Capone's Art-House Round-Up with A MOST VIOLENT YEAR; STILL ALICE; TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT; GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D; and IF YOU DON'T, I WILL!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


A MOST VIOLENT YEAR
It becomes clear after a few minutes of viewing A MOST VIOLENT YEAR that Abel Morales' (Oscar Isaac) definition of running a clean business in 1981 New York City actually means he's just less dirty than his competitors in the home heating oil business. But his ambition is an honorable one: he desperately wants to operate so that the feds can scan his books, keep an eye on him, and see nothing but a hard-working immigrant working hard to make a success of himself for his family, including wife Anna (a powerhouse Jessica Chastain), whose father just happens to be about as mobbed up as they come.

The setting is winter and Morales' troubles begin when his trucks begin getting hijacked and emptied by an unknown rival. He refuses to arm his drivers, despite urgings from union leaders, because it's illegal. To compound his stress levels, he is also attempting to raise capital to expand his business after his investor backs out at the last minute, leaving him scrambling and cutting unwise deals with competitors and loan sharks to scrounge together the cash. All the while, the city's heating oil industry is being investigated by an ambitious district attorney (Selma's David Oyelowo), which Morales is more than happy to assist with until his wife tells him maybe he shouldn't be so eager.

Writer-director J.C. Chandor's third feature (after MARGIN CALL and ALL IS LOST) continues his tradition of building mature and carefully realized works. With A Most Violent Year, he has structured a film that is the closest thing to a Sidney Lumet crime drama than we've seen since Lumet's passing four years ago (although his final film was released in 2007). It's a sophisticated and complex tale about not being able to escape where you came from as easily as you'd like. And while you might not feel that a story about the home heating oil business would be particularly interesting, Chandor supplies us with just enough detail to pull us in and make us invested in the fate of these character and their work.

The performances, both lead and supporting, are what keeps A MOST VIOLENT YEAR afloat and absolutely gripping. Isaac is the picture of focused and contained, and in those rare moments when he loses his composure, the tension rises exponentially. Chastain prowls across the screen like a woman with a secret, which more than likely is that she is ready to embrace being her father's daughter at a moment's notice if need be. A scene in which the couple hit a deer and are forced to put it down tells us all we need to know about the perceived and actual balance of power in their marriage and business. And pay particular attention to an utterly offbeat (but not entirely comedic) take on the Morales' lawyer but an almost unrecognizable Albert Brooks.

We're able to empathize and support much of what Morales does in the film because his heart is in the right place, but his actions go from honorable to deplorable fairly quickly once he thinks he's discovered who has been ripping off his trucks. The story goes a little astray when Chandor sends us down a subplot involving a truck driver involved in a shootout, after which Morales must track him down and deal with his unstable ass. But the way all things converge in the film's final moments is magnificent and wholly satisfying.

I'm so impressed with Chandor's track record and growth as a filmmaker that I eagerly await each new project (his next work is an exploration of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, starring Mark Wahlberg, set for a late 2016 release... not that I'm counting the days or anything). A MOST VIOLENT YEAR is the kind of film that doesn't necessarily win awards, but it's a solid, self-contained piece of near perfection that makes everyone involved look good and do some of their best work to date.


STILL ALICE
This is one of those bizarre instances where a film features a remarkable performance (and apparently those who issue acting awards agree) at the center of a deeply flawed film. In a perfect world, such performances should be recognized more often (some have argued that Eddie Redmayne's work in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING is another example of this), but the truth is prestige awards usually only recognize work in lauded films. But in STILL ALICE, Julianne Moore's work as Alice Howland, a linguistics professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, is impossible to deny as some of her finest work.

There's not much of story to STILL ALICE beyond watching the fairly rapid decline of a woman for whom language is not just a part of life, it has become her life's work. She's happily married to husband John (Alec Baldwin, Moore's occasional partner on "30 Rock") and has three grown children (played by Hunter Parrish, Kate Bosworth and Kristen Stewart), all of whom have different ways of dealing or not dealing with the new of their mother's illness. Lydia (Stewart) is looked upon as the flighty, irresponsible one whose latest dalliance is with acting in a company that Alice partially funds. But she's the only one of her siblings that steps up to help out around her parents' home when Alice's condition worsens.

Moore's performance embodies the frustration, sadness and fear that a relatively young person (Alice celebrates her 50th birthday at the top of the picture) might have when handed this sentence, but almost more interesting a choice by writers-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD, QUINCEÑERA), adapting the Lisa Genova novel, is to portray her family members as sometimes less than supportive. None of them, including her husband, feel they have the time to care for her full time, which motivates her to push on with her life fending for herself. It also pushes her to use the parts of her brain that work just fine to conceal the illness from her colleagues and students with intellectual tricks. Still, the aggravation of losing what seems like one word at a time from her vocabulary is unbearable, and dark thoughts begin to permeate Alice's mind.

But without Moore's subtle, tragic acting work, the film might have become disease-of-the-week fare with too may opportunities for us to simply take pity on this poor woman's situation. Moore's performance rarely asks for the audience's sympathy. Alice wants our understanding rather than our tears, and on those terms, STILL ALICE succeeds.


TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT
Occasionally the simplest ideas make for the most powerful dramas. In the case of TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT, the latest from Belgium-born Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (LA PROMESSE, ROSETTA, THE SON, L’ENFANT, THE KID WITH A BIKE), the story is ripped from the word of downsizing and economic strife. The Dardennes don't tend to use famous faces in their movies, but here it suits them. Nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role, Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, who works a manufacturing job that she had to leave for time due to mental breakdown. Not long after her return, Sandra discovers that her bosses have decided to let the other employees make a decision: they all get bonuses if Sandra gets laid off, or Sandra stays and no bonuses. Not surprisingly, the vote does not go her way.

But Sandra convinces the bosses to let the employees take another vote on the coming Monday morning, after she spends the weekend visiting each and every one of them (there are only about 20 co-workers) convincing them to reconsider. Fully armed with new chemical-balancing pills and a frustrated but caring husband (Dardenne Brothers regular Fabrizio Rongione), Sandra does just that, and what follows is a series of awkward—sometimes hostile—conversations that open up a whole new world of working- and middle-class Belgian households, all of which could use the money but also have compassion for Sandra's situation and disdain for the people that run their company for making the employees the bad guys in this situation.

In my favorite female performance of 2014, Cotillard is the portrait of restrained angst (as she often is), and as she goes from person to person, neighborhood to neighborhood, you can see the energy and will power drain from her face and slumping body. It's one of the most desperate things I've ever seen on screen, and we find ourselves trying to keep track of who is voting for her, who is not, who is on the fence, who might change their mind. And even if she wins, others might lose. I know TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT sounds like a type of endurance test, but it's actually an emotional roller coaster that finds you celebrating a series of small victories and cursing the losses. There's not much more to say about it other than you absolutely must see Cotillard in the best performance she's ever given, in a career loaded with strong work.


GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D
The more recent works of France's legendary director Jean-Luc Godard are not experiences you discuss and evaluate as you do more traditional cinema. There aren't plots or fully drawn characters, not as you'd recognize them. With efforts like FILM SOCIALISME and his latest, GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D, Godard seems far more interested in offering up something that goes beyond and outside our comfort zone, using the tools of filmmaking but ignoring and corrupting all that we know about cinematic structure and piecing together a work of visual art like a mad scientist in a lab. For Godard, these more recent works have been about how the images and sounds make you feel than whether they make sense. Of course they don't make sense, but they are still so worth experiencing and enjoying.

GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE elicits feelings of joy, laughter and playfulness, words not often associated with Godard. I wouldn't necessarily call it accessible, but with a running time of only 70 minutes and a clear sense that the filmmaker is attempting to play with the conventions of 3D, Godard certainly doesn't overstay his welcome. It's best to view the movie without burdening yourself with trying to make sense of it. Listen to the declarations made by the actors, relish in the madness and chaos, enjoy the healthy doses of male and female nudity, and when it's all done, take stock in how different you feel.

Ever the provocateur, Godard tosses in images concerning revolution, costume dramas, a sweet dog in the woods, stock propaganda footage, politics, the economic climate, and some true mind-altering uses of 3D, including a couple of instances where the lenses point in two different directions, giving us one image in one eye and a totally different one in the other. I guarantee you, I couldn't pass a test on GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D, but I know I enjoyed the lesson. I think the more adventurous among you will as well.


IF YOU DON’T, I WILL
Two of the finest French actors of their generation, Mathieu Amalric (who recently popped up in THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL) and Emmanuelle Devos (KINGS AND QUEEN) come together in director Sophie Fillières' (UN CHAT UN CHAT) latest, IF YOU DON’T, I WILL, as husband and wife Pierre and Pomme, whose marriage has become little more than a series of petty squabbles and going through the motions. Their squabbles are actually mildly amusing and their dark humor can be funny at times, so for a time I assumed they would find a middle ground in friendly jesting. Instead things turn nasty and vindictive as she attempt to be more spontaneous and loose, while he resists with all his might just because he doesn't seem to like the idea of her being happier than he is.

Pierre and Pomme have a grown son in college, who seems to be the only one who'll be honest about how bad things have gotten. On one of their better days, the couple go into the woods for an extended hike, but before too long they're fighting again, and Pomme storms off into the woods, disgusted with her husband and her life. In a fit of anger, Pierre heads back to the car and leaves her in the forest. Rather than panic once she realizes she's been abandoned, Pomme takes the time alone to walk the woods and uses the silence to take stock in her life and where it's headed. Surprisingly, Pierre finds himself missing his wife, and he begins the search (half-hearted as it may be) for her.

IF YOU DON’T, I WILL rambles and wanders a great deal, and it's certainly not the most in-depth examination of a marriage in turmoil I've ever seen, but Amalric and Devos are such strong, talented actors, they fill in a lot of what's missing with fraught emotions and wonderful moments of clarity that are missing from the script. Although they spend a great deal of the film apart from each other, they still generate enough explosive energy between them in their scenes together to sustain us for the film's brief running time. Both husband and wife are adrift, and the movie is not about them coming back together to become whole again; it's more about them beginning the journey toward healing their own souls before they can decide how the other person fits into their lives. It's an honest, raw work from all concerned, and while it certainly won't be ranked among either actor's finest films, it's certainly a pleasant reminder of how important an actor's interpretation of a character can vastly improve things.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
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