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

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Saturday, February 28, 2015

The Greatest Show in Swanse, revisited: Follies Night

After a few year's hiatus saw the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies of 2014 last night at the Venus, and fully enjoyed the show (made smart decision to leave table in distant corner and take a seat near the stage-front). Sad that the show has ever fewer cast members and crew who are actually Guild members, but at least it's still hanging on and has developed a fine core crew over the years of actors, musicians, and techies. Props as ever to music maestro Larry Berren for a lively and ear-blasting performance. Longtime director Andy Smith came through once again not only w/ a (mostly - tho even the pauses and flubs have a charm of their own - reminding that after all it's an amateur production) well-paced show but a damn good opening monologue (Nick Mattiello supports business, wants to cut taxes, wants to cut social services: at last we have what we need in R.I. - a truly powerful Republican; new airline at Green wants to build a connection to Azores - we've already got one: The Braga Bridge). Among the highlight #s of course I like the Dust Bowl tribute to my boss Commissioner Gist, had a lot of laughs dancing calamari and the many hirsute Bob Healys (It's all about the Beard) - and they have a Gina Raimondo for the next 8 years (Tracy McGraw, I think?) - a dead ringer and a damn good singer as well. Old friend Bob Kerr made an appearance playing an original folk song lament for the days of great journalism. Sad - but at least the show goes on. Thanks, all!

Friday, February 27, 2015

Street Illegal: Watching Better Call Saul

For fans of Breaking Bad, like me, there's a fix out there - Better Call Saul - a surprisingly good prequel, a genre that usually is just an attempt to exploit the popularity of a far more vibrant original and pales in comparison. Not so here, as BCS is a good series in itself, enriched by knowing what eventually happens to Saul (Bob Odenkirk) in his legal (illegal) practice, but you don't have to know all that to enjoy the series. Odenkirk is great in the title role, which he plays, variously be-wigged, in various time frames. Over the first 4 episodes, we see Saul in some scenes as a scheming petty crook probably in his 20s - and also as the criminal lawyer in witness protection, working in a Cinnabon, in Colorado. But most of the series shows Saul - who at that time was called Jimmy McGill  - as a young attorney trying to make a living in Albuquerque, picking up near-hopeless criminal defense cases on assignment at the county courthouse. He's a completely lovable and engaging schemer, who'll do just about anything to get a client and to win a case - but he does have moral scruples (albeit with some flexibility) and he has a heart. And, as one of the thugs he encounters puts it bluntly, he has a mouth - and part of the fun of the whole series is watching him talk his way out of various scrapes, applying his legal skills to his life's troubles. Also fun to see how he gears up, how nervous he is - in the courthouse men's room, rehearsing his lines - before a case, however petty and pathetic, however obviously guilty his clients may be. Four episodes in and it's still not known how or why he will change his name and start his new, high-profile practice: his still living in his office, which consists of a fold-out bed in a storage room at the back of a manicure salon in a strip-mall. I would say that at times the complex plot feels a little creaky: his "discovery" of the couple that fakes a kidnapping-abduction is so improbable as to push even the boundaries of comedy, but that aside, the series is fun to watch, engaging, and promising.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

An homage to? - or ripoff of? - Seven Samurai

Whether the Japanese film 13 Assassins is an homage to Kurosawa's 7 Samurai or just a ripoff - it's hard to say, maybe both. Obviously, it's nowhere near as good as 7S, but 7S is one of the greatest films of all time. Twice as many samurai (minus 1) does not make the film twice as good. The structure is almost exactly the same: an older samurai called upon to recruit a team for a near-impossible task, and even the team itself has exactly the same elements: the young warrior, his hero and mentor, the crazy non-samurai in the role made famous by Mifumi, What's different here is that, instead of coming to the rescue of a village plagued by robbers, these assassins are hired to kill the 2nd in command to the Shogun (like an emperor), who's crazy and sadistic. It makes for a more intense and vivid antagonist, but on the other hand the village life in 7S that added a whole new dimension to the genre is missing. Killing the sadistic leader raises some interesting questions, as they struggle with the question: what is the true role of the samurai? To be loyal to the leader no matter what? Or to take on any assignment, and to protect the life of the people? This was apparently a key topic in Japan in the 19th century - and in England in the 16th - as dramatized, for one, by Shakespeare (Richard II in particular). So there's a sociopolitical element, which is good; there also is some very vivid imagery, as style and mores have changed a lot since the 1950s, so this film in some ways feels more vivid and present the 7S. The fight scenes, which dominate the last 30 minutes of course, are pretty dull unfortunately: lots of close-ups and quick cuts and sounds of slashing swords, all mean to put us "in the action" but that actually make the action look very staged - not balletic, as in say Crouching Tiger; plus, with 13 count 'em assassins it's hard to focus on any one and some are completely obscure.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Defenders of the Faith: The heroic public defenders, and how we can help

