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Archive for October, 2015

“MEET THE PATELS”: My big fat Indian bachelorhood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 15, 2015| 1 Comment »

Meet-The-Patels-e1437091362227“MEET THE PATELS” My rating: B

88 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

I was prepared to give “Meet the Patels” a chilly reception just on principle.

After all, here’s a release that looks suspiciously like a home movie…a home movie that meets everyone’s cliched expectations about the behavior of Americans of East Indian descent.

Okay, I was wrong.  I ended up thoroughly enjoying this goofy, warm, borderline heart-tugging documentary from the brother/sister team of Ravi and Geeta Patel.

And if it sometimes looks like a home movie…well, that’s part of its charm.

Our subject is co-director Ravi Patel, a modestly successful Hollywood actor who, as this documentary begins, is rapidly approaching the age of 30. Though born in the U.S.A., Ravi comes from a traditional Hindu family and the pressure is on for him to marry a nice Indian girl — preferably one also named Patel (it’s a clan thing) — and start producing grandkids.

The Woody Allen-ish Ravi reveals (sometimes in conversation with his unseen older sister Geeta, who’s manning the camera) that his dating history is sketchy at best. He’s rarely had success with American girls, though he did enjoy a two-year relationship which he kept a secret from his family lest they go bonkers because he was seeing a woman who wasn’t an Indian American. Eventually the romance collapsed (you can’t blame the girl…who wants to be a dirty secret?).

Now he agrees to allow his parents, Champa and Vasant, to do the whole matchmaking thing.  Ravi doesn’t want an arranged marriage –though he admits that his parents, who knew each other for all of a week before becoming engaged, are the happiest couple he knows.  Rather, he will submit to a complicated process meant to hook him up with an appropriate Hindu girl.  Both he and the women will have the right of refusal.

(more…)

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“BRIDGE OF SPIES”: Cold War, warm heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

‘Bridge of Spies’ by DreamWorks Studios.

“BRIDGE OF SPIES” My rating: B+

142 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

 

Tom Hanks’ singular status as this century’s James Stewart pays off big time in “Bridge of Spies,” Steven Spielberg’s recreation of one of the Cold War’s lesser known stories.

As the real-life James Donovan, a New York insurance lawyer pulled into the world of espionage and international intrigue, Hanks is wry, moving, and astonishingly ethical. He practically oozes bedrock American decency.

Which was precisely what this movie needs.

The screenplay by the Coen Brothers and Matt Charman runs simultaneously on four tracks.

In the first Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is arrested in NYC in 1957 by federal agents. As no lawyer wants to represent him, the Bar Association basically plays spin the bottle — and assigns the job to Donovan.

Jim Donovan believes that every accused person deserves the best defense possible. In fact, he alienates the judge, the feds, and the general public by standing up for his client’s rights and assuming that this is going to be a fair trial when everybody else wants just to go through the motions before sentencing Abel to death.

On a parallel track is the story of Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), a military flyboy recruited for a top-secret project and trained to spy on the U.S.S.R. from a one-man U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.  Alas, on his very first mission in 1960 he’s shot down, fails in an attempt to commit suicide, and falls into the hands of the Commies.

Then there’s the arrest in 1961 of Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), an American grad student studying economics who finds himself trapped on the wrong side of the newly constructed Berlin Wall and vanishes into the labyrinthine East German justice system.

All this comes to a head when Donovan, several years after Abel’s conviction, is dispatched to Berlin in an ex officio capacity to arrange a swap of the Soviet spy for Francis Gary Powers.  And if in the process he can somehow free Fred Pryor from a damp cell, so much the better.

The yarn is so big and dramatic that it seems improbable…yet it happened. (What’s more, a few years later Donovan was dispatched to Cuba to negotiate the release of anti-Communists captured in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.)

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“HE NAMED ME MALALA”: Uncanny calm

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »

88 and Malala **

Ziauddin and Malala Yousafzai

“HE NAMED ME MALALA” My rating: B

87 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Even if “He Named Me Malala” were a mediocre example of the documentarian’s art it still would be devastating.

