My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Saturday, October 25, 2014

They don't make movies like this anymore: Every Day

If you're going to write and direct a movie, as Richard Levine did, entitled Every Day, you better be damn sure that the movie doesn't live down to the bland diurnal mood foretold by its title. Unfortunately, this movie does live down to expectations, despite a pretty solid cast and a low-key style and 90-minute format. More than any film I've seen in many years, this one feels like an old-fashioned Lifetime TV movie, a format largely eclipsed by the mini-series and the long-form series. I waited more than an hour for something surprising or engaging to happen, and nothing did - a truth made all the more painful in that the protagonist, Liev Schreiber in the role, is supposed to be part of a TV writing team for a show that's never made clear but seems to be a medical drama - and the head of the production team is pushing the writers for more and more outrageous and shocking material (anal is the new oral is one of several very unfunny gag lines) - perhaps this movie is meant to be the counterpoint to the TV drama so crudely satirized but you know what?, if this the alternative, please shock me. We have here yet another movie about an elderly, irascible parent disrupting the lives of a young family - and of course irascible dad who swears like a sailor for the first 30 minutes of the movie suddenly, an hearing grandson play the violin, says: you have to work on your legato. Hey, he's a sensitive musician beneath the gruff exterior! And so it goes - with gay son learning a lesson in life but finally being accepted for what he is by dad, and younger son who begins movie afraid of the dark gaining confidence and ... anyway, I can't go on. They don't make movies like this anymore. Wonder why?

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Season 3 feels like the end of Homeland - hope they don't just play out the string

Though I realize that the critics were less than kind to Season 3 of Homeland, I found the season to be very compelling and dramatic, the final episodes, which bring Brody, trailed by Carrie (Claire Danes) into Iran on a mission of assassination, to keep up the tension from the earlier episodes and even build up the drama. As noted in previous posts, Danes is terrific and expressive throughout - her face has to be the most expressive in all of television - and the rest of the cast is generally very good, notably Patinkin, who despite is mannered mumbling which causes us to miss a few lines here and there, has really grown into and developed his role as interim CIA chief (F. Murray Abraham, on the other hand, is really miscast - who knew two old Jewish guys ran the agency? - and perhaps as a result the season makes less of his devious nature than it could have). The plot in this season is particularly complex, but as we follow it we are always rewarded with surprises - and all told the complex plot seems pretty credible. (I won't divulge any of the surprises here, btw.) On the other hand, the weakness of the season and of the series in general is the relationship between the principals, Carrie and Brodie - I just can never buy that they're so deeply in love with one another - each is too driven, too professional, and finally too different to imagine them having any kind of life outside of the life-and-death drama they're caught up in. I think a weakness throughout has been Brody's family, which the creative team seems to have realized, too, as they have moved wife and son largely offstage and focused more on his relationship with his daughter, a truly fine young actress I believe. It feels as if the series has reached a concluding point at the end of Season 3, but evidently not as 4 is being aired and streamed right now; I will watch, no doubt, but am always troubled by great series that seem to run on a season or maybe two seasons too long - can anyone say The Killing? A great series really does not a sense of an ending, and I hope they don't just run out the string in succeeding episodes.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Love Is Strange - not as good as the song by Mickey and Sylvia

Love Is Strange is a sweet, sensitive domestic drama with likable characters and a few powerful scenes but in the end there just isn't much too it - the emphasis on domestic, not on drama. I kept wanting the movie to break out into some real dramatic confrontation, but everything here is soft and muted. That could be OK if it felt like a realistic drama, but unfortunately the plot is a little creaky and the director, Ira Sachs, has a penchant for quick solutions and self-consciously weepy scenarios. In short, the movie is about a gay couple - Ben and George - who've been together in Manhattan for about 40 years and now are getting married; as a result of the marriage, however, the Catholic school where George teaches music, fires him - his confrontation w/ the priest who does so is one of the stronger scenes in the movie. Shortly afterward - we jump ahead rather freely in time at various points in the movie - Ben and George have get rid of their apartment, as they can no longer afford the rent. (As an aside, this is another in the long line of movies that have absolutely no idea how to film an ordinary Manhattan apartment - the various interiors in the film that are meant to be affordable NYC places are palatial by Manhattan standards.) Oddly, they have absolutely no place to go, and they hit on friends and relatives to put them up; nobody has room for two, so Ben and George live separately for a time (seems extremely odd and unlikely - both that they would separate and that they have no friends who can help); we mostly follow Ben, and his relation w/ his sister-in-law, Marissa Tomei as the least-likely budding novelist I've ever seen, and his nephew. I won't give away any endings, but will only say that a # of the interesting plot lines - is the nephew involved in a homosexual relationship? - are left dormant and the housing solution that George works out is preposterous. In the end, we're left with some long, arty, moody shots and a feeling of wistfulness and lingering sorrow. It's a movie whose heart is in the right place, but the the flame is set on simmer.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Homeland keeps us on edge right through Season 3

We're a year behind the times, as season 4 is soon to debut, but in the midst of season 3 of Homeland finding the series as great as before; the 2nd "disc," encompassing episodes 5 through 8, is full of twits and surprises - and unlike so many complex shows in Homeland the twists all seem to make sense. Sure, the ease with which the CIA folks pry out arcane info about global finances and with which they track the clandestine movements of dozens of suspects, is a bit beyond the pale - but the plot holds together very elegantly, keeping us on edge constantly and introducing just enough twists to keep us thinking without making us throw up our hands in disbelief - compare with the largely successful series Damages, in which one had the feeling that clever screenwriters were making it up episode by episode without any clear idea of the destination or overall design. Claire Danes's Carrie Mathisson remains a great lead character - though as this season progresses she becomes a more conventional CIA agent and less a troubled, sometimes desperate woman. Mandy Patinkin's Saul Berenson, though highly mannered, is great in the role - and his opposition to the pending new CIA chief, a right wing, self-important senator obviously modeled on Cheney, is a good plot development. I was surprised that they let one plot line go away so easily, as the Bethesda police just dropped the pursuit of murder charges against Quinn, one of CIA agents involved in the pursuit of the Iranian security chief. In final episodes of the season, a lot will depend on how much we can buy into Carries's love for the largely absent Brodie: she is seemingly motivated by her desire to prove him innocent of the CIA hq bombing - and thereby to protect herself, as she has lied about her role in helping him escape - but the stakes on that have been pretty low, as neither Saul nor anyone else truly suspects her of enabling a suspect to leave the country. I would expect this plot element will develop further and put her into greater jeopardy and conflict with her agency. The spying on Saul himself is just starting to emerge as a plot element - though I have to say I found it ludicrous that an intruder could slip into the DC home of the head of the CIA; one would think there would be pretty tight security, esp. if he works from a laptop that he often leaves at home unattended?