Girlhood

An experiment this year: because I'm hoping to be able to work out and get to an 11:20 screening of The Danish Girl, and because I can't pop the Veuve Clicquot until midnight, I'm doing my best-of sober. I know it sounds crazy, but let's reserve judgment. Oh, and this year the 2014 pictures that didn't get to town until 2015 aren't eligible for my top 10.

And before we get down to that order of business, let me share with you my new year's resolution, which is cinematically based. Some films I'm going to see more or less regardless of reviews, and some I'm going to skip barring universal critical enthusiasm. But inevitably, a lot of films end up on the fence over the course of the year--and precisely because I see so many films, most of those films fall on the "no" side. So my resolution is simply this: if a film is iffy, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt if it has a female writer and/or director, or if it has a female protagonist who doesn't wear spandex and fight supervillains. Because my daughter is a filmmaker, and women are still getting short shrift in Hollywood.
OK, remind me: what happened on the screen way back in . . .

• January? Well, nothing, according to my new rules, though this is when I got to see the squirmily excellent American Sniper and the sorta kinda disappointing Inherent Vice.
• As always, February is the cinematic dead of winter, though another excellent 2014 film came to town, Timbuktu.
• A March sing-out to The Last Five Years, a brave operatic experiment in depicting the life and death of love. Following late in the month was It Follows, the latest document in support of my contention that we are living in a golden age of horror films.
• The first 2015 film that absolutely blew my mind was White God, a sort of canine Spartacus. A very good film however it was made, and a stunning accomplishment when the logistical challenges are factored in. Special mention in April to Ex Machina, a good film but a film much more interesting than good. Huh! I'd forgotten how much I liked Clouds of Sils Maria; does that mean that it didn't grab me as tightly as I thought or simply that I'm in my 60s? Maybe it just means that baseball had started by this time.
• Haven't mentioned a documentary yet, have I? In May, Iris, about the stylish nonagenarian Iris Apfel. And then it was early summer so we got an adrenaline movie, but an excellent one, with a thrilling testosterone-estrogen cocktail, Mad Max: Fury Road.
• In June I was stunned by how much I loved two pictures I expected to like, both of which work largely via looking under the hood: Love & Mercy (the hood of Pet Sounds) and Inside Out (the hood of an adolescent). In between I saw the bizarre and affecting documentary The Wolfpack, about brothers sheltered by their immigrant father from the Lower East Side into adulthood. Dope was no Dear White People, but it worked a similar neighborhood well.
• Two in one day in July, very different and yet oddly related: the excruciating vampire documentary Amy, about the people who sucked Amy Winehouse dry, and the incontinently hilarious Trainwreck.
• In August the creepy Vertigo-esque Phoenix. And then, squirmy and wonderful, The Diary of a Teenage Girl.
• A thin September, the most notable film of which was the German (Austrian?) creeper Goodnight Mommy. By this time I was shifting into Mets postseason mode.
• And in October, I was pretty much all Mets all the time. Bridge of Spies drew my attention away the most effectively.
• The star of post-World Series November was the heroic journalism film Spotlight, though I still wish the Boston Globe had given its investigative team a more lively name so that this film could have had ditto.
• And finally, the month of Oscar (oh, dammit, I'm not gonna insert the little trademark bug--let the Academy come after me if they think they're bad enough!) hunger, except that I didn't really see much Oscar bait. The mostly unloved Chi-Raq is a mess, but a thrilling one. The Big Short is a cousin of Spotlight, and while it's not as excellent, it does have Margot Robbie in a bubble bath. And finally, a mystery about marriage, 45 Years.

So . . . ? Purely subjective, not necessarily the best, but my favorites:

10. Trainwreck
9. It Follows
8. Love & Mercy
7. The Diary of a Teenage Girl
6. Amy
5. Clouds of Sils Maria
4. Spotlight
3. White God
2. 45 Years
1. Inside Out

Happy new year!

Follow your arrow

Joy

Crit

A very strange, almost impressionistic, telegraphic narrative, complemented by the American-dream voiceover by Diane Ladd as the title character's endlessly optimistic grandmother. Somehow it works, even as it seems ever on the verge of falling apart. Credit to writer-director David O. Russell for that, if only in having the sense to bring back Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper again to play the two least-likely characters in a sort-of-true story of (spoiler alert) grueling trial capped by fabulous success.

Trailers

• Eddie the Eagle--Didn't care about this story when it was happening, don't care about it now.
• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--If Tina Fey as a reporter in Afghanistan hadn't been enough to grab me, the prominence of one of my favorite songs of the year would have sealed the deal.

Let the . . . oh, you know

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Imax 3D

Post

Omigod! Darth Vader is . . . Luke's father! And . . . Leia's as well! And yes, that means . . .

Oh, wait, we already knew all that, didn't we? But I think I can be forgiven my confusion, given that episode VII is largely pieces cobbled together from episodes IV, V, and VI: you got a death star, you got a life-or-death-of-galaxies mission to destroy the death star, you got an intrepid young woman who needs rescuing less than her would-be rescuers do, you got a wisecracking pilot, you got a hero who needs to be convinced that he's a hero, you got a squeaky little droid that you want to punt into an asteroid belt (seriously, if you thought R2-D2 was the acme of artificial intelligence annoyance, you gotta meet this little soccer ball BB-8), you got a masked mouth-breathing villain, you got his creepy old even more villainous boss, you got familial complications Forcewise (one given away quickly, one reserved for VIII or IX), you got a quest for a retired Jedi (was I the only one praying that when that robed figure turned around, he'd be wearing Groucho glasses?). Oh, and right: you got three old geezers who eerily resemble swashbucklers from the first (aka "real") trilogy.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the pic, and seeing and hearing it in huge 3D was a sensory delight, and I plan to follow Rey (Daisy Ridley, in a kickass chick performance that warms the heart of the father and grandfather of kickass chicks) and Finn (John Boyega, who, if you haven't seen him in Attack the Block, do) and Poe (Oscar Isaacs, or, as I thought of him throughout the film, that younger actor who looks a lot like Oscar Isaacs) in episodes VIII and IX as they battle Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, prettied up so much that I also didn't believe it was he; oh, but wait, he must have been killed when the death star exploded, right? Yeah, right; you haven't seen any of these films before, have you? Unless you actually see a light saber go through someone's heart and then see that victim fall a million miles into nothingness, that person has a contract to be in the next pic). I'm just hoping for some surprises.

