Month: January 2013

Utterly sad and hauntingly disturbing, Amour challenges and provokes.  On the surface, perhaps less so than Michael Haneke’s previous output (Cache, White Ribbon, Funny Games).  However, when the subject matter is no less than the degeneration that can occur before the end of life, manipulations, however subtle and ostensibly humane, take on a weight all the more terrifyingly remorseless.  The scale of Amour‘s subject matter provides the harshest of contexts.  The couple’s unsentimental pain and suffering, depicted in as real a manner as can be imagined, can take on a disquieting tone when a lifelong   provocateur like Haneke seems to be substituting ravaging, uncompromising realism at the expense of more benign insights, let alone empathy or compassion.  Yet, facing the question of death, are we merely intensifying that lifelong tendency to blame the messenger?  After all, what we ultimately have in Amour is a Rorschach blot that allows for introspection on this most important of issues.  After experiencing the day-by-day grim deterioration of  Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and the sacrifices and frustrations of her husband Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) I was left with a numbness that felt something like the immediate aftereffects of a car accident:  I could think of little else than the overwhelming immediacy of what I’d just expetienced  yet at the same time I was glad to be alive.  Life took on a new glow.

A bit of context regarding Riva and Trintignant.  They’re icons of the French cinema.  For anyone familiar with them, their presence adds a poignant  immediacy of identification that may be lost on many American audiences.  They’re not just any two actors going through this ordeal but ones their fans can recall from more youthful and vibrant days.  And what performances!  Along with an excellent Isabelle Hupert  as their preoccupied daughter, they form an ensemble cast that must be seen to be believed.  As must this film, despite what reservations you may have about it being no walk in the park.  Put aside any fear of the starkness you’re about to witness.  You may just find it life-affirming.  You will no doubt be changed.  Great art has a way of doing that.

4 1/2 Elegiac Brutalities  (out of 5)

 

 

Reminiscent in spirit of a grander, much spiffier Fawlty Towers, Beechum House resembles a nursing home not one iota.  Similarly, the pain and suffering of old age makes nary a dent here.  Equal parts cute and dignified, Quartet marks the directorial debut of 75-year-old Dustin Hoffman with the whimper of feel-good fluff.   

Released in Philadelphia on the same day as the multiple Oscar nominee Amour, Quartet is certainly the flipside of the gravity of the conditions faced by an aging couple as presented by the Michael Haneke film.  Yet any positive notions of aging gracefully, while certainly evident in Quartet, are craftily tempered by a fundamental dishonesty within its seriocomic framework.  As Roger Ebert pointed out none of the characters here even have so much as one visitor in this fairytale of a home for retired musicians and opera stars.  Small pleasures present themselves alright.  It’s fun to watch these spirited souls burst out into song at the drop of a hat.  Billy Connolly provides an often witty take on the lascivious old coot eager to push the boundaries on acceptable behavior.  And Maggie Smith is here, reprising her favorite alter ego:  the grump displayed in Downtown Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  Tom Courtenay is even here.  Audiences old enough to remember him from 1963’s Dr. Zhivago may gasp that he’s still the same vibrant Tom Courtenay.

 

The audacious Michael Gambon portrays a tyrannical figure who rallies the troops of this odd home to put on a fundraiser to save Beecham House from financial ruin.  It is to take place on Verdi’s birthday and to pack the necessary wallop, it will require a reluctant Smith to overcome her unwillingness to reunite with Courtenay (a bitter ex-husband), Connolly, and Pauline Collins.  Their mission?  To tackle the Act 3 Quartet from Rigoletto no less.  With the real life Hedsor House in Buckinghamshire, near London, offering somewhat over-dazzling backdrops, Courtenay must decide whether to forgive Smith for a marriage indiscretion, Smith on whether to sing again, and Collins on whether she can overcome an increasing dotiness (itself portrayed only in the safest terms) in order to pull off the project.

Just when it all comes together, Hoffman cuts away as the big performance is about to start.  We’re treated with a cover version of the Quartet as the credits roll. Before we’ve had time to digest this sleight of hand, the credits reveal another feel-good crescendo:  many of the supporting characters in the film are actual ex-opera stars.  Who knew? 

