Mike Leigh’s new film, Happy-Go-Lucky, provides a much-needed reminder that the art of the screenplay is very far from dead. This relentlessly entertaining, quietly thoughtful and wholly believable dramedy not only contains a magnificently liberating performance by Sally Hawkins as the sort of carefree gal more interested in enjoying her life than getting swept up by it—but the movie itself offers a swift rebuke to all the trite notions of the “second sex” still plaguing Western culture after all these…I dunno…centuries?
Happy-Go-Lucky opens in New York this October. It’s possible that Leigh’s screenplay and Dawkin’s performance could win a lot of awards when the season hits, but who cares? It’s a lovely accomplishment.
Nope, no spoilers. Just a couple of dialogue tidbits that you didn’t get from the zillions of clips spilling across cyberspace.
Spoiler alert? Not really. We’re talking about a movie where the hype is practically written into the screenplay. Anyone really pumped to see The Dark Knight will—no question about it!—enjoy the hell out of it. And while the movie doesn’t come anywhere near the subtle brilliance of, say, The Dark Knight Returns or The Long Halloween, there is a sincere effort throughout to emulate the best contemporary Batman stories by taking the environment seriously, rather than overplaying its popcorn appeal.
“The only morality in a cruel world is chance.”
“In their desperation, they turned to a man they don’t fully understand.”
“This town deserves a better class of criminal.”
“He does that.”
Former AFI Festival Director Christian Gaines has taken a job at Director of Festivals for Withoutabox. Meanwhile, Bside Entertainment is preparing a rival service. Thinking about submitting your film to festivals through an online portal? Your options just got a little bit tricker. Read my indieWIRE article about it here.
Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep made a lot of top ten lists last year, even though the movie was about thirty years old. The Exiles might not hold over quite the same way, but it deserves as much attention, if not more so. The movie shows fourteen hours of hanging out from the perspective of urban Native Americans struggling to balance their Los Angeles existence with the culture they brought over from reservation life. It’s an issue that rarely gets explored today, which makes it all the more remarkable that the movie was made by Kent Mackenzie back in the late 1950s. It has not, however, received theatrical release until now, and Milestone Films has done a fantastic job with the restoration. For indieWIRE, I spoke with presenters Burnett and Native American writer Sherman Alexie about the various themes explored in the film, which is currently playing at the IFC Center.
I couldn’t decide if I liked Austin Chick’s August when I first caught it back at Sundance in January, but it’s not the sort of movie you can easily write off (needless to say, many people did just that). A kind of Mamet-lite drama about the start up scene from the perspective of a young jerk making big bucks on some undefinable product just a month shy of 9/11, August has a great talky performance by Josh Hartnett and interesting tangents courtesy of Rip Torn and David Bowie. After viewing the movie for a second time, I became convinced that the moody aura isn’t forced and the dense biz-jargon actually suits the material. This is film noir for stockbrokers. I reviewed it for Cinematical, and expanded on some of its themes in an interview with Chick. It opened on one screen in New York last weekend, so check it out if you can.
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