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If you sliced one of my arteries, the blood that flowed would be the color of burnt orange. I am a diehard Texas Longhorn fan and no one was more excited watching that nationally televised game Sunday night as I. But, at the same time, I can't help but wonder about a Texas defense that gave up 47 points at home, squandered a 17-point lead and never did stop Notre Dame's running game or its screen passes. I also remember last October when Texas achieved another "signature" win, an upset victory of Oklahoma and I'm still crushed about how last season turned out. Not good. So unlike just about everyone else who prepares one of these polls, I'm not ready yet to bless the Longhorns as a top 25 team. I want to see a few more victories first, especially some more convincing ones.
My preseason rank is in parenthesis.
1. Alabama 1-0 (1)
2. Ohio State 1-0 (4)
3. Clemson 1-0 (2)
4. Florida State 1-0 (8)
5. Stanford 1-0 (5)
6. Michigan 1-0 (9)
7. Houston 1-0 (15)
8. Oklahoma 0-1 (3)
9. Baylor 1-0 (13)
10. Georgia 1-0 (20)
11. Tennessee 1-0 (10)
12. Wisconsin 1-0 (24)
13. TCU 1-0 (12)
14. Mississippi 0-1 (6)
15. LSU 0-1 (7)
16. Oklahoma State 1-0 (21)
17. Washington 1-0 (25)
18. Michigan State 1-0 (11)
19. Iowa 1-0 (22)
20. Louisville 1-0 (NR)
21. Utah 1-0 (NR)
22. Texas A&M 1-0 (NR)
23. Notre Dame 0-1 (14)
24. Oregon 1-0 (19)
25. Arkansas 1-0 (16)
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Monday, September 5, 2016
This week's DVD releases
Love and Friendship ***½
Lady Susan was written as a series of letters when Austen was still shy of 20; its heroine is unusual for this author in that she’s something of a villain. As played with sly fire by Kate Beckinsale, Lady Susan Vernon is closer to a Restoration Era minx than a proper Regency gentrywoman. Recently widowed of an older and unloved husband, Lady Susan is on the prowl for a new catch through the drawing rooms of London and the country mansions of the aristocracy. She’s a notorious scandal, but she has more than enough beauty and charm to compensate.
And she has prospects, even though most of them don’t know it yet. There’s the rakish Lord Mainwaring (Lochlann O’Mearáin), but he’s inconveniently married. There’s the profoundly idiotic Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) — more about him later. And there’s the young and ardent Reginald De Courcy, the brother-in-law of Lady Susan’s brother-in-law, who’s played by Xavier Samuel in what can only be called a spirit of Early Firth.
To add to the confusion, Lady Susan has a teenage daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark), gentle, pure-hearted, and good. Her mother has no idea what to make of her. Love & Friendship introduces all these characters with droll visual cameos at the start and then proceeds to play mix-and-match. Reginald is dazzled by Lady Susan — to the diplomatic horror of his family — but is the daughter his true partner in temperament and morals? Sir James is besotted with Frederica, but his title, riches, and general stupidity make him attractive to the mother as well.
Sniping from the sidelines is Lady Susan’s closest confidante, Alicia Johnson (Chlöe Sevigny), a visiting American whose stuffy husband (the great Stephen Fry) is worried that she’s spending too much time with the temptress and who keeps threatening to pack her back to the wilds of Connecticut. ("You could be scalped!" cries Lady Susan.)
The novella brought us into the minds of these characters through the letters they wrote; Love & Friendship, by contrast, dramatizes their interactions. More properly, Stillman comedicizes them, fascinated by the way true intent can be expressed, gleaned, implied, or end-run through the polite clockwork of social conversation. Because so little can be directly said in Austen’s universe, the art and endless pleasure comes from the ways in which people speak their minds and hearts indirectly, until such time as they can no longer box up their emotions and all is revealed in a climactic blurt — Darcy declaring his love for Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice being the classic example.
So Love & Friendship is a film to make an action fan tear his or her hair out; it’s all walking and talking. But what talking! Of her friend Alicia, Susan says, "She has none of the uncouthness one expects of Americans but all of the candor"; of Alicia’s husband, she murmurs sympathetically, "too old to be governable, too young to die." Beckinsale rises to a splendid occasion, making us privy to Lady Susan’s manipulations while presenting a glamorous front that blinds all of the men. The women, of course, see everything.
The performances are uniformly excellent, but pride of place goes to Bennett’s Sir James, an upper class twit of Pythonesque proportions. Rarely has a character this moronic been this happy. Pushing his vegetables around a plate, Sir James crows, "Tiny green balls! What do you call them?" ("Peas," replies a perplexed Reginald.)
Love & Friendship accomplishes miracles on a meager budget; only the makeup seems out of place every so often, with Beckinsale looking unaccountably tan for a Regency aristocrat. The film ends, too, not with an Austenesque bang — order restored and all in its place — but with a reasonably satisfying whimper. Stillman is less interested in punishing the bad here than in honoring the good. That’s more than good enough.
A Bigger Splash ***
In A Bigger Splash, everyone is still gorgeous, the camera still captures scenes from unexpected angles and the images still radiate an unnatural splendor — you want to jump into the screen. But the tone is different, the subject matter more specific and the energy is inverted. I Am Love built to a crescendo of a woman’s spiritual and physical liberation; A Bigger Splash is a gradual sink into a swamp of moral quandaries and ambiguities, an exhilarating, sensual downer.
