Savagely Savvy
Tamara Jenkins’ lovely "The Savages"

Note-perfect, Tamara Jenkins' "The Savages" puts a lot of 2007 American moviemaking to shame. Witty about neurosis and unblinking about mortality, her long-in-coming second feature is an unlikely fusion of the comedic precision of "Annie Hall" and the melancholy humanism of "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," however unlikely a combination that may sound. It’s grown-up stuff: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are estranged siblings brought together by the need to put their father (Philip Bosco) in assisted living, "The Savages" has scads of the most formidable comic dialogue of they ear, and Jenkins’ screenplay is lovingly structured. A sampling of Jenkins' ear for dialogue: "We're not in therapy right now, we're in real life"; "I'm not leaving you alone, I'm hanging up"; and "It's back to Krakow for Kasia. Your brother won't marry me, but when I make him eggs, he cries." Like many other behavioral niceties one could cite, Cara Seymour's limpid yet freighted delivery of that line is dead-on lovely. Mostly, what Jenkins’ gets down is behavior, exquisitely performed. "When they were finally inside my apartment and we were just reading the script, I was, just, ‘Wow,’" Jenkins told me recently. "Not that the material was so brilliant, but the dynamic, just something about the physical… I just felt like you would believe them [as brother and sister]. I guess you can throw three people together around a table and call them family; I’ve seen movies where that happens." It’s lived-in. Jenkins nods. "What’s really interesting about the non-text stuff, those guys, you write action in a script all the time, but these actors absorb so much detail it’s almost scary! Any kind of physical action I would describe that would provide subject, they always colored it in so well." (Ray Pride)

"The Savages" opens in November

FILM EVENTS

The Brave One
NPR meets NRA: Jodie Foster assumes the "Death Wish" role in Neil Jordan's serenely shot yet severely emotional examination of urban violence and vigilanteism. She's a radio talk-show host in modern Manhattan: imagine if Terry Gross turned into Charles Bronson.
September 14


Eastern Promises
David Cronenberg abandoned a raft of personal projects he'd grown tired of during development and took up this script about the Russian mafia in London: the five-minute sauna-set all-nude man-on-man fight to the death is the highlight of Viggo Mortensen's performance for some early viewers. With Naomi Watts.
September 14

In the Valley of Elah
Paul Haggis' sophomore directorial outing centers on Tommy Lee Jones' hiring detective Charlize Theron to fathom the disappearance of his soldier son after his return from the occupation of Iraq.
September 21

Feast of Love
Robert Benton's delightful adaptation of the Charles Baxter novel plays with notions of who's lucky and who's not in love, resetting the book to Portland, Oregon: a raft of pretty explicit sex ensues, not including narrator Morgan Freeman, who's paired off with Jane Alexander, but just a skotch from Radha Mitchell, Greg Kinnear, Selma Blair and Alexas Davalos. Fred Ward keeps his kit on, too.
September 28


The Kingdom
Peter Berg's straight-ahead thriller is political in the margins: U.S. agents are sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in a Middle Eastern country that seems to be Saudi Arabia. With Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jeremy Piven.
September 28

Lake of Fire
Tony Kaye returns from the ignominy of the protracted battles with Ed Norton and the studio behind "American History X" for this two-and-a-half-hour black-and-white documentary examining both sides on the subject of abortion. (He didn't ask to sign this one "Humpty Dumpty," as he did with "X.")
October 3

Lust, Caution
Ang Lee's fastidious 1940s Shanghai-set spy thriller plies Hitchcock waters with a fillip of brutal NC-17 sexual interludes inspired by Tony Leung's lead's involvement as a secret agent in torture.
October 12

The Darjeeling Limited
Wes Anderson's latest after the wonky crayon-box folly of "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou"; three brothers--Adrian Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson--go far east to find their missing father. Costume changes ensue. The script is co-penned by Anderson,
Roman Coppola and his cousin Schwartzman.
October 12



Things We Lost in The Fire
Adroit Danish dramatist Susanne Bier makes her American directorial debut with this serioso dash of Oscar bait, starring Halle Berry as a recent widow who invites his disturbed best friend (Benico del Toro) to live with her and her two children. Who gains from whom? With David Duchovny and Alison Lohman.
October 26


Quiet City
Aaron Katz's second feature is a loving, low-key tone poem to the charms of the quiet moments in modern Brooklyn: this terrific charmer suggests the great new low-budget movies are on their way, and they're not all talk.
October


American Gangster
An earlier incarnation fell by the wayside, leaving Denzel Washington with a $20 million pay-or-play payday just for having signed on; one assumes he got paid again to star with Russell Crowe in this 1970s-set police drama that has intimations of being an African-American Hollywood Renaissance "Godfather"-style saga, helmed by Sir Ridley Scott.
November 2

Beowulf
Robert Zemeckis is one of Chicago's least celebrated artistic pioneers—"The Lives of Others" director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck asked why we didn't have statues of him up yet--but building upon the 3-D motion capture technology he began to pioneer with "Polar Express," he may have another legacy on his hands with "Beowulf," which deserves to be as R-rated as all get-out.
November 16

No Country For Old Men
The Coen brothers never left, but they now co-sign the producing-directing credit and
they're getting around to alternating dark dramas with their black comedies. (Death to "Ladykillers"!) This Cannes-adored Cormac McCarthy adaptation promises beautiful deserts, an intent Tommy Jones and a wack-job Javier Bardem. With Josh Brolin.
November 21

Margot at the Wedding
Noah Baumbach gets closer to "Squid and Whale" than "Life Aquatic" with his new movie about a Brooklyn bourgeosie wedding, starring his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nicole Kidman.
November 21


(2007-09-04)

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