Cannes Festival Line-Up

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Cannes Festival Line-Up

The Cannes Film Festival announced the 19 films that will be competing for the Palme D’Or this year. Like every year, the Competition lineup has a number of past prize winners, auteurs and highly anticipated films – and some ones no one saw coming. Plus, you know that of the 19 films here, many will end up being among the most talked about films of the year. One thing I do find slightly disappointing is only one female director made the official lineup. And it's not like they didn't have options - both Sofia Coppola and Claire Denis have film in the Un Certain Regard section. Oh, well. Let’s have a look at what is up for the prize.

1.       A Chateau in Italy by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi
This is one I never saw coming – but perhaps I should have, since her last film did win a Special Prize in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes – meaning she may be reading for a promotion. Interestingly, she is the sister-in-law of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The bares bones site on IMDB offers little other than “A family is forced to sell their Italian home” – and the cast list including Bruni-Tedeschi herself alongside Phillipe Garrell and Of Gods and Men director Xavier Beauvois – so one assumes it is a part French-part Italian movie. With so many other, bigger names directors in the competition this year, it may be hard for her to break through.

2.       Inside Llewyn Davis by Ethan and Joel Coen
The Coen’s are Cannes regular – but their last three films opted instead for fall festivals (or in the case of True Grit, no festivals) instead of Cannes. They are favorites their though – the Cannes juries have embraced them more readily than many in American have. Their latest is a 1960s, New York set look at the folk scene featuring Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman and Oscar Issac in the title role among many, many others. Oh, and it’s in black and white. This is probably my most anticipated film of the year, so even if I have to wait until the fall to see it, at least we’ll have some reviews before too long.

3.       Michael Kohlhaas by Arnaud Des Pallieres
I’ll admit, I’ve never heard of Arnaud Des Pallieres before, and nothing in his filmography even rings the tiniest bell. But you know that Cannes always includes a Franch film like this – and it sounds interesting. According to IMDB, “Set in 16th century France, a well-to-do horse merchant raises an army and ransacks towns after suffering an injustice.” The film features the great Mads Mikkelson and the greater Bruno Ganz, alongside Denis Lavant and Sergei Lopez. That cast is amazing. Let’s hope the movie is too.

4.       Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian) by Arnaud Desplechin
It has been five long years since Desplechin’s last film – the masterful A Christmas Tale – and so this film immediately becomes one of my most anticipated for the rest of the year (please don’t hold it over for 2014 North American release!). There is no plot synopsis on IMDB, so I guess we’ll have to figure it out from the very strange title. But it does star Benicio Del Toro and Matheis Almarac, just in case you needed more a reason to get excited about this one.

5.       Heli by Amat Escalante
The Mexican director of Los Bastardos (which I remember seeing on the shelves back in the days when their were such things as videostores, but I never actually rented), returns with his third film. Like Bruni-Tedeschi, his last film won a prize in the Un Certain Regarde section, so he was due a promotion I guess. IMDB doesn’t even have a page up for this film yet, but from little I have gleamed, it seems like a violent film set in the Mexican slums.

6.       The Past by Asghar Farhadi
The Past will likely be one of the more anticipated films at Cannes this year, as it is Farhadi’s follow-up to his hugely acclaimed film A Separation – which won the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and made countless top 10 lists a couple of years back. This time, he’s outside Iran and in France – working with actors like Berenice Bejo (The Artist) and Tahr Rahim (A Prophet). IMDB has no plot synopsis, but it hardly matters. This will be a must see.

7.       The Immigrant by James Gray
I guess the title of this has changed from Lowlife. James Gray makes his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Two Lovers – the film best known to American audiences because it was while promoting it that Joaquin Phoenix seemingly went nuts. But, as with all Gray films, Phoenix is back – this time alongside Jeremy Renner and Marion Cottillard – who appears to have the title role as “An innocent immigrant woman is tricked into a life of burlesque and vaudeville until a dazzling magician tries to save her and reunite her with her sister who is being held in the confines of Ellis Island.” (according to IMDB). Sounds interesting.

8.       Grigris by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
This is Haroun’s follow-up to his 2010 Jury Prize winning film A Screaming Man – and beyond that, I have no idea, because there is no page on IMDB, and I cannot find anything else out about the film. I like A Screaming Man – but didn’t love it.

9.       A Touch of Sin by Jia Zhangke
Hugely acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke (Platform, Still Life) returns – and other than that, I have nothing for you, since IMDB doesn’t even have a page listed for him yet. Strangely, he has never won a prize at Cannes – will this year change that?

