Catching Up: "The Wife"

 ☆☆☆½ 

The basic premise of The Wife is played as an untold secret, both in this film and in Meg Wolitzer's original novel. On the page, the revelation works, but on the screen it plays like a tease: In hindsight we learn why Glenn Close's Joan Castleman seems so agitated and irritable, and then we know the truth we can marvel at how it was all right there on Close's face. But this would have been a vastly better, more interesting and more fulfilling movie had we known the truth right from the start.

The novel begins with Joan making up her mind about a huge and life-altering decision, then slowly reveals why this decision is the only emotionally rational choice.  The movie saves that the declaration of that decision for its climax, so that everything leading up to it is just one long tease.  One one level, it works, but on another it feels so much like a gimmick that it's easy to resent The Wife for not playing fair either with its audience or with its characters.

Joan is the wife of Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a successful writer of highbrow literary fiction who, as the film begins, is informed that he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The movie takes place in 1992, mostly because the story at its center -- the one presented as a secret but that would be so much better if it were the open and fiery heart of the film -- begins some 35 years earlier, when Joe was Joan's writing instructor at an eastern college.

Joan wants to be a writer, but Joe discourages her, as does an unsuccessful author played with boozy resentment by Elizabeth McGovern.  Writers, she insists are meant to be read, and manuscripts are meant to be published. In the mid-century man's world where Joan works as an editorial assistant, there's no way, both Joe and the author maintain, Joan could ever be a success.

Never mind the female writers who had already risen to prominence, who were successful on their own terms, never mind Virginia Woolf and Harper Lee and Carson McCullers, The Wife hinges upon a 1960s woman's willingness to submit to the patriarchy of the publishing world. In its numerous flashbacks (in which Close's character is played by Close's own daughter, Annie Starke), Joan is presented as talented, timid and afraid.

Yet present-day Joan is none of those things, though she is deeply resentful of her husband's success, as is her son David (Max Irons), who accompanies them on the trip to Stockholm to claim the Nobel Prize.  Also along for the ride is Joe's would-be biographer, played by Christian Slater as an irritating sycophant -- though let it be said that Joe himself is an irritating narcissist.

It's a wonder Joan has stayed with him all these years; he offers almost no affection toward her, even in their opening lovemaking scene, which is played merely as a way for him to stave off his anxiety over the Nobel committee's selection.  Joe has no awareness of anyone but himself, and though Pryce plays such a pompous pseudo-intellect with aplomb, the film leaves us no question of why Joan is always gritting her teeth, sighing and standing a few feet behind her husband.

If the story itself doesn't quite work in The Wife, what does work, and very well, is the film's observations of the quotidian struggles of marriage.  Joan's resentments seem well-founded even before we learn the big reveal, and Joe's complete lack of awareness of his own behaviors ring very true.  The best scene comes when the two have a totally justified screaming match that's interrupted by a phone call to tell them that they're grandparents; the way their long-festering anger melts away into a rare kind of love is beautiful and both actors play it perfectly.

The Wife is, above all, a showcase for Close, a six-time Oscar nominee who has never won.  It's designed as an effort to remedy that, and she does transcend the showiness of the role and make Joan into a deeply wounded and sympathetic character despite the weird insistence of both the screenplay and the source novel that Joan and Joe never had any option for doing what they did.

Strangely, though, it's their son David who ends up being the audience's best surrogate: He's exasperated, suspicious, irritated, confused, intrigued and left to do little except watch two mighty personalities go toe-to-toe with one another as they continue trying to hide a secret that's neither as shocking nor as necessary as it purports to be.



Viewed December 29, 2018 -- DVD

"Mary Poppins Returns"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

As Mary herself might say, there's no point sugar-coating it: Mary Poppins Returns is far from practically perfect. It's eminently enjoyable, and there are times when it's positively poignant, but perfection? That belongs solely to the 1964 original.

It's one of the primary flaws of Mary Poppins Returns, along with extreme over-length, unmemorable songs, and throwback production values that have resulted in a roadshow film in a multiplex era. Those are its drawbacks, and they aren't quibbles.

Let's get this out of the way, too: Emily Blunt isn't Julie Andrews, and to compare her is completely unfair and entirely inevitable. Is it wrong to note that Blunt has a perfectly lovely singing voice that would never, not in a million years (no matter who she was) be capable of matching Andrews' preternatural range. Unfair, I know, I know, I know, but if you're going to make a sequel to Mary Poppins, that is what's going to happen, and it only matters because when Blunt sings she is fun and bouncy but anyone who's grown up with the original knows what's missing.

I feel I must again excuse this kind of criticism, but Mary herself might tell me to quit talking now and just get on with it.

