Balcony Blues

My normal intolerance for aw-shucks Americana notwithstanding, I had plenty of room for the graciousness and insight of Alexander Payne’s black-and-white gem, Nebraska. Peppered with genuine humor, it achieves a feel for what in sunnier days was called “Middle America,” that is at once affectionate and steely-eyed observational. What ends up entertaining in this slice-of-life study of a particularly sturdy archetype of the unfazed, seen-it-all Midwestern character, is the usual uncanny ear for detail that Payne always makes look so effortless. You may hear the opinion this film isn’t up to the standards of previous Payne works like Sideways and About Schmidt. Nebraska goes for a more subtle subtext but is no less piercing in its commentary on the American condition of stubbornness in the face of despair.

Which brings us to the film’s main character, a notched-up, cranky coot (an excellent 77-year-old Bruce Dern), whose taciturn nature enforces an undercurrent of a lifelong build-up of pissy anger. His passive-agressiveness extends not only to his loved ones but to the world at large–here represented by, of all things, a Sweepstakes notice that he has won a million dollars.

His older, much more straight-laced son (Bob Odenkirk) making rushed visits in between his gig as a TV news anchor, thinks Dern is nuts and ready to be put to pasture. The younger, ostensibly more shiftless son, played by comic and former SNL cast member Will Forte, takes a kinder and gentler approach, deciding to take Dern on a 1,000 mile road trip. Nebraska doesn’t need a lot of dialogue between son and father as they embark to Lincoln to “collect” the bogus money. Their dynamic is captured in incisive vignettes as they play off the various misfits and sycophants they encounter as they stop off in Dern’s hometown. Stacy Keach, all gregarious but really unctuous and glib, wants to reclaim money he claims Dern still owes him. Family members are respectful, yet slip in similar requests like a master slipping his dog a pill inside a piece of baloney. Forte tries to tell them there’s no real money but it’s too late to stem the tide. Only the requisitely harsh June Squibb, as Dern’s wife, is able to put these gold diggers in their place. None of them seem to be bad people. They’re more like irritable and irritating mirror images of Dern himself, who rolls through it all quipping the likes of “None of it matters” and “I don’t care” as a ready-made comeback to whatever gets in the way of his essentially wanting to be left alone. We can’t tell how much of his gullibility about the sweepstakes is due to an altered mental state brought upon by his advanced years and how much of it is simply a venting of pent-up revenge.

Forte attempts to connect by way of his own particular non-connecting with Dern by giving his dad no more than honest feedback but no less than a grand gesture. Dern may be less likeable than most screen heroes but he oozes character from a source as mysterious as it is compelling. Squibb (like Dern, a likely Oscar nominee here) resonates in the memory, a heightened version of that crazy relative we’ve all had who may have been nuts but seemed to know more than everyone else. Payne himself, with Nebraska, is a likewise loose cannon of pure truth in all its sloppy splendor.

4 Folksy “Millionaires” Gone Haywire (out of 5 stars)

Ken Scott’s remake of his own film, Starbuck, has been put together with a nearly scene-for-scene deference to replication. How odd, then, that Delivery Man, the English language version of the French Canadian comedy, is mysteriously missing the humor present in the earlier version while mirthlessly retaining the schmaltz.

Messing up foreign films for American consumption is certainly nothing new, but when the same director casts a wrecking ball on his own work eyebrows are raised.

Delivery Man excises Starbuck’s hilarious first scene, where the hapless lead character is shown, via flashback, in a clinic donating the sperm that will get him into so much trouble. Was this to sanitize the American version? One can’t be sure but what is clear is Delivery Man operates in a gentler mode than its predecessor. Starbuck’s lead actor, Patrick Huard, may realize his character, David Wozniak, is hopelessly bumbling but he maintains a leathery, above-it-all posture throughout it all. He owes a fortune to vengeful debtors, curries little respect from his family, and has just impregnated his girlfriend, who’s subsequently even more eager to reject him. Yet he gives us laughs when we find out his activity at the clinic sired more than 500 offspring, most of who are now looking for him.

Vince Vaughn, on the other hand, seems to be moving in semi-stunned slow motion. He’s not exactly walking on eggshells–more, in a perpetual daze. When he starts to surreptitiously look up his kids and exert a guardian angel whammy, we get all the cornball drama but the comic relief scarcely shows up.

