Spectacular visualization of the Kipling novel about two rogue British soldiers, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, who set out to make themselves kings of a tribe in Afghanistan. Kipling himself is a character-- he strongly advises them not to make the attempt. But Daniel and Peachy are convinced of their own superiority. No western human has been there before-- so they take rifles and their training and expect to dominate the natives with their power of advanced civilizations over any primitive culture. After an incredibly arduous journey through the mountains, during which they kill some men for their mules, they encounter a primitive tribe in the foothills, under attack by a band of renegades. They use their rifles to drive them off. Fortunately for them (and for the entertainment business side of it) they find a friend, whom they call "Billy Fish" who speaks English and the language of the native tribe they first encounter. They demonstrate the superiority of their technology-- rifles-- and train their men to handle them and soon they dominate the nearby tribes and establish a sort of kingdom. Daniel is mistaken for a descendent of Alexander the Great, and a kind of god, and is given control of a fabulous cache of gold and jewels. Up to the point where Daniel lets his power go to his head and decides to marry (challenging the natives belief that a god does not have physical needs) the story is compelling and relatively credible. But when his bride bites him and he bleeds, the crowd is immediately convinced he is a fraud and attacks the two men. This scene was a bit too simplistic-- Daniel makes no attempt to do the obvious (wipe the blood off his face or conceal the wound), and the crowd turns on them rather uniformly when one would think some would simply be confused. It all barely survives plausibility. They also choose a rather obtuse way to take revenge. These developments make more sense if the story is seen as a parable or metaphor for British dominance of India and other so-called primitive cultures, and the delusions and hubris connected to it. Well acted, and beautifully filmed (in Morocco) with spectacular crowd scenes with hundreds of extras, as well as the mountainous scenery.
Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Saeed Jaffrey, Christopher Plummer, Shakira Caine
It is said that Arthur C. Clarke collaborated intensively with director Hyams on this film. That would lead one to wonder if the real intelligence behind "2001: A Space Odyssey" was Kubrick. The sequel is sophomoric, contrived, and fairly pedestrian. The poetry is missing, and the mystery, the allusiveness. Worst of all, HAL is now treated like a person, with real feelings, and the ridiculous Dr. Chandra is emotionally involved and very sad and insists that HAL be treated like a person. Wait-- even worse than that- Roy Scheider's Dr. Floyd is kind of Popeye from the French Connection, a re-imagining of that tired American trope of the can-do, no-nonsense, damn the torpedoes kind of guy who yells "screw the government -- just do it". We also get the kind of pat progressivism Kubrick would sure to have been suspicious of: the intelligence behind the monolith only has mankind's interests at heart and this is made far too explicit, and the humans comprehend this massively mind-blowing relationship too glibly: they are shown with beatific smiles as they realize just how smashingly nice the aliens are, and how this solves the political tensions back at home. Interesting trivia: Kubrick had all the sets of the original destroyed upon completion of filming. They all had to be reconstructed for the sequel. Apparently, that was not uncommon practice for the time. Kubrick did, apparently, give his blessings to Hyams to make the sequel. The plot concerns a joint mission by Russia and the U.S. to travel to the Discovery (the spaceship in the original) to determine what happened and why. In the meantime, political tensions on earth are building, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and this briefly leads to some complications in the relationships on the Russian space ship, the "Alexey Leonov". As they approach Jupiter, the last known location of the Discovery, they encounter the monolith, now gigantic, and attempt to revive HAL to find out what happened. The monolith warns them away (through HAL) and there is a crisis as they try to figure out how to leave safely (the original plans called for a strategy that did not require as much fuel). Meanwhile, the original Dave (Keir Dulleau) reappears to his aging wife and his dying mother, and to Floyd (to repeat the friendly warning to leave). And during a stressful space maneuver, in a strikingly gratuitous, sophomoric scene, sexy Irina cuddles up with the manly Dr. Floyd-- does one assume the Russians weren't manly enough for her-- and then kisses him chastely for holding her tight during that scary moment. Seriously? The Russians and Americans learn to love each other, in peace, and in the preservation of their precious bodily fluids. All mocking aside, it's a film that tries to be serious-- it's earnest-- and well-meaning, but boring.
Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen MIrren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Doublas Rain, Elya Baskin, Saveliy Kramarov, Natasha Shneider
Not sure what to make of this somewhat sour but literate story about a woman, Mavis Gary, approaching middle age who decides to leave the city (Minneapolis) and return to her small town of origin to rather shockingly try to snag a former boyfriend from his current wife and new-born daughter. She is thoroughly unlikeable, rude, mean, and crude, and selfish. Her former boyfriend, Buddy, has turned into a relatively decent husband and father, and his wife, Beth, is more than decent to the miscreant Mavis. A more interesting character is Matt Freehauf, another former classmate, who was beaten and disfigured by a group of jocks who thought he was gay (he isn't) and now walks with a crutch. They form an unlikely companionship (it might be too much to say they are "friends") and he is probably the most grounded of the major characters-- though he spends his time moonshining bourbon. We are surprised when Mavis' mom spots her on the street and wonders why she didn't even bother to call on them-- though not surprised Mavis doesn't seem to care about familial connections.
Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Collette Wolfe, Jill Eikenberry, Richard Bekins, Mary Beth Hurt
Well, gosh, it's a Stephen King story, so it must be great, right? And it's filmed in my home-town area, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Orono, and Niagara Falls, and environs. It's an early take on King so maybe not so much. Johnny Smith (yes) is a high school teacher with a lovely, devoted girlfriend, Sarah. When he is in a very serious accident-- with a milk truck (in a Volkswagen), he falls into a coma for five years and Sarah marries someone else. When he returns to consciousness, he discovers he has the power to see visions of the future involving people he physically touches. In a clumsy, under- developed sequence, word spreads, and the police ask him for help in identifying a serial killer. He also realizes he can change the future-- when he sees a tragedy involving a group of boys, he is able to save the life of one of them by warning him about it. He also encounters a politician-- in a neat twist, being promoted by Sarah's husband-- and learns that he is a reckless egoist who will destroy mankind if he wins election, and becomes determined to stop him. One can see the appeal of the story to popular audiences (and the clever title), and the connection to his former lover is clever, but many sequences reek of amateur hour, and Walken is nearly comical as Mr. Smith and his brooding interpretation-- almost everything he says, even the most anodyne, sounds creepy-- became a favorite of parody on SNL and elsewhere.
Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Nicholas Campbell, Jackie Burroughs, Sean Sullivan, Simon Craig
Unusual, compelling documentary consisting of a long sequence of shots of various locations in Amsterdam from which Jews were removed during the Nazi occupation with a narrative about them, their fates, and the subsequent history of the location. Beautifully filmed with music to accentuate the restrained, contemplative mood. Sometimes we are taken inside the buildings, to the lives of the current occupants, and sometimes we just view people conducting their lives, shopping, walking, sledding, or demonstrating against climate change. There is a Bar Mitzvah. A woman doing her exercises. Elderly people, young families, children. It seems to be a powerful counter-punch to the story of Anne Frank which many Dutch people took to heart as emblem of their imagined resistance to Nazi atrocities. But, yes, there area also stories of heroes, who hid Jews or helped them. And then of the collaborators who betrayed them. A sad, powerful statement about how people actually behave during times when their ethical compass is willingly or not distorted.
Melanie Hyamas
Three young British girls travel to a Greek island, Malia, for the vacation of their lives, a week of drinking, dancing, and partying. Taz is shy, reserved, and a virgin; Skye is harder, more worldly-wise, and a bit of a provocateur, who sometimes regards Taz as a spoilsport; Em is bisexual, more empathetic to Taz, tall and exotic. They meet some guys including Paddy and Badger. Paddy is the kind of boy feminists hold up as an example of toxic masculinity. He wants sex but won't even bother to walk with the girl after having it. Badger is kind of clueless, nicer to the girls and more sensitive. The others are all busy being teenagers, horny, drunk, impulsive, and rather mindless. The film at first is bacchanal and I almost turned it off. But those long scenes of partying and dancing and the three girls screeching in mock delight at the reveries to come (and clearly clueless about it all) serve to stage the sobering developments as Taz finds out she is not so sure she is ready to lose her virginity, or whether she has a choice, or just how romantic and satisfying the moment will be, while Skye assumes everyone will be happy just to get laid. It's all a bit shabby and depressing. After the bacchanal, the film begins to slow down, lingering over wordless companionship between Taz and Badger, who seem to find a real connection, as opposed to Paddy's exploitive attitude. In the meantime, the girls receive their GCSE results, and not everyone is getting in, and the friendship, you sense, between the three of them has suddenly become very fragile. "How to Have Sex" is an ironic title: it's really about how not to have sex, and how the casual indignities young people inflict on each other can sting and will, we know, resonate long after they happen. Walker should be honored for never cheapening the questions about consent and manipulation for effect, or for cheap moral platitudes: one is moved by the complexity of what feels like lived experiences.
Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Enva Lewis, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Laura Ambler
Based on the novel by Evan Hunter. Two teen-aged boys, Peter and Dan, meet a young woman, Sandy, on a beach, where she is fascinated by a wounded seagull. She persuades them to help her rescue it and they become friends and begin hanging out, drinking, experimenting with marijuana, and flirting. A fourth teenager, Rhoda, tries to join them, and is partially accepted, and partially rebuffed. Sandy clearly resents Rhoda's prudishness and self-righteousness-- she judges the three, while simultaneously craving their friendship. By the same team that did "David and Lisa", "Last Summer" explores teenage psychology, the desire for acceptance, the lure of impulsive recklessness, the braggadocio. It is a puzzling mix, moving from clumsy, amateurish sequences to sequences of daring bravado. Very uneven. At one point, Sandy runs to get bandages for the wounded bird but one cannot imagine how they could possibly be used. The audio is clearly looped. The characters are recognizable, dimensional, and as puzzling as any adolescent would be.
Barbara Hershey, Richard Thomas, Catherine Burns, Bruce Davison, Ernesto Gonzalez
True story-- ha ha-- of the creation, marketing, success, and then collapse of the Research in Motion "Blackberry", the first cell phone with internet features (texting, messaging, emails), focused on it's wooly-headed founders (Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin) and its shark CEO or Co-CEO Jim Balsillie, who realized the value of the product Lazaridis and Fregin were developing and brought it to AT&T and other cell phone vendors to start it on the road to an insane but brief popularity (President Obama loved his, but wasn't allowed to use it). Apparently not a reliable re-telling. Of course some persons don't recognize themselves quite as depicted in the film. And not a great film on any level artistically, though it does have that feel of a cheap rush as you watch them succeed and then fail. Very little on their personal lives, but some detail about the technologies involved and how they hacked the towers to get it all to work. And that penultimate moment of doom when Apple announced their iPhone!
Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Matt Johnson, Saul Rubinek, Cary Elwes, Mark Critch,
Akhavan believes that men can't or shouldn't attempt films on female sexuality-- at least, not lesbian female sexuality-- so here's her own take on the subject. Mostly about how poor little Shirin has suffered so much, is so lonely, and unappreciated. The fact that she can be quite annoying, narcissistic, and self-centred is, to Akhavan, beside the point. Her parents are shown to be well-meaning and kind but disapproving (she hasn't come out to them). So "Appropriate Behavior" is occasionally funny, and sometimes witty (I immediately suspected that Akhavan was at least a part-time comedienne), and always centred on what Shirin wants and desires and how she's not getting it. I found value in the expression of hook-up culture at this time and place, attitudes, and values, and what is perceived to be cool and appealing. And the sequences of Shirin trying teach film-making to a groupd of five-year-olds (not the "advanced" film-making five-year- olds) was amusing. A lot of it is Woody Allenesque (lesser Woody Allen). Maxine strikes me as bit of a revenge character-- Akhavan says the film is not biographical but, yeah... She shares some of the Amy Schumer tropes about "how dare you not find me attractive when I know I'm not but how dare you". Well, she's not: we thought she might be transgender for a while. She's also just plain mean and rude. Is it fun? For a while. Boring? Yes. Being obsessed with your own dissatisfactions is not social activism. Listen to this shit, about the film "Pariah": "Dee Rees's gorgeous directorial debut stars Adepero Oduye as Alike, a Brooklyn teenager who comes to terms with her own sexuality and puts the comforts of friends and family at risk as she discovers how to express her identity." Always a victim and the story is not about how a person is fulfilled by love or generosity or compassion or intelligence or art. It's about how a person is fulfilled when the world arrives at her knees in worship, and the centre of the world is the miasma of disapproval for sexual diversity. Yes, by all means, demand the right to be yourself, but stop demanding the whole world worship you.
Desiree Akhavan, Rebecca Henderson, Hailey Feiffer, Ryan Fitzsimmons, Anh Duong, Hooman Majd, Arian Moayed, Justine Cotsonas
Frederique Benoit (AKA "Freddie") is a young Korean adoptee who has lived in France with her adoptive parents for most of her 22 years. She arrives in Seoul as a result of happenstance and decides to seek out her birth parents. The entire exercise is fraught with raw, scabrous emotional risk, for her and for her biological father, mother, grandmother, and step-siblings, and an aunt who translates (Freddie speaks French and some English). Some of the other characters speak English or French as well, including Andre, an arms dealer who eventually hires her. She also acquires a friend, Tena, one of the most emotionally attractive characters you will ever see in a film, and the voice of judgment at times, of Freddie's impetuousness and rudeness. Freddie is impulsive, sometimes mean, sometimes reckless (she hooks up with several men), and not afraid to offend people who dislikes. She is clearly bitter about having been abandoned no matter how sorry her biological parents are, or how reasonable (or not) their explanations are. She is scarred, wounded, somewhat self-pitying, in sum. But we also see that her father is needy and clingy and feels he has authority over her, his abandoned daughter. The film had me on edge throughout, because of the powerful performances, the authentic feel (it is indeed based closely on the real experiences of co-writer Laure Badulfe-- a Korean adoptee). It stimulates feelings about family, love, attachment, the scars that we nurse and the scars we hide. This is a remarkable, beautiful film.
