21 - Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best (2011)

Discovered quite by accident on YouTube, I watched Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best on Amazon Prime. Now I want to help it find the audience it deserves.

The film is a paean to those who consider themselves society's "scraps," the ones who don't quite fit into their nine to five jobs and suburban life. Alex, the main character is infectingly played by Ryan O'Nan (who wrote the screenplay and directed the film). O'Nan looks like the love-child of John Hurt and Ryan Gossling. He can't find the life he wants. He plays music for handicapped school children while wearing a ridiculous pink moose outfit and is totally unable to handle his job of selling real estate. All he really wants is that half hour playing and singing to an audience of five or six.

Alex's girlfriend dumps him, his musical partner does the same and he is accosted by Jack, a quirky musician who plays children's toy instruments and who wants to start a band with him. When Alex agrees, we begin a delightful road picture as Alex and Jack try to find their place in a world that sees them as life's scraps. Michael Weston's Jack is quirky and loveable.

As they go On the Road, they pick up a female groupie named Cassidy (On the Road, think Cassady... get it? If not, you don't deserve Kerouac.) Cassidy looks a lot like Jennifer Lawrence. But the three play off well with each other.

The writing, by O'Nan is powerful. In one scene, as a dejected Alex and optimistic Jim sit in some forsaken country town by a grain elevator, having been deserted, with no money for gas, and no prospects for what’s coming, Jim does a magical riff on their situation that summarizes a philosophy that Jack Kerouac would have understood:

Have you ever thought for a second that this is it? ... Maybe this is all it’s ever going to be. I mean, you sing songs about moths. ... I f**king love moths because they're ugly, ugly little worm creatures that crawl into their cocoons with promises of metamorphosizing into like these beautiful butterflies, but when they come out, they’re still f**king ugly, and now they're blind and they fly into the lights and shit. Those little dudes, they keep on trucking. ... There are no free rides, man, if we can’t handle roughing it a little and carving our way out here like f**king old Apache warriors, then what are we doing? I mean, what the f**k. Cause to me, we’re doing something most people will not do in their entire lives. ... I mean people that sit at the same desk every day for eight to ten hours a day and then they sleep for nine hours a day, and then they truly live their life for maybe, I don't know five hours at the most. I bet those people would love being here. They would f**king love it. Not knowing what’s coming around the corner; not knowing what’s coming next. They’d love it!

By the end of the film, I found the message powerful and the music charming. 

I love quirky Indie films and this brought me a lot of smiles. See it and tell others I sent you to it.

Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best (2011) *****

20 - Blancanieves (2012)

Grimm's fairy tale Snow White is retold in 1920s Spain in a rich mocha black and white homage to the films of the 1920s. Like The Actor, this is a silent film told with a sense of magic.

The story begins in Seville where famous matador Antonio Villalta (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) fights honoring his pregnant wife Carmen de Triana. When he is severely wounded, she goes into labor and ends up dying. The baby is raised by Carmen's mother and paralyzed father eventually marries his nurse (all glorified evil by Maribel Verdu). Sofia Oria, the young actress who plays Carmenchita (Snow White) looks like a young Anne Hathaway. She misses knowing her father, and when her grandmother dies she ends up being brought to his estate where La Madrastra (Verdu) makes her life miserable. Eventually her pet rooster Pepe wanders into the bedroom where her father is and the two develop a rewarding relationship. Her father is eventually murdered by his wife.

Carmencita grows into Carmen, Macarena Garcia, an actress who looks like a dark haired Ellen Degeneres. Surviving her stepmother's attempt on her life, she ends up becoming part of the Seven Matador Dwarfs (although there are really only six). Eventually Carmen's bullfighting skills are shown and La Madrastra makes one final attempt at revenge.

The ending, based on Grimm's, becomes both poignant and powerful.

Surprisingly engrossing and magical, the film pulls you in throughout.

Blancanieves (2012) *****

19 - The Place Between the Pines (2013)

The Place Between the Pines is the translation for the Mohawk word for Schenectady (New York), where the film takes place. The film tells three separate but related stories, each dealing with the responsibility fathers have toward their sons. The film is divided into three distinct stories: the crook, the cop, the sons.

Ryan Gosling plays Luke Glanton, a carnival motorcycle stuntman, obsessed with his motorcycle. When he learns that he is the father of Jason, a baby he didn't know he had, his world changes. His sense of rage at the world that has created him is hinted at by the tattoo knife/tear at his eye. His scenes with his baby's mother, Robin (Eva Mendes), are superbly written and acted. Unable to find the money he needs to woo Robin away from the man she currently lives with, Luke eventually is convinced that bank robbing will provide him all he needs. Things do not go well.