Speaking of which, here's what I foresee: Rey spends a big chunk of VIII as Luke spent a big chunk of V, being tutored in the Force by the retired Jedi. Who, in this case, she finds out either at the end of VIII or in IX, is her father. I mean, come on, there aren't a lot of candidates for Force carriers, right? And she has already shown her untutored Force to be stronger than that of one she encounters who has only one Forceparent, so I'm thinking Luke and some Forceful woman merged somehow (not sex; please, don't make me think about Luke having sex), Rey and Mom were left in "safety" (don't these people ever go to the movies?), yadda yadda yadda.

Sisters

Post

Holy shit, I think I laughed my clit off. Is this just another dumbedy, but with women rather than the usual sexpects? Yeah, I suppose so; what's your point?

Trailers

• Star Trek Beyond--Best not to ask "beyond what," I suspect.
• Warcraft--Peaceloving orcs!
• Independence Day: Resurgence--Admit it: you think I'm making this up.
• Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice--What a clever idea! Superheroes squaring off against each other!
• Captain America: Civil War--What a clever idea! Superheroes squaring off against each other!
• The Jungle Book--Bigger jungle, bigger book.
• Dirty Grandpa--OK, this looks like another page in the dossier for De Niro career intervention, but it's the ONLY film of the nine I saw first-time trailers for that's not a sequel or a spinoff.
• Alice through the Looking Glass--Refused to see the first.
• 50 Shades of Black--Got more enjoyment (and hope for civilization) from the recognition of what this must be than from all the other trailers combined.

Smoke gets in your eyes

It's great to be old M4

Guess what?! Senior discount kicks in at 62 at IFC: 10 bucks instead of 14! And at Cinema Village I discovered that I've apparently been wasting money for two years: 8 bucks instead of 11 at 60! God, I love slouching toward senescence!

Hitchcock/Truffaut

VE

Wonderful nerdfest of a documentary about a book about two people talking. I need that book.

45 Years

IFC

An unconventional mystery/ghost story about unconventional infidelity, and I really don't want to say much more than that, except that it's a contender for my favorite film of the year. OK, I'll say one more thing: did it never occur to them when they chose the song for the first dance at their wedding reception that it's less a love song than it is a love-gone-all-to-hell song?

The Hateful Eight 70mm

VE

Worth twenty bucks? Absolutely: gorgeous Morricone score behind a gorgeous panoramic Colorado (standing in for Wyoming) screened in my favorite Manhattan theater, the palace in thirteenth-century Córdoba Moorish and Jewish décor that somehow survived the multiplexization of the rest of the building. Smart, funny Tarantino script, treated skillfully by members of his repertory company.

Great filmmaking, but I think maybe I'm getting too old for repetition of the n-word and physical abuse of a prisoner (never mind a woman) to work for me as running jokes. Now the running joke that did work for me--and, as it turned out, the one integral to the plot--was the need to kick in the front door and nail it shut again whenever anyone needs to enter Minnie's Haberdashery.

By the way, I expect intermission comes only in the 70mm Roadshow screenings, but if there's a break at about 1:50 (the fastest almost 2 hours imaginable, by the way) and you think, "There's hasn't been much violence yet," trust me: you won't feel cheated in the next hour.

TransFatty Lives

CV

Patrick O'Brien was just another maker of goofy trash films until he was diagnosed with ALS, whereupon he became a documentor of disease, determination, love, fatherhood, lost love, death, and life. An astonishing, queasymaking film that will never come to your town unless your town is Manhattan or Los Angeles, and judging from attendance at my screening and the one before it (total: 2), it's not going to be in either of those towns come Friday. Eminently worth renting.

Trailers

• Moonwalkers--Yeah, maybe: based on the myth that the moonlanding was a myth and that NASA tried to hire Kubrick to fake it. Do I need to say "a comedy"?
• Rolling Papers--Another story of newspaper intrepidity, this one a documentary about the Denver Post's symbiotic relationship with legalized recreational pot.
• The Boy--No, come on: no one is stupid enough to agree to be nanny for a ceramic doll modeled on an elderly couple's dead son.
• Anesthesia--Danger! Looks like another of those many-stories-connected-by-auteristic-pretense. Oh, but that's interesting: just noticed that the auteur in question is Tim Blake Nelson, in whom pretense would be a disappointing surprise for me.
• The Treasure--Yes, please: post-Ceaușescu comedy by Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective).
• Omhide poro poro (Only yesterday)--Part of IFC's Ghiblifest, wonderful, I'm sure, but I've gotten kinda Ghiblijaded.
• Yosemite--Even the trailer admits what's you'd been thinking: this is Stand by Me.

Zat you?

I Am Santa Claus

(2014)

My daughter totally bullied me into watching this documentary about freelance Santas--she even gave me an Amazon gift certificate to pay for a stream--and I'm so glad she did, because it's the perfect Boxing Day night farewell to the season.

Director Tommy Avallone covers the economics, the sociology, the sexuality of the Santa family--he covers such a spectrum that you're left regretting that we get only one glimpse of a black Santa, and nothing at all on the female Santa options. Sequels, I guess.

Darkroom

Carol

Crit

OK, confession: I'm not a consistently worshipful Todd Haynes fan. And I could toss out a few quibbles, but mostly I just loved the matter-of-factness of a 1952-53 lesbian love affair in the U.S. of A. Yes, of course, there are crappy repercussions--Cate Blanchett's title character is in critical danger of losing the daughter whom she cares about more than the film does--but mostly it's just a love story like any love story, except with much better-looking people (and if you can imagine such a thing, I mostly found Rooney Mara's face more riveting than Blanchett's).

OK, one quibble: for the most part the men in the film reminded me of when the Cro-Magnon sportswriter asked Martina Navratilova, "Are you still a lesbian" and she parried, "Are you still the alternative."

OK, one other quibble: I was thrilled to see the name of my second-favorite lesbian rocker in the opening credits, but most of what she did must have ended up on the cutting-room floor, because she shows up almost at the end for what must be < 2 minutes and for 3 lines. But having brought her up, let me take this opportunity to say that Sleater-Kinney's No Cities to Love is, by a wide margin, my favorite album of 2015. Click that link and download it, and thank me later.

But back to the film: good film. Good Christmas film.

Trailers

• Jane Got a Gun--Looks like it wants to estrogenize Tarantino.
• Miracles from Heaven--From the producer of Heaven Is for Real; people in the theater laughed.
• The Lady in the Van--Dame Maggie--this looks very much like one I'll see because of my New Year's resolution (stay tuned).
• Eye in the Sky--Does the presence of Helen Mirren satisfy the parameters of the NYR?

'Tis a ponderous chain

Scrooge

(1951)

This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased

This is Dickens straight, and the film paraphrases a bit, but just a bit. Excellent advice, that, but it seems that we are, as a nation, seemingly as a majority opinion, taking an "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" stance. Certainly, one of our traditionally major parties, the party that gave us Lincoln and abolition and the Fifteenth Amendment, has embraced those rhetorical questions as a virtual platform.