The premise is simple: The rock star Marianne (Swinton) is recuperating from throat surgery and has come to Pantelleria to vacation with her boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts, who looks like Viggo Mortensen’s younger, hunkier brother). Marianne is under doctor’s orders not to speak for two weeks, so the couple spends their time sunbathing nude, having sex and slathering each other’s bodies with sea mud, all things that don’t require much talking.
Then Marianne’s ex, the record producer Harry (Ralph Fiennes), calls to say he’s vacationing on the island with his daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson) and could they all get together? Paul acquiesces with furrowed brow. Father and daughter grab spare bedrooms in the mansion the couple was renting. Marianne and Paul’s romantic getaway has become an extended get-together with friends, although they still manage to squeeze in some private sexy time here and there.
But Harry, who seems a little too animated and happy, begins to commandeer the vacation. One day, while the group is chilling indoors, he starts dancing to the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue and becomes so enraptured by the music that he winds up outside, reaching to the sky, gyrating with such wild, spastic energy you wonder if he’s praying to some pagan god. In this scene, as in several others, Fiennes goes so far over the top he comes back around the other end; you have never seen this side (or so much) of him.
His daughter Penelope is the opposite, a cool, observant beauty with cruel eyes who always seems to be working out some kind of plan inside her head. "My trouble is that I fall in love with every pretty thing," she tells Paul with such disingenuous innocence that you wonder why she didn’t think to be sucking on a lollipop when she said it.
Through quick flashbacks, the movie gives us just enough details to understand the nature of Marianne and Harry’s former relationship, how it contrasts to their current state and why Harry wants her back. Emotional schisms begin to form (the island, we are told, is filled with volcanoes); snakes literally start slithering across the vacation home’s outdoor deck, like serpents in the garden; the TV blares news reports about hungry Tunisian refugees making landfall; a strange tension begins to coil underneath the movie’s ravishing beauty.
A Bigger Splash was inspired by the 1969 French drama La Piscine, in which Alain Delon and Romy Schneider played the vacationing couple. But Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich expand on the original film, pulling the material in different directions. The movie is filled with indelible, throwaway little moments: Harry and his daughter getting a little carried away (ahem) while singing at a karaoke bar; the world's creamiest, most appetizing ricotta; an anecdote recalling the worst suicide note ever; a car hurtling down a highway at unsafe speed during a rainstorm; a meal at a mountainside restaurant that makes you want to hop on a plane and fly there right now; a police detective (Corrado Guzzanti) pausing his investigation to compliment Marianne on her purse.
In its last half-hour, A Bigger Splash becomes a specific kind of story, and it’s not as pleasurable or strange as what preceded it: It makes you long for the earlier hedonism. But maybe that’s the point. Guadagnino is a bit of a prankster, and even when he’s being dead serious (such as a long overhead shot depicting some suspenseful business that stretches on without cutting away, making you catch your breath), he’s showing off, too.
Guadagnino is preparing to direct a remake of Suspiria as his next project (Swinton and Johnson are on board to star), and that may well turn out to be his masterpiece, a delirious horror movie wild enough to accommodate his lavish, outsized vision. He is a filmmaker incapable of crafting a boring shot, and he has a devilish sense of humor, too. He casts Swinton, one of the best actors on the planet, in his film and then barely lets her speak. When she does, it’s mostly in raspy croaks — except for a moment in which she has to scream.
The Meddler **½
For Lori, this means it’s time to "set some boundaries," which prompts Marnie to visit her daughter’s therapist. When her daughter travels to New York for work, Marnie sets her sights on other potential beneficiaries, including a friend of Lori’s, played in an amusing turn by Cecily Strong, who never got the storybook wedding she wanted, and an Apple store clerk (Jerrod Carmichael) who is considering law school.
Just when you think Marnie’s grating, un-self-aware Lady Bountiful act couldn’t get more patronizing, The Meddler morphs into something tender, even poignant. What at first looks like a massive case of overcompensation and denial instead becomes a portrait of loneliness, unresolved grief and a courageously persistent generosity of spirit.
The Meddler is a movie of modest charms. It unfolds as a series of vignettes rather than a structural whole; it has a tendency to feel schematic and forced, such as in a bit involving the Apple store guy and one of his relatives that feels like a gratuitous non sequitur. Scafaria — who made her directorial debut in 2012 with Seeking a Friend for the End of the World — doesn’t have the ease or rhythmic command of such peers as Noah Baumbach or Nicole Holofcener. But she does evoke a yielding, expansive tone that pleasantly ambushes viewers who reflexively expect the worst for the slightly out-of-it Marnie.
Once the accent settles in, Sarandon delivers a spirited, brash performance as a woman just coming into consciousness about how she’s really feeling (other than the "just great" she repeats like a chirpy mantra). And she’s ably supported by Byrne, who exudes flustered sympathy as a young woman sorting out her own jumble of mixed feelings, and J.K. Simmons, who channels his inner Sam Elliott to become a seductively persuasive love interest.
It’s been an interesting season for upper-middle-aged women in cinema: No sooner was Helen Mirren literally and figuratively commanding the military thriller Eye in the Sky than Sally Field made the best of a ditheringly thankless role in Hello, My Name Is Doris. Sarandon’s Marnie is a welcome addition to that field, a woman whose instincts may not be entirely foolproof but wind up creating their own kind of luck. What seems cringe-worthy at first in The Meddler winds up as a warm, forgiving embrace — of the movie’s characters and viewers, as well.