Still, a few more faults linger: Lin-Manuel Miranda lacks almost any screen presence, which is odd considering how electrifying he proved to be on stage. He's just ... nice. He's fine. Then there's the biggest problem of all: Mary Poppins Returns dares so little from a story standpoint; it is, beat for beat, basically a remake of the original, following the basic outlines so closely that there's a loopy relative who sings on the ceiling (played by no less than Meryl Streep); not one but two musical numbers that blend live action and animation; and an elaborate, wildly overlong dance scene with Mary and a bunch of working-class Londoners (lamplighters instead of chimney sweeps, but they've still got smudged faces and big smiles).

It all feels entirely familiar ... and the crazy and almost unbelievable thing is that, by and large, it works. It shouldn't, God knows. But there's Mary Poppins, all snippy, irritable, sharp-edged and lovely just as she's always been, and she's ready to rescue a family in trouble.

Even the family is the same as before: Jane and Michael Banks, who are now grown and living in a rather surprisingly integrated London of the 1930s, in what Britain called the Great Slump and Americans called the Great Depression. They're still in the big townhome at No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane, next door to Admiral Boom. Ellen is still their maid and Miss Lark still likes to walk in the park with ... well, poor Andrew didn't last through the last 20 years, I guess.

Michael (Ben Whishaw) is the father now, a widower since his wife died a year earlier, leaving him with not two but three children this time around, Anabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson). Jane (Emily Mortimer) spends a lot of time helping out Michael, and he needs it: His grief has become a distraction, he's forgotten to pay the mortgage and they Bankses are going to lose the house soon, to the hands of the greedy banker Mr. Wilkins (Colin Firth).

Who can help? Why, Mary Poppins, of course, summoned by the seemingly magical kite that the Michael, Jane and their parents flew in the climax of the original.  She's back to teach gentle lessons about imagination and acceptance and all of the kinds of things that Mary Poppins does best, and she does it with the knowing winks of the original.

As the movie bounces along from lackluster song to lackluster song (they're all by Marc Shaiman, with Richard M. Sherman listed as "musical consultant," perhaps because the movie soars to life most vividly when it recalls the indelible music of he and his brother, Robert), there's every reason to dislike it, but Mary Poppins Returns does something quite astonishing: It refuses our disapproval. Like Mary herself, it simply ignores the criticisms and insists on being, well, Mary Poppins.

Yes, the original is superior in every way, but Mary Poppins Returns is so superior in craft and performance to most other movies around that it floats above even while we note every single objection we could possibly have to it.  Yes, the songs are dull, but they are jaunty enough to keep us occupied, and every performer (even Miranda, who is so weirdly unmemorable) sings, dances, smiles and cries with absolute conviction.

Perhaps the most welcome relief is that, just like the original, Mary Poppins Returns finds its true soul in the story of a man overwhelmed by a life he can't control. Just as Mary Poppins belonged as much to Andrews as to the under-appreciated talents of David Tomlinson as the beleaguered, disappointed Mr. Banks, the sequel belongs to Blunt as much as to Whishaw, who is a different kind of adult. If his father was overly confident and rather too proud, Michael is scared, overwhelmed, and saddened that the life he has is so far from the life he imagined.

Michael feels at once appropriate for the Depression-era setting of the film and perfectly in synch with a modern father, shocked that his life has left him with so much less than his own parents.  Jane, presented here as an activist just as her mother once was, takes a much-reduced role here; call it a patriarchal flaw in the film or just a result of telling a story from a different era, but Mary Poppins Returns is once again about a father learning some basic life skills. Whishaw can be a little whiny and cowardly, but mostly he strikes all the right notes that balance the bluntness (no pun intended) of Mary herself.  A scene in which she listens while he collapses, and allows him to express his pain, is exquisite for the way Blunt, in particular, plays her own hurt.  The ageless Mary knows how easy her life is compared with those she helps.

There's a lot going here, probably too much in most every way.  A little less of Mary Poppins would have been more successful for her return.  She didn't need to come back.  But maybe, despite all of our resistance and every objection to her acidic sweetness and old-fashioned emotional common sense, we actually needed her.

By the time the Bankses go back to the park to celebrate as a family, by the time Mary Poppins once again realizes the family no longer needs her (after just a week this time!), by the time the music swells and Mary flies off, I found myself overcoming my initial eye rolling to discover a tear or two rolling down my cheek.  Maybe I'm just an old softie.

Yeah, I'm as surprised as anyone by that. Leave it to Mary Poppins to tear down those walls of resistance and force her way, once again, into our hearts. Turns out, there's still space for her in there.




Viewed December 28, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1355

Catching Up: "Eighth Grade"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

Hey, Guys!

It's me, John.

