The Cue Card

Holy smokes, this is a disturbing and creepy movie about a girl who escapes from an abusive cult. I don’t know exactly why I saw it — knowing it was about a cult — but it received such high praise that I think I was enticed. The film’s definitely effective in a chilling, spooky way. The girl, played by Elizabeth Olsen (yes, she’s the younger sister of the Olsen twins), is haunted by memories and paranoia of the cult (and for good reason!) after she flees and tries to regroup at her sister’s place in the Catskill Mountains. Creepers, you may never look at the Catskills in the same way again. The film is perhaps in the same disturbing realm as the film “Deliverance” crossed with “Helter Skelter” or something.

The cult leader is a freaky bad guy, eerily played by John Hawkes. You might recall Hawkes as the sweet, goofy “Bugsy” in the movie “The Perfect Storm,” but here his character is a scary nutcase who instills fear and delusion over his polygamous sect. The girl, Martha, makes a break for it luckily, but she’s so messed up afterwards, that she’s far from normal. Her sister and brother-in-law have their hands full with her staying at their house. Eventually with the flashbacks, the foreboding of the film’s ending works its way into a crescendo.

The small indie film is quite horrifying in a psychological way. I can’t say that I’d tell someone to see it. Most likely I’d tell them to run. But since that’s too late for me now, I’m sure its vivid portrayals and chilling story will stay in my head for quite sometime.

I’m glad I caught this documentary on the big screen as seeing it elsewhere wouldn’t quite do it justice. Credit filmmaker Werner Herzog for bringing a broader spotlight to the Chauvet cave in southern France, which has been closed to the public since it was discovered in 1994. I knew about the prehistoric art at France’s Les Eyzies and Lascaux caves, but didn’t know much about Chauvet’s, though its contents are dated to be about 15,000 years older and have been less disturbed than Lascaux’s. The cave’s entrance at Chauvet had been sealed by a landslide, and its contents had remained virtually untouched until its discovery. The cave paintings inside are the earliest known on Earth, dating from about 32,000 years ago.

Herzog’s documentary gives an awe-inspiring view inside the cave. The only light is powered by the film crew’s battery packs, which reveal hand prints, animal paintings and prehistoric animal bones amid the cave’s various chambers. A sense of wonder pervades the screen. Here is where our early ancestors came to paint and perhaps engage in ceremonial gatherings. What were they like? How did they live? The film spends a good deal of time examining the fascinating animal art on the walls and the cave’s contours looking for clues, as ominous or mysterious music plays in the background. In many of the paintings, the animals appear to be in motion, similar to drawings in animation. A number of the cave’s scientists appear in the film, giving insight into what their research has found; a couple of them come off more understandable or informative than others. One, for instance, explains that one of the rock artists, who left a hand print near the entrance, has a damaged finger and can be traced to another part of the cave as well.

For those interested in prehistory, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” offers a rarified, intriguing glimpse into the world of early man, where depictions of horses and cattle coincide with those of rhinos, lions and panthers, and hand prints coexist with cave bear bones and paw prints. It’s truly a world like no other.

For more on the cave at Chauvet, see Judith Thurman’s New Yorker article “First Impressions,” which prompted Herzog’s interest in the subject, and the official French site at: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/

“The Ides of March” came in second over the weekend in box-office take-home; first was “Real Steel.” “Real Steel”? Come on people, get a grip! Of course, I had to flock to the Clooney, Giamatti, Seymour Hoffman and Gosling political drama on opening night. And I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a dark little flick about aides playing dirty on the campaign trail of a presidential race that includes a couple of plot twists that’ll grab your attention.

George Clooney is the candidate, Philip Seymour Hoffman, the campaign manager and Ryan Gosling, the media staffer, who causes havoc when he meets with the opposing candidate’s campaign manager, played by Paul Giamatti. Things go from bad to worse there, for Gosling’s character and his staffer girlfriend, played by Evan Rachel Wood, who’s involvement in the plot rings a bit stale by now in light of candidates of the past decade.

