42 - but who's counting?

As a dues-paying member of The Southern New England Brooklyn Dodgers Fan Club, how could I not like 42? Any retelling of the amazing story of Jackie Robinson's debut in Major League Baseball in 1947, breaking the shameful color barrier, is going to be worth watching - and worth retelling to generations who may not comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishment. Robinson's personal bravery and strong, dignified personality did so much to change the sport and to change our culture. All baseball fans of my era, particularly Dodger fans, are also somewhat familiar with the key episodes in Robinson's rookie season - the hostility from fans and in particular from racist plays such as teammate Dixie Walker and opposing manager Ben Chapman (Phillies), the withering media attention, the fortitude of Branch Rickey, the despicable silence of commissioner "Happy" Chandler. And everyone's aware of Robinson's great skills as a ballplayer - and how so many great black players followed him through the door that he and Rickey opened. So, yes, 42 reminded us of all of that and is a great movie to show kids and others. Wisely, it's not a biopic in the traditional sense - there's virtually nothing about Robinson's life before Rickey signed him. It's a story of two seasons, postwar - 46 is Montreal and his rookie season in Brooklyn. Sadly, the movie isn't really so great as a film: it's absurdly sanctimonious (cue the strings! cue the orchestra!), full of absurd set pieces (Rickey, way overplayed by Harrison Ford, bucking up Robinson's confidence again and again, for example), and in my view none of the actors looks like a ball player of the era and the company seemed to care very little about accurately re-creating the look or feeling of spring training or major league ball in the 1940s. A couple of good scenes - Robinson driven from his lodging in Florida by a gang of racists - aren't enough to outweigh the stodgy set pieces and the heavy-handed messaging Not a bad movie at all, but not nearly what it could have or should have been. On the DVD edition, Warner Bros cheaps out, taking plenty of time and space for innumerable promotional trailers and including only one crappy special addition - why not some clips showing Robinson in action or on camera?

The weird enshrinement of Walt Disney and Mary Poppins: Saving Mr. Banks

Just as you should read and study The Odyssey, preferably in the original Greek, before setting off on a reading of Ulysses, you should probably see and ponder Mary Poppins before you set out to see the new Disney movie Saving Mr. Banks. No, stop it - I'm just joking! But you might think, from the hagiographic tone of this film, that Mary Poppins is one of the great cultural monuments of our time. In essence, the movie is about Disney's 20-year quest to get Aussie-British author V.L. Travers to assign his company the rights to her books; as the movie opens, she's about to sign the contract, which gives her the right of final script approval - her agent says this is a first for Disney, and it's very unusual in any event. The very best scenes in the movie involve (some of) her meetings with the writer, composer, and lyricist team to go over some of the scenes, the art direction, etc. Travers, played very well by Emma Thompson, who adds value to any movie she's in even this one, is really funny in some of her bizarre critiques - insisting that film not include the color red, for example - and we learn from the closing credits that these working sessions were in fact recorded and the best scenes it seems are very closely based on fact. And that's where the movie goes off base; I would have enjoyed seeing a realistic account of how this team managed to put the project together even w/ her literally insane demands - but no, this is a Disney film, after all, so over time we see the writing sessions become increasingly Glee - choreographed, background score, and so on - why not just play it w/ the single studio piano? And we see Travers/Thompson become less irascible and increasingly relaxed, cool, eccentrically lovable. In other words - this film has a Hollywood, a Disney, ending. There are two other aspects to this film, neither of them good. Though Tom Hanks plays a credible Disney, it's totally bizarre to see him plead with Travers for the rights to this film - it will bring joy to children, and adults, everywhere, he says; he promised his daughter he would make this film, and a man doesn't break a promise to his children; and so on. It's impossible to know whether Disney is meant to be seen as such a cornball, or whether he's being a shrewd businessman. I suspect he was a shark - but I also suspect, for some weird reason, that this movie is meant to enshrine him as an affable genius. The less said about the many flashbacks to Travers's difficult Australian childhood the better, but let's just say I found the youthful T. and her eccentric but fatally flawed father insufferable, almost nauseating. Paul Giamatti, btw, is wasted in a dumb part as a limo driver who at one point literally sits on the ground digging holes w/ Travers as he talks about his "handicapped" daughter. (Later, in lieu of a tip, she gives him a list of famous people who had disabilities.) Travers may have wanted to ban the color red from her film, but it seems the studio wanted to ban the color black from this one. It's the most lily white casting I've seen in any movie in many years - right down to the extras. In a very long sequence at Disneyland with many crowd scenes, I saw not a single person of color. In fact, the only black person I can recall in the entire movie is the man who lifted the luggage from Travers's limo. Happiest place on earth indeed.

Hysteria and a charge of sexual abuse - The Hunt

Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt (2012) is absolutely gripping and will keep you engaged and on edge from its first shot (a group of drunken Danish middle-aged guys carousing at a wilderness hunting lodge) to its last, which I won't divulge. That makes it a totally successful psychological social drama, but whether that makes it a great movie or even a movie you'd want to see is another question. That depends on your capacity for enduring disturbance - and moral ambiguity. The film is in essence about a 42-year-old father, just divorced, apparently unsuccessful in whatever his career was (seems financially pretty comfortable) now working in a kindergarten (seems more like what we would call a preschool). Through a series of incidents, the man, Lucas (the excellent Mads Mikkelsen, also great in A Royal Affair) is charged with sexually abusing one of the children - we know that the charge is unfounded, and we also know that Lucas is very vulnerable to the charge, as man living alone, and known for kind of rough, physical play with the kids. By the nature of his job, there is body contact - we see in an early scene that he helps clean a child after the child has a bowel movement. So when a child wrongly accuses him (she's a very troubled young girl who'd seen a porno video that her teenage brother handed her) the charge quickly accelerates to hysteria - largely because the head of the school and a counselor handle this terribly - asking the girl leading questions; calling in all parents and asking them to watch for any signs of disturbance. One thing very disturbing about this story is the possible implication that charges of sexual abuse are often unfounded - I believe that's not true, that more than likely most incidents are never reported because of fear, shame, confusion. On the other hand, the film is a warning as to how a criminal charge can quickly become mass hysteria that can lead to ostracism or worse - that's really what the film is about, the effect of the incident and its aftermath on Lucas/Mikkelson, his family, his friends, the whole community. There are some incredibly tense and dramatic confrontations, one or two of them physical but most of them verbal, emotional - with typical Scandinavian understatement and then sudden bursts of passion and violence. This film would have a much wider audience if there were an American re-make, but that's unlikely given the sensitive and disturbing nature of the subject; it is a Golden Globes nominee and will possibly be an Oscar nominee as well. The Hunt may also recall for some the fine novel and British film Atonement, which also centered on an unjust charge of sexual abuse - though that one by a much older girl, who should have born some responsibility for her actions and instead carried the guilt inside of her for the rest of her life.

The 20 best films I saw in 2013, part III - 7 documentaries

Completing my list of the 20 best movies I saw in 2013 - once again it's been a great year for documentaries which have clearly moved ever closer to the mainstream of cinema in the past few years, thanks in part I think to increasing use of and familiarity with personal documentary video on social media and YouTube, the ready availability of good documentaries on Netflix and other media that bypass commercial theater distribution, and the ever-increasing portability and affordability of videocameras. Here are the best documentaries, many of them disturbing and unsettling, a few of them uplifting as well, that I saw this year (listed alphabetically):

Five Broken Cameras. A fine and disturbing Palestinian documentary made up of footage by an amateur videographer who started out buying a camera to film family birthday parties etc. and ends up filming various marches, public events, and encounters with the Israeli military - without meaning to, he becomes the unofficial chronicler of the struggles in his village; as the title tells us, he has had his camera smashed and destroyed during at least 5 encounters - each one chillingly captured live.

The Imposter. A weird film about about a family whose 14-year-old son disappeared - and then three years later a kid shows up who claims to be their son. Very mysterious and unnerving, and will leaving you thinking, and puzzled, right up through the end and beyond.

Last Train Home. A terrific documentary from China that shows the lives of a family of garment workers who migrate from a seemingly idyllic countryside into the extremely over-crowded city in order to earn enough to survive. Relation between parents and daughter, seeking her independence, is very powerful and sad.

Marwencol (2010). An excellent and thoughtful look at the work of a great outsider artist, Mark Hogancamp. Sad and disturbing in some ways, but also triumphant, as the artist gains recognition for her very peculiar oeuvre.

Searching for Sugarman. By far the best-known documentary on this list, the excellent story about an obscure American singer-songwriter, Rodrigues, who for some reason became hugely popular in South Africa - and who completely faded from public life, to the point where there were rumors of suicide, or death during a show. Turns out - not so.

Stories We Tell. Sarah Polley is emerging as one of the most talented and innovative directors; this semi-documentary, which uses a lot of recreated footage, tells the story of her family, with many secrets revealed, to her and to us, during the course of the making of this movie. Unlike so many family documentaries, this one is not filled with misery and abuse. The relationship w/ her father is very moving.

This Is not a Film. An Iranian documentary made surreptitiously by a filmmaker whom the censors have confined to his apartment. He takes great risks and pushes the limits of censorship, and some very disturbing sequences, particularly toward the end of the film, show the dangers dissident artists face every day in repressive societies.

The 20 best films I saw in 2013 - continued (foreign and classic)

Continuing with the 20 best films I saw in 2013: yesterday I posted on five contemporary or near-contemporary English-language films, and I will add 8 films to the list today - some foreign-language, some classic, some both:

The best classic/foreign-language films I saw in 2013 (listed alphabetically):

A Hijacking. This terrific Danish film from 2013 makes a good counterweight to the bloated, action-drenched Captain Philips (perhaps a case study of the difference between U.S. studio films and indie, foreign films) - tells the story of Somali hijacking primarily seen from the POV of the corporate chief who wrestles with crushing moral and strategic decisions as he negotiates to free the hostages and the ship.

