Drug addiction movies are a bit like Holocaust movies.
Even if the film is well made, the subject matter is tremendously off-putting and depressing. It takes something remarkable, a new way of looking at the topic, to make the painful bearable.
“Beautiful Boy” comes close. It is based on journalist David Sheff’s memoir of dealing with his son Nic’s addiction, as well as a second memoir by Nic. There’s little emphasis here on the usual tropes of the genre…back-alley drug buys, spoons and needles, withdrawal agonies.
Instead the film puts a parent’s horror and anxiety front and center, and by doing so it forces every viewer — or at least those with children — to question how they would deal with a similar situation.
Coddle? Criticize? Wash your hands of an uncontrollable child?
At various points in Felix Van Groeningen’s film, all those options are examined. And it helps immeasurably that the film stars Steve Carell as the elder Sheff and the ever-resourceful Timothy Chalamet as his tormented son, Nic.
The screenplay by Van Groningen and Luke Davis cleverly juggles its time frame, opening with a conversation between the deeply concerned David and a drug counselor and then employing a series of jumbled flashbacks to tell the story of this father and son.
A narratively straightforward, step-by-step depiction of young Nic’s descent into depravity might be too much to handle; by zigging and zagging between the family’s homey past and its uncomfortable present, the film offers an emotional buffer between the audience and the film’s inescapable angst.
“FREE SOLO” My rating: B (Opens Oct. 26 at the Tivoli)
100 minutes | MPAA rating:PG-13
The faint of heart had best pass on “Free Solo,” a mountaineering documentary with so many close calls that the audience spends a good chunk of the running time with their hearts in their throats.
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s film follows young Alex Honnold, who eschews pitons and ropes and the usual paraphernalia of mountain climbing in favor of his hands and feet. As a free soloist, he clambers up impossible cliffs with nothing but his own strength and a sort of sixth sense about what cracks and indentations can accommodate his fingers and toes to support his weight.
“Free Solo” follows Honnold over two years as he prepares to be the first to freestyle climb Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan, viewed by mountaineers as “the most impressive wall on earth.” We also learn that the most famous of Honnold’s fellow free soloists have fallen to their deaths…it’s a high-mortality calling.
There’s a good deal of information here about how Honnold approaches this killer challenge. He has climbed El Capitan dozens of times using ropes and safety equipment, trying to decide what route he’ll take once he’s on his own. Frequently he loses his grip and falls. The lines that save him won’t be there on the day of the big climb.
Over time he maps out in his head every nook and cranny of the 2,000-foot tall mountain face, and choreographs his every move, planning what each hand and foot will be doing in a sort of life-or-death choreography.
Most filmic treatments of the Holocaust — be they documentary or fictional — bend toward the atrocities of the Nazi era.
It’s hard to beat billowing smokestacks, jackbooted fascists and piles of naked corpses for compelling cinema.
What’s remarkable is how few films have addressed the fates of Holocaust survivors after their liberation from the camps.
Jon Kean’s “After Auschwitz” does precisely that. It’s not a “scientific” documentary. Oh, it has its fair share of statistics, but mostly it’s based on the experiences of six women who emigrated to the U.S. (three are now deceased) and survived to tell their tales.
These are, in fact, the same individuals — Eva Beckman, Rena Drexler, Renee Firestone, Erika Jacoby, Lili Majzner and Linda Sherman — who formed the backbone of Kean’s 2007 doc “Swimming in Auschwitz,” which provided a record of the camps as experienced by woman prisoners.
There’s a temptation to believe that the Holocaust story ends with liberation. But beginning a new life from scratch is no easy thing.
As these women point out, their early days of freedom were anything but free. Though the Allies tried to feed them, the food was so rich it acted as poison on nutrition-starved bodies.
Moreover, liberating armies were ill prepared for the medical, psychological and social needs of thousands of former prisoners. There were few services available to the newly freed; resources were sapped just dealing with the corpses (27,000 reportedly at the Bergen-Belsen camp).
It is estimated that one in five survivors died in the first month after liberation.
Some of Kean’s subjects recall wandering into German villages and ransacking homes and stores in an attempt to find proper sustenance. They were, in effect, reduced to criminal status.
Others made their way back to their home towns, often riding on the outside of boxcars. They found the reception anything but welcoming. Countless returning Jews were murdered; many Polish Jews decided they were better off returning to Germany and taking up residence in displaced persons camps.
A majority of survivors learned they were the only members of their families still breathing. Many entered into loveless marriages (“Not a flower in sight,” recalls one woman) simply for the sake of survival. (“It filled a hole.”)
Even after years had passed and they found shelter in the U.S. these women carried the scars of their experiences. Depression was common. One says she couldn’t look at a uniformed Boy Scout without thinking of Hitler Youth.
Few related their horrific experiences to their family and friends. Silent suffering was the norm. Over time, though, a couple of these women became spokespersons for other survivors, speaking publicly about what they had been through.
