OSS 117: Lost in Rio (France 2009,  97 min. dir: Michel Hazanavicius, cast: Jean Dujardin, Louise Monot).

James Bond with vertigo teams with an Israeli Mossad operative in a miniskirt to find Nazis in Brazil. He can recognize Jews by their noses and believes his mission is to bring better understanding between Nazis and Jews.

This is the second James Bond spoof that Michel Hazanavicius has directed. The first was OSS 117: Cario, Nest of Spies. The plot of that propels OSS 117:Lost in Rio is an attempt to find a microfilmed list of French who collaborated with the Nazis. But all the really matters is a chance to riff on old James Bond movies, including the split screen images still remembered in old title sequences.

But OSS 117 was actually a French James Bond before James Bond. Author Jean Bruce first invented him in 1949, four years before Ian Fleming published his first James Bond novel. The first movie using Bruce’s OSS 117 character was made in 1957 (OSS 117 N’est Pas Mort). The first James Bond movie was made in 1962 (Dr. No).

Michel Hazanavicius has gone on to make the much-praised The Artist (also staring Jean Dujardin). At first it seems odd that a television comedy, and commercial director should suddenly show up with a film about silent film stars shot in black and white and without dialogue. But if you look more closely at his filmography you discover his first movie, La Classe Americaine, was a compilation of old clips from Warner Brothers dubbed into French.

From a film made up of classic clips to two stylistic parodies of Bond movies to The Artist is a very logical evolution. In all these films the director has managed to recreate the clunky styles of the past without every making them silly.

Me and Orson Welles (UK 2008, 114 min. dir: Richard Linklater, cast: Christian McKay, Claire Dames, Zac Efron).

Towards the end of his life Orson Welles would agree to appear in any film, TV show, or commercial that would pay him $2000 a day. His bulk required a wheel chair and an oxygen tank at the ready to help him breath. He died owing thousands on his house account at Ma Maison: the one restaurant that let him run a tab.

The Orson Welles of this film is young, vital, creative, egoistic, charismatic and thoroughly mesmerizing. Christian McKay played Orson in a one-man show long before signing to play this part. His familiarity and ease with the role make the movie.

The plot isn’t much. Orson’s Mercury Theatre troupe is about to perform Julius Caesar on Broadway. Orson hires a young aspiring actor (Zac Efron) to play a small part. Zac falls in love with Claire Danes (Sonja) without realizing Orson is also bedding her.

What makes Me and Orson Welles rise above the plot is its examination of the theater, of the belief that great things came happen there, and that actors are really escape artists fleeing from themselves. “If for 90minutes I get this great reprieve from being myself—that is what you see in every great actor’s eyes.”

Too bad a movie about the soul of Broadway had to be shot in London. This is a British production trying to overcome the lack of money by faking just about everything from Central Park to 45^th Street. Maybe it was deemed too risky for Hollywood.

The risk also led to an advertising campaign featuring the young romance angle (Zac and Claire) and completely ignoring the power of the film vested in Christian McKay as Orson. His wonderful examination of an actor’s soul—or lack of it is what’s worth watching. Me and Orson Welles also has a lot to say about an amazing period in American theater (during the Great Depression) and the crazy genius who went from staging Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as a Nazi parable to vowing “We will sell no wine before its time” in TV commercials.

My Name is Kahn (India 2010, 165 min, dir: Karan Johar, cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol).

The plight of a Muslim man from India traveling across the US trying to convince post 9/11 America that he is not a terrorist is enough, but burdened with Asperger Syndrome it makes Shah Rukh Khan’s (Rizvan) performance all the more amazing.

This hybrid film is actually a Bollywood production but set in San Francisco and dealing with American problems faced by Indian immigrants. Before Rizvan Kahn’s problems even begin with being suspected as a terrorist, he has to overcome the prejudices of his own people against Muslims. He falls in love with beautiful Mandira (played by Kajol) but she is Hindi and shunned for marrying him.

