THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN

Review: The Father of My Children
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

I love movies about making movies. Many of them, like “Sunset Boulevard,” “The Player” “8½” and “8½'s” wrongfully abused stepchild, “Nine,” are as interested in portraying the glitzy glamor of showbiz as exploring the struggles of those being digested within its underbelly. “The Father of My Children,” French writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve's 2009 Cannes favorite (it nabbed the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section), ditches all the glamor and focuses on the gastric juices.

Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), an independent Parisian film producer, is hit with problem upon problem, setback upon setback, as if someone were following him around with a tennis ball cannon. His life is a fascinating, frustrating swirl of behind-the-scenes stressors, all born of the initial desire to put art up on the screen. Somewhere along the line for Grégoire, the art end was terminally eclipsed by the business end, and Hansen-Løve, a serious talent at 29, realistically exposes the hectic, money-conscious muck of her own profession while illustrating Grégoire's undoing. At least, that's the first hour of the film.

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INCEPTION

Review: Inception
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Christopher Nolan has said he was influenced by the work of trailblazers like Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Michael Mann and The Wachowski Brothers when crafting his dense, awesome, near-indescribable mind-trip “Inception,” the adrenaline-shot antidote to summer-movie malaise. Without question, Nolan, the writer/director who's also given us “Memento” and “The Dark Knight,” will himself be a major influence on future filmmakers like him, who, to borrow a choice line from his brilliant new thriller, “(aren't) afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” Amazingly ambitious in concept and execution, “Inception” marks the marriage of Nolan's talent for manipulating narrative structure and his exceptional ability to apply arts and smarts to large-scale, bankable entertainment. Nowhere else in the current realm of popular cinema will you find a film more capable of fully engaging your brain while providing sights and sounds that dazzle and electrify.

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THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

With the the books of Stieg Larsson's “Millenium Trilogy” flying off American shelves (they've officially unseated the “Twilight” tomes as the hottest must-reads of the moment), the buzz regarding the film adaptations has become all about the forthcoming American remakes, the first of which is set to be directed by David Fincher from an already-in-the-bag script by Steven Zaillian. I'm plenty interested to see what a visionary like Fincher will bring to these audacious mysteries, but it's disheartening how the original Swedish-language films are now being treated as mere stepping stones to the Hollywood versions. Americans don't know what they're missing.

The Swedish movies are brisk, intelligent, well-performed thrillers, and even if the remakes can capture all that, they won't be able to replicate the basic, indigenous nature of Scandinavian stories recreated as Scandinavian films. The second installment, “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” fully retains the tough-as-nails aura of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which hit U.S. art houses in March. Following the ongoing, intrigue-ridden adventures of magazine editor Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and mysterious, bisexual hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), “Fire” also reminds us that good stories begin with great characters.

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THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

Review: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Unlike last year's “New Moon,” which boggled the mind in that it wasn't in fact some late-night SOAPnet special, “Eclipse,” the third adaptation of author Stephenie Meyer's “Twilight” tetralogy, actually has a cinematic pulse, boasting higher stakes and greater urgency than both of its predecessors. Things are getting a lot more action-oriented in the town of Forks, Wash., where a small army of hungry “newborn” vampires are headed to feast on Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), the series' brooding heroine who's still playing eenie-meenie with her dual (and dueling) love interests, the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and the werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Directed by David Slade (“Hard Candy,” “30 Days of Night”), “Eclipse” also bests “New Moon” in how it knowingly nudges its own phenomena, particularly that of its swoon-inducing heartthrobs. Though far from sure-footed, it's more self-skewering than self-indulgent. And, in a welcome development, the film often shifts its focus to the lives and backgrounds of its intriguing secondary characters, enriching the story's milieu and giving the audience much-needed opportunities to digress.

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I AM LOVE

Review: I Am Love
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Tilda Swinton has sculpted one of the most enticing bodies of work of any living actor. She is a connoisseur of exotic, avant garde roles, and even after lending her inimitable talents (and supernatural looks) to mainstream fare like the “Chronicles of Narnia” series, she hasn't lost a sliver of her art house credibility. When her work in 2007's “Michael Clayton” earned her an Oscar (an accolade that unquestionably made the film-buff favorite more popular among the unwashed masses, and one so many recipients have used as a ticket to big-paycheck blockbusters), she seemed to grow only more resolute in the pursuit of out-of-step parts. Last year she appeared in Jim Jarmusch's nothing-if-not-unique mystery “The Limits of Control,” and French filmmaker Erick Zonca's offbeat thriller “Julia,” which contains her marvelous turn as an in-too-deep alcoholic. Now she captivates in a foreign language in “I Am Love,” a luscious, intoxicating Italian melodrama and one of the best films of the year.

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JONAH HEX

Review: Jonah Hex

2 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

In the comic-book western “Jonah Hex,” the title character, a sort-of-resurrected bounty hunter with a sort-of link to the land of the dead, has a talent for touching corpses and bringing them back to life, if only for a few intense, interrogative moments. Trouble is, if Jonah holds on too long, the reanimated stiffs start to slowly, painfully burn up, inching ever closer to what I assume qualifies as a second, definitive kicking of the bucket. Watching this movie isn't much different. As safe and standard a Hollywood product as they come, “Hex” bores you to death with its platitudes and processed plot, then revives your attention with blaring noise and frenzied editing that wind up incinerating your senses. What really burns is knowing that increasingly risk-averse studios like Warner Bros. won't get behind gems like “Winter's Bone,” but they'll invest millions in this kind of dime-a-dozen rubbish. There have been worse movies this season, but “Hex” is probably the least necessary.

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JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK

Review: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

The opening shot of the documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” is an unforgiving extreme close-up of Rivers' famous (and famously maintained) mug, which looks slightly alien, is still wrinkle-free at 75 and, for a few delicious seconds, is shown entirely without makeup. It's a totally arresting image, something you never knew you always wanted to see. Eye-opening and eye-grabbing, it's the perfect preview for what's to come in this surprisingly valuable film, shot over a year in the life of the loud-mouthed, trail-and-guns-blazing comedienne. Perhaps what's most surprising is how fully Rivers comes off as a real, live, flawed, scared, breathing, thinking, feeling person, since pop culture basically programmed us to believe she's just a plastic part of the media machine. “Piece of Work” aims to tackle that notion head-on, and does so from frame one.

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