What's it all about?: The power and confusion of Sicario

Sicario is a movie that you have to take on two levels: One one plane it's a story about a group of rogue CIA officers, military combat vets, FBI agents, and a recruited drug-cartel expert from South America who uncover a scene of grisly execution and set off to nail the head of the Mexican drug cartel that called the shots. On this level, the movie is gripping from start to finish, with some terrifically tense scenes, notably the discover of the mass killings at the outset, a scary journey into the heart of Juarez in search of a kingpin, the invasion of the smugglers tunnel leading into the Mexican desert, the final approach to the drug lord - well-paced, terrific pounding music, and at least once cool tough-guy character (played by Josh Brolin) who holds out interest. That said, there's a second plane: the plot itself is so elaborate, confusing, and in fact on looking back kind of ridiculous that it's almost impossible to figure out what's going on; and the two central characters, a man and woman (Emily Blunt) FBI agents as so bland that I kept wondering what they hell are they doing on this mission, or in this movie? There's a really thin attempt to explain why these novices are on the ride: the CIA guys say they need an FBI member of their troupe in order to justify acting outside of U.S. borders. Really? Or did I miss something? And if you need an FBI agent to come along why not a veteran rather than a doe-eyed novice who will gawk in surprise and awe at everything she sees - other than to give Brolin a reason to explain things to her and thereby to us? So overall it's one of those powerful movies that has you in its grip for two hours and when it's done you have to wonder whether any of it made sense and what mission was all about.

Root, root, root for the bad guys?: The upside-down world of The Big Short

They used to say economics was the dreary science, but no longer, as there have been a # of movies about the high jinx of Wall Street, hedge funds, and esp the collapse of the economic system in 2008. The Big Short is the latest and certainly ups the ante and the frenzy. As the director Adam McKay notes, it's "based on truth," in fact on a Michael Lewis book about three sets of hedge-fund investors who went "short" in 2008: each in his own way saw that the housing market was a bubble that would burst and bet against the housing market - leading to incredible stress and distress, to eventual huge profits, but not to much satisfaction or salvation. McKay does a good job establishing the personalities in each of the 3 groups - and he's helped in that each is distinct and colorful. He also does a fantastic job keep the movie going at a fast pace - with lots of quick edits at times, with some amusing scenes in which B-list celebs address the camera and explain some of the arcana of credit default swaps at al., and with some shrewd asides from the lead characters, assuring us at various times (e.g., when one of the traders confronts Alan Greenspan) that "this really happened," and one, amusingly, admitting that a scene (specifically, two of the hedge guys learning about the potential collapse from a brochure left in a bank lobby) actually never happened in reality. The film faces a really tough challenge and manages to make it work: we kind of root for these guys, underdogs in the trading world, even though, a., several of the players are pretty nasty, self-centered, and sexist, and, even more odd, to "root" for the is to root for the collapse of the whole financial system, a travesty and a disgrace. There's no real positive message here - in fact, the film makes us look over our shoulders and wonder if it could happen again, when it will happen next in fact. That's probably the goal. It makes a good companion piece with another recent film that shows the crisis from the POV of a homeowner under the water: 99 Homes.

Movie Brooklyn: Better than the book?

John Crowley's 2015 movie Brooklyn, extremely closely based on the Colm Toibin novel and with a smart screenplay by novelist Nick Hornsby - a powerful two-barreled literary phenomenon here - was in my view actually better than Toibin's novel, a rarity. Though it's not entirely the kind of movie I would see (or book I would read for that matter), a somewhat over-the-top romance with a thin plot line, what was a little disappointing in the novel opens up very well on screen: the humor of the dialogue comes much more to light in the very well written and acted encounters, in particular the boarding-house dinner conversations with Julie Walters stealing the show. And the sweetness and innocence of the two main characters, especially Saoirise Ronan in an Oscar-likely lead as the Irish immigrant Ellis really come to life beautifully throughout the film. What felt a little unsettled at the end of the novel is much more complete and gratifying on film (spoilers here, but they won't be much of a surprise in any event): We can really see by the end, why, after Ellis/Ronan came so close to moving back to her small village in Ireland and settling in with the gentle and thoughtful publican's son, she close to return to the US and begin a life with young, hard-working, devoted plumber: Of course it's a better world in the States, which she realizes after her return to Ireland - more open, diverse, with more opportunity, acceptance, joy, and space. Everything's more extreme - the climate and changing seasons serve as a metaphor for that - but we can see by the end of the film why US immigrants virtually never move back to their homeland. In a sense, the movie as a paeon to all that's great about American (not just Brooklyn tho that's where she begins her life in America - I never like this as a title for the book, or the movie), and of course it makes us think about immigration today and the anger and bitterness toward so many immigrant groups - the movie does not touch on this, but it could fuel both sides of the debate. My quibbles would be with the way over-the-top score - please just shut up and let the characters act! - and I thought the street scenes and styles looked a decade older than the apparent setting (based on various references to new movies) of 1952.