 

2 1/2 Comfy Geezers (out of 5)

Despite tight performances by Russell Crowe, Mark Wahlberg and Jeffrey Wright, Broken City exudes the unsettling feeling that director Allen Hughes about midway through the film let the screenplay get into the hands of a pack of schoolchildren. Cheapshot plot contrivances race to outdo each other while facilitating movement toward equally plentiful cliches. It all becomes so numbing after awhile that I strabgely came to sort of enjoy pro actors demonstrating they can rise above just about anything and still deliver the goods, damaged or otherwise. Feeling violated in terms of a script insulting one’s intelligence is nothing new but at least here Crowe as a powerful New York City mayor and Wahlberg as a private detective with a lurid-cop background, leave the viewer with a modicum of self-respect. And Wright as a mysterious police commisioner shows a command that further buffers the absurdities.

What we have here begins with a conspicuous plot device about Wahlberg’s past that even the most innocent viewer will realize is sure to appear again at the film’s climax. It ends with a headscratching decision by Wahlberg to go after The Mayor, who’s probably betrayed him, with a (metaphorically-speaking) nuclear bomb when a far less messy sledgehammer would have sufficed. In between characters like Wahlberg’s girlfriend (Natalie Martinez) and her family suddenly disappear and appear in the film for no apparent reason other than Hughes-and-company need to get from Point A to point B with as little outside-the-box thinking as possible. We are led to believe, for instance, that Wahlberg is willing to go to the ends of the earth to save a fictitious Brooklyn povery-stricken neighborhood from Crowe’s exploitation largely due to his girlfriend’s parents presence in the neighborhood . Yet when he drops in on them alone after Natalie breaks up with him, they haven’t seen him in years. Natalie, in keeping with the film’s haphazard tone, becomes a dangling character.

It’s the kind of film where occasional great one-liners by Wright and Cathrine Zeta-Jones (as a steely Mayor’s wife) do their best to outweigh a screenplay mired in laziness. Even an election campaign subplot featuring the reliable Barry Pepper as Crowe’s rival, comes up a bit short when Pepper’s usual ability to credibly play Over the Top gets stretched into wobbliness here. Finally, I left the theater briefly tempted to excuse Wahlberg’s decision in the film’s climax as an Achilles heel of some sort. Yet when the best that can be said is, “Well he had to go there or there’s no movie here,” that leaves little room for rationalizing. Sometimes the best excuses flail away before they can be taken seriously.

2 Talented Actors Rising Above A Shitstorm of a Screenplay (out of 5)

Sean Penn continues to kick out the jams of character excess, gracing us with a gross exaggeration to wash down the previous eccentric he tackled in This Must Be The Place. Going from a Boy George-like whispery wallflower to a gruff caricature of a cantankerous hood ought to give him enough of a break from playing all those Oscar-worthy roles he was best known for until lately. One would hope.

Just when expectations begin to soar that after the string of serious Top Ten-list-contending December films, a change-of-pace might be forthcoming with a film featuring an A-list cast telling the pulpy story of 40s mobster Mickey Cohen (Penn). Nobody foresaw Gangster Squad as L.A. Confidential, or even Bugsy. Yet the result wears a show-offy sheen that obscures the fun. Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Giovanni Ribisi, Nick Nolte, and Emma Stone all come with their game. Four hundred and ninety cartoonishly violent scenes later it doesn’t matter. Glossy art direction and silly edits prevail. Must be a January film after all. Empty calories. You’ll find occasional tasty morsels but when director Ruben Fleischer (30 Minutes Or Less, Zombieland) lays out a style this bragadocious, and blares characters bereft of any meaning beyond the baleful and the superficial, the highs get wiped out by the film’s many lows.

Among the highs: Gosling continues his flip and cool hot streak from Blue Valentine, Drive, and Crazy, Stupid Love as he fearlessly goes after Cohen’s damsel (Stone). Josh Brolin’s determination as the cop ringleader of this motley vigilante gang that left their badges home is matched by his sheer will to move through this film and entertain us no matter what the director has in mind. Ribisi as an early tech-nerd who’s videotaping Cohen’s conversations plays the fish out of water counterpoint to all the macho crazies around him.

