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“LIFE ITSELF”: Pretentiousness himself

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Olivia Wilde, Oscar Isaac

“LIFE ITSELF” My rating: C-

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Having conquered the world of episodic television with the emotion-wringing family drama “This is Us,”  writer/director Dan Fogelman turns to the big screen with “Life Itself.”

Things don’t go well.

As the title suggests, Fogelman is here attempting nothing less than a God’s-eye view of human lives, all of them entangled — though at first that’s not obvious.  While “This is Us” appeals directly to big laughs and big tears, “Life Itself” is curiously muted, as if we’re observing the characters across vast distances.  Those looking for a good cry will probably leave looking for something to punch.

The film is perversely curious, for Fogelman has given us nothing less than a humanistic, non-violent parody/homage of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.” Like that film, “Life Itself” is broken into specific chapters and employs a time-leaping narrative (something with which Fogelman is familiar…see “This is Us”). At one point characters attend a party dressed like John Travolta and Uma Thurman in “Pulp Fiction’s”  famous dance contest; at least twice in “Life Itself” the movie slows down so that characters can deliver long Tarantino-esque monologues. Tarantino regular Samuel L. Jackson even pops up in an extended cameo so weird it defies description.

So what’s the movie about?  Well, let’s break it down by  chapters.

  • In the opening sequence the bearded, unkempt Will (Oscar Isaac) is getting therapy from a shrink (Annette Bening). We gradually learn that his beloved wife Abby has left him (in flashbacks she’s played by Olivia Wilde).  We see their romantic meeting, their growing love, their relationship with Will’s parents (Mandy Patinkin, Jean Smart), their anticipation of the birth of their child. We discover that Will’s therapy was court-mandated after a suicide attempt and a few months in a mental ward. Eventually we discover what happened to Abby.
  • The next segment follows the childhood of Will and Abby’s daughter, Dylan (Olivia Cooke), who is raised by her widowed grandpa and grows up to be a smart/rebellious punk rocker, though tormented by the loss of the parents she never met. (more…)

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“LIZZIE”: Forty whacks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Chloe Sevigny

“LIZZIE” My rating: C+ (Opens Sept. 21 at  Tivoli, Glenwood Arts and Barrywood)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

In “Lizzie” the infamous story of Lizzie Borden — the young Massachusetts woman accused in 1892 of giving her parents “40 whacks” with a hatchet — gets a very modern, feminist (sort of) spin.

Writer Bryce Kass and director Craig William Macneill adhere closely to the known facts of the case…and use their imaginations to fill in the unexplored gaps.

Lizzie Borden (Chloe Sevigny) is trapped. A spinster (unmarried at the age of 32), she lives in the household of her wealthy and domineering father, Andrew (Jamey Sheridan).

Andrew is an old-style patriarch so cheap he has refused to wire his home for newfangled electricity. His  wife Abby (Fiona Shaw),  Lizzie’s stepmother,  is his colorless appendage; his older daughter Emma (Kim Dickens) is obedient and personality deficient.

Lizzie, though, is rebellious — though whether that is the result of an admirable strength of character or mental illness is up to the viewer. Early on she defies her father’s edict against going out unaccompanied, attends the theater, and has an epileptic fit in the powder room.

She’s the weird daughter Andrew would like to keep locked in a tower.

Life in the sedate Borden household shifts imperceptibly with the arrival of Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart), a new housemaid. She’s quiet and hard working…and before long Andrew is raping her on a regular basis.

At the same time, Bridget and Lizzie are entering into their own love affair, a desperate reaction to the misogyny of Andrew’s home.

(more…)

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“THE WIFE”: Behind every great man…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 13, 2018| 1 Comment »

Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce

“THE WIFE” My rating: B 

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

By the time “The Wife” delivers its big reveal, it should come as no surprise.  The film has been telegraphing its intentions all along; only the most inattentive viewer will be taken aback.

Happily, plot is one of the least important elements in Bjorn Runge’s film (adapted by Jane Anderson from Meg Wolitzer’s novel). What we’ve got here are some terrific acting and a portrait of a marriage in which both partners have struck a deal with the devil to ensure their continued success.

We first meet novelist Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) and his wife Joan (Glenn Close) in the dead of night. Joe can’t sleep, knowing he’s a finalist for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Joan finally submits to septuagenarian sex to calm him down.

