Frozen River ★★★★
Written and directed by Courtney Hunt. With Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Michael O’Keefe, Charlie McDermott, and John Canoe. (R)
With our nation’s financial system circling the drain in the aftermath of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Frozen River is sure to touch a nerve. The story of a mother trying to salvage a life for her kids from the wreck of her marriage—the husband we never meet has run off with their savings—cuts close to the bone in its depiction of a hardscrabble life, and how quickly good people can find themselves pushed into a bad situation by events outside of their control.
Melissa Leo stars as Ray Eddy, whose dream of getting a new double-wide trailer for her family goes up in smoke when her husband leaves with the balloon payment. Her job as a part-time cashier at the Yankee One Dollar is barely enough to put food on the table—the popcorn and Tang the family is reduced to subsisting on while waiting for pay day—and she buys her gas according to how many coins are in her change cup.
When she tracks her husband’s car to the bingo room on the local Mohawk reservation, she discovers it was stolen by Lila, a sulky, short-tempered Native American who’s been using the car to smuggle illegal immigrants across the border from Canada. Before long, the unlikely pair—each distrustful of the other’s lifestyle—forms a partnership, piloting Ray’s car across the ice of the St. Lawrence river and using the reservation’s sovereign status to avoid U.S. border patrols. After all, they both need the money, and in this world, money trumps morals every time. One of the film’s saddest scenes shows Ray rushing home with her illicit gains to pay off the rental company that has come to repossess the family television. Flushed with pride, she waves a fistful of dollars in the air and asks who wants to go to “The Chopper”—a trip to the grocery store is Ray’s triumph.
In its insistence on deprivation and hardship, Frozen River recalls the blue-collar sadness of Snow Angels, and like that film, it’s too honest to provide a scratch-ticket-winner ending. What we get instead is quieter, more open-ended, and far better. We know from the moment Ray’s car first slides onto the ice that nothing will go as well as she hopes; the only question is how bad it will be.
The credit for the film’s emotional impact belongs to Melissa Leo, whose turn as Ray deserves an Oscar nomination. The actress’ well-lined face and sinewy body are perfectly at home in the role, and she inhabits it so thoroughly and so fearlessly that one begins to wonder if she wasn’t raised in such a place. It’s also a welcome change to see a middle-aged actress interested in actually looking middle-aged, and being given the chance. If it seems like an obvious choice, it’s not a common one in film today. But it’s one that makes the story all the more believable, and isn’t that what film should do—make us believe?
Igor ★★★
Directed by Anthony Leondis. Written by Chris McKenna. With John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Sean Hayes, Eddie Izzard, Jay Leno, Molly Shannon, Jennifer Coolidge, and John Cleese. (PG)
Somewhere, Tim Burton’s lawyers might be filing suit. Granted, that director’s gothic-tinged animated films (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride) themselves borrow from Edward Gorey and a long tradition of schlocky horror tropes, but like Dr. Frankenstein reanimating a body, Burton brought new life to the bits and parts he’d collected and reassembled. The result is a body of work that is so distinctive that the phrase “a Tim Burton film” actually means something.
The star-studded Igor, by contrast, might as well have “a Tim Burton rip-off” as its subtitle. That on its own doesn’t make it a bad film—Igor is an enjoyable semi-dark comedy with some winning performances—but when the entire look of the movie owes so very much to Burton’s work (including one major character that appears to be a wholesale lift of Nightmare’s mayor), it’s difficult not to imagine how singular it could have been in that director’s hands.
What keeps it from being a mere knock-off is what has saved so many small movies over the years: some sharp writing and Steve Buscemi. He’s not Igor—that would be the plain vanilla John Cusack—but the acerbic Scamper, a rabbit Igor brought to life and made immortal. Since Scamper doesn’t really care for immortality, he spends much of the movie trying to kill himself—a running joke that recalls the TNT-infused heyday of Looney Tunes.
