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.

The Spy Who Didn't Come in from the cold: Restless

The BBC/Sundance two-part movie Restless is a very good British spy movie, if you go in for that sort of thing - I don't especially, but many do and I can see that this is a good contemporary take on the genre. It's a double-period-piece movie, with the "present" set in 1976, as a young woman (Dockery, apparently well known from Downtown Abbey) and her son visit aging mom, Charlotte Rampling, in her country house - Mom is clearly disturbed and believes people are watching her from the woods. It appears we're entering Stephen King movie, or perhaps a movie about the boundaries of mental illness (is the mom crazy? or does she see and know something that others don't?), but pretty quickly we learn she right, people are watching her (I think it would have been stronger had we been left in doubt longer, but so be it) - and then we learn why: She has written a mss. that she gives to daughter to read, and for the rest of the movie we jump back and forth between her past and the 1976 present. What we learn: she is a Russian-born Brit (extremely unlikely that she could or would keep this from her adult daughter till now) who gets recruited into a British spy network. Their mission, in the late 1930s/early 1940s, is to encourage U.S. entry into the World War, through means of subterfuge. (I thought for once I was going to be watching a BBC movie that did not take place during one of the world wars - fooled me!) But things get complicated, people all around her are getting knocked off, and it becomes evident there's some kind of double agent - doesn't take us that long to figure out who - that wants to ruin the mission. Exactly why this agent would still be trying to bump off the woman 30 years after the war - and why he hasn't been able to do so, for that matter - is never exactly clear, though there's a hint at the end that maybe the Mom is a little dotty and has been imagining at least some of the supposed threats against her. As with so many good spy movies, it's a lot of fun along the way and it keeps you guessing, thinking, trying to figure out the plot. And yet - as with so many spy movies, at the end, if you step back, you have to wonder whether any of this was probably, or even possible. (spoiler here): I mean, seriously, a Soviet agent thinks he can prevent U.S. entry into the war through a kooky scheme to knock off British agents and make them look like German double-agents...? The U.S. was going to enter, or not, based on U.S. interests - plain and simple. The movie has all the great production values we've come to expect from BBC productions: great period re-creations, fine acting; the woman playing the younger version of the spy, Haley Atwell, is really good and very appealing - largely unknown to date but I think not for long.

Advertising men, they con - End of Season 6 of Mad Men

What are we up to now, Season 6 of Mad Men? Watched the season-closer last night and once again found the season entirely compelling even though there's hardly a character that we like. Yet we love to loathe them: the addicted and narcisstic and sexist men, the ice-cold and ruthless women. Yes, we kind of like Joan and Peggy, and yes Megan has become a very nice and caring if beset-upon spouse and soap actress, and yes some of the peripheral characters in the ad agency and even Roger, my twin, have their redeeming qualities - but what a world! What's great about this season, at last, and particularly this final episode, is the evolution of Don. From the first episode, when he thought about Hawaii as a place to disappear, I was pretty sure that Don would vanish into a new personality - as he had done after his service in Korea, when he adopted the Don Draper identity from a comrade killed in action. I was only partially right. By the end, he isn't disappearing into a new personality, but he is at last recognizing and even proclaiming who he is and where he came from. After many flashback scenes to his difficult childhood, he at last recognizes that his childhood is formative - repressing these memories is literally killing him (as he begins to see after a night in the clink for punching a minister - who reminded him of a boyhood trauma). In one of the great scenes in the entire series, Don completely blows apart a client-pitch meeting (with Hershey) by telling the group that he was raised in a whorehouse and he yearned to be like other kids. Everyone at the table is aghast, of course. Roger asks Don if "any of that was true" - his closest friend and business partner, and he'd known nothing about Don's life. Advertising is all an illusion, deceit - obviously - much like Hollywood/LA (where the plot seems to be heading - Don yearning for a new beginning) - and Don is now exposing some of the hypocrisy and lies, especially his own. Partners force him to go on leave indefinitely - and season ends with him showing his astonished kids the dilapidated house where he grew up; amazing that they know so little about him (and I was surprised to learn he grew up in the NY metro area - we'd been led to think he was Midwestern). The look on Sally's face at the end is great - she's become a really good actor, BTW. So where will Don go? One might think that he will give up the business and become a writer - trying to tell the truth about his life. But that's a romantic notion - of writers, and of life.

