Some catch-up on recent titles

I'm still trying to get my act together and have amongst others watched two recent films which were suprisingly grabbing and satisfying:

Transamerica (2005):  I expected this one to be worthwhile since I knew that Felicity Huffman in the lead had garnered a best actress Oscar nomination and an amazing job she did too.  She plays a male trans-sexual days away from his final operation when she is forced to go to New York to bail out the son he/she never knew existed (the result of a one-night stand many years ago).  In full female kit she presents herself as a social worker, successfully initially maintaining a strange but very definite female persona.  Huffman is so good in the part that one believes that the actor in question is really a somewhat effeminate man.  When the son comes to realise that his companion on their cross-country journey is not a "real" woman and when he ultimately learns that she is the father he never knew, it is more than he can take in.  However the film is ultimately about the bonds of family and acceptance and the tentative ending is therefore a totally believable one.

Two for the Money (2005):  I wasn't expecting any great shakes from this one, but found it completely watchable.  Al Pacino in his frenetic, over-the-top mode plays a betting broker who recruits Matthew McConaughey, an injured football player who is unlikely ever to return to the professional game, but who has a good record of predicting results for a local premium phone-in line.  Pacino sees him as the son he never had and his potential successor and is chuffed as can be when McConaughey's increasingly accurate predictions are netting a fortune.  However as the young man loses touch with his own personality, his predictions become increasingly erratic and Pacino stakes everything on his finding himself again.  I have never warmed particularly to McConaughey, but he did a good job here and I even wanted things to right themselves for the foul-mouthed Pacino.  Many people reckon him to be the best actor of his generation, over both DeNiro and Hoffman, but he is too often larger than life, too out of control.  Here that overplaying definitely worked to the film's advantage.