I want to talk to you today about Eighth Grade.  I mean, the movie.  Because, I mean, who would want to talk about eighth grade the actual experience, right?  Like, you might want to talk about it, but that would mean you need to think about it and no one wants to think about eighth grade ever again, right?  I mean, of course you think about it because it's, like, part of your life, and you can't not think about part of your life.  Except maybe eighth grade you can, because is there anyone on earth, and I mean like anyone on the entire planet, who would want to be 13 years old and be in eighth grade again?

You've got pimples. Even if you have great skin, you have pimples. Except two girls in the school.  One of the girls has perfect hair that she plays with and primps all day and she wears makeup like something from a magazine, and her parents buy her all the nice clothes and she lives in a great house.  And another one of the girls is her best friend and they're always together and she does everything the other girl tells her to do, and because of that everyone wants to be her because they know they can't be the Perfect Girl.

No one is ever that girl.  Just like no one is ever the guy who is already over six feet tall and has hair on his chest.  No one will ever be that girl or that guy, and honestly they've peaked in eighth grade. Seriously. That's sad.

So, in this movie I saw called Eighth Grade there is a girl who is absolutely not the Perfect Girl.

Her name is Kayla Day. She makes YouTube videos on subjects like how to be yourself and how to "put yourself out there."  The thing is, Kayla has no idea how to be herself and no idea how to put herself out there. And because she's in eighth grade she doesn't realize that no one ever knows how to do those things. That everyone is faking it, now and forever.

Kayla's dad is not very helpful. He tries to be, but, GOD, HE IS EMBARRASSING even if they're just sitting around and eating dinner on Friday night. Kayla's mom left them. Now it's just the two of them. Her dad loves Kayla more than you could ever believe.

So, yeah, Kayla makes these videos and no one watches them. At the end of every video she tells people to share and to subscribe, but the videos each have one view. Or no views. No views happened when her dad got too busy to watch, or forgot.  Her dad really loves Kayla.  He thinks she is great.  No one else does, especially not Kayla.

Kayla's school has a Perfect Girl. Kayla gets invited to her pool party (the girl doesn't invite Kayla; her mom does). Some of the boys there turn their eyelids inside out and have breath-holding contests. The girls wear bikinis and stay in the sun. Kayla doesn't know what to do. Kayla says her life is like this: She feels the way you do when you're waiting in line for the roller coaster.

She feels that way all the time. She doesn't want to be doing what she's doing. She's afraid. It's always like that.

She never feels the way you do after you get off the roller coaster.

Eighth Grade is about discovering that you might never feel that way, and being okay with that.  Eighth Grade is about eighth graders, maybe, but not really.  You're not in eighth grade, right?  But it's about you.  A version of you.  A version of you that you remember all too well.

It was written and directed by Bo Burnham, who's only 28 years old himself, so maybe he remembers a little more than others what eighth grade was like.  Or maybe he just has a whole lot of empathy and sees real beauty in the world, in places where no one else notices.

Kayla is played by Elsie Fisher, and her character feels so real that this could be a documentary, though it's not. Everyone in this movie is so wonderful you forget you're watching a movie, really. I mean, you always know you're watching a movie because you're in your living room or a movie theater or whatever, so obviously you're watching a movie. Duh. It's just that some rare movies do this thing where you completely forget that what you're seeing on screen is made up. And you don't really want it to end.

Eighth Grade is that kind of movie.

Okay, well, anyway. That's what I thought of Eighth Grade. Thanks for reading. If you liked this, then share it with your friends and subscribe to my blog, okay?  Yeah. Okay. So, thanks.

Okay.

Bye, guys!

Gucci!



Viewed December 20, 2018 -- Amazon Prime

"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

The basic premise of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may be well-known to comic-book fans, but was completely new to me and seemed, based on the trailers, complex and vaguely off-putting. It is complex, but Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is anything but off-putting. It's exhilarating. It's exciting. It's everything a super-hero movie should be but, if you ask me, rarely has been since 1978 when Superman: The Movie created and then seemingly broke the mold.

Who would have guessed that what super-hero movies needed to be was animated? I mean, when you get right down to it, they've basically been animated since the advent of CGI, but they've never embraced their roots as what are, in some ways, really just freeze frames of fantastically drawn animated stories in the first place.  It makes sense, so why has it taken so long?  No matter: It has taken as long as it has taken, but finally, finally super-hero movies make sense.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse feels both authentic and new, intimate and expansive, genuinely impressive in the way the overproduced computer-generated landscapes of the "live-action" movies never feel.  In those movies, no matter how persuasive the imagery tries to be, it can never completely fool the brain into believing that what's on screen is real.

