BUCK (2011) - 3-1/2 stars
Documentary directed by Cindy Meehl
A Sundance and SXSW fan favorite, this pleasant doc follows around horse trainer extraordinaire Buck Brannaman (the original 'Horse Whisperer') as he teaches his humane methods of horse training across the West. What makes the movie work is its engaging and pleasant subject: Buck's understated, self-deprecating personality is a joy to spend time with. Amazing, given his beyond-abusive upbringing by his unloving, drunkard of a father, who also trained Buck and his older brother as a trick-roping duo (the brother's absence from this project is the movie's only unanswered question). Buck's ability to deal with the terror he experienced as a child, and grow into this gentle, loving family man is a lesson in the power of the human spirit. In exploring the fraught relationship between father and sons, this movie is a nice companion piece to "Tree of Life"-- without the cosmic pretensions. Sometimes the best-told stories are the simplest ones.
BEGINNERS (2011) - 2-1/2 stars
Directed by Mike Mills ("Thumbsucker" is his only previous credit)
Starring: Ewan McGregor; Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent ("Inglourious Basterds")
This movie, by the husband of the more-talented director-artist Miranda July ("You, Me & Everyone We Know" and the upcoming "The Future") is cutesy without being cute; pleased with its own cleverness, but not that clever; and generally more interested in cinematic style over substance. I'm all for "meeting cute," but what was the point of having the actress/love interest pretend not to be able to speak for the first 20 minutes, then suddenly drop the shtick for no reason? Even the trick of having the family dog communicate in subtitles comes across as cloying, as the dog (a veteran actor who I think was Frasier's dog, too) seems to respond to his off-camera trainer more than to his onscreen co-stars. (Buck taught me to look for that!)
It is a shame the director makes such a muddle of his autobiographical story with this nonsense, since it would be a gripping tragi-comedy if played straight: soon after burying his mother, his father comes out of the closet at age 75 and finds out he is dying of cancer. Christopher Plummer is a marvel as the sympathetic septuagenarian. The rest of the cast is fine, too (poor Goran Visnjic ("ER") is quite miscast as the old man's lover, however).
SARAH'S KEY (French 2010) - 1-1/2 stars
Directed by Gilles Paquet-BrennerStarring Kristen Scott Thomas ("The Horse Whisperer"), Aidan Quinn ("Practical Magic"), and a bunch of French actors I've never heard of before
This is the turkey of the trio, I'm afraid to say. Sad, since I am one of those people who thinks every story about the Holocaust needs to be told, again and again. (I recently watched the 9-and-1/2 hour Holocaust documentary "Shoah" in one day-long sitting!). Just don't tell it in this inept, melodramatic, badly-acted fashion!The movie begins by following the fortunes of a small Jewish family during the notorious round-up of Parisian Jews in 1942 by the French police, who herd them into an overcrowded Velodrome for a week before transporting them out of the country to their ultimate fate. By far the most-compelling and authentic scenes in the movie (despite the overbearing musical soundtrack telling you how to feel), the movie makes two inexplicable mistakes: 1) it continually switches the story to modern-day Paris to follow an American reporter as she uncovers this story and deals with her own changing life -- which frankly, by comparison to the horrors we are witnessing, comes across as narcissistic in the extreme; and 2) the dramatic conclusion to the 1942 episode with the young heroine Sarah comes much too quickly, stripping the film of any tension it might have built for the remaining running time.
What we are left to suffer through are mundane scenes of the journalist tracking down Sarah's story (all movie journalists are intrepid!) and dealing with her selfish husband and in-laws. It is notable that these flat scenes are mostly spoken in English, because I have a strong suspicion that this French director doesn't have command of this language. How else to explain why the English-speaking scenes are uniformly stilted, unconvincing, and in some cases, downright poorly-acted.
I was surprised to read this movie was based on a novel, rather than true events, since the progression of the young heroine's life after the war is so messy and unfulfilling (as in real life, as opposed to a novelist's imagination). The very lack of detail in Sarah's post-war experiences is supposed to lend mystery to the story, I suppose, showing how a person's life and motivations are ultimately unknowable -- but by having this character speak not a line of dialogue for the last half of the movie seems to me a mistake, dramatically. I know it was a mistake, cinematically.
