***

Chloe- rm– this movie deals with the situation of a partner in a marriage believing that a spouse has lost sexual interest. A middle aged female gynecologist (Julianne Moore) suspects that her college professor husband (Liam Neeson), who always seems to flirt with his female students, may be having an affair. She finds Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), a younger but very experienced woman, at a nightclub. She hires her to approach her husband to determine if he seems interested in her. Chloe is to report to the concerned wife as to the results of the encounters. It is clear that from the beginning of meetings between two women, that there was an intense sexual attraction. Chloe is a contemporary of the physician’s son who is starting a career as concert pianists as well as beginning to bring women home. He has a chance meeting with Chloe, which further complicates things. The story turns on an interesting variation of the of plot of the classic film Fatal Attraction. Director Atom Egoyan provides fast pacing to this intense drama. Julianne Moore expresses the intensity of her emotions very well through her facial expressions. The movie was surprisingly explicit especially since we viewed in flight where sexual scenes usually are toned down, on the other hand it was an international airline. (2010)

***

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger-rm – We have always been willing to see Woody Allen movies if for no other reason then to see where his head is at. He always comes up with an interesting group of characters who are struggling in great angst in which we can some way identify with or at least understand. This time he gives us various configurations of couples who are each having trouble with their relationships and for the most part they each have some very wishful fantasies. The oldest couple has split because Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) feels he should have relationship with hot young blond    (Lucy Punch). His disappointed wife Helena (Gemma Jones) falls under the spell of a forune teller (Pauline Collins) whom she believes hookline and sinker. Helena then falls in love with a widower Jonathan (Roger Ashton-Griffiths) who needs the permission of his dead wife to marry her. Alfie and Helena have a daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) who is married to Roy, a doctor (Josh Broslin) who doesn’t practice but is trying to produce a second novel rather than a family and prefers looking out his apartment window at Dia (Freida Pinto), a beautiful woman whom he is convinced would be the perfect partner for him. The doctor – now writer’s wife really imagines that she would be better off with her art dealer boss (Antonio Banderes). If she can’t have him she would hope that her mother would lend her money to open her own art gallery but the mother doesn’t think the stars are aligned right. There are many more twists and turns in this study of the human psyche. There is also a narrator to the movie (Zak Orth) who really doesn’t tell us very much. Allen has a writing style that gives the audience a feel for who are these people and the dilemmas they face from their own point of view. The problem is that when all is said and done, we didn’t really care that much about any of the characters despite the unique story and a great cast. There were some good comedic moments but overall it is a sad commentary about human nature. (2010)

***

Red– sp- Retired and Extremely Dangerous is what the title of this movie stand for. This cast of actors, while some are a little long in the tooth, are far from retired but  their characters in this movie are certainly dangerous. While you probably can picture Bruce Willis toting a deadly machine gun can you picture Dame Helen Mirren blasting away with an up to date Kalashnilov or whatever they are called? This is what you get in this delightful fun spoof of all the shoot em up, kill lots of people, blow things up,  smash cars,  CIA , FBI movies that you may have seen in the past few years plus some shades of James Bond. In addition to Helen and Bruce, you have great star power from  John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Dryfuss as well as excellent performances by Karl Urban, and Brain Cox.  Basically the plot is that the old team has to get back together because they are all on a hit list related to some “ work “ they did in Guatemala 20 years ago. The plot thickens and involves the modern day CIA and maybe the Vice-President in a not such a good way. The story and the actions are completely unbelievable as they are played out, but  you never know about the real secret lives of secret agents. Malkovich plays a delightful character who appears to be completely paranoid but everything that he is concerned about seems to happen with a vengeance. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, veteran movie producer, was at our screening and took us through how he put together this cast and how much fun they all seemed to have making the movie.  He is hoping that older crowd will identify with the RED component and that the younger crowd will be drawn in for the action. We doubt that it will make the Oscar list but a good time can be had by all. ( 2010)