This movie does something entirely different: It is a movie-sized comic book, and watching it is like being immersed into the frame that's on the page. Every frame is suffused with remarkable detail that straddles the line between movies and comics, with subtle half-tone dots and sharply drawn edges on the characters that are different than we're used to seeing in an animated movie, but that are nonetheless familiar. There's a depth to the images but also a welcome flatness -- don't get me wrong, this is about as far from a flat, two-dimensional movie as you can get, but artistically it welcomes any chance to be like a living comic book as it can get.  Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is genuinely artistic and genuinely innovative.

Since I am not well-versed in comic books, I won't embarrass myself by trying to recount the story. Instead, let me tell you the things I loved about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:

• Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) is real and charming, and his transformation into a hero is remarkable for the way he never feels entirely at home in his eventual self; this movie works best as a coming-of-age story, with a boy who gets a glimpse of the man he is to become, and learns just enough about adulthood to simultaneously excite and scare him.
• Miles might be the very best super-hero character since Clark Kent. He's in awe of his own powers, doesn't entirely trust them, doesn't really even want them, but understands their importance. I left the movie wanting very much to know more about him.
• The relationship between Miles and his father (Bryan Tyree Henry) is disarmingly affecting -- and not in the lush and romanticized way of classic Disney animated films, but in the way live-action movies always try to be about children and parents and almost never are.
• Newcomers are treated with respect. While I can only assume the movie plays enormously well for those who know all the nuances of the story, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse goes out of its way to make those unfamiliar with Spider-Man feel welcome and comfortable; everything we need to know is up there on screen -- something that most definitely cannot be said for the most recent spate of super-hero movies.
• The supporting cast is astonishingly good, from the intentionally silly Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) to the seen-it-all Aunt May (Lily Tomlin) to the alluring and clever "Gwanda"/Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) to the reluctant alternate Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), not to mention the villains, Doc Ock (Kathryn Hahn) and Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) -- animated films have gone overboard on stunt casting to no real effect in recent years, but this cast is as good as any live-action film.

I could go on. Apart from some minor grumbles about the length of it all and fight scenes that go on too long. Even the astonishing visuals can't save those scenes from feeling like we've been here before.  But I guess a huge part of the reason I mildly resented these scenes is because aside from their beauty -- and this is a staggeringly beautiful movie -- they took precious time away from being with characters I grew to admire and love.

Still, the action is why movies like this exist, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse definitely gets the action right.  Not to mention everything else.

Viewed December 22, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

2005

"Roma"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

At two critical points in Alfonso Cuarón's nostalgic and melancholy Roma, characters go to the movies, and Cuarón emphasizes the scope and grandeur of the cinema and the outsized role that moviegoing plays in many lives. Earlier in the film, he has shown us a family cuddling and laughing together as they watch a silly sitcom on their tiny TV, but the movies ... ah! The movies! They do something altogether different: They incite passion, they mark milestones.

So, wow, here's the irony: Roma can be seen almost exclusively on Netflix. Cuarón didn't actually make the movie for the streaming service, but the rapacious Netflix scooped it up after production and effectively locked it away from all but a handful of movie theaters in just a few big cities.

By all means, watch Roma on Netflix, because it should be seen by anyone who says they like movies. But Roma is more or less the antithesis of the Netflix style; it's long, slow and takes its own sweet time getting to its story, which it finally comes at in sort of a roundabout way, almost sneaking up on it.  Roma is made for the singular experience of sitting in a movie theater and staring at a big screen.

You'll put up arguments to that idea, no doubt: The movies aren't what they used to be. They cost $15 for a ticket, but Netflix is only $10 a month. People use their cell phones and talk. They arrive late and munch on popcorn and they're downright rude. Going to the movies is a terrible experience! Netflix saves us from all that!

Yes, Netflix at home, where you can pause the movie and come back to it later, never mind that you're screwing with the very rhythm the director intended.  Netflix at home, where you can check your phone anytime you want while the movie plays.  Netflix at home, where you can get up and go grab a snack and go to the bathroom and have a conversation while the movie plays, because they're in their own home, and they can do whatever they want there.

So, yeah, the movie theater may have horribly behaved audiences from time to time -- but, guess what?  No audience is more horribly behaved than the average person when watching a movie at home.  The living room experience was simply not designed for long, concentrated attention, and the movies were simply not designed for the living room experience.

Go ahead, watch Roma on Netflix, but I fear that there's a good chance many viewers will give up before the opening credits are even over, before Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is finished scrubbing down the family's driveway as this black-and-white film with no musical score meanders through its story and takes a good 45 minutes to find itself.  When it does, it's moving, sometimes harrowing and painful, and hypnotically compelling.

Roma is named after Colonia Roma, the Mexico City neighborhood in which it takes place, a neighborhood and a house very much like the one Cuarón lived in when he was a boy. One of the boys in the family for whom Cleo works may be a mildly fictionalized Cuarón, it's hard to say, but word has it that the set of the family's house looks exactly like the house in which Cuarón grew up.

