In theaters for this coming Tuesday we have a bio of Emily Brontë, the spiritual journey of a Christian hippy, and a pair of psychotic bears (see above). I vetoed the Ant superhero movie — Paul Rudds me the wrong way — and L probably saved us both by vetoing what appears to be a bungling new attempt at Marlowe.
What we have seen hasn’t been that great, either. Here are two blurbs:
80 For Brady **½ This is not a good movie despite its 53 on Metacritic. For $5 you get some great actors (Fonda, Fields, Tomlin, Moreno, and Harry “Clash of the Titans” Hamlin) and a few laffs. There are one or two scenes that are well put together, but it is mostly mush. For the L&D guide to Metacritic scores, see our earlier post on giving free passes to novelty movies and tv-to-theater productions that “fans of the genre will love.” Extra half star for Guy Fieri.
A Man Called Otto ** It was a not a big decision for a Man Called Otto. Let’s just say that L&D agree to disagree on this one. Tom Hanks isn’t a credible grump. And when is the last time it was sunny in Pittburgh during the winter?
While enjoying Mr. Butler’s most recent offering as star of Plane, I continued thinking about his credits as Producer.
LnD first noticed this role in his thriller Angel Has Fallen and so I was intrigued. Butler’s first major Producing credit came in 2009’s Law Abiding Citizen. That film cost $50 million and grossed $128 million worldwide. That’s a healthy start to a producing career. However, Butler isn’t a nominal Producer. He’s a role up your sleeves, develop the script, choose the cast and director type of Producer.
And it shows. The films he makes seem on the surface to be straight to streaming affairs. But as you watch them, you notice the craftwork and talent involved. For example, I was really enjoying some of the cinematography in Plane. There were these artistic shots, contemplative ones, that broke up the action. It showed a concern for and understanding of pacing. Would it surprise you, as it has me, that the film was shot by Cinematographer Brendan Galvin, Irish Society of Cinematographers, who lensed the classic, The Crying Game?
I watched a 15 minute behind the scenes video of Plane on YouTube and it reaffirmed my feeling. Every character, no matter how small a part, has developed a backstory for themselves. None of the players here are just phoning in their performance. Mike Colter, who plays Gaspar, an accused murderer and French Foreign Legion vet, has got all of the conflicting aspects of his character and those of Captain Brodie Torrance played by Butler, down pat. Even though his character is involved in some of the most gratuitous and even absurd violence, since, well since Violent Night, there is a lot of depth to the performance in the scenes where Colter can show his dramatic range.
As an involved Producer, Butler is tuned in to the story. He is thinking about what happened before and what is going to happen next. He works as a creative partner to the Director. It’s effective, because he chose the director in the first place. They have been partners on the film from its inception. It’s a chemistry that translates to the big screen. And on that note, I encourage you to watch Plane on as big a screen as possible. Not because the special effects are great, they are not. But because you want to watch the true pathos in these performances come through in as epic a way as possible.
A Man Called Otto is an old school After School Special for adults. Handily Directed by Marc Foster of Quantum of Solace, Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland fame, the film never feels like it’s breaking new ground, yet each vignette carries the story along. I found myself entertained from moment to moment and before I knew it, the ride of Otto was over. Interestingly, some of the imagery and situations that were depicted have stayed with me, even several days after watching the movie. There was a lot to process though at the time everything seemed innocent enough.
The inclusivity aspects of the story at times feel forced and stretch to the point the story enters, “suspend your disbelief” territory. And so we are simultaneously and ironically once again looking at the white savior narrative trope. Yet overall, the film works. It’s because the audience wants it to work. A lot of this has to do with Tom Hanks. In this film, thankfully, he doesn’t start out good, continue to be good and end good. Don’t remind me about Sully. The Otto character has a great narrative arc. When the classic curmudgeon says, “I’m not unfriendly”, it’s a laugh out loud moment in the theater. This film delivers several of those. And the supporting stories: the immigrant family, the insidious real estate speculators, the stricken and neglected neighbors, even an abandoned cat! They all work in shoring up the main narrative; how Otto got to be this way and what can be done about it.
The more I think about it, the more I really enjoyed this film. It sort of develops this fantastic world but there is a lot of truth in it and in what it’s ultimately trying to say. Your life isn’t over unless you think it is. And in life, empathy can take you much further than bitterness. I hope you all get to catch this one.
