Phillip Noyce‘s Mary and Martha is debuting so quietly on HBO that it can’t be called a debut — it’s a peek-out. It turned up last night on HBO without a shred of promotion or hoopla, or at least none that I’ve noticed. It’s an issue-driven film (based on a script by Notting Hill and Love Actually‘s Richard Curtis) about the ravages of malaria, and particularly about two moms (Hilary Swank and Brenda Blethyn) coping with the malaria-caused deaths of their sons in Africa, and about the social and political activism these tragedies bring about.

Right away you’re saying to yourself, “Okay, here we go…a tearjerker that’s going to tell me what a terrible thing it is to lose a child to malaria.” But it’s deeper and sadder and to a certain extent more all-encompassing than that, and so well acted by not only Swank and Blethyn but every last costar and bit player (Frank Grillo, James Woods, Lux Honey-Jardine, Sam Claflin, Sean O’Bryan, Ian Redford) and written with such clarity and finesse that it moves along and just sinks right in without a hint of huffing or puffing…it just happens.

Mary and Martha is clean and direct and earnest as far as the story allows it to go, which is farther than you might expect.

I watched a screener a week or two ago but then I saw it again on HBO last night, and it hit me all over again (and in a sense a bit more this time) how well made it is, how carefully finessed, how exactly right it all feels. Noyce is primarily known for directing big expensive action thrillers and potboilers (Salt, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, Dead Calm) as well as somewhat smaller-scaled humanistic dramas (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Catch A Fire, The Quiet American) — this is obviously one of the latter. The material might be a little on-the-nose, but Noyce knows exactly what he’s doing, and there’s just this sense of convergence — a team of clearly talented people have been told to contribute in just the right way.

Is Curtis’s story affecting? Without question. Does the story deliver surprising jolts and turns? Not really. It’s fair to call it somewhat predictable. It’s an instructional drama that doesn’t contain or strike what you’d call a universal chord, except for the element of working through grief. It’s obvious that we’re being set up to feel hurt during the first third of the film as we meet the two sons (Honey-Jardine, Claflin) and wait for the awfulness. But once Swank and Blethyn are on their own, more or less, the film quietly gathers strength. There’s no big knockout punch, but the finale feels whole and reasonably complete.

I could recite the story beat for beat and comment about this and that, but I’m going to let it go at this point.

For what it’s worth, next Thursday (4.25) is World Malaria Day.

Not all of the films shown at the annual TCM Classic Film Festival (4.25 to 4.28) have been recently restored and released on Bluray (or are due for a Bluray release down the road). But a great many are, and so I naturally wondered if the Saturday, 4.27 screening of John Frankenheimer‘s The Train indicated a possible Bluray release…I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope.

Or was it included because The Train seems newly relevant because George Clooney‘s Monuments Man, which uses Rose Valland‘s Nazis-trying-to-steal-French-art saga that Frankenheimer’s fictional film was based upon, is opening next December?

In an email received this morning, TCM programmer Genevieve McGillicuddy told me “no” on both counts. The Train (which is being screened in 35 mm) was chosen for three reasons, she informed. (1) “It’s a terrific, underappreciated movie,” (2) “It also fits in very well with our ‘Cinematic Journeys’ theme this year” and (3) “This year is also the 100th anniversary of Burt Lancaster‘s birth.”

So to summarize, one of the smartest and most beautifully shot and paced older action films ever made (and the last major-studio action film shot in black-and-white) is crying out for a Bluray release, and the World War II history behind The Train is about to enter the conversation in a few months’ time…and the TCM Classic Film Festival’s principal reasons for showing The Train, apart from the quality consideration, have to do with (a) tributing movies that offer intriguing travel destinations and (b) blowing out birthday candles.

Tai Chi is a martial art form, but it’s not primarily about ass-kicking. It’s a highly disciplined spiritual rite or practice that’s about seeking, nurturing and serenity. Obviously this trailer for Keanu Reeves‘ Man of Tai Chi is about trying to deliver more Neo thrills. The cries and whoofs as feet and hands go thudding into bodies…later.

I’m finally seeing Michael Bay‘s Pain & Gain (Paramount, 4.26) on Monday night. Pain is Bay’s first modestly-scaled (costing a relatively frugal $26 million), character-driven film ever — a “gimmee” that ansty Paramount execs let him do because he’s made them so much money with the Transformers films. Half of me wants to like Pain & Gain going in because it seems to signify that Bay is at least trying to deliver a little more nutritional value. On some level he’s also trying to atone for his sins.

In today’s Miami Herald, in fact, Bay has literally apologized to critic Rene Rodriguez for the frame-fucked, machine-gun cutting of Armageddon. Rodriguez wrote the interview after speaking to Bay during a recent Miami Beach press junket.

“I will apologize for Armageddon,” says Bay, “because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?’ But the movie did fine.”

Rodriguez notes that Pain & Gain is “atypical” for the hyperkinetically-inclined Bay in that he “actually holds on shots and characters faces for longer than two seconds, giving you time to take them in.”

“People have always given me a hard time on my editing,” Bay admits. “But if if you could do a graph on my movies you would see how my editing has slowed down over the years. Bad Boys was my first movie, and we cut that quite fast. Back then it was very new for action. Now you see a lot of that imitated. Call it what you will. Yes, critics have given me shit about it. But when you watch the Bourne Identity movies, they are cut way faster.”

Bay is mainly referring, I think, is the second Bourne film (or the first one that Paul Greengrass directed)– the cutting in that one was absurd. When I first saw it at the WGA theatre a woman threw up.

Four years ago I wrote a piece called “Bay of Lost Hope.” It opens as follows:

“There was a movie-theatre moment eight years ago when I thought Michael Bay might one day grow into a semi-mature film artist. Maybe. To my delight and surprise the opening seconds of Pearl Harbor began with Hans Zimmer‘s music playing for nine beautiful seconds over a black screen — a semi-overture, I thought at first. But the black gave way to a shot of World War I-era biplanes cruising over cornfields during magic hour — a middle-American nostalgia scene. But that black-screen opener was still…well, mildly impressive.

“I asked Bay about the blackness at a press conference the next day. He talked about how he had to fight hard to begin the film this way, especially since it meant not starting this Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film with the traditional highway-tree-lightning Bruckheimer logo.

“It wasn’t much of an artistic call on Bay’s part but it was at least something, I felt. I came away from Pearl Harbor half-convinced that if Bay ever wanted wanted to move beyond shallow whambam blockbuster movies that he had the potential to do so.”

I was inspired to write this after reading Kim Morgan‘s recent review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. She also suspects that Bay has more in his quiver than he’s commonly given credit for.”

Exhibitors at Cinemacon were down on Pain & Gain and maybe there are reasons for that. I’ll figure it out soon enough.

“If you watch Pain & Gain with an open mind,” Rodriguez comments, “you will see Bay is stretching, regardless of whether you like the movie.

“Of course, he’s making Transformers 4 next, so we’ll be back to the same-old. But I really liked the vibe of P & G. It is so Miami (which I know means nothing to people who don’t live here, but still). And they stayed true to the real story, with only a few exceptions. It’s an unpleasant, pitch-black comedy but it fucking works…as long as the viewer isn’t all PC-sensitive.”