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Ides of March– rm-  It is not a coincidence that this movie opens in the US as there is a hotly contested primary race in one of the political parties prior to the 2012 Presidential Election.The stories that emerge from behind the scenes of these campaigns usually mesmerizes the public. The people running these campaigns have to be the brilliant tacticians who understand politics and the power of the press. They encounter nosey reporters exemplified in this story by NY Times reporter Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei). They play a complicated chess game as they present their candidates. Everything and everybody is expendable including the campaign leaders themselves. Steven Myers (Ryan Gosling) is  the idealistic very smart staffer working for Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) under very wise campaign director Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). The campaign manager for the oppositional candidate is a very crafty (Paul Giamatti). The Governor while politically very principled has some Clintonesque weaknesses and we should mention there is a pretty young intern (Evan Rachel Wood). Mix these ingredients together and you get a suspenseful fast moving screenplay by Grant Heslov with contribution from Clooney who also directed the film. It was based on a play, Farragut North,  by Beau Willimon which having seen it in Los Angeles, we felt the suspense and surprises of the story were slightly muted. In real life, reading the newspapers and various biographies, we get snippets that makes us understand that in big time politics  there can be  deception, lying and compromising of principles. This movie gives us a depressing view how it might go down. This isn’t a pretty picture but it is a great story and an effective movie (2011)

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The Wrestler –sp – Marisa Tomei plays a pole dancer with a heart of gold and Mickey Rourke plays a washed up wrestler with a broken heart. No doubt that the movie was very well directed and acted. Rourke, a former boxer, bulked up 40 pounds to realistically play this role and Tomei learned how to pole dance without her clothes. However the script was very predictable and the story failed to give us the depth of understanding of the characters that might have made this a great movie. 2008

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Whatever Works – rm – People who like Woody Allen usually like Larry David. Allen chooses David to speak his words and act out his state of mind which basically is “what really matters, we are all going to die “. Thus we see a divorced, could have been a Nobel Prize winning physics professor, after a botched suicide attempt decides to live on his own in Manhattan. Along comes a pretty young girl from Mississippi who ends up living with the good professor. Allen’s current views on love, sex, relationships, death and everything else are seemingly demonstrated through the characters who inhabit this film. Everyone seems to be in an incongruous situation which makes for good comedy at the same time as we get insight into the struggle of the characters and of Woody Allen sitting at his typewriter or ultimately directing his actors. As expected the directing, production and acting by Larry David, Ed Begley Jr. Patricia Clarkson, and Evan Rachel Wood are on target and move this film into the higher level of a must see rating ( unless of course you don’t like Woody Allen ) 2009