Still Life is set in London, so I was of course predisposed to like it.
Eddie Marsan plays a low-level civil servant whose job is to track down friends and family members of people who died alone. It seems a thankless task, but it's one he takes seriously and treats with the respect it deserves. A great little hidden gem, sweet and sad, which I loved.
In
Croupier,
Clive Owen plays an aspiring novelist who, in lieu of success as a writer, takes a job as a dealer in a high-end casino. A visitor to the casino piques his attention, but she may be a bit more than he bargained for. In a very
Stranger Than Ficton-type realization, his life becomes his novel. I enjoy the noir-style filmmaking, and I was surprised that this movie is as old as it was and I had never heard of it.
Jake Gyllenhaal turns
The Guilty into a one-man-show as a police officer who is demoted and has to work a job as a 911 dispatcher. He takes a call from a woman who has been kidnapped by her estranged husband. Their telephonic interactions are brief and tense, and most of the movie plays out in the responses of the disgraced officer. (Overall, the movie was less than the character that Jake played, but it's worth seeing just for him.) This is a remake of a Danish original, which I have yet to see, but I'll let you know if I can track it down!
The Tomorrow Man is a weird little story about two weird old people. It stars
John Lithgow and
Blythe Danner as a pair of sweet, weird old people. His quirk is that he's a disaster prepper; hers is that she's a bit of a hoarder. Their families don't understand them, but they can understand each other.
I don't know what you know the lead actor in
Saint Ralph from, but I bet you'll recognize his face. His name is
Adam Butcher, and he plays -- you guessed it -- Ralph. Ralph is a boy who gets the wild idea that he's going to race in the Boston Marathon ... and win. Ralph's motivation is to save his mother, who is in a coma; Ralph is living alone, under the ever-closer radar of social services. Ralph gets support and coaching from one of the priests at his Catholic high school, and I appreciated the references to all of the obscure patron saints.
The Good Shepherd stars my boyfriend,
Matt Damon, so I'm going to love it. And it's set in England, so I'm doubly going to love it. The styling is fantastic. Really, this movie could do no wrong after these two points were established. But the tension that is conveyed, the stress of living every day in the early days of the CIA, is so well-portrayed that I felt like I had aged 20 years just for watching the movie, much less living that life.
A Man Called Otto is another sweet, sad, darling little jewel. It stars America's favorite good guy,
Tom Hanks, as an old curmudgeon. The cast of characters who surround him in this film are simply wonderful, and it's a reminder that there are deep, touching, human stories in every little corner of every little town.
Eddie Redmayne and
Jessica Chastain are excellent in
The Good Nurse. Jessica begins to suspect that her co-worker has caused the death of several patients, but has to put her own career and health at risk to find out the truth. It's especially horrifying when you realize it's a true story.
