Month: November 2011

To quote a phrase: if you look up “sex symbol” in the dictionary, a photo of Marilyn Monroe would stand alone. (And Probably take up the whole page) Her myth endures despite the nearly 50 years since her death of an overdose of sleeping pills. Part indomitable goddess, part vulnerable child-woman, nifty actress, insoluble enigma. Who the hell’s going to play her onscreen?

Michelle Williams!?!?

Much as I loved Williams in Wendy and Lucy, Blue Valentine, and Brokeback Mountain, this observer and many others were skeptical she could pull it off. The glamor quotient was something she hadn’t previously displayed. While very easy on the eyes, did she have the right kind of looks? Could she pull that grace off on screen? I was mistaken in ever thinking she couldn’t

My Week With Marilyn Williams is a hands-down Oscar nominee and deservedly so. Some might say that the rest of the film strikes one of “peanut-butter-and-jelly” alongside Williams’ foie gras and truffles. But the moment Williams walks on screen the screen the movie continually scintillates and provokes.

The Movie Star Marilyn “illusion” Williams puts out, while never synthetic, balances perfectly with her private Marilyn’s self-awareness regarding her own fragility. She seems ready to fall apart totally one moment, then snaps into a totally in command flirtation mode, complete with a knowing wink and giggle, whether the object is the adoring public or press, or this film’s main character, Colin Clark, third director on Monroe’s new film, The Prince and The Showgirl. There is an art to projecting a multi-facted personality, especially one of this magnitude, without caving in to cliches or mockery. Williams’ Marilyn always seems of a whole cloth while effortlessly segueing from glamor queen to emotionally bruised damsel and back again.

The Prince and The Showgirl was directed by the legendary Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branaugh), who is also Monroe’s co-star in the film. Much is made of the tension between Olivier and his classically trained cast (including a sympathetic-to-Marilyn Judi Dench) and the absent-minded, struggling Monroe, who uses the newfangled method acting style and actually brings a protective coach with her on the set. Branaugh’s preformance is either likely to be brushed aside and taken for granted or overpraised. His Olivier, while witty and perceptive, doesn’t exactly imbue the character with depth, although that is largely the fault of Simon Curtis and Colin Clark’s screenplay, based on Clark’s memoir from the 1990s. Olivier’s wife, the renowned actress Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormand) is shortchanged even further, reduced to a jealous, petty shrew.

My Week With Marilyn, had it strived for more than a snapshot sketch (albeit an intriguing one) might have overshot its mark. Limited by the confines of an earnest (and embellished?) account of a stranger to Marilyn who’s suddenly given intimate proximity, the film is able to approach its subject at a comfortable distance looking in. Yet since this isn’t a “real” biopic, the lightness of so much insider movie-making (while well-done) and huffiness on the part of Marilyn’s advisers often overshadow Marilyn herself. We couldn’t care less about Curtis (Eddie Redmayne) except his bringing us to Marilyn, yet he’s in what seems like an interminable number of scenes without a trace of Marilyn.

Luckily, Williams takes the proceedings up several notches. As the story unwinds, her seriousness and faith in her subject both sustain the film and give the viewer the feeling that, yes, Marilyn could very well have been much like this. At first a puzzle inside of an enigma, but by the conclusion of My Week With Marilyn, a Norma Jeane Baker, who’s at once absurd, complex, and finally, capable of being understood.

8 sex symbols (out of 10)

In the The Descendants the line between comedy and pathos forms a perfect tightrope that has stretched through all of Alexander Payne’s films from “Election” to “Sideways.” George Clooney, Hawaiian shirt and boat shoes in tow, faces a dilemma: his self-professed role as “backup parent” is about to swiftly change. His wife is suddenly in a coma and he’s got 10- and 17-years-old daughters to quickly figure out and nourish. In the meantime, as lawyer and principal heir to a potentially fortune-yielding plot of land, he’s also dealing with ambitious cousins who want to sell. Since they’re practically strangers he deals with them at a careful distance.

And because it’s Payne and Clooney, you find yourself knowing that despite the Hawaiian shirts and native music on the soundtrack that neither will do anything of the sort of corny slapstick to which a lesser director and actor would easily succumb. Before long, any physical comedy here will be perfectly balanced by a higher order of mature human introspection.

Not that there aren’t, as in all of Payne’s films (even the equally sober-subject terrain of About Schmidt) a generous portion of funny scenes and lines throughout. Payne is so assured in his comedy because he goes after life’s little details with uncanny casualness. His contagious confidence in his characters seems to arise out of an all-knowing perceptiveness regarding their often offbeat reactions Before we know it, another, more grating problem arises for Clooney and his total attention to solving it in the light of his greater difficulties, is the stuff of great comedy here. And ultimately, convincing drama.

Clooney (an Oscar nomination seems likely) plays so well off the 17 -year-old daughter (a superb Shailene Woodley), her preposterous yet totally believable slacker boyfriend (Nick Krause), his amusingly tough but clueless father-in-law (Robert Forrester, looking more like Robert Blake everyday), and his laid-back nemesis of a cousin (Beau Bridges). Distinctive veteran character actor Judy Greer plays a pivotal small role with unnerving acuteness.