When in the early a.m. the phone call from Stockholm comes, the two celebrate by jumping up and down on their marriage bed like a couple of preschoolers.

But there are signs that not all is well in the Castleman household.  Joe, we learn, is an inveterate philanderer.  And while their pregnant daughter Susannah (Alix Wilton Regan) seems well-adjusted, their son David (Max Irons) is a slow-boiling cauldron of resentment and hurt, not the least because he is an aspiring writer and desperately wants the approval of his famous father…approval which Joe won’t give.

The scene quickly shifts to Stockholm and the swirl of Nobel Week.  Joe attempts to take all the attention in stride, while Joan looks on. In fact, all this hubbub  — and Joe’s obvious infatuation with the pretty young photographer (Morgane Polanski) assigned to record his visit for posterity — is rubbing Joan the wrong way.

Her mood isn’t improved by Nathanial (Christian Slater, in one of his best performances), a sort of literary leech who wants to write Joe’s authorized biography.  Equal parts charm and smarm, Nathanial spends an afternoon drinking with Joan and suggesting that perhaps she’s the one who should be getting the Nobel. (more…)

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“WHITE BOY RICK”: Marshmallow boy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Matthew McCaughnahey, Richie Merritt

“WHITE BOY RICK” My rating: C+ 

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It’s easy to see why the real-life tale depicted in “White Boy Rick” got Hollywood’s attention. Here’s the story of a 15-year-old white Detroit kid who back in the ’80s infiltrated a black drug ring for the FBI, survived an assassination attempt, became a cocaine kingpin and ended up serving a long prison sentence.

It practically screams “Movie!”

Yet “White Boy Rick” is a surprisingly limp affair, perhaps because the screenwriters (Andy Weiss, Logan Miller and Noah Miller) and director Yann Demange cannot decide what to make of their offbeat protagonist.

And if they don’t know, those of us in the audience are even more in the dark.

The basics are these: Back in ’84 Rick Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt) was helping his bottom-feeding, gun-dealing dad (Matthew McConaughey, in full character actor mode with pot belly and greasy mullet) peddle illegal homemade silencers to Detroit’s gangbangers.

Cornered by a couple of manipulative  and openly amoral FBI agents (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rory Cochrane), Rick agrees to go undercover if the feds will leave his old man alone. He starts by buying at local drug houses, ostensibly on behalf of his crackhead sister (Bel Powley), and gradually becomes accepted by the crew of a local drug lord (Jonathan Majors).

Before long he’s dropped out of school and is sporting expensive track suits and gold bling (he’s so thick he buys a gaudy Star of David necklace, not realizing it represents Judaism) and doing all sorts of services both for the gang and for his FBI handlers.

(more…)

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“WHERE HANDS TOUCH”: Wrong color for the Reich

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »

George MacKay, Amanda Stenberg

“WHERE HANDS TOUCH”  My rating: C

122 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Initially intriguing but ultimately ineffective, “Where Hand Touch” is an odd blend of “Romeo and Juliet” romance and “Pianist”-style Holocaust horror.

Its heart is in the right place. Alas, good intentions aren’t enough.

While the film mines a real-life situation rarely recognized by the arts or the history books — the plight under the Nazis of mixed-blood Germans whose mothers were Aryan  and fathers African — “Where Hands Touch” is tough going. And not just because of the downbeat subject matter.

Writer/director Amma Assante rarely opts for subtlety when a heavy hand can be employed. The result is a film that, in theory anyway, should move us deeply.  Except that it doesn’t.

Sixteen-year-old Lenya (Amanda Sternberg) comes to Berlin with her mother (a dowdied-down Abbie Cornish) and little brother (Tom Sweet) in the hopes of becoming lost. Back in their provincial burg the authorities are looking for Jews and mixed-race children. Perhaps Lenya, whose father was an African soldier with the occupying French at the end of WWI, can hide her racial heritage among the city’s masses.

The irony here is that Lenya considers herself 100 percent German…and so does the law, which defines citizenship as being passed down from mother to child.  But mixed-race children are widely viewed as a blemish on the Reich, so Lenya must be very careful where she goes and who she sees.