10.   Like Father, Like Son by Kore-Eda Hirokazu
Disappointingly, this is not a remake of the Dudley Moore-Kirk Cameron classic body switching comedy from the 1980s (I kid of course). Instead, this sounds like a really interesting film, about a man who finds out his son was switched at birth with another boy – and now has to choose between his biological son, and the one he has raised. Kore-Eda is always interesting (I need to see more of his work), and considering who the head of the jury is, who obviously has his own daddy issues, I think this could be the favorite to win the top prize.

11.   The Life of Adele by Abdellatif Kechiche
Kechiche had a critical hit a few years ago with The Secret of the Grain (2007) – but his follow-up film, Black Venus (2010) never really played outside the festival circuit, and got extremely mixed reviews.  I can’t tell you what the film is about, but I can tell you it has Lea Seydoux in it – best known for Farewell My Queen and Midnight in Paris. Other than that, I don’t have any info on this one.

12.   Shield of Straw by Takashi Miike
It used to be a new film by Takashi Miike meant something totally batshit crazy. And while I admire those bygone days, I don’t mind his recent foray into more mainstream fare. This one seems like the later, as it is a crime thriller about a man who kills the granddaughter of a powerful man, who offers 1 billion yen to anyone who can kill him. Sounds fun to me.

13.   Young and Pretty by Francois Ozon
You’re never quite sure what to expect from an Ozon film, as he hopes genres, and yet almost all of the films I have seen (and I need to see more) are interesting. This one has a simple description – a portrait of a 17 year old girl, in 4 seasons, 4 songs. Could be simple bliss or just too simplistic. No way of knowing yet.

14.   Nebraska by Alexander Payne
It took Alexander Payne 8 years to follow-up Sideways, but now only two to follow-up The Descendants. This certainly sounds like a smaller film – Bruce Dern plays a father who travels from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son – Will Forte – to claim a million dollar prize. The supporting cast includes Bob Odenkirk and Stacy Keach. Anyhing by Payne is going to get attention.

15.   Venus in Fur by Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski returns to adapting a play to follow-up Carnage, which I quite enjoyed, but was a disappointment to many. This one stars Emmanuelle Segnier as an actress who tries to convince a director – Mathieu Almarac – that she is perfect for an upcoming role. Anything by Polanski is a must see.

16.   Behind the Candelabra by Steven Soderbergh
Apparently Steven Soderbergh’s last film – we’ll see this one before the rest as it airs on HBO in May. It stars Michael Douglas as Liberace, and Matt Damon as his younger lover. With Soderbergh, you know it’s a must see – and the fact that its playing on HBO has more to do with content than quality – at least according to Soderbergh.

17.   The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino
One of Italy’s most acclaimed directors working today, and a Cannes regular, Sorrentino returns after This Must Be the Place was mainly considered a disappointment (but what a wonderfully strange disappointment) which followed up a Jury Prize win for Il Divo. He returns to Italy this time for the story of a “an aging writer who bitterly recalls his passionate youth”. That could mean almost anything if you think about it. Looking forward to this one.

18.   Borgman by Alex van Warmerdam
This is a Dutch film by a filmmaker I am unfamiliar with, featuring a cast of people I am unfamiliar with, and with no synopsis at IMDB, so you guess is as good as mine.

19.   Only God Forgives by Nicolas Winding Refn
Aside from the Coens, my most anticipated film in competiton this year. Nicolas Winding Refn’s last film was the brilliant Drive, and he reteams with Ryan Gosling to make this apparently very violent film, about drug smuggler convinced by his mother (Kristen Scott Thomas) to find and kill the murderer of his brother. Cannot wait for this one.

Winner Predictions (Just For Fun)

Remember, Steven Spielberg is the Head of the Jury this year, probably meaning we’ll see some more mainstream films than normal take the prizes this year.

Palme D’Or: Like Father, Like Son

Grand Jury Prize: The Past
Jury Prize: Only God Forgives
Director: Arnaud Desplechin, Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian)
Actor: Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Actress: Emmanuelle Segnier, Venus in Fur
Screenplay: Inside Daisy Llewyn

Movie Review: Sound City

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Movie Review: Sound City

Sound City
Directed by:  David Grohl.
Written by: Mark Monroe.

Last year, I was a big admirer of the documentary Side by Side, which looked at the changeover from film to digital in the world of movies. David Grohl’s directorial debut Sound City is similar to that film – except about the music industry. True, Grohl’s documentary is more nostalgic than Side by Side was – which split itself between proponents of film and digital, looking at the pros and cons of each – while Grohl’s film is certainly more on the side of the old way of recording music. Other than Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, there really isn’t much of a voice given to the people who like to use computers to manipulate their music – and even he preaches that having a real musical background (i.e. knowing how to play actual instruments) is important as a foundation to any musical creation.