You couldn’t invent a story more inspiring than that of Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who openly fought the Taliban’s ban on education for women, was shot in the head by an assassin, miraculously recovered, and now is key to international efforts to provide schooling for young women in often hostile environments.

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth,” “Waiting for ‘Superman’”) is clearly in awe of Malala, who possesses the uncannily calm, transcendent world view you’d expect from an 80-year-old guru or lama, but certainly not from an 18 year old.

Perhaps Guggenheim is too much in awe of his subject, for there seems to be little room here for any sort of critical perspective. I’m not asking Guggenheim to gnaw away at this remarkable  young woman’s reputation (you come away from the film humbled and inspired), but it would be nice to get a handle on how much (if any) of her activism is guided by her father, Ziauddin, an educator with big ideas.

For as the film’s title suggests, it’s as much the story of Ziauddin as of Malala.  One cannot speak of one without including the other — Malala describes them as “one soul in two different bodies.”

“He Named Me Malala” begins with an animated sequence depicting the 19th-century martyrdom of Malalai of Mailwand, the Pakistani version of Joan of Arc, who died leading native insurgents into battle against occupying British forces.

Malala narrates this story, and it clearly has personal meaning. After all, long before she became an international symbol for women’s rights her father named her after the historic Malalai.  It’s almost as if he knew she was destined for big things.

(Guggenheim returns again and again to painterly animated sequences to visually depict parts of Malala’s past for which there is no video footage.  These passages give the film a poetic quality, but also tend to prettify the brutal conditions faced by everyday folk in Taliban-controlled regions. I’m guessing that one of the film’s target audiences is teenage women and that the makers wanted to avoid the ghastly whenever possible.)

(more…)

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“BIG STONE GAP”: Small town schmaltz

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson

Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson

“BIG STONE GAP” My rating: C

103 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Much star power has been brought to bear on “Big Stone Gap,” writer/director Adriana Trigiani’s adaptation of her best-selling series of semiautobiographical books set in her childhood home of Big Stone Gap, W. Va.

So why isn’t this film any better?

Perhaps for fans of Trigiani (The Shoemaker’s Wife, the Viola series for young adults) the film will be a welcome opportunity to see on the big screen beloved characters from the printed page.

For this newbie the film was mildly (but only mildly) entertaining and mostly forgettable.

Set in the early 1970s (and actually shot in the real Big Stone Gap), the picture stars Ashley Judd as Ave Maria Mulligan, operator of the local drug store and at age 40 widely considered an old maid.

(One must regard as suspect any movie that promotes Ashley Judd as an old maid.)

Shortly after the film begins Ave’s mother — an Italian immigrant — dies, leaving behind a letter revealing that Ave is the love child of a romance back in the Old Country. Mom was pregnant upon arrival in the U.S.A. during WWII and wed the first man who showed an interest.

Anyone wanna bet that before this story plays out Ave’s mysterious biological father makes an appearance?

Meanwhile Ave has to deal with the hassles of directing the annual town pageant, an affair that comes off like a bargain-basement version of Branson’s “The Little Shepherd of the Hills.”

And there’s also a visit to the burg by U.S. Senate candidate John Warner and his movie star wife, Elizabeth Taylor.

Ave’s longtime beau is Theodore (John Benjamin Hickey), an aspiring and ego-driven thespian who has never consummated their relationship. Hmmmm. Theodore could have been the inspiration for “Waiting for Guffman.”

Meanwhile Ave is drawn to her childhood friend, the hunky coal miner Jack (Patrick Wilson), who has his hands full with a predatory divorcee (Jane Krakowski).

Other townspeople — all eccentric to one degree or another — are portrayed by Jenna Elfman, Whoopi Goldberg, Anthony LaPaglia, Jasmine Guy, and Judith Ivey.