Especially gooey is a scene where Vaughn accidentally walks into a meeting of his kids, organized to discover the identity of their dad, after following one of them. Several of them converge on him since they’ve recently received his good deeds. None of them seems to wonder why this strange altruistic guy who’s old enough to be their dad shows up at a meeting to find their dad. A meat delivery man for his family’s business, he shows up at a picnic and barbecues enough vittles to feed North Philly on Thanksgiving: still no suspicions.

Supporting characters in Delivery Man also pale in comparison to the original. Wozniak’s girlfriend had much subtlety in Starbucks. Here she’s one-dimensional pedestrian. Wozniak’s attorney, a key supporting role as a self-mocking and self-doubting underachiever, just isn’t funny enough here. Like the rest of Delivery Man, he leads us to the sensation ghat we’ve just walked into a Broadway play on an understudy day.

2 – Its’ Own Director Still Can’t Save An American Remake (out of 5 stars)

Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a combined 80 pounds for the compelling Dallas Buyers Club. There’s an 80 – 1 chance they don’t both secure Oscar nominations. They could both win.

Although you’ll need to see David France’s excellent 2012 documentary, How To Survive A Plague to get a fuller picture of the scope of the AIDS crisis, Dallas Buyers Club zooms in on an unlikely crusader. Part hilarious scumbag, part tireless responder to medical and governmental foot-dragging, Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) was a straight, womanizing, swaggering Texas cracker who in 1985 discovered he had 30 days to live. When diagnosed, Woodroof swiftly goes from complete denial to a take-charge frame of mind. Not liking his chances in a drug trial where half the patients are given a placebo, he makes a deal with a hospital orderly to buy AZT. An electrician and part-time rodeo aspirant who hardly seems accustomed to book learning, he soon researches his medical options. After hooking up with an expatriate American doctor (Griffin Dunne) in Mexico, he’s bringing back drugs and vitamins that lack FDA approval. Donning a priest’s outfit, he poses as a cancer-stricken man of the cloth when interviewed at the American border. Thus begins several years of struggling with federal authorities. Not permitted to sell the unauthorized medications, he sets up a “buyers club” in adjoining motel rooms. For $400 a month, drugs are free, and it’s completely legal. Lines of the stricken and hopeful soon extend outside the door to the club.

Business booms only after Woodroof takes on a transgender accomplice, Rayon (a stunning performance by Leto), who’s savvy at recruiting the local HIV-infected. The odd-couple fellowship between Woodroof and Rayon is a marvel to behold. Leto injects Rayon with a knowing, heroic wit but never loses sight of keeping Ron’s excesses in check. Woodroof loses little of his rooster-like machismo as he begins a transformation, taking on a social consciousness and concern for the marginalized that seems almost accidental in nature. His turn toward compassion may arise out of a rigid sense of self-preservation, but when push comes to shove he’s a changed man in spite of himself.

McConaughey, on a roll of now a half dozen progressively daring roles that even before this one have ascended him to the tiptop of film actors, is simply amazing here. In total command of his character, he portrays the nuances of a steely, take-no-shit cowboy turned pariah. From homophobe to antihero, he is not without vulnerabilities or mood swings bordering on the sorrowful. Yet he never seems to feel sorry for himself.

Despite some oversimplifications, pacing shortcuts and the presence of a bland Jennifer Garner, the film is an eye-opening introduction to a sad time in our history. I won’t criticize the film for not addressing the larger picture of a crisis that was only turned around after a vociferous grass- roots response from those affected by the cold shoulder of governmental bureaucracy. I’ll just make one more plea that you view How To Survive A Plague. Meanwhile, enjoy the microcosm of one man’s battle to survive, and in the process, make himself not only an unlikely caregiver, but a lot more human.

4 Homophobic Narcissist Gone Courageous, Unlikely Hero (out of 5 stars)

One might pass over Blue Is The Warmest Color since when a film is this hyped and controversial, some have the tendency to run the other way. That would be a big mistake.

Unprecedented was the film winning the prestigious Palme D’or at Cannes not only for its director, Abdellatif Kechiche but also its two lead actresses, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. The Cannes jury, headed by Steven Spielberg, was not engaging in an overreach of veneration: the performances are indeed that remarkable.