A lot of talent and potential gone to waste: Top of the Lake

Have finished the 7-part first (and only?) season of Jane Campion's Top of the Lake, and, as noted in earlier post, I was drawn to stay with it by the great acting of Elisabeth Moss (as a New Zealand detective with a specialty of working on cases involving children or abuse), the beautiful scenery, and the many little odd elements that continued to promise to build toward an interesting or satisfying whole. Sadly, that never happens - Campion knows how to establish a mood and a tone, but doesn't quite know what to do when she gets there. So among the elements here is the commune of women who've turned their backs on (male) society and live in some abandoned box cars in a remote setting called Paradise, the lead drug dealer in town and his tough-guy sons who occasionally kneels before his mother's grave and lashes himself with his own belt, the creepy detective sergeant who comes on to Moss/Robin in an extremely clumsy way, and possibly drugs her while she's visiting his far-too-lavish home, and others. By the time all the elements come together at the end of episode seven, there are so many loose threads and so many ridiculous improbabilities that I just felt empty, cheated. For example, the spiritual leader of the women, Holly Hunter (G-J), never says anything wise or helpful - it is totally unclear why any of these women would hitch their star to her and travel half-way around the world. Ultimately, Hunter just walks off the scene. What are we to make of this? Most of the way through the series I thought Campion was conveying a feminist message: the men certainly are horrible, rapists and drug dealers and full of bile and hatred; so I thought, OK, the female detective and the camp of women would present an alternative. But when you get down to it, the women don't protect or help one another either - Moss is the victim of a childhood rape that was never reported, let alone avenged - completely and totally unlikely in this small community; the central figure in the plot is a 12-year-old girl who is pregnant (by her father, we finally learn to no surprise) - nobody helps her except some well-meaning fellow preteens - again, completely impossible that the entire community could be seeking her out for months while a group of teens delivers her daily supplies to a campsite in the woods. There are so many ridiculous turns in this series that it's not even worth recounting any more. It's a great example of a lot of talent - beautifully shot and paced, generally well acted, some scenes powerfully written - without any sense of vision or direction, without, in fact, any sense of how people really live and behave - or misbehave.

At the bottom of Top of the Lake

I've now watched 4 episodes of Top of the Lake, Jane Campion's shot at a miniseries, and I think that means I'm more than half-way through - so I guess I'm in for a dollar - not loving the series, but intrigued enough by its mysterious and drawn in by its strengths. Taking the strengths first: great to see Elisabeth Moss in a more dominant lead role, as a tough detective, and in contemporary hairstyle and dress, and especially great to hear her in an N.Z. (I think) accent - so many Brits/Aussies play Americans so it's kind of cool to see the reverse, and I think she does it really well. She plays a detective from Sydney who's home visiting her ill mother in hometown in what they call Southern Lakes district of New Zealand - looks like a more mountainous Lake Tahoe, and I can imagine this series redone as a U.S. version, set there. The settings are extraordinary and Campion manages a mysterious, dark, moody feeling, much like many American shows shot or set in the NW. In fact, the similarities between Lake and The Killing, which I am also watching, are uncanny and, for anyone watching both series at the same time, confusing: both about a powerful, somewhat opaque detective, pursuing the case of a murdered (or in Lake, missing and presumed murdered) young troubled girl. Whereas Killing, esp in seasons 1 and 2, created a whole network of characters and shifted suspicion onto many in turn - including various family members of the dead girl, her teacher, political operatives in town, et al. - Lake is not as complex in clues and leads. Moss/Robin is on a lonely quest to find the missing or dead Tui. The lack of clues, the lack of mystery is a real drawback in Lake - but we're supposed to be less interested in what happened and who dunnit than in the odd characters that turn up in this community. Problem is I for one cannot believe in any of the odd characters - Tui's brutal family of drug dealers, kind of like a Hell's Angels gang with Maori tatts - of the group of women who set up a commune and healing retreat on a remote stretch of land. Holly Hunter as their guru and spiritual leader is completely preposterous, and it just seems like this cast of outsiders  - the men and the women - are a screenwriter's concept and not recognizable as people: compare any of them with the characters in, say, The Wire, or even in The Killing, and you will know what I mean. I.e., no woman in her right mind, or even out of her right mind, walks into a tough bar, slams down a bill, and says, This is for a fuck. Yeah, right. But putting reality aside and just getting into the spirit of the series - and into Moss's acting - such as her extraordinary long soliloquy over dinner in which she  tells another detective, her boss, about how she was raped and had a daughter out of wedlock etc. - great scene, but an actor's workshop scene, not a scene that grows organically out of this dramatic materials.