Cleo is one of the family's two maids; she and her compatriot are dark and ethnic, while the family is caucasian and upper class.  The mother, Sofia, learns early on that her husband is leaving her, but she maintains an air of grace for the sake of her family. Cleo, whose housekeeping skills seem of questionable efficiency, quickly becomes the grounding that the remaining family needs.

She does have her own life outside of the family, but it's seen in maddeningly fleeting bursts, which might be the movie's biggest shortcoming: It should be Cleo's story, but we learn less about her than almost anyone else. Her life outside of Roma leads to Cleo getting pregnant, visiting doctors, getting reassurance from the family that they won't fire her, and participating in a holiday getaway that ends when fireworks ignite a field.  It's one of the movie's most dreamlike scenes, with men and women filling tiny buckets to try to extinguish an out-of-control fire, one of the metaphors that Cuarón loves.

All throughout the background of Roma the specter of angry, violent political unrest looms. But Cleo has little education and a simple view of the world, while the kids who are frequently in the foreground of the shots, know nothing about the world outside their windows. Roma is very much a film about innocence -- not merely innocence lost, but the real and constant need people have to remain innocent long after they have learned hard truths.

Roma is filled to the brim with visual effects of the "invisible" sort (that opening shot of cleaning the driveway among them), and Cuarón makes the most out of his visual prowess.  In shots of Cleo and the family on the streets of Mexico City, Cuarón fills every corner of the frame with some sort of movement and half-glimpsed little drama, and even the most common experiences, like shopping for furniture, hold the possibility of being a life-or-death moment.

A lot happens in Roma, but very little in a common cinematic narrative way.  This is a movie that washes over you like the waves that Cleo braves in the film's climactic scenes, and it's a movie that demands attention and patience.  It also boasts, in lieu of that musical score, an extraordinary soundscape that pulsates with the life that is ever-present in the film.

You get the sense that Cuarón desperately wanted Roma to be experienced on the big screen, not just in the way he made the movie but in the way movies play such an integral role in the story. And it is, indeed, a movie to savor.  It is a bold experiment, even an unintentional one, to see how much of the film's lush artistry comes through on the small screen, even a 70" home theater, because watching something on TV at home and watching something in a cinema are two entirely different experiences.  It's ironic how much Roma knows that to be true.



Viewed December 19, 2018 -- Laemmle North Hollywood

1910

"Vox Lux"

 ☆☆ 

Vox Lux has no lack of ideas the way that Donald Trump has no lack of words. There are a lot of them. They are not coherent or productive.

To be clear, any comparisons with certain White House occupants end there, though it's the lack of articulation and the insistence that something important and profound is being said that linger as the common points.

Vox Lux addresses an almost staggering array of ideas, but writer-director Brady Corbet can never settle on any one (or two, or three, or four) it really wants to explore, though let it be said he meanders very stylishly.  The movie begins in 1999 with a horrifying incidence of violence in a high school, as a trenchcoated boy shoots up a classroom and puts a bullet into the neck of Celeste Montgomery. She is played as a teenager by Raffey Cassidy, who had a major role in last year's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and who seems in touch with her dark side.

Celeste is gravely wounded but survives, and writes a sullen and weirdly disconnected song that we are meant to believe -- through the courtesy of leaden narration by Willem Dafoe -- captures the hearts of Americans with its emotional honesty.  It's a terrible song, but that is beside the point, because somehow it makes Celeste into a pop star.  She also has a lot of survivor's guilt, sibling issues, religious issues and co-dependency issues, but thanks to the leering attention of a manager (Jude Law), she moves out of her dreary home in Staten Island to a dreary Los Angeles, where she's just about to shoot her first music video when, simultaneously, she gets pregnant, hears about the 9/11 terrorist attack and discovers her sister (Stacy Martin) has been sleeping with the manager ... and then the movie shifts gears and fast-forwards 16 years with no explanation.

Vox Lux is separated into sections with on-screen cards that are as pretentious as the scrolling, pointedly serifed opening titles. The sections have names like "Prelude" and "Regenesis," and the first section ("Genesis," naturally) is nowhere near as intriguing as the description makes it sounds. It's morose and plodding, and the actors are posed to look like they're in a very literary student film.

The second half perks up as Natalie Portman takes over for Cassidy, who shifts unexpectedly into the role of Celeste's daughter.  And as Portman comes on screen, Celeste changes from a bland and bored quasi-celebrity to a loud, abrasive caricature whose presence would be grating except that she at least makes Vox Lux into something mildly interesting.