As for the lows, you start with Nolte, who seems downright embalmed as he puffs through his chief-of-police character as stiffly as the Tin Man. Then you move over to Penn, who looks so outrageous that his makeup seems to be wearing makeup. That’s already two strikes against taking him seriously but then his dialogue actually makes its way onscreen. Needless say, this ain’t Harvey Milk or Mystic River. More like Blood Bath and The Seven Hoods.

2 Penn chews the scenery and Fleischer bites it (out of 5)

Zero Dark Thirty, one of the year’s best films, continues in the hard-as-nails tradition of director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. Its climax, which stages the Navy Seal raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottobad compound in apparent realtime, is stunning docudrama. The bulk of the nearly three-hour film deals in the intricacies and passions leading up to the raid. It centers on a driven, fledgling female CIA operative, Maya (an insightful Jessica Chastain) who finds herself front and center of a one-woman crusade to pursue ostensibly sketchy leads in the face of her skeptical male bosses. Though her gut-driven pursuit is at times chaotic, and nearly always against the grain, her perseverance seems downright heroic. When she finally gets the ear of the CIA director (James Gandolfini), her moxie in stating her case is thrilling. “Who are you?” Gandolfini asks her in a high level meeting. “I’m the mother fucker who found this place. Sir.”…Part suspense yarn, part spy potboiler, part CIA office politics procedural, Zero Dark Thirty never feels false or Hollywood-ified.

Some observers have fallen into a crestfallen tizzy because they view the film as glorifying torture as a valid means of coercing intelligence leading to the capture of Al Queda leaders. The film does nothing of the sort. It presents the question in nonpartisan, journalistic terms. To maintain it draws a straight line between the “enhanced interrogation” sharply depicted here and an adversarial position on its use, is preposterous. Keep in kind the main criticism of torture beyond its moral implications is that intelligence gathered from it is largely unreliable and usually can be better garnered by other means. Most of the politicians and pundits who denounced the film (some of whom called for the filmmakers to issue a statement condemning torture) seem to be talking about a different movie altogether. There are some tough scenes, including waterboarding, and Maya and her cohorts seem confused when the Obama administration hands down an edict tossing out torture as a valid means of interrogation. Yet a key scene in the film has Maya and Dan (an excellent Jason Clarke) receiving their best tip to date while sitting at a table offering their subject hummus and cigarettes–hardly a torture-laden endeavor. In fact, after an initial scene of torture provides only a small clue to bin Laden’s whereabouts, it is safe to say the rest of subsequent, more important clues are obtained through good old fashioned groundwork.

Politics also reared its head on another matter. Many think President Obama’s decision to stage the raid, despite the advice from the majority of his aides that it was far too risky, will stand up as a noteworthy historical legacy. Again, the filmmakers wisely understate. Obama is in the film for only an instant, seen in a clip railing against waterboarding. It’s almost funny Republican Congressman Peter King threatened a Homeland Security Committee investigation if the Obama administration was found to have aided the filmmakers. King’s fears disappeared once the film’s release date was delayed until after the election.

I can’t think of a film where the spy business has such a human face. The stresses of the job are presented both matter-of-factly and empathetically; the dangers, with cinematic flair; the uncertainties, with credibility. Maya is miles away from George Smiley’s got-it-all-under-control persona. Her fragilities multiply as she gets closer to snagging the whereabouts of bin Laden. Dan eventually needs return to Washington to take a breather from his role as hard-pressed interrogator, and not just because the government is cracking down (“You don’t want to be the last one holding the dog dollar when the oversight committee comes” he says). By the time we get to Seal Team 6, they all seem so calm and casual; so, er, lighthearted, that they’re both a heroic testimony to professionalism and a stark reminder that the “agency” spies may ironically have it even tougher. If war is hell, the 21st Century high tech hunt for payback just somehow further upped the anguish.

5 just the facts, ma’am (out of 5)