"The Front Runner"

 ☆☆ 

How did the makers of The Front Runner take a true-life story set in the 1980s and filled with sex, lies and politics -- a story that even has Miami drug dealers on its fringe -- and make it boring? It's hard to imagine a movie being botched this badly. The only comparison is the way Gary Hart drove his own presidential campaign into the ground with alarming speed, but at least Gary Hart's real-life story was never dull. That's much more than can be said for the movie that finally got made about this sordid moment in presidential history.

The Front Runner moves at a funereal pace and approaches its story with a hand that isn't just heavy, it's leaden. Director Jason Reitman is trying, apparently, to channel the spirit of Robert Altman and his multi-layered style of filmmaking, which stuffed both the frame and the soundtrack with dizzying amounts of information and story. Give Reitman credit for trying, but the effort doesn't work, and instead gets The Front Runner off to a confusing and rocky start from which it never recovers.

But that's also in part because from those very first moments Reitman and co-screenwriters Matt Bai and Jay Carson take a completely straightforward approach to telling the story -- not entirely factual (it invents, awkwardly, a young Washington Post reporter, among other liberties) but in its dry, by-the-numbers accounting of the way Hart went from 1988 presidential front-runner status to disgraced has-been in just a few weeks.

That fall from grace in the public eye and Hart's steadfast insistence that the public has no interest in tawdry tabloid tales when reporters seem to catch him in what appears to be an affair.  But not everything is as it seems, Hart keeps insisting, and wants to try to keep the story focused on a panoply of policy-based issues.

The movie is based on All the Truth is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, screenwriter Bai's chronicling of the events that enthralled Americans in the spring of 1987. But if the movie gets (most of) the details right, it utterly misses the meaning behind it all. There's talk throughout the movie -- a lot of talk -- about how Hart's misdeeds and the media's frenzied response would affect politics forever, and obviously the movie has more than a few parallels to our current age, in which a president was elected because of his tabloid-style celebrity.

But those knowing winks to 2018 audiences don't really relate to Gary Hart's story; what does is the complete failure of a seasoned politician to be able to reflect on his own actions and save his campaign. Hart, who is played with little zeal by a mostly charmless Hugh Jackman, is relegated a secondary character in his own scandal -- The Front Runner bounces back and forth between his campaign staff (led by a seemingly bored JK Simmons); his wife, Lee (Vera Farmiga, trying hard to find something to work with here), who is stuck in their Colorado home and surrounded by press; the fictional Post reporter (Mamoudou Athie, who gives by far the most intriguing performance); Donna Rice (Sara Paxton, weepy-eyed with no character at all), and reporters and editors like Ben Bradlee (Alfred Molina, entirely miscast) and Miami Herald reporter Tom Fiedler (Steve Zissis).

It might be something to see all of these characters dancing around each other to create the media frenzy that erupted, doing an intricate dance between media and politics as the public watched, wide-eyed -- that might have made for a biting, relevant satire.  That's not what The Front Runner is all about, even though its one-sheet poster offers a delicious image of Hart's campaign bus flying off a cliff while reporters chase after it.  A movie like that could have been the Dr. Strangelove of our modern political system, but the movie that Reitman has made is sleepy, dull and uninteresting, a recitation of facts that finally has nowhere to go but a title card that reminds us that Gary and Lee Hart are still married.

What are we to make of the fact that a woman whose husband cheated on her in one of the most high-profile and public scandals in modern American politics stood by her husband and still does?  What are we to gather from the indignation of the campaign staff who cry foul over tabloid journalism?  Or of the voracious need of media to fill ever minute of a 24-hour news cycle?

The Front Runner doesn't offer any answers or perspectives; it just kind of sits there and lets us fidget in our seats, hoping something interesting will happen, until it's over.

If we learned anything from the Gary Hart scandal, you'd never know it by watching this movie.  I mean, we did learn something ... didn't we?