Pulling the comedic out of the serious and vice-versa is no easy task. We like to think our often absurd daily lives have a rich poignancy despite their utter messiness. In Payne’s films our best wishes are persuasively confirmed.

9 luaus (out of 10)

A little way into Tower Heist you are lulled into feeling you’re watching a pretty good funny movie. Eddie Murphy’s actually back in a groove reminiscent of his heyday. Alan Alda plays a Bernie Madoff-type character. Ben Stiller, Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Tia Leone, and Judd Hirsch are all around for good measure….Then the baloney begins to unfurl.

Soon quelling the laughs, a big fat set of cliches drops in your lap. Before you know it, what looked like a production that could have made a significant comic statement on “the one percent” very rich and their victims plays it safe and bland. A car perposterously dangling from a high floor of Trump Tower over a Macy’s Day Parade personifies the film’s turn to jelly. Director Brett Ratner’s encore has us believe Ben Stiller and his band of Robin Hoods actually sneak past the Tower’s security because they’re too busy being mesmerized by the parade. More parade shenanigans ensue but I won’t bore you.

Shame, because the movie has some worthy moments. Murphy’s so good you almost forget his largely unmemorable preformances in the past two decades. Playing a role similar to Jamie Foxx in Horrible Bosses, he’s asked to bring a bunch of (white) hapless would-be-criminals up to the task of performing some serious mischief. He quickly rounds up Stiller, Broderick (admirably deadpan), Affleck, and Michael Pena to a mall and asks them to all steal at least $50 worth of stuff and report back to him. He also takes their wallets so they won’t be tempted to pay. The timing of his lines and the frenetic mania of his character reminds us how strong a comic actor he was in films like Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop. One particular scene in Tower Heist opposite Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) is especially brilliant but by the film’s second half, Murphy’s presence is diminished and we’re left with the caper itself, a heist to rob Alda’s secret stash. He evokes a frighteningly affable monster who steals pension investments from his building’s workers while swimming in a penhouse pool with an engraved image of a huge $100 bill. Also keeping a rare Ferrari inside his apartment, he soon gets nabbed by FBI agent Leone and goes under house arrest. Stiller, feeling especially responsible since as building manager he led his minions’ money go you in smoke once in Alda’s grasp, decides to take revenge.

Not quite a stellar cast entirely wasted but one who could definitely have used a better screenplay. It’s like signing up the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals to play a sandlot softball game. And as far as the Wall Street persona and what got us here, you’d be far wiser to catch the current flick “Margin Call” if you’re really interested.

5 Ferraris Over a Parade (Out of 10)

As historical enigmas go, none can top J. Edgar Hoover for sheer cuckoo quotient. The story of how an insecure, repressed man who transferred his neuroses onto an entire country ought to make a grand story. In Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, what we get instead is an occasionally well wrought study that tiptoes around its subject often to the point of inducing somnolence.

Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) play a shadow game of substitute musical chairs. Wanna know about Hoover’s ability to basically blackmail presidents into leaving him alone? All his meetings with several presidents take place off-camera. Instead we get a face to face with a hammy Bobby Kennedy as Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) outlines his clandestine file of Jack Kennedy’s extramarital affairs as backup that Bobby shouldn’t mess with him. Heard about Hoover’s strident opposition to homosexuality (gay FBI agents were summarily dismissed if discovered)? The film substitutes Hoover objecting to things like facial hair and pinstripe suits. Heard something about Hoover enabling Senator Joe McCarthy’s red baiting tactics? Left out of the film in favor of broader bromides regarding Hoover’s longstanding distaste for communism.

Even Hoover’s fixation on Martin Luthe King’s sex life, while somewhat artfully addressed in the film, is handled circuitously, as is the very subject of Hoover’s own gayness. The film acknowledges Hoover’s longtime attachment with FBI underling Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, The Social Network) as a restrained, chaste affair on Hoover’s part. His fixation on his mom (Judi Dench), who he lives with until her death, also figures prominently in his makeup. However, another type of makeup, of DiCaprio and especially Hammer’s, as gloopy-looking septuagenarians, rears its somewhat ugly head often. Only Naomi Watts (as Hoover’s longtime secretary and confidante) wears her ghostly makeup well enough to satisfactorily depict the transition to middle-aged. Unfortunately, a stretch-the-truth scene of her and Hoover’s early dating soils our perception of her for the rest of the film.

Hoover was not a nice man. There was practically nothing he wouldn’t resort to (blackmail, fabricated documents, the planting of false stories in the press, illegal deportations) to keep his power, which he justified by the steadfast assertion that he was keeping the country safe from threats both external and internal. J. Edgar gives us an under-baked glimpse into what motivated such an over-the-top personality but it should have been much more.

A noteworthy saving grace is an astutely multi-dimensional performance by DiCaprio that is all the more startling for its effectiveness despite the obstacles surrounding him. His effort propels a curiosity about Hoover that the film does more to launch than to satisfy.

5 Secret Files (Out Of 10)