The bombing of the Word Trade Center shocks their world and makes him a marked man because he is a Muslim and because he can not properly explain himself on account of the Asperger Syndrome effects. He embarks on a journey across the US to see the president and explain that he is not a terrorist. Along the way he touches many people and, somewhat like an Indian Jesus, brings a message of love and tolerance wherever he goes.

It goes well, it goes badly. It actually goes on a long time at over two and a half hours. But then, Bollywood films are usually measured by the hours of pleasure, not the minutes of seat squirming. Along the way are music, songs, colors and hope. There is a lot to see here and enough to keep your finger away from the fast forward button.

Greenberg (USA 2010, 107 min. dir: Noah Baumbach, cast: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans.

Every generation makes its mid-life crises movie going back to Bye Bye Braverman. But Noah Baumbach’s take on the problem is especially good because of Greta Gerwig and Ben Stiller.

Yes, Ben Stiller can actually act. That’s the news from Greenberg. And Greta Gerwig is nothing but a very good actress in a role that calls for underplaying. She’s Florence, the assistant to Roger Greenberg’s (Ben Stiller) successful brother. The brother and his family are conveniently away on vacation, allowing his brother from New York to live in their house and build a new doghouse for the German shepherd (Greenberg is a carpenter).

Florence sings at a small, empty club when she isn’t taking care of the dog. Roger laments that his life is nothing more than his life. Of course they have an affair and the first sex scene is wonderful for it’s total lack of emotion. He can’t give much more than a good ejaculation. She expects nothing more of any man.

Roger laments to his old drop-out buddy Ivan (Rhys Ifans) that it is probably too late to go to med school or even veterinarian school at 50. Truth be told, at fifty he doesn’t even drive a car and seems confused by more than Florence. “Where is my life going?” is the question none of this genre a movies can ever answer except to shrug and conclude, “That’s my life.”

What makes this one different is good performances, especially from Greta Gerwig as the sweet, clunky girl who is not quite pretty enough and ambitious enough to find herself. And to make it more complicated, she’s pregnant by someone else (whom we never meet).

We know where this will end, but the curiosity that sustains the movie is our getting there with them. Too bad the setting is Los Angeles’ west side. There’s a lot of truth in this story that gets lost in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. The map restricts the point of view because everything is circumscribed by wealth and ease.

But you can’t help warming up to poor schnook Greenberg as he flails and fails and even brings a cheeseburger to Florence’s hospital bed while she recovers from her abortion. “I thought you might be hungry,” he explains as he sets it on her stomach.

Welcome (France 2009 110 min. dir: Philippe Lioret, cast: Vincent Lindon, Firat Ayverdi, Audrey Dana, Derya Ayverdi).

There is a peculiar monument in an obscure traffic circle of Sangatte, France that looks like a giant electric shaver. It is actually one of the tunneling machines that burrowed the nearby channel tunnel to England. For immigrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Africa it is as symbolic as the Statue of Liberty.

Sangatte and nearby Calais have become the jihad destination for armies of young men seeking passage to England and the promise of a better life. Their fantasy is hopping a train for the twenty-minute ride to British amnesty on the other side. The reality is you can’t hang on to a train going 160 miles an hour.

The next bet if the trains will kill you is the sea-going ferries that load trucks for England day and night at the port of Calais. But the police have CO2 detectors they can insert into the truck cargo areas to detect clandestine travelers. Bilal (Firat Ayverdi) and his companions try to smother themselves under plastic garbage bags to hide their breath. They fail.

So they become casualties of the immigration system that neither will legitimize them, nor send them back to their war torn countries. They are limbo people roaming the streets of Calais where residents are instructed it is against the law to help them.

Bilal (Firat Ayverdi) must get to England to save his lovely girlfriend Mini (Derya Ayverdi) from a forced marriage to her cousin. If he can’t get there by train or boat, he must swim. As crazy as it is; he is obsessed. Simon is the swim instructor at the municipal pool. Bilal seeks his lost love, Simon has just lost his soul mate: ex-wife Marion (Audrey Dana) has signed their divorce papers.