Viewed November 25, 2018 -- AMC Sunset 5

1430

"Bohemian Rhapsody"

 ☆☆☆ 

I grew up in what could charitably be termed a pop-music-limited household; until I was 16 and old enough to drive on my own, my only exposure to what was playing on the radio was limited to the 20 minutes it took to carpool to or from school.

I was also a closeted gay kid, frightened of being found out, and, just as I started becoming aware of my predicament, pushed further into the closet by the mortal fear of AIDS.

In the midst of this confused childhood, I was more than a little aware of Freddie Mercury, who fronted a band called, of all things, Queen, and who wore cop glasses, a bushy mustache and a tight T-shirt when he wasn't wearing outrageously flamboyant costumes  -- all of which both flaunted and embraced a hyper-homosexualized persona that was hypnotizing and even frightening. Was looking and acting like this expected of everyone who was gay? And yet, the supermarket tabloids implied he wasn't gay, or that maybe he was, or that perhaps he was bisexual, and all of that confused me even more: If someone so clearly gay apparently wasn't gay, if someone whose band was named Queen was actually straight or possibly straight, where did that leave me?

Freddie Mercury seemed enormously complicated, especially in the defiant way he normalized a gay appearance just as the papers were filled with news of gay men causing a new plague. What a fascinating, complex, tortured, artistic, proud, manic soul must exist behind those mirrored glasses. So, Bohemian Rhapsody, the long-in-development biography of Freddie Mercury, had not just a man but an entire era to work with, placing it all against a backdrop of social and political change, of musical growth and experimentation.

Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't, in the end, do any of that, or at least next to none of it.  Never anything less than perfectly entertaining and slickly made, it is both everything a pop-music fan could want of a movie about Queen and nothing at all that will satisfy anyone searching for some kind of insight into the person behind the iconic images of Freddie Mercury.

As a docudrama, it's strictly made-for-cable stuff, hitting every key beat along the the rags-to-riches timeline and scrubbing away anything unseemly (or, sadly, interesting).  Most frustratingly, most alarmingly, most discouragingly is the way it treats Freddie Mercury as a gay man.  He is "movie gay" in Bohemian Rhapsody; in one scene, he is talking to his wife Mary on a pay phone outside of a truck stop in the middle of America when he sees a man entering the bathroom. Their eyes lock, filled with lust. This is how the film tells us Freddie Mercury is gay: by the prurient portrayal of the unspeakable things that men do to each other in a truck stop restroom.

Later, Freddie can't live with his one-scene struggle, and tells his angelic, sweet, patient, loving, supportive, perfect wife that he "might be bisexual." "You're gay," she assures him. And then they make a promise never to leave each other, because without her popping up from time to time, the movie will need to come to grips with Mercury's homosexuality, which it simply can't do.

Still later, Freddie goes into a gay bar, which is filled with men wearing leather, some even wearing hoods, where sex is happening everywhere, where sex is the only reason for being. Is this really how a big-budget studio film portrays homosexuality -- even in the 1970s and 1980s -- in major movies? As salacious and sleazy and undoubtedly dirty and shameful?

There is no serious attempt to explore what Freddie Mercury was struggling with, as far as his own identity goes. Nor is there ever a serious attempt to explore what that struggle did to Mercury both as a singer, a songwriter and a celebrity.

Likewise, we're never given insight into how Farrokh Bolsara turns into Freddie Mercury, other than a moment in which he tells his family that he has legally changed his name. His family, presented as fine and upstanding though staid and repressed people, seem like they'll be a major factor in the story, but once Bohemian Rhapsody is through with them, they mostly disappear. The whole movie's that way, bouncing merrily from one episode from the life of Freddie Mercury and Queen to the next, making sure to hit all the same marks that would be found in a special, two-hour episode of MTV's Behind the Music.

