Month: October 2015

The Club, intelligently complex yet not in the least academic, has the dynamism of a thriller. Essentially a moral fable, the Chilean director Pablo Larrain follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Film No, is at once a bold tale rooted in the reality of the Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal.

Four exiled priests and a caretaker nun live a hermetic life in a house on the shore of Chile. They are prohibited from mixing in with the townspeople, and aside from singing hymns, seem to spend most of their time watching TV and surreptitiously training a greyhound who earns them a few dollars at the dog track. Then one day an outsider, Father Lazcano, another wayward priest, is brought to their door to join them. He also brings disturbing baggage with him when suddenly a bellowing vagabond is right outside the house–loudly and relentlessly detailing sexual abuse he suffered as a victim of Lazcano. The eerie vagrant, Sandokan (Roberto Farias), doesn’t intend on leaving.

A resultant tragedy ensues. It brings a Jesuit counselor, Father Garcia (Marcel Alonso) into the house. The four original priests sense he’s there to shut it down. As the priests are grilled by Garcia we learn they are not all there due to pedophilia, but one is present because he kidnapped babies from unwed mothers who he says were likely to kill their offspring. As Garcia grills them, the cynical, defensive, yet uniquely compelling priests are anything but repentant. In a strange but riveting venture into black humor, the occupants of the house, the dogs, and Sandokan share an apocalyptic sequence to the tune of Arvo Part’s Canto In Memoriam Benjamin Britten.

In Catholic terms the house clearly represents Purgatory, but one not seeming to offer a possibility of redemption. By film’s end the routine of the passive penance of the priests is replaced with a drastically altered existence. It’s an ironic yet clearly punitive decision by Father Garcia. Yes, it contains the faint possibility of renewed faith. Yet the allegory becomes a double one as a chilling realization sets in that the final state of the house also comes to symbolize plight of the current Catholic Church as it futilely deals with its shady, overbearing recent history.

In The Name of the Greyhounds and The Guttersnipe….4 stars (out of 5)

The narrative surrounding Lance Armstrong was just too good to offer much public resistance. His overcoming of testicular cancer diagnosed at age 21, his championing of promoting others to fight the disease, and not least, his seven consecutive Tour de France victories all clouded the many signals that something grim was awry. Stephen Frears’ The Program outlines the injections, the blood transfusions, the bullying, and most of all, the self-deception that eventually doomed Armstrong into disgrace. Highlighted by an excellent Ben Foster performance as Armstrong, the film also boasts a very good Chris O’Dowd as the London Sunday Times journalist who led the expose. The film’s compassion for Armstrong centers on his unqualified desire to be a champion. His “everybody’s doping” argument finally subsides when he realizes he’s lost, but not before we get a chilling glimpse into the psyche of an obsessed competitor, equal parts flinty and freaked out.

Have Bike, Will Not Break…..3.5 stars (out of 5)

Dirt-poor with no running water nor electricity, and unable to read or write, Maria (unprofessional actress Maria Mercedes Coroy) is set up by her strong-willed, well-meaning parents for an arranged marriage to the foreman of the coffee plantation they inhabit. What transpires is a revealing glimpse into the Mayan culture of the Guatemalan highlands. Maria’s gaze is so intently piercing, it isn’t hard to figure out she is constantly alert for danger. She and her parents, who speak the Kaqchikel language and virtually no Spanish, do things the way they have been done for centuries.

When Maria begins to question things, she proceeds cautiously. Yet her drive for self-expression holds steady through a caldron of superstition and physical danger, including a host of poisonous snakes. I left the film with a deep fondness for these indigenous people, high admiration for Maria’s dynamic mom (a terrific Maria Telon), and nothing but respect for Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante. Bustamante’s excellent helpers include cinematographer Luis Armango Arteaga and veteran sound designer Julien Cloquet, who had me wondering whether the theater’s sound system was going haywire only to figure out that it was actually the eerie roar of the smoldering dormant volcano in the background. When Maria asks her friend Pepe what is on the other side of the volcano, he flippantly replies the U. S. with that little thing Mexico in between.

