Favorite Films: "Roxanne"

I first saw Roxanne in 1987 in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was the first time I had lived away, really away, from home, the farthest I had been on my own.  And it was lonely.

That summer, I learned that being alone and being lonely are two very different things, and the latter is one of life's great sadnesses.  I learned that a full life could feel empty without friends and co-workers, and because I was only living in Cleveland for a summer and I was working at a newspaper with lots of much-older adults, I didn't really have either.

Roxanne did something extraordinary, something that made me not just love it, but feel grateful to it and everyone involved in its making, especially Steve Martin and director Fred ("Rhymes with Pepsi") Schepisi.  Roxanne made me feel less alone.

In a way that is hard to describe to anyone who hasn't seen the movie, Roxanne made me feel loved.

It was not made for me, personally, of course, but it felt that way, because it was made to ease the heartache of everyone who feels disconnected from life.

If a movie can soothe a heart, Roxanne is that movie.  It is that lovely and earnest, casting a sort of enchanted spell that I don't think I've ever experienced in another movie and maybe never will again.  That summer, I took a bus three different times from downtown Cleveland to the suburban theater where Roxanne was playing, and in the ensuing decades, I've seen Roxanne more times than I can count, and I still smile and feel a little light-headed afterward.

This adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac must be the sweetest and most kind-hearted movie ever made; there isn't a single mean person in it. Even the bullies who give fire chief C.D. Bales (Steven Martin) a hard time about his outlandishly large nose are only mildly insulting.

C.D. moves to a little mountain town completely removed from anything resembling reality.  Also in town for the summer is the beautiful Roxanne (Daryl Hannah), an astronomer studying a passing comet.  She falls instantly in love with C.D., the only catch is, she doesn't know it's him.  She thinks it's handsome, rugged, dumb-as-a-shoe Chris (Rick Rossovich), and because he has a grotesquely large nose that he thinks makes him ugly, C.D. helps Chris woo her.

If you wonder whether Roxanne will learn the true identity of her suitor, you haven't been paying attention to the last few hundred years of romantic literature and drama.

Of course she does, but that's not the point of Roxanne.  It's a movie that exists to evoke a feeling, to provide hope for the hopeless that they, too, can be loved.  Everyone can be loved.  Roxanne really, really believes that.  It wants you, whoever you are, to know that your problems, whatever they may be, aren't insurmountable.  That your heart, however damaged you think it is, is worthwhile.

With a lovely, jazzy, memorable score by Bruce Smeaton -- a true standout among movie scores -- and the leisurely pacing of a lovestruck walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon, Roxanne wants only to make you believe that anything is possible for anyone.  The real magic of Roxanne is that for at least a little while after you see it, you do believe just that.

"Before Midnight"

 4.5 / 5 

The Before series is turning into one of mainstream cinema's greatest and most satisfying experiments, reuniting the same actors as the same characters every nine years as they age.

Most movie sequels are intent on delivering more of the same.  Three or five or 15 years later, characters experience little change, because they have to retain the same qualities that made audiences like them in the first place.

Before Midnight, then, is a genuine cinema rarity: A sequel that strikes an entirely different chord than its predecessors.  The original film, Before Sunrise, explored romantic infatuation; the next, Before Sunset, watched that romance turn to longing -- a longing, Before Midnight reveals, that was finally fulfilled.

After their exquisite meeting in Paris nine years ago, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) left his wife and child to live with Celine (Julie Delpy) as a novelist.  Now, they're vacationing in Greece, and things are complicated: They've never married but they have two daughters, and Jesse's son from his previous marriage offers a stark reminder that the ex-wife hates the man's guts.  Like the other two films, Before Midnight takes place over the course of a single day, but deviates in meaningful ways from director Richard Linklater's template.

For one thing, Jesse and Celine are not the only characters of importance; their lives encompass other people; the intrusion and influence of outsiders is an important issue in Before Midnight, and the prominent way other people figure into the movie directly confronts the audience: You thought you were going to get these two lovebirds on their own, but things are more complex than that.