Money Monster **
One of the scarier impressions created by Jodie Foster's peppy, upright film is that more people may take their financial advice from a guy like Clooney's cynical, clown-like Lee Gates — who issues glib pronouncements on the market while enacting pranks and showing clips from monster and horror films — than from more sober-minded analysts. Too rich himself to even care anymore, Gates has made finance into just one more branch of the entertainment industry, where any misguided predictions can just be tossed aside and forgotten like yesterday's bad joke.
Unfortunately for him this time, a fan who has taken his advice too much to heart decides to exact revenge. Working-class stiff Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) has lost all his money — $60,000 — based on Gates' enthusiasm for an outfit called Ibis Clear Capital, whose stock has just tanked overnight. About 10 minutes into the film, Kyle manages to slip into the studio and suddenly has Gates looking like an ISIS captive, ready to be blown up in front of a worldwide audience if Kyle doesn't like what comes out of the older man's mouth. Much better to be victimized by Ibis than ISIS, the TV pundit might have quipped.
The unsteady Gates has an advantage in being equipped with a virtually invisible earpiece, which allows producer Patty Fenn (Roberts) to feed him instructions and advice on what to say and how to behave. At first, of course, they have to play ball with Kyle, to figure out what he really wants and how he reacts. As he seismically conveyed in the British prison drama Starred Up three years back, O'Connell is great at conveying bottled-up anger as well as its shocking release. Part of the problem in the script by Jamie Linden, Alan DiFiore and Jim Kouf is that Kyle explodes at the beginning and, having shot the works, soon lets his anger subside. By the final stretch, he has very little to say at all, leaving it to the rich and famous to sort things out.
Although the virtually real-time format is maintained (there would seem to be a bit of cheating here and there, given the variety of locations and time zones introduced), the story fans out as Patty bears down by phone on Ibis' communications director Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe), whose job it is to protect the reputation of her jet-setting CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) but whose official stories about the boss soon crumble as his chronic lying becomes irrefutable.
The real-time conceit is ready-made to serve the cause of suspense, and it should be remembered that Clooney has shown a rare predilection among contemporary artists for the format, having done live broadcasts of both E.R. and Fail Safe for television. Unfortunately, as a director, Foster shows no knack or instinct for building tension; her style is strictly presentational, brisk and efficient, but with no sly trickery, desire to surprise or to forge technique that suggests an imaginative approach to storytelling. There's nothing subversive or disquieting in the imagery or editing, which is to say that she learned little about creating suspense from working with the likes of Scorsese, Demme and Fincher.
Money Monster therefore emerges as a pretty ordinary film about an extraordinary predicament, one in which the writers contrived to bring all the principals together down on Wall Street. The wrap-up, and the way it too easily employs both comeuppance and tragedy, is rather too neat for real life, and there's a feel-good aspect to it as well in the way the sneaky, morals-free culprit is forced to be held to account in the most public and embarrassing way possible. It's a fantasy, in other words.
While pointed at times, the script should have been a couple of notches wittier and more caustic than it is, and a few vivid character actors surrounding the big stars would have been welcome as well — the sort of things that the old Hollywood provided as a matter of course.
Clooney doesn't play a doofus here as he has done repeatedly for the Coen brothers, but his Lee Gates could be a smarter, more successful but jaded second cousin to those rascals. Attached to a phone or microphone most of the time, Roberts has little to play other than on-point efficiency through most of the tight running time, and her best scenes involve her exchanges with the fellow female executive intriguingly played by Balfe (intriguing in that the actress makes you aware that there's much more to her character than meets the eye or that is touched upon in the script). West has no trouble letting the audience feel all the scorn it can summon for the heedlessly amoral, and criminal, big-money guy, by which time poor, working-class Kyle has been frustratingly sidelined in favor of the fat cats.
Now You See Me 2 *½
They must have figured out what new cast member Daniel Radcliffe has not: that the best attitude to Now You See Me 2 is simply to go nowhere near it.
This inane franchise treats its audience like patsies — essentially casting us as the gullible, whooping masses it puts on screen during its glitzy Vegas conjuring shows, where a trickster posse known as the Four Horsemen keep staging appearances, while finessing simultaneous heists across the world. Like a coloured ribbon whipping through one ear and out the other, the plot bypasses your brain with overconfident flourishes that can’t disguise how amateurish it all is.
The ridiculous fame of these characters — Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco are now joined by Fisher replacement Lula (Lizzy Caplan) — already makes them hard enough to like. But they also come across as certifiable, with their mad banter about false sleeves, bird tricks and habit of endlessly flicking cards about during passages of downtime.
If the camera pulled back to reveal this whole charade as a high-concept production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you wouldn’t be wholly surprised.
The Nurse Ratched trying to quash these bizarre antics is "magic debunker" Thaddeus (Morgan Freeman), who got shafted at the end of the last one, and is now in prison. For circuitous reasons, Mark Ruffalo’s FBI agent (who’s in on the games, remember? You don’t? Never mind) has to bust Freeman loose, but the movie completely bails on the Houdini possibilities of a prison break. He’s granted leave to walk right out — where’s the fun in that?
Meanwhile, the other four are whisked without their knowledge to Macau, where Radcliffe’s Walter Mabry, the tech tycoon son of Michael Caine’s insurance bigwig, makes them an offer they can’t refuse: they have to steal some all-important data-mining chip from under a casino, or else.
Radcliffe makes a good first impression — he’s so darn likeable as an actor, almost embarrassingly sincere, that it briefly looks like he’s going to charm the film out of trouble. It’s tediously inevitable, though, that the boy wizard has to turn bad here, and duplicitous egomania isn’t something he does nearly as well.