I don't believe there is a god, but if there is, how will she or he judge us? And if there's not, how can we judge ourselves?

The truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry

The Big Short

Crit

I took copious notes during the film, and I'm prepared to explain in full detail precisely what a collateralized debt obligation and all its various permutations are.

No, come back! I'm just kidding! Even with explanations by Margot Robbie in a bubble bath and Selena Gómez in a sexy dress at a blackjack table alongside my very own Yale University Press author Richard Thaler, it's still a little unclear. Maybe if Robbie explained it again . . .

That's two terrific films now based on books by Michael Lewis; maybe I should read him sometime. I wonder whether he found the black humor in the meltdown that killed people and fortunes, or whether that's all down to screenwriter Charles Randolph and cowriter and director Adam McKay?

Trailers

• 2oolander--Looks excruciatingly unfunny.
• Everybody Wants Some--Linklater remakes Dazed but in the '80s? Does this seem like a good idea?
• The Nice Guys--It's Inherent Vice down to the color palette.
• The Boss--Looks unsalvageably bad, even by Melissa McCarthy.

The gift

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946)

How strange that I've never quite gotten this before. All the 1946 signals are present: the tweed jacket, the fuck-off spectacles, the mannish hat, running to the bar girls for protection: "old maid" + librarian = . . . if George's window-smashing cock had never existed, Mary would have become . . . A LESBIAN!!!!

Another thing I thought this year: Sheldon Leonard (Nick the bartender), who later became a producer, is perhaps best known as the guy who discovered Bill Cosby, an honor that should not be diminished by recent revelations. In fact, on an early comedy album, Cosby does an impression of Leonard that anyone who has ever seen this film will recognize as spot-on.

We were desperate

The Decline of Western Civilization

(1981)

This documentary about the early LA punk scene has been a White Whale for me, a Holy Grail--I've been wanting to see the film since a friend who wasn't isolated, as I was, in West Virginia saw it and sent me a cassette dub of the soundtrack. It had a VHS life, I guess, but I never came across it in that format, and its DVD existence has been sketchy at best. Thus, uncharacteristically, I'm linking the title not to the Rotten Tomatoes page (which inexplicably dates the film 1988) but to the Amazon streaming video link (seems not to be available in any format from Netflix, but you can now [finally] buy it on DVD or BluRay, though only packaged with its two sequels). I finally got hold of it when TCM showed it in the middle of the night, and I noticed in time to DVR it.

Long, birthday-related story why I came to be watching it with my friend Laura B, but I was fairly certain that she wouldn't have seen it and absolutely certain that she'd want to. I was correct only in the second assumption, as she had a much more immediate relationship with the music than I and also wasn't isolated in West Virginia. So let's do another of those email dialogue posts:

LB--I was worried that after so much time this documentary wouldn't stand up. I think I find it MORE compelling now. In addition I wanted to know what happened to the people (other than the ones we know have died. Darby [Crash, enthusiastically self-destructive frontman of Germs],  didn't live much past postproduction). What happened to the movement?  Are they all capitalists now?

CB--The where (and who)-are-they-now? question is irresistible, of course, but for present purposes I'm more interested in the personal grip punk and this film (for you as a film, for me as a cassette dub of the soundtrack) had on us in 1981. I was an age-inappropriate 27 when I put away the Manilow and Newton-John of my married life and embraced Jonathan Richman and X and Ian Dury, but you were of the punk age cohort--but living in what I've always imagined was a fairly quiet, fairly protected community. Correct my misconceptions, and tell me why you listened to punk and got all those tattoos and piercings as a kid.

LB--Yes, yes, it was a difficult time for sure. I was really angry. Angry at my broken family (divorces, drugs, domestic violence, neglect, emotional abuse). Angry about living in a trailer in a biker neighborhood on the outskirts of Phoenix. Angry knowing that my generation was the first generation that wouldn't do as well as our parents'. Angry at race inequality, gender inequality, class inequality. Angry at the horrible education I got. (I remember the first time someone told me their parents took them around to shop for colleges. The idea was completely foreign to me and the very working-class background I was accustomed to.) Punk came along and ignited the fuse. Suddenly there were 100X more like me, disillusioned and exploding with energy. Watching the film now I understand that it wasn't a very healthy thing to respond to anger with more anger. We gave our anger carte-blanche, when really there were probably other things I could have been doing to create a better future for myself and the world around me. Everything that I experienced as a teen is nothing new. There are kids experiencing the same things now. I feel guilty for not behaving better, for not being a better person and looking for a more positive outlet. But hey, I was 14, 15, 16 . . .  And it was seriously fun to slam. 

CB--Are there photos? Were there tattoos and piercings? Apart from the chronological difference—when I was discovering punk, it had zero practical application to my lower-middle-class-but-upwardly-mobile life; it was just exciting new rock & roll, in stark contrast to the mind-deadening sentimental dreck that had dominated the predivorce playlist—it’s hard to establish, if I had been the right age but living the life I lived at that age, how punk would have worked for me. Sad to say, I suspect I never would have noticed it, because I was the antithesis of the rebel when I was in high school. “Rebellious” music for me then was the Doors, Cream, Led Zeppelin, but I mostly listened through headphones, to avoid rocking (!) the house/boat. If anything, I’m afraid I’d have been like the skin-deep suburban pseudopunks (though I was way too far from any “urb” to have been remotely suburban). In my real life, punk, like so much else, was essentially an academic construct.

LB--For some reason, in Dec. 2013, my high school friend Tracy posted the attached picture to my FB page. I was 19 when the photo was taken in 1985. It's a pretty tame photo given the topic, but you can see I wasn't your average Deb. That's Danny Elfman's guitar pick on my left ear, captured the year before at a show in Phoenix. Lou Reed is over my left shoulder. We silkscreened the B&W prints in our graphic arts class in high school. The high school I attended was heavily focused on graphic arts, we learned printing and photography among other skills. There was no such thing as college prep; I was told not to bother to apply to college by my counselor. Of the people who did not leave Phoenix, many of my peers wound up either in jail or working at the jail. A cohort just posted her prison release papers on FB. Very few of my peers got a college education, and those that did got out. I've been mighty uncomfortable with the middle-class most of my life. It is a conflict, I desperately want to be accepted by the middle-class while at the same time eschew it for all its comforts and societal ease. I have seen classism, sexism, and racism perpetuated by many "good" people who call themselves middle class. But I have also seen incredible generosity, humanity, and empathy. Today the middle-class is declining and I have some sympathy. Maybe the demise of the classes will bring us closer together as a country. The 99%.