I had always heard of the films of WKW but his oeuvre lived in a blind spot in my viewing. Recently the Criterion Collection released a box set of his films on Blu-ray. The visual style of the films are lush. The dark colors are heavy, crushed. As a viewer you are completely sucked in. Not dissimilar to an experience I had sitting in front of a Rothko for 25 minutes in the Seagram Murals room or what I call the Red Room of the Tate Britain in London. It’s mesmerizing, transcendent and a little scary. You need to re-calibrate to reality afterwards — but it’s never quite the same. In the case of WKW, now you know how beautiful a film can actually be.
The collaboration of WKW and Cinematographer Christopher Doyle is now legendary. Doyle, an Aussie who lived in Hong Kong and spoke fluent Cantonese worked hand in glove with WKW. He is featured prominently in behind the scenes documentaries in the Criterion set. However, years ago I had seen a BBC doc in which he walked the audience through Hong Kong. Describing how, for example, certain streets or lights from buildings inspired his style. It’s not surprising that in both directing and cinematography the craft of these films is derived from the surrounding world. Consider that the inspiration for one film, Happy Together, came from a lamp that long time WKW Art Director and Editor William Chang found at a local shop in Buenos Aires.
Which leads us to WKW’s directing style. As Western filmmakers, at my grad school, UCLA and in my own role as a teacher, I have always followed the rule, been told and taught that the script is the Bible. And on large productions this holds true. All the department heads look to the script to help find clues to or straight up answer questions. No stranger to this method, WKW had 50 TV & Film screenwriter credits before he directed his first film. But his own directing method is antithetical to this. He works 100 percent from improvisation. It takes many months to complete his films. The actors have time to sink into their roles, costumes, movements — their world. Curious about this method, also shared to an extent by Wenders and Fellini, I tried it myself on my last film. The way to pull it off is to be working with smart actors who have great ability to pivot depending on what’s happening. Actors with great intuition and ability to go with the flow. Sure, there are adjustments from the Director, notes. But setting the scene, creating the environment, is the main job of the Director when working this way. WKW was certainly one of the most successful —and intense— Directors to achieve results with this method. Combined with the visual style, he tapped into raw human emotion and created a parallel reality in front of the camera.
— If you’d like to experience this reality firsthand, then head over to The 602 Club in Appleton, Wisconsin. I’ll be screening In the Mood for Love on Blu-ray on Friday, January 13th.
Too scared to venture out on our own, L&D turns to a guest reviewer from our friend and Reuben expert, Tommy Bergler, soon to be proud owner of the coveted L&D tee!
In these days of escapism, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Baz Luhrmann, and the insane CGI of Avatar, whichever version we are on, Darren Aronofsky brings a different view.
The first film I saw of Aronofsky’s is Pi, and just let’s leave it at his is a special oeuvre, to be savored at the right time and with the right people, and with a certain expectation. His work is not light. It is not flighty. It is not a cream puff of a film, to be swallowed and for the sugar rush to give you a pleasant warm hug all over. Aronofsky flays you. He turns you upside down. He isn’t afraid to dig in.
To truly see how challenging he can be with your vulerabilties, and make you uncomfortable. I noted that when the lights came up on The Whale, the audience I was with, all middle-aged white Brooklynites from Park Slope, Ft Greene, and Dumbo, got up and left and there were a smattering of what I distinctly heard were really uncomfortable laughs.
To say that this was Brendan Fraser’s greatest cinematic performance is an understatement. I remember watching Fraser opposite Pauly Shore back in the 90’s as an unfrozen Cro Magnon specimen in modern day Encino (Encino Man was the title of this great film), and this film shattered all opinions I previously had of Fraser.
The Whale is set in Idaho in the late fall of 2016, when Fraser, who portrays a brilliant though mortally emotionally damaged, kind, and sensitive man named Charlie, who realizes he is quickly dying, and seeks to reconcile with his estranged daughter Ellie, played by Sadie Sink (Stranger Things). Along the way, this ensemble piece, originally written as a play, shows us the relationships Charlie has with his friend Liz (Hon Chau), who is also a nurse, and who is his closest friend, as well as Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a complex young man with some familial estrangement issues.
Look, there are moments in this film when I was desperately uncomfortable and even disgusted. Aronofsky has a talent for challenging the audience. But I was prepared for what I was going to see, and I enjoyed it. My wife, however, was not amused nor entertained. So let me just offer that it’s not necessarily a “date night” movie. The play — yes, it’s a film, but really, it’s a play — takes you on a psychological journey through the valley of despair but rest assured that Aronofsky doesn’t leave you there in that chasm, there is redemption “at the end.” So go see it if you’re interested in taking that journey and see a tour de force performance by the actor previously known for playing Tarzan the Ape Man.