So many sequences — take the five straight minutes of ensemble card-palming needed to purloin that chip — make no sense even by the film’s own flashy logic. Just when we thought Eisenberg had reached a nadir of up-himself tomfoolery as Lex Luthor, he makes rain stop in Greenwich and vanishes into the pavement.
Meanwhile, Harrelson has to play his character’s twin brother, with false teeth and a curly wig, for double unamusement. When we're bored during dialogue scenes, looking at Franco’s will-this-do face becomes oddly hypnotic, if depressing.
Constructed to fool the viewer with layer upon layer of lame cheats and moth-eaten devices, the film has nothing on its mind but sinking you gently into an in-flight stupor.
Other new releases this week
Neon Bull ***½ The film is filthy with nuanced moments of fierce, sweaty intimacy, all shot with a precise eye for detail. At the very least, it will make you rethink your next rodeo.
What Happened, Miss Simone? *** Features some of the best concert footage and musical performances in recent music documentary memory, even if it never quite answers the question in its title.
From Afar *** The movie’s disquieting tone unfolds with a familiar kind of naturalism — devoid of soundtrack, it develops an engrossing reality filled with pregnant pauses and fragmented exchanges. There’s a palpable despair to this scenario rooted in the authenticity of its environment.
Tale of Tales *** Director Matteo Garrone has created a world of both rich and ugly textures — visual, narrative and imaginative — that transports, delights and imparts disturbing lessons.
Hockney **½ There are beautiful moments from David Hockney’s home-video stash in this thoughtful documentary..
The Ones Below **½ A creepy genre exercise by a craftsman finding his groove.
Genius ** Not nearly as smart as it should be.
Buddymoon ** This is the kind of buddy comedy where you have to take a giant leap of faith just to believe these two characters would ever be friends.
Equals *½ Its few saving graces are some decent shot-making, a rather great score and the loveliness of its lead actors' faces.
Compadres ½* This is a movie which you’d call a god-awful mess.
Nina ½* The whole endeavor seems like a bad idea badly executed, and one can only imagine that Nina Simone, a fierce advocate of black pride and empowerment, would be aghast at this cheesy rendition of the later years of her life. Strange that this misfire is released the same week as a better-made documentary about the singer.
The Darkness ½* This is pretty much a total bust — it isn’t scary, it isn’t exciting and it plods along at such a snails pace that even though it clocks in at just over 90 minutes, it plays like it runs at least twice that.
RATINGS
**** Excellent.
*** Good.
** Fair
* Poor
No stars Abysmal
Hanks gushes over “La La Land”
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| Tom Hanks at Telluride; Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in La La Land |
Up until a week or so ago, I thought Manchester By the Sea was the odds-on favorite for this year’s top Oscar. Now I’m not so sure. Folks I’ve talked to who have seen La La Land are swooning over this film.
But what I found really remarkable was that during the audience meet-and-greet following the screening of Clint Eastwood’s Sully at the Telluride Film Festival, the film’s star, Tom Hanks, had this to say about la La Land, which also screened at Telluride:
"When you see something that is brand new, that you can’t imagine, and you think ‘well thank God this landed’, because I think a movie like La La Land would be anathema to studios. Number one, it is a musical and no one knows the songs.
"This is not a movie that falls into some sort of trend. I think it is going to be a test of the broader national audience, because it has none of the things that major studios want. Pre-awareness is a big thing they want, which is why a lot of remakes are going on. La La Land is not a sequel, nobody knows who the characters are. But if the audience doesn’t go and embrace something as wonderful as this then we are all doomed.
"We all understand the business aspects of it. It’s cruel and it’s backbreaking and take-no-prisoners. But there’s always that chance where the audience sees something that is brand new, that they never expected, and embraces it and celebrates it. We might be in the luxurious position that we can say we don’t have to pay attention to the trends, but there are other people whose parking spaces with their names on them are paid to follow these trends. I don’t take anything away from them and there are some good movies that come out of that. But we all go to the cinema for the same thing, that is to be transported to someplace we have never been before."
Praise like this coming from one of the most respected figures in Hollywood means a lot, especially from someone who came to Telluride to promote his own film. La La Land has moved to the top of my must-see list.
Monday, August 29, 2016
This week's DVD releases
Jungle Book ***
Director Jon Favreau (Elf, Iron Man) has done a marvelous job re-creating that world in his live-action/CGI adaptation.
Mowgli (newcomer Neeli Sethi, who spends the entire movie acting opposite CGI characters) is adopted by the panther Bagheera (voiced by Ben Kingsley) after the boy's father dies. Bagheera takes him to the wolves and helps raise Mowgli, teaching him the rules of the jungle in ways that reflect the human world we live in — stick with the pack, don't play with fire.
But when the evil tiger Shere Khan (a menacing Idris Elba) discovers Mowgli, the tiger vows to kill the little man-cub. So Bagheera sets out to take Mowgli back to the man-village.
Joining Mowgli along the way is the sloth bear, Baloo — played by Bill Murray, whose voice and general persona exude the character's credo: that life should be full of everyday pleasures and little else. He even gets to sing Baloo's theme song, The Bare Necessities, originally sung by Phil Harris.
It's an interesting choice for Favreau to call back to the Disney version. He does it again when Christopher Walken takes over for Louis Prima as the giant ape King Louie to sing I Wan'na Be Like You.
At first, this was jarring, taking me out of the world that Favreau has constructed. But the music adds a necessary levity, especially since Favreau does not shy away from the dark parts of the jungle. Characters fight and die, which, my 10-year-old granddaughter told me, didn't seem to bother her as much as I thought it would.