Park Ji-Min, Oh Gwang-Rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-young, Yoann Zimmer, Louis-Do Lencquesaing, Jin Heo, Ouk-Sook Hur
Fanny Price is the poor girl-- humble and self-effacing-- sent to live with the rich snobs, her uncle Sir Thomas, his wife and four children, and destined to find true love with kind of a step sibling. Every argument that women write fiction as good as men seems to rely on writers like Jane Austen and books like "Mansfield Park" that are actually soap opera. It's all about relationships. It's all about how worthy little me-- without manipulation or deceit-- has to fend off the desires of bad men (pretty well all of them except the gayest character, Edmund). Every interaction is fraught, with lingering, meaningful looks, and the heroine's joyful masochism at being made to suffer by less worthy people. Fanny obviously loves Edmund-- it's kind of incestuous since they are brought up together-- but Henry Crawford, who is rich, wants her and Sir Thomas agrees to the match over her objections. Not a single scene involved in this transaction is compelling or nearly as interesting as Rozema, I think, thinks it is. Shot after shot seems poorly judged, reading after reading seems wrong, sequence after sequence seems abrupt or misplaced. There is a hint that Fanny's father is sexually abusing her or Sue, but no further reference to this occurs. But in Rozema's world, pretty well all men are predators, and they are shown to be so in "Mansfield Park". Sir Thomas is revealed by his son's drawings to also be violently abusive of his slaves (beyond the mere fact of owning them) so he can be conveniently villainized, while noble Fanny raises objections to the idea of bringing a slave over from the colonies to serve in the house. The entire dialogue between Sir Thomas and Fanny over her refusal to marry Henry is just plain stupidly film and processed. Edmund sees extremely gay for a romantic lead-- which makes sense given Rozema's own orientation. And when Fanny is recalled from her maternal home to care for Tom after an accident, she doesn't really seem to have anything to do, and certainly doesn't actually care for him other than holding a cloth to his head. What is this crap? Well, it's Rozema reading anachronisms into Austen, who was never as a great a novelist as people think anyway. And what the fuck: where did Henry bedding Mrs. Rushworth come from? It aint in the book.
Frances O'Conner, Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola, Lindsay Duncan, James Purefoy, Harold Pinter, Victoria Hamilton, Hugh Bonneville, Justine Waddell, Embeth Davidtz
Carla Nowak is a teacher of 12-year-olds at a small German school. She is a Polish immigrant, a bit of an outsider. When the school becomes plagued with small thefts (pencils, and some money), suspicions are aroused and she and the school administrators make a number of questionable assumptions and take actions that reverberate through both the staff and student bodies. There is the taint of racism involved in the questioning of Ali, an Arabic student, and Carla uses her laptop camera to surreptitiously record activities in the staff lounge arousing some resentment among her colleagues. The student paper publishes an interview with her that raises questions about fairness and integrity, and a cheating student, and the child of an administrative staff member suspected of a theft, create a volatile mixture. Do students at German schools have the freedom to publish that these students seem to have? And why doesn't Kuhn explain whether she was even in the staff lounge or, if she was, that she just happened to walk by the jacket (we don't see unambiguous footage showing the actual theft). But then, this film is about people lacking good sense. Perhaps one of the best films in terms of an authentic depiction of a classroom and teaching in general. The tension is utterly compelling as we watch events lead to more and more antipathy and hostility and we sense an impending explosion. All of this accented by a musical score that, like "Psycho" and "Jaws" winds the tension ever tighter and tighter. Well acted and filmed if not entirely satisfying. The ending? No simple answers, except for the most important one, that poor judgement and weak character can lead to disaster.
Leonie Benesch, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Rafael Stachowiak, Michael Klammer, Eva Lobau, Kathrin Wehlisch, Canan Samadi, Ozgur Karadeniz, Leonard Stettnisch
Utterly compelling and convincing dramatization of the famous crash of a flight from Uruguay to Chile in 1972 in the Andes mountains. Unable to locate the missing turbo-prop plane, the searchers gave up, leaving about 27 survivors on their own in unspeakable conditions of cold and starvation. In desperation, most of the survivors began to eat from the bodies of the dead. Eventually, two of them succeeded, after 10 days, in contacting a muleteer in Chile who notified the authorities who ten rescued the remaining survivors. The survivors did not initially disclose the cannibalism but after questions arose, they held a press conference and admitted to it. "Society of the Snow" is brilliant filmed in real mountains, in Spain, Uruguay, and, of course, Chile (and Argentina, in the Andes). The mountain scenes are utterly spectacular. The make-up and physical condition of the actors is remarkably convincing. The special effects, the crash, the avalanche, and so on, are all quite good. The film takes you on a journey with these young men and you will be carried along through the horrific ordeal and the emergence to joyous rescue.
Enzo Vogrincic, Augustin Pardella, Matias Recalt, Esteban Bigliardi, Esteban Kukuriczka, Valentino Alonso, Blas Polidori
But be warned: this is an 8 out of 10 that includes many bonus points for principals. "Fallen Leaves" is about two very average, very believable people, who are both working class, poor, and falwed. In fact, everyone in the film is very shabby looking-- Kaurismaki has made an art out of it. It's part of what he calls his "proletariat" series. So many people will not enjoy it. The backgrounds are shabby, the foregrounds are shabby, the homes, the tables, the restaurants, the bars: everything is shabby and world-worn and everyone's expression is depressed. Yet it is a remarkable film because the concerns of the two main characters are so elemental and compelling. All they want to find a lover, a companion, someone who makes them feel good about themselves. So Ansa clings to the flowers Holappa brought to their first date, and so Holappa decides to give up drinking. The cinematography is very basic and it's obvious that no sets were built, and the clothing could be what the actors wore to the set that particular day-- if they didn't have any money. But the performances are very good, and the guest appearance by Finland's own "Spice Girls" (Maustetytot) is delightful, funny, and wonderfully weird.