And that is enough for many people. The audience I saw Bohemian Rhapsody with loved it. They clapped along and raised their hands and gently sang the lyrics, and afterward they applauded and quite rightly praised Rami Malek for dominating the film with his re-creation of Mercury. They got exactly what they had wanted to see, a fun, jaunty musical that happens to have some not-so-happy moments like Mercury finding out he has AIDS and a title card that says he died of it, but why focus on those icky things when the music is so good?

Bohemian Rhapsody gets the mannerisms and general personality of Mercury right, or so I gather from what I've read of the film. He was a little guy who was always larger than life, he was not the leader of Queen but was more than "just" their lead singer (the other band members barely register as characters in this movie), and he dominated every room he walked into.

The movie adds in a few little observations like: he loved cats, he was sad, he was lonely, he thought Queen was his family, and he wanted to be friends with the wife who knew his secret. Beyond that, Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't allow Freddie Mercury even a moment to be a real person. How does he create songs? He writes them down, sometimes gets a tune in his head first. What do his lyrics to "Bohemian Rhapsody" mean, and why is it so over-the-top? There's a little observation about how poetry matters more to the listener, but that's the extent of the insight.

What about those sad, angry, lonely lyrics that open "We Are the Champions"? Nope, not a thing. What about the very public struggle to discover his own sexuality even while hiding it for the fans? Bohemian Rhapsody isn't going to go there.

It's purely a paint-by-numbers job, and it's a colorful and entertaining one. See Bohemian Rhapsody for Malek's performance and for the music. Enjoy it. It's worth enjoying.

But consider, too, all the ways it does a gross disservice to the story it's telling. When Mercury says he doesn't want to be a poster boy for AIDS, what does that mean?  Why does he eschew the one opportunity to give something back to the community that helped him attain such lofty heights? What is he afraid of?

More intriguingly, what is Bohemian Rhapsody afraid of? Sure, it's worth being satisfied with the idea that Mercury is at least played as gay in a limited way throughout the film, so that the audience is getting a story about a gay musician who is still revered and idolized; at least they haven't eliminated Mercury's real self entirely. But they have blunted it to such a degree that it's all presented as acceptable. Too acceptable. Outside of a chaste kiss or two (and that scene in the truck stop), there's no desire in this film to present hyper-sexualized Freddie Mercury as a hyper-sexualized human. Indeed, apart from some drinking, Queen has to be the least sordid band in history, with other band members who live fine, upstanding, family-oriented life.

The more I think about Bohemian Rhapsody the more I have to wonder about the people who made it (fired director Bryan Singer chief among them); are they this frightened of sexuality in general, homo- or hetero- or otherwise? Because they've taken the story of one of the great crossover icons, whose death from AIDS exposed so many of the secrets he had longed to hide, and presents him as just another slightly loony singer with talent who makes it big and then gets a little lonely.

What a waste of material. Even more frustrating is that so much of what's there is so good. Malek is terrific, often disarmingly so; some complex and bewildering relationships are given just enough time on screen to make us want to see more; and the film's depiction of the music is first rate.

But, really, didn't Freddie Mercury deserve more than this? A lot more than this? As a populist biography, it may be fine -- like I said, it's at least of the quality that plays on cable -- but as a deep and unexpected look at Freddie Mercury and the rise and success of Queen, it leaves the best stuff out. You go to Bohemian Rhapsody to be entertained, not to be enlightened. Fair enough. But it should have been much, much, much more than a perfectly enjoyable jukebox musical.




Viewed November 18, 2018 -- AMC Burbank 6

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"Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

It doesn't seem right to dismiss Lee Israel, whose wild and weird story is the basis for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, as a mean and horrible person. To do so completely undermines everything that has happened to her before this movie begins. Lee is 50-ish, disillusioned, disappointed, and tired of being the butt of everyone's jokes, which she knows she is. How could a woman who carries a Scotch glass in her messenger bag not be aware of how others see her?

Lee looks in the mirror and sees, well, herself. She has written two books, both biographies, and wants to write a third, about Fanny Brice. The year is 1991, and even then a book about Fanny Brice was a few decades too late. Lee is undaunted. No, wait, scratch that: Lee is daunted by just about everything. And why shouldn't she be?