CB--You’re pointing at Bowie’s dick! You little hussy!

LB--Not possible, Bowie is an androgynous being.

CB--In that case you're pointing at both of his genitalia.

Not war

Chi-Raq

Crit

A messy masterpiece from Spike Lee, with support from Aristophanes, as ambitious a joint as anything since Malcolm X and as powerful as any since 4 Little Girls. Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) persuades women of the South Side to unite against (sexual) union until the Spartan and Trojan [sic] gangs put away their guns. Sometimes too preachy, sometimes sidetracked in subplot, but at its best--the opening song, "Pray 4 My City" by Nick Cannon, who plays one of two title characters (the one not on the Illinois map); the long, impassioned sermon by Father Mike (John Cusack); every moment Dolmedes (Samuel L. Jackson) is on the screen--stunning, inspiring, thrilling.

Blue door

Brooklyn

Crit

So Saoirse Ronan is like the anti-Wood Harris (see my Creed blurb): I feel as if I've seen every film she's made. That not even remotely true, this being only the fourth. Maybe it's that she left such an indelible mark on Atonement, Hanna, and The Grand Budapest Hotel (a doubly indelible mark!) that she's more present in memory than on the screen.

With a lesser 21-year-old actor in damn near every scene, this might still be a charming slice of transatlantic Eisenhower era life; Ronan makes it more compelling than it has any right to be. Unfortunately, she can't do anything to keep it from being irksomely rushed at the end. I was reminded in the end credits that the screenplay is by Nick Hornby, who writes 80% excellent novels but can't seal the deal.

Trailers

• Demolition--This may be Jake Gyllenhaal's bid for the Damaged Guy Oscar®.
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2--I'll admit it: I enjoyed the first one. But was this necessary?
• Carol--Oh, yes.
• Anomalisa--Charlie Kaufman, stop action, I'm in.

Event horizon

Room

Crit

I'll cut right to the chase: if you were considering giving this a miss because although you were blown away by Emma Donoghue's novel, you don't think you can put yourself through that again, I advise you to see it: I don't think you can have as intense an experience the second time around in any medium, but the second encounter with the material remains powerful.

If you've not read the novel and are avoiding the film because you fear the intensity of the experience, then your life is so hermetically sealed that you in particular might profit from the experience of one or the other. In which case, I recommend the book: the film is very good, and the screenwriter kept faith completely with the source, perhaps in part because the screenwriter was Emma Donoghue, but having the story come from the perspective of five-year-old Jack is vital, and the printed page allows that perspective to be maintained more cleanly and consistently.

Tell mama

Home-in-time-for-the-Illini-game (well, on DVR) M3

Janis: Little Girl Blue

IFC

Little here that I needed to know that I didn't already know about Joplin, a decade my senior but forever 27. But I didn't come for the knowing, I came for the seeing and the hearing. I have only three regrets in life, and one is never having heard (and seen) her perform live.

Mustang

IFC

Five Turkish sisters shame their family by . . . swimming, fully clothed, with boys? Yep, that's right. Lockup and forced marriages ensue, and only the youngest is emotionally equipped to fight back actively. A depressing, invigorating slice of a life we're fortunate to have avoided.

In Jackson Heights

FF

This was briefly my (Airbnb) neighborhood a couple of times this year, but I had no idea that it's home to what is apparently the oldest NYC gay pride parade, started 20-odd years ago by a guy who's now a councilman. Or how vigorous the organized support for immigrants is. Or how steadfastly the small-business owners oppose the so-called business initiative organization whose primary initiative seems to be to make it easier for Gaps and Walmarts to find homes.

You can observe a lot just by watching, Yogi Berra probably didn't say, but that could be Frederick Wiseman's mantra: point the camera, edit wisely, and respect the audience.

Trailers

• 45 Years--Rampling, Courtenay, and Something Never Spoken Of.
• Every Thing Will Be Fine--I doubt that.
• River of Fundament--5½ Matthew Barney film that is doubtless genius, but I'll take it on faith.
• Son of Saul--Not saying I'll never see another Holocaust film, but the bar is high.

Standing eight count

Creed

Crit

So, I'm looking at Michael B. Jordan in a scene with Wood Harris, and I'm thinking, yeah, if you were going to tab one of these veterans of The Wire to have a huge career, it would have been Jordan, but still: Avon's not exactly chopped pit beef. Well, turns out Harris has been working pretty regularly, just in stuff I haven't seen. Literally: nothing until this. Would've seen him in Ant-Man had the reviews not convinced me I'd hate it; would have seen him in House or Justified had either series drawn me in enough to stay with it. But no. Good to see him here, if only briefly.

And the film? Do you have to ask? Cliché-drenched, surprise-free, and as satisfying (and nourishing) as a plate of mac & cheese. I hated loving it.

Trailers

• The Hateful Eight--Had Christmas w/ Q in 2012, and he's a leading contender this year.
• Central Intelligence--Looks pretty dumb, but damn, The Artist Formerly Known as The Rock is charming.
• Barbershop: The Next Cut--I'll probably just let it grow.

Ploughshares

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, part 2

Crit

Yes, I remember the final book of the trilogy resisting any but the most basic uplift at the end, and being pretty damned depressing as a result. The fourth film of the trilogy (filmmakers don't do math) is true to that spirit. War is hell, and guess what: postwar isn't necessarily peaches and cream.

Two takeaways: the mutts in the tunnels, the f/x stars of the film, which look like love children of orcs and aliens (you know the ones I mean); and a scene between MFW Julianne Moore and the late lamented Philip Seymour Hoffman that distracted me with a recollection of Magnolia.

Trailers

• Gods of Egypt--Wow, what a train wreck this looks like.
• Allegiant--Sequel to Divergent.
• How to Be Single--Seriously, Rebel Wilson is fourth billed? If this is any good, she'll be the reason.
• The 5th Wave--Hmm, trailers for two kickass girls in dystopic futures.

It takes a village

Spotlight

Crit

Damn, I love newspapers, admire then, need them, premourn their inevitable demise. I'm even proud to have spent a third of my working life in newspapers, even though I was always in sports and never did anything braver than deleting a coach's homophobic locker room joke from the executive sports editor's column. But I rubbed shoulders and, after hours, bent elbows with reporters who did more important stuff. (What, you didn't think I was going to write about newspapers without mentioning alcohol, did you?)

Mainly I love it when big (almost always American) newspapers expose the shit that sanctimony and hypocrisy and corruption sink their roots into. And I love movies about those investigations, especially ones that find romance in the drudgery that constitutes 99.9% of good investigative newspaper work.