Alma Poysti, Jussi Vatanen, Janne Hyytiainen, Nuppu Koivu, Mia Snellman, Mikko Mykkanen
Uneven and sometimes surprisingly candid documentary about the recording of "We Are the World" in January 1985, on the same night as the American Music Association's annual awards. Lionel Richie gets most favored subject status here and I suspect he had some inside relationship with the producers. Michael Jackson is also treated with kid gloves, but Stevie Wonder is revealed to have been annoying and Prince a no-show and Cyndi Lauper lobbied for special treatment. Others, like Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, and Huey Lewis, showed up, did what they were told without complaint or self-promotion, and left the room with a good vibe. Dylan was shown as awkward during the choral parts-- because that's not really in the scope of his performance skills. Some started asking for autographs from their fellows, which was kind of cool, I suppose. Quincy Jones must get credit for treating the group, at times, like disobedient school children. Not a bad documentary, not too overly self-serving, and generally favorable to those who showed up and humble performed as asked for a good cause.
Lionel Richie, Harriet Sternberg, Wendy Rees, Harry Belafonte, Ken Kragen, Quincy Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Huey Lewis, Smokey Robinson
There is some rumbling out there about this film not being nominated for an Academy award. Why? Because the director is a woman (who undeservedly won for her screenplay for "Promising Young Woman")? Like "Promising Young Woman", "Saltburn" promises far more than it delivers, with the embarrassing exhibitionist performance of Keoghan who also wrote the screen play. Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a student at Oxford who sics himself on the good graces of Felix Catton whose family is incredibly wealthy and dysfunctional and owns a lavish estate called Saltburn. Oliver cleverly-- well, not so cleverly, really-- insinuates himself into Felix' family for the summer, where he succeeds in showing mayhem only because the Catton family is either unbelievably stupid or merely mechanical devices of the plot. Keoghan is rather charmless, which really stretches the credibility of the plot, and Jacob Elordi as Felix is not much better. Felix' sister, I suspect, is also supposed to be at least a little seductively desirable but isn't. It is unclear at times what the viewer is supposed to think of the shenanigans other than isn't Keoghan so naughty and sexy and shocking and hilarious. He is not. A reviewer in the New York Times tried to rescue the film as satire, or pastiche, or a commentary on the commentary on "Brideshead Revisited" but if it was, it is tragically unfunny, and scenes like the one in which Oliver sips at Felix bathwater (after he has masturbated into) are less stunning than banal, and his fornication of Felix's grave (which Keoghan improvised) is as entrancing as sophomore's vomiting after a party. So what? This action doesn't fit into a depiction of his passion for Felix or even a parody of his passion for Felix but it doesn't really connect to anything we know about either Felix or Oliver. It does connect to Keoghan who insists to the audience that he is just so, so, so interesting.
Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Richard E. Grant, Rosamund Pike, Archie Madekwe, Saide Soverall, Reece Shearsmith, Paul Rhys
In 1946, the Revised Standard Version of the bible, a new translation at the time, chose to translate two obscure Greek words into "homosexual". Lesbian Sharon Roggio decided to make a film about the efforts of Kathy Baldock and others of the gay community to track down the source of the translation and the dubious claims made about the meaning of those Greek words. Unfortunately, they essentially try to sustain a literal interpretation of the bible-- just not your literal. The most interesting part of this film is the relationship between Roggio and her father who stubborn insists on his own reading of the literal bible while maintaining deep respect and love for his daughter. He's kind of admirable, for his principles, if not his intellect. The rest of the film is a lot of pseudo suspense and cheap effect, tracking down a theology student who questioned the original interpretation and noting that the RSV subsequently back off their original interpretation while the derivative translations, including the NIV and Good News, did not. The problem is the real issue is whether the gospels are cultural limited. There is very little discussion of the fact that there are many other prohibitions in the bible that even conservative Christians ignore today, while insisting that they and they alone adhere to a the "literal" word of god. Aside from the issues, it's just not a very interesting film in most respects. It's an affirmation of the idea that homosexuality should be accepted by Christians while striking a tone of reserve and respect for those who have trouble accepting it.
Kathy Baldock, David S. Fearon, Sharon Roggio, Ed Oxford, Salvatore Roggio
Augusto Gongora was a well-known Chilean journalist. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2015 and this is a documentary about his struggles as his mental acuity declined and the loving, supportive relationship with his wife, actress Paulina Urrutia. Audiences are said to have wept at the Berlinale film festival. We see clips of him in younger days, though conspicuously omitted is any reference to first wife, Patricia Neut, the mother of his two children, Javiera and Cristobal. Given the somewhat self-serving tone of the film, lavishing shots of Urrutia bathing and caressing Gongora, one wonders a little. Yes, her devotion is touching and inspiring but one cannot and should not overlook the extent to which the presentation is manipulated. We are given a moving portrait of a great mind being lost, the sadness that entails for himself and his loved ones, and the frustrations. I also considered the issue of whether Gongora could consent to a film like this. Perhaps it should not be an issue; perhaps it should be. I'm not sure that, in the same situation, I would approve for myself. Some of the film is obviously shot by Urrutia herself, possibly with a cell phone. I didn't mind-- the rawness and honesty of those clips outweighed the technical limitations.
Augusto Gongora, Paulina Urrutia, Gustavo Cerati, Pedro Lemebel
Adam, a gay man living in London, lost his parents to an auto accident when he was twelve. He is very sad. Sad sad sad. He even rebuffs Harry, a fellow inhabitant of the apartment building he lives in, at first. After looking into a box of personal memorabilia he decides to visit his home town. There, in fantasy or dream, he encounters his dead parents, alive, and apparently aware of life after they left the earth. He is able to talk to them about his childhood, his failure at masculine games and traits, and his sense of shame and lack of acceptance. Both of his parents seem amenable to revising their attitudes towards his homosexuality and wrapping him up in love and acceptance. Or do they? It's not clear what relationship the fantasies have to reality in this story. He's not dreaming-- is he? They are not ghosts, except, perhaps, of his consciousness of them. And we don't really get a strong sense of trauma or suffering. Add to that, the horrible music track, barely a note or two, surging, then receding, all through the film.
Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy,
Wenders seems to have enduring fascination with the lives of people who just get buy. They don't commit terrible acts, they don't achieve spectacular things, they don't even really have family drama. Hirayama-- as if to drive home the point--cleans toilets for a living. He has a partner of sorts, Takashi, who seems to be an employee, but, when he quits, seems to have been a colleague. Hirayama drives around Tokyo servicing some of the most elegant public toilets you will ever see anywhere, designed by celebrated architects, including Shigeru Ban, and maintained at the expense of civic-minded corporations. And that's pretty well the story. Hirayama lives in a modest apartment, eats regularly at a local bar, eats his lunch in park under lovely trees that he loves to stare at, and takes picture on an old film camera. He doesn't have a smart-phone and doesn't know what Spotify is: he listens to music on cassettes, mostly alternative music from the 70's and 80's including Lou Reed, but also some Van Morrison, Nina Simone, and Patti Smith. Oh, at one point, a daughter, Nico, appears from nowhere, as does her mother, in a limousine with a driver. Then he sees a man meeting his ex-wife in a bar and discovers that he is dying of cancer-- a subplot that doesn't really resonate with anything, except perhaps the Ozu film "Ikiru", which Wenders admires. "Perfect Days" is emphatically about the normal, the banal, the mundane life of a very average if lonely man. Or is he lonely? He seems pleased enough with his routine, with the leaves, with his music on cassettes. He hardly speaks to anyone. So "Perfect Days" is unique, and fascinating in its own way, but you do begin to wonder if there isn't a good reason why films and stories are usually about something. And perhaps you begin to challenge Wender's implication that we should regard a passionless, quiet existence as some kind of admirable model of how we should live. In "Wings of Desire", the same idea works better because of the shocking decision of one of the angels to give up immortality in order to enjoy those same common things, a coffee, a cigarette, a shabby little circus, and the companionship of a lovely acrobat. "Perfect Days" is almost a sequel: this might be what Damiel experiences after his transition. Does it work? Perhaps not quite. Hirayama seems to have no friends and his family, former wife and daughter, seem very distant even with the warm, brief interactions we see. It is hinted that he does miss them, that he does feel lonely, and, perhaps that he feels he has nothing to offer either of them, for which he weeps. There is a reference to Faulkner and I thought of his comment at the end of "The Sound and the Fury" (I think), to the effect of "they endured". To that point, "Perfect Days" is service to mankind. It may not be a great film, but it fills an important niche and offers us consideration of the importance of the banal, the everyday, the rhythm and routines of the average life, and how they endure. Ebert comments on an Ozu film ("An Autumn Afternoon"): We are here, we hope to be happy, we want to do well, we are locked within our aloneness, life goes on.
Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Hakano, Yuriko Kawasaki
Sixteen-year-old Seydou and his cousin Moussa decide to leave Senegal and try to make it to Europe where Seydou is convinced he can become a professional musician. When Seydou broaches the topic with his mother, she pours cold water on the idea, so he sneaks off with Moussa without telling her, embarking on a long, terrible journey, an odyssey of horrors, as they cross the dessert, are nearly abandoned in the dessert, captured by Libyan hoodlums, threatened with torture, murder, or extortion, but eventually make their way to Tripoli where they find a boat to take them to Italy. This is an important film, the vivid background to so many news stories, compassionate and detailed and compelling. The acting is not intense, thought the crowd scenes are very effective, especially on the boat, and the cinematography is pretty but not striking, but the story itself is so important and so well told that the film deserves to be widely seen. The music is of note: a synthesis of acoustic guitar and African beat with some vocals. One is also astonished at the crowd scenes on trucks and on the boat and wonders how they did it without endangering lives-- if they didn't endanger lives.
Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall, Issaka Sawadogo, Hitchem Yacoubi, Ndeye Khady Sy
Emma Stone plays Bella, a Frankenstein's monster to Dr. Goldwin Baxtor, whom she calls "God" and whose own face is a patchwork of brutal scars. Baxter invites Max McCandles to intern at his lab and study Bella's progress, as she has an infant's brain implanted into her deceased adult body (she drowned herself in the Thames). McCandles falls in love with her and they are engaged but as Bella's brain develops, she strains against her restraints and eventually leaves the lab with Duncan Wedderburn, who clearly has nothing but ulterior motives. They travel to Lisbon, on a boat, then to Paris, as Bella becomes increasingly intelligent, and while she exercises her outsized sexual desires on Duncan and, maddeningly to Duncan, others. Stone is hilarious at times, with her googly walk, her bad table manners, her lust, but it begins to wear. After an hour, she actually became kind of boring. This is a film with 40 minutes of ideas stretched out to 140 minutes of run time, which begins to consist of repetitive fits by Duncan, more of Bella's sexuality, and spectacular if increasingly banal CGI effects. There is a great scene of dancing in a ballroom, but the visuals tail off from there. This is the kind of work that reminds me of a less coherent Terry Gilliam. When Bella spouts fundamentalist feminist dogma at times, you realize it's not part of the story: just a trope dropped in for relevance. Her desire for new experiences is funny once or twice. Her stint in a bordello almost shouts "empowering" even as she realizes that it devalues her sexuality. The ending, including a gratuitous act of revenge upon her first husband, her marriage to Max, and Baxter's terminal cancer, strikes me as capricious and narratively flippant. I suppose it was all meant to be some kind of statement about men and science and women and exploitation but none of it resonated with the rest of the story.
Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Christopher Abbott, Hanna Schygulla
Well, surprise, surprise. This story, written by actor and star Alan Alda, is far better than one expects. Joe Tynan is the young, charismatic Senator from New York, married to lovely, loyal Ellie, father to Janet and Paul, and devoted to his job and his career. We get a surprisingly sophisticated look at the strains on a public figure's family, the pressures, and temptations. In this case, while working on research into a prospective Supreme Court Justice, Joe spends a lot of time with married aide Karen Traynor. They feel a mutual attraction-- the "seduction" of the title-- or it is the seduction of political power at the expense of family? Ellie comes to bitterly resent Joe's regular absences, especially when she intuits that he is having an affair with Karen. Joe's daughter has problems of her own (she shocks the family with a tattoo). No quick resolution here, no pat answers. Joe follows his ambition but makes a course correction seemingly on time. An interesting complication in his life: Senator Birney, a long-time mentor (sort of) is show signs of mental decline and begins to lapse into French when challenged. (There is some suggestion that he is based on Edward Kennedy). Alda is actually pretty good in the role --though he really doesn't sound like a politician during his speeches on the floor of Senate and at news conferences or rallies-- the political transactions are credible, and the emotional issues are presented and treated as adult issues. We quietly get an acknowledgement that Joe is a Democrat but otherwise "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" follows that contemptible tradition of not identifying any specific religion or political party in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Of note: the rally scene near the end, for penultimate speech, was convincing-- one is impressed at the number of extras, the elaborate set preparation, and so on.
Alan Alta, Barbara Harris, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Kimbrough, Carrie Nye, Blanche Baker, Adam Ross
Leon is a writer working on his second book who accepts an invitation from his friend, Felix, to a remote cottage on the Baltic where he expects to find peace and quiet so he can fine-tune his manuscript while Felix works on his photography portfolio. Unfortunately, Felix's cousin's friend has also been invited to use the cottage. Nadja, a friendly, gregarious young woman, is elusive at first, sleeping and working and having sex with Devid, a lifeguard (or "rescue swimmer" as he calls it). She disrupts Leon's concentration. She is also clearly interested in him and invites him to join her at the beach and persuades him to let her read his manuscript. But Leon is an ass. He is narcissistic and rude and finds her annoying-- because he is also attracted to her and jealous of the attention she generously lavishes on others as well. We expect them to eventually hit it off, have sex, and transform Leon into a caring, empathetic person. But nothing is quite as expected. This is a simple, low-key film, focused on personality, conspicuously bereft of effects and action and jumpy, showy camera work. I admire the concentration on character and ideas but, that said, there are no really great ideas at work here. It's a fine film.
Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Enno Trebs, Uibel Langston, Matthias Brandt
Stunning, unique exploration of the contrast between the anodyne domestic bliss of German officers and their families and their unspeakable acts as mass murderers and torturers. Rudolph Hoss was the commandant of Auschwitz - Birkenau at the time that the crematorium and "showers" were constructed, and he managed the transportation and execution of over 400,000 Hungarian Jews. But "Zone of Interest" is primarily about his family life, his lavish home and gardens, his children and wife, and his Jewish servants, all conducting their daily chores and meals within earshot of thousands of Jews being shot, beaten, tortured, and executed. How does one manage the moral ambiguity? Or, to the point, what does it say about humanity that such a paradox can exist? As I have remarked on before, Hannah Arendt was essentially wrong about Eichmann and his "banality" of evil. She thought Eichmann wasn't really evil-- just subservient and conforming. In fact, his diaries later showed that he was, in fact, and enthusiastic mass murderer. "Zone of Interest" invites us to consider the same question, and recoil in amazement that humans capable of apparently wholesome familial relations can get on a horse and ride next door and oversee the execution of more than a million Jews. "Zone of Interest" is beautifully filmed in long, static shots, wonderfully acted, and, most importantly, accompanied by a disturbing just distant soundtrack of shots, screams, and indescribable sounds of suffering and anguish. The characters hear these sounds, choose to disregard them, and carry on-- except for Hedwig's mother, who is so disturbed by the outside noise she quietly leaves without even saying goodbye. The children play with teeth with gold fillings, Hedwig (Rudolph's wife) tries on a fur coat, and lipstick. Rudolph has a romantic moment with his horse-- and then something more carnal with a Jewish prisoner after which he carefully washes his genitals in a basement sink. The power of this film likes in it's ruthless examination of evil-- far more ruthless than "Schindler's List" because it doesn't remove the viewers complicity by caricaturing the lives of the perpetrators: they are so much like us, so "normal", no pedestrian and banal, and so capable of monstrous acts as, we wonder, are we.
Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller, Freya Kreutzkam, Ralph Herforth, Imogen Kogge, Luis Noah Witte, Johann Karthaus, Nele Ahrensmeier, Martyna Poznanski
Amusing story about an African-American writer who discovers that novels that feature clichéish jargon-ridden portraits of black Americans sell very well, compared to his own honest literary works. So he rewrites one of his books to pander to that perception only to discover that he is suddenly rich and famous (under a pseudonym) with enlightened, progressive white critics falling over themselves to praise his work. He even passes himself off as a criminal which leads to one of the more hysterical scenes at the end. Funny, witty, lively, and tasteful. Not sure what conclusion, if any, it offers us, but it is provocative and fresh.
Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Rose, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Issa Rae, J.C. MacKenzie, Michael Cyril Creighton, Keith David, Leslie Uggams
Another "documentary" produced by close associates of the subject, Jon Batiste. I can't tell you if Batiste's music really is special, from this documentary, which is more devoted to developing a brand than art, but I can tell you that his music-- allegedly inclusive and exotic and eclectic-- is essentially mainstream snuff. In "Soul", the film that scored him an Oscar for God's sake, he provided music that sounded and looked like jazz to anyone who doesn't know what jazz is, but protectively insulated itself within so many layers of pop kludge that it was unrecognizable. Batiste's wife, Suleika Jaouad, is suffering from leukemia and a fair bit of time is given to her treatments and consultations, along with Batiste's Grammy nominations and wins, and his work on a big production at Carnegie Hall of his "American Symphony". Many segments just show Batiste doing nothing, really, except contemplating just how fascinating he is. Most viewers, probably, will believe that the focus on his awards and fulsome praise from other celebrities is the choice of an objective directory who decided that this was important information for the viewer to have, when, in fact, it is essentially Jon Batiste, through his proxy, bragging about himself. I found it tiresome. I also found it offensive that anyone thought his thoughts on the nature of music, “it’s playing the thing that we all know is unfolding whether we want to accept it or not. And it’s there always. We just need to harness it. Be open to it.” was deep in any meaningful way. It's fucking banal. It is facetious: Batiste knows full well that viewers don't have the remotest idea of how to compose or sing or suck up to white audiences who can't stand rap. The Guardian nicely quipped: Scenes when we're at this bedside, curiously watching him struggle with sleep in the presence of cameras or on speakerphone discussing his anxiety with his therapist, come off like curated intimacy." Exactly. Well, you could also call it phony. Except, the Guardian reviewer, Radheyan Simonpillai, is a fan, and actually thought Batiste's lavishly over-wrought performance of "Freedom" at the Oscars was a "show-stopper". The longer I watched, the less interesting I found him. Then, for some reason, they showed him doing covers of several songs, including "Let it Be", which puzzled me. In the sequences in which he works on his symphony, I began to suspect that the symphony was more a product of his ego than an actual musical development. Near the beginning, Batiste several times claimed that "nobody had ever done this before". I can't remember what it was he was referring to, but nothing about Batiste was unfamiliar. The film was produced by Barack and Michele Obama. I don't think that matters. It's classic Obama: inoffensive, mainstream, and safe. It was also produced by Jon Batiste, which tells you, as I said, what kind of self-serving product this is.
Jon Batiste, Lindsay Byrnes, Stephen Colbert, Suleika Jaouad
Original and fresh story about a 12-year-old girl whose mother dies of some undefined illness. Georgie, the girl, decides to conceal her mother's departure and continue in on her own, inviting friend Ali for sleepovers, stealing bicycles for spending money, and avoiding nosy neighbors. Her plans are upended when her dad, Jason, who she thinks abandoned her after she was born, shows up. She resents his intrusion and tries to lock him out of the house but eventually grudgingly accepts his presence as regrettably necessary, until they begin to develop a relationship. Not a brilliant movie by any stretch (poorly shot, generally, for one thing) but fresh and original and Lola Campbell is actually pretty brilliant as Georgie. She is quirkly and sassy but not in a way that is too coy or contrived. In one transcendent scene, she and her dad make up a conversation a couple on the other side of the train platform is having, and it becomes a delightful, trippy sequence in which you can't tell which part is made up and which part is Georgie speaking to Jason. The two, incidentally, obviously have a strong rapport that works well here. There are also amusing riffs by characters addressing the camera in commentary on Georgie's behaviour and situation. The story wanders at times a little close to precious, but remains safely a step away, as when Jason suggests a hug at one point. Enjoy this warm-hearted film guilt-free.