Sound City is named after the old, seemingly rundown studio in Van Nuys, that operated between the late 1960s and 2011, when time finally caught up, and it was shut down. Some legendary albums were recorded there – and Grohl has interviews with everyone from Lars Ulrich to Tom Petty to Rick Springfield to Barry Manilow to Rage Against the Machine to Neil Young who all recorded some of their music there. The big draw – in the 1970s – was the fact that Sound City had a Neve mixing board. Grohel features an interview with Neve himself – the engineer who created the boarding, which is so technical that he – and probably most of the audience – gets lost. All Grohl cares about is that the board makes the music sound better.

The interviews are nostalgic in the extreme, as all the artists look back at the days when they recorded there. Most had the same intial reaction – the place was a dump. But even though it didn’t look like much, the sound they got from the Neve board, and the recording studio itself was great. For a while, Sound City seemed to be on top of the world, with everyone seeking them out to record their albums there. Then, in the late 1980s, it became possible to record and mix your music with computers. Sound City wasn’t going to switch over – and slowly the clients stopped coming. It looked like the studio would have to close. And then, for reasons even Grohl cannot explain, Nirvana decided to record Nevermind there. Nevermind became one of the best selling records of all time, and was the quintessential grudge album of the 1990s. Then everyone wanted to record where Nirvana recorded – and once again, they were on top. But then, slowly and surely, the same thing happened all over again – and Sound City was eventually forced to close their doors.

The first hour of Sound City is an extremely entertaining history of Sound City – I suppose it was more entertaining to me, since I am a fan of many of the artists interviewed, so if this kind of rock music isn’t your thing (you have no taste in music!) it may not be as entertaining enlightening. The last half hour or so is less informative – as it essentially documents Grohel’s tribute album to Sound City, featuring many of the artists recording new songs in Grohl’s home studio – using that same Neve mixing board that he purchased when Sound City closed. The music itself is fine – not as good as the artists best work – but it does get repetitive after a while. But impressively for a first time documentary maker, Grohl seems to understand pacing very well – his documentary is clear eyed, fast moving and entertaining – and he shows himself to be a gifted interviewer.

I do wish the documentary asked a few harder questions of its subjects though – including Grohl himself. If the artists loved Sound City so much, why did they stop recording there? No mention is made of Nirvana’s follow-up album In Utero being recorded there – or any Foo Fighters records – so one must assume they weren’t. And what about all the other bands and producers who sing the studio’s prasies over the course of the documentary? One assumes that had they kept using the place, it would still be open. So why didn’t they?

But that’s a minor quibble with what overall is a very good documentary. Something is being lost – both in movies and in music – with so much of the work being done by computers. While I don’t think being a luddite is the appropriate response, we should at least be examining the consequences of relying too heavily on technology, and losing the human touch. Sound City shows us the reasons why we should care about a studio like Sound City – now lost forever.

Movie Review: The Sapphires

Movie Review: The Sapphires

The Sapphires
Directed by:  Wayne Blair.
Written by: Tony Briggs and Keith Thompson based on the play by Briggs.
Starring: Chris O'Dowd (Dave Lovelace), Deborah Mailman (Gail), Jessica Mauboy (Julie), Shari Sebbens (Kay), Miranda Tapsell (Cynthia), Tory Kittles (Robby), Eka Darville (Hendo), Lynette Narkle (Nanny Theresa), Kylie Belling (Geraldine), Gregory J. Fryer (Selwyn), Don Battee (Myron Ritchie), T.J. Power (Lt. Jensen).

It’s hard, if not impossible, to hate a movie like The Sapphires. It has such energy, buoyed by some great music, and good natured performances that you go along for the ride without really thinking about the movie. This is both the movie’s strength and its weakness – the movie is fun while it lasts, but evaporates from your memory pretty much the moment that it’s over. For a movie that addresses issues like racism and war, I’m not sure that’s an good thing.

The film is about an all aboriginal singing group from Australia in the late 1960s. Three sisters – bossy Gail (Deborah Mailman), boy crazed Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell) and big voiced Julie (Jessica Mauboy) are all talented singers, entering rinky-dink talent contests singing Merle Haggard tunes, that they still lose even though they are clearly better than the rest of the competitors. At one such contest, they capture the attention of the MC – Dave Lovelace (Chris O’Dowd) – a failed musician himself, but one who recognizes talent when he sees it. He smartly convinces the girls to give up country music, and start singing Soul music – correctly saying that they have more in common with African American singing that music, than country stars. Dave has dollar signs in his eyes when he agrees to become their manager – and after a quick stop to pick up a cousin, Kay (Shari Sebbens), who is so light skinned, she can pass as white (and as such, was victim of the Australian governments shameful “kidnapping” of aboriginal children, who placed them in white homes, and raised them to be white) – they are off to Vietnam to entertain the American troops.