Holy Motors. A completely unusual, in fact unique, contemporary French film that's more or less about an actor who has to take on 12 (or so) roles during a long and complex evening, leading him through Paris at night and into some very odd places and predicaments. Not for everyone, but one of the best experimental narratives I've seen in some time.

The Human Condition. A Japanese WWII saga - sometimes considered one of the longest films ever made, and maybe best to think of it as a 6-part series. A stunning account of a young man's journey from innocence to experience as he gets drafted into the Japanese army, sent to the China front, and put in the middle of many extraordinary challenges. The arrival of the POWs as conscripted labor in the mines is one of the greatest scenes in cinema.

Kid with a Bike. Another great contemporary film from the Dardenne brothers, in Belgium, who have made an extraordinary career examining the lives and troubles of working-class families in the industrial towns of the Belgian-French borderlands. See this one and see all their films if you haven't already (especially The Child). 

The Loneliest Planet. A contemporary film shot in the Caucasus, follows a couple on a hiking adventure that leads to one shocking confrontation that will change their lives forever. Very beautiful film to watch as well. 

Rocco and His Brothers. A great Italian postwar family melodrama, that follows a group of brothers who leave the wretched poverty of southern Italy for what they hope will be a new and more prosperous life in Rome. A great saga, and an incredibly interesting look at street life and family life in Italy in that long-gone era.

Shoeshine. Like Rocco, a neo-realist Italian postwar melodrama, this one focusing on a few of the street urchins struggling to get by - incredibly sad, and amazing to think how these children had to live and thrive. Anyone who ever thinks society doesn't have an obligation to provide welfare, sustenance, and education to all children should be made to see this film.

The Southerner. A Renoir made-in-USA rarity that's yet another melodrama and has some of the finest en plein air cinematography ever. No doubt the war and his exile in America kept Renoir from obtaining a higher level of greatness, but his American films are still on a par with some of our best.

The 20 best films I saw in 2013: Contemporary English-language

Looking back, I realize that a watched a lot of very good films this year - most at home, on dvd or streaming - and I also realize that it's hard to judge among films of different types, all of which I've enjoyed. So I'll present my list(s) of the 20 best films I saw in 2013 into groups, starting with:

The best contemporary English-language films I saw in 2013 (listed alphabetically):

Frances Ha. I've been up and down on director Baumbach, but definitely a fan of Frances Ha, a terrific movie about a young woman in NYC trying to find her way as an artist, daughter, friend, girlfriend - and seems to me to very much capture the mood and spirit of a segment of the under-30 generation. Greta Gerweg terrific in the title role, and the film has a nice understated quality - and a sense of what NYC really looks like, not scrubbed clean as it is in so many movies and TV shows, e.g. Sex and the City, Seinfeld, anything by Woody Allen.

Happy-Go-Lucky. One of the most likable films in years, totally carried by the great performance of Sally Hawkins in the title role, and a very smart script, in the British manner.

Much Ado About Nothing. One of the very best Sheakspeare on film I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. A terrific transposition to contemporary LA - hard to belief how effective and credible the words of Shakespeare (largely unaltered in this screenplay) can sound in a contemporary setting. The subplot humor comes across far better than in an production of this play I've ever seen, and it's nice for once to hear S. played in American English.

Nebraska. I've been a big fan of Alexander Payne's films; in Nebraska he takes a new direction - working from an original screenplay rather than from an adapted novel - for a "buddy" movie, a father-son movie, and road-trip movie, that breaks with convention in many ways and is consistently moving and surprising. Some terrific subtle humor, and beautiful wide-screen b-w cinematography that captures the look and feel of isolated, dying Plains State small towns. (For whatever reason, 3 of the 5 films on this list are shot in black-and-white - go figure.)

Zero Dark Thirty. Fast-paced, dramatic, and intelligent account of the hunt for and killing of OBL. Obviously not a documentary but at times has the sense of veracity and real-time that documentaries convey. Examines the tough decisions interrogators and agents had to make regarding use of torture, physical and psychological, to extract info that could save lives of others.

Positively Main Street - Inside LLewyn Davis

I've been up and down on the Coen Brothers, so I approach each new release, despite the critical encomiums that always rain down on them, with a little trepidation. I wasn't, therefore, disappointed by Inside Llewyn Davis, but it didn't blow me away, either. I think the Coens do capture the look and mood of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 60s, although, like most directors, they have no idea how to make a NYC apartment look like "a dump." The main character played very well by Oscar Issac who actually sings the part very beautifully (not sure if he actually plays guitar as well - probably, though no doubt the music was over-dubbed). Some really fine scenes, including his audition before a gruff and brutally honest club-owner, the recording of the pop song (with Justin Timberlake - what  good actor he's become!), the fake Clancy Brothers (and a Young Bob) performing in the Gaslight, and a dinner at a Columbia profs house that ends in disarray, among others. The problem with the film, though, is that it's a story without an arc. Loosely based on Dave Van Ronk's memoirs (and it sometimes reminds me of that mockumentary about 1980s folks music - although in this case some of the songs that I thought were parodies were actually songs from the era, who knew?), it never comes clean as to whether Davis will have a singing career or not; it's a story told in a circular, roundabout narration, jumping backward in time and then coming back to its starting point; there's a not-subtle reference to Ulysses, a theme for an earlier Coen Bros movie, btw, yet the journey home does not particularly work as a metaphor here in that Davis does not return home but ends up where he began, at a crossroads, so to speak. I do appreciate that this is not a conventional biopic, and it's all the stronger for that, but on the other hand it does not particularly engage us in LD's fate - I found myself a lot of the time trying to figure out whom the characters are based on, if anyone. There are allusions to LD's back story - we see a little about his troubled relationship with his father, about the tragic death of his one-time singing partner - but these elements are not particularly integrated into the film - they may be relics from the Van Ronk memoir. Not sure why the CB's made "Jean," played by Carrie Mulligan, such a bitch - there are few enough good roles for women in this film, and none comes off well at all, which is unnecessary and probably unrealistic, if you've read other accounts of Dylan and other male folk singers given great strength and sustenance by the women in their lives. And there were some great female folk singers of the era, too, but they are absent here. The pluses - with the additional plus of a strong soundtrack, as in most CB films, to outweigh the negatives, but it's not the be-all, end-all story about folk. Maybe someone will buy the rights to Positively Fourth Street.

Good v Evil: Captain Phillips

No doubt Captain Phillips was a true hero, risking his life and making some wise and daring decisions to save the men on his crew when they were overtaken by a gang of 5 Somali pirates, and the Greengrass-Tom Hanks movie does a great job conveying the tensions aboard the ship, seen almost completley from Phillips's POV. The movie, for better or for worse, is almost entirely about him - very little about the crew, even less about the rescuers or the stateside support, almost nothing about his family. In other words, it's a straight-out adventure movie, so if you like that kind of thing - lots of beatings, guns being held to captives' temples or foreheads, and finally an incredibly long assault by Navy Seals on the small lifeboat where the Somalis are holding Phillips captive, then go for it. To me, the film is admirably made - and I for one like that Greengrass did show us a little bit about the Somali pirates the deprivation from which they came - but too long, too assaultive, and in some ways too obvious. We see Phillips suffer, but we don't understand exactly how he was rescued or for that matter why there was no protection aboard his ship sailing along the Somali coast. Can't help but compare this movie with the much-less known and, to me, much smarter and in a way tenser Danish film, A Hijacking - which actually focuses on the shipowner back in Europe and the decisions he has to make in negotiating with the captives - really examines the moral dilemmas in a far more intelligent way than CP, which is about good v evil in a pretty formulaic manner. A good film for what it is, with one fine acting performance and a lot of technical bravura, but it's just a step removed Armageddon or Iron Man. If you like that sort of thing, go for it.

Nebraska deserves to be among the best on any list

I've really like Alexander payne's movies over the years and what a great one we have this year - Nebraska, w excellent script by bob Nelson - first time Payne hasn't worked from a book? - and a stunning lead performance from Bruce dean. It's a father son road trip buddy movie but w many variations on the genre and a style and mood of its own - shot in wide angle bw which makes these small towns of the western plains hauntingly beautiful and also dead, frightening - as in the great scene in the tiny newspaper office  clearly a dying enterprise. There are no young people in this movie which makes us feel by their absence the these towns are relics doomed. All this said but it's by no means a depressing film - has some amazingly funny minimalist dialog esp the  brother and cousins watching tv and engaging in desultory conversation mostly about cars. And it's also a v warm filme even if anything too sentimental - about a devoted son and his struggle to win the love or at least the attention of his irascible dad. Deserves to be among the years best on every list.

Timeless - and of its time - The Fantasticks

Our regular trips to the theater world of Harvard Square continued last night with tix (thanx AW) to the very enjoyable and ageless The Fantasticks, at the Cabot Theater Company - a highly influential play back in the day and a perfect show for a small venue and a college-aged cast, as the story is of course about youth - and it requires only a very small cast and crew and simple, minimalist set and costumes, and very crisp direction. The fine production at Cabot had all of this. Of course we always love seeing fam-friend Susanna Wolk, and have watched her performances mature and deepen over the years - she's still cast often as the ingenue, but she brings more than that to the show - the whole package, in fact, of lively stage presence, warm voice, graceful dance - great for a lead in a musical. Won't single out others in the fine cast though was pleased to see a student from my town, Karl Aspelund, do a star turn in the comic role of Boy's Father. Two-person orchestra was right on, and much of credit has to go to directors Reed Silverman and Kent Toland and music dir Isaac Alter (also pianist). Very interesting for parents to come watch this show, as so much of it is about kids breaking free from over-bearing parents. Also v. interesting to come back to this show after who knows how many years, too many to count; as noted, it was a hugely influential play in its day, one of the first to show how a musical can be simple, minimalist, elemental - and all the more moving for that. It seems, strange as this may sound, that the play is both universal and extremely dated. Obviously the whole beauty of the play is its light-hearted attempt to portray universal truths, that is, true for every generation, about youth moving from innocence to experience - the children doing exactly what their parents don't want them to do, the relationship falling apart once parents approve, the journey off into the world for experience, the painful realizations about the hardships of the world when outside of the family orbit, the return to one another, wiser and not all that much older. Early viewers id'd with so many of the sentiments in the show - please don't let me grow up to be normal, etc. In some ways, it's a very 1960s show: emphasis on freedom, on the "new generation," on "discovery" that there's suffering and injustice in the world, which others (elders?) can't or won't "see"- later transformed into the Age of Aquarius etc. But also a very 1050s show - very stereotyped about gender (the girl wants to stay at home and pose like a statue, waiting to be "ravished," while the boy wants to go off and see the world ... ), and I have to say I was surprised that a Harvard production left in the "Indian" scenes - these could so easily have been made less potentially offensive. I wondered about a contemporary twist: have the couple be two guys, or two girls?, and have the parents be a mom and a dad (the absence of mothers in the original is a very peculiar matter, isn't it?). Though the sentiments may seem quaint and naive today, 50 years after JFK assassination, more than 10 after 9/11, there is definitely something still appealing about the Fantasticks, right down to the improvisational spelling and the unique font, and in particular the simple but very clever and memorable music and lyrics.

