Two Good Ones in a Row
I've repeatedly lamented over the dearth of decent movies this year. When Hitch still holds up as one of the best things I've seen this year, you know we're in trouble.Thankfully, I've seen two films in the last couple of days that start to reverse this trend: Mysterious Skin and Layer Cake. Both of these are really small indies, so they probably won't even receive an enormous amount of attention, but for their own reasons, they're both worth watching.
Mysterious Skin starts in Kansas in the early 80s. Two boys are on a little league team together. One of them, Brian, winds up in his cellar with a bloody nose and five hours of missing time. Nobody knows what happens to him. The other, Neil, is raised by a single mother (Elisabeth Shue) and develops a really close connection to his coach. Flash forward to the end of the decade. Brian is still trying to figure out what happened to those five hours and why they've affected his life. He's convinced he was abducted by aliens. As he starts to dig deeper, his search leads him to Neil, who has moved to New York and is turning tricks for any guy who will pay him. Neil knows exactly what happened, including his part in the horrific events.
The film is very dark and incredibly squirm inducing. In some ways, it's the perfect companion piece to last year's The Woodsman. That film was about someone trying to find redemption for a crime he'd committed. Neil and Brian try to find a way out of the confines they're trapped in after being the victims of the same crime Kevin Bacon's character in The Woodsman committed. The impact in Skin comes from the fact that as an audience, we know the two boys are linked, yet they don't meet until the last fifteen minutes of the film. When they do however, their connection and joint search for hope is incredibly touching and moving, buoyed by a very grown up performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Neil.
Layer Cake, starring Daniel Craig, starts like it's going to be another Guy Ritchie-esque British mobster movie. And in some ways, it definitely is, but this is more clever, more intricately plotted, and ultimately smarter than Lock, Stock... or Snatch. Though a bit over-directed, Matthew Vaughn does a nice job of keeping the story straight and keeping the pace brisk and involved. The strength to the film is that it always feels a little off-center. Though you always know what's going on, you never get to feel "at home" in the film. So by the time things start going badly for the hero, it doesn't feel unexpected.
Drug-running is a fleeting business full of mistrust and uncertainty-at least according to the film. (And according to the drug dealer we ran into in Milwaukee last weekend, it's also one of small profits.) Layer Cake takes great pains not to mythologize the evils that go hand in hand with this lifestyle. There are consequences to every action, angst over violence, even commentary as to the prison terms given to drug dealers versus other violent criminals. And just when you think you know how the film will end, it undercuts you one more time--just as reality--but not Hollywood--would certainly do.
Neither of the films are going to end up being the best of the year (hopefully), but both are worth checking out.
posted by cinegod @ 10:07 AM
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