YOUNG TURKS

A few years ago, I saw the 2004 movie Head-On, directed by Fatih Akin. If you haven't seen it, do so. Netflix has it streaming. Hell, see everything you can by Akin. In Head-On, Sibel Kekilli plays a young Turkish woman living in Germany with her overbearing family. She's so sick of them (to the point of suicidal despair) that she convinces an older Turkish guy, played by Birol Ünel, to marry her. He's a dirtbag ex-punk rocker who wants little to do with her and less to do with marriage, seeing as how he's in a psychiatric clinic following his own suicide attempt (he drove his car into a wall, despairing over the death of his first wife). They initially lead separate lives, but gradually fall in love. Then things go bad again. I'm not gonna go into all the chaos that ensues, but there's rape, murder, prison, and much more. It's an amazing movie, one that could easily have become a hammering polemic about conservative Muslim thinking and how it conflicts with the more liberal social atmosphere of Western Europe, but chooses instead to focus on individuals who are themselves, and not mere symbols.

I wish the same were true of When We Leave, a 2010 movie, also about German Turks, and also starring Sibel Kekilli, that I saw this week. In this one, Kekilli (who had a nose job between the two movies, so I wasn't sure it was her until her name popped up onscreen at the end) plays a young Turkish woman who flees her abusive husband in Istanbul, taking their son, and attempts to seek refuge with her family in Germany. Her parents are more concerned with maintaining their status and honor within the community than they are with her happiness or safety, and her older brother is a psychotic thug who beats her, attempts to steal the kid and return him to his father, and is basically starring in a Lifetime movie about the evils of Muslim gender politics. The movie is so melodramatic that from the moment I saw the brother glowering at her across the dinner table, the first night she's back under her parents' roof, I knew he was going to attempt to punish her via "honor killing," and the only questions were how long it would take for the movie to get there, and whether he'd be successful or not. But in between, Kekilli's character does pretty much everything she can to lose the audience's sympathy. She repeatedly attempts to gain her family's support, long after it's obvious to everyone else on Earth that it's not coming (doors are literally slammed in her face—this is not a subtle movie), in the process breaking the rules of the women's shelter she's placed in by the German authorities, she disrupts family gatherings with public displays that wind up dishonoring them even further in the eyes of other Turks...I found myself basically shouting "TAKE THE HINT, STUPID" at the screen about a half dozen times.

So yeah, if you're gonna watch a movie about Turkish immigrants to Germany and their problems, Head-On is the one, and When We Leave is a propagandistic crapfest you can safely avoid.

STUFF I'VE SEEN LATELY

The last 11 movies I saw via Netflix:

Mesrine: A two-part biopic of France's greatest bank robber and prison-break artist, topping out at about four and a half hours. Vincent Cassel is a terrific lead, sporting a hilarious array of hideous '70s couture, not to mention wigs and various facial hair options. His forays into pseudorevolutionary political blather barely seem to convince him, let alone the people he's shouting at; only his rampaging ego seems truly heartfelt. Highly recommended, but take a break between Parts 1 and 2.

No One Knows About Persian Cats: An Iranian movie about two musicians—a boy and a girl—who want to get out of the country so their indie rock band can play some shows in England and Europe. In their search for passports, visas and permits, we get a tour of the Iranian underground music scene, in the process seeing and hearing about a dozen bands playing various styles from jam-band funk to thrash metal. Every single one of these bands is better than the piddly-ass music being made by our putative protagonists, which makes it very hard to root for them to succeed.

Micmacs: I'll watch anything Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs. This one is a little darker than Amelie, but not by much, and the cast (jam-packed with people who look like cartoon characters, as always) is up for just about anything. If you like his stuff, you'll like this.

Animal Kingdom: An inexplicably praised Australian crime drama. It starts in the middle, if not the final third, of the story of a family of brothers and their eeeeevil mom, and proceeds to go nowhere special. The only surprise the movie sprung was killing the most interesting character early, and once that happened, it was all downhill. The guy we're supposed to be rooting for/identifying with is a personality-free meatball, and the criminals are about as exciting as figures on a surveillance feed.

Morning Glory: Seems like a girly-girl romantic comedy on its face; turns out to be a pretty funny workplace comedy. Harrison Ford seems like someone woke him up before turning the camera on, which is a welcome change of pace.

Tron: Legacy: I never saw the original, and now I never will. What could have been 90 minutes of neon chases and laser explosions turns into two hours of father-son bonding. And no, the soundtrack doesn't save it.

Green Zone: Better than I expected. Matt Damon has become extremely reliable for a certain kind of bullheaded, get-the-job-done character, and that's what he plays here. The actors whose characters are standing in for real people (Greg Kinnear as Paul Ryan, Amy Ryan as Judith Miller) are less offensive than they'd have been in the hands of, say, Oliver Stone and/or Sean Penn, and Brendan Gleeson is excellent in the Brendan Gleeson role. Director Paul Greengrass keeps things moving.

All Good Things: Based on a true story. Ryan Gosling is very impressive (he's starting to become a draw for me) and Kirsten Dunst is tolerable, which she hasn't always been in the past. Twisty in an unpredictable way, unless you know a lot about the real case (which I don't, but I think I saw an episode of one of the Law & Orders that was also based on this story).

Tangled: Yes, the Disney Rapunzel movie. Yes, there are songs. No, they don't suck. I enjoyed this quite a bit, actually. Donna Murphy, the woman who plays the villainess, is so good I was a) surprised they didn't have someone more famous in the role, and b) surprised she's not more famous herself. Worth seeing just for the horse.

Ondine: A Neil Jordan movie about fisherman Colin Farrell rescuing a woman from the sea who he and his young daughter decide to believe is a selkie (seal-turned-human). Naturally, all is not what it seems. Some good gags, especially one at the expense of Sigur Rós.

Countdown to Zero: An okay if ultimately ineffectual documentary about nuclear proliferation.

Movies I have recently seen in theaters:

Source Code: Duncan Jones is gonna be another director whose movies I'll see on faith, I think. This is a creepy sci-fi/horror thriller about military callousness, about which I will say no more. Jake Gyllenhaal was a good choice for the lead, as an actor with greater gravitas would have made the plot totally soul-crushing instead of just depressing.

Hanna: A chilly Euro-thriller with a terrific soundtrack and only a few logical leaps getting in the way of its general headlong awesomeness. The lead girl is terrific, and the action sequences are very well-shot.

The Adjustment Bureau: Another Matt Damon movie. He's good, as is John Slattery, but the words "magic hat" will forever induce gales of derisive laughter in me, and should replace "jumps the shark" as pop-culture shorthand for "this book/comic/movie/TV show goes off the rails in a major way."