perilously close to the edge of pathos, and two hours on emotional edge creates a resistance that begins to dull the film's effectiveness. The scenes taken most directly from the author's perspective best avoid this dilemma.

So, you are thinking, why would I want to see a low budget, independent, French language film with subtitles about a dying paraplegic instead of Die Hard 4 when I only get out to the movies once every two weeks. Two reasons. First, every actress in this film is beautiful and exceptionally talented (we won't even mention the subtle score or the extraordinary performance by Mathieu Amalric as Jean-Dominique Bauby - all he's got to work with is one eye - My Left Foot was a comparative piece of cake). Second, before watching this movie, I would have left a living will, instructing all concerned to "pull the plug" if I suffered a stroke that left me in Jean-Do's condition. Now, I'm rethinking that instruction.