The reason to rent or stream Favreau's The Jungle Book, instead of just watching the animated one, is how gorgeous the jungle looks. The temple that King Louie calls his kingdom is breathtaking, and it seems as if every hair of Shere Khan's fur moves as he stalks.
It's the living jungle of Kipling's stories that we could once see only in our minds.
Me Before You **
It’s not so much better that it escapes being what it is, a sort-of romance, liberally sprinkled with moments of corniness and emotional dishonesty. But ultimately, when it matters, it’s truthful — about the people depicted, and who they are, and what they face. It should be noted, however, that the movie’s depiction of disability and of the choices available to people with disabilities have become subjects of controversy within the disabled community, and there have even been some protests and campaigns against the film.
Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) is Lou, a working-class girl in small-town England, and the movie makes no bones about the fact that, were young Will (Sam Claflin) not the victim of a terrible accident, he would never have given Lou a second glance. It’s actually rather interesting just how uninteresting Lou is. She is genuinely simple and not too bright, with no ambition or passion, but she has qualities of character — not remarkable qualities, but solid, decent qualities, that engage our attention.
Clarke is entirely charming and winning in the role, except for one small but nagging thing. She has too much facial tension as she speaks, and it produces a commensurate tension in the viewer. You might not particularly notice this on a small screen, but it’s something you can’t miss the more the face is blown up. George Clooney had a similar problem when he first started making movies. He’d wag his head, as he’d done for years on TV, but suddenly entire audiences were getting motion sickness. He made the adjustment and went on to glory. If Clarke can just stop scrunching up her face, she can do the same.
The class aspect is a presence in Me Before You, but not in the heavy-handed (and ultimately sentimental) way that was present in the French film Intouchables, which had a similar story. In this film, Lou just hasn’t done anything. She’s never been anywhere. She has never even seen a movie with subtitles. And so, introducing her to new things — not for the sake of educating her, but simply to show her new pleasures — becomes a source of mild enjoyment for young Will.
Within what seems to be (and mostly is) a sappy, romantic frame, Sam Claflin is able to do some nice things with Will, and the movie ultimately doesn’t let him down. He remains, from beginning to end, an intelligent person, utterly realistic about his situation, and we always feel that he is thinking — that even when he is almost amused and almost happy, he maintains a certain British refusal to be anything other than realistic.
Claflin’s rigor and Clarke’s charm are counterbalanced by cringe moments, as when, after years of unemployment, Lou’s father (Brendan Coyle) gets a job as a maintenance man, and the family goes into a paroxysm of joy. In such moments, one gets the sense of the working class as imagined by the upper class, the idea that poor people aren’t just willing and resigned to working hard, but they’re absolutely ecstatic about it.
Still, unlike at least 90 percent of movies, Me Before You gets better as it goes along, and that’s something.
Other new releases this week
Citizen Soldier **½ This film will have a hard time attracting attention outside the community of veterans. But that doesn't diminish its ability to put us in the shoes of ordinary men balancing boredom with life-or-death action on a daily basis.
The Phenom **½ The movie may be choppy, but it’s saying something sincere about how the pressure to be thought of as a winner can be an athlete’s most formidable opponent.
Jane Wants a Boyfriend ** A sweetly-intentioned though somewhat awkwardly structured spin on a Hallmark Channel-style dramedy that strives to shed light on Asperger’s from a female perspective.
RATINGS
**** Excellent.
*** Good.
** Fair
* Poor
No stars Abysmal
Saturday, August 27, 2016
My Preseason Top 25 College Football Teams
1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Oklahoma
4. Ohio State
5. Stanford
6. Mississippi
7. LSU
8. Florida State
9. Michigan
10. Tennessee
11. TCU
12. Michigan State
13. Baylor
14. Notre Dame
15. Houston
16. Arkansas
17. Oregon
18. North Carolina
19. Georgia
20. USC
21. Oklahoma State
22. Iowa
23. Mississippi State
24. Wisconsin
25. Washington
2. Clemson
3. Oklahoma
4. Ohio State
5. Stanford
6. Mississippi
7. LSU
8. Florida State
9. Michigan
10. Tennessee
11. TCU
12. Michigan State
13. Baylor
14. Notre Dame
15. Houston
16. Arkansas
17. Oregon
18. North Carolina
19. Georgia
20. USC
21. Oklahoma State
22. Iowa
23. Mississippi State
24. Wisconsin
25. Washington
Monday, August 22, 2016
This week's DVD releases
Weiner ***½
Once again, truth proves stranger than fiction in the raucous and provocative documentary Weiner. This absorbing, entertaining film takes a decidedly warts-and-all look at disgraced, seven-term Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner and his propulsive if ill-fated 2013 run for mayor of New York City.
Toward the end of the movie, Josh Kriegman, who directed and produced with Elyse Steinberg, bluntly asks the beleaguered Weiner, "Why have you let me film this?" It’s a question that viewers are likely to be wondering throughout as the filmmakers’ cameras capture Weiner, perhaps best known for his career-crippling sexting scandals of 2011 and 2013, in a plethora of awkward, squirm-inducing, shameless, even clueless moments.
If the unfortunately named Weiner’s purpose was to somehow help vindicate himself for cyber-cheating on his wife, longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, by showing what a warrior of the people he was — and still could be — he may have partially succeeded. As seen here, Weiner’s steely self-possession, unflagging drive, scrappy charm and, it seems, genuine desire to make a difference add up to the kind of politician you want on your side. In these dizzying days of Donald Trump, Weiner’s flaws can seem a bit quaint.
