I've recently had the pleasure of watching Senna, The Company Men and Beginners, in less than 48 hours. All of them are good movies, but two of them were particularly well done. Here's why.

Senna

I started out with Senna the night before my flight back home. It's a documentary that portrays, well, Ayrton Senna. The movie maps archive video material from his races and family tapes with audio commentary from his friends, competitors, colleagues and relatives. In the beginning, I was a little sceptica, as I felt the movie was starting a little slow: it introduced Senna as a driver, referred back to his go-karting experience and his Brazilian origin. However, that feeling went away soon enough. Looking back, I'd argue that it's the focus on Senna, the person as a whole, that made the movie appear so very appealing to me. After all, his passion was racing. I didn't find any obvious unnecessary speculations or overstatements in it -- the movie simply told his story. But it did so in a way, that permitted the audience to become emotionally closer to the happenings on the screen. Certainly, there no surprises. The story had been told many times before. But for somebody, like myself, who had been interested in Formula One racing at younger ages (in the times of Michael Schumacher and Mika Häkkinen) but never followed up beyond watching a race every now and then, it was intriguing. The movie provided interesting background knowledge that I was previously unaware of; yet, it also introduced the people I had come across and heard about. Roger Ebert reviewed the movie, giving it a mixed rating. He writes: "Senna is a documentary that does the job it sets out to do. I wish it had tried for more." Yes, maybe it only achieves what it set out to do; but there's only so much to say. The rest is history. And it tells it in the most powerful way I've seen over the past year.

The Company Men

When considered going to the movies over the summer, I was looking at The Company Men. To be very clear: I'm glad I didn't. It's not a bad movie. It's just not a great one. Maybe it was the fact that I watched it in an airport terminal when my Swiss Air Lines flight had been delayed, but I simply wasn't impressed. There've been a couple of movies on the recent recession and its impacts on society (very much in a way Brothers tackles the Iraq War), but The Company Men is certainly the one that convers the topic right head on. Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones all work for the fictional company GTX, when the risk of a takeover leads to closure of multiple business lines that affect all three of them. In short, they are layed off one after another. When I watched the trailer, I felt that it wasn't clear that all three of them worked for the same company. I went into the movie expecting a set of episodes of people dealing with suddenly becoming unemployed. And to some extent, that's what the movie does. Yet, it spends too much time on it. Bobby Walker, played by Affleck, is the first to go. And boy, it takes him a long time to accept his new situation. In one of the stronger parts of the movie, he tells his son that he can't drive him. His son leaves obviously disappointed; and so Bobby follows him, encouraging to play Xbox instead. That's when his wife, played by a very strong Rosemarie DeWitt who returns from another major performance in Rachel Getting Married, tells him that his son had returned the Xbox. He didn't feel like they could afford it anymore. And so the movie keeps on going. There are surprisingly few surprises. And the few of them that are, didn't leave me feeling that I cared. The people themselves are somewhat likable, but it's probably that directory Wells didn't spend a whole lot of time introducing me to them; that is, except for letting me watch them deal with their situation. For example, I wish that he took more time to effectively show the conflict between Tommy Lee Jones and his boss, Craig T. Nelson. There's another strong scene in there, when the HR department is going through a list of people to lay off and Gene, represented by Jones, points out that apparently he had falsely assumed that the company was shooting for higher standards than just the question "is it legal?". Again, it's a good movie. And I have to commend it for dealing with a complicated topic. But in this case, I think Roger Ebert's comment on Senna fits much rather: "I wish it had tried for more."

Beginners

Finally, I had the opportunity of watching Beginners on my flight to Zurich. Since it was a red-eye, I was originally planning on sleeping, but I had wanted to watch Beginners for a while, and so I went for it. Beginners tells the story of Oliver, played by Ewan McGregor, who is reflecting on his relationship with his parents (in particular, his dad, who is brilliantly delivered by Christopher Plummer), as well as his girlfriends and his dog. Simply put, it's a film that makes its points so very subtly, making it magnificient. On multiple occasions, I didn't start laughing out loudly. I smiled silently. And it didn't even take much: the simple use of a piece of piano music got me to smile. Think 500 Days of Summer, yet much less hectic, almost in a Woody Allen style. Then again, like aforementioned movie, Beginners isn't a love story. It's so much more. I was amazed by its simplicity. I suggest you check it out.