Gideon's Army is a fine, understated documentary that rightly celebrates the lives, commitments, and struggles of public defenders, in the case in the Deep South, but the same could be and has been done for public defenders in the Northeast or elsewhere - it's a nearly thankless calling, as the movie shows, with most cases ending in some kind of plea in which the client does some jail time, even though often they're innocent - but the risk of losing all at trial and facing a mandatory sentence is too great. Of course most are guilty, and in a weird way that's as it should be: Cops, one hopes, don't randomly arrest people - but all deserve good counsel and a fair trial, and not all get that. The public defenders try to fight against the tide, and they're overwhelmed - the 3 whom this movie focuses on have working caseloads of 120+, which is ridiculous - and underpaid, and often unappreciated by clients and certainly by the public. They are often asked: why do you defend these criminals? People just don't get it. By focusing on 3 defenders the film gives us some real, live drama, as we watch several cases unfold and are with lawyer and client right through the verdict. Very few of these public defenders have the heart to make the work their full-time career - and one of the three moves off into private practice by the end of the film (though still doing a lot of pro bono work and maintaining her ideals); the others are still fighting the good fight. It would seem at the very least that we could have a system in which their student loans were forgiven or paid off by the communities they serve; pathetic to watch one of these fine people use spare change to buy gas as she's out of money by the end of her her pay period.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Landslide brings them down: A family in crisis in Force Majeur

The Swedish 2014 film Force Majeur is extremely engrossing, disturbing, and unsettling start to finish - a compact, interior film (a descendent no doubt of the great interior dramas of Bergman) about a family of 4 on ski trip to the French Alps in which a single dramatic event exposes deep rifts in the family and, in particular, the hapless father: from the start, when the family with two very young (maybe ages 5 and8 or so?) kids get off a lift and awkwardly pose for photographs we sense there's something uncomfortable and no quite right here. The wife, Ebba, later explains to a stranger that husband, Tomas, has been working too hard and needs this break. As the four sit at an outdoor cafe for lunch or dinner they watch an approaching "controlled" avalanche that appears to suddenly rise up and out of control and to bear down on them; the children call "poppa!" and the wife huddles with them as the Tomas turns and runs for cover. This event proves revelatory and central - as we follow them through the extremely awkward and painful next day as none of them articulate their thoughts or feelings, Tomas later denying to Ebba that he turned and ran and says something like he's amazed that they have such different perspectives and can't they just agree on a story. And then things get even worse, especially as Ebba, getting a little flushed with wine over dinner, tells some strangers what her husband did (a very Swedish characteristic, I think - the repression, and the sudden alcohol-fueled outpouring of emotion). Over the course of the next four days they all try to come to terms with his behavior and with what it says about his personality, their marriage, their family - painful to watch the family sink to the lowest depths, with a bit of an uptick at the end, leaving us thinking, maybe they'll survive this, maybe (as we watch them walk down a mountain roadway amid a crowd of fellow ski-ers in a closing sequence that reminded me of Nights of Cabiria) we all carry flaws and hidden faults, maybe they're not so different from others, life will go on for them, albeit painfully and never quite the same. You also can't help thinking, as you watch this, what would I do?, and am I so sure?

Monday, February 9, 2015

Surprisingly good movie based on novel by the late, great Roberto Bolano

The Future (Il Futuro, 2013), dir Alicia Scherson (I had to look it up) is a very powerful and surprising film, based on a short novel by Roberto Bolano, who died way too young but left behind many excellent novels and stories, most not published in his lifetime. The story is pretty straightforward: a 19-year-old woman and her 17(?)-year-old brother, living in Rome (but of a Chilean family) are orphaned when their parents die in a car crash. Visited by Rome social services (a completely phony and feckless social worker - to me, the one sour note in the film, such a familiar and unfair target - would have been better had the made the children victims of an overburdened system rather than of an incompetent worker), they get the OK to live on alone, although they're completely unable to do so: piles of laundry and pizza boxes build up, dishes overflow the sink, etc. He begins cutting school and hanging out at a gym - and eventually brings two trainers back to the apt where they settle in; at first, very well - they're more mature than they look, and the cook and clean, etc. - but eventually lead the kids toward a criminal enterprise, trying to rip off an aged reclusive movie star, sending the woman to him as a prostitute. He actually treats her very well and they develop a fondness for each other, which in a sense saves her from herself. It's a movie that could have gone wrong in so many ways: could have been too violent and mean or, on the other hands, too sentimental and melodramatic, but Scherson finds just the right tone, keeping up our sympathies for the main characters without making any of their adversaries into real heavies. The movie just hovers on the edge of the realistic, with a few notes of gothic horror and sexual exploitation to keep it edgy but not off balance; some beautiful shots, esp at night, of purportedly Rome (although some scenes shot in Germany and Chile). In short, a very watchable and engaging movie about real people in a time of great struggle who live through their difficulties and emerge damaged but stronger - not exactly an upbeat film, no "Hollywood ending," but a dark film with an ending that holds forth at least the possibility of hope.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