Lola Campbell, Alin Uzun, Cary Crankson, Harris Dickinson, Freya Bell, Aylin Tezel, Olivia Brady
The first thing to know is that Nevil Shute was appalled by the direction taken by the movie producers and director and quit the project in a huff. The second is that neither Gregory Peck nor Ava Gardner was remotely suited for or successful in their leading roles. Peck is a very nice actor with high personal principals and a limited range. Gardner at 37 was obviously too old for her part. That said, this version has merits. Peck is Commander Dwight Lionel Towers, an American submarine commander who is tasked with travelling to Alaska to check if the radioactive fall-out from a massive nuclear war is really going to persist and kill everyone, including all those in Australia where he is now based. He picks up some Australians to take with, a Lieutenant and a scientist. They confirm the degree of contamination and return. But the film is really about human relationships: how do you handle love, family, and life itself when confronted with inevitable death? Towers meets Moira, a woman who has slept in a lot of beds, we are told. The Australian lieutenant is Peter Holmes and we see him try to explain to his wife why she and their young child will have to take a pill that will kill them rather than die slowly, painfully, of radiation sickness. There is some discussion of causes (in the book, Albania-- yes-- attacked Italy first, provoking a cycle of attack and retaliation leading up to NATO, the Soviet Union, and China-- in the movie it's kind of nobody's fault and everybody's fault). A scientist decries the use of the bomb because, he insists, he and the other scientists never thought mankind would be so stupid as to every use it. There are touching, melancholy, poignant moments. There are archaic sexual attitudes (both Towers and Holmes slap women on the bum). But for the most part, it's tasteful and sad and very thoughtful. It's a relatively sincere film about an important subject. It has some other virtues: appears to have been shot on a real submarine (close in, wide-angle shots), with a real sub in the external shots. Some care is taken to show actual functions aboard the sub. And Shute obviously researched what the effects of radiation would be on the civilian population. But there are no bodies anywhere in view, nor physical destruction. The lack of destroyed cityscapes-- okay-- but it's hard to rationalize that there would not be numerous bodies in the streets and buildings. The accents are terrible, if even attempted (clearly not in most cases), and the drama itself is starchy, old-school stagey (Peck and Gardner kiss like high school seniors in "Oklahoma".) I still like it for what it is attempting and I note that Kennedy reportedly saw this film and was moved by it and it influenced his attitude towards the Soviet Union. Oh, and "Waltzing Matilda" may be the worst choice for theme of a serious movie ever.
Gregory Peck, Ava Garnder, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire, John Tate, Donna Anderson, Harp McGuire, Lola Brooks
At Barton boarding school, someone, a teacher, has to stay over Christmas for the students who have no place to go or can't return home for Christmas for various reasons. This year it's not Paul Hunham's turn but the real designate claims his mother has lupus. So Hunham is stuck with six students in the company of cook, Mary Lamb. This is an unacknowledged remake of "The Browning Version" though-- see the real thing. Hunham is very strict, very traditional, and very repressed. Angus, one of the students, is extroverted, rich, rebellious, and rude. Of course they end up spending a lot of time together (the other boys are shuffled off to a ski-trip with one of the other rich boys' father). And of course, Hunham learns to be less repressed, and Angus learns something about life. It's all very fresh and intriguing for the most part, well-acted, and evocative. Until... was this ending pasted on? It seems out of character with the rest of the story. It seems contrived. There's still a bit of fun, as in the way Angus plays along with Hunham when he meets a fellow Harvard alumnus. But the scenes with Angus' parents are not fun at all: too predictable and, as I said, contrived to provide some punch to an ending that threatened to merely end elegantly. Not as radiantly awful as "Dead Poet's Society" but still a kludge. All the more pitiable because "Holdovers" has elements of a fine film and a good character study. And I have endless appreciation for the fact that it was filmed after a real snow storm at Fairhaven High School in Massachusetts. Yes, the snow is real, and it looks it: beautiful. The soundtrack is also exceptional, featuring nary a single hip-hop or rap song. Mostly guitar-based folk, including a Cat Stevens tune.
Paul Giamatti, Joy Randolph Da'Vine, Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston, Brady Hepner, Ian Dolley, Michael Provost, Jim Kaplan, Andrew Garmen
The character of Frank Horrigan, at the end, walks a gauntlet of admiring, cheering, adoring political aides, reporters, hotel staff-- everyone-- with gestures of just how much he rejects this tripe. But the character of Frank Horrigan is created by Clint Eastwood and Wolfgang Peterson and they, while outwardly seeming to admire his modesty, have conspicuously staged this scene in order to have it both ways. We heap contempt on your cheap adulation but we make sure everyone sees it and knows it's there. You would think, that by 1993, the ridiculous mechanism by which Frank is the one who saves the president, requiring a massive pretzel twist to an already strained plot, would be too much for audiences but no, here it is, in it's full perverse glory. Because everyone else minimizes the risk to the president, because everyone else doesn't believe in the reality of evil, because everyone else doesn't have hornet in his crotch that Frank has. On the plus side, there is some fun with the assassin: he's wordy and smart and plays sophomoric mind-games with Frank. That fun is undermined at every turn with the even more tired cliché of the hot, smart, sexy Secret Service agent (Rene Russo, 39) who falls for the 63-year-old washed up Secret Service agent (mandatory retirement age: 52), Frank (who is famous for failing to protect President Kennedy in Dallas - he was in the follow-up car). And here is another "having it both ways": the movie makes it clear that, in fact, Frank could not have prevented Kennedy's assassination in any case. Thus we get the drama of Franks self-castigation and his search for redemption, plus we don't have to actually believe he did anything to deserve it. And that's what makes him so appealing to younger women, I guess. More bad news: the Secret Service "offered its full cooperation" in the making of this movie. Because they wanted to ensure factual accuracy, I'll bet.