It’s a small miracle, then, when she is befriended by Lutz (George MacKay), a blonde Hitler Youth who is not only prejudice free but romantically taken with his exotic new neighbor.

(more…)

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“OPERATION FINALE”: The banality of evil

Posted in Uncategorized on August 31, 2018| 1 Comment »

Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley

“OPERATION FINALE” My rating: B

122 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Israel’s 1961 show trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has spawned several documentaries, a hit stage play (Robert Shaw’s “The Man in the Glass Booth,” later filmed) and numerous other movies. Particularly noteworthy was 2012’s “Hannah Arendt,” about the political philosopher who covered the trial for The New Yorker and was so unimpressed by Eichmann’s demeanor that she coined the phrase “the banality of evil.”

With “Operation Finale” first-time screenwriter Matthew Orton and director Chris Weitz (“About a Boy,” “A Better Life”) have tackled the Eichmann saga and in effect given us two films.

The first is a suspenseful procedural about Mossad agents who track down the “architect of the Final Solution” in Argentina, risking life and limb to spirit their kidnapped prey back to Israel and a final judgment.

But wrapped in the middle of that thriller is an equally absorbing drama, a psychological duel between Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) and the Jewish agent (Oscar Isaac) who must somehow bend the will of this egocentric anti-Semite.

Much of the film’s first half is devoted to planning the mission. Like many of his fellows, the first inclination of agent Peter Malkin (Isaac) is to simply pop a bullet into Eichmann, who under an assumed identity has been working as a foreman at a Buenos Aires auto plant and devoting his spare time to nurturing an underground Nazi movement. (Under Juan Peron’s fascist leadership Argentina was already halfway Nazi; Eichmann and his goose-stepping pals had plenty of friends in politics and law enforcement.)

But Israeli bigwigs very much want Eichmann alive.

The skillfully depicted abduction goes as planned — but there’s a hiccup.  The El Al plane that is supposed to whisk the agents and their captive to Israel is delayed by red tape.  Eichmann and his guards must spend a week in a safe house, keeping a low profile as outraged Argentine law enforcement launch a citywide manhunt. (Here’s a bit of irony…15 years after the war we have a houseful of Jews still hiding from right-wing thugs).

(more…)

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“THE BOOKSHOP”: Bait and switch

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Emily Mortimer

“THE BOOKSHOP” My rating: B

113 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

“The Bookshop” is an insidious bit of bait and switch.

As it starts out a viewer is confident that he or she is entering familiar territory.  In 1959 a war widow opens a bookshop in  picturesque British coastal town.

So this is going to be a feel-good movie about the power of literature to illuminate gray lives, right? And the lady storeowner will undoubtedly find romance with one of the locals…maybe a handsome fisherman?

Also, our  heroine sells controversial books like Nabokov’s Lolita. So the film will depict the conflict between the local blue noses and everybody else’s right to read, eh?

Uh, no.

Isabel Coixet’s film, adapted from Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel, is much darker than that.  Here the common man is something less than noble and the good guys shouldn’t expect to win.

All might have gone swimmingly had Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) not chosen as the site of her new book shop the long-abandoned  Old House, a historic structure fallen on hard times. She buys the place at bargain prices, installs shelves and orders crates of books.

She hires Christine (Honor Kneafsey), the child of local laborers, as her after-school assistant.

And she cultivates the attentions of the  eccentric  town hermit, Edmund (Bill Nighy), a voracious reader living in a slowly decaying mansion. He’s this movie’s version of Miss Havisham.

(more…)

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“JULIET, NAKED”: Swooning and cynicism

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Ethan Hawke, Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd

“JULIET, NAKED” My rating: B+

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The drolly amusing “Juliet, Naked,” isn’t my favorite film based on work by Nick Hornby (that would be the sublime “Brooklyn”) but it’s right up there with “About a Boy” and “High Fidelity.”

And like the latter, it’s a comedy/drama that pivots on a guy obsessed with rock music.

Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) teaches pop culture at a small British community college. He’s the kind of geeky prof who, for a course on HBO’s
“The Wire,” supplies his students with a glossary of American inner city words and phrases. You can imagine him leading serious  classroom discussions about the etymological roots of “mofo” and “ho.”

His biggest crush, though, is on a marginal American singer/songwriter named Tucker Crowe whose LP “Juliet”  holds the 43rd place on at least one list of great heartbreak albums.

