“I Wish”
Directed by: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Friday 8/10/2012 by myself at the Tower Theatre in Fresno

Sometimes, when I least expect it, I find exactly the right movie at exactly the right moment.

“I Wish,” written and directed by Japanese filmmaking virtuoso Hirokazu Kore-eda, tells the story of two young brothers who are split apart by the separation of their parents. The oldest brother, who lives quietly in the south of Japan with his mother and grandparents, wishes for the family to be reunited. He concocts a plan over the phone with his younger brother, who lives wildly in the north of Japan with his musician father, to meet in the middle between their respective towns. Their hope: A miracle will happen when they witness the intersection of two new bullet trains passing each other at top speeds.

This little movie has such a simple premise, but Kore-eda frames every sequence with heart and art. Real-life brothers Koki and Oshiro Maeda lend an authenticity to the adventure that would have been impossible to capture otherwise. The onscreen brothers bring the magic of a kid’s naive spirit to the serious subjects of separation and loneliness. In particular, their everyday interactions with their father and grandfather– the ways that the boys so closely emulate their male role models, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously– frequently moved me to tears.

For me, the best part of “I Wish” was its sweet depictions of childhood adventure. As I near the anniversary of my Big-Kid Playtime Party in the Park event of last fall, the movie reminded me that I should spend less time working and more time making fantastical plans. Let the scheming begin!

“Bernie”
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Wednesday 8/08/2012 with my wife at the Regal Manchester Stadium 16 in Fresno

As a longtime fan of independent filmmaker Richard Linklater, I was beyond stoked to hear that his latest movie, “Bernie,” was scheduled for a Fresno Filmworks screening. I’ve been hooked on Linklater since I first saw his nonlinear indie classic “Slacker” back in the day.

Regular readers of this blog know all about my love and loyalty for Filmworks and the great job they do consistently bringing indie movies to a town that’s mostly devoid of indie movies. But I was disappointed when the movie’s distributors forced Filmworks to pull the screening just days before it was scheduled to play at the Tower Theatre, only to turn around a couple days later and try to restore the screening after they had already botched the deal with Filmworks in favor of a deal with Regal Cinemas. Luckily, despite the booking controversy, my wife and I had just enough time to catch “Bernie” at one of Regal’s multiplexes before it slipped out of town after a short one-week run.

Local theater politics aside, “Bernie” was a terrific film, and it showed Linklater in top directorial form. The movie, a dark comedy adapted from a real-life Texas Monthly magazine article by journalist Skip Hollandsworth, tells the story of a funeral director named Bernie Tiede and his unusual connection to a cranky, rich widow. Jack Black, who starred in Linklater’s blockbuster “School of Rock,” delivers a perfect performance as the protagonist, a guy that everybody in the small town of Carthage, TX adores to a fault. I’m not at all a big Jack Black fan, but it would be impossible to imagine anybody in the role of Bernie Tiede but him. He laughs, he cries, he dances, he prays, and most of all, Black delivers a flawless interpretation of Bernie’s remorse after shooting the widow (played wonderfully by Shirley MacLaine) in the back.

The movie also features a funny character performance by Matthew McConaughey, who got his first big break in Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” in 1993. Oversized glasses and all, McConaughey plays the blustery district attorney who prosecutes Bernie. Despite the great acting of his three main actors, Linklater’s master stroke in this film is the onscreen presence of the local townspeople, many of whom star as themselves throughout the movie. Linklater films them talking about Bernie, the widow, and the D.A. in documentary-style interviews, lending a real feel of authenticity to the grand story played out by Black, MacLaine, and McConaughey. As the townspeople show up time and time again in unusual places throughout the movie, Linklater keeps you guessing about what’s real and what’s fiction, which is a delightful feeling for a movie whose characters are often asking the same questions.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild”
Directed by: Benh Zeitlin
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Friday 7/27/2012 with my wife at the Edwards Fresno Stadium 22

Sometimes, when I hear a certain poem read aloud or when I see a certain film trailer, I discover that I am holding my breath. The occasions are rare, and they always take me by surprise.

On a recommendation from my cousin Juan earlier this summer, I watched the trailer for the fantasy drama “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and it immediately stole my breath. The movie tells the story of Hushpuppy, a six-year-old who lives with her father and a patchwork of poor neighbors who have become their family. They learn to survive together on a bayou island called “The Bathtub” that has been cut off from the rest of New Orleans by a manmade levee. The film is heavily influenced by the social injustices and racial inequalities of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history.

