Before Midnight (2013)

Jack and I enjoyed this story of a long-term couple at the end of their Greek vacation although their squabbling sometimes pushed buttons. Most of you know it's the third part after Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), in real time: it's supposed to be 18 years after the first one and 9 after the second. Those were good and all are extremely talky. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy star in all three as Jesse and Celine and are co-writers on this and the previous installment (they were Oscar-nominated along with director Richard Linklater for writing Before Sunset). My other favorites of Hawke's include Dead Poets Society (1989), Reality Bites (1994), Great Expectations (1998), Training Day (2001) for which he was Oscar-nominated for Supporting Actor, Fast Food Nation (2006), and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). I haven't seen that much of Delpy's work (I left out Waking Life (2001) from Hawke's filmography--she was in it, too--because I didn't much care for it) but I did like Broken Flowers (2005) a whole lot. She has also directed five features and Hawke two so far.

There is a great ensemble piece in the middle of this picture, with other couples talking about their relationships, among other things, at a dinner party in a gorgeous Greek villa, with majestic cinematography by Christos Voudouris (he's new to me). The beautiful little blonde girls who play Hawke's and Delpy's twins, Charlotte and Jennifer Prior, are not Delpy's own, as I suspected, and don't have many lines but they sure are cute.

Linklater (last blogged in Bernie) once again helms, even though there's no on-screen reference to Texas (his usual signature) that I recall.

Graham Reynolds provides dreamy music with the addition of a few songs of Greek origin, and the entire soundtrack can be streamed, song by song, from this page--just click the one to the right after each one in aqua is finished.

With a few funny moments, this is very much a drama. Verbal sniping and lots of dialogue may keep some away, but if you can handle that you'll like it. Maybe we'll meet Jesse and Celine again in 2022.

Disconnect (2012)

This fabulous ensemble thriller is a horror film for 21st century parents, with kids (and adults) getting into deep trouble online. The powerful cast is headed by Jason Bateman (most recently in these pages in Horrible Bosses) playing it straight, and includes Hope Davis (my favorites include The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), Next Stop Wonderland (1998), Mumford (1999), About Schmidt (2002), The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002), American Splendor (2003), Duma (2005), Proof (2005), The Weather Man (2005), Infamous (2006), Charlie Bartlett (2007), and the 2011 mini-series Mildred Pierce), Frank Grillo (handsome and square-jawed, he's been in many things and starred in none that I know of), Michael Nyqvist (last in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), Paula Patton (ditto), Andrea Riseborough (Made in Dagenham) abandoning her native English accent, Alexander Skarsgård (What Maisie Knew), and teenagers Max Theriot (Chloe), Colin Ford (We Bought a Zoo), and Jonah Bobo (Steve Carell's son in Crazy, Stupid, Love.).

Director Henry Alex Rubin was Oscar-nominated for Murderball (2005), which you must see immediately--it's a documentary about wheelchair rugby--and this is his feature debut. Screenwriter Andrew Stern collaborated on a TV movie and the script for the soapy but good Return to Me (2000).

The excellent music by Max Richter (last in Lore) can be sampled on this amazon page and here's a list of songs, two of which are credited to him.

Rottentomatoes' critics have been lukewarm, averaging 65 to its audiences' 81 (down a few points since we saw it in late May). I'm not the first to compare it to Crash, nor will I be the last. We recommend saving it to your netflix queue, as the DVD release date hasn't been set.

What Maisie Knew (2012)

Though initially put off by the description of a little girl witnessing her parents' dysfunctional relationship, Jack and I loved this movie, starring remarkable six-year-old Onata Aprile, with Julianne Moore (last blogged in Being Flynn) and Steve Coogan (most recently in Our Idiot Brother) as the parents and Alexander Skarsgård (was in Melancholia, but we hated it) and Joanna Vanderham (new to me) as support, literally and figuratively. Based on the 1897 novel of the same name by Henry James, this is 100% contemporary, with Moore's Susanna as a rocker á la Courtney Love, Coogan's Beale a globe-trotting art dealer, Skarsgård's Lincoln a bartender at a ritzy restaurant, and Vanderham's Margo an au pair. The novel is skillfully adapted by Nancy Coyne (her feature debut after a couple of episodes of TV horror shows) and Carroll Cartwright, who co-wrote two other movies.

This is the fifth venture for directing partners Scott McGehee and David Siegel (contrary to imdb he is not the David Siegel in Queen of Versailles) and I've seen two: The Deep End (2001) which starred Tilda Swinton as a mother who stops at nothing to protect her teenage son and Bee Season (2005) which featured another terrific child performance.

Special note must be made of Maisie's spectacular and colorful wardrobe, designed by Stacey Battat (Broken English (2007), Somewhere, Country Strong, Another Happy Day). Here's one picture. Further eye candy is to be found in the production design by Kelly McGehee (Bee Season, Lymelife, The Art of Getting By, more) (probably related but I don't know for sure) and cinematography by Gilles Nuttgens (won at Sundance for The Deep End and also shot Water (2005), a miraculous tale of a child widow in India).