A Mayan Masterstroke…..4 stars (out of 5)

The highly versatile Tim Roth stars as Hank Harris, a DEA agent who gets kidnapped by a small time Mexican gun runner in 600 Miles. Sicario it is not. The film’s early scenes depict twerpy south-of-the-border Arnulfo (Kristyan Ferrer) acquiring automatic weapons at Arizona gun shops and gun shows. His pesky gringo friend Carson (Harrison Thomas) does most of the work, easily acquiring whatever automatic weapons he wants although he does get carded when he tries to buy cigarettes.

As Harris attempts to bust Arnulfo, Carson sneaks up on him and cold cocks him. Then we never see Carson again and it is left to Roth to provide any charisma. The very talented actor (and don’t forget Roth’s one foray into directing–the underrated The War Zone) can only do so much here. There is a surfeit of driving scenes where very little happens. It may be the film’s central point that unglamorous schleps like Arnulfo fit the actual profile of low-level players in the over-the-border drug game but Arnulfo is such a boring character he drags down the proceedings. First-time director Gabriel Ripstein does an impressive job with the scenes of violence that ensue but theses shots are no more than diamonds in the rough. A clever enigmatic final scene puts a nice exclamation point on things but generally 600 Miles seems half-baked and often self-consciously deliberate.

A Road Trip With Roth That Actually Feels Like It’s 600 Miles Long….2.5 stars (out of 5)

Returning to the suspense realm he so strikingly presented in Munich (2005), Steven Spielberg tackles the Cold War era in Bridge of Spies with resounding success. Tom Hanks stars as an unwitting spy straight out of Frank Capra. Hanks plays James Donovan, an insurance lawyer with no apparent political leanings (although he had worked as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials). When the New York Bar Association undergoes a lottery to pick an attorney to defend apprehended Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel. Hanks draws the short straw. His law firm boss (Alan Alda) preps Donovan with a nod and a wink as he flatly states the defense is meant to be no more than a response on behalf of a half-hearted show trial.

When Donovan takes the job seriously and digs deeply for his client, he quickly becomes a pariah. The backlash includes just about everybody including his immediate family. Given that it is Spielberg we are talking about, the Americana overflows out of Donovan’s home. His wife Mary (the ever-versatile Amy Ryan) is a dead ringer for Harriett Nelson or June Cleaver and, like all good 1950s TV dads, Donovan wears a tie to the dinner table and chuckles a lot. When someone shoots out his front window, scaring the hell out of his three kids, the stakes suddenly rise. They will continue to grow as Donovan (this time he’s asked rather than told) decides whether to head for East Berlin for some officially unofficial negotiating with mysterious Soviet operatives.

Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski evokes imagery that represents the long forsaken era with brilliant mood. Kaminski isn’t the only master craftsman on hand: the Matt Charman screenplay was rewritten by none other than the Coen Brothers as likely evidenced by the quirky witticisms prevalent once Donovan arrives in Germany.

So don’t write this one off as “old fashioned”–a quality that happens to be Bridge of Spies greatest strength. With Hanks putting forth full-blown Hanks-isms and a piercing performance by Peter Lorre-esque Mark Rylance as Abel, there is quite a bit going on in Bridge of Spies that elevates it above most films of its genre. Also, when it comes to it’s old-school nature, don’t kid yourself. A film this compassionate to an enemy spy would never have been given a chance to be made back in the Eisenhower years. As for modern-day relevance, Donovan prides himself on the U. S. Constitution rising above whatever the pragmatic concerns of a particular era–a timeless notion certainly equally vital in today’s war on terror.

Yet Donovan is no softie. Based on a real-life character who went on to negotiate bigtime deals on behalf of the American government (including the freeing of 9700 Americans and Cubans from Cuban jails in 1962), Donovan as portrayed by Hanks may seem offhand and in over his head. But he knows exactly what he’s doing in striving for the best deal. I would love to know if the Coen Brothers brought into the screenplay a very sharp reference connecting a Donovan tactic used in negotiating with the foreign agents with an earlier scene where he hustles a fellow insurance lawyer.