Season 3 of The Killing not as good as first two seasons - and here's why

I am enjoying The Killing Season 3, though with some serious reservations. Strengths are to a degree the elements that carried me through the first 2 seasons, notably the fine performances of Enos and Kinnaman (?) as the lead detecties tracking down who killed Rosie Larsen - Enos especially strong in the role, tough, dedicated, unflappable, but vulnerable at the core. Kinnaman terrific as the young cop and who emulates street talking ghetto folks - in one of the more memorable lines, a teenager asks him: Anyone ever tell you you're white? Well, both are still at it and strong in Season 3, and Seattle (Vancouver actually but who's counting?) still drizzly and evocative, cops still working a really tough shift and piecing together the clues through hours of drudgery not sudden and improbable coincidence or confession. That's enough to keep me going. However: one thing that made seasons 1/2 so strong were the many interweaving plot lines that led to a kaleidoscope of suspects including every character but Enos herself. Also, the personal saga of Enos - her background as a foster kid, her tough first marriage, her protection of her son, and her doomed-to-failure engagement - all made a seemingly opaque character much more deep, and more human. That's all gone - season 3 in a way could be any pretty good police procedural. Also, the investigation is far more gruesome and bizarre - a serial killer who has killed many young street women over seemingly many years - I get that he might not be caught so easily - in fact I think something like that happened in the Northwest, but surely people would be aware of crimes of this magnitude and would not suddenly discover a dozen corpses floating in a pond near the airport. Everything is leading us to think that the killer will be a lowlife who frequents the street haunts - all of which tells me that probably won't be so. But the reason season 1/2 worked well as a plot is that we knew the killer had to be someone already introduced - whereas in season 3 new characters keep passing through - suspect of the week - not as effective as establishing a cast of characters and shifting the suspicion around over time.

Guess what - a film needs a plot - neighboring sounds

I cheated and looked at some of the review capsules on metacritic and have to say that AO Scott hit it on the nose in observing that the Brazilian movie Neighboring Sounds (2012) is a thriller without a plot. How you feel about thrillers and plots will determine how you feel about this film. I personally don't care for thrillers and do like plots so for me this moderately ambitious film was a washout. In essence it's a film about a high rise neighborhood in a brazil city more or less controlled by a mobbed up patriarch, a place with bored and disaffected haves and their servants and nearby neighbors the havenots most of the black or native. The film raises many potential plot elements - a woman poisons a neighbor's barking dog, a woman commit suicide by jumping off railing (unseen), a car thief hits the vehicle of his cousin's girlfriend, a housewife buys marijauana from water-delivery service, guy keys the car of woman who won't tip him - and more - none of which develops into anything. The one plot element that does move forward is the three thugs who set up a security operation - at first it seems like a shakedown but then like a legit biz until at the end - 2 hous 10 minutes mind you - we see their real motive - revenge - a v weak and strained payoff after so long a journey. The director , Mendonca?, has obvious skill and ambition - some of the scenes play v well on their own - so I suspect he could do well w better material a ruthless editor, and a little less pretension - e.g., just because you open film w montage of exploited peasants does not make your film Wild Rice or Hallelujah.

Portrait of an Artist: Gregor Crewdson

Ben Shapiro's documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounter is the kind of low-key documentary that I most admire (see Sweetgrass as a perfect example thereof) - the filmmaker is completely a background presence, and the film is a pane of clear glass through which we view the subject matter (or it appears to be so - of course there are a million directorial decisions, in filming, editing, and so on - but in the best documentaries we are not aware of these decisions at all, we appear to be or feel as if we are just looking at life, or just peering into someone's consciousness - like great fiction, for that matter - the mirror held up beside the highway). No background music to control and manipulate us; the only flaw in my opinion was his brief inclusions of the interviews with a few of Crewdson's friends, Banks and Moody and a mag editor, which made the film too much of a testimonial in those moments - should have been just Crewdson talking and thinking. I knew nothing about Crewdson himself until watching this but came away hugely impressed with his photography - as the movie makes clear he "stages" each of his photographs with all the care and attention with which a director stages a scene in a movie, more actually because each shot will stand as an independent work of art, not as a frame among moving images and narration. The influences are obvious, and some are cinematic: the spookiness of Hitchcock, the vibrant eeriness of David Lynch, the loneliness of Hopper. Also his attraction to the abandoned mill towns of Western Mass shows the state and the region in a manner never seen before - his photos are great works of art, monumental. Most impressive, we get to really see how the mind of an artist works during the act of composition - something rarely if ever captured on film or anywhere else (there are moments of this in the Dylan pic Don't Look Back, but nothing like here) - a fine picture on its own and even more powerful as a meta-creation, an homage to a major artist.