The film’s emotional wallop is undeniable. Its portrayal of sexual awakening, physical desire and attraction, attachment and dependency, and the heartbreak of loss, feels to be taking place on an almost cellular level. Its candid revelations of subtle and not so subtle class and intellectual differences, come from an organic perch far removed from preachy dogma. Then there are what feel like interminable scenes of the teacher Adele (the actress has the same first name in the film) interacting with her kindergarten and first grade students. The idea is to give the sense of her everyday life: mainly its solitude compared to her wondrous relationship with Emma (Seydoux), and also to reveal her more pedestrian lifestyle compared to Emma’s existence as a painter and graphic artist. It’s very tempting to say the film would have worked much better if it were far shorter than its three-hour running time.

As is, though, Blue is The Warmest Color has a permeating effect of bringing across the indelible feelings of its two main characters in no-holds-barred, in-your-face, torrid vignettes of what seem like an emotional roller coaster ride. The little moments of life and love take on a new immediacy. Interactions between the two women are playful and real, then non-verbally redolent of an understood mutual affection, then passionately but always tenderly adversarial as things evolve to another stage. Adele goes from the 15-year-old who opens the film to a woman several years older, possibly wiser, infinitely sadder. The then-18-year-old Exarchopoulos puts on a symphony of visual acting that won’t be soon forgotten. Matching her every step of the way is Seydoux (2012’s very good Sister, Midnight In Paris, Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol), whose casual/aloof yet feeling/loving character is essential to all this working.

Oh yeah, there are two rather long sex scenes between the two women in case you haven’t heard. They are very much an essential part of the thread of the film. You may have also heard a criticism voiced that Kechiche was in it for the voyeuristic thrill. You be the judge. To my way of thinking, if that we’re the case we wouldn’t be talking about Exarchopoulos in the same breath as French actress Sandrine Bonnaire, whose legendary performances in A Nos Amours and Vagabond 30 years ago defined the exasperated young woman in search of meaning. Accusing the film of pandering to a prurient interest likely means you missed its not inconsiderable essence.

4.5 Great Performances, Including Sex (out of 5 stars)

A re-imagining of The Hangover for the geriatric set? Sure, but much like Stand Up Guys, this is another movie whose entire reason for existence is to showcase formerly heavyweight actors condescending to, wink in their eye, settle for a lesser script. DeNiro, Douglas, Freeman, and Kline set out to demonstrate that no matter how stereotypical and trite the proceedings, they are surefire pros enough to overcome the pap with their established brand of charm. The worse the story gets, the bigger the challenge to rescue it.

In Last Vegas, it works only intermittently, and sparingly. Robert DeNiro, who seems to be trying to break a personal record for films released in a year and has now made four forgettable followups to his quality turn in Silver Linings Playbook, plays a grumpy widower shut-in. He’s the last of a set of old Brooklyn childhood pals to consent to a Hangover-type bachelor party trip to Vegas with pals Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline. Seems he has this problem with lifelong bachelor and groom-to-be Michael Douglas since lifelong friend Douglas neglected to attend DeNiro’s wife’s funeral. Douglas is ready to marry a 30-ish woman who remains on the margins of the film, even though they’re in Vegas not just for the bachelor party but for the wedding.

In between various incontinence, hearing loss, and Viagra jokes, there’s a schmaltzy quasi-dramatic subplot involving bored but vivacious lounge singer Mary Steenburgen. She takes to the guys as soon as she lays eyes on them and wants to hang out. If you can figure out why she finds them so damn compelling and your answer is anything but plot facilitating, try again. Before we know it, there’s a triangle going on with Douglas and DeNiro competing for her. This eventually brings us around to the real reason Douglas didn’t attend the funeral.

Maybe these actors all need sufficient breathers in between more quality projects. After all Douglas, competent but absolutely familiar here, came right out of Stage Four cancer treatment with his excellent performance as Liberace in Behind The Candelabra. Before you go plunking down your cash on this or any other downtime projects these four guys release, however, here are a few suggestions. DeNiro? If you haven’t seen Mean Streets, do it now. Likewise for Douglas and the underrated Solitary Man, Kline: Grand Canyon, and Freeman: Seven.

