Do you know what works better than renting movies that were critically acclaimed and nominated for Oscars? Picking movies with funny covers and/or Phillip Seymour Hoffman. This last batch of movies was far more satisfactory than that last bunch of allegedly “great” films. Hooray!

La Vie En Rose: A-

Finally! A movie that was nominated for an Oscar this year that I actually enjoyed. This was fantastic. I thought it was a way better biopic than Ray or Walk the Line, which were overrated. It’s not that I didn’t think Joaquin Phoenix and Jamie Foxx were great in their roles, it’s just that those movies were sorely in need of an editor to cut them down. We don’t need to see every single drug overdose or affair or scandal - we could get the idea with one or two and then some well-written dialog. But no. All these movies always have to be five hours long these days. I sound like a crotchety old lady, I know, but things really were better in the past, when movies over ninety minutes were few and far between.

But anyway, La Vie En Rose was fantastic. Marion Cotillard… I am speechless. What an unbelievable performance. The first time I saw her was when she accepted her award at the Oscars, and I couldn’t believe this was the same woman. I admit I didn’t know much about Edith Piaf’s life, so most of this was new to me. I loved all the sequences from when she was a child up until she first became a star in Paris. After that, I had a few problems, mostly dealing with the time line.

There were big gaps in the story. I sat through the whole movie waiting for the section on Edith Piaf’s life during World War II, but that never happened. Also, the story kept shifting around from the present to the past to the future, and it wasn’t always clear exactly when certain things were taking place. Because of this, the story got a bit muddled. I can understand why the filmmakers wouldn’t include every single lover and husband and affair - that was exactly the fault I had with movies like Ray - but it became confusing when sometimes Edith was married, sometimes she wasn’t, the movie would shift forward a bit and she would be married again to a new man. I found that confusing. My other issue with the movie: the actress playing Marlene Dietrich. She looked nothing like Marlene, didn’t sound like Marlene, and didn’t even bother to put on a German accent. Would it have been so hard to find a Marlene impersonator? Or at least tell the actress who was on screen for a total of five seconds to fake a German accent? Sheesh.

But besides that, this was a great movie. I very much enjoyed the depiction of Edith’s intense “friendship” with Mômone - even when the storyline slipped into the background it wasn’t neglected. You really got a sense of their relationship over the course of Edith’s life. As much as they pushed the storyline with the boxer, the real love story in this movie was between Edith and Mômone. And the music was great, as is to be expected in a movie about Edith Piaf. The concert sequences, her early street performances, the recordings playing in the background - all of it was just thrilling to hear playing over the wonderfully created images of Edith’s life.

The Savages: A+

I’ve been waiting to see this movie ever since I saw the preview a year ago. It looked like a wickedly mean black comedy, which is my favorite kind, and it starred Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, two of my most favorite actors. I also learned that it was filmed at the house of one of my friends from high school. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this movie was even better than I thought it would be. First of all, it’s not really a comedy at all. It has some funny moments, but it is most definitely a drama. Also, despite the name of the movie and the implication in the preview that this story was going to be about two truly awful people, this movie was actually about regular people; just two unhappy, damaged siblings struggling their way through life. They are called upon to deal with their sick father, who needs to be put in a nursing home. It is implied through their reactions and through subtle exposition in the script that this man was a bad father, abusive and unsupportive, and that their childhood was far from happy, but the details are never hammered into your head with painful amounts of flashbacks or endless expository dialog. A million points to The Savages for that.

This movie wasn’t full of annoying indie movie quirkiness or overdone cleverness. The nursing home storyline wasn’t chock full o’ maudlin sentiment like every single other depiction I’ve ever seen. Phillip and Laura’s characters were well drawn. They had flaws, but they weren’t bad people. They weren’t depicted as monsters for not being able to afford to put their father in Grassy Green Lawns, the fancy, private nursing home. They were allowed to feel guilty and bitter and angry and to say awful things in the heat of the moment because they were real people. Philip and Laura had a real chemistry together as brother and sister. All in all, this movie was near perfect. Also, it was fun seeing the house in which I attended many beer filled parties in my teen years.

Eagle Vs. Shark: A

Stark and I rented this movie because we had seen a preview before the feature on another DVD we rented. It looked pretty funny, and the cover was cute, so we decided to get it. Neither of us have seen Flight of the Conchords, so we had no real experience with Jemaine Clement. The only thing I’d seen him in before this was a commercial for Outback Steakhouse.

Yay! This movie made me bounce on the couch and say “Yay!” a lot. The story is about a nerdy, shy girl who works at a fast food restaurant in the local mall. She has a crush on a guy who works at the video game store. She sees him as the pinnacle of manliness, but he’s really just another nerd with bad taste in clothes. He even has a mullet. She invites herself to a party he throws, where everyone has to dress as their favorite animal. He dresses as an eagle, she dresses as a shark. It’s true love.

Things I loved about this movie (besides the awesomeness that is the New Zealand accent):

1. The story focuses on the nerdy girl, not the guy. Every other movie like this focuses on the guy and his dream girl, who is usually beautiful and seemingly unattainable. In this movie, the girl was cute, but normal looking, and she wasn’t the head cheerleader, she was a bit of a social misfit. And she gets the guy’s attention by nearly beating him at his favorite video game. Awesome!

2. The guy is a bit of a jerk, but still lovable. You get a sense of why he is the way he is, and at the end he doesn’t morph into something totally different. This isn’t one of those wretched makeover movies, where the “nerd” with the glasses is made “cool” by having to change their outfit and their interests and all the things that make them them. This is a love story between nerds. No one is cool. It’s awesome!

3. Hee! It’s funny. The script is really good. I kinda want to own it… Yay!

Color Me Kubrick: B

This was another movie Stark and I rented because the cover was funny looking and because of who was in it - namely Mr John Malkovich, Divine Chewer Of Scenery and All Around Source of Constant Entertainment. John plays a man who spent years conning people by pretending he was Stanley Kubrick. Whether it was free drinks, plane tickets, a hot young man to bring home, or thousands of dollars, this guy could get it by “impersonating” Stanley Kubrick. I put impersonating in quotes because this con man didn’t really do anything to actually impersonate Stanley Kubrick - he didn’t look like him, he didn’t talk like him, he didn’t even know what movies Stanley Kubrick had actually made. But because Stanley was a recluse, he got away with it.

This movie was just a bit of entertaining fluff. The sole reason for its existence is to put John Malkovich in different funny outfits and make him mince around, doing increasingly bizarre accents. John’s “Stanley Kubrick” is alternately an impression of Cary Grant, Jerry Lewis, Tony Curtis, and assorted other silly voices. It’s not a great movie by any means, but it’s fun. And Malkovich doing Cary Grant - totally worth the cost of the rental.