Eventually, they do go off together, and Greece makes a stunning backdrop visually as they stroll through ruins and along impossibly romantic pathways -- ultimately winding up in a hotel room that strips away the romantic pretense and looks like it could be any room in any hotel in the world.

It's here that things get really interesting, because Before Midnight knows the time for the romantic cooing and cuddling of these two people is long past.  This time, the illusions, resentments, hostilities and genuine worries -- given only passing mention in the first films -- come to the fore.

Almost a third of the film's running time is devoted to what happens in the hotel, beginning with an awkward and tentative attempt at sex, through to a harrowing realization and declaration.

Before Midnight is not a gentle movie; if its first few scenes lull you into smiling satisfaction, the last few leave you wondering the same questions Jesse and Celine face -- most notably, what did they ever see in each other to begin with?

After Before Sunset, it was hard to imagine revisiting these characters.  Before Midnight presents a solution brilliant in its simplicity: Let them become very different people than they were nine years ago.

Ditching the romantic pretenses of the first two films is as shocking a move as, say, painting Iron Man's suit pink.  And for a certain crowd, Before Midnight is at least as eagerly anticipated as one of those blaring, hyperkinetic summertime blockbusters -- and the less romantic, more realistic approach may be as off-putting to some Before fans than any shock Superman might have up his sleeve.

The result is a film that is less easy to love than the first two, at least on first viewing, but that's very much the point: When romance fades into everyday love, it loses its appeal.  Relationships are hard and very often one-sided and unfair.  Life's ambitions become less overtly daring, but even more difficult and exhausting, than climbing a mountain.  And yet, it's all still worth it.

No final scene could be as nearly perfect as the final shots of Before Sunset, but Linklater and his actors (not to mention Christos Voudouris, whose cinematography is exquisite) come very close in Before Midnight.  The scene and the emotions are very different, but they leave us with the same hope: That we'll meet Jesse and Celine in another nine years.  And then nine after that ...

Viewed May 25, 2013 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2010

"The Great Gatsby"

 3.5 / 5 

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's celebrated novel, so frequently despised by high-school students (and adults who remember it as a slog) that takes far fewer liberties than Luhrmann's reputation and pre-release publicity would have you believe.

Its best parts have to do with Gatsby himself, and it makes sense that he's played this time by Leonardo Di Caprio, since Jay Gatsby is, after all, the character Titanic's Jack Dawson would have become if he hadn't gone down with the ship.  He's a self-made man, and his fulfillment of the American Dream is as suspicious as it is enviable.  Di Caprio brings him a surprising amount of sympathy, but it takes a while to get there -- the same goes for the movie as a whole.  Its first half is undeniably entertaining, but misses the ennui and tone of detached melancholy that fills the novel.

It's this that is the most disconcerting aspect of The Great Gatsby as reconceived by Luhrmann and co-screenwriter Craig Pierce.  They have every artistic right to bring their own vision to Gatsby, and while what they've done to it musically may be unnecessary, it's not at all off-putting.  The bigger problem is their inability apply a steady new tone: In the end, The Great Gatsby's strengths and weaknesses are the ones inherent in the source material.

On the page, The Great Gatsby is unabashedly literary.  Fitzgerald's lush, carefully considered prose makes the novel dazzle (or distract, depending on your view) 88 years later.  What he described as "extraordinary and beautiful and simple and exquisitely patterned" is, indeed, that.  Luhrmann's film may be beautiful, it is at times extraordinary, but it is far, far from simple.

In Luhrmann's eyes, big and loud are not enough: Everything must be bigger than big, louder than loud.  So Gatsby's stately mansion rivals Hogwart's for size and Gothic elaborateness.  That's all well and good, but the means by which Luhrmann achieves this epic, oversized vision are less effective. Everything is rendered through complicated, dizzying visual effects that look, well, fake.  The colors are too rich, the camera moves too impossibly, and the animation is too obvious.

For the first hour, everything is too over-the-top.  The 3-D effects (I saw it in 2-D) are aggressive and relentless, the blending of 21st-century hip-hop and dance music with Jazz Age visuals a bit too self-satisfied.  It all feels like a Disney-esque blend of live action and animation, and the actors often barely seem to exist within their digital environments.  There's also an odd, uncomfortable comedic tone that, critically, undermines the first meeting between Gatsby and Daisy.