And entertain the troops they do. The movie is most alive when the group is on stage belting out soul staples like What a Man, I Can’t Help Myself and I’ll Take You There. Most of these songs are sung by lead singer Mauboy – who was a runner up on Australian Idol – and if she was the runner-up, the winner must be one hell of a singer, because Mauboy is terrific. When the movie stays on stage with The Sapphires, it is almost endless fun.

Unfortunately though, the movie doesn’t stay on stage for the entire running time, and the movie creaks along too often when it’s not. You know those one word descriptors I used above to describe the individual Sapphires? Well that’s about as much depth as they are given in the movie. They never really become fully rounded characters – and the inevitable arguments that erupt – over Cynthia’s drinking, long buried resentments and guilt over what happened to Kay, etc. – seem forced, as if the screenwriters felt the movie needed more conflict to sustain the movie’s running time. Don’t get me wrong, all four of the women are very good in their roles – I especially liked Mailman and Sebbens who come closest to having complex roles – and Chris O’Dowd is at his comedic best throughout the film. But considering just how many serious issues the film raises, the whole movie seems kind of trivial.

The Sapphires is a fun time at the movies – make no mistake about that. It has been an audience please back home in Australia – where it also won pretty much every homegrown award it could have. If you go to The Sapphires, you’ll likely have a toe-tapping good time. I just wish there was more to the movie than what there ends up being. I had a little fun watching the film, but I was never really drawn into the movie – never felt I was watching real people, even though the movie is based on a true story. Everything seem a little too predictable to make an very good movie. As it stands, The Sapphires isn’t a bad movie – but it’s not particularly good either.

Movie Review: Trance

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Movie Review: Trance

Trance
Directed by:  Danny Boyle.
Written by: Joe Ahearne and John Hodge.
Starring: James McAvoy (Simon), Vincent Cassel (Franck), Rosario Dawson (Elizabeth), Danny Sapani (Nate), Matt Cross (Dominic), Wahab Sheikh (Riz).

Director Danny Boyle has pretty much admitted that he made Trance just to keep the creative juices flowing during the very long process he went through to direct the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics. And Trance feels that way – a simple genre exercise by a talented director in between bigger projects. Sometimes, it’s these “simple genre films” directors make in between their more ambitious projects that turn out to be far more interesting than their more serious work. But that isn’t the case with Trance – a film that starts at ridiculous and simply goes downhill from there. You can tell in every frame of Trance that a talented director is behind the film. And you can tell in every scene, that you have three talented actors giving the movie their all. But Trance never really adds up to anything – and as the film hits the audience with one twist after another, I simply grew tired and bored with all the hyper-stylized action on the screen. A great twist ending is one you do not see coming – but should have. Think of a film like The Sixth Sense – I certainly never suspected the secret behind that movie as I watched it the first time, but when it hit, it made complete, logical sense. A film with a twist ending like Trance feels like a cheat – there is no possible way you can see the ending coming, because the film withholds too much information to ensure you don’t see the ending coming. Rather than that satisfying moment where you want to scream “Of course”, when you realize you’ve been fooled, the ending of Trance feels like you’ve had the rug pulled out from under you.

The movie stars James McAvoy as Simon – who works in an art gallery/auction house and opens the movie by explaining just how hard it is to steal priceless masterpieces these days, by walking you through the process of what they do to ensure thieves cannot steal them. And then, of course, a group of thieves led by Franck (Vincent Cassel) do just that – steal a masterpiece by Goya that had just been sold at auction for over $25 million. But wait, there’s more – in the film’s first twist, Simon isn’t just the innocent guy he seems to be, who tried to save the painting, and gets hit on the head for his troubles – but he’s the groups inside man. And then there’s even more – when Franck opens the case that is supposed to contain the painting – all he finds is an empty frame. He’s obviously unhappy about this, and his gang is there to meet Simon when he returns from hospital – but Simon has conveniently forgotten what he did with the painting, and blames that bump on the head. So Franck decides the only way to figure out what happened, is to get Simon a hypnotist to unlock the memory from Simon’s brain – and Simon chooses Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) for just that purposes.

The movie is essentially a three character piece – yes, Franck has three henchmen in his employ, but they don’t really do anything. The film concentrates on the triangle that Simon, Franck and Elizabeth form – these three circle each other, in more ways than one, and almost on a scene to scene level, your opinion on who is trustworthy and who isn’t, who is playing who, and whether they are good, bad or somewhere in between, changes. If these types of role reversals are handled properly, they can be great fun to watch. But in Trance, I just felt like the movie was jerking me around, for the sake of jerking me around – and hence I grew restless and bored. McAvoy, Cassel and especially Dawson are all very good in the movie – in the case of Dawson it is even more impressive when you consider how much pseudo-intellectual and psychological claptrap she has to speak throughout the movie. But by the end of the movie, I just no longer cared what was happening – who was good and who wasn’t, and what precisely happened. Boyle does his best to disguise the shallowness of the movie with his mile and minute direction, and rapid fire editing, but it all ends up being sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Boyle had been on a bit of a role leading up to Trance. Following his big budget failure – The Beach (2000) – he had made several very good to great films in a row – 28 Days Later (2002), Millions (2004), Sunshine (2007 – probably my favorite of his films), the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and 127 Hours (2010). So, I guess he was overdue for a dud. Hopefully, with the Olympics behind, and his battery recharged with the trifle that is Trance, he’ll return to form next time out. Because Trance is one of the worst films Danny Boyle has ever directed.