She's been fired yet again, this time for being abusive to a co-worker who, quite frankly, deserved it. Her books have been failures, just like her relationship. Her apartment is filled with flies. She's broke. And the damned world keeps insisting she be polite and upbeat. She has  She has seen enough of people to know she prefers the company of her cat (who's sick), and she is well aware that this is not how successful people live their lives. What can she do? It is who she is.

She doesn't complain about it, so why is everyone always complaining about her? The way she sees it, she has every right to be pissed off at the agent who won't return her calls but races to the phone when she thinks it's Nora Ephron on the other end.

Melissa McCarthy captures a real, beating heart inside the layers of this woman who is dismissed by the entire world so frequently that she has come to dismiss herself. McCarthy makes Israel entirely watchable, wonderfully alive and oddly hopeful, so when she stumbles upon a way to make a quick buck that is entirely unethical and kinda-sorta criminal, we're rooting for her. She is an insufferable person, maybe, but only in the way that every single one of us is insufferable by the time we reach a certain age; life owes us more than it's given us, doesn't it? Why not take it?

Her weary view of the world is matched by the approach Jack Hoff (Richard E. Grant) takes to life -- he's gay in 1991, he's seen everyone he cares about die, he might very well die himself, and, screw it, he wants in on this scheme of Lee's. In the odd and squishy ethics of director Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me?, what Lee is doing seems harmless enough, and she has genuinely stumbled upon it herself: She has taken to forging letters allegedly written by literary giants, people like Noël Coward, Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner.

She sells the first one, legitimately, to a confident and pretty book store owner (Dolly Wells), and then realizes there is real money to be made here, a vast network of collectors that she can tap into; they don't ask too many questions, and, besides, everyone seems to be doing equally shady things.

The story itself is unlikely but true (which is the best kind of true, as the screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty knows), and Lee's do-what-it-takes approach to life reminded me, along with its New York vibe, both of mid-'80s Woody Allen and, oddly, of Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman is told by his agent that under no circumstances will anyone ever hire him for anything.

Lee also has an agent, who is played by Jane Curtin with sparkle, fire and a distinct air of sympathy. Her message to Lee: Find another line of work, because you're never gonna make it doing what you're doing. Lee's tired of that answer. And she's even more tired of never being willing to act, either way, on the advice.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is about a woman who is complicated, unpleasant and slightly unhinged, and none of it without good reason. She knows she's not the best person out there, but, damn it, she's not the worst, either. An all-too-brief scene with Lee and her ex-girlfriend (Anna Deveare Smith) is heartbreaking in its honesty; Lee is a difficult person, even for herself.

Yes, the movie is a showcase for the dramatic side of Melissa McCarthy, and a wonderful one. But there's much more to it than letting McCarthy look and act unglamorous and unseemly. It's above all a carefully observed portrait of how people see exactly what they want to see, about how they make up their minds based on little more than a cursory glance and a gut feeling, and about how both of those things can be wrong.

Late in the movie, there's a scene in which Lee gets a chance to explain herself. And she does. The way she does it (not to mention the way McCarthy plays the moment) is just perfect for how it sums up a woman who is unrepentant about scamming a world that scammed her, is even a little tired of it, but willing to be just the tiniest bit hopeful that maybe there's something halfway good still waiting in it for her.




Viewed November 13, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1655

"Boy Erased"

 ☆☆½ 

The intentions of everyone involved in Boy Erased were noble and sincere, of that I have no doubt. You can see it in almost every frame of this earnest, muted drama that seems custom-crafted for awards-season audiences. It's a well-shot, well-cast, well-acted film with a topic almost guaranteed to elicit sympathy among Oscar voters. There's only one problem with Boy Erased: It isn't nearly as good as it should be.