The movie picks up as Celeste is getting ready to open an arena-sized tour back in her hometown, and she's doing a day of publicity in a Manhattan hotel. But her mind isn't on the show or the media, it's on a terrorist attack that has just taken place in Eastern Europe, in which gunmen have opened fire on sunbathers at a beach while wearing costumes that replicate the ones Celeste wore in her first music video.

OK, let's pause for a moment: Vox Lux is, variably, about gun violence and terrorism, pop music, celebrity culture, teen sex, wealth, drug abuse (did I mention Celeste is an alcoholic and drug addict?), mothers and daughters, sibling rivalry, and the media. Yet, it's about none of these things. Even as Portman impressively blusters her way through the film's complicated long takes and some impressive monologues, even as she wears outrageous costumes and makeup, and even as she snorts cocaine and stumbles around backstage, Vox Lux ends up being about nothing at all.

It's as vacuous as one of the mindless pop songs it simultaneously worships and satirizes, and its as shallow and repetitive as the EDM-tinged music performed by Celeste -- whose success is given a last-second and totally ridiculous explanation.  She's presented as an over-the-top Lady Gaga/Katy Perry-style pop star, but Vox Lux offers no insight into the creative process or into the human being behind the image.

Vox Lux imagines, I think, that it has a lot to say.  The trouble is, as we've seen so often in the past couple of years, that is not the same as saying a lot of things. Volume and substance are two entirely different things.



Viewed Dec. 15, 2018 -- AMC Burbank 16

1515

Catching Up: "First Reformed"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

In a small, historic church in upstate New York, which was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, pastor Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) conducts services for a half-dozen or so parishioners. His heart does not seem in it, but since losing his son in Iraq and watching his marriage crumble, his heart doesn't seem in anything.

He is filled with doubt. He does not even trust his own thoughts. He writes them down in a journal, and promises himself to be completely honest, to write everything he thinks, to scratch out nothing and to tell his story truthfully.  Occasionally, he tears pages out of his journal and burns them.

There is nothing he can trust. He recites the prayers (though admits he himself cannot pray) and speaks kindly to the people who visit the church -- "the souvenir shop," as it's become known to its owners, a mega-church that seats 5,000 people -- but he does not have kind thoughts.  He also knows he is dying.  If you were to bring that up with him, he would probably sigh and say, "Everyone is dying," but the blood in his urine and the pain from his stomach, which leaves him doubled over and retching into the toilet, means he is dying faster than others.

Death does not mean much to him. He sees and contemplates it all the time, and it brings no answers, no closure, it just ... is. First Reformed is about a man who has retreated so far within himself that even his search for God feels empty and meaningless.  It is best for him to think about nothing, which is largely what he does.

Then, he meets a young woman named Mary (Amanda Seyfried), who is married to a deeply troubled man (Philip Ettinger). They are both environmental activists, though really it's only the husband who takes the activism part seriously. And he takes it very seriously. Mary is pregnant and her husband wants her to have an abortion. His reasoning is that the world has been ruined; the science is real, the data incontrovertible -- the planet has been damaged, maybe irreversibly, so how could you possibly bring a child into that world?  Would that child ever be able to forgive you?

And then, to Ernst, the question arrives with more force: Can God forgive us for what we've done to His creation?

Mary's husband seems to make valid points. Ernst, who lives up to the German translation of his name with vigor, becomes alive during the conversation, which he calls "exhilarating." The passion and conviction of Mary's husband are like nothing he has seen in a very long time.

And then, something shocking happens, something that sends the film reeling in another direction altogether, and begins, slowly, to shake Ernst awake from the stupor in which he's been living. Increasingly he is scared of the words he writes in his journal. He cannot be honest, because his version of honesty was one in which he was examining his previous self. First Reformed examines the moment in which a man becomes different than he was before.

Then, in one of the most unexpected moments in recent movie memory, Ernst is visited by Mary and together they have what might be termed an out-of-body experience. She calls it the "Magical Mystery Tour," and it is deeply physical but it is not sexual. This is not a movie about sex, it is a movie about, if anything, why people even bother with things like sex and love and hope. The very act of connecting with Mary opens Ernst's mind to a deeper truth, one her husband and she have been trying to tell him.

The movie veers tonally, artistically and narratively into a new direction by trying to depict what this awakening must feel like for Ernst, how it makes him feel like he is floating on air, how he suddenly sees the way things are connected.

Already, Ernst has been placed in an uncomfortable position of having to defend the very faith he has been doubting: A big anniversary event is coming up for the church he runs, and it's sponsored by the company that was so bitterly opposed by Mary's husband and his fellow activists.  What Ernst has not yet learned is that the man's death has left an opportunity to oppose this company in a way that is shocking and disturbing, and as Ernst explores this unlikely chance, First Reformed starts making some deeply uncomfortable observations about religion, faith and conviction.

