***

A Late Quartet-rm

 A famous successful string quartet makes great music together for twenty five years but their individual lives are now on the verge of producing some very bad notes. We are introduced to this group as we learn that Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken) the older, most mature and stable member of the group learns that he has  the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease and will probably have to step down from the group. The possibility of change and perhaps a new member of the group creates a window for Writer /Director Yaron Zilberman to show the audience the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the other 3 characters. Robert (played magnificently as usual by Phiilip Seymore Hoffman) decides he doesn’t want to play 2^nd fiddle anymore and wants to in the future alternate first violin with  Daniel (Mark Ivenir) who now has that role. Robert is devastated when his wife Juliette (Catherine Keener) also a member of the quartet doesn’t agree and has actually talked it over with Daniel. He of course, doesn’t want to share the role of top banana with Robert. In fact Daniel who probably has been a repressed musical genius has an affair with Robert and Catherine’s daughter Alexandra (Imogene Potts) to whom he has been giving violin lessons and who had been flirting with him. He seems devastated when she ultimately rejects him.  In the course of this situation her mother comes down hard on Alexandra’s poor judgment which leads Alexandra to vehemently respond what a failure Juliette has been as a mother especially since she and her father were  not around 7 months of the year, always being on tour. We are led to believe if they can really get into the music especially Beethoven’s opus 131, all be ok. It almost works because the music really carries the movie. When you see them play together (the actors were taught to move their fingers in the correct manner) you believe that everything is going to be back in balance with a new equilibrium. That is the power of music and some very good acting. (2012)

 ****

Silver Linings Playbook-sp

We are always sensitive when there is humor presented at the expense of people with mental illness. This is what seemed to be the case when at the beginning of the film we meet Pat (Bradley Cooper ) who is about to be released from a mental hospital. He is being picked up by his mom ( Jacki Weaver ) and we see that he has Bipolar Disorder , flies off the handle very easily and fools the nurse into thinking that takes his medication when he really cheeks it and throws it away. The humor continues as we meet his father, Pat Sr. (Robert DiNiro) who has an obsessive disorder and is a superstitious gambler who always bets on the  Philadelphia Eagles. From finding ourselves unhappy that we are laughing at these dysfunctional characters, we then become aware of the great pain that they are suffering which early on shows in the sensitive performances of Weaver and DeNiro. The storyline then reveals the circumstances of Pat Jr’s hospitalization and his trauma in regard to his wife’s behavior. Bradley ‘s performance is tremendous as he plays mentally disturbed , determined and very smart. However the real stand out and maybe even Oscar performance is by Jennifer Lawrence who plays Tiffany a beautiful. dysfunctional , quirky , vulnerable and very intense woman. She is  recently widowed, who becomes entwined with Pat as he is trying find a way to recapture his wife. The photography, mostly single camera  fast moving as is the directing by David O. Russell, the editing by Jay Cassidy and the music by Danny Elfman which includes Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis at the appropriate times with a little “ dancing with the stars”  thrown in. In the end what makes this movie a winner is that it  is a real love story, complete with sentimentality all around ( think Frank Capra and It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas lights and all . (2012)

****

 Life of Pi-sp

If you have by some chance read the book, we did not, you probably will be very curious how the story would be told in the film . If you are a big Ang Lee fan(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), Hulk (2003), and Brokeback Mountain (2005), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director,  you most likely will want to see his latest work. If you love 3D movies where everything seems so real and comes right at the audience, this would be on your list to see. Finally if you  are a real big animal lover, you will be drawn to this movie. Since we really don’t fit in any of these categories we were quite neutral when  we found ourselves at the sneak preview showing of this movie. The Life of Pi  was like nothing we have ever seen. The story is quite unique which revolves around one young man from India who as you can see from the movie poster is  shipwrecked in the middle of an ocean with a ferocious tiger. The 3D effects are as realistic as we have ever seen . The CGI ( Computer Generated Imagery) is clearly state of the art or perhaps years ahead itself. In a Q & A after we saw the movie, the  audience actually questioned the  guest at our screening, Elizabeth Gabler,  Fox 2000 President, whether trained animals were being used for most of the complex dramatic scenes because every hair on their bodies was totally realistic as was the fast moving action. The beautiful and powerful  depiction of nature was beyond description and has to be seen to be appreciated. There were essentially 5 people in the film although it revolved around one person Pi Patel . However, there were 14,000 people hired to work on the movie who worked an estimated 600,000 hours in a film that had a budget of around 100 million dollars. This alone should pique your curiosity to see this movie. Pi Patel was played by Suraj Sharma a young man who had no intention of being an actor but showed up with his brother at one of numerous castings held all over the world and was chosen. He had to endure wind, water and much movie trickery to help Director Ang Lee achieve his effects. If there was one shortcoming of the film, it was that we did not respond strongly to  to the intended emotional undercurrent and the twists at the end of the movie as did some of our fellow movie goers. That did not make us sorry in any way that we had spent 127 minutes with this unusual film.(2012)