Scamper, along with a dimwitted brain in a jar named Brian, are Igor’s secret projects. In the eternal dark of Malaria, storm clouds hang low, evil scientists are celebrities, and Igors are a race of their own, hunchbacked, pale, and bred to serve one purpose: to “pull the switch” that evil scientists use to bring electricity to their devilish inventions. But Cusack’s Igor is cursed with the desire to invent, and when his bumbling master blows himself to smithereens, Igor sees his chance: he’ll create new life, win the annual Evil Science Fair, and prove that Igors are the equals of scientists.
What he creates is Eva (Molly Shannon), an enormous but childlike creature who, instead of wreaking havoc, wants to be an actress. For Igor, it’s an unmitigated disaster: how can he be an evil scientist if his creation just wants to be on stage? (Answer: Create Bette Midler.) As he tries to puzzle it out, the slithery Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) is plotting to steal his invention and install himself as king.
Will Igor triumph? No one who’s seen his films would believe John Cusack might really be evil, and his soft-spoken Igor is another in his long line of essentially gentle characters—a misfit who finds his place in the world, and someone to share it with. By the time it wraps up, Igor has become a generic romantic comedy, complete with a sing-along ending. Along the way, it sheds the gallows humor that gives its first half a spark of life—even if that sing-along includes blind orphans singing “I Can See Clearly Now.”
Burn After Reading ★★★★
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. With George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and J.K. Simmons. (R)
Supposedly the Coens were working on the script for Burn After Reading at the same time they were working on a screen adaptation of No Country, and it makes sense: Burn After Reading is in some ways the other side of the coin. Both films share some bare-bones plot similarity, but where the former was a grim affair, the newer film plays out as gleeful parody.
As it begins, CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (Malkovich) has been demoted due to a drinking problem. He doesn’t take it well—he doesn’t take much well—and quits, banking on the sale of his tell-all memoir to keep him afloat. When a misplaced disc with his notes falls into the hands of a couple of air-headed gym employees played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand, they think the notes are state secrets, and decide to blackmail Cox.
Say what you will about Brad Pitt—that he’s a tabloid star, a pretty boy, whatever—he’s great here. The Coens seem to have a knack for zeroing in on just what makes actors tick and giving them exactly that to work with; here they tap into Pitt’s goofiness, letting him riff on his own image, and he’s obviously enjoying it immensely. His Chad Feldheimer is a sweet, gum-chewing fool who gets swept up in the espionage game. Call him Blond. James Blond.
His partner in crime is Linda Litzke; they’re blackmailing Cox to raise enough money for the plastic surgery she thinks she needs. Together they’re playing a game they only think they understand. Except they don’t. And more, there’s no game to begin with; their cloak-and-dagger shenanigans only confuse everyone involved—first Cox, and later, the Russians and the CIA.
Also in the mix are Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney)—a sex-crazed ex-marshal convinced he’s being watched—and Cox’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), who’s sleeping with Harry. Clooney again shows a great sense of comic timing, and even if his Harry is something of a one-note song, it’s still a memorable tune, especially in a scene where he unveils a certain contraption he’s been building in his basement.
The Coens’ sense of comedy can include some bleak moments, and Burn After Reading includes a few, at least one of which threatens to derail the film. And the absence of longtime Coens cinematographer Roger Deakins is felt in the somewhat flat look of the film—it has little of the zip and sparkle of their usual work. But all in all the film is a delightfully absurd ride, as tortuous and convoluted as any number of recent conspiracy films without the pretense that the twists and turns truly mean anything in the end.
Also this week: On Sunday afternoon, Amherst Cinema screens Little Fugitive, a modern-day take on the 1953 film of the same name; the cinéma vérité feel of the original helped usher in a more naturalistic style of filmmaking that influenced directors for decades. The updated film tells the story of a family stretched to its limits—a father in jail, an overworked mother, and a boy fed up with caring for his younger brother. A prank gone awry leads one brother to run away to Coney Island, leaving the other desperate to find him before social services comes to break up the family. For those interested in a look at what goes on behind the lens, director Joanna Lipper will be present to lead a discussion after the screening.•
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