Those questions lead it to an ending that is shocking for both its content and its abruptness. Very likely, you will come to the end of First Reformed and feel cheated, or at the very least confused. You may look at the screen and give a slight "Hmpf."

There are, it appears, cinematic precedents for First Reformed, and writer-director Paul Schrader, who also wrote disturbing and complicated films like Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ, was inspired by a specific form of filmmaking called the "transcendental style" (about which he wrote a famous book) and by specific films by directors like Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson. That is interesting to a certain segment of the filmgoing population, but what is important in the end is not whether you understand the origins of First Reformed but what you see on screen.

What is there is haunting, troubling, hypnotic and, there's no doubt about it, puzzling. But its central question of whether God can forgive his own creations for destroying what he has designed has remarkable relevance, and opens up a fascinating story of one man's realization that trying to answer the question can have impossibly fearsome consequences.





Viewed December 11, 2018

VOD

"Green Book"

 ☆☆☆ 

Is this really 2018? Watching Green Book makes the question relevant: Here is a big studio awards-season film about racism in America made by white men and told from the perspective of a white man. Two years after Moonlight won Best Picture, Green Book seems related far less to that film than to the Best Picture winner from almost three decades ago, Driving Miss Daisy.

It is heartfelt, warm and touching. That is sincere praise. It's engaging and sweet, very well made, eminently enjoyable. Does it seem at all odd that as we approach the second decade of the 21st century, Hollywood still finds it impossible to make a movie about America's race problem that is something other than warm, touching, sweet and heartfelt and seen through the eyes of the straight white man?

Green Book would be something much more than problematic if it weren't for the presence of Mahershala Ali, who delivers a performance that is rich, nuanced, insightful, careful, contemplative, complex and human, qualities that don't seem intrinsic to the words he speaks. The screenplay, which is credited to Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie and director Peter Farrelly, doesn't know what to make of the character Ali plays, the real-life musician Dr. Don Shirley.

Here are some facts about Dr. Shirley, which are briefly recounted in the film: He was 2 when he started playing the piano. He was 9 when his mother died and he was invited to study music theory in Russia. You read that right: 9 years old. He received a doctorate in music, psychology and liturgical studies. He worked as a psychologist. He was taken under the wing of Arthur Fiedler.

He was an astounding, fascinating person.

And he's not the main character of Green Book.

No, instead, Green Book is about a boorish, uneducated racist Italian man who becomes a better person when Shirley hires him to be his driver on a concert tour through the Deep South. Shirley believes that if he commits himself to touring the South, he will change hearts and minds. This motivation is explained in the film not by Shirley but by one of the white musicians who is part of the Don Shirley Trio.

Ali plays Shirley with fierce commitment, with passion and complexity -- even though for the first two-thirds of the movie he's meant to be little more than the comic foil to Viggo Mortensen's Tony "Lip" Vallelonga (whose son wrote the film). He's prim, precise, fussy, effete, yet somehow Ali makes him feel deeply alive and compassionate, despite the movie's weird insistence that this isn't really his story. Green Book offers absolutely no insight into Shirley, though through some extraordinary miracle of acting Ali makes him believable and three-dimensional despite almost never gets a moment on screen to himself; Tony, with his cartoonish New York Italian accent and insatiable appetite, is always there to steal the spotlight.

Green Book seems endlessly fascinated with Tony's private life, with his sweet and patient wife (Linda Cardellini), with his lack of education and his enormous belly -- but the groundbreaking, multi-lingual musician who refuses to accept his country's hateful racism is the secondary player. He calm and steady force in the backseat who encourages Tony to be better, to exhibit a semblance of the self-awareness that the musician seems to have in endless supply.

But somehow, Ali finds a depth that is only hinted at in the screenplay itself. His may be the performance of the year, if only because he does so much with so little.  Green Book is at its best as it watches the friendship between the two men develop, and when it's just the two men on screen there are times when the movie is downright wonderful.

Keep in mind, though, that Green Book is named for "The Negro Motorist Green Book," which listed the places that black Americans could safely travel during a time of open discrimination. Green Book is about an America that made it impossible for someone as educated, accomplished and talented as Shirley to exist safely. It is about a deeply disturbing, shocking, shameful period in America's history that is not as far removed as we may think -- never mind the fact that as a throwaway plot point Green Book also notes that Shirley was gay, or at least bisexual.

The ways that Shirley was disallowed to be himself, the ways in which he experienced unthinkable discrimination, and the sense of self that gave him extraordinary presence despite every disadvantage, is not the point of Green Book. This movie isn't about those things.

Instead, Green Book is about a white man who is so racist that at the beginning of the film he throws away two glasses because black men have drunk from them, and it's about how his experience with Dr. Don Shirley teaches him how to open his mind and heart to the humanity of a black man. It's about how his casual racism doesn't really count because it's not as bad as what happened in the South, and it's about how Tony becomes a better man by seeing how Shirley is treated.