The movie also misses the mark with its decision to underplay the recollection of how Daisy and Gatsby first met.  By glossing over this crucial section of the plot, the weight of the central romance and ultimate tragedy are hard to latch on to emotionally.

If it's a little difficult to quite believe Gatsby falling for Daisy all over again, that was, to be fair, always part of Fitzgerald's point: The past can't be revisited, and Daisy has changed in ways Gatsby can't grasp but Nick can.  In the novel, that central realization is conveyed by Nick through narratived description; in the movie, Nick recites many of Fitzgerald's words but they lose their impact.  As spoken narration, there's no time to linger over the complex ideas being conveyed, and the movie has to resort to underlining its thematic points through thudding dialogue that feels forced and insincere.

Emotionally, The Great Gatsby is just a little too aloof.  In part, it's due to the miscasting of Carey Mulligan as Daisy.  She's a terrific actress, and by the end she does convey some of Daisy's emotional ambivalence, it's just hard to understand Gatsby's obsession.  Mulligan just doesn't make the impression she needs to as a shimmering, fragile, unattainable beauty.

The second, more heavily plotted half of Gatsby works better on film, and a crucial scene between Nick, Tom Buchanan (tremendously well played by Edgerton), Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki) and Daisy in an overheated Plaza Hotel is pitch perfect.  It's the best sequence in The Great Gatsby, and it's no coincidence that it's the one in which Luhrmann and his hyperactive camera are the most restrained.

Reworked with a completely unneeded framing device, The Great Gatsby works better than it should.  Luhrmann's visual and musical rethinking are no less valid than any reconsideration of a classic text, but they overwhelm the more nuanced moments.  Luhrmann has tried to redefine The Great Gatsby as an entertainment for the masses, but he can't overcome the basic limitation of the novel: It's a literary and intellectual exercise more than an emotional one.  That Luhrmann manages to wring as much emotional satisfaction as he does is pretty impressive.

Viewed May 18, 2013 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

2045

"Star Trek Into Darkness"

 3 / 5 

How much you enjoy Star Trek Into Darkness will largely depend on your appreciation of certain of the previous big-screen Star Trek adventures, though 21st-century Internet decorum dictates I refrain from saying exactly which one.

But it's the measure of 2009's Star Trek and now the confusingly titled Star Trek Into Darkness (what is this darkness into which the Starship Enterprise is trekking?) -- and certainly a measure of the pop-culture-obsessed times in which we live -- that a great part of the enjoyment and ultimately the disappointment of this film is counting the allusions to other movies.

In just over two hours, I noticed references to Robocop (and not just in casting), Inception, The Silence of the Lambs, The Poseidon Adventure, Avatar, Raiders of the Lost Ark and at least three, maybe four, of the previous Star Trek movies. Its giddy, wink-wink fanboy self-satisfaction becomes not only distracting, it does the film itself a disservice: Instead of creating something boldly, entirely new, J.J. Abrams and a team of high-profile writers have crafted a Frankenstein-monster version of Star Trek, and it's hard not to notice all the different parts stitched together.

But it moves at a relentless -- almost exhausting -- pace, so by the time you notice and start thinking about what it means, you've missed the rapid-fire exposition.  It goes something like: Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and the Enterprise have to hunt down a terrorist who appears to be a Starfleet officer, and in the process discover that the peaceful tools of the 23rd century are being turned into weapons of war.  That's the easiest way to say it.

It's quite understandable if you come out of Star Trek Into Darkness not really understanding quite exactly what happened, because the movie never really pauses long enough to make its story seem meaningful or terribly coherent.  There's no lack of plot, but not quite enough of a story.

It's nonetheless a lot of fun, mostly, and a perfect example of escapist summertime entertainment, whizzing and gleaming, spinning and exploding in just the right amounts to never once let anyone in the audience be bored.

