Afterglow (1997)

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Three little words: Lame, lamer, lamest.

Lucky “Fix It” Mann (Nick Nolte), a self-employed handyman in Montreal, and his wife Phyllis (Julie Christie), a former grade B movie star, walk through what might be called a marriage. She’s obviously depressed and in a continual state of lamenting the estrangement from their only child, an adult woman. Lucky just shrugs and encourages Phyllis to forget the girl and he even denies that he has any offspring when talking to others.

Marianne (Laura Flynn Boyle) has hired Lucky to do some work in the posh 3,500 square foot penthouse she shares with her uptight, career-driven, neglectful husband, Jeffrey Byron III (Jonny Lee Miller). She wants a baby. He doesn’t.

Marianne is ovulating and horny as hell but Jeffrey, the cold fish, rejects her even though she looks alluring in her new sexy negligee. So Marianne falls into Lucky’s pants –- and Lucky doesn’t seem to mind at all.

While Lucky and Marianne arebscrewing around Phyllis is drinking at a restaurant when Jeffrey suddenly appears, allegedly to spy on his own wife who is nowhere around so he makes the moves on Phyllis.
Smarmy is as smarmy does. How Julie Christie managed to garner an Oscar nomination for this is beyond me?

With lines like: “I’m Jeffrey Byron III. There will not be a fourth. We Byrons quit when we get it right,” this is just flat out a film that bores me to death with its contrivances and annoys the heck out of me when I think about the waste of a sometimes stylish Mark Isham musical score. And dang it all, even Tom Waits singing “Somewhere” at the end can’t save this dog.

Other hideous lines are: “I like the sound of wet tires. Reminds me of the movies.” And “Come with me this weekend. Moonlight on the lake. Four stars on the menu. Someone like you deserves at least that.” And then there’s Nick Nolte laying in a bubble bath drinking Geritol out of the bottle. Not a pretty sight. There are also too many unseen barking dogs and neighing horses which proves what?

I guess I just didn’t get it.

Produced by Robert Altman and directed by Alan Rudolph.

Run time: 1 hour, 54 minutes

Rated R.

My personal rating: D

The Secret Life of Words (2005)

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Before the holocaust, Adolf Hitler called all of his collaborators together and in order to convince them that he could get away with his plan he asked them who remembers the extermination of the Armenians? That's what he said. Thirty years later nobody remembered the million Armenians exterminated in the cruelest possible way.

Bosnian refugee Hanna Amitron (Sarah Polley), a young hearing impaired woman who is emotionally fragile, is encouraged by her boss to take a holiday after several years of perfect attendance, excellent performance at her English factory job, and because she's never taken a holiday before. She reluctantly goes to the Irish coast but she really doesn't want to be there. She overhears a conversation in a cafe and learns of a badly injured man who survived a fire on an oil platform in the north sea. He needs nursing care until he can be safely evacuated, maybe two weeks. Hanna volunteers for the job and is flow by helicopter to the oil rig.

There she finds Josef (Tim Robbins) who sustained burns on his face and back, damaged corneas resulting in temporary blindness, and several major fractures.

Hanna had been abused in Bosnia and escaped to Copenhagen where her case was documented by Inge (Julie Christie) before she went on to England. She suffers from post traumatic shock and is reclusive with compulsive behavior.

In time, Josef begins to realize some aspects of Hanna's story and after he is transferred to hospital, he contacts Inge and learns the extent and nature of PTS and its affect on Hanna.

Eddie Marsan also appears.

A tender stories with some wonderful music. Among my favorite pieces are Tom Waits' "All the World is Green" and David Byrne's "Tiny Apocolypse."

Written and directed by Isabel Coixet.

Run time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

Not rated by MPAA.

My personal rating: B+