Still, Weiner’s mayoral bid, coming so soon after his 2011 resignation from Congress in wake of his massively covered and derided scandal (highlighted here by a raft of cringe-inducing, yet funny, Weiner-bashing tabloid spreads, cable news clips and late-night TV talk show bits) was the kind of uphill climb that makes for a riveting documentary narrative. The filmmakers appear to judge via some of their editing choices, but the story pretty much wrote itself; they just needed to shoot it.
And shoot it they did with a kind of joyful abandon, thanks to what feels like an all-access pass to all things Weiner. Whether prowling his turbulent campaign headquarters with its coterie of sweating staffers, the comfy Manhattan home he shares with Abedin and their toddler son, or the many personal, public and backstage dramas that erupted along the way, Kriegman and Steinberg, who co-wrote the film with Eli Despres, enjoyably sweep us into the hugely idiosyncratic ride that was Weiner’s stab at political reinvention.
Though we already know the campaign’s outcome, the film builds palpable tension as it bobs and weaves up to and through election day and, especially, election night. That’s when Weiner must escape the camera-ready clutches of former phone-sex buddy Sydney Leathers, who’s lying in wait for a 15-minutes-of-fame showdown with the man whose online identity was "Carlos Danger."
Viewers hankering for a deeply examined portrayal of Weiner may be disappointed; it’s not that kind of doc. There are no staged talking-head pundits or observers dissecting the politician’s psychosocial makeup; no chats with friends or family members to support, decry or help enlighten us about Weiner; no youthful history to foretell his adult proclivities. Weiner himself, for all the screen time he receives here, does little beyond the mea culpas and let’s-move-on requests to reveal what winds his clock.
Yet, there are enough fly-on-the-wall moments, including a funny riff by Weiner about what that phrase even means, that we feel more intimate with the film’s star than we may have the right to. Sleight of hand? Maybe. Then again, this is a film about politics.
As for Abedin, who was game to participate at all here, she mostly just glowers and simmers at her husband’s gaffes, outbursts and other dubious tactics. Her highly visible presence, however, does help effectively hammer home one of Weiner’s key defenses: No one other than his wife was hurt by his transgressions which, as others have pointed out, never included any actual physical contact — so get over it.
Maggie’s Plan ***
Her achievement in Maggie’s Plan has many aspects to it, but they boil down to two — how smooth and easy it all is, and how messy and wrong it might have been.
It’s a story with several shifts in time and mood, with characters whose ambitions, affections and motives change, almost without warning. But at no point does the viewer ever feel lost, left behind or pushed into some unearned perception. The film could have seemed clumsy, and it’s anything but. There’s also a lightness in the tone that yet allows for real emotion and impressive performances. Maggie’s Plan doesn’t quite transcend the limits of the romantic comedy genre, but it pushes at them.
At the center of it all is Greta Gerwig, who radiates niceness and authenticity, even as she is playing a character that could be easily misperceived as a control freak. At the start of the film, Maggie has given up on the idea of finding a lifelong partner, but she knows she wants a baby. She also knows the sperm donor she wants — a mathematician turned pickle entrepreneur (Travis Fimmel).
Even as she is planning that, she is trying to fix the life of a professor at the New School, a ficto-critical anthropologist who aspires to be a novelist. John (Ethan Hawke) is a married man, with a high-powered academic (Julianne Moore) for a wife, and Maggie becomes his chief reader and cheerleader.
It would be so easy, and so wrong, to think of Gerwig as merely a charming personality, someone quirky and appealing, who just stands in front of the camera and acts like herself. Actually, she’s brilliant. Take a look at the long close-up during which Maggie talks to John about her parents. Gerwig seems to be acting five things at once, experiencing sadness, humor, a desire to connect, regret and conflicting impulses to reveal and conceal. But what she’s really doing is getting out of her own way and experiencing all the richness of the moment, and letting us see it, in all its complicated emotionality.
Not everyone can do that, nor can they build, from what might have seemed a character of erratic impulses, a portrait of emotional courage. Gerwig — and no doubt, Miller — makes Maggie into someone with an uncomplicated yet sophisticated capacity to know what she feels, to admit what she feels and to act on her feelings. This makes her a little like a child, but wise.
It also makes Maggie someone who maybe should be planning other people’s lives. Over the course of Maggie’s Plan, Maggie improvises her own course and those of others, and as the movie goes on, the filmmaker’s relationship with the whole notion of planning isn’t simple. While the characters onscreen keep insisting that some things can’t be planned, the movie seems to be arguing something else — that making a grand design for your life is possible, but only if you’re able to face what you want and accept the consequences.
The Nice Guys ***
This is not the shiny Los Angeles of now.
It's the funky Los Angeles of 1977, in which a couple of stumblebums — a freelance enforcer by the name of Jackson Healy and a single dad and unlicensed private detective, Holland March — meet up and knock around in pursuit of a missing girl, and maybe a bigger caper, a conspiracy involving a porn king, the mob, who knows what else.
Healy and March are played, respectively, by Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, and the actors have an instant, jostling, riffing rapport. They meet cute — Healy sucker-punching March, busting some bones — and take it from there.
If there's a straight man, it's Crowe, but he's pretty funny in a deadpan, brute-force kind of way, while Gosling displays a surprising knack for slapstick. Watch him try to protect himself — and what little dignity he has left — in a men's room stall. Watch him do a kind of Lou Costello flabbergasted thing. Watch him swimming in a see-through pool with mermaids.