Keep in mind, though, that the Trek unfaithful have long accused both the series and more than a few of its subsequent movies of being just that: boring. They consider questions of ethics, moral imperatives and philosophy with abandon: 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, arguably the pinnacle of Star Trek entertainment of any sort, was an unapologetic rumination on aging, maturity and friendship.  Thirty years later, those are hardly the sort of topics a studio wants to gamble $200 million on, so today's Star Trek is an unapologetic reverie of fanboy obsession and genuinely stunning visual effects, all shot in a fashion that makes Michael Bay look like a model of restraint and pacing.

If you're a Star Trek purist, Into Darkness may make you apoplectic; if you're less enthusiastic, this may be the perfect blend of Star Trek and not-Trek, even better than Abrams' first film.

Star Trek Into Darkness certainly has a lot of great moments, none better than a gentle, thought-provoking exchange between Spock and Lt. Uhura, who in this re-imagined Star Trek universe is his girlfriend.  But their dialogue comes during a frenetic descent onto an alien planet, and its weightiness (which is genuine) is undermined by the explosive action happening around it -- "Don't take this all too seriously," the movie seems to be saying, "it's all in jest anyway."

And that makes some of the bigger scenes, which actually want to be emotional, feel underwhelming.  You can never be too sure just when Abrams' Star Trek is being serious and when it's being jokey.

For all of it, though, Star Trek Into Darkness has one epic miscalculation, which is not to trust its own choice of villain.  Benedict Cumberbatch from TV's Sherlock has a suave, confident presence and a sonorous voice -- but it turns out he's only one of two possible villains, and the movie spends a lot of time trying to justify the actions of both of them.  (I have a much larger problem with one of those villains, an unnerving and complicated one, which I'll address later, when its discussion won't be considered a "spoiler.")

Star Trek Into Darkness, then, feels like a conflicted movie, both in its tone and its meaning: Throughout, it condemns the machinations of war while glorifying them; it revels in violence and destruction while claiming to abhor them; it recalls 9/11 and the first wars of the 21st century over and over again without quite knowing what commentary to make.  Is unjustifiable war the inevitable destiny of humanity, or is it a despicable and cowardly thing?  That could have been a fascinating question for Star Trek to tackle.

Without the conviction of a single central villain, Star Trek Into Darkness lacks the conviction of a singularly focused story and feels a little weightless.  But it sure looks and sounds great and moves at a lightning pace, and for a world that, in general, moves much faster than it thinks, that may well be enough.

Viewed May 17, 2013 -- Arclight Hollywood

2045

Favorite Films: "Terms of Endearment"

What everyone remembers, 30 years later, is the big "plot twist" about two-thirds of the way through 1983's Terms of Endearment. View the movie again through new eyes -- like I got to do at a recent screening hosted by the American Film Institute -- and the plot doesn't seem so twisty.

Terms of Endearment is bookended by two funerals.  One of them, anyone who's seen the movie (or even heard of it, likely) knows all about, but the other one is easy to forget even though it really is at the heart of the story: the husband of Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and the father of Emma Greenway (Debra Winger) has just died.  He's virtually never mentioned again, but his death is what drives mother and daughter so close together they practically fuse into one.

You might recall these two women as being strong.  They are certainly vivid characters, and they certainly have forceful personalities.  But they can't function without each other.  Even when Aurora does a hateful thing and refuses to attend her daughter's wedding, both of them understand that it's about showing love and respect for each other.

"I always think of us as fighting," Aurora says to her daughter, who answers, cuttingly, "That's because you're never satisfied with me."  Neither can ever be satisfied with each other because they are mirrors of each other, one appearing before the other and reflecting back every shortcoming.  Their dissatisfaction springs from their deep, unyielding love.

These may be two of the best, most honest female characters ever written for the big screen, which can't be a big surprise since Terms of Endearment was the directorial debut of its screenwriter James L. Brooks, who also wrote and directed TV's best female character, Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  In Terms of Endearment, he takes characters from a novel that was also written by a man (Larry McMurtry) and reveals two of the most complex, thoughtful women in film history.

Complex, indeed -- keep in mind that one of the film's central plot points pivots around Emma's decision to have an affair with a mild-mannered banker (John Lithgow), partly out of boredom, partly out of suspicion that her frequent-failure husband Flap (Jeff Daniels) is carrying on himself.  She tells this to Aurora, who's having her own dalliance with the wacko astronaut who lives next door (Jack Nicholson).  And they both talk about it.  They don't judge each other, and the film doesn't dwell on these conversations, but they are both fully aware that they are flawed as humans.

