‘The Messenger,’ ‘Precious,’ ‘Blind Side,’ ‘The Maid’: Movie reviews, news

“The Messenger”

In “The Messenger,” terrific acting serves a story that earns it. The film is about two official couriers who bring the bad news home, from the endless war in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery served there bravely and doesn’t like being called a hero, despite past injuries. His new officer, Capt. Tony Stone, is an Army “lifer” who has the worst homefront duty: delivering news of the newly dead to their families.

For Will, so uneasy with civilian life, and with the beauty (Jena Malone) who is dropping him for another man, the grim new job feels like combat revisited. Ben Foster as Will is a marvel of terse compression, his words as trim as his military haircut, yet every subtle touch is alive with feeling. Tony bunkers into the dress uniform and strict routine, snapping lines like “Do not touch the n.o.k.” (next of kin) as if he had seen Jack Webb’s “The D.I.” too often. Ritual behavior gives him leverage to endure suppressed feelings. Woody Harrelson, in perhaps the best acting of his career, gives this tough guy a force of both ambiguity and humor (with lines like “This beer tastes like laundry”).

Of course, the two will bond, yet not easily. Both are deeply afflicted by having to face such civilians as the anguished dad (Steve Buscemi) who hates the war that killed his son. Far more civil is the new widow Olivia (great performance by Samantha Morton) admitting in a wonderfully nuanced kitchen scene her conflicted feelings about the war and her late husband. She and Will are drawn to each other, despite Tony’s warnings, and the distant conflict, now put on the media’s back burner, is an echo chamber deep inside all their heads.

Israeli-born director Oren Moverman and Italian co-writer Alessandro Camon delve into American realities without a flaw. Well, one: Tony says the 1991 Gulf war “wasn’t much of a war”; it surely was for the over 8,000 Americans who have died on account of it. “The Messenger” goes where it must, soberly, without becoming a hankie or waving a flag (no “tea party” bilge here). This work of integrity and deep feeling is the third excellent film drama emerging from the Iraq war, after “In the Valley of Elah” and “The Hurt Locker.” Three fine births, but so many deaths. (Opens Friday at Landmark La Jolla Village; rated R) ★★★★

See the SDNN interview with Woody Harrelson:

Woody Harrelson takes a stand on war, marijuana and ‘The Messenger’

“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

The new “push” in “Precious, Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” is the media pressure to get the movie taken very seriously, pre-Globes, pre-Oscars. Oprah got behind it, franchise filmmaker Tyler Perry also became a “presenting” producer, the head of the Cannes Film Festival called the film incredible (C’est incroyable), and big early grosses have been greeted with hosannas.

“Precious” can seem very Spike Lee-like, whenever director Lee Daniels inserts flashy dream sequences and racial solidarity fantasies as breaks in the endless suffering of his heroine (and to relieve the suffering audience). The obese Claireece “Precious” Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe  (a touching though limited actor), is a bright but miserably lonely teen. She was raped by her father, who left during her second pregnancy, and is grotesquely abused by her mother (Mo’Nique), who treats her as a welfare check and punching bag. Precious endures this for a long time before using her weight to full advantage (fatty-foods dependency is part of her mother’s control system).

The film has reality roots, and old movie roots, going as far back as the 1949 dramatized documentary “The Quiet One,” about an alienated black boy who is rescued by a camp run by earnest liberals. Here the earnest liberal is Mrs. Weiss, a welfare worker played very appealingly by singer Mariah Carey. This is a sisterhood movie, with men mostly awful or absent (though Lenny Kravitz plays a nice nurse). Precious finds a nurturing, female family at a new school full of wonderful, feminine faces and spirits, though it is almost cruel that her terrific teacher is played by the contrastingly svelte beauty Paula Patton.

Lee Daniels is often a gouging director, but he’s also a keen showman. He piles on the pain so that we welcome the healing emotionally. And he packs the best into the end, in a stunning scene of mom facing Mrs. Weiss. Mo’Nique (by trade a comedian) is indeed incroyable as the guilty, dismal mother tries to win sympathy, briefly resorts to astrological reasoning, and opens up enough of her own agony (mostly sexual  rage) to seem human, not a total monster. She, and the other women, give this fairly obvious soaper some piercing moments of greatness. (Opens Friday at Landmark Hillcrest; rated R) ★★★

“The Blind Side”

Not since Michael Clarke Duncan in “The Green Mile” have we had a huge, noble, black simpleton like Quinton Aaron’s Michael Oher in “The Blind Side.” Though based on an actual man (and star football tackle), Michael is like a Baby Huey fantasy from Karl Rove. Forget those crazy government programs! Teen-aged Michael, a minimally educated refugee from a housing project in Memphis, is absorbed into the home of the Touhys, who are wealthy, white, Christian, Republican and steer him to their other religion: football.