Duncan loves “Juliet” and scarfs down every bit of information he can find about Tucker Crowe, who vanished a quarter century ago.  Duncan is also the proprietor of a Tucker Crowe web site where he trades theories with other Crowe disciples and writes rambling blogs about how Tucker is the J.D. Salinger of alt rock.

In short, Duncan is perfectly ridiculous. (Not that we can’t relate. Most of us have our little hard-to-explain musical fixations: Richard Thompson. Eric Andersen. The Beau Brummels.)

Anyway, Duncan’s live-in girlfriend Annie (Rose Byrne) has just about had it with the whole Tucker Crowe thing.  When an early stripped-down demo recording of the songs on “Juliet”starts circulating on the Internet, Annie writes a withering (and anonymous) review of what is being called “Juliet, Naked.”

(more…)

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“SEARCHING”: Life online

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »

John Cho

“SEARCHING” My rating: B 

102 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Most of us spend too much time staring at screens. So why has it taken so long for Hollywood to deliver a feature film that tells its story exclusively through Internet images?

In Aneesh Chaganty’s “Searching” a single father sets out on a desperate quest to find his missing teenage daughter. We never see or hear him — or any of the characters — except via some sort of electronic device …especially a computer monitor or a smart phone.

Initially it would seem that this approach — it’s a kind of variation on the “found footage” gimmick –would be limiting, both narratively and visually.

But that’s not the case. Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian find ingeniously inventive ways of telling their story. Often we’re looking at a computer screen overflowing with various windows between which our eyes flit…at least at those times when the filmmakers don’t employ editing and zooms to focus us on a particular bit of business.

The movie opens with a montage of home videos featuring David Kim (John Cho), his wife and daughter. Through these we see the family in good times and bad — the Missus is eaten away by cancer over years. The heart-grabbing effect is not unlike the brilliant photo album introduction of Pixar’s “Up.”

Post-tragedy, David and daughter Margot (Michelle La) appear to have a more or less normal relationship. We see them exchanging texts and communicating over FaceTime. He’s a concerned parent, but in no way smothering.

Which may be his big mistake.  One night Margot goes to a friend’s house for a late-night study session.  It’s almost 24 hours before David realizes she never came home and is no longer answering her cell phone.

He starts tracking down and calling Margot’s friends. They know nothing (they’re not really friends…more like acquaintances); worse, David begins to realize that his girl had a private life to which he wasn’t privy. For years he’s been giving her $100 a week to pay for her piano studies; now he discovers that she abandoned those classes months ago, but has continued to collect the cash.

The panicked father contacts the cops and Detective Vick (Debra Messing) takes the case. Despite her admonitions that he should leave the investigating to the professionals, David cannot help digging ever deeper into Margot’s digital history. What he finds is starting to look like a parent’s worst nightmare.

(more…)

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“NICO, 1988”: End of the rope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Trine Dyrholm as Nico

“NICO, 1988” My rating: B

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The German model/singer Nico — real name Christa Paffgen — had her 15 minutes of fame in the late 1960s when Andy Warhol cast her as the blonde monotone figurehead of the Velvet Underground.

She really didn’t sing all that much — mostly she banged a tambourine and looked ethereal — but for a brief time she was the embodiment of cool Teutonic eroticism.

That’s not the Nico writer/director Susanna Nicchiarelli is interested in.  No, this  Nico is 20 years of hard living down the road, a bloated brunette addicted to heroin and pretty much pissed at everyone and everything.

Nicchiarelli’s docu-drama follows Nico in her last two years, when she toured Europe with a ragtag bunch of musicians in a broken-down van and worked hard at alienating anyone who cared about her.

As portrayed by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm, this Nico is no longer beautiful…but she’s a force of nature. Rebelling at being window dressing for other, better musicians, she is determined to live her life her way, even if it means (and it will) an early grave.

“Nico, 1988” unfolds as a series of one-night stands as the singer — who wants to be known by her real name but cannot outrun the Nico legend — alternately enthralls and alienates her audiences. When the mood is upon her she can be an arresting presence, prowling the stage and snarling out the lyrics to her compositions.  At other times she looks bored  and contemptuous.

(more…)

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