*****

Conviction sp- This is  a true story of a man convicted of a bloody murder in a Boston suburb in the 1980s .  There are witnesses who say that he told him he did it and there is blood typing evidence (this is before DNA analysis) which strongly suggests it was him. The only thing going for him is his sister who is sure that he didn’t do it. You have seen this relatively simple plot play out many times on television on Dateline, 20/20 or on similar programs. The only difference here is that you have another magnificent performance by Hillary Swank playing Betty Anne Waters who is going to take the next 18 years of her life completing High School, going to college and then law school in order to see if there is way to get her brother his freedom. You also have Sam Rockwell, playing the  brother Kenny,  in a performance that should earn him an Academy Award nomination. The screen play by Pamela Gray and  the direction by Tony Goldwyn gives us pieces of their childhood which clarifies their great devotion to each other. The struggle of Betty Ann to become a lawyer and her determination to find the evidence that would be the key to saving her brother allows us to understand this person. Her interaction with Kenny similarly provides insight into his pain and bravado.  The difficult lives of the people in the community where this happened and the very questionable actions of the police and district attorney Martha Coakley (who subsequently was defeated in the recent  US Senate race in Massachusetts to replace Kennedy)  was brought out by a stunning performance of Juliette Lewis who played one of the witnesses who recounts what really happened to make her testify against Kenny. We had the good fortune to meet at our preview screening Swank, Rockwell, Lewis, the real life Betty Anne Waters and her good friend and fellow law student Abra Rice who was well played in the movie by Minnie Driver. They confirmed that truth is stranger and at times more unbelievable than fiction. I recall reading about the well known lawyer Barry Scheck, who was depicted in this movie, and wondering about his decision to devote his career to  the Innocence Project where the new science of DNA matching is applied to old crimes. It turns out that over 250 innocent people have been freed from prison due to his efforts. There is one particular line in this film stands out in this regard as Swank as Betty Ann remarks that if Massachusetts had the death penalty her brother would have been killed before she had chance to make a case for his innocence. Swank, speaking for herself at our screening told how making this movie allowed her to understand the unique life affirming experience that these people went through. Watching this film also gave the audience the opportunity to share this journey.(2010)

*****

The Social Network-rm – Every aspect of this story and film is handled just about as well as it could be done. The subject matter has to be of interest to the 500 million people who are on Facebook or the millions who are not and are wondering how did all of this ever get started. The captivating story comes from a book titled Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich but the brilliant dialogue comes from the screenplay of  Aaron Sorkin who also wrote the great TV series West Wing. We get a very realistic trip back a few years to the Harvard campus where the very contemporary version of the great American dream is being hatched in a college dormitory. Mark Zuckerberg somewhat of a social misfit himself, is developing this idea for what will ironically become the greatest social networking concept of all time. He is played extremely well by  Jesse Eisenberg whom we remember as the older son in The Squid and The Whale, plays Zuckerberg. The fascinating part of the story is that a bunch of other guys  at Harvard also had some roles in stimulating and developing what was to become a world wide phenomena. While Zuckerberg clearly is the genius here, the Winklevoss brothers and Divya Naregra provided some of the nuclei of the ideas and Eduardo Saverin one of Zuckerberg’s friends actually started off as the business manager and then CFO of the fledgling enterprise. Saverin initially invested the $1000 to start it and then another $18,000 before several the big venture capitalists found it.  In contrast, this movie, about their story cost $50 million. But we digress here because the essence of the story, which will suck you in, is how all these Harvard students plus Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake), a Stanford dropout who himself invented Napster, became entangled ultimately in a multimillion lawsuit at the time that Facebook was worth billions of dollars. The film is directed by  David Fincher, who knows how to transition episodes of time, having directed The Strange Case of Benjamin Button. He cleverly moves back in forth from the high stakes deposition of a law suit being waged about who owns Facebook and how much do they own, back to the events of their college days a few years previously. Zuckerberg is the center of attention here. This film is successful in giving us a good glimpse under the hood of this determined person who is one of those 21^st century people who is changing the world as we know it.  (2010)