Aurora is proper and frequently stern.  Emma is looser and a bit rebellious, but cut very clearly from the same cloth.  When these women don't approve of behavior, they make themselves known -- and it is what endears them to the men who can't help but fall for them.  There are a lot of affairs and flings happening in Terms of Endearment, but the central relationships remain rock-solid.  The film follows people who genuinely love each other -- Aurora and the astronaut, Emma and Flap, Aurora and Emma -- even though they very often can't stand each other.

For much of the film, we're carried along by the loosest of stories: Aurora doesn't approve of Emma's husband, she marries him anyway, mother and daughter rack up astronomical pre-cell-phone long-distance bills, and then ...

Aurora falls in love, quite unexpectedly and against her better judgment.  Flap gets a job and moves the growing family.  And something else happens.  It happens as naturally and effortlessly as the rest of the film, and quite matter-of-factly: By the time we realize what's going on, the plot has moved far ahead of us.  It simply accepts that this development is part of the lives we are watching.

And that, ultimately, is the supreme beauty of Terms of Endearment: It is an effortless movie.  Everything works, the dialogue, the straightforward (but carefully crafted) style, the exquisite acting by everyone involved.  There's not a single unbelievable moment.  There's not a single easy laugh -- or easy tear.  They're earned, legitimately and richly.

Watching Terms of Endearment, I was struck by how funny it is, not just in the early, more carefree moments, but all the way through to the end.  It's a movie that understands how we use humor to shield us and to embolden us, to mask our feelings and to convey our feelings.  It doesn't try to be funny, it just finds humor in even the darkest situation -- humor that springs from the recognition of these characters as mild variations on people we all know, very likely ourselves.

"The Place Beyond the Pines"

 3.5 / 5 

In the first shot of The Place Beyond the Pines, stunt motorcyclist Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) bursts out of his trailer in a traveling carnival that's passing through Schenectady, New York.  He's a bleached-blond raw nerve who fidgets and smokes and locks eyes with a sultry woman in the crowd.

They have a past together, and it's central to the ambitious, three-part story in a sprawling, ambitious movie that gets off to such a roaring start, overstuffed with adrenaline and emotion, from which it never quite recovers.

The three sections of The Place Beyond the Pines are all connected to these two people and their deep, genuine love and passion for each other.  Luke and the woman, Romina (Eva Mendes), have a son -- one he didn't know existed.  Hurt, curious, scared and proud, Luke decides in a flash that he's going to be part of the boy's life, no matter what.

Luke will do whatever it takes to give the little boy the things he didn't have, including a father's love, even if it means resorting to crime.  He doesn't think about the consequences of that decision, or of pretty much any decision -- so he can't know just how profound and long-lasting they'll be.

A botched robbery leads to an armed confrontation with a local cop (Bradley Cooper), who in turn makes his own fateful, split-second decision.  It's another momentary incident with ripples that will be felt across generations.

The sins of the fathers weigh heavily on the minds of director Derek Cianfrance and his co-screenwriters Ben Coccio and Darius Marder.  The Place Beyond the Pines takes place over more than a decade and a half, considering the consequences of actions that happen in the blink of an eye.  It's a more grounded, less chaotic version, in a sense, of Paul Thomas Anderson's unforgettable Magnolia, a big, messy movie drunk on possibility.

The Place Beyond the Pines is more mannered for much of its running time, much more circumspect and sometimes too mannered.  Though violence always simmers under the surface, the movie never quite feels as dangerous or unpredictable as in its first hour.  Gosling is white-hot, his Luke so tortured by his own limitations that, unbound, anything is possible.

By comparison, Cooper is buttoned-down and safe.  That's not to say his story isn't compelling -- it is, but in a completely different way, and after the hand-drawn tattoos and fiery temper of Gosling, Cooper comes across as comparatively bland.