There's a moment when the two men find themselves in a "sundown" town, where black people were not allowed on the street after sunset. They get arrested, and when Shirley insists on making his one phone call, it turns out the person he calls is Bobby Kennedy, the attorney general of the United States.

Green Book isn't about how Don Shirley became a man who knew the attorney general and his brother, the president, but still couldn't sit in a restaurant with his white driver.  Green Book isn't about that man, it's about how Tony learns that when he accepts Shirley as an equal, his heart grows bigger and his life gets better.

The most frustrating part of Green Book is that despite all that, Green Book is not terrible. It is affecting. It's enjoyable. But is "enjoyable" the best we can expect from a movie about a subject like this?  Green Book is a crowd pleaser, make no doubt -- even while it leaves the most relevant, vibrant, interesting and meaningful part of itself in the back seat.



Viewed December 9, 2018 -- AMC Sunset 5

1700

"The Favourite"

 ☆☆☆ 

Yorgos Lanthimos knows that Dostoyevsky's old pronouncement about happy families is irrelevant in today's world -- we've moved far beyond mere happiness or pain and into freakish levels of suffering. Look around and be brave enough to call it as you see it: It may look like taunting, teasing and bullying, but it goes well beyond that. We're killing each other, engaging in torture for the sport of it.

Lanthimos makes movies like an ethnographer who doesn't understand the language but merely observes the results, and he applies filmmaking styles that don't seem to match the obscenities he is depicting on screen. The Lobster offers the nervous energy of a satirical comedy even while it puts the main character into impossible (literally) ethical quandaries. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a vile and hateful film, yet I've seen it twice, because in depicting its depraved story, Lanthimos seems brave, even sad for his knowledge of just how far people will go while seeming to remain absolutely sane.

Which brings us to The Favourite, Lanthimos' second film in as many years, and one that is more forthright than The Lobster in acknowledging that it's trying to be funny and maybe even more sinister than Sacred Deer since the victims of its cruelties aren't just a family but, ultimately, an entire country and political system.

Whether its historically accurate or not is beyond my abilities, but The Favourite seems to go to extraordinarily lengths to depict the court of Queen Anne in the early 18th century; as a movie, I may have found it a bit draggy in parts, but as a replication of the way Anne ran her palace and her country, it's impressively exacting.

At the center of the story are the Queen, a sickly and lonely woman who harbors sexual and romantic feelings for Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough, who in turn has become the voice of the crown -- she goes so far as to make strategic military decisions, claiming to be delivering the decree of the queen herself.  The palace is made an even weirder place by Anne's 17 bunny rabbits, each of whom represents one of the 17 children Anne miscarried.  Into this odd and frequently severe environment drops Sarah's cousin, Abigail, who arrives penniless to implore Sarah to give her a job, but quickly learns of the palace's secrets and begins conniving her way into influence.

It all would make for a terrific PBS series, and in fact a cursory glance at online articles shows that the basic plot is astonishingly true. But The Favourite is anything but a staid and stodgy costume drama, and anything but straightforward.  The three central performances by Olivia Colman as Anne, Rachel Weisz as Sarah, and Emma Stone as Abigail, are massively entertaining and monstrous in their depth of feeling. As the movie moves along at fits and starts it becomes clear that Lanthimos is doing something sly by turning the only sympathetic character at the film's start -- Abigail -- into the movie's villain, while Sarah turns from cold-hearted political climber to the victim of enormous violence.

Something tells me that The Favourite is a movie that will grow on me both with time and repeated viewings the way The Killing of a Sacred Deer did, but it's a problematic movie on many levels, vacillating in tone and approach with uncomfortable frequency. Unlike Lanthimos' two previous English-language movies, it lacks a sure-handed style, which may have been deliberate but leads to unpredictable shifts in mood that leave audiences unsure where to turn for some grounding.

Maybe that's part of the point, though -- that when jealousy, betrayal, disloyalty and violence come into play, nothing's predictable, and what started out as amusing turns shocking with vicious speed.

Most satisfyingly, the movie relegates its male performers to the background, often serving as emotional or sexual props while giving the women of the story the credit for the enormous power they wielded, both over each other and over the world.

Yes, even as I write this I sense my feelings toward The Favourite are shifting, but I'm not quite sure how. Moment to moment, the movie often doesn't quite work, behaving a little too badly, offering up a little too much merriment amid the hostility, and yet as a whole, especially with a cryptic and disturbing final shot, it lingers.  It's going to be a while until I figure out quite what to think about The Favourite, and just as with Lanthimos's previous films, maybe that's a good thing.



Viewed December 1, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

1415