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.