Do not fault the actors. Academy Award Nominee Lucas Hedges is in seemingly every other movie these days for a reason: He's engaging and believable and committed. Academy Award Winner Nicole Kidman dons a wig and accent that would make Dolly Parton proud and continues to be maybe the most interesting actress working in film (not to mention TV). Academy Award Winner Russell Crowe brings an added air authority and offers more proof that Australians can do flawless American accents -- as does writer-director Joel Edgerton, who co-stars in his film, which is, as Oscar tends to love, Based on a True Story.

It might be cynical to assume that Oscar gold was the primary intention behind the film, of course. I believe (honestly, I do) that Edgerton and his cast and his crew wanted to make a serious, artistic film about the insanity of anti-gay "conversion therapy" and the horrors suffered by those who are forced to go through it.  They have succeeded but only to point. Boy Erased is indeed both serious and artistic. It's also predictable, unsurprising and frustratingly unmoving.

How could Boy Erased be so staid? Every frame of this film should be awash in anger and outrage, not in muted shadows and sallow colors that underscore just how serious the movie is. Every moment of what happens inside the walls of the "therapy" center should unnerve the viewer with the terror of psychological torture, but instead comes across as pedantic, even sedate. Except for a few moments, it all seems frankly polite.

Jared Eamons (Hedges) goes to the "Love in Action" center because once his parents learn that their 18-year-old son is gay, they give him an ultimatum: Live by our set of Scripture-based morals or be disowned. That alone should be a devastating moment, but is given barely an extra beat in Edgerton's straightforward-but-well-meaning screenplay.  Edgerton also plays the head of the center, a hard-talking, hardcore Christian who himself has "overcome" homosexuality and is convinced that a program of praying, intervention and manly activities can help gay teens become straight.

If you've ever seen Frank Oz's In and Out starring Kevin Kline, you'll remember that film's funny, satirical "Exploring Your Masculinity" sequence, which ends with Kline doing a joyous, exuberant dance to "I Will Survive." That's Boy Erased, but with no sense of humor at all, even though the concept is the same: one "straight" man yelling at a gay man to stop being gay. Played for laughs, it makes a point, but when stripped of its humor, and of the freedom and sense of self-worth that are part of the coming-out process, it's all overwhelmingly, aggressively dour, and lacking in drama, pathos and empathy.

In part, the film lacks an anchoring point of view; the movie recreates and presents scenes that no doubt actually happened, but without a clear sense of this being Jared's story, it has a curious detachment. And although it boasts an intriguing supporting cast, including YouTube influencer Troye Sivan, multi-hyphenate performer Xavier Dolan, Flea, and, most memorably, Cherry Jones as a deeply understanding doctor, none of them (except Jones) are given much at all to do.

Worse, Jared is afforded no real identity, something that it's beyond even the impressive talents of Hedges to overcome. His sexuality is a plot point, not a key aspect of his character, and other than a brutal, devastating rape and a few chaste kisses with another boy, there is no sense at all that he views his homosexuality in any meaningful way.

While there is no requirement that a film about a young gay man needs to be made by gay filmmakers, Boy Erased desperately an authentic gay voice, the way last year's mesmerizing Call Me By Your Name benefitted from director Luca Guadagnino's gay experience even though it starred two straight actors. Straight writer-director Edgerton really, sincerely believes in what he's saying here, but beyond the message that gay "conversion" therapy doesn't work (as if anyone watching the film might believe otherwise), it's unclear what exactly he wants to accomplish with this film.

Boy Erased ends, as does this Oscar season's equally discouraging Beautiful Boy, with a set of statistics. Both movies might get the facts right, but they seem to know nothing about the experience of those who go through the horrors they depict. Boy Erased means well. But that's not nearly enough.




Viewed November 10, 2018 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2010

"A Star Is Born"

 ☆☆☆½ 

Ally is a nobody waitress with a voice of gold, Jack is a superstar singer whose addictions are getting the best of him. Sound familiar? It should, because this is the fourth time A Star Is Born has been made in Hollywood, and even though more than 80 years have passed since the first attempt, the story hasn't changed much.

