We recently saw two very good films that zero in on people in pain. In The Savages, there’s a scene where Philip Seymour Hoffman, having wrenched his neck during a game of tennis (and an argument with his sister Laura Linney about his idiocy in his relationship with a woman), stands with his head bound up in an absurd weighted contraption, meant to “balance” him. Linney looks on and laughs, and he can’t help it–bursts into giggles, too. And ‘though the pain doesn’t go away, not the nerve in his neck nor the loneliness of their lives nor the anguish of their family history and current reality (dad sinking into dementia, and needing to be put in a home), the laugh reframes the pain as less a personal blight than something the two share. (more…)

A gothic manor house located in a particularly beautiful, particularly remote spot on the Spanish coast is purchased by a woman who lived there decades before when it functioned as a Catholic orphanage. She and her husband, along with their six-year-old son, work to restore the home and transform it into a school for mentally disabled children, but when her child starts communicating with unseen forces and soon vanishes into thin air, the past finds a way to eerily push itself into the present. This film is creepy and atmospheric and evocatively affective–perhaps due to the fact that it’s plot ingeniously appropriates and recontextualizes the story of Peter Pan. There is a set piece about twenty-five minutes in that is stunning, and the ending’s perfect balance of the uncanny and the mythic will break your heart.

Adult Swim keeps upping the absurdist ante.

Walt Whitman’s review:
Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! is often aggravating,
but it’s never boring,
is never complacent,
and I sing of
its cascade of chubby men in thongs,
its fluids dribbling or spewing or squirting from mouths (and elsewhere),
its unibrowed whore-milk-drinking baby Chippy,
its frenetic love of (don’t we all) synthesizer dancing,
and its video tomfoolery circa 1982,
oh Zach Galifiniakis
Galifaniakis,
Kiss Zach,
drinking your gravy caught in your thick thick burly beard,
I-I-I-I-I watch in slackjawed wonder.

I was dubious and this will definitely not appeal to all tastes, but I was completely enchanted and moved by this Capra-esque fantasy firmly rooted on the planet earth by smart, unadourned, emotionally resonant acting choices. Lars (an understated Ryan Gosling in a charming and warmly human-sized performance) suffered extreme trauma as an infant and the result, twenty-seven years later, is that he severely lacks interpersonal relationship skills. When he purchases a life-sized, sex doll for companionship, literally convincing himself she is real, his brother wants him packed off to a mental institution. His sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) takes a different tact and soon the entire town rallies around Lars’ relationship with “Bianca.” None of this should work. None of it! The potential for treacly, saccharin-laced whimsy is undermined by a no-nonsense approach and a cast of characters straight out of an E. Annie Proulx novel (the original screenplay by “Six Feet Under” scribe Nancy Oliver was nominated for an Academy Award). The first act is a bit forced (give it a little time) and the ending, befitting the genre, is telegraphed from the next state, but the plot twists keep you engaged and even surprised.

HOT DAMN. Another great, vicious French horror film–not quite as smart, polished, and riveting as Ils/Them which I reviewed a little while back, but it is still sharply-shot, often unnerving, and about 10,000 times gorier.

The plot: a pregnant woman who recently lost her husband (how careless!) is being assaulted in her home late one Christmas eve by a profoundly freaky Beatrice Dalle (the Betty Blue), who wants to give her a Caesarean. Or, more precisely, wants the baby for herself, and plans to get it expeditiously, using whatever comes to hand.

I’m likely the only person who posts here who would love a film so unrepentantly gory, but maybe it might attract fans of stylish, audacious filmmaking; its qualities are not merely the repulsive but the perverse seductive beauties of such gore, and every shot is lovingly framed, the colors are vibrant, the use of shadow and haze outstanding. The directors rival Takashi Miike in their ability to yoke a vibrant, joyous aesthetic sensibility to such literally pulpy, vigorously vicious material.