I don't even need to name the picture that does this best, having reviewed it here with some regularity over the years, but this new one, notwithstanding its bleh title (seriously, in the '70s, when the Globe was putting together a team for special investigative projects, Spotlight was the most appealing name they could come up with?), is a worthy entry in the field.

Never mind the angrymaking reprise of the Boston Globe's investigation into systemic protection and recycling of predatory priests by the Archdiocese of Boston and the Catholic Church more broadly; maybe the most remarkable accomplishment here is conjuring a world where the church still had enough clout--with police, with judges, with politicians, with plutocrats--to stonewall its sins for so long. A church with that kind of power seems a joke now, and it's worth remembering that this story was breaking--against that still powerful resistance--less than 15 years ago.

But ask yourself this question, which writer-director Tom McCarthy, to his credit, does not press: had the Globe not pursued the story, would the church have made an effort to clean its house, or would it have continued reshuffling its pedophiles, monkey business as usual? And if the shit had not hit the fan so messily, would people be talking today about recent and ongoing changes in the character of the papacy, and of the church itself?

The story was pursued as newspapers used to pursue stories, and as all media outlets find it increasingly impossible to do in the era of the 24-hour news cycle: carefully, in depth, without haste, leaving no loose thread that the subjects might use to unravel the whole thing. And damned if it didn't make the world a better place.

Trailers

• Triple 9--Cops, robbers, and cops who are robbers.
• Snowden--The Oliver Stone treatment.

Fair game

Nie yin niang (The assassin)

Crit

Beautiful young woman learns to kick seriously lethal ass but struggles with the ethical implications therein and with the recognition that she has become a pawn in a larger game. But the movie makes only  half-million bucks in a month because it's in Mandarin and lacks exotic special effects.

To be fair, it's also narratively confusing, leaving much not only unsaid but even unhinted at, though to continue to be fair, the shifts in political loyalties, and the reasons for them, are clear enough, and are the nub. And it's gorgeous. Just don't go in expecting Katniss Everdeen.

Iowa, heaven, and other utopias

Field of Dreams

(1989)

In brief (reserving the right to expand later on): when this was released, I found it absolutely enchanting, so when, a decade or so later, I saw the VHS at Sam's Club for $5.99 (the details may be slightly off, but the gist is accurate--and it was definitely a VHS), I bought it and watched it again almost immediately--and found it one of the most cynically manipulative, sentimental, cliché-ridden pieces of crap I'd ever wasted 2 hours on. If I hadn't already developed the Where Your Head Is on a Particular Day theory of film criticism, this film must have given birth to it.

So maybe a year or so ago, I thought maybe I should give it one last screening--the rubber game of a three-game series, as it were--and during the baseball season the thought turned into a resolution, and I mentioned it to my grad school friend Michael, who said he'd been thinking the same. He had, I think, never been as enchanted as I, but he liked it enough to watch it a second time, and his reaction that time was much like mine.

So I suggested that we wait until both his Yankees and my Mets were finished playing for the year, watch the film, and carry on an email conversation about it, which I would then reproduce in lightly edited form here. I was gratified by how late the Mets' season ended, but the weekend after that, we proceeded with our plan, and herewith our email conversation over several days:

CB--Unsurprisingly, I found it neither remotely as magical as I did in 1988 nor nearly as execrable it seemed a decade or so later. I was engaged by the early Iowa scenes, but it started to lose me on the trip to Boston and then Minnesota. Nor was the central issue against it the sentimental manipulation (not that that's not overwhelming, but it actually worked on me 2 or 3 times, especially in the first full-fledged game, with Archie Graham batting against Eddie Cicotte) or the ladeling on of cliché (also as remembered).

No, what made it impossible for me to give myself up was the sheer lack of logic. "Huh?" you ask. Let me explain. The Wizard of Oz operates on a framework of perfect interior logic: Dorothy must "escape" Kansas, must go to a Technicolor land of wonders and terrors, but one populated largely by familiar Kansans, so that she can learn something about herself, and about home. That Miss Gulch becomes twin wicked witches, the 3 farmhands become both guardians and foster children, and Professor Marvel becomes a more dangerous flimflam man--each element is a well-oiled part of the machinery of her epiphany.

But what the hell does a long-dormant writer have to do with this story? Put another way, what difference would it have made if that character were an ex-poli-sci prof Ray & Annie had studied with at Berkeley, or a Gerry Garcia-esque ex-rocker, or a Jerry Brown-esque ex-pol? None that I can see, except for his walking into the cornfield so that he can write the novella we are ostensibly reading (he gives it the title that the real Ray Kinsella gave his novella), but that strikes me as a tenuous function.

And Moonlight Graham, though the story is appealing--half an inning in the bigs, no at-bat--seems too close to the John Kinsella of this narrative, but in reverse: one would-be ballplayer who let failure defeat him, another who found success in life if not on the diamond. It seems at the same time too mechanical and too arbitrary a tie.

Then there's the writing, much of which has all the life and humanity of an IRS schedule. In short, I've seen lots worse pieces of crap, but this still smells less like roasted Iowa sweetcorn than like the fertilizer responsible for that dish.

JMH--[Michael's first entry clearly comprises notes written while watching; I've mostly tried to preserve this flavor, while cleaning up some of his late-night typos--CB.] The intro is revoltingly sentimental. Amy Madigan is cute as a button; that's something. 

This is just stupid, and if I might say that in a more sophisticated way, like you I find the premise here unbelievable: the voice, and then the magically appearing field. Also the unbelievably supportive (if cute) wife. Now the very clumsy exposition about Shoeless Joe. I think I tried to demur when on 2nd view you called this hopeless dreck, but now I'm going to need something to make me take the more positive tack you're now taking.

I like the Shoeless Joe into better: more believable in a narrative sense. The intensity which the actor brings to the part. That was a better scene. I think what I remember liking and believing is the baseball scenes.

The movie would be better if Kevin Costner were a better actor.

But James Earl Jones brings life and believability to his scenes.

At least Costner is a better actor than the little girl.

Jones is trying hard to say this ludicrous speech about people coming to give Ray money. But he's failing.

Heaven is the place dreams come true. This movie has become more sentimental and more poorly written, and that is really tall corn, in more ways than one. 

CB--Yes, the "Heaven is the place . . ." (I can't even bring myself to compete the sentence) is the gloppiest of all the glop, and some of the Jones speeches (they'll come because it's baseball? and baseball has been the one constant that has buoyed the people through all the bad stuff, like wars and depression and . . . uh . . . racism?) constitute crimes against a good actor.

But I wasn't offended by most of it this time, as I was last time and you were this time, and that's consistent with my generally higher tolerance for treacle. Or to the extent I was offended, it was simply that the film's not very good, not very smart--and worse, it pretends to be smart, and to contain mystical truth.