Movie Review: 42

Movie Review: 42

42
Directed by: Brian Helgeland.
Written by: Brian Helgeland.
Starring: Chadwick Boseman (Jackie Robinson), Harrison Ford (Branch Rickey), Nicole Beharie (Rachel Robinson), Christopher Meloni (Leo Durocher), Ryan Merriman (Dixie Walker), Lucas Black (Pee Wee Reese), Andre Holland (Wendell Smith), Alan Tudyk (Ben Chapman), Hamish Linklater (Ralph Branca), T.R. Knight (Harold Parrott), John C. McGinley (Red Barber), Toby Huss (Clyde Sukeforth), Max Gail (Burt Shotton), Brad Beyer (Kirby Higbe), James Pickens Jr. (Mr. Brock), Gino Anthony Pesi (Joe Garagiola), Brett Cullen (Clay Hopper), Jesse Luken (Eddie Stanky), Jamey Holliday (Pete Reiser), Derek Phillips (Bobby Bragan), Jamie Ruehling (Spider Jorgensen).

Sometimes even a movie that was never made effects how you see a movie that was. Such is the case with Brian Helgeland’s 42 – a solid, respectable movie about Jackie Robinson, mainly focusing on his first year as a Major League player in 1947, when he broke the color barrier. There is nothing really wrong with 42 – I cannot deny that the movie moved me emotionally, or that it is well-made, well-acted and well-written, even if the movie never transcends its genre. Like any number of sports movies – from Glory Road to The Blind Side – it offers a simple view of race relations in America, and would be a very good movie to show to older children to inspire discussions about racism. And yet, I while watching the movie, I could not help but think I would much rather be watching the Jackie Robinson movie that Spike Lee tried for years to get made, and never found a studio willing to give him the money to do so. Perhaps Lee’s movie would have been better, perhaps it would have been worse – we’ll never know because it was never made. But one thing is for sure – it wouldn’t be as straight forward or simplistic about the issue of race as 42 is. This wasn’t the first or last time Lee wasn’t able to make a movie he wanted – when Will Smith was looking for a director for Ali, he apparently told Lee that he didn’t have “wide enough appeal” to make the film – which Lee (most likely correctly) read as he didn’t appeal enough to white audiences. That’s a shame. If there are two sports figures in the 20^thCentury that are quintessential African American stories, they are Jackie Robinson and Mohammed Ali. And one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his generation, who also happens to be African American, wasn’t hired to direct either one. That’s a shame.

But, as I said, that doesn’t really matter when it comes to the quality of 42 – just something I find to be an interesting aside. As a movie unto itself, 42 is pretty good. It doesn’t deliver anything overly challenging – its message is simple, racism is wrong, and people should be judged based on who they are, and what their abilities are, and not by the color of their skin. It’s no more complicated than that.

Yet, while I know it sounds like I am being dismissive of the movie, I don’t mean to be. What 42 does, it does very well. As Robinson, newcomer Chadwick Boseman does an excellent job. True, I wish the movie made Jackie a little more complicated than he is – this is essentially the same type of role that Sidney Poitier played all through the 1950s and 1960s – that of the strong, proud, respectable black man – but Boseman does it as well as can be expected. He has some nice scenes with Nicole Beharie as his wife Rachel – the two have an easy chemistry together, and you can feel the love between them. Boseman is at his best during the scenes when you can tell he’s seething on the inside, but has to maintain a calm, cool exterior – he knows any fight he gets in, even if he didn’t start it, will be blamed on him, and will set him and other black ballplayers back for years to come. Only once does he truly lose it – and even then, he makes sure he is alone when he does. The other major role in the film is played by Harrison Ford, as Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, who decides unilaterally that his team is going to break the color barrier. At first, Ford, nearly unrecognizable under a lot of makeup, and with that weird twang in his voice, and his performance feel like a mere stunt – but as the movie moves along, he grows more comfortable. It still isn’t a great performance by Ford – but unlike the last few movies he’s been in, he doesn’t seem to be sleepwalking through the performance, so that’s something.

