A Serious Man, Frozen River, The Thief of Bagdad, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, & My Name Is Bruce

A Serious Man is the Coen Brothers doing the story of Job, with an ending straight out of John Sayles's excellent Limbo. Michael Stuhlbarg is outstanding as the put-upon professor, husband, and father in 1960s Minnesota, whose wife wants to leave him for a neighbor, whose son is a pothead who owes the neighborhood bully $20 and has to prepare for his bar mitzvah, whose job is in jeopardy, and whose brother's neck cyst is both hilarious and disgusting. The Coen Brothers really can do no wrong when working from their own scripts, and this one is defintely going to be a much tougher road for non-Jews (or non-Biblical scholars) to follow. But for me, even without any real knowledge of the story of Job, I loved the little Jewish touches (and I am very happy I didn't have to use a record player to learn my maftir and haftorah, as I am terrible at playing records). This is also a great excuse to remind everyone of the greatest trailer ever made. Although if someone wants to challenge me and and try to convince me otherise, you can try.

Frozen River stars Melissa Leo (who's excellent in everything she's ever done, including 21 Grams, Homicide, and Treme) as a newly single mother who lives near the Canadian border and starts to smuggle immigrants over the border to raise money to save her house. It's a little depressing, but it's interesting and well-acted.

The Thief of Bagdad is a sort of amalgamation of a lot of different Arabian Nights myths, and there's some significant links to things like Aladdin, and a mess due to being filmed in both England and the US, and having six different directors. It's interesting to see not just brownface, but also actual non-white actors in an early Hollywood film. If only it was a better film.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona makes me feel like it's Woody Allen trying to do something different, but no matter how hard he tried, with this one, he just failed at making anything much different from normal. The two American girls are typical Woody Allen's impression of how people talk rather than anyone who remotely exists. But hey, it's filmed in Barcelona rather than New York and they speak Spanish a lot! Congratulations, you've found the two things different from every other Allen film. Even the much hyped "Penelope Cruz kisses Scarlett Johansson" scene couldn't move this past any of Allen's mediocre films from the past twenty or so years. Boo.

My Name Is Bruce is Bruce Campbell's self-deprecating film. It's him being a huge ass, in a sort of Three Amigos but instead of a gang of bandits, it's a tofu demon. Yes, the Guan-Di, Taoist God of War and defender of bean-curd sellers, is the big bad, disturbed by a huge Bruce Campbell fan who goes to a graveyard to make out with a goth chick. He then goes on to start killing people in the town, magically appearing just at the best time to kill people. Problems with the film include Ted Raimi being racist stereotypes (yeah, two different ones), terrible acting from everyone, unfunny humor, crappy gore effects (lots of decapitations), and a winking tone that makes itself want to think that it's a much cleverer sendup of low budget horror films than it is. Sorry, Bruce, you're much funnier doing stuff like this in your books.