The trouble with that this time around is that Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper create rich, carefully observed characters who are endlessly fascinating for about the first 45 minutes of the movie, and just as we're really falling in love with both of them and their complexities, they start living A Star Is Born.

We've seen the story before, over and over; we haven't seen these characters, and as A Star Is Born raced toward its inexorable conclusion I found myself wishing time and again that something different would happen to these particular people.  These characters deserve a more interesting, more challenging fate than the same one to befall Judy Garland and James Mason, Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, et. al.

The first time we see Cooper's Jackson (not Norman) Maine, he's on stage performing in front of an adoring audience, but he looks and acts tired of it all. He's too used to being a star, but he navigates the trappings of stardom with ease, especially as a passenger in the back of an SUV limo whose driver is the closest thing he's got to a friend. After the concert that opens the movie, Jackson needs a drink, so the limo pulls up in front of a grungy dive that turns out to be a drag bar.

Jackson doesn't mind, and in one of the movie's many nice little grace notes, he seems to enjoy the camaraderie of the bar and its patrons. Up on stage comes Ally, the only biological woman in the place and the only live singer, and immediately Jackson is entranced. It's easy to see why: Lady Gaga seems uncharacteristically average in these opening scenes, and as she's already proven in Five Foot Two, her simultaneously candid and self-absorbed documentary, Lady Gaga can seem disarmingly ordinary.

They share a long scene in a supermarket parking lot that feels a lot like two superstars imagining what it would be like to be anonymous again, marveling at the way everyone knows who they are but no one knows what they're like. Jackson asks her to call him Jack. This relaxed, revealing, completely captivating scene holds the tantalizing promise of turning A Star Is Born into an intimate conversation like the Before movies.

But it's A Star Is Born.

He's going to make her famous. She's going to try to get him to stop drinking and doing drugs. As she rises, so he will fall, ultimately humiliating her, but she will stand by her man, and he will become convinced his own fame is holding her back, and the movie will play the way A Star Is Born always plays, and it will prove as simultaneously beguiling and disappointing as listening to Lady Gaga perform a cover of an old standard: With so many more interesting opportunities, why choose the safest ones?

Because A Star Is Born demands it. There's no doubt most of it is played very, very well, with the exception of an onerous little creep named Rez, who becomes Ally's manager and turns her into a bubble-gum pop-music sensation. The scenes with Rez are the movie's weakest moments, which isn't the fault of actor Rafi Gavron, who plays him as all slime and artifice; the problem is that Lady Gaga and Cooper play their roles with real conviction, and their characters insist on authenticity. Her sellout into music superstardom feels contrived and overplayed -- certainly the world today knows celebrities who don't rise to the top by giving in so easily.

So little about the film's middle is believable that it's disconcerting to compare it with the sheer force of personality in the first act.  By the time A Star Is Born gets to the only place it is allowed to go, it feels even less convincing -- it's a story of fame and addiction that shows its age; would anyone in the movie act the way they do if the plot didn't demand it?

Perhaps in the hands of a lesser director and lesser stars it would have been less problematic for the film to wind up in precisely the place A Star Is Born must wind up, but is that a reason, in 2018, to force Ally into a place of having to choose between her career and her man, of ending up in the same place as the character did 80 years ago, feeling weakened yet strengthened by avoidable tragedy?  The film seems so stuck in its old self that there are times when you wish Ally and Jack would just sit down and watch A Star Is Born to see where it's all headed.

None of that, strangely enough, is reason not to see A Star Is Born, or to marvel at its wonderful soundtrack, or to imagine the acting career ahead of Lady Gaga, or to enjoy the remarkable chemistry of the two leads. Indeed, there's not too much wrong at all with A Star Is Born ... except that it's A Star Is Born, that old chestnut, roasted and served up again with the same bittersweet flavor it's always had.



Viewed November 5, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

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