For this, his first ever feature, director Benh Zeitlin has so far won two of the movie industry’s biggest awards: the Caméra d’Or at Cannes and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. They are well deserved. Every frame of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” brims with energy and truth– no matter how ugly or uncomfortable those energies and truths may be. Through her thoughts and deeds, Hushpuppy shows an uncanny fearlessness throughout the movie that communicates the most resilient and the very best of the human spirit. And like the best poetry, this film forces us to face our flaws and consider how to imagine a life that’s better.

At the first of the year, I made a goal to watch an average of one movie per week and then review the films here on my blog. I never stopped watching the movies, but I did go through a two-month blogging drought. So, I’m happy (and a little bit relieved) to say that as of this week, my reviews have finally caught up with my movie watching! Here are a few short reviews of three very different films I saw early this month.

“A Cat in Paris”
Directed by: Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Wednesday 7/11/2012 with my friends Judi and Mark at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco
Even though I make a pretty boring date, I still insist on catching an indie film every time I go to San Francisco. When I visited the city for a couple days in early July, my longtime friends Judi and Mark took me to see the animated French drama “A Cat in Paris” at Opera Plaza. The film, which tells the story of an enterprising feline who naps in the lap of a little girl by day and then roams the city as a burglar’s assistant by night, was a New York Times critics pick. I loved the pulsing and angular animation, and I enjoyed the storyline even if it was pretty predictable. But I was disappointed that the film had been translated into English for U.S. audiences. The translation revealed flat and overly simple writing, which I thought detracted from the movie’s magic. If you have a chance to see the film in French, I’d recommend it.

“Rumba”
Directed by: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy
Format: DVD from the public library
Viewed: Thursday 7/05/2012 with my wife at home
Thanks to the Fresno Film Festival, I’ve gotten to know two terrific comedic films — “L’iceberg” and “The Fairy” — from the kooky Belgian director trio of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy. So I was happy to see their sophomore film, “Rumba,” available from the Fresno County Public Library. In this movie, Dom and Fiona play a couple obsessed with Latin dancing, but when a depressed man (Bruno) who they’ve never met causes them to have a car accident, their dancing days are forever changed. Some of the gags in this movie were pretty inappropriate considering some of the heavy subject matter after the crash, but I thought the filmmaking whimsy of the trio still made the movie a delight. Lots of fun.

“Carnage”
Directed by: Roman Polanski
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Sunday 7/01/2012 with my wife at home
Filmmaker Roman Polanski can be a creepy guy. Some of that creepiness seeps into his latest movie, the black comedy “Carnage,” which takes a very long argument and turns it into a squirming, ugly character study. The film stars Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly as one couple and Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz as the other. Most of the 80 minute movie is a real-time angry volley between these privileged parents of two kids who assaulted each other at school. I sat amazed as these “civilized” adults tore each other apart, and Polanski’s dialogue and staging made me feel uncomfortable throughout– a terrific effect from a small, well-executed idea.

“To Rome with Love”
Directed by: Woody Allen
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Saturday 7/07/2012 with my wife at the Sierra Vista Cinema 16 in Clovis

My wife and I agree on a lot of things about going out to the movies. First: Even a bad big-budget movie in Mandarin will probably be more interesting than most bad big-budget movies in English. Second: Always see an indie movie the first weekend it comes out in Fresno, because it will probably be gone by the same time next week. Third: Even a mediocre Woody Allen film will probably be better than most everything else in the theater that weekend.

Well, we might have to question that last one after seeing Woody Allen’s latest ensemble comedy, “To Rome with Love.”

Going in, I read some harsh reviews about the 76-year-old Allen’s most recent film, which played out as a mishmash of ideas centered around four separate stories. The only connection was that all the stories took place in Rome. That general formula has worked well for Allen in so many other great films. But here, the narratives do not overlap literally or thematically, which left me feeling like “To Rome with Love” was, as several critics suggested, a series of unexplored chunks cut from previous scripts that got loosely tossed together into this one. That didn’t help the dialogue, which felt wooden and forced.

The movie had its charming characters, for sure. I particularly loved Rogerto Benigni as a working-class Italian man who is unexplainably swept into a media circus as a temporary celebrity. I also loved Fabio Armiliato as a humble funeral director whose gorgeous tenor singing voice can only be realized when he’s singing in the shower. But there were other not-so-charming characters– Alec Baldwin’s philandering architect, Ellen Page’s self-absorbed actress, Alessandra Mastronardi’s naive country girl, etc. In the end, the only thing that made “To Rome with Love” worth seeing in the theater was that I didn’t have any interest in seeing the new, younger Spider Man or the foul-mouthed talking teddy bear, Ted.