Love is Strange.

I came across the Memphis born film director Ira Sachs via his second feature film Forty Shades of Blue (2005). The movie starred the beautiful Russian actress Dina Korzun in which she played a trophy wife to Rip Thorns ageing music producer. Also featured in this movie was Darren E Burrows who coincidently appears in Sachs latest outing the romantic drama Love is Strange (2014), a character study of a gay couple whose lives are thrown into turmoil when that decide to get married after living together for 39 years.

 

Wedding Day.

This LGBT movie extends a successful genre to include a love story about two late middle-aged men. George (Alfred Molina) is sacked by the Catholic school were he has successfully worked for a number of years as a music teacher. His relationship with the 72-year-old Ben (John Lithgow) was well known by the staff, the pupils and their parents, and until they were legally married nothing had ever been said about their relationship. Now the Bishop wants him out after spotting their wedding photo’s on Facebook! Because of this change of circumstances their finances are very stretched and they realise that they will have to sell their Manhattan apartment, as they are unable to afford the mortgage. This leads to a crisis! George moves in with his neighbours, two gay policeman who love to party, and Ben stays with his nephew Elliot  (Burrows), Elliot's wife Kate (Marisa Tomei) and shares a room with their teenage son Joey (Charlie Tahan), both George and Ben are not happy with this new arrangement as they are forced to live apart.

 

Uncle Ben shares with family....

....while George shares with friends.

Sachs, who recently got married to his long-term partner, based many of the films characters on real life people and he portrays the two older middle class Academics as being very much in love and successfully pulls it off. The film has been described as a 'graceful tribute to the beauty of commitment in the face of adversity' and to that I would add meaningful and sincere. It's well written script gives the films cast a chance to excel and with some great cinematography from Christos Voudouris gives a depth to a story that at times is both sad and moving at the same time casting a warm glow over its watching audience who are treated to a rather agreeable love story.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Nice office Mickey.

Mickey Haller, the son of the famous Los Angeles defence attorney, followed in his father’s footsteps. When his father passed away he inherited his Colt Woodsman pistol that had been given to the old man by a famous local gangster who he had got off a murder rap. Haller has been married and divorced twice once to Lorna Taylor who is currently his office secretary and the second time to Maggie McPherson who is a career prosecutor with the L A District Attorneys Office a women with whom he maintains a close relationship they also share a 14 year old daughter. For convenience sake this wheeler-dealer hotshot lawyer works from his Lincoln Town automobile, he may be street smart and know how to ‘work’ the legal system but he cannot hide his humane streak.

Mickey Haller is a fictional character created by prolific novelist Michael Connelly and the subject of Brad Furman’s second feature film The Lincoln Lawyer (2011). Haller lands the case of a Beverly Hills playboy with rich family connections who has been accused of brutally beating a prostitute. During, what turns out to be a complicated case, Mickey has to reassess his own inadequacies. 

The every watchable Marisa Tomei.

Mickey Haller gives Matthew McConaughey a chance to leave his lightweight roles behind and to be fair he grabs the chance with both hands. The movie also has a great supporting cast which includes Ryan Phillippe as the accused playboy Louis Roulet, the always worth watching Marisa Tomei as Maggie McPherson with William H Macy as Private Investigator Frank Levin and Frances Fisher as Mary Windsor Roulet’s rich mother. Swiss cinematographer Lukas Ettlin has made a grand attempt to show the real Los Angeles and not the Hollywood version we normally see. Add to this mix a great soundtrack and you have a very good evenings entertainment.