Clint Eastwood, Rene Russo, John Malcovich, Dylan McDermott, Gary Cole, Fred Thompson, John Machoney, Jim Curley
In the late 1990's a schoolteacher, Mary Katherine Schmitz Letourneau, famously was charged and convicted of 2nd Degree Rape for a sexual relationship she had with an eighth grade student, Vili Fualaau. Fualaau always-- until after Letourneau's death from cancer in 2019-- insisted the relationship was consensual, but, under the law, it is technically rape, and no regard is given to the genders of the couple. "May December" is not a depiction of that event but it is clearly inspired by it, using the device of having an actress, Elizabeth, come to visit Gracie and Joe in order to absorb details about Gracie to be incorporated into her performance in a movie about the scandal. As Roger Ebert observed about a particular film, everyone in this story has a personal agenda, things they wish to conceal, and things they wish people knew about them (whether true or not), and that includes Elizabeth who is hardly a reliable observer. She follows Gracie around for a few days, meets with her father and with other individuals involved in the story (sometimes to the discomfort of Gracie), and seems rather indifferent to any impact the movie might have the lives of the real people it portrays. When challenged, especially by Gracie and Joe's daughter, Mary, about the harms the film might do, she responds with the usual Hollywood canard about people having the opportunity to tell their story, so people can learn something about life. But she is also smart enough to avoid a head-on confrontation over the issue. It is clear that she is more interested in improving her own performance than in any consequences the film might have. As in real life, as he gets older, Joe has mixed feelings about the relationship with Gracie, and begins to realize how manipulated he may have been. Gracie, who seems utterly blind to the element of exploitation, demands of him, "who was in control?". She claims that he seduced her! This film is remarkably smart about the issues involved, and how the fundamental good sense we have about these relationships can prevail even when the flawed people involved seem, on the face of it, to insist otherwise.
Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Chris Tenzis, Charles Melton, Andrea Frankle, Gabriel Chung, Elizabeth Yu, D. W. Moffett, Christopher Nguyen
We have the oddly authentic recreation of a period, with lavish costumes and props and crowds, but with a ridiculously uneven hodgepodge of dramatic expression. At one moment, Joan is a millennial, struggling to articulate her feelings, weepy and shy and upset at her friends who send armies to her campaigns anymore. Other times, she tries to be the devout, head-strong agent of God's judgement upon the English, raining fury upon the insolent armies that defile her hold France. Is it Milla Jovovich's completely misjudged rendering, or Besson's absurd but daring concepts that misfire here? Hard to tell. What we have is a spectacular misfire, with scenes of power and magic and then unbelievably bad scenes of banal conversations and unhistorical incidents. The major plot points acknowledge the historical record and then proceed to make shit up whenever it suits the film-makers to do so, to jazz up the action. To begin with, Joan's sister was not raped and murdered by Burgundian soldiers, and Couchon was not nearly as generous to her or genuinely concerned about her well-being as portrayed here. But some of the battle scenes are compelling, and Joan's interactions with her captains and Charles have life to them because the roles are generally rich in dimension-- even if some of the French ridiculously speak English with a French accent. But then there is Dustin Hoffman playing some kind of imaginary mentor or "conscience" who argues with Joan about the validity of her mission, and whether the voices she hears were really from God and not from her own delusions. Hoffman is terrible and he makes Jovovich look terrible and the dialogue is terrible. Whatever is compelling about that moment-- and it is potentially extremely compelling-- it all melts away in the face of Hoffman's flat, mumbling, platitudinous hectoring and Jovovich's mumbling, self-pitying response, which just doesn't resonate with anything we know about Joan.
Milla Jovovich, Dustin Hoffman, David Baille, David Barber, Christian Bergner, Vincent Cassel, Faye Dunaway, Christian Erickson, David Gant, Michael Jenn, John Malkovich, Carl McCrystal, Richard Ridings, Timothy West
Arthur Miller directs movies more like television shows than any other director of his era. "The Out of Towners" is quintessential. It is well-lit, smoothly presented, and efficient, and not really very film- like. It has a lot of aesthetic of a sitcom. George Kellerman has an important appointment with the New York office of his company which he anticipates will lead to a promotion to Vice-President of Sales. The position will provide him with lavish benefits and doubled salary. His wife accompanies him on a flight to New York which can't land due to heavy air traffic and then bad weather conditions: they are dropped in Boston from which he would be able to access train transportation to New York, if he can get to the train station on time. What he doesn't know is that public services in New York, including transportation and garbage collection, are all on strike, and he neglected to request that the Waldorf-Astoria hold his room after 10:00 because he was late. He and Gwen are tricked into a robbery, hi-jacked in a police car, robbed again in Central Park, mobbed by protestors, and so on: just one horrible incident after another, all while George takes names and threatens to sue everyone he blames for their circumstances. Lemmon is hilarious as George, hyper-driven, outraged, determined, and clearly neurotic. Sandy Dennis plays Gwen, his wife, as patient and loyal, but to a limit. The fun is in the relative believability of all this misfortunes that befall them, and the credible performances of the various hotel clerks, transportation staff, police, and crooks they encounter along the way. Neil Simon is Neil Simon but I give the movie extra points for at least being written by a real writer who builds a character and writes witty, interesting dialogue, and I note that it was written for the screen, not adapted from a play, and it shows.
Jack Lemmon, Sandy Dennis, Anne Meara, Ann Prentiss, Phillip Burns, Ron Carey, Carlos Montalban, Robert Walden, Paul Dooley
The projectionist, having lost his girl after being blamed for a stolen watch, fantasizes becoming a great detective and projects himself into a film about a great detective. Typically (of Keaton), the story is a set-up for many fantastically inventive routines of silent film, mostly structured around a chase. Yes, Keaton gets a bit predictable in that sense, but his stunts and sequences are so beautifully realized-- and often stunning-- that you forgive the repetitive modes. There is no doubt as well that a good deal of fascination is due to the fact that all of the stunts are "practical"-- they are real, and dangerous, and magnificent. Of course he is proven innocent, and of course he gets the girl, but that's all beside the point. No current digital extravaganza can match the entrancing experience of watching real actors and real trains and cars and so on executing brilliantly choreographed sequences like this. I do note that Chaplin was better at integrating a compelling storyline ("Gold Rush", "City Lights") into his films than Keaton.
Buster Keaton, Joe Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Erwin Connelly, Ward Crane, Jane Connelly, Kewpie Morgan, Ford West
Trudy Kockenlocker-- out of heartfelt generosity and patriotism-- decides to spend a night out dancing with the boys who are about to be sent overseas. But her dad, the local constable, disapproves, so she sets up her friend and hopeless suitor Norval to say he is taking her out to the movies and lend her his car so she sneak to the dance. She bumps her head and gradually discovers that she is married-- but can't remember to whom. Worse, she discovers that she's pregnant. This unleashes a wild sequence of events that eventually involve the entire town, and more, at a time when an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was a huge scandal, especially in small-town America. Relentlessly paced, funny, and crisp, "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" is an oddity. It's profoundly irreverent and occasionally dark, cynical, and sometimes broad (no shortage of pratfalls) but always funny. And sometimes surprisingly transgressive. At one point, Kockenlocker thanks someone for a favor with "that's awfully white of you". If you haven't seen some of the other films involving the principals, it's also pretty fresh.
Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn, William Demarest, Eddie Bracken, Porter Hall, Emory Parnell, Julius Tannen, Victor Potel, Julius Tannen, Brian Donlevy
All Contents Copyright Bill Van Dyk 2017 All Rights Reserved
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