The final third stumbles as it tries to draw the first two parts together to make a grand statement about the way crime and violence perpetuate themselves.  It would be unfair to reveal up front just who they play, but Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen, the two young actors who spring to the forefront here are in over their heads. Following in the footsteps of first Gosling then Cooper, they simply aren't commanding presences, and the movie suffers for its strict adherence to its structure.  (You keep waiting for a Gosling flashback that never comes.)

Other actors, particularly Mendes and the stunningly creepy Ben Mendelsohn, are well-used, while others like Bruce Greenwood and especially Ray Liotta -- playing exactly the kind of role you expect Ray Liotta to play -- seem out of place.

The overall result is a curious one: Gosling's Luke is a character whose outsized personality is intended to be felt throughout the story, even when he's not on screen.  Gosling delivers a towering, dazzling performance.  The only problem is, it's too towering.  The Place Beyond the Pines is one-third stunning and brilliant, two-thirds very good; but compared with stunning and brilliant, very good almost doesn't seem enough.

Viewed April 13, 2013 -- Arclight Hollywood

2030

The Screen Darkens: Farewell, Roger Ebert

Today, I lost a friend I never met.

But Roger Ebert had the uncanny ability to make everyone feel they were listening to their best friend -- their smartest, wittiest and sometimes most irritating friend -- urge them to share his passion, feel his enthusiasm, argue with his opinions.

Ebert died today, and with him went the certitude of his thoughts, the disarming and unbelievable intelligence he brought to even the simplest of ideas.  Whether in his prolific, Pulitzer Prize-winning writing or his fiery arguments (and just as passionate agreements) with rival film critic Gene Siskel, Ebert condensed and often simplified -- without dumbing down -- complex and frequently challenging views.

When Ebert reviewed films, he did so neither with the sensibilities of a pop-culture enthusiast nor with the highbrow elitism of a film theorist.  He rarely discussed a movie's artistic genesis, the oeuvre of an artist, the composition or intent of a filmmaker.

He just told you whether he liked a movie or not.

Behind his judgment was the enthusiasm of a young boy riding high on adventure, a man aware of life's pitfalls, a celebrity-in-his-own-right who hob-nobbed with the biggest names, an ink-stained journalist who cared about words.

He could be cultured, he could be simple, he could be outrageously smart, he could be silly.  Though he could not have been untouched by his own status, he rarely let his position and accomplishments affect his views on movies.  He just knew what he liked -- and what he didn't.  More often than not, it aligned with what other Americans liked and didn't.

Ebert could be scathing, he could tell everyone from his platform, "I hated, hated, hated this movie."  He could become practically rabid in his zeal to tear down or build up a movie that inspired passion in him.  And then he would listen to the other point of view, most famously represented by slightly more upscale Siskel, and share it or attack it with equal fervor.

Just the way you do when you go to movies.

He didn't care about the budget of a movie (well, almost never), he didn't care about the stars or the political and corporate machinations that went into making a movie.  He just wanted you to see the good ones, steer clear of the bad ones -- and sometimes secretly enjoy a wretched one.

My moviegoing life was shaped by Ebert.  Siskel, too, absolutely, but it is Ebert we mourn today (and Siskel we remember -- an irony the longtime foes would probably both hate and relish), and mourn him we should.  We often lose people.  We often lose people with great ideas or who have made great accomplishments.  So rarely do we lose a voice.

Ebert helped me understand that it was OK to like a film everyone else despised, to find magic in the flickering lights of the theater even when others saw something different.  He helped me learn that the best way to analyze a movie wasn't through its mise-en-scene, its cinematography, its editing or the artistic sensibilities of its director; the best way to analyze a movie was by deciding whether you liked it or didn't, and being able to articulate that.

"No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough," Ebert famously said.  I think of that phrase a lot when I look at the running time on a DVD box and think, "I can't sit through a three-hour movie."  But he was right, not just about long (good) movies, but about other kinds of films: documentaries, which can show you a different way; lengthy films and foreign films, because they can transport you to places you never dreamed possible; independent films, because they remind you not everyone sees things the same way.  He was right about bad films, too -- short bad films, long bad films, or successful and popular bad films: Life's too short.

Ebert's certainly was.

Roger Ebert was always right about movies.  Even when he was wrong, he was right.