Mr. Movie: More sleepers from 2009

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May 16, 2010

Anonymous ---- The Randolph Guide Sun May 16, 2010, 08:39 AM EDT

Here are five more 2009 films that may have slipped under you movie radar. All of them are available on DVD. All of them are for grownups.

The Class is a fine French film about a high school teacher who gets into trouble from an offhand remark he makes during a class.

It manages to balance precisely on the edge between sympathy for the guy and understanding what all the fuss is about.

The teacher is played by Francois Begaudeau, a real school teacher who wrote the screenplay. The students are not professional actors, and you feel you are in the classroom with them.

It should probably be required viewing for every educator.

In Everlasting Moments a young Swedish woman wins a camera in a raffle. About to marry, she decides to sell it to raise some money.

But a kindly photography shop owner recognizes her talent and talks her into keeping it and using it professionally. She marries and her husband is not supportive of her talent. Children follow, as well as success as a portraitist.

The film is a microcosm of many families of the time, seen through the eyes of a daughter who recognizes her mother’s genius in the face of considerable obstacles.

Nicholas Cage is the best bad cop ever in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. The quirky title is to distance this film from an earlier Bad Lieutenant (1992), a real dog with Harvey Keitel as the lead. Mr. Cage is frequently drunk and on drugs on the job, and sees iguanas no one else can see. And yet, he does a good job and he keeps us thoroughly entertained.

500 Days of Summer is a very different romantic comedy with Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Zooey Deschanel. The tag line says it all: Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, girl doesn’t. The film is not chronological, beginning at day 488 and skipping around. It is amusing and constantly surprising.

Passing Strange is indeed that. Spike Lee directed this filming of a Broadway musical about the life of entertainer Stew, who moves from country to country and art form to art form.

The music is highly original and the small company is sure-handed in assuming the many roles. At once funny and original, it holds your attention.

Rusty Hammond has been writing the Mr. Movie column since 1996. It appears in several newspapers in North Carolina.

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