Survival stories: The Martian et al

Ridley Scott's 2015 space movie The Martian is totally entertaining and engaging - especially given that you obviously know right from the outset what's going to happen (what? you'd thought they were going to leave Matt Damon to die alone on Mars?) - but still engages our interest all the way. Compared with such grand, boring epics as the recent Interstellar, The Martian is easier to approach because it feels real, almost plausible right from the beginning - there' no super scifi element (frozen bodies that allow for interstellar travel, etc.) - plot is simple - after a Mrtian landing by a crew assigned to examine the minerals and resources of the planet, crew takes off after a violent dust storm, thinking Damon had been killed by debris - turns out (of course) not, and most of the movie captures the many smart things he has to do to survive on the planet, long after his rations would have been consumed. While his survival drama is happening on Mars, we watch the NASA hq suddenly learn that he's alive (there's no direct communication) and wrestle w/ the difficult task of bringing him home alive. Both parts of the drama are quite credible and filled with constant tension and a degree of danger. Man lost in space seems to be an emerging genre - think of Sandra Bullock/George Clooney recently in Gravity - and this genre overlaps with the whole Survivor genre - from Robinson Crusoe through, more recently, the Robert Redford film about the solo sailor lost at sea. There's something eerily frightening about being alone or abandoned in such circumstances, and something reassuring and satisfying about watching the hero (or heroine) take the slow, deliberate steps that can bring them back to safety and civilization. These movies are celebrations of (American) competence - something that I think cheers us and reassures us about the goodness, or blessedness, or our nature and our capacities as a species. Most of us - certainly, I - would not survive a day in most of these circumstances, but to know - or to believe - that such survival is possible with the right attitude, the right "stuff," gives us a (false?) assurance that America will prevail and that all's right with the world, or the solar system anyway.

Best (classic) films I saw in 2015

My previous post was on the best new films I saw in 2015, but of course many of the great films I saw this year were classics, reaching all the way back to the silent era - so here's a list of the 5 best classic films I saw in 2015:

Late Spring (1949). Another great, if extremely thoughtful and methodically paced, domestic drama from Ozu (Tokyo Story), this one about a young woman completely devoted to her aging, scholarly father. She believes she should never marry. Her father believes otherwise.

The Passion of Joan of Arc. Dreyer's 1928 silent is simple, dramatic, and has some of the most amazing cinematography of any movie before or since - an incredible drama of interiors and faces, many of them Joan's, many others hideous.

Sullivan's Travels. Preston Sturges's 1941 masterpiece starts out as a rollicking comedy, and it's funny enough, but becomes increasingly darker, more mysterious, and more socially conscious, culminating in an incredible sequence in which chainbound prisoners shuffle into a black church and watch a movie.

Umberto D. In Vittorio de Sica's 1952 drama social realism takes a turn toward the personal and interior, as an elderly man struggling to get by on his meager pension has to determine what to do with his only true companion, his beloved little dog.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Jacques Demy's 1962 movie musical (not a word of spoken dialog) is colorful, romantic, over-the-top emotional, an homage to American musicals such as West Side Story, all filmed on location, and completely different in look and style from any other movie.

The 10 best (new) films I saw in 2015

Unlike pro movie critics, I didn't manage to see every worthwhile movie over the past year and a # of the contemporary movies I saw probably came out in 2014 or even in 2013 but with that caveat in mind here is the list, in alphabetical order, of the top 10 (new) movies I saw in 2015:

Another Year. A tremendous family drama that unfolds over the course of four seasons by the under-appreciated British direct Mike Leigh.

Leviathon. A powerful film about political corruption and bullying in a small town in contemporary Russia; the film evokes sorrow for pity toward the most unlikely and initially unsympathetic of characters. Amazing that Putin didn't squash this film like a bug.

Norte, The End of History. This four-hour Philippine film is not for everyone, but watch it over 2 nights if you must - it's a powerful drama about a disturbed young man who commits a heinous crime, and it's loosely based on Crime and Punishment.

The Overnighters. The only documentary on the list - a harrowing and painfully honest account of migrant oil-workers in the northern Plains and a minister who tries against all odds to make the workers at home in his community - and with a disturbing twist near the end.