Nice music is by Nick Urata (last blogged in Ruby Sparks) and clips can be heard on the amazon page and a whole track on this page. Here's a list of seven songs on the soundtrack.

The current winner of the Producers Plethora Prize is a 14 minute short we saw in April with 39 producers of various rankings, but this deserves a mention with 28.

The DVD is scheduled for release August 13. We recommend it highly. So do rottentomatoes participants (critics 88%/audiences 83).

Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

For a change, one with glowing reviews led Jack and me to say, "Meh." It has some spectacular action sequences, including air battles, gunfights, and fistfights, and we wanted to care about the people, but it's sooo looong--longer than its 2 hours and 9 minutes should seem. Like early Indiana Jones, each time we thought, "How will they get out of this one?" But they do. And Jack noted, "It all boiled down to a fistfight on a moving train." Not really a train, but you'll know it when you see it. Perhaps we're not the best people to judge as we are not Trekkies.

Like the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek, which we loved, Zachary Quinto (last in Margin Call) as Spock is much more interesting than his co-stars: plus he's a movie hero on the Aspergers spectrum. Also reprising their roles are Chris Pine (most recently in People Like Us) as James T. Kirk, Zoe Saldana (most recently seen in The Heart Specialist) as Uhura, Karl Urban (small part in Red) as Bones, John Cho (perhaps second best known as Kumar's buddy Harold, he's made appearances in a lot of projects, including American Beauty (1999), American Dreamz (2006), Identity Thief, and the now-canceled series Go On) as Sulu, Bruce Greenwood (last in The Place Beyond the Pines) as Pike, and, with their intense Scottish and Russian accents respectively, Simon Pegg (most recently in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) as Scotty and Anton Yelchin (Like Crazy) as Chekov. Benedict Cumberbatch (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and Peter Weller (some of my favorites: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), RoboCop (1987), RoboCop 2 (1990), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), and a 2010 series arc on Dexter) join in the action and drama.

Also last blogged in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was composer Michael Giacchino. Here's a long selection of tracks from this movie.

If you are a Trekkie definitely see it. There are some laughs, intentional and un-. For the record, the rottentomatoes critics average 87% and audiences 92, and it's #6 at the box office in five weeks of release. We didn't hate it. But we didn'y love it either (that's not a typo--Scotty and his countrymen sometimes say didn'y for didn't and can'y for can't).

Milestone alert! This is the 600th movie covered in babetteflix since September 3, 2008. I saw 21 before I started writing and summarized them after. More statistics: right now I have three in draft mode, not including the ten I combined when I got so far behind in February. If you haven't noticed my index over on the right, you may look them up alphabetically by English title.

Now You See Me (2013)

Despite its poor reviews Jack and I quite enjoyed this yarn about some cocky magicians, who hold up banks from afar, and a few interested parties trying to catch them in the act. The first-rate cast includes Jesse Eisenberg (last blogged in To Rome With Love), Woody Harrelson (most recently in Seven Psychopaths), Isla Fisher (two weeks ago in The Great Gatsby), and Dave Franco (he has the same goofy grin as his brother James!) as the magicians, and Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers), Mélanie Laurent (The Day I Saw Your Heart), Morgan Freeman (Red), and Michael Caine (covered in Is Anybody There?; I guess I forgot to mention him in The Dark Knight Rises) as the pursuers.

Director Louis Leterrier (of his six features I've seen only The Incredible Hulk (2008) with Edward Norton) keeps us guessing with help from his cast and a script with collaboration by Ed Solomon (co-wrote both Bill & Ted's Adventures movies and TV series (didn't see them), Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), the first Men in Black (1997), the funny Garry Shandling vehicle What Planet Are You From? (2000), and more), Boaz Yakin (new to me), and Edward Ricourt (his first anything on imdb). Apropos of nothing, tomorrow, June 17 2013, is Leterrier's 40th birthday.

A half hour ago I wrote that I hadn't heard of composer Brian Tyler of Iron Man 3. He wrote the music for this one too! Here's a video of him playing a lot of instruments on a selection from this movie. And a short list of songs on the soundtrack.

Audiences at 75% are voting with their wallets against the sourpuss critics whose 48% average on rottentomatoes can't sink this twisty thriller. As of tonight, Sunday, it's #3 at the box office in its third week of release.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

We saw this three weeks ago and I think we liked it. Iron Man's alter-ego Tony Stark is at his most vulnerable, literally and figuratively, now that he admits he loves his aide Pepper Potts plus he keeps having problems with that metal suit. Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, playing Stark and Potts with possibly more nuance than before, were both last blogged in The Avengers. Don Cheadle (most recently in Flight) returns as Colonel James Rhodes and Jon Favreau gives up the director's chair (last directed Cowboys & Aliens) to Shane Black but appears as Potts' amusingly fussy security chief Happy Hogan (Favreau's most recent acting gig was People Like Us). Ben Kingsley's (last in these pages in The Dictator) villain is also something to watch, from his "You will neverrrr seeeee meeee coming" in the trailer, to the middle of the movie when more is revealed. But there are at least as many outstanding action scenes as there are dramatic ones. As it should be.