Mommy Touhy, Leigh Anne, tracks down Michael’s crack-coked mom in the slum, is anointed “a good Christian lady” by the poor wreck, but is also called a bitch by drug thugs (they’re the main sample of modern black life). She bitches right back, since Sandra Bullock takes no guff, wears a cross and says she packs heat. Maybe this is one way to revive a career.

Bullock is all warm feistiness, a likeable straight-talker who already has a family mascot in cute son S.J. (Jae Head). Yet she gladly takes on the placid, almost speechless Michael as a sort of adored pet and bodyguard. She explains football tactics to him by talking about protective family values, and there is much “suspense” about whether he will play football for Ole Miss or Tennessee.

“The Blind Side,” so sincerely calculated, was directed by John Lee Hancock as if connecting dots on wet tissue. It turns a real story into a Thanksgiving turkey for conservatives who wish that Michael Oher could replace Obama in the White House, no doubt with some help from Dick Cheney. Already we sense a sequel: “Big Mike Takes Up Golf (and Buys the Country Club).” (Opens Friday; rated PG-13) ★

“The Maid”

Raquel, weary housemaid for an upscale family in Santiago, Chile, is sullen and prone to headaches and fainting spells. She has been with the Valdezes for half of her 41 years. The five appealing kids are growing up fast, and though mom-boss Pilar is delightfully supportive, kindness tends to make Raquel paranoid. When the family brings in new help to lighten her work, she goes on the offensive, even sending one big toughie  crawling up to the roof. She doesn’t like the cat, either.

“The Maid” is surprising. Along with Catalina Saavedra, oddly appealing as the unhappy domestic so conflicted about her busy but sexless life, it has writer Sebastian Silva’s sure-paced direction, as vivid with family energy as Louis Malle’s “Murmur of the Heart” (1971). The upstairs/downstairs story heads for unexpected payoffs, and its intimacy of observation and emotion is neither stridently feminist nor melodramatic. As a slice of life this layers well. It would make a great double with “Cama Adentro,” Jorge Gaggero’s subtle 2004 film about an Argentine widow and her housekeeper. (Opens Friday, Ken Cinema; unrated) ★★★

STARS: FOUR (ace), THREE (worthy),  TWO (involving), ONE (dud), ZERO (nil).

RECOMMENDED (and current): “The Maid,” “The Messenger,” “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” “Pirate Radio,” “Where the Wild Things Are”

Read more:

‘2012,’ ‘Pirate Radio,’ ‘Disgrace,’ Dead Snow’: Movie reviews and news

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NEWS Etc.

Holiday promises - We approach the season of Xmas Biggies and Oscars thunder.  Let’s not forget less publicized gifts, scheduled for Landmark’s Ken Cinema: “Oh My God” (opens Nov. 27), Peter Rodger’s documentary about the glib politicizing of many religions; “Collapse” (Dec. 11), Chris Smith’s interview portrait of ex-cop turned radical critic of modern society, Michael Ruppert; a new print of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” (Dec. 18), the elegant 1950 stunner about the trickiness of truth, starring Toshiro Mifune at his most virile; Claire Denis’ “35 Shots of Rum” (Dec. 25), about overlapping lives in a Paris suburb; “Visual Acoustics” (Jan. 1), Eric Bricker’s tribute to modernist architectural photographer Julius Shulman, and Jacques Tati’s  lusciously stylized comedy “M. Hulot’s Holiday” (Jan. 8). The Ken is at 4061 Adams Av. in Kensington; see www.landmarktheatres.com

Visit to a patio planet  - The latest, surely not final “Star Trek” adventure had a healthy run last May and the DVD was released this week. (Here’s the SDNN movie review.) I was among the many viewers impressed by how freshly director J.J. Abrams re-imagined the saga, briskly overhauling its kitsch elements with a young, strong cast: Chris Pine (budding Capt. Kirk), Karl Urban (McCoy), John Cho (Sulu), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Anton Yelchin (Chekov) and especially Zachary Quinto, brainy but wistful as Spock. It beams again on the elegant patio screen of Tops Presents Cinema Under the Stars, tonight through Sunday; door opens at 7, movie at 8:30 p.m., at 4040 Goldfinch, Mission Hills. Details at topspresents.com

A QUOTE (not a blurb!): “Try sincerity. That’s a virtue. The truth, it’s an affliction.” - Arthur (Harold Pinter), sounding rather Pinteresque to Harry (Geoffrey Rush) in “The Tailor of Panama” (2001).

David Elliott is the SDNN movie critic.

Tags: Ben Foster, David Elliott, David Elliott column, Ken Cinema, Maid review, Mariah Carey, Messenger, Michael Oher, movie reviews, Precious, Precious review, review Blind Side, review Messenger, Sandra Bullock, SDNN, Star Trek, SWRNN, The Blind Side, The Maid, The Messenger, Woody Harrelson

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