Before Sunset, After Sunrise, Before Midnight - and beyond?

I was (am) a big fan of the Hawke-Delpy-Linklater collaboratiaon Before Sunset, which I think beautifully captured the mood of young people at a particular time of life - somewhat established in careers and but not in relationships - as Hawke (Jesse) and Delpy (Celine) meet on a train and disembark together for one long night in Vienna - the beginning and, seemingly, the end of their relationship. Very moody and funny and endearing and a little bit sad, but you also felt that each was strong and talented and would go on to fine and successful lives, with this one night as a memory or pole star. But both seemed so real and imbued in the character - that many, including the 3 creators or the movie - were curious about exploring the course of these lives; the follow-up, After Sunset, in which Hawkes returns to Europe to promote a novel he wrote based on his night with Delpy - she seeks him out and they spend much time talking and reflecting - was to me drab and much less moving and provocative. This 3rd segment - each about 10 years apart, something like a fictive version of the Up series - Before Midnight - returns I think to the strengths of the first movie - funnier, equally credible (for the most part - though I can never buy Hawke's discourses about writing - even though H. himself is a published novelist - odd how phony these sound). Both Jesse and Celine are still endearing and at times charming, and also at times irrational and difficult and annoying - and this film examines, over the course, again, of one day, in about 8 scenes, most very long and most involving just the two of them - the course of their lives; at times they seem like a happy, quirky, joyous couple and at other times angry and embittered and selfish - Jesse virtually admitting to infidelities, Celine haranguing him about his oppression of women and how she's tied down by their twin daughters. The crux is they are wrestling w/ whether to move back to the U.S., at risk of C's emerging career - an issue so many couples face. Several of the long scenes could be classics for acting classes to analyze, and to try to re-create - which would be a real challenge (I wonder how much of their dialog was improvised, btw). Definitely a film worth seeing but only if you've seen the other 2 first - and I have a feeling more are to come, over time.

Treating hysterics - and mistreating them

Augustine is a French film about the Dr. (or M.) Charcot and his pioneering treatment of female hysteria in Paris in the 19th century - particularly his treatment of a patient, the eponymous Augustine, a house maid who has seizures and fits, during which she writhes and cries out as if in violent and fevered sexual orgasm. Not sure how much is based on fact, but Charcot was a famous practitioner, whom Freud admired - his great insight was that the treated hysteria as a curable disease or illness, and not as a form of witchery or possession. The insight that he didn't have - and that Freud did have - was that hysteria was an illness of the mind, not just of the brain - so he never engaged in anything remotely like psychotherapy in any form. He barely talks to his patients, treats them as objects of study and of display - he worked with A. to "train" her to undergo hypnosis and fall into fits on command, for demonstrations before other doctors, in his efforts to seek more funding for his work. So he's both a hero - helping these women whom society had ignored or worse - and a brute, especially to Augustine (in one horrid scene he penetrates her with some kind of medieval looking torture device). Gradually, he comes to develop a bit of tenderness for A., but they never engage in any serious dialogue - she, by the way, is illiterate and very taciturn. The actress - Soko - is very good, btw, and her sexual fits are the kind of scenes that often bring an actor an Oscar nomination, but probably not in this case, as she hardly says a thing throughout the film. Up to a point, I found it a very captivating and provocative look at early medical treatment and the ethical issues surrounding treatment of the mentally ill - but then the movie goes off the rails near the end (spoiler). Why does the director, Alice Winocour, have Charcot have crude sex with Augustine after one of her fits? I doubt he would do so - I hope he wouldn't - but it seems she does this just to make a feminst point: the doctor is a brute, weak willed, exploitative, horrid. Augustine - apparently "cured" before the sex scene - runs away from the asylum, and we wonder whether his attack on her (though she came on to him, she's obviously sick and vulnerable and he took advantage from his position of power and health) ruined all of the progress he had made - we suspect she was not wakened to sexuality in some pseudo-Laurentian way but rather frightened and distraught by this attack and maybe reverted to hysteria or worse. Seems needless point-making, and, hard as it may be to imagine a French movie without a sex scene, the film would have been stronger had it been less sensational.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Terence Nance's An Oversimplification of her Beauty is like the best graduate-student workshop-project film ever made - which is to say that it shows an abundance of technical talent, of imagination, of daring - and yet, by the end, and I have to admit I was fading by about half-way through this relatively short (90 minutes) film, the whole is less than this sum of its parts. It's a compendium of just about every narrative device in the repertoire, and some in fact that have never before been in the repertoire: scripted acting, improv, archival footage, hidden camera, animation, stop-action, frames within frames, voice-over, handwriting on screen, and many more - always visually engaging, up to a point. Overall, the simple "story" if it can be called that involves a guy who's rebuffed by a girl w/ whom he's been flirting and on whom he has a serious crush, and he uses this rebuff as an occasion to examine their relationship and several other failed relationships in his life. In a stronger film, this would present us with a complete and surprising portrait of the artist, and we would continue to learn more about him (or her, or both), perhaps in surprising ways, throughout the film - and, even better, he would continue to learn more about himself. For comparison with a slightly similar, excellent film - see Stories We Tell, by Sarah Polley. In Oversimplification, unfortunately, it seemed to me as if we were going over the same ground repeatedly (we kind of were, in a literal sense - as many scenes repeated - another narrative technique seen in some experimental films, even narrative ones, such as Run, Lola, Run). All told, lot's of talent here, which, when someday linked with a strong narrative, might lead to a truly knockout film.

His name is Mud

Jeff Nichols's 2012 Mud really ought to find a wider audience, as it's a tremendously appealing and engaging film that's suitable for all ages - basic plot is two Arkansas boys exploring the river and its islands meet up with a homeless man who asks them to do him a favor and get some food (he promises a boat and, later, a pistol in return for their help), they soon learn that the eponymous Mud is wanted on a murder charge - and that there's a team of bounty hunters on the lookout for him. The plot kicks into gear very quickly, and Nichols keeps it moving and keeps the tension high without resort to gimmicks, pyrotechnics, violence (up to a point), or too much melodrama (there's some - but hey it's just an entertaining movie - not a movie with a message). The acting is strong all across the board - it will remind you of Stand By Me (boys bonding over a secret discovery) or to an extent Beasts of the Southern Wild (parent-child relationship, impoverished gulf community) though without the fantasy and extravagant narration. +2 hours but moves along well and doesn't feel drawn out; at times the dialect is very difficult, at least for New Englanders, to parse, but you don't need to comprehend every word to follow the story line. Some very beautiful outdoor photography - both of the waterways and of the tacky gulf town where some of the action takes place. All around good film and in a just world it would be out there fighting Gravity at the box office but will have to settle for a lot of rentals and downloads.

Baumbach's best

I've been up and down on Noah Baumbach but I think Frances Ha is his best movie to date by far, in large part because of the great comic-emotional performance of his lead, Greta Gerwig, as the eponymous "undateable" Frances but also because it seems to truly capture the mood and mode of a generation in a particular time and place - the young and artistic and career-ambitious but (most of them) spoiled and pampered 20-somethings in the maelstrom of NYC - a world of underpaid internships (except for Frances, most or all of the people are from wealthy families who allow the kids to live in seeming poverty but to all of a sudden have enough $ to spring for beautiful clothes, expensive liquor, constant cigarettes) and overpriced rentals. The movie is about Frances's tempestuous friendships, her frustrations as a would-be dancer who's competent but not good enough to move up to the next level, constant anxiety about rent money leading to frequent moves among th boroughs, with a lot of talk, much of it very quirky and funny - Baumbach and Gerwig co-wrote the excellent script - a cool and casual attitude toward sex and a complete failure at long-term relationships - and way too much drinking and self-indulgence. Despite all this we like (or I did anyway) all of the characters, can understand them and forgive them their faults - and we particularly like the buoyant and athletic but socially clumsy Frances/Gerwig - and feel sorry for her as she tries to hang on to her friendships in changing seas, to remain optimistic, and to make the rent - even as her fortunes decline. The movie is shot in Allen-esque b/w, mostly in New York City - but with three excursions: Frances goes home to see family in wholesome and middle-class Sacramento, goes to Paris on a stupid lark that makes her sad and wastes $, and takes a summer job at her alma mater, Vassar, which makes her feel, rightly, that she's going nowhere w/ her life: and w/ each of these locales we see how Baumbach's vision is so different from W. Allen - these are not scenes of beauty but of crowded streets and lonely cafes and scrubby woodlands and at a young woman miles removed from her very conventional but loving and supportive family. Gerwig pushes the age limit for this part, but it will be interesting to see how she grows as an actor and what's next.