I was so uncomfortable during Amsterdam. It was so self-indulgent. I was wondering when it would end. It never seemed to end, though it had long past had anything to say. It was just in love with saying things.
I wondered what this film would have been like with a halfway decent Director. Then was surprised to learn that it was directed by David O. Russell. It was beautifully shot but some of the shots seemed unsteady, not the greatest. Except the Director of Photography turns out to be one of the greatest, Emmanuel Lubezki. The cast was just a powerhouse of talent. Though they seemed unsure, stepping on each others lines, seemingly uncertain of what to say next. One actor gave the world’s flatest performance. Didn’t the Director notice? Was his note to act like a piece of wet cardboard?
It was a beautiful film, though. It’s too bad that you can’t just hang each frame in a museum and admire them without the rest. Maybe watch it with the sound off? Even still, there were a few great lines: Are you with someone because you choose them or because you need them? And…If you’ve had your heart broken, well it just means that you were living. Kudos to Russell for some depth there.
This film, which takes place in the 1930s had a certain haunting nostalgia. Meanwhile, the protagonist was doing a major Columbo rip-off. Yet there was no homage to Columbo which could save this film. Like the infamous Jerry Krause, the General Manager who broke up the Michael Jordan era Chicago Bulls, this film didn’t know how to get out of its own way. And maybe we should be grateful because I don’t think there would have been a dry eye in the house if they could have figured it out and pulled it off.
Meanwhile, I was also able to watch Paul Dano’s 2018 Wildlife starring Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ed Oxenbould. Also a period piece, this time from 1960 but with a distinct 1930s flavor. The film’s compositions owed much to Hopper and his isosceles trapezoids, which you can read about in Mark Strand’s Hopper. And Hopper’s light as well. It certainly felt like a depression-era story. And yet, a timeless story. Not nostalgic and unrelatable like Amsterdam’s fever dream. More like the slow burning forest fires that always menace these characters from a far off yet not impossibly distant place. Wildlife is a domestic nightmare, seen from the eyes of its 14 year old protagonist. There is no sledgehammer voiceover here, like in Amsterdam, telling you what to think. The story is told visually. In close-ups of cigar smoking. In tracking shots revealing the sunrise. In fantastic vistas of ever expanding, majestic mountains. It’s an allegory about pride and desperation and it never feels distant. If you get a chance to see Wildfire, it’s well worth the emotional deep dive.
I enjoyed The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry but you probably won’t. …This is a film that has a lot of continuity problems. But if you are willing to suspend disbelief (a film phrase right up there with diagetic space, persistence of vision and the martini shot) then you might enjoy it, too.
Here’s an example. For starters the story is specific to New England, yet the accent is only discernible briefly in one character, in one scene. What gives? On an isolated island like this people wouldn’t talk like they were emerging from an LA nightclub. And I could go on and on. On the other hand, who cares. Not really me, it turns out. This movie has a lot of heart, a lot of spirit, it’s intriguing at times and laugh out loud funny a lot. …So why was the theatre empty? What do people want? More The Ring knock offs? (Smile, I’m frowning at you.) …To ask the question is to answer it, as D would say.
Well, you know what? They can have all the cheap jump scares they can handle. I’ll stick to the unlikely but still thought-provoking and interesting movies on this side of the megaplex, thank you.
There were quite a few horror films to chose from this week: Smile, Invitation, Barbarian…Bullet Train. At some point I’ll stop picking on Bullet Train but I can’t get those two hours back so I’m still processing how bad it was. Why are there so many horror films out there? It’s always been a popular genre. Back in my Hollywood days, I even shot one as a Cinematographer, The Unbidden. It got crushed. I read one review and I think I stopped reading reviews of my own work after that. Too painful. On another horror feature I shot, I did film the death of someone who was killed by asphyxiation, with a plastic bag, at night, at a bus stop in Little Tokyo, Downtown LA. I was shooting while standing on a ladder at the time…above the stream of critiques.
But you’re here to read about See How They Run. It’s an original script based on the longest running play in the world, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, in London’s West End. The Mousetrap is circa 28,000 performances at this point. Twenty. Eight. Thousand.
