Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a couple of films that are making their way into art houses around America this week or at least expanding to more theaters (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you. Enjoy…

A SERIOUS MAN
In what may be the Coen Brothers most personal film (which is a far cry from calling it their most autobiographical, although I'm sure there's some of their lives here), A SERIOUS MAN, acclaimed theater actor Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, struggling physics professor in late-1960s Minnesota. Larry is struggling and suffering for a host of reason, chief among them is his wife (Sari Lennick) is leaving him for a douche-bag named Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed, who employs a calm, soothing voice that makes you want to throttle him). Larry's daughter (Jessica McManus) is shrill and demanding, and his son has trouble with authority and seems woefully underprepared for his forthcoming bar mitzvah. And then there's Larry's imposing brother Arthur (Richard Kind), who lives with the family and spends all his time in the bathroom draining a giant cyst on his back. Larry has bribes being thrown at him for grades, lawsuits are being threatened, letters of complaints being put in his file, and a tenure hearing days away. He turns to three different rabbis (and a lawyer to help with the divorce) to help him find ways to cope with the pressures of his day-to-day life. Did I mention that A SERIOUS MAN is a comedy and is extremely Jewish?

Joel and Ethan have made what might be my favorite of their films. It somehow manages to fit right in with everything else they've done--from BLOOD SIMPLE to FARGO to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN--and still manages to be radically different than all of their previous works. It's a master stroke of character development, pathos, and an acute sense of what is so completely wrote with both a life of solitude and a purely secular living. It's quite clear that Larry has zero interest in visiting any rabbi, but he also is smart enough to know that if he doesn't, his community to say he didn't try to fix his life. There's a great opening sequence in A SERIOUS MAN, in which young couple living in Poland in the early 1900s are visited by what they believe to be a demon in the shape of a long-dead rabbi. Attempts to kill the creature fail, and he disappears into the snow-driven night. The wife declares that this visit is a statement that their family is cursed. A lot of very wise people are going to interpret that scene differently, but to me it connects to Larry's situation by simply stating that some people have shitty luck and will always have shitty luck. That's your Larry in a nutshell.

Stuhlbarg is so alarmingly good that he makes his fellow cast members seem like mere stereotypes, but the Coens are simply too talented to let that happen. Everything and everyone in Larry's world seemed designed to plague him and demoralize him just a little more than the day before. There's a slow, creeping quality to the film that fells like it may be building to Larry snapping and killing everyone around him, but the true ending of A SERIOUS MAN is far less predictable and easy to process. I almost fell out of my chair when the movie ended. But to presume that Larry was a man meant for suffering is to run the risk that we won't actually feel for the guy. No danger of that here. Stuhlbarg's performance puts us right there in Larry's shoes, looking through his piercing eyes at those around him who never seem to care that his emotional, financial and physical well being are being chipped away. Not since Police Chief Marge Gunderson waddled through the snow to a crime scene have I felt so much for a Coen Brothers character. It is my firm belief that no one will go see this movie, and that's the crying shame of the decade. With no major stars in the lead roles and the Jewish emphasis, I think even the Coens' usual band of well wishers may stay away. It's with that in mind that I need to make it abundantly clear--this is among the finest films that the Coens have every made, and if you don't see it and are able, then you don't give a shit about quality cinema. I don't know how I can put in more plainly. That said, I'll take a cue from the writers-directors and simply end this review by alerting you to the fact that A SERIOUS MAN sure is swell.

GOOD HAIR
Chris Rock can be a bad liar sometimes. He told me that the goal of his new documentary examining the elaborate world of black (usually black women's) hair is to make people laugh, and I guess technically that's true. But the fact is, GOOD HAIR has just as much bite and social commentary/criticism as any Michael Moore film. The only difference is that Chris is a little more worried than Michael about offending people. Sparked by a conversation with one of his two young daughters about why she doesn't think she has "good hair" (defined as straight hair, achieved by either relaxer or a weave), Chris set out on a journey to discover when natural black hair stopped being considered beautiful and discovered a billion-dollar world he never knew existed. Rock is a masterful interviewer, and an even more masterful commentator on the black community. He takes the discussion of hair etiquette to a barbershop full of men, he interviews dozens of famous and not-so-famous people and gets them to reveal their hair secrets, and he travels to a hair show in Atlanta to watch one of the most ridiculous and fascinating competitions the planet has ever known. By being famous, Chris can get away with asking far more audacious questions of his subjects than a civilian journalist might, and the results are laugh-out-loud hysterical.