The Spy Who Came In From The Insurance Firm….4.5 stars (out of 5)

An impossible perfectionist, an utterly vainglorious egomaniac, an intently focused mover and shaker, Steve Jobs also sucks at life outside the workplace. Yet he’s somehow not a total asshole. Leave it up to his biographer and people who knew him to pass judgement on the accuracy of Michael Fassbender’s performance as Steve Jobs. On the entertainment and insight scales, however, Fassbender (Hunger, A Dangerous Method, 12 Years A Slave) positively nails it. Simultaneously revolting and highly compelling, Fassbender’s Jobs effectively makes you hate him for his inscrutable insensitivity, but not before proclaiming, “Hey, wait a minute.”

Not that he isn’t trying hard to be despicable. Jobs would rather deny his paternity of 5-year-old offspring Lisa than take the time to deal with the situation. His treatment of Lisa’s mom (Katherine Waterson–Inherent Vice, Queen of the Earth) sure seems utterly wretched given his multi-millionaire status versus her welfare-level existence. The usually hyper-intelligent Jobs challenges his fathering of Lisa despite the prospect of DNA testing. When it comes in at 94 per cent chance of his being her dad, Jobs still hedges. What’s with this guy?!

Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network) focus on Job’s shortcomings yet actually cut him a break by stopping the film at 2008. Not mentioned are the multiple scandals acutely depicted in the documentary Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine that occurred after the rollout of the I-phone and the I-pad, two events not covered here. Boyle and Sorkin are content to focus on the swath of time that included a couple of fairly huge business failures for Jobs, and his unwavering ability to rebound even stronger. Throughout, Jobs has little concern for the feelings of original partner Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) who expresses a stinging resentment over Jobs’ unwillingness to acknowledge Wozniak’s team’s contributions with the Apple2. Since Jobs deems the Apple2 a dinosaur, he doesn’t budge.

Given Sorkin’s rat-a-tat erudite dialogue and Boyle’s fervid but at times exorbitant direction (his use of a magical realism device is decidely excessive and silly), the proceedings here are often downright theatrically dizzying. Yet, despite the presence of Boyle and Sorkin, this feels like Fassbender’s movie more than anyone’s. He creates a believable monster yet one without undue artifice. Whatever the innate excesses of the main character of this film, none can be attributed to attenuation due to overacting. Fassbender is totally in control and now the favorite for the Best Actor Oscar. Very good turns by Jeff Daniels (as Apple CEO John Sculley), and Kate Winslet (as Jobs’s marketing director) contribute nicely.

By the film’s climax, a sudden shift occurs and what can be perceived as a (gasp) sentimental ending rears its unseemly head. Jobs’ interest in Zen Buddhism is barely mentioned in this film. A significant element in Steve Jobs: The Man and The Machine, it was apparent that Jobs was likely far more interested in Zen as a facilitator for greater career focus than as an avenue for compassion.

When Jobs’ moment of empathy finally comes, it’s an odd duck of a desperate gesture. Boyle stylistically milks it to death, rendering it weak compensation for what had been a hard-hitting criticism, now tempered if not fully compromised. Yet just as Jobs’ nastiness is shadowed throughout the film by a mysterious and insistent counter-force, the film’s maudlin conclusion contains a naggingly soothing glass-half-full aspect if one wishes to sidestep its jarring change of tone.

Jobs Falls Further Off His Pedestal; Fassbender Climbs Into The Lead For Best Actor….4 stars (out of 5)

To steal a sports metaphor, when Michael Shannon is in one his his “zones” the result is pure magic. In 99 Homes, Shannon portrays Rick Carver, a calm-as-a-monk, slyly ruthless opportunist. His game? Real estate repossession manipulation and outright scams, and he’s a hall-of-fame level competitor. The plot device here is Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), a single father and unemployed building tradesman who lives with his mom (Laura Dern) and his young boy, Connor, gets tossed out of his home by Carter but that is far from the last they will see of each other.