So it took a little something to bring a version of this play, that isn’t this play, to the cinema in a fresh way. I think the film succeeds in that venture, at least cinematically, with a mix of aspect ratios and vertical and horizontal split screens —almost an homage to Wes Anderson. It’s literate, with a voice over by a narrator. It’s loosely a film within a film and a play within a play. The acting is strong, though constrained, by design. Obviously, there is a murder. But the killer fails to take the tongue out of the victim’s mouth…though they tried to do that. It’s not totally clear why but that attempted action is about as gory as this film gets. It seems that we have, as a society, become at least somewhat immune to this type of sadism. I was told that the new Dahmer series on Netflix, “doesn’t really show anything.” Well, besides the severed head in the fridge in episode 1? No severed heads here, rest easy. No one is living in the basement torturing people. Brad Pitt doesn’t pretend to be acting. Nothing like that. It’s just a smart, entertaining movie that perhaps isn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread but certainly checks the box for a fun evening of solid entertainment.
This film is structured like a The Princess Bride for adults. Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is having apparitions in the most awkward of situations—though I imagine this circumstance would always be a bit unsettling. However, she’s a hard-nosed scientist, a PhD in Narratology (the study of the structure and function of stories) and on a lecture tour in Turkey. She doesn’t have time for ghosts…or ghost stories. She has read them all…in their original Greek. Except that a djinn named Djinn (Idris Elba) who she unwittingly releases from a bottle she picked up at the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, has other genie-like ideas. And since he manifests as a giant who takes up her entire hotel suite, he is a little hard to ignore. Djinn’s stories include battle scenes, castle intrigue, a dash of Orientalism and some humor based on corpulent people — I mean laugh out loud, squirm in your seat humor. The film is entertaining. It’s frankly a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be. It’s also expertly directed by George Miller, who you know from the Mad Max films and Babe: Pig in the City.
There are some plot elements that are obvious and telegraphed but the point of the film is the journey and the theme. The theme being, not dissimilar from Life of Pi. That a world culture that has given up on myths, stories and legends, will be quite a sterile, ignorant and terrified one. There is another great scene with Dr. Binnie’s xenophobic neighbors. An elderly female couple. It’s not clear what their relationship is to one another but in the vein of The Muppet Show’s Statler and Waldorf they are disturbingly hilarious balcony dwelling trolls. One of the zingers from this geriatric set include calling the good Dr. a fuckface, which puts a comedic point on their true character.
On the whole, I was surprised and impressed with Three Thousand Years of Longing. I can’t tell whether it is that it’s such a great movie, but considering the absolute dogs, like Bullet Train to name one, that we have been subjecting ourselves to, I found it an intelligent, funny and welcome reprieve.
Executive Producer and Actor John Boyega, of Star Wars sequel trilogy fame, gives a strong performance as Brian Brown-Easly, an Iraq war veteran who is suffering from PTSD. Lance Cpl. Easly is apparently not taking his medication and like many, does not have the financial, legal or emotional tools to deal with the injustice he is facing at the Veterans Administration. The film is based on a true story. And according to the credits, to this day the VA still owes him $892 dollars and an apology for siphoning this sum from his Wells Fargo account.
There are times when I wonder why a film got a green light to be produced. Usually though, this thought is triggered by a bloated Hollywood production where the actors are just phoning it in and having what feels like an elaborate inside joke. Here, it’s the opposite, a long list of no doubt earnest Executive Producers couldn’t catch the obvious or speak truth to power — the film is too literal, there is no strong foil, there is no real conflict, therefore this is no enduring drama that can sustain itself for 100 minutes. No there, there.
The classic heist film like Dog Day Afternoon was also based on a true story but you’d be hard-pressed to forget Pacino outside the bank with a crowd of onlookers yelling, ”At-ti-ca!, At-ti-ca!”. A reference to the New York State prison and the riot that occurred there, which killed 43 people. This scene was improvised on the spot by Pacino. …It’s a movie.
The filmmakers seem to want to stay as true to the real story as possible. In that case, this film should have been given to the immediate family as a gift and to the VA as a cautionary tale. But a movie audience expects and deserves more. The filmmakers were trapped by the truth. That’s not something that is easily forgiven in a narrative film.
The real difficulty here is that once Michael Kenneth Williams shows up, there is at least a modicum of possibility that this film will take off like a rocket. That all of the introspection and endless phone call scenes will simply be a setup for some spectacular, powerful, even funny action. But it never materializes. Even Kafka has a powerful ending in The Trial. In Breaking, it’s like watching a game winning pass drop out of a receivers hands in the end zone…in super slow motion.
As for the late great Michael Kenneth Williams, even with both hands tied behind his back, he still lights up the screen and owns every scene he is in. It was like the filmmakers chose to overlook a diamond in a mine to stare instead into the abyss of an empty cinema.
L&D Report 