Bradley Cooper as Avery Cross, at the top of his acting game, plays a rookie cop confronting life and death for the first time. In his story, he confronts the corruption of the police department around him while feeling responsible for Jason, who is the same age as his son. AJ The acting is outstanding. The script plays with the parallels between the two men's failures at relationships with family and women.

The third story jumps fifteen years and deals with Jason and AJ beginning a tenuous friendship fraught with violence and drugs. There are subtle ironies in the lives of these young men and the fathers who have tried to help raise them.

While the film was beautifully filmed and compellingly acted, Oblivion proved a more satisfying experience for me. Both had high adrenaline scenes but I didn't find myself fully vested in the characters.

The Place Between the Pines (2013) ****

18 - Oblivion (2013)

I should begin with the caveat that I generally avoid all Tom Cruise films. The blending of his personal life and film career has put me off. The trailer for Oblivion intrigued me and I was soothed by the fact that Morgan Freeman was in the film.

Based on an unpublished graphic novel, the film focuses on a post planetary-war world some 40 years after the human race has been sent off to a new life on Titan. The final two human beings have been left to oversee the final mining of the earth's resources. The two have had their memories wiped clean, but look forward to leaving earth and joining the surviving humans in a couple of days.

Jack (Cruise) dreams of images of an earth he can't explain from before the war. He and his partner talk about their memories having been wiped so they can function as the final survivors of mankind on earth. His job is to provide maintenance for the droids which kill any remaining life forms. As Jack investigates a remaining building, he discovers a library and is drawn to the world the books describe. We recognize the rubble among the unfamiliar terrain as being New York City. Jack's encounters suggest that there may be other remants of the human race left. Unbeknownst to his partner, Jack has a small cabin near a lake all set up with his books and it becomes his refuge when he want to recapture his memories of earth.

From the remains of the Empire State building, Jack realizes a beacon impulse is being sent into space. When an earth-made rocket ship crashes on earth, he saves the only survivor from the droids which kill all other survivors. Later he recognizes the survivor as the woman he has been remembering ...his wife, thus creating jealousy of the partner as she sees Jack's affections recentered.

Later as Jack and his wife find other humans living in the seeming rubble of the earth, Jack also discovers the world he knows may not be at all the world that really exists. The film poses many intriguing questions: What makes us who we are? Do memories define us? If we could duplicate people, what happens to the concept of self.

What more can be said about a film that references the Lays of Ancient Rome and A Tale of Cities. Filled with high energy action and many special effects, I found myself totally caught up in the story and highly satisfied with the ending and the questions the film poses.

Oblivion (2013) ****

17 - Tales of the Night (2011)

Directed by Michael Ocelot, this French computer animated film consists of six fairy tales told in shadow puppet style against brightly colored backgrounds and six different historical presentations. Some are variations of stories you might recognize. The first, The Werewolf, seems inspired by one told by Marie de France from the 12th century, although the plot details change. Glorious to look at, the variety of tales and unique presentations keeps one's attention for 84 minutes.

Tales of the Night (2011) ***

16 - From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)

One of my favorite animated films is Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2002), where a scared little girl finds herself at a bathhouse for spirits. During her adventures, she learns to control an evil spirit and to save the boy she loves who is under an enchantment from an evil witch. Peopled with strange and delightful characters who would be at home in Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland world, the film has always enchanted me.

Unlike the previous film, From Up on Poppy Hill deals with a much more real world of everyday life in 1963 Yokohama, Japan, as Tokyo prepares for the Olympics to show the world how modern they are. The story is based on a 1980 serial of the same name.

The main character Umi lives in a boarding house and longs for her dead sailor captain and her mother who is studying in America. Each day she raises flags to the passing ships, hoping that her father will see them and find his way home. One day she learns that someone on a passing tugboat is answering her flags. She eventually meets the boy, Shun, at school and is attracted to him. Umi and the other girls become instrumental in trying to save the seedy building the school boys use as their clubhouse, Latin Quarter.  As old buildings (and customs) are being destroyed, the kids show must show the adults how to refashion the past into a new present. One of the ideas of the film becomes the importance of protecting the old from destruction.

A major plot twist occurs with Umi and Shun's relationship, which feels a little stretched, but ultimately fits the themes and builds to a satisfying conclusion.

The graphics are lush watercolors with an accent poppy color appearing in each frame. Although not as memorable as Spirited Away, the film becomes a satisfying film experience.

From Up On Poppy Hill ****