Though filled with powerful images — lots of vintage newsreels, Army Signal Corps footage, still photos and other visual aids — “After Auschwitz” is in some ways a scattershot affair. The film jumps from subject to subject, with the result that it’s difficult to follow the story arc of any one of these women. It’s also a bit difficult to get a handle on their personalities.
Yet the cumulative effect gets under the viewer’s skin. Despite the darkness on display, ultimately “After Auschwitz” celebrates the resilience of the human character.
These women survived and prospered, after all. But the pain, one suspects, never goes away.
The Dames: Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench
“TEA WITH THE DAMES” My rating: B-
84 minutes | No MPAA rating
“Tea With the Dames” is a slapdash affair, less a well-crafted documentary than a fly-on-the-wall peek at a reunion of four great English actresses.
Theatre geeks will be captivated. Others perhaps not so much.
The “dames” of the title are Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins, all of whom have received that honorary title from Queen Elizabeth for their contributions to English arts.
The youngest is 83, the oldest 88; one of them is blind; two are widows; the other two apparently are divorced (although their present marital status is never addressed).
For this doc director Roger Michell assembled the four at Plowright’s lovely country home (the one she shared with the late Sir Laurence Olivier) and over the course of a long weekend filmed them talking and sipping the occasional cordial. The conversations are illustrated with clips and photos from the women’s illustrious careers.
Over the course of the film the ladies discuss their careers, their craft, their private lives (within limits). Occasionally director Michell attempts to steer the conversation, not that anyone pays him much attention. (“Let’s talk about aging,” suggests his off-camera voice. “Fuck you, Roger,” one of the dames shoots back.)
“Tea…” has no format, really. The girls talk about what they damn well want to talk about.
One of the America’s most hellish rituals — the family Thanksgiving gathering — takes on even more demonic dimensions in Ike Barinholtz’s “The Oath.”
Barinholtz, a familiar face whose name you never knew, does triple duty here, serving as writer, director and star, combining the usual holiday dysfunction with torn-from-the-headlines politics. The resulting black comedy is like finding a hand grenade in the roasted turkey.
As the film begins we learn that the U.S. president has instituted something called “the Patriot’s Oath,” a sort of loyalty waiver citizens are expected to sign.
“Nothing happens if you don’t sign,” assures a White House spokeswoman. “But there are perks if you do.”
The news infuriates suburban couple Chris (Barinholtz) and Kai (Tiffany Haddish). Theirs is a mixed-race marriage, and as one might deduce, they are fiercely liberal.
Especially Chris, who is one of those apoplectic lefties who invariably takes a confrontational and self-righteous approach to political matters.
The citizenry has a year to decide if they will sign; the new law goes into effect on (appropriately) Black Friday, a day after Thanksgiving.
Chris and Kai’s family gathering is like a cross section of the voting public. Chris’ brother (Jon Barinholtz, the writer/director’s brother) is a sort of perennial frat dude whose new girlfriend (Meredith Hagnar) has a world view cloned from Ann Coulter.
Chris’ sister (Carrie Brownstein) is a fellow liberal, as is her hubby (Jay Duplass), who has come down with an intestinal monster and spends most of the holiday curled in a ball.
Mom (Nora Dunn) tries to referee the mounting sibling turmoil (“Hey, no politics!”); Dad (Chris Ellis) keeps as low a profile as possible.
Prays Chris: “God, who I don’t believe in, please give me strength to get through the next three days.”
Huge chunks of “Thunder Road,” Jim Cummings’ triple-threat Sundance feature (he’s the writer, director and star) are so cringeworthy that it takes an act of will to keep watching.
Cummings portrays Jim Arnaud, a small-town policeman whose life is coming down around his ears.
In the first scene — filmed in one long take — Jim delivers a rambling eulogy at the funeral of his mother.
Jim — who has shown up in full uniform, as if this were a military service — slowly becomes emotionally unhinged despite his best efforts to play the rational adult. Pretty soon he’s engaged in a hair-raising stream-of-consciousness rant about his mom’s work (she was both a CPA and operator of a ballet school), his own struggles (dyslexia), his wife and daughter (the marriage is going south).
His mother’s favorite artist was Bruce Springsteen, he says, and Jim has brought a boom box so that he can lip sync to “Thunder Road” while performing a two-left-feet dance routine in front of the coffin. Blessedly, the boom box malfunctions; nevertheless, Jim attempts the dance in silence before collapsing into a weepy, humiliated glob of quivering flesh.
It’s hard to watch (yet fascinating). But writer/director Cummings isn’t finished with us yet. After the opening credits he replays the entire opening scene; we sit twice through Jim’s very public meltdown.
The rest of “Thunder Road” — a fiendishly ironic title since 1) it suggests some sort of action drama, which this isn’t, and 2) we never do hear the Springsteen recording (probably the music rights were too expensive for Cummings’ indie effort) — consists of scenes from our protagonist’s rapidly unravelling life.
The story arc of “Black ’47” will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Western about a posse in pursuit of a wiley outlaw (or Apache).
What makes the film special is the setting.
Lance Daly’s movie unfolds in Ireland during the potato famine, a situation rarely if ever depicted in the movies. While the film’s dramatic tropes follow an expected trajectory, the background against which the action plays out — and which informs the film with a moral imperative — becomes a character in its own right.