Typical of the grating humor in Last Vegas is Kline’s continual reference to his wife having given him a free pass (along with a condom and a Viagra pill wrapped inside a greeting card) for some extracurricular activity while in Vegas. Despite Kline’s rather good comic timing, it all heads to an annoying redundancy topped off by a play-it-as-safe-as-possible result once Kline gets his prey behind closed doors. What are unconventional jokes along the way turn inside out to a pat moral seriousness once it’s time to marry the young girl, or in Kline’s case, make good on his wife’s offer. It’s back to the conventional, hey-we’re-only-kidding-here.

And four great actors have the last laugh all the way to the bank.

2.5 What Happens in Vegas Gets Mired In Cliche-land (out of 5 stars)

The headline in 1985 read something like “Police Bomb Osage Avenue MOVE House, 11 MOVE Members Dead, 61 Houses Destroyed.”

Where there’s police brutality, citizen pushback isn’t far behind. When the peace of innocent residents of a block is disrupted by unruly neighbors (threats of violence, the constant blare of bullhorns, filthy conditions–the group did not believe in exterminating vermin–) public opinion in the neighborhood swings back against the former victims, giving authorities renewed confidence for suppression.

Add in suspicions of a double police cover-up in incidents seperated by seven years and you’ve got a template for the MOVE disaster. Director Jason Osder, brings the havoc back to life using only archival footage. He makes use of public hearings, TV coverage, and the deposition of one of two survivors, 11-year-old Birdie Africa.

Was the police officer killed in the first incident in 1978 shot by police friendly fire? Were seven MOVE members subsequently sentenced to lengthy prison terms actually scapegoats? Did MOVE members who came out of the burning house in 1985 only to go back into it, return because they were being shot at by police?

Osder makes a case for both suspicions–a stronger one for the latter. What does seem sure is the Rizzo administration overreacted and the Goode administration waited too long to act, that both police and MOVE shared blame, and that, the uniformly condemned decision to bomb the property and then let the fire burn probably ranks as the most asinine government blunder in Philadelphia history. It also cost the city around $50 million to relocate displaced residents.

It’s sad that although the investigative commission condemned city officials (they used the word “malicious” referring to Mayor Goode) their conclusion led to zero criminal prosecutions.

Goode won’t be on the post-screening panel at the film’s next Philadelphia Film Festival screening of the film on Saturday, October 26 at 2pm. Ramona Africa, the other remaining survivor, will be though, as will Jim Berghaier, the Philadelphia policeman who heroically pulled Birdie to safety….The film opens theatrically at The Ritz Bourse on November 1.

4 Raging Infernos of Shame (out of 5 stars)

Every once in a long while a film comes along where seeing it can be considered not only essential, but practically a duty. Setting aside even the lowest tolerance for violence can be a relative small price to pay for the reward gained. In 12 Years A Slave, the mindless atrocities brought against American slaves in the pre-Civil South, is not merely shown, it’s brought to the screen with an artistry that puts the viewer squarely inside the shoes of the tormented.

British director Steve McQueen is interested in telling this based-on-a-true-story of a kidnapped formerly free black man unabashedly from the viewpoint of the slaves. The constant tension of what will happen next–the terrible uncertainty–fills the empty spaces McQueen leaves between his parade of harsh scene after harsher scene. The stillness between the sadism is the glue that brings the viewer in closer and closer. McQueen’s remarkable use of sound provides a jarring counterpoint to the haunting quiet that gives us time to reflect “How would I handle this? COULD I handle this?”

As Solomon Northrup, Chiwetel Ejiofor, in the year’s most impressive performance thus far, portrays shock, vulnerability, resilience and fear, often in the same scene. McQueen regular Michael Fassbender, as Ejiofor’s second slave owner, brings a new definition to insanity. Unabated grotesque cruelty knows no bounds in Northrop’s’ new world, yet McQueen’s overriding concern is that we experience it as if it were happening to us. With things this intense a catharsis is too much to hope for, but since we’re practically tied by an umbilical chord to Northrup, we come to identify with his strength against all odds. There may be a way out of the madness but only if Northrup continues ratcheting up his superior stamina, and even then, any deliverance of Northrup would be nothing short of a miracle.

Crumbling the likes of Gone With The Wind into la-la land shambles, McQueen, 43, has been here before. His film Hunger placed us inside the walls of a Northern Ireland jail full of abused IRA prisoners and inside the hunger strike of Bobby Sands’ fight to death. Subsequently he tackled a troubled sex addict’s voyage to an inner hell. With 12 Tear’s A Slave you won’t confuse him with Quentin Tarrantino anytime soon. Nor will you ever be able to watch any previously made film about slavery in quite the same way.