Revenge of the whales

Blackfish is a good old-fashioned documentary, using plenty of archival video (much is available, as this documentary is about the abuses - to the orca and to the staff - at Seaworld, where just about every moment is captured on someone's camera) and lots of interviews (except of Seaworld people, who repeatedly refused - stupid strategy I think) with former trainers/entertainers. Nothing new or noteworthy about the techniques, but this film, which proudly wears its heart on its sleeve, is a very effective advocacy - who will ever go to one of these water shows again after we see how the whales are captured, held captive, often mistreated and abused - an how at-risk the trainers are and how they're forced to spew - or spout - the company line. There is some absolutely horrifying footage (and voice recording) of whales attacking trainers at various points, and some sorrowful accounts about trainers whom the whales killed. And yet we certainly don't "blame" the whales - they, like the trainers, are the victims of a system. it's incredibly moving to see a huge tough guy who was part of one of the orca roundups in Puget Sound recounting his experience and tearing up, choking up, as he realizes what he's done to these beautiful creatures. To see them in the show, they look playful and happy - but what most never see or never saw until this film is that the orca are dangerous and unpredictable and the conditions of their captivity may exacerbate their danger and make them potentially violent and malicious - or, at best, unaware of their own strength when "playing" with their trainers. Totally captivating movie that may very likely change your views about whales and the whole water-show entertainment business.

Fine character study - but not much plot - Welcome to Pine Hill

Keith Miller's 2012 Welcome to Pine Hill is an indie about a street hustler in Brooklyn, in his 20s, who's trying to put the street life behind him - he's a petty drug dealer, apparently - and earn an honest living, working 2 jobs, a bouncer at a Brooklyn bar which has, to his annoyance, become increasingly
yuppified, a hangout for white guys with designer eyeglasses who try to befriend him and ask him about street life - very offensive, obviously - and as a claims adjuster for an insurance co., where his workday involves hearing the sad stories of policyholders who've been in crashes and are hoping to collect. Things go poorly for the guy - played by an actor named Shanon Harper - and the movie ends with (spoiler coming - though honestly the plot is the least important element of this film) him waling off into the woods in the Catskills and vanishing among the trees, disappearance and a suicide and a bit of a movie cliche, easy ending, if you ask me. Miller does a fine job with many of the scenes in this film, shot in documentary style, with little camera movement and a great deal of patience, letting the various scenes unfold slowly and as if in real time - many of the scenes seem to have improvised dialogue. Some the best include the opener - in which Harper tries to scam a neighborhood guy (played by Miller) into giving up his pit bull (Harper claims it was his, had run away, had cost $250, and the guy - "I really love this dog," he says, tearfully - will have to pay up to keep the dog), a scene in which Harper sits silently heating a crappy meal in a toaster oven, worried about his health, a scene when he in near-silence gets bad news from a clinic doctor, and a backyard drinking binge with some of the guys from the neighborhood. Scene by scene, that is, Miller has a fine style, but by the end, the promising tensions of the opening sequences fade rather than build and the movie, laconic in style to the extreme, becomes somewhat less than the sum of its parts - lots of great potential here and Harper is a great study of a character but the materials never quite come together to form a narrative or a story.

2 films we couldn't finish

Started 2 films last night and could not get beyond 20 minutes on either. One we should have known better, Cabin in the Woods, a "horror" film about a group of college friends who go off to a remote country cabin for the weekend, Blair Witch meets Deliverance, I think - moral of story:don't go! The other seemed more promising, Upstream Color, I even liked the title, but after 20 minutes neither of us could understand what was happening nor did we care. Maybe I was too tired and didn't give it a fair chance. Promos and reviews call it technically brilliant and abstract, about a couple struggling to put together their identities from fragments. Sorry, I just could not make sense of this - though it seemed like other films I often like, e.g., Holy Motors, this one was unfathomable.

A postmodern family documentary : Stories We Tell

No doubt Sarah Polley has become a major film talent and Wellesian polymath - first as a comic actor (who didn't enjoy watching her Juliet in Slings and Arrows?), then as a fine director and screenwriter, in her smart adaptation of Alice Munro's story into Away from Her, now as a writer and documentary filmmaker in Stories We Tell - a magnificent and subtle examination of the dynamics of her own family, centering on her mother, who died when Polley was a young child - and on her father, Michael Polley (also an actor - played a comic good role beside Sarah P in Slings and Arrows - I had no idea then that he was her father). I won't give major elements away, but just will say these few notes: Michael Polley comes of as a complex and difficult but very kind and loving father of this complicated family, at times in the film - much of which he narrates, as he reads a hand-written family memoir he's been working on - we feel that he's a terribly sad and repressed man, unable to express and even hold feelings of grief, shame remorse - and we know nothing of his family background and childhood - but then we step back a little and realize how courageous he is to take on this project, and what a great father he was to Sarah during a very difficult time, and we see his generosity and open-mindedness - and I'm reminded of a line of his in Slings, in which he recalled some difficult passages in life, but then remarked that we look back on these "stories" and tell them and that's how you know: "you've led a life." I think that may have been Sarah Polley's inspiration (and title source perhaps). Second, S. Polley does a great job using family interviews documentary style, some archival footage (including I think some family super-8 movies), and lots of re-enactments that look like family videos or film - very convincing and beautifully filmed, directed, and edited. Third, she is something of a post-modern documentary filmmaker, as she allows us to look around the edges of the film - leaving the DP and other crew members in the frame from time to time, leaving her own questions in at times, asking her dad to "take back a line" while he's reading the script, which he does with great professional skill. Fourth, she gets so much out of her cautious and wary sibs, from the nervous titters as they begin this project till, eventually, each (I think) breaks down and then tries to brush the emotions aside. Very strong and totally captivating small-scale documentary film that has a lot to say about a unique family, and about how all of us make sense of our lives and our past through art.

A rare film that is very suitable for all ages: Kon-Tiki

When I was a kid everyone knew about Kon-Tiki, from Thor Heyerdahl's book, from the documentary, from the general knowledge of pop culture - he was one of teh few explorers of the 1950s, and his story - the daring journey by raft from Peru to Polynesia - was soon displaced by other adventurers such as the Mercury astronauts and, much later, Robert Ballard and the Titanic - but for a time Heyerdahl was a cultural icon. The new move Kon-Tiki brings him back for the 21st century - so strange to think that for young viewers this story will be as remote in time as Stanley and Livingston were to me. The movie, while breaking no new ground, is successful on its own terms: easy to follow and to enjoy, though the outcome is never in doubt there are many exciting scenes, especially once the crew is at last aboard the raft - and encountering a great storm, near-mutiny and perhaps suicide attempts, attacks by sharks and whales, as well as some beautiful sequences like the passage through a crowd of phosphorescent fish. The movie is very suitable for all ages and neither condescending to kids or pandering to adults - such a rarity these days - as well as quite upbeat, with a nice synopsis at the end of what became of each of the men on the raft (seeing real photos of them would have been a plus). Film is Norwegian but acted in English, in an obvious attempt to reach a wide audience and convey Heyerdahl's story to the world once again.

Drug War likely to be remade (and ruined?) as a U.S. film

I wasn't the idea viewer for Johnnie To's Chinese action movie Drug War last night as still sleep deprived from World Series but can say that the film, though there's no particular depth to it, the title says it all, it's basically a story of some drug-enforcement agencies trying to break up a massive manufacturing and smuggling ring, it meets all its goals - fast action and some very imaginative and gripping sequences. Essentially, story, set in a small Chinese city - perhaps near the Hong Kong border? - flat and industrial and ugly (the kind of landscape the Dardennes brothers film so often in Belgium) get a tipoff about a bus coming in transporting a whole crowd of impoverished Chinese who'd been paid to stuff sacks of cocaine (?) into their rectums. Some pretty gruesome and probably realistic scenes as the police extract the evidence in various ways. One guy involved with the ring - a meth manufacturer it appears - nearly dies in an explosion, is captured, and agrees to help the cops (his wife and her sibs did die in the explosion, as we see in another gruesome visit to the site). The lead cop ultimately impersonates a rather bizarre and frightening mega-dealer called HaHa because of his propensity to laugh at everything and everyone. Many frightening and powerful moments of tense confrontation - in particular, a sequence in which the cop is forced to ingest some coke (or smack?) and nearly dies. Everyone's caught, ultimately, of course, but the ending is darker than you would imagine - going places where no American film is likely to venture, especially if this were remade at the U.S.-Mexican border, which I can imagine it might be.

Before watching Drug War we started watching the much-touted documentary, Leviathon, which is of the style now quite popular in which there is no voice-over, no interviews, just actually filming of the subject over a long period of time - very successful in the excellent documentary Sweet Grass - but much less so here. Topic seems to be deep-sea trawling fisherman, and after 20 minutes of sometimes beautiful footage - in an abstract way - it's obvious that the work is cold, dangerous, almost inhumanly difficult, but very hard to ascertain what's happening in any of the sequences, filmed at night with a juttery hand-held camera. Couldn't go any further - got the point.

The other morive about a hijacking on the high seas

I'm sure Captain Phillips is a great movie and I'll probably see it and be impressed like everyone else but it's hard to imagine a better movie on the theme of at-sea kidnapping by Somali pirates (why are there suddenly two of these movies within the span of a year?) than the Danish A Kidnapping. Told with incredible efficiency and understatement, this film puts us right in the midst of the captured ship, and we suffer along with the crew, in particular the cook, whom we see in the first sequences talking to his wife and daughter home in Denmark and about whom we soon learn, to his later chagrin, that he is competent in English - he later becomes the captors link to his fellow crew members and to the owners back in Denmark - which brings us to what's even more remarkable about this fine movie: it's not just about the tension on board the captured ship, great a story as that may be, but also about the tension, guilt, and duplicity going on back in Denmark among the ownership - in fact the real star of the movie is not necessarily the ship's cook but the company CEO, Peter: in an early scene we see him as the tough negotiator and steely boss cutting a deal w/ a Chinese team for the sale of a few ships. After the hijacking, he hires an outside expert to consult on the negotiating process but defies advice and insists on doing the negotiating himself - admirable, in that he's taking ownership of the situation but also, perhaps, foolishly cocky in thinking he can handle any situation when in fact he's in uncharted territory. There are many moments of moral ambiguity, as he tries to work out a deal with the pirates without jeopardizing the men, but also with a sharp eye on the company bottom line. The expert he hires is very self-confident - his main advice is don't give in to their initial demands because they'll see you're weak and demand more - but every moment of delay means more suffering for the captured crew, and perhaps more danger. It's really tough to know what to do, who's right who's wrong - and eventually we learn, particularly through one surprising and explosive scene, the toll this is taking on the CEO as well. A really fine and understated movie, and I wish it could find one twentieth of the audience that Captain Phillips has found.