The Nash’s removal is sudden-slap-in-the-face brusque, complete with cops throwing their possessions on their front lawn. They retreat to a motel. Nash looks for odd jobs, and, swallowing his pride (and holding his nose), manages to do a particularly unpleasant job for Carter. What follows is The Odd Couple/Housing Crisis Edition–minus the laughs.

Nash, caught in the desperate predicament of trying to save his home after all is apparently lost, faces a Hobson’s choice of compromise. For all of Nash’s caution, once he gets deeper and deeper into aiding his new predatory boss, Carter plays him like a violin. Their interactions are a sight to behold. Shannon is in his finest form since his uncanny performance in Take Shelter (2011).

Nash hides the whole thing from his mom despite bringing her and Connor a string of gifts that continuously escalates in value (this isn’t one of Dern’s more cerebral characters). By and large, though, director Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo) keeps the implausibility in check. 99 Homes contains a big heaping of solid drama, loads of compelling anger from stung victims, and dollops of suspense–even if things do errantly veer off into melodrama at its conclusion.

Sumptuous Shannon Showcase….4 stars (out of 5)

An unnerving, exhilarating, you-are-there capturing of the sensations an aerialist experiences is really all that matters in The Walk. Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forest Gump, Cast Away) tells the story of Philippe Petit, who walked a high wire strung between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center not long before the irrecoverable monuments opened to the public in 1974. Zemeckis trumpets Petit’s daredevilry and moxy amidst an extravagant if impressive feast of special effects probably not for the fainthearted, nor for the acrophobic.

Perfectly designed to showcase IMAX 3-D technology, the film’s visceral immediacy is so enhanced it ought to also work effectively in conventional 2-D formatting. Almost lost in the technical giddiness are a couple of close calls. Zemeckis does his best to shore up any uneasiness concerning the towers’ eventual tragic fate. His solution is a climactic, hope-laden tribute that although it is not without honor, rings a bit glib and hollow. It doesn’t help that The Walk will not win any awards for its screenplay elements but of course complaining about story elements here is like whining about a slow Ferris wheel in an amusement park with a dozen state of the art roller coasters. Zemeckis overcomes any hammy ingredients largely with the help of lead actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Gordon-Levitt may seem about as much of a Frenchman as Ian McKellan but he’s perfect in portraying the intensely purpose-driven Petit, who must mastermind a task equal in difficulty to the actual walking of of the wire. Posing as an architect and various workmen, Petit, along with an assembled team, including a key aide suffering from an acute fear of heights, investigates the lay of the land in the towers. After using a bow and arrow to project a thin wire from one tower roof to another, followed by a rope and finally the actual wire, Petit sets out on the wire in time for the morning rush hour. Before long NYC cops right out of “Car 54, Where Are You” are bellowing epithets like, “Hey, that’s enough buddy; knock it off.” In defiance, Petit turns around just before reaching his destination and goes back to the other tower.

On second thought, if you are afraid of heights, take a chance on this film anyway. It’s only a movie, but a damn good one from the thrills perspective. If more recondite aspects are needed, follow it up with the 2008 James Marsh documentary, Man on Wire. Yet as good a film as Man on Wire is, you won’t actually feel like you were there.

Innocent Times, A Brazen Feat….. 4 (out of 5) stars

A couple of apparent losers get acquainted during a poker game in some godforsaken Iowa town. One, Gerry (a terrific Ben Mendelsohn), is a fascinating degenerate gambler who probably couldn’t stop if someone told him the world would end tomorrow if he didn’t. The other player, Curtis (an equally good Ryan Reynolds), is like-able although swaggering and outgoing to the point of badgering. He is also hard to figure out. Curtis gambles, too, although more on the people in his life, strangers included, than on actual games.

