In Blue Ruin (2014), a recent film by Jeremy Saulnier, a loner who lives as a bum learns that the murderer of his parents is being released from prison.  Hungry for vengeance, wide-eyed Dwight, the loner (played by Macon Blair), tracks down the ex-con and kills him, thus precipitating a chain of vigilante attempts as well as harrowing violence.  It is clear that the film deals with what makes revenge problematic, but it also centers on the shattering messiness of life as lived by lost souls who make dark, bad decisions.

Individuals scenes in Blue Ruin are better than Saulnier’s okay writing: disbelief must be suspended a little too often.  But his direction is fine and the movie is a potent nail-biter.

Too fancy but still fascinatingly shot, Birdman (2014) is a notable film but not a great one.  Though awash in coarse language, its serious and personal nature is potent, and it can be funny.  It asks how an individual’s sense of worth is to be had in the present world, especially with moral and emotional failure so pervasive.  It’s a great question, notwithstanding the movie’s ending is meaningless.

Michael Keaton is extraordinary in Birdman, while Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts and many others are thrilling strong.

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

In Marc Lawrence’s Music and Lyrics (2007), Alex (Hugh Grant), a forgotten singer once a part of the raved-about PoP! band, gets a chance to write a song for, and record with, a currently famous pop queen called Cora Corman (Haley Bennett).  Lacking any talent for lyrics, Alex begs a stranger—Drew Barrymore‘s Sophie—with a certain poetic sensibility to churn out some words for him.  Not only do they naturally fall in love, they also struggle with the song and face the threat of severe artistic compromise, thanks to someone who represents “Buddhism in a thong,”:  namely, Cora.  That phrase in quotes belongs to one of the flick’s many one-liners, that which makes Music and Lyrics a funny treat until it starts limping with no hope of recovery.  Dramatically crippled by Sophie’s character and, finally, some weak acting, the film proves it was made by a man who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Cover via Amazon

Effervescent but never silly, convincing in her emotional range, Doris Day stars as a woman long believed to be dead—but not—in Michael Gordon’s Move Over, Darling (1963).  James Garner co-stars as her well-to-do husband newly married to Polly Bergen.  Day is not expected to carry the film by herself, as she so often does; Garner and others are sapidly talented, forcefully comic.

Though only mildly funny, Darling is a comedy of recognizable emotions.  Cardboard characters, yes, but recognizable emotions.  In addition, it is charming and involving—with a great woman-subjected-to-a-car-wash sequence.

Cover of Move Over Darling

http://gty.im/455776736

The CW series Jane the Virgin keeps going strong.

Jane is a pretty complex character (some of the others need more complexity, and they may get it) played by an actress, Gina Rodriguez, who keeps proving just how able she is.

To no one’s surprise, the Village Voice reports that the show began with a “seeming social conservatism” but is now displaying “a rather nuanced, if not strictly progressive, sexual politics.”  Are you sure it’s not a seeming sexual politics?  To my mind, all the show wants to do is entertain.  It cares about its characters, but has nothing to say.  (Note to myself:  There are plenty of more episodes to come, though.)