The improbably friendship between the embittered Frenchman and the romantic young Iraqi could easily descend into bathos, but it doesn’t. Nor does it end well for either of them. Welcome is anything but. And the point of Philippe Lioret’s provocative movie is that the imbalance of human suffering and aspiration knows no boundary.

Brothers (two versions). (Denmark 2004 117 min. dir: Susanne Bier, cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Connie Nielsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas.USA 2009 105.min, dir: Jim Sheridan, cast: Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal).

The most amazing fact about Brothers is that it was made twice. Once might have been more than enough. There is an old Hollywood story about the producer and the writer alone in the desert dying of thirst. They spot a cold clear jar of water. The writer says, ‘Shall we drink it?’ The producer says, “let’s piss in it first.”

Susanne Bier’s Brothers is a modest movie about the romantic yearnings of two people when one happens to be the brother of the other’s husband. The husband has conveniently been declared dead on an Afghani war mission. But he is really being held captive and we know he will return.

It’s a good movie (which is why it is included in MovieWithMe, we only review the ones we like). But it is plot driven rather than character driven. Things have to happen to push it forward, and the audience knows where it is headed. Plot driven movies are like building a fence around the property and thinking what kind of house you will put in the middle.

Taking this modest house and remodeling it so Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman can live in it ruins the architecture. To begin with, Tobey Maguire has no sex appeal. The Muppet of Spiderman is not a leading man. Natalie Portman has some heat with Jake Gyllenhaal, so did she marry Tobey?

Jim Sheridan is a very talented director, up there with Susanne Bier in all respects except one: he’s working from a script that has been remodeled like the house to suit the new star tenants. No subtlety is allowed. Many of the scenes are exactly alike, but the remake doesn’t play like the original. When the military messengers come to inform the wife that her husband is dead, Susanne Bier gets to do it almost without dialogue.

Jim Sheridan’s version is more concerned with the two cute, precocious little girls who open the door for the soldiers. Everybody has to talk and explain. I guess the producers wanted to make sure they milked every emotion from wife to children. Did I say milk? I started this review talking about a joke with water. Choose your liquid but don’t drink the remake. Somebody has pissed in it.

Mother (Korea 2009, 128 min. dir: Joon-ho Bong, cast: Hye-ja Kim, Bin Won).

I’m never sure if director Joon-ho Bong is a comedy director. Mother is a serious murder mystery where a mother tries to clear her son. But it is so funny that you can’t help wondering if the world-weary mother and her dullard son aren’t really playing dead pan humor.

He’s accused of killing a girl, but mother won’t give up on him, no matter that it costs her everything else in her life.The strength of the movie is Hye-ja Kim as the mother. She’s an actress whose face is lined with suffering and whose eyes are set in resolve.

Who couldn’t love or hate a mother like this? There is really nothing between those two poles. The story and characters are all delicious, even if the plot meanders like the stream on the golf course where Bin Won found the golf club driver that is the crucial piece of police evidence. Even minor characters are delicious; like a police detective who watches phone videos or his female evidence clerk who asks whether they really need to send the golf club to forensics because anyone can see the red stuff is not blood, but lipstick.

These are the touches that make Mother delightful. The same attention to detail and offbeat characters can be seen in Joon-ho Bong’s earlier horror movie, The Host. That one also deals with water but not on a golf course. The Host is about a monster that comes out of the river to terrorize a city. Humor and terror, the meal is best as a mix of both dishes.

Entre Nos (USA 2009, 80 min, dir: Gloria La Morte with Paola Mendoza, cast: Paola Mendoza, Sebastian Villada, Laura Montana.

If you are Latin, the proving ground for human strength is not Colombia or Mexico, it is Queens. At least according to several recent films set in the borough. Entre Nos joins Paraiso Travel and Where God Left his Shoes (both on Movie With Me) as a gritty emotional movie about tough life and tough love on the streets off Roosevelt Avenue.

