Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [101]
Rispoli plays Buddy Visalo, or Uncle Buddy, as he’s referred to by the movie’s narrator. Buddy is a good-hearted guy who happened to marry the wrong woman. He could have had a singing career in the years following World War II but his wife Estelle (Katherine Narducci) found the prospect embarrassing. In fact, she finds everything about her husband embarrassing, especially his dream of opening a neighborhood bar where he can sing to his customers.
So Buddy pursues another “crackpot” idea. He buys a two-family house on Staten Island, planning to put his bar on the ground floor and rent out the upstairs apartment. Then he discovers that someone’s already living up there. He’s a mean drunk (Kevin Conway) and his young Irish wife (Kelly Macdonald) is his number one victim. She’s also pregnant, but not with his child. Buddy insinuates himself into the woman’s life and this takes him on an unexpected path.
Everything Buddy does comes from the heart, which is why this movie never falters. Its characters seem true and so do their actions, even if they aren’t always logical or predictable. If you haven’t noticed, real life isn’t always logical or predictable.
Two Family House is a crowd-pleaser. It won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, though it’s probably too “good-hearted” to have appealed to a jury accustomed to dark, difficult material.
Writer-director De Felitta went on to make another warmly entertaining film about offbeat family relations, The Thing About My Folks with Paul Reiser and Peter Falk, and another ensemble piece set in a specific part of New York, City Island. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Two Family House remains his primary calling card for many years to come.
140. TWO LOVERS
(2009)
Directed by James Gray
Screenplay by James Gray and Richard Menello
Actors:
JOAQUIN PHOENIX
GWYNETH PALTROW
VINESSA SHAW
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI
ELIAS KOTEAS
MONI MOSHONOV
JULIE BUDD
NICK GILLIE
JOHN ORTIZ
The first great film I saw in 2009, Two Lovers is a vivid romantic drama that’s meant to express larger-than-life emotions. When he brought his film to my class at USC, writer-director James Gray explained that he wanted to emulate the films of the 1970s that exposed their characters so nakedly you almost felt uncomfortable. In this instance, I actually felt exhilarated.
I also knew that despite its marquee value Two Lovers had failed to attract a major distributor and would never reach a wide audience in theatrical release.
Joaquin Phoenix plays a fragile young man who has moved back in with his parents at their Brighton Beach apartment in Brooklyn after a failed suicide attempt. It’s here that he chances to meet a new neighbor, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. She doesn’t mind spending time with him, but she’s self-absorbed and represents trouble with a capital T. That doesn’t stop him from falling in love with her, almost to the point of obsession. She represents glamour, adventure, the good life in Manhattan and beyond…even danger. Then his family introduces him to a “nice girl” from the neighborhood, played by Vinessa Shaw. Unlike Paltrow, she actually likes him and is happy to pursue a real relationship. (It doesn’t hurt that her father is also doing business with Phoenix’s dad.)
Phoenix tries juggling the two women who represent opposing forces in his life. One woman is dangerous but alluring; the other is sweet and safe. Two Lovers deals with fate and the choices we make.
Gray knows this isn’t typical story fodder for a contemporary film, and acknowledges that the raw emotions his actors convey lack the layering of irony and cool that today’s audiences are accustomed to. Yet that’s precisely what sets Two Lovers apart. One scene is accompanied by Henry Mancini’s lush orchestral piece “Lujon,” from the early 1960s. It is used to convey Phoenix’s feelings about the glamour of Manhattan at night, and it