The movie probably works better in individual moments than it does in total. While the movie is mostly solid and respectable, and a little dull at times, there are moments you are unlikely to forget. – Lucas Black’s Peewee Reese going over to Jackie and putting his arm around him in front of the fans in Cincinnati as the crowd hurls boos and racial slurs at Robinson is a wonderful moment. Christopher Meloni’s Leo Durocher (who will eventually be suspended because of another kind of “moral lapse”) lashing out at his team for signing a petition to not have Robinson play with them. And the scenes that are really spectacular – and unforgettable – involve Alan Tudyk, playing Phillies manager Ben Chapman, standing outside the dugout and yelling one ugly racial slur after another at Robinson. Tudyk is mainly known as a comedic actor, and he plays Chapman with a kind of “class clown” attitude. He says the most ugly, vile, racist things imaginable, but does it all in good cheer, and doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about when he’s questioned on it. In a few short scenes, Tudyk delivers the movie’s best performance – and an ugly reminder of the kind of racism that not that long ago was commonplace.

The scenes that I really felt Spike Lee would have done something interesting with are between Boseman’s Robinson and Andre Holland, who plays Wendell Smith, a black baseball reporter, who has to write his copy on his typewriter from the bleachers, because he’s not allowed in the press box. He becomes Robinson’s unofficial chronicler – and is hired by Rickey to make sure Robinson gets around okay. I have a feeling that when these two black men – both on the outside of their respective fields, not because they’re not good enough, but because of their race – were alone with each other, the dialogue they had wouldn’t be quite as PC as writer-director Brian Helgeland has it in this movie. Both performances are willing and able – but the screenplay lets them down.

In short 42 is a solid, respectable movie – in baseball terms, a well hit double. What it does, it does well, and I have a hard imagining that too many audiences would dislike the movie – it is a crowd pleasing, inspirational movie. Personally though, I just wish there was enough room for Spike Lee’s version of the same story – it may not have been as crowd pleasing or inspirational, but it most likely would have been a more honest and hard hitting movie. In short, it would have been the Jackie Robinson movie made for intelligent adults. 42 is kid’s stuff – solid kid’s stuff – but kid’s stuff just the same.

Movie Review: Upstream Color

Monday, April 15, 2013

Movie Review: Upstream Color

Upstream Color
Directed by: Shane Carruth.
Written by: Shane Carruth.
Starring: Amy Seimetz (Kris), Shane Carruth (Jeff), Andrew Sensenig (The Sampler), Thiago Martins (Thief), Kathy Carruth (Orchid Mother), Meredith Burke (Orchid Daughter), Andreon Watson (Peter), Ashton Miramontes (Lucas), Myles McGee (Monty), Frank Mosley (Husband), Carolyn King (Wife).

I’m not sure you’ll see a more ambitious film this year than Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color – a brilliant –sci-fi/horror/love story hybrid that starts out really creepy and disturbing, and then just keeps getting creepier. The film is told in a style that resembles Terrence Malick, but with subject matter than recalls David Cronenberg. And if these directors seem at odds with each other to you, you’re right, but you also haven’t seen just what Shane Carruth has up his sleeve in Upstream Color. This is a movie that forces audiences to think and pay attention – and I’m sure it will inspire some Room 237 like craziness in its interpretations. The movie doesn’t spell everything out for you, but if you pay attention, you can put it all together. People who want a linear structure will be frustrated (like the people who sat behind in the movie, who seemed baffled). The best way to watch Upstream Color however isn’t to try and figure it out on a moment to moment basis, but to let it wash over you. Like I said, I think everything in the movie makes sense, once you have the whole picture, which you won’t get until the end of the movie. But watching the movie the first time through, you will undoubtedly be baffled at some moments – and that’s a good thing.

The movie opens with what we assume is some sort of botanist, tending to his flowers, who may well be diseased, as he scrapes a strange blue powder on them. He also gets some maggots from the soil around the plants, and tends to them – discarding some but not others. What he is up to is not immediately apparent – but eventually it comes together when he meets Kris (Amy Seimetz) in an alley, and in an extremely disturbing scene involving an oxygen mask, forces her to ingest one of those maggots. He then takes Kris back to her place, and seemingly has her under his control – making her give him all his money, and take out a home loan against her house to give him even more. Eventually, he leaves her alone, and she goes to another man when she realizes there is something beneath her skin that she cannot get out – and he extracts the worm from her in another extremely disturbing surgery scene – this one involving a pig. When she finally wakes up, she doesn’t really remember either man. But she has lost everything.

This is just the setup for the movie – much of it involving Kris’ relationship with Jeff (Carruth himself), who she meets on a commuter train. Although at first it appears like he has everything together, while she is falling apart, eventually we realize he is just as screwed up as she is. Their relationship is seen slowly progressing, and falling apart, and then healing itself, as they two grow increasingly paranoid – but with good reason. Sometimes paranoia is justified.

