Chip Kaufmann’s Pick:

Java Heat (2013)

Having thoroughly enjoyed No Escape (see my review this issue), I was immediately reminded of this little action flick from Indonesia that did decent business back in 2013. The setting is Southeast Asia, it has action to spare, and has the added bonus of a big name star (Mickey Rourke) in the plum role of the film’s reptilian villain.

Java Heat is old school filmmaking recalling the medium budget international thrillers of the late 1960s and the early 1970s but retooled for the 21st century. It’s a well made crime thriller/buddy movie with a touch of the exotic and an inside look at Indonesia’s peoples and its customs.

The film opens with a suicide bombing at a lavish party that kills a Javanese Sultan’s daughter. An American graduate student (Kellan Lutz) and an Indonesian policeman (Ario Bayu) join forces to discover who is beyond the bombing. Turns out that the student is an undercover marine and the daughter isn’t really dead but is being held for ransom by a vicious criminal with ties to terrorists.

The storyline may be predictable but the surprising use of split screen (echoes of Brian De Palma – remember Carrie?), a refreshing lack of computer generated effects, a normal running time and the exotic Indonesian locale make Java Heat an effective way to spend a couple of hours.

Kellan Lutz as the American lead is more than adequate for his role. Kind of like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger minus the accent. He even looks great in the buff. An amusing joke even pokes fun at his having been in the Twilight series. Of course the villain in a film like this is the plum role and Mickey Rourke doesn’t disappoint. He even delivers several lines in Javanese.

Java Heat isn’t a great film and has no illusions about being one. It is simply good, old fashioned entertainment that effectively achieves its thrills for 1/10 the budget of a superhero blockbuster. In fact it had surprising staying power after I left the theater which only confirms the lesson that Hollywood needs to learn and that is…less is more.

Michelle Keenan’s Pick:

While We’re Young (2014)

At press time, I have not yet seen Noah Baumbach’s latest film, Mistress America. I don’t know where that film will stack up for me at year’s end, but earlier this year I was quite taken with his coming of middle-age story While We’re Young. If you missed it in theatres, you may want to check it out now on DVD. It will likely end up on a number of ten best lists this year, including mine.

While We’re Young tells the story of a documentary filmmaker (Ben Stiller) in his mid-forties who’s at an impasse in his life. Josh is suffering a creative roadblock professionally and personally. He and his wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are adrift and slightly deadened as they enter midlife. Their friends have morphed into parental/family units, while they remain childless.

Josh and Cornelia are the kind of couple who talk about doing great things but never actually do them. So when they meet a young 20-something couple who embody the people they used to be and the people they aspire to be, their lives are reinvigorated.

Jamie (Adam Driver) is an aspiring documentary filmmaker who admires Josh’s earlier work. His wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried) makes boutique ice cream. They are consummate hipsters. The contrasts between the Millennial couple and the Gen-X couple are stark, noteworthy, even comical and ironic. As can be expected, all is not what it seems. But, it’s through the whole journey with Darby and Jamie that Josh and Cornelia find their own truth.

Baumbach could have let the story just be a personal coming-of- middle-age story. Because Josh and Cornelia inhabit the world of documentary filmmaking, that forum allows Baumbach to debate editorial and ethical integrity of documentary filmmaking in today’s on-demand, always streaming, and constantly connected world. The exploration of that truth and that dialogue seems like an entirely different concept better saved for another story altogether, but instead serves and enhances the primary story beautifully.

I like Ben Stiller, always have. But for many his performance in While We’re Young will be a revelation. He and Baumbach previously collaborated on Greenburg, a good but cynical work (a little age is working to everyone’s advantage here). Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried both turn in terrific performances. Charles Grodin livens things up a bit as Cornelia’s father, and The Beastie Boys’ Adam Horowitz has a plum little role as one of Josh and Cornelia’s friends who has recently had children. For me the real revelation was Adam Driver, who worked with Baumbach on Frances Ha and has gained notoriety on the HBO show Girls.

My only real issue with the film comes at the very end of the story, but fortunately the final shot throws even that plot point into question and in doing so quelled my aggravation at a possibly contrived ending and, instead, left a smile on my face.