The Cue Card

I won’t kid you. I was disappointed in spending two hours watching “Another Year.” I know many critics just loved this character study (I thought I would, too, judging from other reviews), but instead I found it rather dull. I think people in the theater kept politely waiting for something of note to happen but in fact nothing ever did. There was one person who stood up in the theater not too long into it and I heard say I can’t take it anymore and walked out. I’m not sure if there was something in particular the person was talking about or just the entire thing. Little did I know at that early stage they were quite right. At times it felt like grass growing.

But perhaps I’m just not the right person for Mike Leigh films as others seem to be. I plan not to sit through another. Yet I do very much like small indie films but just didn’t find a lot in this film, which is about the year in the life of a middle-aged British married couple. The married couple seem quite happy with each other but are surrounded by friends and family who are unhappy in their love lives or singledom. One of their friends in particular, Mary, who seems to be a sad sort of train wreck, garners a lot of focus of the movie. We see her desperately latch onto the happy couple in a pathetic kind of way to try to ease her misery, but she grows quite annoying to them and to us.

All the actors are quite excellent in their roles. I have no quibbles with them. They paint an intimate portrait of this couple and the people close to them. It’s just that the movie doesn’t seem to go anywhere, nothing really seems to happen. It’s too slow. The married couple at the center are happy, and the single folks around them are sort of sad sacks, a viewpoint that gets a bit tiresome after awhile. For once at the end, I couldn’t wait for all the credits to roll, I didn’t want to spend another moment on “Another Year.”

With the awards season here, I’m going to pick “The King’s Speech” as perhaps my favorite film of the year. Before seeing it, I thought it would be a bit dry and uneventful: a 1930’s period piece about the ascension of a king with a speech impediment to the throne of England. But it is anything but dull. The film, which dwells on the unlikely friendship of the Duke of York (later to become King George VI) and a speech therapist who helps him overcome his stammer, comes vibrantly to life on the big screen and is quite an extraordinary yarn.

The two are ill-matched, the duke and the commoner, whose credentials the duke finds out are not those of a real doctor. The destined monarch doesn’t believe in him, much less that he can be cured of something so ingrained. The therapist, played amazingly by Geoffrey Rush, has an uphill battle convincing the duke to accept him and in believing he can speak without a stammer.

Set against the backdrop of Edward VIII abdicating the throne and Hitler’s rise to power, the new king’s impediment coincides at a time of weighty importance. There’s no escaping his public speaking obligations. The film does a great job of conjuring the angst and imperativeness of his being able to communicate to the country. The king’s public address declaring war on Germany at the end is incredibly palpable, as is the film inspiring.

Kudos to the screenwriter, David Seidler, who apparently asked the royal family’s permission back in the 1970’s to write the script. The now-late Queen Elizabeth I (King George’s wife), however, declined saying the memory of events was too painful. Portraying the king as a stutterer apparently was not appropriate. Interestingly, it was Seidler’s own childhood stuttering that inspired him to write the script of his onetime idol and fellow stammerer, the king.

This is one of those kooky movies. Every few years it doesn’t hurt to see one, like “Psycho” or “Fatal Attraction” or whatnot. “Black Swan” is a little like those, but I thought it over the top in parts in what it was going for. Didn’t it seem to get a bit ridiculous? The audience laughed in a couple spooky parts that weren’t necessarily meant for laughter.

Despite that, I did like bits of “Black Swan,” which is the story of a veteran ballerina in a New York City company who wins the lead in “Swan Lake” but appears headed for a breakdown from the pressure as well as contending with a smothering psychotic mother (played by Barbara Hershey) and a rival ballerina (Mila Kunis).

The film does a good job at capturing the strenuous demands and artistry that goes into such a top venue dance performance. Nina, the lead ballerina (played by Natalie Portman), practices endlessly through pain and injuries to get the moves just right. She aims for perfection in a profession that insists on it, but along the way things start to become unglued.