No happy endings - in Blancanieves, a reworked "fairy tale"

The Spanish film Blancanieves (i.e., Snow White) is unusual in so many ways and there are so many ways it could have gone wrong but I think it's a good movie and would appeal to a very wide range of viewers, including children, if people have the patience for a movie that: a., is in black and white, b., has no dialogue (though it does have to title frames a la a silent movie), c., is set in the 1930s or so, d., is Spanish-language based, and e., is pretty dark and scary at times. The film is a loose adaptation of the Snow White story - most of us know only the Disney version with the cute dwarfs in the forest - in this case SW is the daughter of a bullfighter who gets seriously gored and paralyzed in a major fight; she grows up mistreated by a wicked stepmother - a staple of so many fairy tales and films - think of the fabulous Pan's Labyrinth as one example - and gradually learns who her father is/was and, with the aid of the dwarfs whom she meets in a forest after escaping an assassin - they are "repurposed" as a dwarf bullfighting troupe - she gets into the ring to avenge and emulate her father. The ending, which I won't give away, is powerful and creepy. Some very beautiful, dark sequences, a truly engaging plot that's very simple and elegant, like most fables, and easy to follow cinematically. The whole spectacle of bullfighting is strange and very powerful on screen - not sure that it's ever been shown as such a dangerous sport - the scene near the opening with the matador waits in the ring for the initial charge of the bull is very powerful. Too bad wicked stepmothers have become such a cliche, which this movie fully endorses. This movie posits that there's incredible evil in this world - which of course there is - and that the good does not always win out in the end - a very dark message, especially for those who look to myth and fable and fairy tales for uplifting, happy endings. You won't find that here.

Ending Bad

Inevitably, the ending of Breaking Bad turns out to be disappointing, in part because we have set unreasonable expectations for any great series and in particular for this one, which literally seemed to improve and mature with almost every episode. These conclusions are also disappointing because we don't want to let the characters go, and wish they could live on - but the writers and creators know, as a convention, that they lead has to die - otherwise, there's always that slight possibility of another season. But the conclusion to BB was also disappointing because, thought Vince Gilligan wrapped up all of the strands of the series pretty effectively, he did so by granting Walter White almost superhuman powers - or luck. Did anyone else wonder how in hell he managed to sneak into the house of the wealthy couple? Or how they would manage to distribute millions in cash to Walt's children? And how did he manage to build that weird contraption in the Cadillac trunk that mowed down the whole rival gang? Even the assassination of the Chicken King in the nursing home seemed more possible, if not more credible. In other words, in this last episode Walt stepped out of the boundaries of ordinariness that made his character, and the show, so intriguing. I didn't buy into it, and thought an accidental or unexpected death would be a more likely and more satisfying conclusion. (BTW, I always thought it was a mistake to kill Tony in the final episode, and that he should have been left as the last one standing, with his family and his crew all gone.) Despite these quibbles about the final episode, Breaking Bad takes a deserved place among the great American TV dramatic series, maybe just a notch below The Wire and The Sopranos, but certainly on a level with Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, Homeland, and even the surprising Battlestar Gallactica - each different in style and genre but each just a great contribution and a high point in American culture and to popular, commercial entertainment.

Breaking Bad: The End is Near

I've noted a # of times that no show has consistently become better episode by episode than Breaking Bad. This week's episode - is it the penultimate? - carries that observation forward, still intact, as it's one of the finest and most dramatically intense episode every seen on TV, IMHO. From the very strange opening sequence - a flashback to a time when Walt and Jesse were first cooking meth in a trailer, and W. is trying to maintain a bizarre facade of normalcy with the then-pregnant Skyler - long cell phone conversation suggesting they take a drive up to Taos over the weekend, enjoy some family time - while he's cooking meth in the background! - to the very tense confrontation with the new meth gang when they discover that the now-captive Hank is a DEA agent, Walt's desperate attempts to negotiate for Hank's release, Hank's trenchant remark that W. is so smart and so stupid - he doesn't see that Hank's a dead man either way - the capture of Jesse and his abduction, the final face-ff between Skyler and Marie, the revelation at long last to "Junior," the violent confrontation at home between the bossy and now totally insane Walt and Skyler (and Junior), and finally Walter's revenge and this very strange phone call back to S., when he must know police are listening. What's his motive for that call? To pose as the only bad guy and take the heat of Skyler? Or something else more devious. The end is near.

Who made your blue jeans?: An incredible documentary, Last Train Home

Last Train Home (2009) is Lixin Fan's excellent documentary about migrant workers in China - after a great opening shot of a vast crowd of workers pressing against a set of gates waiting to board trains - and we know there's no way that anyone can handle a crowd - Fan gives us a surtext stating that 130 million Chinese migrant workers go home for the New Year, the largest population migration on the planet. Amazingly, he finds one family to focus on to tell this sorrowful story, and he does a great job; in the style of many contemporary documentaries he stays completely out of the picture, we never hear his voice or anyone's doing interviews and after the opening segment we never get a bit of info from the filmmaker, it's all what we see, carefully edited to have the feeling of an epic drama. Events take place over 3 years - we see a husband and wife living in terrible poverty in a large sitting, making clothes for the U.S. market. Their children are in the Szechuan village, being raised by the grandmothers. We see some very painful calls home, in which it's clear the parents barely know the children; they go home - incredibly difficult and expensive to get tickets - for the New Year, and we meet the children. The daughter, about 16, says no one her age is left in the village, either they've gone to the city to work or they're elderly. Parents awkwardly pressure the children to study hard - it's the only road out for the children of peasants, they note - but the daughter, Qin, wants to go to the city with them. She does so, lives with a girlfriend and others and has a crappy job, but makes a little money, starting to feel independent. Over the net two years, she gradually breaks away from the family, finally coming to head in a tremendous fight that Fan captures. It's the only moment when the frame breaks for a second, so to speak, as Qin turns to him and says: You wanted to film the real me? this is the real me! (Earlier, she and her brother had been very awkward, obviously looking at the camera when being filmed.) At the end, the mother decides she has to go back to live in the village, and the husband, by this time in ill health, is alone in the city, knowing the family is completely dependent on his pathetic wages - and as we also all know, the family is just a concept, they barely know one another. Goddamn, makes you think you should never wear another pair of $200 jeans, basically made in China by slave labor.

Down the drain: Spiral

With disappointment, I watched the first episode of the much-talked-of French series Spiral - and found it to be not by any degree better than a routine American police procedural or crime series - though quite a bit more gruesome than just about any American TV - the discovery of the faceless corpse in the first scene and the ghastly autopsy early are challenging for the viewer, and even for the characters (and perhaps the actors). Gruesome is not something I really look for on TV, however. Gruesome aside, the interest for American viewers will be primarily a look at the French criminal-justice system, apparently strikingly different from that in America: for example, parents with a complaint about the behavior of a public-school teacher go right to the public prosecutor, who hears them out, interviews the teacher and her colleagues, and brings the matter to resolution - without, apparently police involvement, much less education officials, unions, et al. If true, that's very surprising. Other than that, Spiral has the flaw of so many crime or mystery series, in that the clues just keep falling into place so that the crime can be solved in the requisite 47 minutes. It reminds me a little of the excellent US police series The Shield, in that there's one ongoing series narrative and a side story (0r even 2) per episode. I could forgive the crappy side story if the main narrative were more unusual and interesting, but there's nothing special or vivid about any of the characters, the ridiculous run of luck gathering clues and evidence over course of the hour is preposterous, and at the end, or at the beginning rather, we've got yet another story about a brutalized woman - can you say Dragon Tattoo? Compare this story, at least at its outset, with the much greater The Killing, that worked so effectively (in seasons 1 and 2 at least) because of vivid and likable characters and a great deal of attention to the family of the victim. The Spiral, at least in episode 1, does neither - just a rush to conclusion; in fact, one of its more effective devices is occasional use of fast-forward as we transition between main story and episodic subplot. Quel dommage.

The worst living director?

I don't want to be mean or anything but is it possible that Hang Sang-soo is the worst living director? I mean, we tried to get through his pretentious and tedious 2011 film, The Day He Arrives, and, not leaving bad enough alone, tried again last night to watch his 2012 In Another Country. Well, did watch it - though 3 out of 4 adults watching film fell asleep (new rating system potential here). Sang-soo gets a lot of mileage out his strange narrations in which conversations are weird and improbable and very stagey - and sometimes have the feeling of uncomfortable actors trying to improvise a scene - and in which scenes are played out again and again, with slight variations. These are tedious and even painful to watch, and in fact these are films designed not for an audience but for a graduate seminar - you could spend a lot of time talking about what the films "mean," but in the end do they mean anything at all or are they just a conceit? In Another Country seems to recognize that Sang-soo's stories are puerile and ridiculous, so this film begins with a young girl and her mom talking about some kind of family distress; then the young girl (maybe about 20?) goes off to a desk where she decides to write three short screenplays (as in Day Arrives, these are movies about moviemakers and, in particular, about grad students) - and then we watch the three versions of a story she creates. The fact that each one is odd and preposterous and stilted without being, in my view, striking or moving or imaginative in any way, is shielded from critical complaint because, hey, these are a fledgling's attempts at a screenplay and not "real" moviemaking. Nice try. In addition, most of the movie is in English, not Korean, in that the 3 plots are about a French director (Huppert) visiting this small seaside resort town, where she stays with a Korean filmmaker and his pregnant wife, and engages with one or two people in the town, notably lifeguard (some symbolism here? pretty heavy-handed) - so the very fact that the conversations seem artificial and broken can be attributed to everyone's speaking a non-native tongue. But can Sang-soon write a good scene in Korean? I see no evidence of that. These movies about movies w/ multiple versions of reality are by no means radical innovations - this is ground filmmakers explored pretty thoroughly in, say, the 1950s (Hiroshima, Rashoman, many others) and then moved on. Sang-soo ought to as well.