The ideology behind Still Mine

Still Mine (2013) is a low-budget based-on-a-true-story Canadian film just a step above a Lifetime movie (do they make those anymore?) that's mostly worth watching because of its honest portrayal of a couple in their 80s who, despite the deterioriating health of the woman (Genevieve Bujold) and the cranky stubbornness of her husband (James Cromwell), remain in love with each other - they even maintain a healthy sexuality. Well, you can see that this film is obviously not aimed at a mass-audience demographic, as there's practically nobody in the small cast of characters under 50, and most are well past full retirement age. Story itself: because of Bujold's deteroriating health, they decide - despite her resistance - to "downsize" and Cromwell, a crotchedy independent sort, decides to build their new, smaller house himself. Thing is he doesn't like the various government requirements - building permits, inspections, etc. - and repeatedly resists orders that he comply. The somewhat noxious building inspector orders him to stop work, and the issue winds up in court (and in the local newspaper), at which time - surprise! - in an impassioned address to the court Cromwell gets permission (or so it seems, not made absolutely clear) to proceed and complete the house - and he and spouse (Craig & Irene Morrisson) were still living there in their 90s at the time of the film. OK, I work for the government so I'm not without bias here, but I don't like these movies that make public employees into faceless and stupid bureaucrats and that give the impression that the rules and regulations are pointless. They're not. Imagine if he built the house and one day the roof collapsed, killing someone - and the outcry that it had never been inspected, why didn't town officials do their job, etc. Perhaps in Canada it's easy to see independent spirits like Cromwell/Morrison as throwbacks to the good old days when people could get by on their own (or with a little help from neighbors and offspring - and, by the way, with a pretty damn good public-health system that seems to take good care of Bujold/Irene Morrison). In the U.S., however, he looks a hell of a lot like a Tea Party anti-government activist, hating all government relations and interventions - until they need their Social Security, Medicare, education, transportation, protection, and so forth. There's an ideology behind this film - even if the Canadian filmmakers don't get it - that isn't about preserving a way of life but about destroying our civic, democratic culture.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Possibly the worst movie I have ever seen

Sorry but the recent German film The Strange Little Cat is possibly the worst film I have ever seen (forgive me, I could watch only 30 minutes of this film that at least had the blessing of being short). I know there are many horrible slasher films, stupid war movies, sophomoric comedies, cheap horror movies, all of which are no doubt terrible but their ambitions are equally low, whereas this film aspires to be some kind of artistic statement, a slice of reality: in effect, it's like a reality show about a family of absolutely no interest to anyone, without a dash of humor or the shred of a plot of conflict. Shot almost entirely within a small apartment (in Berlin, apparently), almost all from the level of, say, a table top, we see the family squabble a bit over breakfast, various family members (not well identified or introduced) arrive, as they are apparently preparing for some sort of family dinner in the evening, a brother helps repair a broken washing machine, they take some bottles out for recycling, make coffee. They talk in inanities: the mother tells of sitting in a movie theater and the man next to her nudges against her foot and she can't (or won't) move her foot away - how odd, and how dull, without further development or reaction; a daughter gives  along account of walking on a path and tossing away orange peels, which all land white-side-up - why? Who cares? Worse, the family members are kind of mean people, though not in a dramatic or intriguing way: the sister throws a ball at a kid outside and hits him; the mom meanly chastises youngest child for neglecting to feed the sparrows (How many sparrows will die because of you?). And if this isn't dull enough, we watch a cat occasionally pass through the scene - unless the mother or sister is intentionally stepping on it or pushing it off the table. What is the point of this? Could any viewer possibly care about these people or what happens to them over the course of 90 minutes, which could feel like a lifetime?

Sunday, February 1, 2015

A third great contender for Best Picture: The Imitation Game

So now I see that we have 3 (at least) really fine movies up for Best Picture Oscar award, as The Imitation Game stands up there with Boyhood and Birdman - a really excellent movie about Alan Turing, creator of the Turing Machine which was essentially the first digital computer, that he and a team used to crack the Nazi's "enigma code" and by many estimates advanced by 2 years the end of the 2nd World War. Yes, we learn a lot about the code-breaking and the surrounding intrigue and espionage, but what sets this film a notch or two higher is that we also learn about Turing's complex and troubled personality, through dialogue and action. Many props to Benedict Cumberbatch who in my view should win Best Actor (though probably won't) - a subtle performance with great range. Also props to Graham Moore's screenplay, another O contender, that expertly moves about among the framing narrative (set in 1951 as Turing explains his life to an officer who's arrested him on a "morals" charge) and various time periods in Turing's life: boarding school days of harassment and isolation and the war years and his struggle to crack to code and to live his life. Turing is clearly what today we would call "on the spectrum," and Moore's screenplay captures beautifully the difficulty he has relating to peers, superiors, women, everyone - because he can't really dissemble, nor can he determine when others are not saying precisely what they mean. He starts as a terrible loner who antagonizes all who work with him because he knows he's smarter and they're on the wrong path to crack the code. Without any foolish dramatics or epiphanies, he gradually understands he has to build a team and his fumbling attempts to do so are sweet and, ultimately, effective. (Full disclosure that Moore's mom is an old friend - though I've never met Moore.) The subplot involving his sham near-marriage is a bit fumbled - Knightly is just far to pretty and charming for this role - but props for the honesty and directness in dealing with Turing's homosexuality without becoming lurid, morbid, or melodramatic - and yet still showing us what a disgrace the British "morals" laws were and how they ruined thousands of lives needlessly.