I won’t go any further into the plot, because you really should see how Carruth builds it from moment to moment in the film. Also, if I tried to explain it all, we’d be here all day, and it wouldn’t enhance anyone’s enjoyment of the film – even if they’ve already seen it. Does it all make sense? In the end, to me, it all does. I’m sure if I was interested, I could watch the film over and over, and dig into each and every scene, and put together they purposely fractured timeline that Carruth presents. But in a film like this – like Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko or David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (or really, almost every other Lynch film) – I’m not really interested in doing that. The confusion in parts of Upstream Color is on purpose by Carruth – the film is ultimately about how these two people have to rebuild their identity after they have been ripped apart. They are confused, so shouldn’t we be as well? That is part of what makes the movie work so well. I don’t necessary view films like this as a puzzle that needs to be solved – that way leads to madness as shown in the recent Room 237. What matters is the whole of the movie, which no matter how you see everything interlocking, to me, makes perfect sense.

This is Carruth’s second movie, following his ultra-low budget time travel movie Primer (2004). That was one of the few time travel movies to actually take the question of time travel seriously, and think through the paradoxes it presents. Primer was a very good film, but Upstream Color is a great one. The film is just as brainy as Primer – a puzzle movie made for nerds like Carruth who has a degree in mathematics, and is more interested in science than spirituality – but it hits you harder on an emotional level as well. Part of this is undoubtedly because of the great performance by Amy Seimetz. In some ways, you could describe her story as a play on the old rape-revenge storyline of horror movies, except what happens to her is perhaps even more disturbing and traumatizing, and in the end, she may not quite get the satisfaction she thinks she does. Her performance is truly great – and anchors the film scene by scene on an emotional level. Carruth himself is quite good as Jeff, but he seems to know this is Seimetz’s movie, and certainly wrote the better role for her, which she seizes. An indie actress, along with an indie and director herself, Seimetz should become a star because of her work here, which is horrifying, layered, subtle and heartbreaking. I mentioned off the top that the film resembles the work of both David Cronenberg and Terrence Malick – and so it does – and yet this is no mere homage to those directors (and undoubtedly others). This is every inch a Carruth original – and along with Primer is the start of hopefully will be a great filmography.

I could go on and on about Upstream Color (who is The Sampler really for example? God?), but I think perhaps it’s best to end the review now before I give away too much. Upstream Color is certainly not for everyone – be prepared walking into the theater, because you are going to have to think, and you will be baffled at times, which to me, in a movie like this, is a supremely enjoyable experience, but to many if not most is simply frustrating. But if you get on Upstream Color’s wavelength – if you let it wash over you, and let yourself go with it, I think many will love it as much as I did. This is likely to be one of the best films of 2013.

Movie Review: The Place Beyond the Pines

Movie Review: The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines
Directed by:  Derek Cianfrance.
Written by: Derek Cianfrance and Ben Coccio and Darius Marder.
Starring: Ryan Gosling (Luke), Bradley Cooper (Avery), Eva Mendes (Romina), Dane DeHaan (Jason), Emory Cohen (AJ), Ben Mendelsohn (Robin), Ray Liotta (Deluca), Rose Byrne (Jennifer), Mahershala Ali (Kofi), Harris Yulin (Al Cross), Gabe Fazio (Scott), Robert Clohessy (Chief Weirzbowski), Bruce Greenwood (Bill Killcullen).

If you’re read any reviews of Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines, you have more than likely read one of film critics favorite words – “flawed”. You will have also heard another critics favorite “overlong” – although the film is only two hours and twenty minutes, so that’s hardly an epic running time, and makes me think that some critics, like the rest of society, have fallen victim to an ever shrinking attention span. I say this not to criticize other critics – they are certainly right on the first count – The Place Beyond the Pines is flawed. And yet, it’s major flaw is that Cianfrance is overly ambitious. In telling this story of two families – one on either side of the law – three sets of fathers-and-sons, spanning more than a decade, Cianfrance has certainly bitten off a little more than he can chew. Unlike the nearly perfect Blue Valentine (2010), Cianfrance’s previous film, Cianfrance is painting on a large canvas this time. True, The Place Beyond the Pines is “flawed”. But I’ll take a flawed film like this that tries to do so much, and succeeds at doing most of it, over a safer less ambitious, less flawed film.