Best Icelandic film in years!: The Deep

This has to be the best Icelandic film I've seen this year, maybe ever! (Joke) Actually, The Deep is a pretty good movie by any measure, interesting and engaging, pretty much accomplishes the goals it sets out to meet - which is a measure of success in any art form. As noted in previous posts, I always prefer a B movie that knows it's a B movie and hits the mark than a pretentious, over-stuffed would-be A movie that bores us for two+ hours. The Deep comes in at a respectable 90 minutes - and I wish more movies would try for that mark, almost any commercial movie released these days could benefit from judicious edits. The Deep is one of those "based on true events" movies - in this case about an Icelandic fishing boat that goes down in the Arctic in winter; one of the six crew members survives and swims several hours through the 40-degree water, to a remote, rocky island; scales a cliff, walks barefoot across a lava-rock field, finally gets to a small community where he collapses and is brought safely to a hospital and recovers. This is the first hour of the movie - after an initial set-up in which we meet some of the crew men at home with their families before the leave port, most of the movie is about the wreck and the journey home. The last 30 minutes feel rather deflated, as we some doctors and researchers become interested in how this guy could have survived and run some tests on him and determine what we already knew - that he has (perhaps because he's quite fat) a tremendous resistance to cold and to lower body temp. That said, the final minutes of the movie are very sweet - as the sailor, Gulli, remembers his thoughts - which he'd articulated - about what he'd do if he survived; he had dreamed of a rendez-vous with a beautiful girl in town (we'd seen her briefly in a bar scene early in the movie) - in his fantasy while swimming, she met him at the door, like in a Viagra ad. In the reality, at the end of the movie, he just looks up at her house, her lighted window. This, to its great credit, is not a Hollywood ending. The guy, injured though he is, has only one, lonely course through life, and at the end he boards another fishing vessel. Over the credits we see something that has become a bit of a cliche but always draws my interest - actual newsreel footage of the guy on whom the story was based - heavier, and homelier, than the lead actor - which grounds the movie firmly in reality. That's a good thing, actually, as if this movie had been entirely fictional our reaction would be: nah, could never happen, and we'd be much less interested and caught up in his plight and danger. Some great scenes, both of his trek and of his re-adjustment to small-city life, in a movie that's not actually great but is worth watching.

Breaking Bad - the only series to get consistently better episode by episode

I will join the chorus and sing in praise of the final season of AMC's Breaking Bad - if there was ever a series that got consistently better season by season and even episode by episode it's this one. This final season once again contains great drama, with all the characters in crisis - as Hank moves in on Walt and tries to arrest him while protecting his sister-in-law Skylar, not realizing, at least yet, how deeply involved Skylar is in the crimes. Each of the first three episodes has tremendous surprises - e.g., the DVD "confession" that Walt records, which has everyone, I'm sure, completely fooled until Hank and Marie play it at home and we see Walt's message, or threat - and scenes that could be studied and played out in any acting workshop anywhere: a great example being the long diner scene with just Skylar and Hank - he doing most of the talk, trying to convince her that he can protect her if she'll just tell him about Hank's crimes, and we just watch her face go through a transformation as she croaks out that she thinks she needs a lawyer, and Hank just can't understand - tremendous scene. It would be a great scene to improvise of course - give the two actors their basic condition and motivation and see if he can persuade her and if she can resist without drawing down too much suspicion. Clearly, over the course of the season, we are seeing Walt (and Skylar) as increasingly monstrous, but in that crazy way of this series also as utterly conventional and fiercely protective family. As M pointed out, it's the counterpoint to the Sopranos, in which in this case an ordinary, good, high-minded, somewhat nebishy man becomes increasingly evil - a villain in sheepish clothing.

An old-fashioned melodama - Rocco and His Brothers

Lucchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1955?) is a long and old-fashioned melodrama, largely interesting for a few very powerful scenes and for its overall vision and documentation of postwar urban Italy, still reeling from poverty and ruin. In brief, story involves recently widowed mother and 4 sons who leave small southern town and take a train journey to Milan to join the oldest son who has settled there successfully. The opening sequence is disturbing and kind of hysterical - as the five arrive at brother's small place just as he's gathered with a large group of future in-laws; the family arrives mid-celebration, unannounced, all very poorly planned, and expect to move in right away. Mother and future mother-in-aw get in a screaming match - and oldest son, Vincente, torn between mama and fiancee - a theme for the entire three-hour movie, in which mother is constantly wailing about her boys, who can do no wrong and are beset upon by the world. First half of the movie shows their gradual assimilation into life in Milan, as they move into very crowded public housing, find work in various places (youngest son does not appear to go to school at all). About half-way through the story shifts into a battle between two of the brothers - Rocco and Simone - over the love of a former prostitute. Simone is a professional fighter. In by far the most powerful sequence of the movie, he and a gang of thugs pursue Rocco to a remote water works where he's gone with the girl. Simone rapes her right in front of Rocco, then the two of them engage in a lengthy, and kind of stagey fist fight. Simone continues to deteriorate, Rocco becomes the good brother, devoted to family, and all ends in one of those insane and operatic conclusions with everyone wailing and falling all over each other. In the last sequence, the two youngest brothers meet and reconcile at the fates of an Alfa Romeo plant, where the older works - and at the end we see him ambling back to the factory among a crowd of fellow workers - Visconti's Marxists politics envisioned in a tableau, the opposite of, say, Metropolis - and then the youngest walking alone back toward one of those massive ugly postwar housing complexes on a wide treeless street - someday, we know, to be jammed with traffic but not yet - in a final note that reminds me a little of the end of Der Rosenkavalier, the young boy who, unlike the others, has a whole life in front of him. A pretty good movie but hindered by its own ambitions - it's very hard to tell a tale of (maybe six) distinct characters over quite a long and eventful period of time without spending far too much time on basic exposition. Too much of this movie entails just moving the grand mechanism forward, rather than examining character and emotion.

Shu-do-run-run-run-shu-do-run-run: Back-up singers (Tewnty Feet from Stardom)

Though it's probably about 20 minutes too long, the documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom is a terrific look at several backup singers - most of them black, all but one women - and their careers and their aspirations and in some cases frustrations and disappointments. Part of the message of the film, at least its intended message, is in the title: these women are fantastic singers who have come very close to being stars in themselves but for one reason or another have just missed. The film seems to be edging us to think that their missing out is a matter of luck and chance and exploitative producers, and those are factors, but I think, whether it means to do so or not, the film also shows that it's also a matter of talent (and drive). Backup singers, to an extent, learn to self-efface and to erase the individuality of their voices, and even their look - they have to blend into a group, and highlight the star but not supplant the star. So their voices and their style tends to be homogenous, and replicable. You have to imagine that there are dozens of great backups ready to fill in - just as there are dozens of great studio guitarists in Nashville, for example, none who will ever have a solo career. Some of the backups are just fine with this and have great careers - the Waters Family in LA is one example in the film - and one or two break the stereotype and begin to solo (Darlene Love) and others feel they've been the victims of chance. But when you see them in performance you understand - they're not stars, their "original" songs are derivative and dull, they don't have the look or the moves. Interestingly, of the many white singers for whom the women in the film sing backup, all but one are British - the British stars used the backups to make their sound more Afro-American, more blues - they needed that element in a way that American rock stars, many of them Southern in any case - seem not to. All that said, there is an element of destiny in stardom, as Sting notes in one of the interviews - on top of talent and drive - and some of the backups clearly were exploited by nasty producers, notably Phil Spector: one backup (Darlene Love?) recorded and had her voice dubbed into hit songs supposedly by the Crystals, who were just lip-synching. If it's any consolation to her, the Crystals probably got no money either, and very fleeting fame.

Why Season 3 of The Killing was disappointing

I've really enjoyed the AMC series TheKilling though let's face it Season 3 was a big dropoff in quality. Not only because I figured out the killer by half-way through the season, or sooner (I won't give it away - but will note that any attentive viewer will recognize the pattern from Seasons 1 and 2 and systematically cross every character about whom "suspicions are raise" from the list of likely suspects - no series indulges more in red herrings than this one). I continue to really like the two lead characters, Linden and Holder (played so well by Enos and Kinneman) - but have to say that I probably would not get the characters so well had I not seen the first 2 seasons - season 3 does not stand well on its own in that regard, as Enos's opaque qualities become even darker and more obscuring - and most of all we don't have a complex relation between the two). The relative weakness of Season 3 touches on something Enos said in her NYTmag interview recently: what makes the series special is its particular concern for the lives and the plight and the feelings of the victim, and her family. That was a huge element in Seasons 1 and 2 - Rosie Larsen's family were as deep and significant to the plot as the cops (and the politicians - completely eliminated from 3); in season 3 we barely know the victim(s) - after all there are 21of them, a real mayhem, with no clear motive - unlike the killing in seasons 1 and 2 which were all about figuring out the motive - let alone the victims' families, thought there are some half-hearted attempts to highlight the mom of one of the missing girls, esp. in the last 2 episodes. So, you get right down to it, and The Killing becomes a pretty good cop drama, but it's lost most of the unique qualities that made the first two seasons a real drama about a city, and a family, and a couple of cops, in various forms of crisis. I wouldn't mind seeing the series continue - there's a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of 3 - but I hope it can regain its mo-jo.

