Director's Chair

Watched two movies last night.

I hate biopics (which Face pronounced like "myopic" until recently), but Kinsey was pretty damn good. The movie could have been made very poorly and one dimensionally, but Liam Neeson gave a masterful performance as part deviant and part hero of the sexual revolution. The script walked a fine line between celebrating Kinsey's unflinching attacks on repression and the cruelty it spawns, and acknowledging that his obsession with sexual appetites went far outside the bounds of science. It sort of reminded me of that Larry Flynt movie, in that it did a hell of a job in profiling an unlikely hero, and how so often those who do great things for society do so with conflicted motives. The movie was also relentless in making sure it was just as provocative and unsettling as Kinsey's research was in the 1950s. The director clearly wanted to challenge the viewer's sexual constructs as much as Kinsey did. Ultimately, the tough questions about sex and love and moral judgment are never answered, but Kinsey makes the strong point that they must be asked regardless. This movie also has a killer supporting cast, with Peter Sarsgaard stealing all of his scenes, William Sadler making skin crawl, Timothy Hutton, Laura Linney, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Chris O'Donnell. Rent it, even though it has the mandatory boring third act that every biopic suffers.

On paper, The Upside of Anger is not a movie for me. The nutshell is a middle-aged mother and her four daughters coping with their father's desertion, and the romances that follow. Such a film would normally never make it from the shelf to my hands, but I remembered hearing that Mike Binder (his writer/director debut) had made a funny and powerful movie. Binder had a short-lived comedy on HBO called "The Mind of the Married Man," which was brutally honest to the point of misogyny. It was unsettling and too-harshly funny, but Binder was clearly on to something. Anger follows the creative template of the HBO show, portraying relationships as humorous and sweet, but also laced with a quiet pain and cruelty that leaves you wanting to love the characters despite their constant failings. Joan Allen nails the tone of a woman teetering on the brink of a destroyed life, a role that has bombed miserably when attempted by lesser actresses (Tea Leoni tries way too hard in Spanglish. In Something's Gotta Give, Diane Keaton gives a nauseatingly over the top performance and banishes any doubt that she's lost her mind.) Most impressive is Binder's orchestration of nearly a dozen complex, radically different characters. It's an untidy movie, reflecting untidy emotions. And Kevin Costner proves that he's a stellar actor, but only when he plays athletes for some reason. This is not a romantic comedy, as it was marketed. Binder is well on the way to being the next Jim Brooks, but without the sugary coating. Top notch acting and mature themes with no apology make for a movie about love that actually didn't make my penis hurt to watch.

And that's why my movie reviews rule, because Peter Travers would never praise a movie by saying it did not hurt his penis.