The other movie I just sent back was L'Empire des loups. I had it in my queue primarily because it starred Jean Reno. It is really two different movies crammed into one shell. An amnesia tinged mystery in the first half, then action/ninja/trainwreck. While it was entertaining in its own ways it suffered terribly from the problem that plagues most action movies: the action supercedes all logic or rationality and creates plot holes big enough to drive through. This becomes a huge detracting factor for me. The mysterious first half gets lost and forgotten once the Turkish ninja "Wolves" assassins make their appearance. If you like action movies, you probably will like this, but it did not float my boat, as they say. And (THIS IS A VERY BIG AND...) if you do choose to see this for the love of all that is holy use the subtitling. The dub is horrendous.
I'm also midway through Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu). This is a much better film than the other two and comes from Romania. It won numerous awards including the Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Old, alcoholic Mr. Lazarescu is sick/drunk/dying and calls for an ambulance. This sets off a journey where the individual becomes largely lost in bureaucracy as he is shuttled from hospital to clinic to hospital, each time cursorily examined, marginalized and sent further afield. It often feels like a documentary rather than a drama. We can empathize with Mr. Lazarescu who needs help and cannot get it, we can see how overwhelmed the hospital system is in Romania and relate that to our own medical systems, we can understand the ambulance personnel that persist in trying to get help for him despite rejection after rejection, and we see a man dying, slipping through the cracks, family gone or too far away to comfort or help him, dying in large part due to his own lifestyle choices. This is not an action film by any stretch of the imagination, it is slow and methodical and very matter-of-fact about what is happening, but it is not boring and it has to be happening all over the world right now. A much better review is available here. I had not thought about the similarity with another fantastic film I had mentioned here recently until I read Ebert's review, but it is definately there. "The Death of..." is long at 2 and half hours, which is why I'm not done with it yet, but it already has shown itself to be a powerful study of the human condition.
Finally, a book review: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
This is the third book by Atwood I have read in the last 6 months (the others being Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale) and she continues to grow on me. Alias Grace takes a real murder case from 1843 Canada and imaginatively fills in the gaps that history has left. Atwood takes newspaper clippings, personal letters, official documents, literary quotations, and the widely varied voices of her characters (including different tenses in the narration) and puts them all together in a story whose overall effect is startling, memorable, and strikingly original. It is a notorious case primarily because female murderers were uncommon and Grace was given a life sentence, while James McDermott was hanged. Her level of guilt and involvement in the entire affair was widely contested, which is partially why it makes great fodder for a novel. I really got pulled into this multi faceted method of telling the story. I felt somewhat foolish towards the end when an "easter egg" finally dawned on me and I realized the little drawings that headed each section were the quilting patterns that had been referenced throughout the book, but it is things like that that just make the overall effect that much more enjoyable.
And one of TelefunkenU47's creations (you have to click on it to get the full effect):