Shane Black wrote the first Lethal Weapon (1987) (he submitted it in 1984 at the age of 22), co-wrote Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), directed and adapted the screenplay for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) which also starred Downey, and earned $4 million for writing Renny Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight ( I didn't see it). Apparently one of his trademarks is movies set at Christmastime and this is no exception. Drew Pearce (probably no relation to Guy Pearce (last in Prometheus), who appears as Aldrich Killian) makes his feature debut sharing screenplay duties with Black.

I turned my head to whisper something to Jack and missed the mandatory Marvel movie Stan Lee cameo. He didn't have a line this time. Watching it here ahead of time is no spoiler.

The exciting music by composer Brian Tyler (91 credits and I've never heard of him--it can happen) can be heard by starting here and following up numerically from links on the right side of the page.

Though doubtless better on the big screen, it's not high art either (78% from critics and 83 from audiences on rottentomatoes) and can wait for high quality home viewing. Oh, and I don't need to tell you to wait for a bonus scene after the credits, do I?

The Great Gatsby (2013)

A magnificent spectacle, this zooms and leaps in its depiction of 1920s wretched excess set to 21st century rap music and jazz covers. If you don't know the story, read the F. Scott Fitzgerald book which Jack, a former English teacher, calls (I may be paraphrasing) one of the best crafted works in the English language. Suffice it to say that some fabulously wealthy folks party on Long Island and we learn that money can't buy happiness. But we enjoy watching "the privileged class enjoying its privileges" (quoted from The Philadelphia Story (1940)). Leonardo DiCaprio (last in Django Unchained) plays our enigmatic title character to a T. Tobey Maguire (Brothers) is the aw-shucks narrator Nick Carraway, Carey Mulligan (Shame) the blandly calculating Daisy, Isla Fisher (Confessions of a Shopaholic) the brassy floozy, Elizabeth Debicki (new to me, she's been in only one other picture) as nice girl Jordan, and Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty) is getting the most props as the explosive Tom.

Director/co-writer Baz Luhrmann (Australia was probably his least popular movie, Moulin Rouge! (2001) his most and it was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture; I didn't see Strictly Ballroom (1992) nor Romeo + Juliet (1996)) is known for his zooming and leaping camera, even though he hasn't used cinematographer Simon Duggan before. Gatsby co-writer Craig Pearce collaborated with Luhrmann on the earlier three screenplays.

But the real stars here are the sets and costumes. Wow. Architectural Digest covered them in an article with some pictures on an attached link. You can also see some photos of the costumes on the movie's website (left column, five rows down). I predict nominations for Catherine Martin who headed both the Production Design AND Costume Design teams (she won Oscars for both for Moulin Rouge! as well as the Art Directors Guild Award that year, was nominated for art director for Romeo + Juliet and for costume design for Australia, and has had a producing credit on Luhrmann's movies starting with Romeo + Juliet). Oh, and Mulligan's and Debicki's haircuts or wigs or whatever are terrific as well.

With Jay-Z as another of the producers it's no surprise that there is contemporary music mixed in with the oldies. Here's a pretty good list as far as I can tell. You can hear clips on the movie's website in the video section, soundtrack sampler, right column, second row.

The critics are still complaining (51% average on rottentomatoes, though audiences are up to 72). I guess they were expecting Shakespeare. We liked it. And it finished its fourth weekend at #8 at the box office, #7 in total gross of movies playing now. You probably don't need to spring for 3D but you should see it on a big screen.

Frances Ha (2012)

Fluffy entertainment for those not afraid of awkward, this slice-of-life about a free-spirited optimist features the new queen of awkward, Greta Gerwig (last blogged in Woody Allen's To Rome With Love). In fact, Woody is frequently referenced in reviews of this black-and-white New-York-set comedy, although his characters seldom live hand to mouth as our heroine Frances does. Co-written by Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach (profiled in Greenberg, which is cringier than this by a factor of at least five), the movie ambles about the city with Frances and her bestest friend Sophie and then suddenly develops a plot and takes off to other locations in the process. Sophie is played by Mickey Sumner, who just happens to be the daughter of Trudie Styler and Gordon Sumner AKA Sting. Look at the movie's official website and click on Cast & Crew to see Sumner as she is in the movie with dark hair and oversized glasses and then see this picture, which is what I would expect Sting's and Trudie's daughter to look like. A number of recognizable folks show up, e.g. Adam Driver (Adam in every episode of Girls and a smallish part in Lincoln), Michael Zegan (Damien in 42 episodes of Rescue Me and Benny in six of Boardwalk Empire), Grace Gummer (played Anjelica Huston's daughter in Smash and is also one of Meryl Streep's three daughters), and Charlotte d'Amboise (Broadway dancer-singer in, among others, Chorus Line, Chicago, and Damn Yankees), and more. Oh yes, Gerwig's own parents play her parents in the Sacramento sequence (yep, that's her home town).

No composer is listed. Instead there's a long list of songs on imdb. The movie is short at only 1:26 and critics are raving (91% with audiences averaging 81 on rottentomatoes). Check it out and see why it was 13th at the box office last weekend despite being on only 133 screens. And also see the origin of the title in the very last frame.