Movies You May Have Missed: Four movies, ‘Two Lovers’

Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix in Two Lovers

The Movies You May Have Missed DVD column has been MIA since early May because there simply haven’t been any movies that qualified. That changed last week with two worthwhile films hitting DVD, but we were wrapped up with the Los Angeles Film Festival and didn’t get around to it. This week there are a couple more films worth mentioning, though we’re a couple of days late rolling them out.

Better late than never, here are four movies you may have missed in theaters that are now available on DVD or will be on Tuesday.

Two Lovers (2008) ****
The set-up sounds a little programmatic with Joaquin Phoenix as an emotionally damaged young man choosing between stable-but-boring Vinessa Shaw and exciting-but-dangerous Gwyneth Paltrow, but Two Lovers is one of those films I’m going to regret not reviewing. Director James Gray is more interested in the truth behind his characters than he is the machinations of story. These feel like real people. They’re not always likeable, but they’re believable. As such, Two Lovers has a decidedly European flavor to it. It’s also surprisingly amusing for such potentially heavy material. The cast (including Isabella Rosellini as Phoenix’s permissive but over-protective mother) is excellent and they go a long way toward bringing the characters to life.

But don’t just take my word for it. Read what Jennifer Boulden (aka Jennybee) had to say about it at Sam Juliano’s Wonders in the Dark. I’m a sucker for a jazz metaphor and hers is particularly apt.

Tokyo! (2008)
Sometimes the Movies You May Have Missed column includes movies I may have missed as well and Tokyo! is an excellent example of that. The omnibus film about Japan’s largest city from Bong Joon-ho (The Host), Leos Carax (Mr. Lonely) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) hit LiC radar when it premiered at Cannes to generally positive reviews in 2008, but it played in LA for about a week before moving on. Now is our chance to catch up to it.

And here are a couple of movies that were released to DVD last Tuesday.

Waltz with Bashir (2008) ****
When he realized he didn’t remember key events surrounding his involvement as a 19-year-old Israeli soldier in the Sabra and Shatila massacre during the 1982 Lebanon War, filmmaker Ari Folman interviewed his fellow soldiers and others involved in the conflict in an attempt to unravel the mystery. In part because not all of his subjects were willing to be exposed, Folman then animated the staged conversations and the result is Waltz with Bashir, one of the more interesting movies of 2008. It’s kind of a documentary hybrid, yet it takes on the power and visceral impact of memory or dream. It has a nightmare intensity that pulls you along like a suspense thriller and then lingers hauntingly long after the film is over.

I originally saw it at AFI on a busy schedule amid a general movie burnout and Waltz with Bashir didn’t pack the punch it might normally have, but it has grown on me in the months since I first saw it.

Phoebe in Wonderland (2007) ***
Elle Fanning plays a troubled little girl with an obsession for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She’s a precocious kid whose struggles to fit in with her classmates are complicated by what could be the onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder or it could be something else. The lead role in a school production of Alice in Wonderland seems to be just the thing to help her through this difficult time, but it ends up threatening her increasingly tenuous attachment to reality.

Perhaps trying to capture the spirit of Carroll’s original story, the film veers between the dramatic and the absurdly humorous, but writer/director Daniel Barnz isn’t the storyteller that Carroll is and the movie doesn’t quite take flight. It’s still worth seeing though if this kind of thing sounds like your cup of tea. Elle Fanning is good as Phoebe but Patricia Clarkson steals the show as the drama teacher Miss Dodger. On the other hand, Felicity Huffman is a little annoying as Phoebe’s mom. I liked her back in the Sports Night days, but 10 years later she seems to be bringing the same tics and mannerisms to her characters. Bill Pullman plays Phoebe’s concerned father and Campbell Scott plays the school’s principal.

Filed under: DVD
Tags: Ari Folman, Bill Pullman, Bong Joon-ho, Campbell Scott, Elle Fanning, Felicity Huffman, Gwyneth Paltrow Joaquin Phoenix, James Gray, Leos Carax, Michele Gondry, Patricia Clarkson, Phoebe in Wonderland, Tokyo!, Two Lovers, Vinessa Shaw, Waltz with Bashir