This is the first feature from Trigiani, a veteran TV producer (“The Cosby Show,” “A Different World”), and while she may be intimate with the material she lacks the directing skill to bring it to life.

“Big Stone Gap” clunks along, making a stab at humor here and a grab at pathos there.  But despite the large and attractive cast, it never gets out of low gear.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE MARTIAN”: The loneliest man alive

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2015| 1 Comment »

martianMV5BMTUxODUzMDY0NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDE0MDE5NTE@._V1__SX1377_SY911_“THE MARTIAN” My rating: A

141 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

With “The Martian” director Ridley Scott and star Matt Damon deliver an almost perfect piece of popular filmmaking, an intimate sci-fi epic that is smart, spectacular and stirring.

This big screen adaptation (by screenwriter Drew Goddard) of Andy Weir’s best-seller about an astronaut stranded on Mars has just about everything — laughs, thrills, visual splendor and a rousing endorsement of the brotherhood of man.

It’s the least pretentious and most wholly enjoyable film of Scott’s extensive career (which includes  “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “Thelma & Louise” and “Gladiator”) and pushes Damon’s acting talents to the max.

The premise melds elements of 1964’s “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” and “Apollo 13” (earthbound scientists and engineers invent ways to help their desperate colleague).

Matt Damon

Matt Damon

And nestled inside this riveting adventure is a sly commentary on bureaucracy.

Set in a near future in which the American space program is thriving (the film’s most patently fantastic assertion), “The Martian” opens on Mars, where a team led by Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) is wrapping up a month-long scientific mission. A fierce sandstorm catches the astronauts out in the open, and they barely make it to the Martian lander that will return them to the orbiting mother ship.

But one of them, botanist Mark Watney (Damon), is literally blown away by the raging wind. Believing him dead, Lewis has no choice but to take off without him before the storm makes liftoff impossible.

But Mark isn’t dead. He awakens to a beeping alarm in his helmet telling him he’s almost out of air, struggles out of the sand in which he is half buried and discovers that he’s been skewered by a shard of wind-blown metal.

He barely makes it into the now unoccupied housing module where he performs a bit of surgery on himself and takes stock of his situation. (more…)

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“SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE”: Slow burn to sexy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie

Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie

“SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE” My rating: B

101 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Writer/director Leslye Headland describes her new movie as ” ‘When Harry Met Sally’ with assholes.”

That’s accurate as far as it goes.  But I have to admit…I fell in love with these assholes.

The sorta familiar plot is about a guy and a girl — both of whose love lives are, well, challenged — who make a pact to remain platonic best friends.  They will be able to confide to each other the stuff they can tell no one else. But they will not get physical. That would screw up the chemistry.

Jake is a serial  womanizer.  No sooner does he establish a physical intimacy with a new woman than he starts looking for ways to cheat on her. Thing is, he’s so funny and charming that many of Jake’s wronged ladies let the infidelity slide.

Lainey, on the other hand, has been engaged in a long affair with a OB-GYN who uses her for quick, unsentimental sex before returning to his wife. Normally a pretty tough cookie, she’s hopelessly infatuated with this creep. Though she swears she’ll break it off, she keeps drifting back into his orbit.

Jake and Lainey are seriously flawed.  Thank heavens they are portrayed by Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie, who somehow manage to make their characters amusing, entertaining, vulnerable and, ultimately, very romantic.

In a prologue we see Jake and Lainey — college students — losing their virginity to one another. It’s a one night stand, no big deal, and both go their separate ways.

Twelve years later they run into each other at a meeting of sex addicts. (How’s that for a deliciously perverse twist on the old rom-com meet-cute scenario?)

He’s curious about his inability to maintain a monogamous relationship — though hardly committed to changing his ways. She’s dealing with her perennial sexual obsession with the good doctor (Adam Scott, who seems to be everywhere these days).

They agree to be each other’s emotional backboard, someone against whom they can bounce their innermost thoughts about sex and love. When they’re together, Jake and Lainey don’t have to pretend to be anything other than what they are.