I'm so used to seeing Costner play essentially the same guy every spring, and play it in a way I wouldn't change, that I didn't have a problem with him (though maybe Richard Dreyfus would have been better--it is, after all, essentially his Close Encounters role), and this time I found Madigan tolerable, but I remember last time being fingernails-on-slate maddened by her perkiness.

You mention being impressed by Ray Liotta's performance, and it certainly does bring the one note of gravitas to the film, but here's the problem I have with that: the attitude toward Shoeless Joe is just a lie. He took $3K, $6K, whatever from gamblers, then played well in the Series anyway, and that, in the context of this film, makes him a persecuted hero. And, we are told in so many words, not a criminal. Now if I give you $6K to patch my roof, and you decide that you'd rather not, but you keep my money, haven't you committed the crime of stealing from me? And if I give you $6K to kill the neighbor whose dog craps on my lawn but you think better of it--but keep my money, and don't bother to report the incident to the police, you have committed at least one crime already. We are in this story meant to think that Ray is righting a wrong committed against Jackson and his teammates (it's completely elided that most of the other seven were demonstrably guilty as sin); Jackson is noble, damn near Christlike.

For me, the true cinematic Joe Jackson will already be the one portrayed by D. B. Sweeney in John Sayles's excellent Eight Men Out: not very bright, easily bullied, leagues (!) out of his depth. You can almost imagine the guy being simple enough to take the money but too much in love with the game--with the one arena where he can be brilliant--to grasp how one would even go about giving less than his best. 

JMH--Yes, turning Shoeless Joe into a saint was offensive ethically, and in narrative terms it was so egregiously wrong that it was one more of the ways that the movie made it hard to have a suspension of disbelief. It's like the Gen. DeGaulle statement in Casablanca [i.e., the notion that Vichy or the Gestapo would respect the siganture of the letters of transit of the Free French leader--CB], only in this case it's a historical error constantly asserting itself, rather than made once and then dropped.

I suppose the writers concluded that few would know the facts well enough constantly to be annoyed by the portrayal, but who except a fan not only of baseball but of early baseball would be inclined to sit even through the long, clumsy opening voiceover/montage, let alone the entire movie?

And while I said Madigan is cute as a button, I was actually seeing the Amy of my Field of Dreams dream. I gradually came to see her as less young and pretty than I remembered, as if she has aged not only outside the film but in. It seems unfair that she should age in this way when Shoeless Joe gets to go in reverse, even though he's the ethically challenged one.

CB--Well, yes: some people romanticize baseball even more than I do, to say nothing of more than you do, but any who are also dimwitted enough to accept that a guy is not a criminal merely for accepting payment as part of a criminal enterprise and not reporting that enterprise will buy anything the filmmakers are selling.

Or I suppose if you know enough about the background of the sellout to excuse the Eight on the grounds that Sox owner Charles Comiskey was himself an economic criminal on a much larger scale, effectively inviting the gamblers by paying the slave wages that baseball's slave system made possible, then you're a socialist, and not necessarily a dimwit, and I have more sympathy with that stance. More, but not much. Was Joe Jackson the worst person involved in the scandal? Not by a long shot. Did he deserve the lifetime ban so richly merited by Gandil & Williams & Cicotte & Felsch? I'm inclined to say yes, but I won't spend much effort mooting the moot point with those who feel otherwise. But was he a criminal? Absolutely. Can he reasonably be figured as a hero, even a tragic one? Not in my view.

And speaking of how much knowledge a viewer brings to the film, we haven't mentioned, perhaps because it seems so picayune, the left-handed-hitting elephant in the room.

We're told in the film that Babe Ruth modeled his swing on Jackson's, which I've seen in enough sources to believe. But it's unlikely that he'd have modeled his swing on this Joe's, because this Joe bats right-handed, unlike Ruth and the real Joe. In fact, this Joe--and I presume Liotta--has baseball's rarest bats/throws combination, bats right, throws left, exactly the opposite of Jackson's BL/TR. And to me that's not a picayune point, especially if you're bringing Ruth's idealization into your mythmaking. Did mirrors not exist in 1989, or the ability to reverse film footage? Could not reverse logos be manufactured?

Well, sure, it could have been done right, but it wasn't important enough for the filmmakers to take the trouble. (To be fair, the much better Eight Men Out, though it gets Jackson's BL/TR correct, portrays Eddie Collins as a right-handed hitter, which annoys me just as much, maybe more, given the higher standard I hold Sayles to.)

JMH--Yes I knew about the batting problem. It's not as damaging a mistake narratively because fewer people know it is one, and more importantly, that error doesn't drive the plot. It's a little worse than the annoying DeGaulle error since it's visual, but neither seriously damages my ability to buy into the narrative. The heroizing of Jackson does. That said, making Jackson a hero is way down on the narrative sins of this movie, and if it didn't have the others, I could look past it. Also, it's dimwitted moviemaking to so insist on Jackson as a hero. Lots of people romanticize his on-field accomplishments, and there's an existing narrative for ignoring his participation in the plot; you seem affected by it yourself. (Can there really be even a shred of argument for allowing someone who took money to throw a WS game to ever play again, no matter what anyone else did?). It would have been easy to adapt that existing narrative to the fantasy plot of this movie.

CB--No, I wouldn't have let him play again, as I said, but (as I also said) I'm not going to waste time arguing that moot point with those who claim that his failing was ignorance and/or stupidity, not venality. This film doesn't even have the courage to argue that (as Eight Men Out leans toward doing, without making it exculpatory). Its agenda is not merely historically inaccurate mythmaking; it's historically dishonest mythmaking. Not that a great film can't be made from such an agenda: Bonnie and Clyde comes to mind, and though I've never seen it, I guess Triumph of the Will would also fit.

I think we're in agreement that writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, for whom this was the career high point, is not in any danger of parlaying his dishonesty into Leni Riefenstahl-esque noxious greatness.  

Slave to the slaves

Suffragette

Crit

There is such a thing as having too much incontrovertible right on your side to make good art. This is an earnest film in favor of giving women the vote a century ago, and it's probably no coincidence that it comes along when one of the last former British colonies to elect a women to its highest office is finally giving consideration to doing so. So why did it feel so much like school?

Trailers

• Secret in Their Eyes--Oh, right: remake of an excellent Argentinean film, this time with a heavyweight who-needs-surnames cast, Julia, Nicole, and Chiwetel.
• Race--Stephan James is Jesse Owens bound for Berlin.
• Hello, My Name Is Doris--Sally Field trying desperately to be liked.

The heptapus

Spectre

Crit

Oh my god! They killed Bond! You bastards!