Spotlight. The only other American film on this list - a film that perfectly captures what it was like to work on a large urban newspaper (15 years ago, when newspapers still ruled) and tells a heroic story of investigative journalism as Globe reporters take on the Catholic hierarchy.

Stray Dogs. A Taiwanese film composed almost entirely of long, nearly still shots - each a moving image of unbearable pain and worthy of display in a museum; it provides a harrowing look at the lives of some homeless children in Taipei.

Tangerines. An Estonian-Georgian film with a small cast that tells a highly dramatic story of two soldiers on opposite sides of a civil war who face off in a life or death struggle and are forced to come to terms with one another, with the inevitable dire consequences.

Two Days, One Night. The Dardenne Brothers give us another great movie about working-class life in the industrial wastelands of Belgium, in this case a socio-drama about workers' rights (and wrongs) as bosses pit co-workers against one another in a struggling factory.

Wild Tales. An Argentine film that tells six (I think) stories in sequence, each better than the next, culminating in the most incredible wedding scene ever filmed.

Winter Sleep. A strong, engaging, highly literate drama about a semi-retired intellectual running a resort hotel in the mountains of Turkey and navigating complex disputes with his (much younger) wife, (demanding) sister, and (threatening and frightening) neighbor.

A sanctimonious movie worth seeing for what it exposes about the Holllywood blacklist

Trumbo is a sanctimonious movie on an important theme and, despite its limitations as a dramatic movie, is definitely worth seeing as it exposes some of the horrible things that happened during the Cold War era. We're all familiar with the Hollywood black list, but this movie, as effectively as any I've seen, shows its effect on a individual - in this case a group of screenwriters barred from their profession by the right-wing bullies in Hollywood (Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan) and in Washington (RMN, McCarthy, et al). What's special and unique here is the way in which screenwriter Trumbo, after doing time in a federal pen (where there's a good and surprising scene in which has a confrontation with a highly resentful black prisoner - although I wondered what the guy was doing in a fed pen on a murder conviction), begins writing under various pseudonyms and when he actually wins not one Oscar but 2, pseudonymously, he gets to work again under his own name. Most of the Hollywood people depicted are either craven (EG Robinson, various studio heads) or crass - and you can't help but think they were willing to embrace Trumbo once again not because they changed their views but because it would be profitable to do so. Kirk Douglas comes off very well, as does Otto Preminger (one hilarious exchange: OP reads a scene from a screenplay Trumbo is writing for him and says it's brilliant, make sure all the scenes are brilliant. Trumbo says: then the movie would be monotonous. Preminger says, don't worry: I'll direct it unevenly.) The movie is based on a Trumbo bio, and I hope he heeded closely to the facts because that was my main interest here - the dramatic line itself was rather flat and polemical, and Trumbo's relationships with his wife and children never seemed to ring true to me. Dialogue with younger daughter was particularly strained: Am I a communist daddy? Well, what would you do if you had a sandwich and another girl didn't? I'd share! You little Commie! (Would that it were so simple.) Throughout the movie I think Bryan Cranston was over-acting, with a pseudo-British stage accent, as if every utterance were an aphorism for the ages. Then, over the closing credits, there were clips of Trumbo himself, and that's how he spoke - so I have to admit that, annoying tho it may be, Cranston has him dead-on.

The curse of great talent: Almost unbearably sad documentary Amy

Kind of odd that Amy Schumer's movie is called Trainwreck and ought to be called Amy, while Asif Kapadia's documentary Amy (about the life and death of Amy Winehouse) ought to be called Trainwreck. The message of this excellent documentary is that great talent can sometimes be a great curse, as it was for this poor girl who never really had a chance. A very middle-class North London Jewish girl who had the voice of a 60-year-old black American jazz singer - we hear this right at the top in home-movie footage when she sings Happy Birthday at about age 14 - she gets discovered very early and paid a huge signing bonus with a record label on the basis of voice and potential alone (her early performances are awful; she doesn't truly emerge until she stops playing guitar and works with a solid back-up band). We learn right off that her parents were both completely feckless, and her father abandoned the household when Amy was a preteen. She uses the signing money to buy or rent a place of her own, where she hangs w/ girlfriends and spends most of her time smoking weed, as she notes. It's downhill from there. One of the great things about this film is that her life was very thoroughly documented on film and video - tons of footage, much of it intimate, from which to select. There are a # of voice-over interviews about Amy but almost never do we see the subjects as they speak - a device that's like a dead spot in so many documentaries - it's almost always voice-over live video of Amy and friends. Despite one or two good life-long friends who try to help, her life spirals rapidly downward - and she's spurred on by malevolent husband, greedy manager and father, and the celebrity machine to continue performing when she is obviously extremely ill and deranged. She created for herself the role of in-your-face addict and bad girl and became almost trapped in her own image. She makes a few rehab attempts, and perhaps the saddest moment in the film occurs as she is at a celebration, clean and sober and a little wan, and says to a friend: This is so boring without drugs. Another almost unbearably touching moment is her recording of a duet w/ one of her idols, Tony Bennett, and she can hardly sing at all and he kindly coaches her along, very patient and worried. Watch it if you dare.

