Mad About Coco

In the battle of the biopics, fashion-based weepie upsets Nair’s Amelia

(Nov. 12, 2009) Previews

Opening Friday, Nov. 13, is A Serious Man, the latest offering from Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in Minnesota in 1967, the film centers on Larry Gopnik, who is a professor of physics. Things aren’t going so well: his son is smoking a lot of dope, his wife announces it’s time for a divorce, his daughter is just unpleasant, his brother is in trouble with the police, a student attempts to bribe him for a passing grade and the rabbis aren’t exactly helpful. The humor is offbeat, dark and Jewish. I saw this film in Portland and recommend it highly. Rated R for language, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence. 105m. At the Minor.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

GALLERY >

The world may digitally end yet again in the latest disaster film 2012. This time, the end of a cycle for the Mayan calendar on 12/21/2012 (numerologists rejoice) provides the impetus for the cataclysm, directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) and starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt and Woody Harrelson. Rated PG-13 for intense disaster sequences and some language. 158m. At the Broadway, Fortuna, Mill Creek and Minor.

Reviews

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS: Jon Ronson, whose book of the same title inspired this film, is a British author and documentary filmmaker. I have never read his 2004 book — in fact, I’ve never heard of the author — but as best I can tell from some research, the book was a serious examination of a secret program within the U.S. army that intended to use psychic powers as a weapon. The program was largely based on a 1979 manual written by Lt. Col. Jim Channon, influenced by the human potential movement in California (of course), entitled First Earth Battalion Operations Manual.

The film itself — wisely, I believe — does not take the whole operation seriously. In the film, Ronson becomes Ann Arbor journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), who, after his wife ditches him for his editor, goes off to Iraq to re-find himself. Here he meets Special Forces op Lyn Cassady (George Clooney, having a good time), who tells him about the special program.

While Cassady and Wilton embark on some mysterious mission, the film intersperses flashbacks of the psychic experiment, which was the brainchild of Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, looking like a refugee from the Summer of Love). Throw in Kevin Spacey as a failed psychic and imagine an army training exercise with a New Age template thrown over it, and you have this mostly amusing and genial film. Rated R for language, some drug content and brief nudity. 93m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek and the Minor.

AMELIA: I’ve been a fan of director Mira Nair ever since Salaam Bombay! in 1988, and up through The Namesake in 2006. Sadly, Amelia is not up to her best work. Her other films — especially those dealing with social problems in India, where she was born — have a clear point of view and a rich narrative center. Perhaps Nair was defeated by the limitations of the biographical film, but in any case Amelia seems a bit shallow in comparison to Nair’s other work.

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