I may have used that joke for the previous movie, but hey, the classics never age. And equally surprising, and true, is that the femme du film (Léa Seydoux) gives Bond the brush--regretfully, but definitively . . . well, as definitive as such a thing can be in Bond's world.

A new Bond film is cinematic comfort food, and since I am currently being held hostage by the evil cartel Phlegmtre, I'm in the market for all the comfort I can get.

Elephants on tiptoe

Meadowland

Crit

Golly, that was a cheery post-Mets World Series loss pick-me-up.

Parents' worst nightmare, as elementary schoolteacher Sarah (Olivia Wilde) and NYC beat cop Phil (Luke Wilson)'s little boy goes missing from a gas station bathroom in a safe-as-houses-looking leafy New Jersey suburb. The rest of the excruciating, compelling film follows each in a separate, manifestly unshared, unsharable hell. Brutally magnificent, largely down to the leads, especially Wilde, and a wonderful secondary cast including Elisabeth Moss, Giovanni Ribisi, Juno Temple, and John Leguizamo. You'll want a drink after; it's High West Double Rye for me.

The banality of conformity

Good deeds punished double feature

Experimenter: The Stanley Milgrim Story

Crit

Peter Sarsgaard at his usual low-key best plays the title character, who, working at a New Haven university in the early '60s, made a surprising and self-evidently important discovery about people's tendency to bow to the instructions of perceived authority figures, only to be attacked for the alleged ethical violations of the experiment's (vital) deception and encouragement of subjects to inflict (illusory) torture on others.

A fascinating portrait, elevated from standard biopic fare via carefully crafted selective surrealism.

Bridge of Spies

Crit

Tom Hanks as a Cold War Schindler, gliding easily from business to gotta-do-more altruism, an insurance lawyer drafted to defend a Soviet spy who then goes all Mr. Smith Goes to Washington about the sacredness of the Constitution instead of giving the pro forma courtroom performance expected of him.

Cheese of the very finest Spielbergian sapor. Oh, and a wonderful performance by Mark Rylance as the Rooskie (via the north of England).

Trailer

• Victor Frankenstein--Meh.

Brilliant mistake

Steve Jobs

Crit

Golly! What I didn't understand going in was that this is a stunning experiment by director Danny Boyle in pacing, or rather the abandonment of pacing: no action film has ever moved more helter-skelter than this. Miraculously, it works, partly because Boyle is brilliant, partly because he's got the brilliant Aaron Sorkin writing his screenplay, partly because he has the brilliant Michael Fassbender bringing . . . well, not humanity, but something empathy producing, to the brilliant asshole title character, and partly because Fassbender/Jobs has the brilliant Kate Winslet/Joanna Hoffman constantly as his side, desperately trying to school him in how empathetic human beings actually behave.

With this and The Social Network to his credit, Sorkin needs only to write the screenplay for a Bill Gates biopic to be directed by, say, Quentin Tarantino to have nailed the 3 tech genii of our time.

Trailers

• Hail, Caesar--Oh, hell yeah!
• The Big Short--Uh, hell maybe?
• The Danish Girl--Oh, hell yeah!

Building and loan

99 Homes

Crit

Huh! Who could have foreseen that the satanic home-foreclosing Realtor® played by Michael Shannon would be named Chase Utley? Nah, just kidding.

Andrew Garfield plays the innocent in the postlapsarian, postbubble garden, and that he will be seduced by the serpent is a given; the only question is whether he will lose his soul irrevocably. I won't spoil that for you, but it is Andrew Garfield, don't forget.

Surprisingly flat, disappointingly simplistic.

Actor on wire

The Walk 3D

Crit

I was so wowed by Man on Wire--the 2008 documentary that covers the same essential ground (or air) as this, about loony Frenchman Philippe Petit and his quest to walk a wire stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Center--that I was prepared to hate this. But I don't; I don't really feel strongly enough about it to hate it.

In Robert Zemeckis's attempt to dramatize what could not have been more dramatic to begin with, he shoots for gripping and compelling and thrilling, but he gets only as far as interesting: if you haven't seen the other, better film, you'll certainly find your two hours and change adequately repaid, but I think you can guess what my recommendation is.

For one thing, what an asshole the guy was (maybe still is)--brilliant, unique, artistic, yes, but a manipulative, selfish bastard--is more told than shown here, and it's an essential point that all the people who helped him (including his lover of some duration) were really only his props. For another, the relation of narrative and audience to those buildings is handled much more adeptly in the earlier film. Maybe the fact that nearly a decade and a half has passed now makes it easier to look at Zemeckis's reconstruction of those unlovely, undistinguished boxes--enormous file cabinets, one character calls them--but in Man, 9/11 is never mentioned but always present. Here, the fatal day is just something we know that the characters don't until two hamhanded bits in the coda--in one, it's proposed that Petit's feat, more than a quarter of a century before the event that really accomplished this, gave the buildings "a soul" and changed the way New Yorkers felt about them; in the other, Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with a bad accent) pointedly boasts that a pass he received from the Port Authority after the walk entitles him to access to the observation deck "forever," whereupon we pan from his perch atop France's most favorite gift to America to the downtown skyline; apparently it didn't occur to Zemeckis to drive home the point by showing the skyline as it exists now. Thank god.

Trailers

• The Last Witch Hunter--You were wondering, weren't you, when Vin Diesel and Michael Caine would appear in a film together.
• Star Wars: Episode VII, The Force Awakens--The old gang is back (and old). Hard to imagine missing this; hard to imagine not being disappointed.

Unbreakable

He Named Me Malala

Crit

One good thing about the Mets' postseason opener not starting until the ungodly hour of 9:45 (seriously, what's the deal with Pacific Daylight Time?) is that I had time to go to a movie after work, and now I have time to blog about it.

As you'll see if you click on the title link, this documentary has gotten middling reviews. I guess that's because it's oversimplistic. I mean, the opposing view is never aired in counterpoint to such assumptions as:

• schools shouldn't be blown up
• girls should be able to go to school
• girls shouldn't be shot in the head for going to school
• the Taliban don't speak for Islam

So, yeah, if you're looking for a balanced discussion of those propositions, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for inspiration from one of the bravest people of our time, I think you'll be OK.

Trailers

• Youth--Looks star-heavy.

Rocket man

Doubleheader double feature

This day was so busy that I'm only now--on my Monday lunch break--writing my post. Mets, still playing meaningful games, were rained out on Friday, meaning that they played a day/night doubleheader Saturday. Since I was going to the regular-season finale on Sunday--and since I was still hoping to be attending 2 postseason games next weekend (a hope since dashed)--I had no choice but to: (1) go to movie 1, (2) rush home, (3) speedwatch (i.e., watch on the DVR at about triple speed) game 1, (4) rush back to theater for movie 2, and (5) rush back home to watch game 2, this one at regular speed, not quite ever catching up to live.