(more…)

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“FINDERS KEEPERS”: Fuckery and shenanigans

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

John Wood

John Wood

“FINDERS KEEPERS” My rating: B

82 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Finders Keepers” is a sort of hillbilly epic about an amputated human leg.

For starters.

In 2004 John Wood of Maiden NC lost his left leg — and his father, Tom — in the crash of their private plane.  Wood asked the hospital where he was treated to let him have his severed limb.  He hoped someday to be buried with it.

He expected to receive bones.  Instead Wood was given the whole leg, decaying flesh and all.

Initially Wood stored it in the freezer of the local Hardee’s (a friend worked there). After the manager threw a snit fit Wood soaked the limb in formaldehyde and hung it from a tree to dry.

But John had a drinking and drug problem. Before relocating to another state he moved his possessions into a storage facility. When he failed to pay the rent his belongings were sold at auction.

Enter Shannon Whisnant, a bombastic, barrel-bodied, bullfrog-voiced good ol’ boy who made a living buying junk cheap and selling it dear. Whisnant purchased and took home Wood’s small barbecue smoker. When he looked inside he discovered not the residue of old ribs but a human leg.

And there Whisnant saw a glorious future. This boondock Barnum would charge folks $3 ($1 for children) to view the limb. He printed up T shirts declaring him The Foot Man.

Meanwhile, between benders John Wood  argued that this was his flesh and bone, after all. He wanted nothing to do with what one observer of the feud describes as “fuckery and shenanigans.”

Shannon Wisnant

Shannon Wisnant

Their battle for possession of the leg would eventually be settled in the reality TV courtroom of Judge Greg Mathis.

At first glance Bryan Cranberry and Clay Tweel’s documentary appears to be a savage sendup of redneck ethos. But “Finders Keepers” takes individuals who at first glimpse seem stupid and silly and recognizes the tragedy in their lives.

For the more you dig into Wood and Whisnant’s back stories, the more complex things become.

(more…)

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“SICARIO”: What good guys?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2015| 1 Comment »

Emily Blunt

Emily Blunt

“SICARIO” My rating: B+

121 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The war on drugs is lost.

No character in “Sicario” says as much, but the overwhelming thrust of Dennis Villeneuve’s gripping film makes that conclusion unavoidable.

Taylor Sheridan‘s first produced screenplay couches its sobering observations within the familiar tropes of an anti-crime drama. “Sicario” (Mexican slang for “hit man”) begins with FBI agent Kate Mercer (Emily Blunt) leading a raid on what appears to be an unremarkable home in the Arizona desert.

Except that the house is filled with heavily armed men and contains dozens of dead bodies entombed behind dry wall — it’s like some sort of bizarre tract home catacomb.

Kate and her partner Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya) are by-the-book types who make a point of observing all the legal niceties. So Kate is puzzled when she is reassigned to an interagency task force where the rules are bent or broken with disturbing regularity.

Benecio Del Toro

Benecio Del Toro

She’s suspicious of Graver (Josh Brolin), the garrulous but vaguely sinister task force leader. She thinks he may be CIA — but that can’t be, since the CIA cannot legally get involved in domestic operations.

And her red flags really begin twitching in the presence of Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), who claims to be a former Mexican prosecutor  but radiates lethal possibilities, not to mention an encyclopedic knowledge of the Mexican drug cartels they’re trying to bring down.

“Sicario’s” knotted plot is hard to explain — it involves a massive plan to force one drug kingpin to reveal the identity of his heavily-protected boss. There are blatantly illegal incursions South of the Border, a kidnapping and torture — but the mood of desperation, corruption and betrayal that it establishes (abetted by a throbbing musical score that seems to embody doom) is carried with the viewers as we leave the theater.

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“MISSISSIPPI GRIND”: Roll of the dice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Ben Mendelson, Ryan Reynolds

Ben Mendelsohn, Ryan Reynolds

“MISSISSIPPI GRIND” My rating: B

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Ben Mendelsohn is such a terrific actor that some day he’ll be cast as an upright citizen.