Children of the Holocaust - but Nazi children

It would be easy to dismiss the Australian-German 2012 film Lore Homeward Bound with a group of Nazi children instead of the dogs and cat. And actually for half the movie that's about it - that's in fact the very challenge of the movie, trying to get us to sympathize with and care about these children, largely blameless despite the sins of their parents, as they make their way across Germany at and just after the end of the war, knowing very little about the current status of anything - hearing vague rumors about Americans controlling certain sections, Russians - much more dangerous - others, trying to get to the house of their Omi (grandma) where they believe they will be safely sheltered. (Dad, a high-ranking Nazi soldier, has fled, and mom, a totally nasty character in the few early scenes of the movie, leaves the children to be with her husband, leaving the oldest, the eponymous Lore - it's a proper noun, not a reference to folk lore - with some money, some valuables, and vague instructions on how to get to Omi - useless, in that the trains apparently have stopped running.) Lore owes a big debt to the great Japanese postwar film, The Human Condition, and there are of course many other movies of people crossing a dangerous landscape in search of shelter and security - and in the best, the journey is not just one from place to place but a journey from innocence to experience. About half-way through Lore this mode comes into play, as Lore begins to learn about the horrors her country - and in particular her father - perpetrated. Fortunately, does not wallow in self-righteousness and does not make Lore heroic or bold - she just gradually puts the pieces together, and we can watch as her world view changes very slowly, like shifting sand under her feet. She's still in some ways infected by the Nazi ideology that her parents spewed, but she starts to see around the edges and develop a consciousness. At the end, she strikes out with one symbolic but defiant action. It's a somewhat slow and somber film, but it does have some startling moments of high drama, and it truly follows the arc of a story - a film, like so many foreign, indie, or low-budget films, that flies completely below the radar and no doubt deserves a wider audience than it will ever have. Based on novel by Rachel Seifert, who deserves a lot of credit - she's an English or maybe American novelist, I think, and has taken on a very challenging task in bringing some sympathy and humanity to these children whose parents were pretty much monsters.

The Newsroom is a disaster

I usually give a series a few episodes before commenting, posting, or giving up, but for the HBO series The Newsroom I will make an exception because nothing could get me to possibly watch another episode. There's plenty of bad, horrible TV out there - but at least no one expects much from Real Housewives or Jersey Shore or whatever, but what makes The Newsroom so awful is, among many other things, its incredible pretension - the preachings of the characters, the self-righteousness of its politics and of its sense of the mission of a newsroom, and of course all the hype surrounding it - HBO, Aaron Sorkin, wow, that's almost like Shakespeare-Globe theater... but when you compare it to the Sopranos or The Wire or even lesser HBO series like, I don't know, Treme or Deadwood, which I didn't love but at least could accept as worthy of their own ambitions, The Newsroom is a mutant. First of all, there is not a single line of dialogue in the entire movie that was ever said by a human being other than a screenwriter reading his text aloud. This is obvious from the first post-credit sequence of a couple vainly arguing about when he would meet her parents while standing right beside the desk of a fellow employee who comments wryly on their witticisms and quips. This never ever happens. Now I don't mind a comedy that includes lots of quips and quirks and isn't exactly realistic - but a comedy, such as say Modern Family, or even Seinfeld, first succeeds because of its feeling of verisimilitude, also our recognition of the characters as both types and individuals, and third because of a certain uplifting comic sensibility - Newsroom has none of the above, and of course no it's not trying to be a comedy. Yet it's as realistic a vision of a newsroom as Ally McBeal was of a corporate law firm. At least AMcB knew it was an entertainment - but this clunker is larded with Sorkin speeches, such as Jeff Daniels's lengthy harangue about why America is not the greatest country - reeling off a dizzying # of statistics - again, not only is the dialogue idiotic in this show but the monologues are even worse. Some of this I could put aside if Sorkin had even the slightest hint of the culture of a newsroom (BTW, though I never warmed to the West Wing, I did like Sorkin's Social Network - that, he seemed to get right, and if there's anyone who speaks like he writes it may be the high-tech Mensa nerds of programming) - but as to the newsroom in The Newsroom, well, if you can believe, just to cite one of many examples, that two minutes after there's an AP bulletin about an oil rig fire in the Gulf, one of the producers - first day on the new job no less! - gets a call from his college roommate who's in meetings w/ BP and who's telling him they can't cap this fire (plus for good measure another call from his sister! who just happens to explain to him the geology of an underground spill) - just ask yourself for one second why anyone working for BP would make that call in two minutes to a reporter? The idiocies go on throughout the entire broadcast as they put together what would be months of investigative reporting in about 10 minutes during a live broadcast. Well, there may be worse shows on TV - but few worse ones on HBO for sure. For a good example, BTW,  of a fine series about a TV newsroom - which, actually, check out the British series The Hour.

Two reasons why Beneath the Candelabra received Emmy nominations

I can tell you in a few words why the HBO movie Beneath the Candelabra has received several Emmy nominations. First, TV industry types love it when major movie starts deign to work in their medium, so the casting of Matt Damon and Michael Douglas in this Liberace biopic, as told from the POV of his "special assistant," that is, his boy toy from the late 70s. Second, TV (and movie) industry types love "bold" casting and actors who take risks - and nothing is more bold (they suppose) than straight actors taking on gay roles and actually making out with and coming onto each other. So seeing Douglas and Damon kissing and caressing shows us how daring these two guys are and how groundbreaking this movie is - when in fact it's not, particularly. It's by no means a terrible movie, but it's by no means great, either. The title tells it all - such a fake come-on, as if we're at last getting an inside look at Liberace the man. But to me that would be interesting if and only if it surprised me with something, showed me something I didn't expect: like what if L. was a Harley-riding tough guy into babes and the gay thing was all an act for the fans? Or what if he hated all the decor and clutter? Or if he was a leftist activist really into Sartre? No, what this movie shows is that Liberace was a campy character with an eye for extravagant design, a true narcissist and egotist who could be kind at times but who thought nothing of using his wealth and eminence to basically by a harem of servants and a boy-toy piece of arm candy. He liked to think he was doing great favors for those whom he more or less owned - and in many ways he was generous - but he wouldn't or couldn't see that he was controlling and in some ways ruining the lives of those he possessed. In other words, despite his love for his mother, or because of it, he could truly love none other than himself. Does any of this surprise you? Me neither. The movie's kind of fun to look at - the art director really went to town re-creating L's domestic extravagance - and the acting and all is fine - though I had little interest in L. himself, the movie held my attention for an hour or so, but by that point there was nothing more I wanted or need to see or to know. I hear they closed the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas; a shame - that, I probably would have wanted to see.

Definition of eternity? Waiting for Blu-ray log on - and 5 films I'd recommend from 2013

I certainly did not give the Israeli documentary The Gatekeepers a fair trial - I was supertired and fell asleep for a while; when I wanted to pick up and watch it again, turned blue-ray back on, and of course am at the beginning of the long sequence of trailers - Sony Pictures is absolutely the worst offender - 15 minutes of trailers is like an eternity (after the 5 minute blu-ray log in) - we have geniuses who can put a device in our pocket that can navigate us around the entire planet but no one can figure out how to skip over the ads at the beginning of a DVD? Anyway, The Gatekeepers might be a great movie for someone who closely follows Israeli politics, but since I knew nothing about the men being interviewed and little about the various historical events alluded to, the film did not contain for me any great revelations: I have always assumed that the Israeli secret police is ruthless, efficient, amoral, and totally effective - and what choice do the Israelis have, despite the blunders of the Begin era and the idiotic settling of the West Bank - they are still surrounded by enemies, who are supported by Arab thug fake princes who want nothing more than for their impoverished and oppressed masses to blame it all on the Jews. A hopeless situation, it seems - but despite all that not a very gripping movie (Israelis might feel the same way about the similar American film, The Fog of War, which I found moving and troubling). So with that said, I will take a moment to respond to query from friend PM: how many movies to I see a year? To date this year, it's 31, so I can estimate about 60 a year, which to me doesn't seem like a lot, not even enough, considering all the great ones huddled helplessly toward the bottom of my Q. And then PM asks, so what would I recommend? I do a 10 best at the end of the year, and looking now at the half-way point is not exactly a prediction of the top 5 on my list - there are some from that I saw during the first half of the year that will make my best list but I won't necessarily recommend to all - classics and unconventional films, for the most part. But for 5 films I've seen this year I'd recommend to general movie-goers, shooting for some variety in the mix:

Much Ado About Nothing - best Sh. adaptation I've ever seen, maybe
Zero Dark Thirty - an excellent thriller that feels almost like a you-are-there documentary
The Loneliest Planet - beautiful to look at and though slow at times very real and vivid about human relationships, a very honest film that will surprise you. Almost totally unknown and unwatched I think.
Searching for Sugarman - a terrific documentary about a lost, legendary rock musician, a story about the music industry and about fame and reputation - great
Best ExoticMarigold Hotel - not my kind of movie, but as good as it gets for this type of feel-good comedy of manners about mature adults

The beginning of the modern age: Parade's End

The HBO 5-part mini-series Parade's End is excellent all the way through - the first three parts mostly covering volume 1 of the Ford Madox Ford quartet, as the characters engage in various domestic disputes and as the threat of war looms, and the last two parts cover, I believe, material in the final 3 volumes - in any case, what we see in the last two parts of the miniseries is Tietjens returning to the front lines, after his brief return to England to recover from shell shock, and in effect finding himself through his service as a soldier - and knowing that when he returns to London (in part 5) that he can never return to his horrible marriage to Sylvia (the excellent Rebecca Hall) but must break convention and live with his mistress - it seems their passion has been chaste and from afar - the much younger Valentine Wannop. Essentially, what Ford, and this series - with a really smart and taut script by Tom Stoppard and crisp direction by Susanna White - don't know anything about her) - are able to do is show the growth and development of the main character, moving from a self-righteous somewhat foppish, idealistic young English government official to a worldly, somewhat cynical and mistrustful, far more modern - i.e., breaking free to a degree from the class structure and conventions - adult - and this as a metaphor for the growth and changes of the psyche and social structure of the entire nation, after enduring the fear and misery of the war and rising triumphant. There's still class structure of course - but the closing scenes, of Tietjens finding comfort and well-being not in his huge estate or with his snobbish wife but with the leftist Valentine and with his army buddies in his barely furnished flat - is a hopeful metaphor or analogue to the changes that would slowly transform the culture over the course of the century. In other words, it's about the opening of the modern age - as seen through sexuality, politics, and social class. The production values, as noted in earlier post, are what we have come to expect from BBC shows - but the last two parts are especially strong in depiction of trench warfare, with explosives all around and bullets whizzing and the colonel in charge gone completely insane. The series, great as it is, should not replace reading the novels - I will go back to them - but it's something like a primer to help readers follow the very complex web that Ford wove: his novels are part of the modern-fiction era, something like Woolf (though less interior, more political) and difficult at first go - the fiction itself is an example in style of the movement the novels are meant to depict - moving away from convention and toward a new, more open and free and challenging form of literary (and socio-political) expression.