In 1847 army deserter Martin Feeney (James Frecheville) arrives in his Connemara birthplace after a long journey from India. He finds a land wracked by starvation after the failure of the potato crop. Dead bodies lie by the roadsides. Virtually everyone is a shoeless beggar.
He discovers that his mother has died and his brother has been executed by the British, and he tries to intervene in the eviction of his widowed sister-in-law and her children, who promptly freeze to death.
Arrested by the local constables, Feeney slaughters a half dozen officers in their own station house, then goes on to kill the judge who hanged his brother, behead the land agent who initiated the eviction, and destroy a revival tent where Protestant missionaries offer soup to the dying…providing they give up Roman Catholicism.
With “First Man” wonderkid director Damien Chazelle has segued from the high artifice of a musical (“La La Land”) to a soaked-in-realism docudrama.
“First Man” is the story of Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.
The creation of NASA, setbacks in the U.S. space program and the eventual triumph of a moon landing already have inspired the HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon” and films like “The Right Stuff” and “Apollo 13.”
The emphasis from Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer is on momentous events as experienced by one man…and not a terribly demonstrative man at that.
The Neil Armstrong of this retelling is a jet jockey whom we first meet in a near-disastrous sub-orbital test flight of the experimental X-15 plane. Like a lot of guys who risk death as part of their daily routine, he keeps his feelings — both fear and love — pretty much to himself. Whatever ego he possesses stays hidden…getting the job done is his primary goal.
So it’s a good thing, then, that Armstrong is played by “La La…” star Ryan Gosling, who has the skill and talent to project the inner turmoil of a man who doesn’t give away much.
The screenplay cannily focuses on Armstrong’s most traumatic experience. It has nothing to do with ejecting from a crashing plane and being dragged across the landscape by his wind-propelled parachute.
No, it’s the cancer death of his young daughter, a beautiful child who, thanks to the Chazelle/Singer screenplay, appears periodically to Armstrong’s inner eye, a reminder that no matter his stoic appearance, there’s fierce emotion bubbling beneath.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead has been on the brink of stardom for a long time.
She’s delivered some terrific TV work (“Braindead,” “Fargo”), sometimes in lead performances, but most of her movie roles have fallen into the supporting category.
“All About Nina” should change that. Written and directed by Eva Vives, “Nina” provides Winstead with perhaps her juiciest role to date.
Nina Geld is a standup comic whose fiercely rude act (menstruation, noncommittal sex) reflects her own angry essence. She’s perennially pissed because comedy is such a boy’s club; in her private life she avoids intimacy.
Emotional intimacy, anyway. Sex is something else…Nina’s a tart-tongued man-eater who picks up strangers and leaves them whimpering for more.
Despite her tough talk and swagger, Nina is weirdly vulnerable. After a set — even a wildly successful one — she stumbles offstage and invariably pukes in an ice bucket or other suitable receptacle. On some level her art hurts.
“All About Nina” follows her from NYC to Los Angeles, where her agent has wrangled her an audition for a TV show. But at the film’s real core is her relationship with Rafe (Common), a contractor who senses the pain beneath Nina’s rough exterior and decides to go slow. (It may be one of the movies’ rare instances of a guy turning down sex.)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Common
Vives’ screenplay has its ups and downs. The depiction of the comedy world — especially backstage at a showcase where woman comics are competing for the same gig — feels absolutely right.
And the slow-burning Nina/Rafe relationship is sweet and sexy despite the landmines with which Nina’s past is littered.
But there’s a big reveal here about our heroine’s childhood that will shock many viewers (though it retrospect it probably shouldn’t)…it’s not that the film shouldn’t have gone there so much as Vives hasn’t quite figured out how to finesse it.
“All About Nina” is a minor film but as a showcase for Winstead it delivers in spades.
It would be easy enough to pigeonhole “Colette” as a bit of feminist backlash against male privilege and arrogance.
After all, the real-life tale of Nobel Prize-winning author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette reads like a cautionary manifesto. Her earliest literary triumphs were published under the name of her husband; it wasn’t until she broke sales records and began to resent her anonymity that she laid claim to her work (though it took a court battle).
Writer/director Wash Westmoreland (“Quinceanera,” “Still Alice”) and his collaborator Richard Glatzer focus their film on the marriage of young Sidonie (Keira Knightly) to roue-about-town Henry Gauthier-Villars (Dominic West), an older fellow who under the pen name Willy edits a variety of publications.
Henry is a womanizer, a big spender, an inveterate gambler, and he isn’t above sticking his own name on the pieces he has struggling writers churn out for his magazines. He flirts constantly with women and bankruptcy, yet manages always to live way beyond his means.
As “Colette” begins our heroine is a country girl, pretty but untested in the ways of the big city. Henry, an army buddy of her father, visits frequently and initiates an affair with the teenager; ere long they’re married and living in Paris where she gets a quick education in sex, society and her husband’s brigandish approach to letters and commerce.
Butler's Cinema Scene 