It’s the acting though that’s worth the ticket. Giamatti and Seymour Hoffman are superb as always, this time in roles that offer some real sparks from opposing sides. And Gosling is quite believable as the optimistic schmoe who gets duped along the way. In running for president, no one is truly clean, “The Ides of March” seems to remind us. So don’t be so naive!

In light of this film: Here are some of my favorite movies about U.S. politics: “The Candidate,” “The American President,” “All the President’s Men,” “Nixon,” “The Contender,” “Wag the Dog,” and “Frost/Nixon.”

I almost passed on “The Debt” because the local paper gave it a pretty bad review and just 2.5 stars out of 5. Eventually, I saw it anyways and found it much better than it’d been critiqued. A thriller about Mossad agents on a mission to capture a Nazi war criminal in 1966, “The Debt” kept me on the edge of my seat for about the entire film.

It starts in 1997 as the former agents, played in older age by Helen Mirren, Ciaran Hinds and Tom Wilkinson, are being honored for the success of the ’66 mission at a book event by two of the agents’ daughter. Mirren’s character, Rachel, reads from the book, recounting the heroics of the mission, but from her despondency, all appears not quite right.

Flash back to 1966, and the three agents, played in younger years by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas, are sent to East Berlin with a plan to bring the Nazi “Surgeon of Birkenau” back to Israel to face justice. But what happens there is far different than the later version recounted from the book.

Turns out, for 30 years, the agents have agonizingly kept secret what really happened. But now one of the agents looks to come clean, just as a journalist is about to publish a scoop on the war criminal. The ending gets a bit crazy, but at this point it’s impossible to turn away.

The screenplay, though fictional, seems authentic, and is helped along by strong acting and by being filmed on location. Like “Munich,” another excellent film about a Mossad mission, it’s filled with nail-biting suspense. Interestingly, Ciaran Hinds plays in both of these films. As for those who liked Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington, who were great in this, look for them again in the upcoming “Texas Killing Fields.”

It helps to be a big baseball fan to thoroughly enjoy “Moneyball.” I really liked it; I didn’t realize I was wearing a baseball hat in there (a championship Giants hat from my sister), but as I looked around other people were wearing jerseys and hats, too. I warn that non-baseball movie-goers might find “Moneyball” a bit slow, long to take root and not much action (a lot were there for Brad Pitt, no doubt). But stats, lineups and subtleties are at the crux of baseball.

“Moneyball” explores how a team found a way to compete in a league where huge payroll discrepancies exist, from the New York Yankees with their million-dollar players to the Oakland A’s with far, far less. The movie goes back to the end of the 2001 season, when three of the A’s stars: Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and closer Jason Isringhausen became free agents and were pilfered by richer teams. Come 2002, what were the less-monied A’s to do?

Enter General Manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, and his fresh out of college assistant, Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill. They piece together a motley crew of overlooked players based on a statistical analysis of on-base percentage and runs scored. The A’s scouts think they’re totally nuts, and true to form, the team is awful in the first half of the season, compiling losses at an alarming rate. But somehow the little team takes hold and starts to come to life, eventually winning an incredible 20 games in a row, a record still in the American League.

Pitt as Beane and Hill as his nerdy assistant, are the gist of film, as they concoct a roster they believe can win. Both are great, and fill up the screen with anxieties, and at times humor. It’s mostly baseball from behind the scenes, from a GM who nervously listens to games only intermittently on a transistor radio, and who once was a player, too, with the inner scars still to show for it.

I haven’t liked a baseball movie this much, since perhaps “The Natural” in 1984. Kudos to director Bennett Miller (who also did “Capote”) and screenplay adapters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin who worked from the bestselling book by Michael Lewis. This reminds me: What are the best baseball movies in recent memory? I’d say: The Natural, Moneyball, The Rookie, Bull Durham and Field of Dreams.