For now, though, he is Hollywood’s go-to guy for grungy losers (“Animal Kingdom,” HBO’s “Bloodline,” “Killing Them Softly”). In Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “Mississippi Grind” Mendelsohn practically sweats desperation and existential angst.

You’d figure that he’d be just right as Gerry, a degenerate gambler from Dubuque, Iowa. What one might not expect is that Ryan Reynolds would match him in the demanding and fuzzy-around-the-edges role of Curtis, Gerry’s alter ego and spiritual inspiration.

Gerry is deep in in debt to…well, just about everyone he knows.  (Alfre Woodward has a brief but tasty scene as a suburban housewife whose real career is that of leg-breaking loan shark.) At a local poker night he meets Curtis (Ryan), an out of towner who tries to disrupt the game with jokes and nonstop patter. Looking at his hand, Curtis innocently asks the other players: “Aces…those are good, right?”

Somehow Gerry gets the notion that Curtis is his good luck charm.

The two men could hardly be different.  Gerry is intense, woebegone, hapless. He goes through hell with every showdown.

Curtis is cool, funny, and entertaining, a raconteur with dozens of shaggy dog stories about the gamblers and lowlifes he’s had the pleasure to know  (including the guy who reversed a losing streak in Kansas City and left the table with “enough to pay back everything he owes and still get a slab at Oklahoma Joe’s”). Curtis doesn’t seem to care if he wins or not. “It’s the journey, not the destination,” he says.

They agree to take a trip down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, hitting the casinos, horse and dog tracks and back room poker games along the way. Curtis will provide the betting money; Gerry the skill.

What could go wrong?
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“GOODNIGHT MOMMY”: Deadly lullaby

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Elias and Lukas Schwarz

Elias and Lukas Schwarz

“GOODNIGHT MOMMY” My rating: B-

99 minutes | MPAA rating: R

In horror movies, twins mean trouble.

There’s something about the intimate relations between these womb sharers that freaks out the folk who make and attend horror films, something creepy and secret that the rest of us can barely perceive and certainly cannot understand.

In Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s “Goodnight Mommy” (the women co-wrote and co-directed) little Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz) are first seen playing in a field of towering corn. Then they move on to a mystical looking woods. They make crude creepy masks out of cardboard, paint and assorted objects.

The boys seem fairly normal — they wrestle, taunt each other, exchange slaps. And then Mom comes home.

Mother (Susanne Wuest) is first seen in a prologue. Apparently she’s an actress, for we see her in a film clip playing a mother surrounded by a large brood of children in traditional German dress (the Von Trapps, maybe?). She sings to them as the scene ends.

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Susanne Wuest

Now, however, she appears at the family’s country home with her head wrapped in bandages, looking disturbingly like the skull-headed Jack Skellington from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”  Apparently she’s had some plastic surgery (or maybe she had a medical issue…it’s not very clear), but the boys are clearly freaked and a bit dubious about this wraithlike presence who demands total silence.

In fact, little Lukas suggests that this isn’t their mother at all, but some replacement.

Dad is a no-show — the marriage is on the rocks — and the boys seek assistant and comfort from a local priest. But who’s going to believe their paranoid fantasy?

With no help forthcoming from the adult world, the grim little guys take things into their own hands, and this is where the film becomes astonishingly disturbing and violent.

What is it about German filmmakers? “Goodnight Mother” seems inspired by  Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” in which a pair of creeps imprison and torment a suburban family vacationing at their lake home. That the nastiness here is being dished out by two angelic-looking but demonically unforgiving little boys makes things even more unsettling.

“Goodnight Mother” pulls a switcheroo by first having us side with Elias and Lukas and then, as things turn ugly, shifting our sympathies to Mother. Ultimately the film delivers a “Sixth Sense-ish” twist that explains all, but not before establishing a nerve-gnawing atmosphere of quiet desperation and paranoia.

| Robert W. Butler

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