5 Excruciating Evils From A Nation’s Shameful Past (out of 5 stars)

Even a strong performance from Marion Cotillard and a fairly good one from Joaquin Phoenix fail to ignite the stodgy if rigorous The Immigrant. Supporting characters are uniformly stock, the story stretches plausibility more than once, and Ellis Island seems like Alcatraz one day, a Barnum & Bailey circus the next. Jeremy Renner as a magician and fraternal nemesis to Phoenix, provides a counterpart to the rest of the overtly serious leads, Cotillard could make me cry doing a commercial, and it’s fun to watch Phoenix get angry and put his Marlon Brando on, but sorry to say immigration woes shouldn’t feel this nondescript.

2 Once Upon A Times in A Flat Period Piece (out of 5 stars)

Gloria Cumplido (Paulina Garcia, Best Actress winner at The Berlin Film Festival) is a late-50s divorcee, mom, and garndmother who regularly hits a Chilean dance hall to meet meet men of a similar age and bent. She does so with aplomb, and with sufficient savvy to offset her vulnerability. Most of the time.

Her challenge comes in the form of a professed fellow divorcee who, although on the aloof side seems a nice enough chap. While kind and caring (he reads poems to her), he also becomes increasingly deceptive. Gloria’s solitary life is portrayed well enough it’s difficult to turn on her for any poor decision-making. We understand her situation, again thanks largely to Garcia’s performance. What’s more difficult is to equally ignore that the screenplay here, which, while containing some fine moments, is often thin and too whimsical for its own good.

Still, it is hardly common that a film about the amorous adventures of a 50-something is even this sharply observed, and while it’s fair to wonder if Garcia was really better than the rest of the actresses in Berlin, she’s pretty damn good as a Plain Jane with anything but a plain spirit and perseverance.

3 1/2 Over-50 Dating And Sex Escapades (out of 5 stars)

Cultural traditions, in all their splendor and confinements, envelop the exquisite Mother of George. Beginning with a sensuous Nigerian wedding celebration, the film offers a first-hand glimpse into a hard-working and dutiful family living among the Nigerian immigrant population in Brooklyn.

What sets the film apart is the subtle touch of Nigerian-American director Andrew Dosunmu and one of the year’s best lead performances from Danai Gurira (The Walking Dead). Gurira plays Adenike, the new bride who butts heads with expectations and familial pressures associated with child rearing and fertility. Her yet-to-be-conceived baby has already been pronounced “George” by her new mother-in-law (Bukky Ajayi), who will be on Adenike like a hawk for the next 18 months.

With her husband Ayodele basically sheltered from his mom’s pressure, Adenike will ingest potions, take on fetyility charms, including a belly necklace, and increasingly find her own fertility no longer a private matter. Worse, when the inevitable visit to a fertility doctor occurs, Ayodele declares it unaffordable, even though, adhering to another cultural norm, he won’t allow Adenike to work. Additionally, although it’s unstated, his macho state of mind doesn’t want to be upset with the unsettling notion of his manhood being questioned. The mother-in-law suggests Ayodele take on another woman, apparently an accepted practice.

Shot by Sundance prize-winning cinematographer Bradford Young, Mother of George is carefully framed with the spare language of close ups and cropped scenes and sharp cuts often replacing any undue dialogue. What could have in the wrong hands been melodramatic overkill, soars to the level of a modern-day classic on the dire difficulties facing a tight-knit diaspora in search of keeping old ways without losing themselves in total chaos.

Patriarchy fights matriarchy, emotional states become rivetingly exposed, and the struggle to stay human against inhuman odds spark this second film from Dosunmu. A former fashion director for Yves Saint Laurent, Dosunmu not only knows his way among colorful print dresses and headwraps but he takes first -time screenwriter Darci Picoult’s compelling story and fashions one of the year’s best films. Gurira will give you goosebumps. Her portrayal of Adenike’s retains dignity and grace as she faces enormous hurdles and moral dilemmas overwhelming enough for a lifetime.

(Mother of George will screen on Friday, October 25, at 7 pm at The Ritz Bourse.

4.5 Ancestors Rolling Over In Their Graves (out of 5 stars)