What it was like to work at a great newspaper: Spotlight

If All the President's Men heralded a new era of journalism and inspiring thousands to join much-romanticized profession,Spotlight (Tim McCarthy) is the swan song, a nostalgic look back to a time not all that long ago - 2001 and 2002 - when newspapers were still hugely influential, were the primary source of information, and boasted robust staffs that generally coddled an elite few on an investigative team, an I-team, that could had virtually all the time and resources needed to pursue a long-term story. Today, the largest papers still have these teams, but mid-sized papers rarely or ever do and none can influence public opinion in the way or yore. Spotlight looks at the Boston Globe Spotlight team in one its greatest moments, the investigation of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and, more significantly (as the new editor Marty Barret cozened), the cover-up by the Church leadership. This movie is dead-on accurate about (virtually) every aspect of newspaper life, style, and methodology; the newsroom looks exactly like the Globe newsroom did then (I'm sure there are fewer staffers there today, sadly), the people look right, their reporting style and lifestyle are exactly correct, and it was a kick to see how different reporting was just 15 years ago as electronic communication was just emerging and email was not yet born. But that's how it was: old stories literally clipped from newspapers and preserved in envelopes and brown folders; photographs printed and file; the main reference sources being old catalogs and directories stored in the library or in the "morgue." The movie gets the pace of reporting perfectly; the misses are minuscule and mostly understandable: e.g., a top editor would rarely if ever stop by a reporter's house at night for pizza and talk (but it's better on film to do it that way rather than a phone call), a reporter would never go on his own to speak to a judge (we used to keep cards in our wallets with procedures for calling the newspaper attorneys on demand), and wouldn't a report and top editor know it's "pickets" not "picketers"? These are quaint quibbles - Spotlight is a great movie that holds your complete attention for two hours and shows you exactly what it was like to work at a great newspaper in its heyday.

Joining the chorus in praise of Transparent (and a note on Justified)

I'll join the chorus in praise of the Amazon series Transparent (watching Season 1, through first 5 episodes), a series that I would have thought to be sensational and exploitative and not especially appealing but it's none of the above. Summary can't really do it justice because if I tell you this is a series about an LA family in which the father - a divorced, retired college professor - is gradually coming out to his 3 adult kids as trans and that each of kids has significant sexual-relational problems of his/her own - it sounds like a melodrama or old-fashioned soap opera doped out with contemporary sexual terminology. It's much more than that and much simpler. Each of the characters is completely recognizable and believable - as types, and as individuals. Our sympathy for them varies - and fact probably varies among viewers - but our interest in them never wanes. The director Jill Soloway conveys an incredible range of mood and emotion in each 30-minute episode - humor, sexuality, anger, sorrow. She handles some really serious and complex issues w/out a moment of condescension or exploitation and with a great deal of sensitivity toward the central character, Maura, as she navigates her new world. Some of the extraordinary short scenes include the moment when older daughter Sarah first sees her father in a dress and wig; flashback scenes when we see a younger Maura leading a secret life as a cross-dresser; Maura's first visit to a shopping mall; and the moment in a restaurant when an old-time family friend tries to flirt with a young girl (also a trans), recognizes Maura, and is humiliated and ashamed while she keeps her cool and her dignity - painfully so, however.

A note on another very popular series that we abandoned after 2+ episodes: There's nothing really wrong with Justified, plenty of action and reasonably good entertainment with appealing and attractive lead characters, but maybe that's part of the problem: This series never seemed to me an authentic depiction of life and crime in Appalachia nor of the life and work of a federal marshal. The characters are cast right out of the Hollywood glamour mold and just don't ring true. Essentially, based on the first 3 episodes, each is a pretty good hour-long crime story, but the series lacks the crucial element that makes a series work: an on-going plot line that develops, evolves, and keeps us engaged over multiple episodes.