I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's hard being me.

The Martian

Crit

Well, you can try to resist Matt Damon's potato-eating grin, but if he doesn't make you believe everything about the science you don't understand (or simply not care about it), you're a better Earthling than I. This is grade A Ridley Scott manipulative entertainment, and I say that as a very good thing. The special effects are useful--even the 3D, which puts visual screens in our face while characters sit comfortably at the normal depth of field--and everyone in the cast nails it, but this is a big movie about one little man. I saw that some reviewer called Damon "our James Stewart," and I nearly swallowed my tongue, but having seen this, I find that absurd proposition almost apt.

Sicario

Crit

That was weird: a sizable percentage of a fairly large 5:20 audience got a real kick out of violent and extremely creepy deaths--I won't say I was in the minority in not being under the impression that this is a comedy, but the minority that did laugh a lot at what we conventional sorts would call inappropriate moments was larger than I'm comfortable contemplating.


The film I saw was hard to watch and excellent--Emily Blunt kicks some serious butt as the FBI agent with an inconvenient conscience, co-opted by CIA/military antidrug cowboys (Josh Brolin as cowboy in chief), and Benicio Del Toro is as good as he's even been, as an agent many of the baddies know as Medellín and whose character ultimately resolves itself into something very close to another mysterious figure from the film in which the actor first came to the attention of many of us.

Trailers

• Joy--As the person who didn't love Silver Linings Playbook, I'm also not the person not particular thrilled to see David O. Russell reassemble his repertory company of Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro.
• The Revenant--Jeremiah Johnson bent on revenge. González Iñárritu directs Leo.
• Concussion--The movie the NFL really, really, really, really, really doesn't want you to see. Really. With Will Smith.
• In the Heart of the Sea--Based on the Essex disaster, source of an American novel about whaling you may have read. Directed by Ron Howard.
• The Forest--Set in Japan and based, I assume, on a Japanese original--has all the ear-and-other-body-part-marks of a Japanese horror flick. Stars Margaery Tyrell, aka Natalie Dormer.
• Spectre--Just a teaser, but what more do you need? Best news is that Christopher Waltz is back, as is Naomie Harris as Moneypenny.

River road

Mississippi Grind

Crit

This isn't the best Oz movie ever (which is not to say it's not pretty darned good), but it's one of the Ozziest, following rainbows from Dubuque to the Emerald Crescent City and a bet on a horse named Toto's Revenge. Two gamblers, one too good to be true, one too hopeful to be anything but hopeless, set out like Huck and Jim, except in a car, gaming their way down the Big Muddy ostensibly toward a private poker table, but knowing what the film knows: the journey is the destination.

This one could have reached/seemed to reach its destination a reel or so earlier (kids: ask your parents about reels), but, being all in, I could do nothing but wait for the river.

8 x 8

Pawn Sacrifice

Crit

With great power comes great responsibility, and jingoistic Americans in the early '70s found in a lunatic chess genius the superhero to humble the evil empire (yes, I know: it hadn't been called that yet, but not because we didn't think it). Tobey Maguire brilliantly embodies Bobby Fischer, a man for whom the universe was contained by 64 squares.

Trailers

• Trumbo--Looks potentially cheesy, with the always potentially cheesy Bryan Cranston in the title role, but the trailer had me. Not to be confused with the 2007 documentary of the same title.
• The Martian--Speaking of films my skepticism about which was blown away by a great trailer . . .

He ain't heavy

Ich seh, Ich seh (Goodnight Mommy)

Crit

Another young-twins goosebumper. You figure out one essential what's what early on, but there's still a lot to puzzle about--is Mama (Susanne Wuest) really Mama, her face at first bandaged and then exposed as slightly reshaped in the wake of some semimysterious trauma, or is this some usurping creature trying to fuck with Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz)? And what's the damn deal with all those Madagascar hissing cockroaches?

Class struggle

Grandma

Crit

Few actors can do as much with 10 minutes of screen time as Judy Greer and Sam Elliott, and both get their licks in here. And it goes without saying (he said, saying it anyway) that Lily Tomlin holds up her end of the bargain. Furthermore, if there's an Oscar® for Best Vehicle in a Road Picture, the vintage Dodge in this one is a lock. Oh, and one more thing: the film gives us a chance to say goodbye to Elizabeth Peña. But ultimately what we have here is a lazily written, mechanically plotted melodrama that telegraphs its every step.

Que horas ela volta? (The second mother)

Crit

Like Grandma, this could be read as anti-career womanist, but I prefer to think of both as anti-bad parenting-ist. Val (Regina Casé) has done an excellent job of raising Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), for whose neglectful parents (Karine Teles and Lourenço Mutarelli) she keeps house. Meanwhile, her own daughter, Jéssica (Camila Márdila), has been raised by a friend far from São Paolo. Jéssica's arrival in hopes of pursuing an architectural degree--and, more to the point, her stubborn resistance to the antidemocratic assumptions her servant mother has internalized--drops the snake in the middle of the garden, or perhaps the rat in the swimming pool.

The first two acts present an appealing clash of cultures and sympathies, which the third act ties up rather too neatly. 

Trailers

• About Ray--Elle Fanning as a transitional boy; I'm eagerly awaiting this, but I hope the film is more complex and less affirming after-school-special than the trailer suggests.
• By the Sea--Unhappy marrieds; written and directed by a new name: Angelina Jolie Pitt.

If nobody sees it . . .

Black Mass

Crit

"Unrecognizable" is a word tossed around promiscuously in film writing. An otherwise excellent profile of My Future Wife Julianne Moore in the current New Yorker calls her unrecognizable in a still for her role as Laurel Hester in the upcoming Freeheld. Well, I haven't seen the still, but I've seen the trailer for the film several times, and from the first, in early scenes and late, cancer-invaded ones, the face, the smile, the grimace are all unmistakably Julie.

In contrast, there was a moment about an hour and a half into this film when I looked at the alien, shark-eyed face that I'd been looking at in almost every scene and thought, for the first time, "Oh, yes: I see Johnny Depp there." Not a great film, and probably not even one of Depp's top ten performances (which is not to say it's not excellent; it is), but if there's not a makeup Oscar® nomination here, somebody wasn't paying attention.

Oh, and one other thing (well, actually about a million): Julianne Nicholson's freckles.

Trailers

• Our Brand Is Crisis--U.S. political wonks wonking in South America.
• My All-American--"Based on the inspirational true story"; 'nuff said.
• Legend--Holy shit--Tom Hardy as the Krays. I'm all in.