Yes, mermaids.
Like Shane Black's directing debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Robert Downey, Jr., his The Nice Guys borrows from noir traditions and pulp fiction, throwing a fresh coat of smart-alecky comedy over the whole thing. And like Black's earlier screenwriting efforts, Lethal Weapon 1 and 2, in The Nice Guys, the momentum comes not simply by way of screeching cars and ricocheting gunplay (although there's plenty of that), but from the banter and bickering between the two leads.
Cowritten with Anthony Bagarozzi, The Nice Guys finds ways to keep its running gags running along (about Nixon, about killer bees, about a porn flick called How Do You Like My Car, Big Boy?).
It also finds time for Angourie Rice, one of those kid-actor naturals. She is Holly, March's precocious daughter, and she joins her dad and his new partner as they go private eyeing around town, to swinging soirees and to confrontations with a trigger-happy heavy named John Boy (Matt Bomer — and yes, there are Waltons jokes).
The detective duo also has business with a Department of Justice official. She is played by Kim Basinger, who drove off into the midday sun with Crowe at the end of L.A. Confidential. Their relationship is a little frostier this time around.
Wiener-Dog **½
Wiener-Dog opens with a man offloading the title character at an animal shelter. Finding itself inside a small crate alongside the pens of other castaways, the dog paces aimlessly. Around and around it goes, and the camera doesn’t budge.
That’s another hallmark of Solondz: forcing the viewer to linger well beyond what’s expected or what’s even comfortable, holding focus, for example, on a young boy staring at the sky while lying in his backyard. The fact that the kid doesn’t blink gives the disconcerting impression that he may not, in fact, be breathing. Not to worry: His name is Remi (Keaton Nigel Cooke) and he becomes the new owner of Wiener-Dog, a surprise gift from his father (Tracy Letts). Remi is instantly smitten. His mother (Julie Delpy) is less enthused.
"Now who’s going to walk it?" she spits at her husband. She’s more patient with her son, even though he’s prone to interrogations, asking questions about everything from canine reproductive urges to faith. "What does it feel like to be put to sleep?" he asks, after learning about dog euthanasia. "It feels good!" his mother says, cheerily. "Like forgetting everything." Upon hearing that his family doesn’t believe in God, Remi wonders what they do believe in. "Truth, compassion, love," his mother responds angelically, without even a hint of irony.
Another story revisits two characters from Solondz’s 1995 breakout feature Welcome to the Dollhouse, this time with different actors: Greta Gerwig as former grade-school nerd Dawn Wiener, and Kieran Culkin as the former bully Brandon. After running into each other at a convenience store, the two end up taking a impromptu road trip together, along with her dog, this time named Doody. (The name is inspired by "Howdy Doody," although most people think it’s something else.)
Then there’s the lonely screenwriting professor (Danny DeVito), who’s practically invisible. In the final installment, Ellen Burstyn plays a salty, ailing woman who’s cruel to her freeloading granddaughter and only slightly kinder to her dog, Cancer.
This segment takes a turn for the surreal when several identical little girls show up to explain to the woman all the different people she might have become if she’d made different choices. But it’s still firmly rooted in the director’s particular brand of earthiness. The camera holds steady as Burstyn swills gulp after gulp of Kaopectate, straight from the bottle, until long after you’re sure the container must be empty.
Solondz is an acquired taste, but at least he’s consistent. The same way Wes Anderson serves up elaborate set pieces — not to mention elaborate sets — Solondz revels in rusty minivans and moth-eaten couches. His characters aren’t stylish, or even all that appealing. They’re just everyday people going about their lives. You wouldn’t exactly call the movie a thrill, but it’s curiously engrossing all the same.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War *
There are no discernible rules in the world of The Huntsman: Winter's War, a dreadful sequel to 2012's darkly appealing Snow White and the Huntsman. In the pale update, nearly every major character dies and comes back to life at least once and a convoluted narrative yields not a single, palpable moment of drama.
Not even the considerable charm of Chris Hemsworth, who plays the seemingly immortal, ax-wielding title hero, or Emily Blunt, as an ice queen with head-scratching motives, can save this dull mash-up of fantasy genre cliches, which wastes its A-list actors, stunning costumes and computer-generated artistry on a fatuous story with zero stakes.
The 2012 film, directed by Rupert Sanders, mostly succeeded as a visually rich retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, with Kristen Stewart playing Snow White as a brave warrior princess and Charlize Theron delivering a deliciously over-the-top evil Queen Ravenna.
The new movie, written by Craig Mazin and Evan Spiliotopoulos and directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, leaves out Stewart's role. Really, it's a Snow White movie without Snow White — can you imagine Iron Man putting up with that?
Set both before and after the events of the first film, The Huntsman: Winter's War stars Blunt and Theron as Freya and Ravenna, a pair of rivalrous royal sisters — think Frozen's Anna and Elsa with better eye makeup and worse attitudes. Ravenna mostly stares in the mirror and makes malevolent declarations. Freya, who starts the film in love and quickly suffers a trauma, begins shooting ice out of her hands, wearing metallic headpieces and training an army of child soldiers.
Hemsworth's Eric and Jessica Chastain's Sara emerge as the most talented fighters in Freya's army. Speaking in muddled Scottish accents and wearing cute leather hunting outfits (perhaps they're hunting for the plot?), Eric and Sara fall in love and try, unsuccessfully, to escape Freya's icy grasp.