Laura Montana (as Mariana) stars in her own story, which she dedicates to her mother. Her husband leaves at the beginning of the movie and she is penniless with two children. The downward progression to homelessness doesn’t take very long and the family is reduced to collecting cans from garbage to sell for food.

Montana’s own story is not so different. Her Colombian mother brought her up on the streets of LA until she became a teenage gang member.Then she was shipped back to Colombia to live with an aunt. It was there, she says, that she learned that life was more than survival. She came back to LA and went to UCLA film school. That led to a part in a student movie that led to a major role in Sangre de mi Sangre (2007). That film is set in Brooklyn.

Entre Nos is remarkable that it got made at all. Small films like this are only possible because of filmmakers who burn to tell human stories. Laura Montana says in a YouTube Interview that her film is about survival and coming of age: first for the woman she plays, then for her son (Sebastian Villada). “We’re told time and again stories of white males, but we’re not told stories of complex people of color…and I thought instead of complaining about it I was going to do something about it and I started writing.”

The result is effecting, personal, and original.

The Runaways (USA 2010, 106 min, dir: Floria Sigismondi, cast: Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart, Scout Taylor-Compton, Michael Shannon).

When the great history of rock is written it will be a two volume boxed set with the history of sex. The two are both inspired by the same primitive African rhythms. Louisiana Cajun settlers banned blacks from dancing to a song they called Les Haricots because the beat was too suggestive of fucking. A century later the phrase “les haricots” was corrupted and shortened to “zericots” and then “zydeco.”  And with that name an early form of rock and roll evolved.

What better film subject than an all girl band struggling with music, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, lesbian love and growing up poor in the San Fernando Valley. You can’t make a bad movie of this even though Floria Sigimondi’s style seems oddly detached from the emotionalism crying to be seen.

Even though Joan Jett prints her own Sex Pistols tee shirt, there is no nudity, penetration, and damn little masturbation in The Runaways. Too bad, it could have been a musical debauch.

Despite this lack, the story of an all girl band making it in the 70′s is always interesting. And the rise from trailer trash to primo stash is fascinating. Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is brooding, pensive and bound for stardom far beyond anyone’s dreams. Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) is brilliant at being doomed.

The one guy who makes a difference in this movie is Kim (Michael Shannon) the manager who will steal for you and steal from you. But without him the Runaways would never have made it; or at least that is what the film suggests.

The best thing director Sigimondi does is let them play the music (her directing background is music videos). When the band jams, the power of their sound makes up for a lot of script shortcomings and pushes a sound that made them stars.

The Runaways (USA 2010, 106 min, dir: Floria Sigismondi, cast: Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart, Scout Taylor-Compton, Michael Shannon).

When the great history of rock is written it will be a two volume boxed set with the history of sex. The two are both inspired by the same primitive African rhythms. Louisiana Cajun settlers banned blacks from dancing to a song they called Les Haricots because the beat was too suggestive of fucking. A century later the phrase “les haricots” was corrupted and shortened to “zericots” and then “zydeco.” And with that name an early form of rock and roll evolved.

What better film subject than an all girl band struggling with music, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, lesbian love and growing up poor in the San Fernando Valley. You can’t make a bad movie of this even though Floria Sigimondi’s style seems oddly detached from the emotionalism crying to be seen.

Even though Joan Jett prints her own Sex Pistols tee shirt, there is no nudity, penetration, and damn little masturbation in The Runaways. Too bad, it could have been a musical debauch.

Despite this lack, the story of an all girl band making it in the 70s is always interesting. And the rise from trailer trash to primo stash is fascinating. Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is brooding, pensive and bound for stardom far beyond anyone’s dreams. Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) is brilliant at being doomed.

The one guy who makes a difference in this movie is Kim (Michael Shannon) the manager who will steal for you and steal from you. But without him the Runaways would never have made it; or at least that is what the film suggests.

The best thing director Sigimondi does is let them play the music (her directing background is music videos). When the band jams, the power of their sound makes up for a lot of script shortcomings and pushes a sound that made them stars.