The Grouchy Editor

All Is Lost

Robert Redford plays a yachtsman who struggles for eight days to survive in the Indian Ocean after his boat is punctured by floating junk.  Redford was praised for his solo performance in this harrowing tale, and deservedly so, but All Is Lost is really a director’s movie … and a sound engineer’s movie, and an editor’s movie, and a cinematographer’s movie, et al.  It’s a fine showcase for what only Hollywood can do:  dazzle us with sight and sound.  Release:  2013   Grade:  B+

*****

Il Futuro

This is one of those artsy, low-plot foreign movies that suck you in because the characters are interesting and the images are striking.  Sad-eyed Manuela Martelli plays an orphaned teen who, along with her younger brother and his shady pals, concocts a plot to rob an aging blind man (Rutger Hauer).  The ensuing romance between old man Hauer and waif-like Martelli manages to be simultaneously creepy and erotic.   Release:  2013  Grade:  B-

*****

Wake in Fright

“He was a good guy.  But then he fell in with a bad crowd.”  John Grant (Gary Bond) is a good guy, a schoolteacher toiling in the boonies of Australia’s Outback.  He goes on holiday, has a drink, does a little gambling … and then meets the menfolk of a community known as “The Yabba.”  What follows is a harrowing, graphic look at just how low the human spirit can fall – disturbing stuff, but expertly realized by filmmaker Ted Kotcheff.  Release:  1971  Grade:  B+

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The Den

Graduate student Elizabeth (Melanie Papalia) is researching online behavior at a video-chat site, but while she spends hours staring at a computer screen, the computer is secretly staring back at her.  The first half of The Den – shot entirely from Web-cam/phone-cam points of view – feels a lot more like Skype than Netflix.  But after tapping into our primal fears about invasion of privacy, the story devolves from clever and cool into a cliché-ridden amalgam of conspiracy silliness and Saw-like gore.  Release:  2014  Grade : C

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Tiny

There’s something romantic about chucking it all and adopting a back-to-nature existence, but I’m not sure I could follow the example of the young couple in Tiny who spend a year building a 130-square-foot cabin to call home in Colorado.  They filmed their project, which is part of a “tiny house” movement in which ecologically minded (or financially strapped) folk build and live in miniature homes.  It’s a fantasy with allure, but — there’s not enough room for my books.  Give me Dick Proenneke’s cabin in Alaska, or perhaps Jim Rockford’s trailer on the beach – small, certainly, but not that small.  Release:  2013  Grade:  B+

 *****

Black Rock

It’s “girls’ night out” from hell for three women whose bonding trip to a deserted isle goes sour when they encounter some Iraq war vets.  Rock asks some good questions: Is a woman ever partly responsible for her own sexual assault? Is every military veteran deserving of our respect?  But after an intriguing setup, director-writer-star Katie Aselton’s story degenerates into a silly, quite literal, battle of the sexes.   Release: 2013  Grade:  B-

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Birth of the Living Dead

The best part of this “making of” documentary is the gee-whiz good humor of filmmaker George A. Romero who, 46 years after the release of Night of the Living Dead, still gets a kick out of the fact that so many people have seen — and loved — his little Pittsburgh-based movie.  Romero is a much better salesman than some of the gassy windbags who are also interviewed and who seem hell-bent on attributing way too much cultural significance to what is, after all, a low-budget horror film.  Release:  2013  Grade:  B 

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Don Jon 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Jon, a shallow bartender who is addicted to porn. Scarlett Johansson is the spoiled “princess” who wants Jon under her thumb, and Julianne Moore is a lonely widow out to save him from both porn and bad relationships.  The message is a good one, but unless you buy into the Gordon-Levitt and Moore hook-up – I didn’t – it falls a bit short as romantic comedy.  Release:  2013  Grade:  B

Captain Phillips

Hollywood has always been good at producing the fact-based action movie – provided the script isn’t too beholden to actual facts.  I have no idea how accurate Captain Phillips is as it dramatizes a 2009 cargo-ship hijacking off the coast of Somalia, but it’s tense and exciting – think Dog Day Afternoon on the high seas – and Tom Hanks’s captain is, as Hanks characters so often are, a man you can cheer for.  Release:  2013  Grade:  B+

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