The story opens in the late 1990s, with Luke (Ryan Gosling), a motorcycle stuntman travelling with a roving carnival, coming to a town he hasn’t been to in a year. On the fairgrounds, he runs into Romina (Eva Mendes), who he knew a year ago, but hasn’t contacted since. She seems to be holding something back – and when Luke goes over to her house, he discovers what this is. Apparently, Luke now has an infant son. Not wanting to be his own father, who he never knew, Luke quits his job to stay in town and help raise his son, Jason. But Luke has no real skills beyond riding his motorcycle. And Romina has a new man in her life – Kofi (Mahershala Ali), who is more responsible than Luke. So while Romina is drawn to Luke, she knows it’s not wise to bet on him. Becoming increasingly desperate to prove her can provide for his son, and Romina, Luke is talked into robbing a bank by his only friend Robin (Ben Mendelsohn, adding another great sleaze ball to his ever expanding lineup). If Luke stopped to think for a minute, he would realize that by robbing banks, he is not proving himself able to provide for his family – but simply confirming Romina’s – and his own - worst fears about him. Luke may well turn out to be just what he doesn’t want – his father.

The movie will eventually switch focus to Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), the son of a former judge (Harris Yulin), with his own infant son, AJ. Avery went to law school, but instead of becoming a lawyer, decides instead to become a cop. He becomes a hero because of a shootout that leaves him wounded, and soon discovers that the department in which he works in is corrupt. But no one seems all that interested in what he wants to do. By doing the right thing, he may well be sealing his fate in becoming precisely what he didn’t want to be – his father.

The third part of the movie takes place 15 years later – in 2012 – and focuses not on either of these men, but on their two sons - Jason (Dane DeHaan) and AJ (Emory Cohen), like their fathers before them, struggle with the legacy left to them. Unlike them however, it may not be too late to change what they will become – although the final shots of both them imply that perhaps it is.

The son paying for the sins of his father is one of the oldest themes in storytelling – it pretty much dates back to the beginning of time. But just because a theme is old, doesn’t mean it isn’t still worth exploring, which Cianfrance does very well in The Place Beyond the Pines. Essentially, what he does is tell the twin stories of Luke and Avery – both are men trying hard to do the right thing, to not be the father that their father was to them, and both of them end up failing. They are their father’s sons, even if they do not want to be. And in Jason and AJ, we see the pattern starting to repeat itself yet again. Poor Jason doesn’t seem to realize that if he wasn’t so obsessed with biology, that he does in fact have a pretty great father figure in Kofi – who unlike the other fathers in the movie, is there for his kids – and who treats Jason as if he was his own son, which he is, in all ways except biological.

The first segment of the film – the one dealing with Luke – was my favorite of the trio. Gosling is one of the best actors working right now, and you cannot take your eyes off of him, even when he appears to be doing nothing. Some critics have complained that here he is essentially repeating his role from Nicholas Winding Refn’s brilliant Drive – but other than the fact that both men are really good at driving (one a car, the other a motorcycle) the characters couldn’t be more different. In Drive, Gosling is a man so in love that he is willing to become whatever Carey Mulligan’s character needs him to be – which changes throughout the movie. If we never really get to know who his character in Drive really is, that’s by design – he essentially plays one role after another. In The Place Beyond the Pines, he is a man who is trying to take responsibility for his own life for the first time – and all because of his new son. But he has no idea, really, what being a responsible parent means – it’s more than just money.

The second segment, with Cooper, is perhaps a little too conventional – we have seen stories of police corruption before, where one man tries to move beyond the corruption he is surrounded by, and has no one listen to him. But even then, the film takes an interesting turn as this segment comes to end. Avery undoubtedly does the right thing – but perhaps for the wrong reasons – and as such, he’s just as lost to his son as Luke is to his. Cooper is great in this part – as good as he’s ever been really – as he slowly goes from idealist to cynic.

The final segment is the most problematic – in part because it’s a little too convenient to have these two teenage boys meet each other by chance, in part because the movie takes some storytelling shortcuts that don’t make much sense, but are necessary for the plot, and in part because Jason’s actions are a little too farfetched to be believed. It is then to Dane DeHaan’s credit that he keeps this segment afloat – and makes us believe in Jason. DeHaan has a great career ahead of him – already adding another interesting performance to a resume that includes a wonderful one in last year’s Chronicle, and a memorable cameo in Lincoln. While Emory Cohen may not have quite the role that DeHaan does, he is great at playing a spoiled, rich white kid adopting African American culture as his own – without realizing how ridiculous it makes him look.

 
So yes, The Place Beyond the Pines is a “flawed” film – it slowly but surely bites off more than it can chew. Perhaps a less ambitious film – one that didn’t try to jam so much into its running time – would have made for a deeper and more effective film. But what we do have in The Place Beyond the Pines is pretty great in its own right – too ambitious to be sure, but I prefer that to a film that takes no chances whatsoever. And perhaps on DVD, where running time is less of a concern; they’ll even be a director’s cut that could turn out to be even better, because while many critics have complained that the film is too long, I think it’s too short. A more expansive running time may have allowed the characters more of a chance to breathe. But while The Place Beyond the Pines may not be the masterpiece that Blue Valentine was, it does confirm Cianfrance as an ambitious director – certainly one to watch for in the future.