Over the next hour, Hemsworth swashbuckles through six or seven plot reversals and multiple inscrutable fight scenes. He is joined by some bickering dwarves, Nion (Nick Frost) and Gryff (Rob Brydon), and becomes determined to capture Ravenna's magic mirror. Wait, is Ravenna dead? Who's alive? Who knows? Who cares? It's raining and cellos are playing so something bad must be happening.
Though the cast are all pros who do their darndest to deliver the bewilderingly bad dialogue with conviction, even an Oscar winner like Theron can't sell lines like, "A humble pawn can bring down kingdoms."
Nicolas-Troyan, who had been the visual effects supervisor on Snow White and the Huntsman, is making his directorial debut here, and there are moments that help explain how he got the job. When Eric and his merry band end up in a computer-generated forest, it's a gorgeous, magical place, where giant, moss-covered tortoises roam and butterflies flutter. If only we could linger here on the mossy forest floor and forget the dizzying subplots swirling in our heads.
Costume designer Colleen Atwood, who earned her 10th Oscar nomination for her work on the previous Huntsman film, delivers the drama the story lacks, this time via exquisite metallic gowns and headpieces. She drapes Theron in a kind of molten gold dress and Blunt in multiple ice crystal-inspired frocks.
At one point, when the two sisters appear on-screen talking conspiratorially in their glittering garments, I fantasized about what the actresses might have whispered to each other between takes: "Do you have any idea what's happening right now?"
"No. Did you read this script before you agreed to it?"
"No. But the good news is, we look fabulous."
Other DVD releases this week
Paths of the Soul **** Filmed in simple documentary fashion and performed with immaculate conviction by a non-professional cast, this movie, directed by Zhang Yang (Shower, Getting Home) is a stirring study in faith and spirituality that will inspire many viewers to think about big and small questions of life.
Sunset Song *** It is a rare director who dares to embrace the slow, meditative rhythms of a classic novel without feeling the need to modernize or accelerate it, but Terence Davies uses the measured pace to unfold his poetic vision of the Scottish peasantry and their attachment to the land.
The Other Side **½ There are moments when this film seems to traverse into arts-ploitation territory, and it’s ultimately hard to tell if the movie is trying to render its subjects with some humanity or otherwise if it's taking advantage of all these poor, beautiful losers.
The Man Who Knew Infinity ** The film tells a great story. It’s just that it’s a little too by-the-book to make anything other than a so-so movie.
Hard Labor ** Teeters uncertainly between horror and social commentary. It feels as if the directors tried to imagine what Bunuel would have done if he had made a horror film.
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong ** The two stars (Jamie Chung, Bryan Greenberg) are attractive, and Emily Ting, who wrote and directed, makes the city look great, but during their endless strolling Ruby and Josh never get much beyond shallow banter.
Beautiful Something *½ Bits and pieces of this gay-themed drama feel real and essential. But this slow-going film often suffers from a forced, navel-gazing quality that can prove exasperating.
Clown *½ Director Jon Watts does nothing with the scarily funny notion of a respectable professional who suddenly refuses to shuck a party costume.
The Duel *½ The story is an intriguing twist on the western genre, but in piling on other subgenres and story elements, including a dangerous and charismatic cult, it dilutes the essential nature of what could have been a potent revenge tale.
Outlaws and Angels *½ Despite worthy performances from the entire cast, this movie’s a prime example of a director admiring some great movies but only having a cursory, superficial understanding of what it was that made them work.
How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town * Despite its provocative title, this film isn’t particularly sexy. More troubling, it’s not very funny either.
Ratchet and Clank ½* In a golden period for both animation and children’s filmmaking, here is a head-splitting reminder of just how bad those two things can get.
RATINGS
**** Excellent.
*** Good.
** Fair
* Poor
No stars Abysmal
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Does anyone else think this is a bad movie idea
According to The Wrap, Ben Affleck has signed a deal to star and direct a remake of the 1960 classic Witness for the Prosecution. I’m assuming Affleck will play the role of Leonard Vole, accused of murdering a much older widow. Tyrone Power played Vole in the original.
The film has two other principle roles, Sir Wilford Robarts, a lawyer in bad health who agrees to defend Vole (played by the great Charles Laughton in the original), and Christine, Vole’s German-born wife who eventually becomes the title character. The story was adapted from an Agatha Christie short story and play,
The marketing for the 1960 film was based on the teaser that "No one would be seated during the last 20 minutes of the film," because of its surprising twist ending. The problem I have with this remake notion is that, by now, everyone interested in seeing this film is going to know the details of that ending so there’s no surprise. Then, what’s the point?
Plus, I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again and I’ll keep on saying it until someone pays attention: Why do studios insist on remaking classic movies? They never live up to the originals. The dismal, just released, Ben-Hur, is just another example and it appears film goers are beginning to notice it as well; Ben-Hur is on its way to becoming an all-time box office disaster. I’m hearing reports it is only expected to collect $12 million in its opening weekend. Here’s my theory: Remake mediocre or largely forgotten films and try to make them better or more popular.
Case in point: Primal Fear, a halfway decent film from 1996 that has a plot similar to that of Witness for the Prosecution, but I’m betting is not lodged in the memory banks of film lovers as firmly as Witness is. But then what the hell do I know? I thought the three best films of last year were, in order, Carol, Inside Out and 45 Years, and none of the three were even nominated for a best picture Oscar. But then, my choice for the fourth best picture of 2015, Spotlight, not only was nominated but walked home with the big enchilada.
And none of those four were either remakes or sequels. So there.
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