Pleasantly Plot-light and atmosphere-heavy through most of its 108 minutes, Mississippi Grind turns the tables and indulges in a flurry of dramatic twists in its final quarter. Most of them work but chiefly as exclamation points on an unnerving, intimate character study. As Curtis is quick to point out during the twosome’s road jaunt through St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, it is the journey that counts not the destination.

The Australian Mendelsohn (Netflix’s Bloodline) gives one of the finest performances of the year. It’s hard to reimagine this movie without him. Gerry’s hubris, in poker terms, is raised by his sensitivity. One minute fearless, the next foundering with fear, Gerry may incidentally recall other characters in gambling movies like California Split and The Gambler, but, in essence, he’s a whole new ball of wax. His nervous energy, his fatalistic elan, compress into a single facial expression of a walking time bomb. We think he’s bound to lose it all; we don’t know exactly how and when.

Curtis seems like an even edgier character. As he bears the brunt of Gerry’s predictable actions, it’s difficult to gauge what is under that ultra-calm exterior. It can’t be good, can it? Tonally, in Of Mice and Men terms, he’s practically George to Gerry’s Lenny. He not only takes him under his wing; he steps aside long enough to let Gerry reach the edge of self-destruction before he reels him in.

Once Curtis’s unique Achille’s heel is revealed, he gains a newfound complexity. Gerry, although he may not seem to have veered off the same broken behavior patterns, gains immensely from Curtis’s seemingly casual gifts. As the giver in this intriguing tale, Curtis –his motives and fate–requires the fuller contemplation. Hold onto your hat for a righteous blues soundtrack to wash down this gritty film full of card games, casinos, racetracks, friendly hookers, estranged families, and, underneath it all, a messy, compelling desperation.

When You Ain’t Got Nothing You Got Something To Blues….3.5 stars (out of 5)

There’s not a whole lot of real substance in The Martian, and even less surprise. What it does nicely maintain, though, is a frisky well-above-average entertainment level. Director Ridley Scott has been around so long he practically makes cinematic moves in his sleep, and most of them work. While it may all seem a bit too calculated and safe, much of what lies within this movie provides the small-pleasure quotient far too often missing in more cerebral films.

Not that The Martian doesn’t have grand notions of its own intellect. Its overtly wonky stance is luckily offset by the aw-shucks, snarky smartness of is lead character, Mark Watney (Matt Damon). Watney’s tendency to annoy is itself offset by the hard-as-nails director of NASA, Teddy Sanders (a superb Jeff Daniels). Together they’re enough to beckon a partial forgiveness for The Martian’s multiple cornball Scotticisms.

Due to circumstances beyond their control, Watney’s fellow crewmembers
leave him stranded on Mars. He seems about as worried as if he’d missed the final evening train and merely needs to wait a few hours to catch the first one in the morning. Watney happens to be a botanist who will grow his own food and perform all sorts of science projects to stretch his food supply and also to get himself transported across the sizable distance to where he needs to be if he’s ever rescued. Not sure it makes any sense that he can’t just stay put and still get rescued but growing your own potatoes from scratch can only take a film so far.

Watney’s diet eventually becomes more lean than an anorexic’s but back on earth NASA is pulling scientific strings to come get him. Rule-breaking, chicanery, mutiny and ultimately a wacky underling’s left-field hypothesis all contribute to an attempt at rescue but not before a very skinny Watney jettison’s most of his escape rocket–the first “convertible” model to hit the movies. Scott, meanwhile effectively uses David Bowie’s “Starman”in its entirety but decided against the perhaps more appropriate “Is There Ljfe On Mars.”

Jessica Chastain, who seemed to wander into this film following Damon from the set of Interstellar, plays the spaceship crew leader. Michael Pena is around to throw jibes at Watney. Their camaraderie out in space is in stark contrast to Sanders’ amusingly stone-serious gravitas back on earth. Somewhere in that juxtaposition lies a symbol for The Martian itself. Keep it light when you’re practically certain to die alone on a distant planet because once you get home to Earth the fun is over.

Is There Life on Mars?….3.5 stars (out of 5)