Portman’s hard work and dance training for the role will likely earn her an Academy Award nomination, as well as the total angst she exudes as the character. Vincent Cassel does a great job as well as the demanding ballet director who pushes Nina to capture both sides of the role as the white and black swan.

It’s an intriguing vantage point for a movie. But the director seems to go a step further than necessary, making it more over the top than perhaps what would have made it more intriguing.

Hmm another boxing film? Is another needed? Despite my initial reaction “The Fighter” has a story and cast that rises above the typical pugilistic fanfare. Set and filmed in Lowell, Mass., it is based on the true story of Dicky and Micky Ward, half-brothers who boxed as pro welterweights in subsequent decades. Upon retirement, the older one, Dicky, slid into crack addiction and landed in jail, but resurfaced in time to train his younger brother to a WBU title fight. The film depicts the brothers’ humble beginnings, their neurotic parents and dopey sisters on the road to Micky’s attempt to fulfill a dream that Dicky never did. (It’s rated a strong R for language, drug content and some good boxing action, though there’s seems a bit more outside drama than in the ring.)

Christian Bale does a great job as the quirky and stoned-out Dicky, while Mark Wahlberg is comfortable in the shoes of Micky, the fighter struggling with losses and thoughts of quitting. The rest of the cast is terrific, too, with Melissa Leo (of “Frozen River” acclaim) as the overly involved chain-smoking mother, and convincing new faces who play the brothers’ seven dumpy sisters. Perhaps Amy Adams, is the biggest surprise, as Micky’s tough sailor-tongued girlfriend who bumps heads with the tightly wound family. It’s hard to believe this is the same Adams who’s known for the wholesome roles in “Enchanted,” “Julie & Julia” and the upcoming “Muppets.” In “The Fighter,” she refreshingly branches out to partake in a role much grittier.

“The Fighter” is an entertaining flick, made better by the very authentic feel it generates thanks to the superb performances, script and fact that it’s filmed on location with input from the actual brothers. Mark Wahlberg said he trained four years for the role, which isn’t too hard to believe. The movie’s already received six Golden Globe nominations and four SAG nominations, and is likely to take a few home. I wouldn’t say it’s the best movie of the year, but it does pack a pretty good punch.

I seem to have had my fix of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, this past weekend: first in “The Social Network” and then in an interview of him on “60 Minutes.” The 26-year-old billionaire is doing quite well, thank you very much. He seemed a bit more relaxed in the “60 Minutes” interview than in past ones and wasn’t sweating it as much over the security of people’s info on the Facebook site as he was in Kara Swisher’s longer, tougher interview with him in June. Though it still remains the biggest concern for users.

On “60 Minutes” he said Facebook doesn’t sell your info and advertisers don’t get access to it. Though applications on Facebook have been known to. “It’s really an important thing for everyone to just be thinking about. Privacy and making sure people have control of their information is I think one of the most fundamental things on the Internet,” Zuckerberg said. He went on to discuss Facebook’s newest projects, which are steering the company to get more involved in your life: in sharing more activities, grouping your friends more around your interests, and in getting the real you more out there etc.

As for “The Social Network,” it’s an entertaining look at the start-up of Facebook. Aaron Sorkin’s script hums along with fast-paced dialogue of Mark’s character and his buddies at Harvard and the beginnings of the site. At the crux of the film, are the snags and enemies Mark’s actions make along the way, notably one lawsuit that accuses him of stealing the site’s idea and another for ditching his CFO. The film switches back and forth entertainingly between the two lawsuits and Mark and Facebook’s rise. The best part seems to be Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of the prodigy, which is convincing and at times quite amusing. I’m not sure it’s really the very best movie of the year, which others claim, but it’s a timely hit on an Internet craze that’s still exploding all around us.