But you can tell when Rock is casting a critical eye over what he is beholding. Chemical tests on relaxer are juxtaposed with images of a 4-year-old girl with tons of it in her hair. The admissions by women that they always look for a boyfriend when it comes time to get a new weave, which range in price from $1,000 to $5,000. And men are dumb enough to fall for it every time. Perhaps my favorite interview of the bunch is with poet Maya Angelou, who describes a woman's hair as her "glory." That will get a few people applauding at every showing. I also really liked Raven-Symoné, who is perhaps the most forthcoming about her hair regimen, emphasized by little tug on her weave to show that it's not real. Rock even drags Michelle Obama's hair into the argument. If the First Lady has chemically treated hair, why shouldn't everyone?

But the real function of GOOD HAIR is twofold: to show us the craziest hair styling competition you will every encounter, and to let us know that what's under the hair is more important than what its made of. It's pretty much impossible not to be entertained by GOOD HAIR. And you won't have trouble thinking between the laughs either. On that plane, the film is just about perfect. I could have gone with a little less of the hair show, but there's no getting around the fact that those scenes are the crowd pleasers. These are the kind of reports that Rock used to do on his HBO talk show "The Chris Rock Show." So it should come as no surprise that one of his regular segment directors on that show, Jeff Stilson, is the director of this film. The perfect mix of humor, seriousness and more humor makes for some of the most enjoyable time you'll have all year watching a documentary.

TRUCKER
This ultra-low-budget-indie lives and breathes because its star Michelle Monaghan makes it so. So strong in movies like KISS KISS BANG BANG, NORTH COUNTRY, and GONE BABY GONE, Monaghan is that rare combination of good looks and talent combined in a woman who seems blissfully unaware she has either in such large quantities. In TRUCKER, she plays Diane Ford, a single woman who lives the life of a long-haul trucker. When we first meet her, she's having loud, sweaty sex with a man, but when she's done, she's done and ready to split. You should see the way her conquest lies on the bed with that "Call me?" look in his eyes. You just got used, dude. Diane is a hard drinker off the road, and a tireless big-rig driver on it. Her best friend Runner (a nice turn by Nathan Fillion) is a married man who she has managed never to sleep with despite the constant drunken flirtation between the two.

One morning, a woman named Jenny shows up at Diane's door with 11-year-old Peter (Jimmy Bennett, who plays young James T. Kirk in STAR TREK). Turns out Peter is Diane's son, who she hasn't seen since just after he was born. Not surprisingly, she was a wild girl growing up and fell in love with the strikingly handsome Len (played as an adult by Benjamin Bratt). Even as a teenager, Diane knew she was not cut out for motherhood, and Len agreed to raise Peter. Jenny is Len's current wife, Len has a debilitating form of cancer, and Peter needs a place to stay so Jenny can attend to her man. Diane is clearly against the idea, but does what she can to make the arrangement work, including dragging the boy around her on some of her shorter runs, which out to be a disastrous move.

TRUCKER is a movie that doesn't necessarily need you to sympathize or even like its main character. Diane a child-abandoning, foul-mouthed, road-sex-having woman with a laundry list of qualities that you would never find in a conventional Hollywood "chick flick." But the truth of the matter is, there are probably more people in the world like Diane than there are Meg Ryans or Sandra Bullocks in the world. One of the most interesting aspects to Diane is her relationship with Runner, who is clearly in love with her, but both are just smart and sober enough not to act on their mutual attraction. Runner ends up taking care of Peter from time to time while Diane is driving, and for a brief time a makeshift family begins to take shape.

Of course, this is supposed to be a temporary arrangement, and when it comes time for Peter to leave, Diane has gotten used to him just long enough to maybe want to keep him. The struggle seems very real and the outcome is not guaranteed. No matter what the rest of their lives are like, nothing about the end of TRUCKER seems certain. We know even before Diane makes her decision that if she tries to raise her son, they will come to blows on a fairly regular basis. If she hands him off again but they keep in touch, he'll be resentful of her. And if she flat out abandons him again, she'll screw up his life worse than if he'd never met her. At the core of TRUCKER, Monaghan is devastating and so worthy of notice. This film has been on the shelf for more than two years, and the fact that its coming out at all is tantamount to a miracle. But here it is, and if it's playing anywhere within 100 miles of you, hitch a ride with a pretty lady driving a semi and get to it. This is a great movie that captures the vibe of the great character studies of the 1970s, complete with the same gritty look and matter-of-fact way of letting the story unfold. I loved this movie, and I even loved Diane despite her best efforts to keep the world at a distance.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
Follow Me On Twitter