A Serious Man chronicles the woes of one Larry Gopnik, a mild-mannered Jewish physics professor living in the mid-western suburbs in the late 1960s. Larry is surrounded by ungrateful, unlikeable characters and he is continually tested by their bad behavior and his bad luck. His wife is leaving him for a pompous neighbor; his teenage daughter is stealing money from his wallet to save for a nose job; his soon to be bar mitzvahed son is smoking pot and slacking off in Hebrew school; his unemployed and inept brother is living with him and hogging the bathroom to endlessly drain his sebaceous cyst; an anonymous letter-writer is trashing him to the tenure committee at the college and to top it all off the Columbia Record Club is harassing him about paying for albums his son ordered without his knowledge. Gopnik’s life is spiraling out of control and he seems unwilling or unable to do something to stop it. All he can do is ask “Why me?” So he consults three different Rabbis for guidance but they give him none. You just want to smack him and shout “Stand up for yourself man!”

I understand that the movie is supposed to be based on the Book of Job, but I for one did not find pleasure in watching Gopnik suffer… and suffer… and suffer… without questioning. It was frankly soul-sucking. And I’m not even going to talk about the weird Yiddish-language fable that opens the movie. I know some critics adored this film and obviously the Academy sees something in it. Perhaps I am not “serious” enough to get the humor in it? I see where they are going but I don’t want to go with them. The only nice thing I can say about it is that Michael Stuhlbarg did give an outstanding performance as the feckless Gopnik. Too bad I just couldn’t stand watching it.

If you are one of those people who just must see all of the Best Picture nominees, then well, I guess you must. For anyone else, I’d say don’t bother suffering through it.

I would say rent this if you are a big Amy Adams fan, or if you are needing to feel like your life is at least better than some other people’s. Just once, I would like to see Amy Adams get mad or bitchy. I don’t think she can. And to me that makes roles like this somewhat beyond her. You want to see something affect that sunny demeanor and nothing does, even when her sister nearly destroys the company. Maybe it isn’t her fault; could be the contrived script or the new director, but I really don’t care who is at fault. The rest of the cast, especially Emily Blunt as the sister, are very good. I put this in the skip it pile.

Apres Vous takes place in a lovely brasserie somewhere in Paris and just watching the food being served in the first scene made me ravenous. I could smell the butter and taste the baguettes. I am not sure that I would watch this if it were an American movie, because I can’t imagine this story being told in such a gentle fashion. We don’t do sweet little farces. Every time Hollywood remakes a French comedy, it doesn’t translate — think A Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe. I read that Wes Anderson is currently developing another Daniel Auteuil film Mon Meilleur Ami into an American remake. I have my fingers crossed; he might just have the temperament to do it. Apres Vous was released in 2003.

“Broken English” was written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes, and stars her mother Gena Rowlands as Nora’s (“you should have married him, he has a great trust fund”) mother. Drea de Matteo plays Nora’s best friend Audrey who is questioning her own perfect 5 year-old marriage and runs off to Paris with her to get away. There are more than a few single woman cliches and a couple of very old jokes on French/English misunderstandings (not to mention a deus ex machina ending,) but I have always enjoyed Parker Posey and as Nora she does not disappoint. In addidtion, the French guy (Melvil Poupaud) is very cute and charming and you will probably wish as I did that there was more with him. And even though I am not the neurotic mess portrayed by the main character Nora, I get her frustrations with looking for love and feeling like you are the only one in the world who just doesn’t get it. No tissues needed here. Just a glass (or bottle) of a nice little French wine. “Broken English” was released in 2007.

I learned early in life that a story is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, yet these 4+ writers seem to have forgotten that lesson, because this film seems to come to an end, but then “oh no there’s more” and then it comes to and end again and then again and again and again. Maybe they should have made it as a miniseries, since that is really what it feels like. My favorite non-commital thing to say to a filmmaker when you cannot find anything else to say about their movie is, “Great production value.” And in Australia, the money is all up there on the screen. Lots of money. Money wasted. Don’t waste your time.

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is beautifully shot in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan with the otherworldly landscape heightening the strange displacement of the father in a country where he cannot communicate without a translator. In one scene, he is lost in what looks like a Chinese Grand Canyon, chasing after the young son of the opera singer he needs to film for his dying son. The opera singer just happens to be stuck in jail and is desperate to meet his son. The boy has never met his real father and is being forced to go meet him as a prerequisite to the Japanese father shooting the opera for his son. The Japanese father’s difficult interactions with the child remind him of his own strained relationship with his dying son. Since he can’t communicate with the little boy in his own language (the boy is Chinese and he is Japanese) he is forced to be loving and kind. It is sweet and funny and, yes, I did get weepy.

Ikiru is more about the father than the son who is so disinterested that he doesn’t even want to hear it when his father tries to tell him he is dying. The father has been a bureaucrat his whole adult life and is so unconnected to the world that his office mates have nicknamed him “The Mummy.” After getting his death sentence from the doctor, he wakes up to the waste of his life and decides to do one meaningful thing before he dies; he forces the powers-that-be to build a park for some desperately poor families who have been stuck in his bureaucratic hell. But before he gets this epiphany, in a Felliniesque sequence, he descends into underworld Tokyo with a writer he meets in a restaurant, drinking and dancing and hanging out with the dregs of society. Not finding meaning there, he runs into a young woman, a former coworker, by chance and is so taken with her joy in life that he decides to find his own bliss before he dies. Returning to work, he finds the request from a group of mothers for a playground for their children and making it happen becomes his final act. I guess most of what I know of Kurosawa is from his samurai movies, but this one has such quiet dignity, I was blown away. Kurosawa based Ikiru on Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Time to head to the library.

I’d recommend both of these films to people who want to see well shot, well acted, well written, quiet, strong films. Of course, you have to be up for subtitles and in the case of Ikiru, black and white.