When news came out that Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA operative by Robert Novak in a Washington Post op-ed in July 2003, it was a terrible feeling. I worked at The Post and was surprised that editors hadn’t caught it and/or didn’t take it out. Novak was beyond the pale to have named her because of what some administration official had leaked. I had sympathy for her life and ruined career but didn’t know much beyond that. For sure, Plame and her husband Joe Wilson’s fight against the Bush administration for being, they believed, the source of her outing (presumably as payback for his suggestion that White House intelligence was false) was an uphill, unpopular battle then. And many criticized their “conspiracy” theory and the Vanity Fair article and photo of them sitting in a convertible with Plame in scarf and sunglasses. But in the end their firestorm did eventually unearth who exposed her: the deputy secretary of state at the State Department.

Regardless where you stood then, “Fair Game” is a captivating and powerful movie. Part spy thriller and part political expose, it holds one’s attention from start to finish. Following events leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it reminds us of the trumped-up charges on weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration made as its reason for going to war. Reliving it will make you feel as mad as hell but should be required viewing for all Americans.

With good performances from Naomi Watts and Sean Penn (even Sam Shepard makes a small appearance!), director Doug Liman’s taut film moves beyond a typical pulled-from-the-headlines story to being an intriguing chronicle of the times and story of an agent’s life blown. I hesitated to see the movie, since it had been so prevalent in the news, but it turned out to be more than just a plodding recap, delving deeper behind the intense consequences at stake.

ps. Check out Valerie Plame’s comments on the movie here and The Washington Post’s thrashing of it here.

“Restrepo” is author Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington’s war documentary of a year with an American Army platoon at an outpost in the Korengal Valley, one of the most dangerous places of fighting in the Afghanistan war. It’s been mentioned as a real-life kind of “Hurt Locker,” in reference to this year’s Oscar-winning war picture. But “Restrepo” isn’t about a bomb squad; it’s about a platoon setting up and defending a remote mountainous outpost called “Restrepo,” named in memory of a medic killed there.

I was a bit nervous to see it before going to the documentary, but I wanted to get a real slice of the war and what these soldiers are going through. The film made me jumpy for sure; the enemy isn’t really ever seen, but the gunfire comes from anywhere at any time. The U.S. soldiers there endured on average four firefights a day and at times thought their outpost, Restrepo, would be overrun by the Taliban. When the platoon goes on a mission outside of their fort things get scarier and I jumped in my seat at one point.

The soldiers’ narration and their lives at Restrepo are revealing and draw viewers into their world, making you feel as if you’re experiencing war firsthand. The view the film leaves of the Korengal Valley, where more than 40 soldiers have been killed since 2005, is disheartening; The mountainous region and the relentless enemy make the war seem futile in Afghanistan. Ultimately, the military decided to pull out of the Korengal Valley in April 2010. Will the rest of the American troops in Afghanistan soon do the same?

The news this week that actress Rooney Mara, at far left, has won the role of Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood movie version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is a tad mind-boggling since no one much has heard of her work, unless you saw this year’s version of “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” Apparently the director of “Dragon Tattoo” met her during the upcoming movie about Facebook and says she’s great. After reading two of the books in Stieg Larsson’s triology, I have to say Rooney Mara doesn’t exactly come to mind as playing the whip-smart, computer hacker ruffian that is the heroin Lisbeth Salander. I’ve seen the Swedish movie version of “Dragon” and actress Noomi Rapace, above right, comes across as highly believable. I couldn’t believe how much Rapace seemed to embody the tough Salander. Will Rooney Mara be able to transform? Or is the U.S. version just going to be a cotton-candy adaptation of the book?

Remember there was a time when author Anne Rice was livid that Tom Cruise got the part of Lestat in 1994’s “Interview With the Vampire.” She said he was obviously “no” Lestat. But apparently after seeing the movie, Rice changed her mind and thought Tom was great with ole Brad Pitt as Louis. Perhaps she was just rolling with the publicity machine. But perhaps an open mind should be kept with Rooney as Salander. Sigh. If only it were that easy.