A rare case in which you should see the film (miniseries) first: Parade's End

Readers of my other blog, elliotsreading, may know that I was both impressed with and frustrated by Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End - finding it really smart and full of complex social issues and at times beautifully written but also extremely challenging, with its fragmented and asynchronous narrative and its willful complete lack of contextual narration - we just find ourselves with character, in a scene of a locale, and only over time do we come to understand who's speaking, what his or her relationship is to other characters, etc. - also we get little or no explanatory passages, which is especially difficult for an American reader not familiar w/ English party politics - particularly of a century ago. HBO miniseries to the rescue - I'm a little scornful of those who see the film and skip the book, and in fact always make a point of reading first if I plan to do both genres - film is so more vivid in its impact that it seems once we've seen the work cinematically it is impossible to envision the characters other than as those who played the parts. But in this case - I recommend seeing the miniseries first - I will now, with greater confidence and more sure bearings, at some point return and read the 2nd through 4th volumes of the quartet. I didn't think this work could translate so well, but the brilliant Tom Stoppard makes a great 5-hour script out of about 1,000 dense pages. The series as all the period details and vivid, rich textures - as well as highly pro acting, that we've come to take for granted from BBC productions. The lead is maybe a little more handsome and "cleaned up" than he ought to be, and the miniseries maybe a little more overtly sexual than the book, which did a lot by implication rather than depiction. But some scenes work way better in the miniseries - trimming extensive dialogue down to a few salient points, for ex the long conversation in Germany w/ the priest handled deftly in one short scene. My only quibble is the casting of Valentine Wannop - the actress in the role is excellent and very winning but she looks far, far too young and innocent for the part, in my view, and I'm constantly thinking that Tietjens is trying to have sex with a teenage girl (she's supposed to be 24 I think). McMaster is suitably unctuous, and Rebecca Hall as Mrs. T. is perfect - every word drips venom. Watched first 3 parts, 2 to go.

Mad Men meets Latin American politics: No

Pablo Larrain's film No is, or seems to be, based closely on real-life events - surrounding the 1983 (?) plebiscite that peacefully deposed Pinochet from power in Chile; film focuses on a young ad creative director in a Chilean agency, Rene (played very well by Bernal, who improves every movie he's in) - starts with his presenting an ad he's developed for a new cola, called Free (some irony there of course), which he pitches to clients as edgy and daring (maybe it was, circa 1980, time of setting) - and then he's called away to meet with a new potential client: the representative of the leftist coalition organizing for the plebiscite. Chileans apparently were asked to vote simply Yes (keep Pinochet in power) or No (oust him). Time for ads was strictly allotted and controlled - by Pinochet and his henchmen. Everyone figured the whole vote was a fraud, meant to give a thin veneer of legitimacy to Pinochet. What happens - whether it adhere closely to the truth or not - is interesting, at least as a movie: Rene is the only one who thinks they can develop an ad campaign that will actually win, and comes up with a somewhat corny but spirited pitch involving songs mocking Pinochet and some light comedy. Some of the leftists storm out - they believe there is no way to win the election, and the left should use the opportunity to present their views and their indictment of P. Rene prevails - and, ultimately, triumphs - to the surprise of all. But not without a lot of risk - the P. forces threaten his family, vandalize his property, etc. And there's a pretty nasty street fight, at which R. is at some risk. I'm guessing it's for movie purposes only but he has a son and girlfriend also placed at risk - that's a weaker element of the plot. Movie alternates between meetings of the No and Yes brain trusts, and of course they are 180 degrees different. The amazing thing is not so much that No succeeded but the P. let that happen, let the results stand. I'm sure it's a simplification of history - but a pretty good drama that informs us, or at least me, about a period I knew little about (using archival footage, too - including a weird picture of Kissinger beaming at Pinochet). As I'm sure others have noted, this is a unique depiction of Latin American politics, kind of Mad Men meets Battle of Chile, with a touch of The Selling of the President, as well (esp. when Pinochet's forces talk about getting him out of uniform, making him more friendly, taking advantage of his warm smile! - and come up with a stiff and stilted video of P. kissing schoolchildren while a chorus sings and soldiers stand - as Nazi as you can imagine).

Whedon's Much Ado (2013): The best contemporary version you'll ever see

I'm not sure if Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing is or will be the definitive version of this Shakespeare play for our time, but I am sure that it's the best contemporary adaptation of the play you're ever likely to see and it's one of the most likable and credible presentations of this play in which, by and large, the characters are superficially brilliant but hollow at the core (the "nothing" of the title). The two leads, Beatrice and Benedick, are so smart and funny that it's easy to think of them as the whole show - and to forget or ignore that most of the other characters behave in absolutely despicable if not idiotic ways: renouncing a bride at the altar because you think you've seen her having a tryst with another guy, engaging in some ludicrous scheme of pretending the bride (Hero) is dead and coaxing her betrothed (Claudio) to marry her "cousin" sight unseen... and so forth - nobody behaves this way. So how to make it credible? And, if you're to have a contemporary version of the play, how do you deal with the setting - soldiers coming back from a peaceful little war in which few died "and none of name"? Whedon has the brilliant idea of setting this on a SoCal estate and making it a movie about a very well-heeled gang of mobsters - the returning "soldiers" obviously just cleaned up some kind of mess with a rival gang in another state, and now come in to report to the head of the clan. Everyone's well dressed and well spoken - this is not the Sopranos, but a much smoother, slicker mob scene - and everything takes off from there. The two leads, esp Amy Acker as Beatrice, are completely winning; Dogberry, understated rather than over the top, by far the funniest I have ever seen - thanks also to his fellow "constables," a bumbling local police force (except for the woman) in way over their heads when dealing with the big-shots. Great use of interior space in the sprawling Santa Monica home (I'm told the director's actual home), and excellent score, including two songs using Sh. lyrics. The secondary characters all are fine, very much looking the part - young stars on the rise, stoner on the fringe, etc. ; casting Conrade (villain Don John's sidekick) as a "babe" is really a good decision. This production isn't notable for any single line delivery - though one very fine clip occurs when Claudio says he will marry the "cousin" unseen, even if she were "an Ethiope" - and in that moment we see in the background, among the wedding guests, a young black woman - just for one second, but great - showing Claudio's shallowness right there. In fact, Claudio becomes a more important character here than he usually is - has some great lines, and we really see the callowness of his behavior throughout. The great production from the 1970s with Sam Waterston's Benedick still remains for me the gold standard - who can ever forget "Will you have me, lady?" or "Kill Claudio" or "We'll have dancing afterwards" - but this contemporary Much Ado brings the play into our day and time better than any before - and likely any ever.

The streets of Rome are paved with rubble: Fellini's Roma

Thinking ahead about planned visit to Rome this fall watched Fellini's Roma (1972), a mixed bag for sure and hardly a vision of the kind of Rome that I expect to see - this is not Rick Steeves's Rome!; though the movie is dated in many ways and though it was not Fellina at the height of his powers - he was pretty self-indulgent here, full of himself rather than devoted to story-telling, cresting on the wave of his great successes such as LDV and 8 1/2 - still worth seeing for the great sequences alone, among them: arrival in Rome and welcome at the small pension where the central "character" (a 20-something version of Fellini, though cast as a writer, not a filmmaker, arrived for first time in the big city from his small-town home in the North [F was from the South, I think]) as he meets about 20 people living in the pension, walking through warren of rooms, a whole world of Italy revealed on one floor of an old apartment building - an exaggerated v. of the experience that anyone renting a pension in Italy would experience, maybe today as well; the al fresco dinner during his first night in Rome with an astonishing amount of food plus singing, yelling, flirting, fighting, everything; the incredibly funny (and sad at times) variety show, with the totally uninhibited and expressive audience, yelling at one another, tossing a dead cat onto the stage, fighting and screaming - again, not as much of an exaggeration as some would think, if you'd ever been to a movie theater in Italy as late as the 70s; the sorrowful and weird visit to the cheap and crowded brothel, with the hookers on parade, selling their services; and the drive on the crowded highway in the rainstorm into "contemporary" (i.e. 1972) Rome, with the dead cattle on the highway. Other scenes are too stagy and over the top, especially the visit of the cardinal to the castle of the princess where they witness a papal fashion-runway show. The humor wears thin. Movie structured, such as it is, as a young boy in the provinces yearning for more experience (F. himself did this much better in I Vitelloni, and it's a common theme, cf Cinema Paradiso), then we jump 20 years and he arrives in Rome - but F. does not actually deign to build a plot; once that arrival is established he decides to compare 1940s Rome with 1970s Rome, and we see scenes, including F. himself, of a contemporary documentary about R. All of this kind of a mess - and a missed opportunity; it's as if he had the material for a great coming-of-age film about arrival in the city, but rather then build that story, he backed off into a loosely structured personal documentary. The 1970s stuff, other than the ride into the city, feels the most dated today, oddly, and by far the least interesting - F. better as a creator than as an observer/documentarian. Worth seeing once, though.