Cut Bank (2014)

Prairie noir set in the real world small town of Cut Bank, Montana. The movie feels like an entire season of Fargo condensed into about 90 minutes, and boy does this movie want to be Fargo, it wants to be Fargo way too much. Really good cast including Billy Bob Thorton, Oliver Platt, and Michael Stuhlbarg (all of which have filmed a season of Fargo) and Bruce Dern and John Malkovich who should do seasons of Fargo. In the end its like a dollar store version of Fargo. Has a few good ideas, none of which are adequately explored. **

See instead: Fargo

Creation (2009)

You remember that sequence in Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World where they are walking around the Galapagos Islands collecting biological samples? Well that sequence made it seem as though a feature film about Charles Darwin could actually be watchable, and to play it safe they cast the doctor from Master & Commander Paul Bettany as Darwin. Well the resulting film is an uneven one. Based on the novel Annie's Box by Darwin descendent Randal Keynes, which in turn is based on family lore, the movie explores how the devastating emotional affects of the loss of his oldest daughter Annie ultimately effected Charles decision to publish his groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species, one of the biggest paradigm shifting books in world history.

Things I liked about the movie include Paul Bettanys performance as Charles, the stuff about the Darwin family particularly his relationship with his religious wife Emma (played by Bettany's real life wife Jennifer Connelly), and the flash back story sequences about The Beagle expedition and Jenny the ape. I didn't like the device about Charles talking to his dead daughter, even though Martha West is good in the part (this is her only movie). Also this movie has a double decker, 'it was only a nightmare'/ waking up in shock sequence. What on Earth is that doing in a Charles Darwin biopic. Still even though its uneven I found it enlightening to learn more about Charles Darwin's personal life, a subject I knew next to nothing about before viewing this movie. **1/2

Oscar Predictions 2017

Mostly pretty safe this year:

Best Picture: La La Land
Best Actor: Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)
Best Actress: Natalie Portman (Jackie)
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), but would also be happy with

Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals)

Best Supporting Actress: Very tough one this year but I'm going to go with Naomie Harris (Moonlight)

Best Director: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

Best Original Screenplay: Should be 20th Century Women or Manchester by the Sea, will be La La Land.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Moonlight

Best Animated Film: Zootopia

 

Select lesser categories:

 

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Star Trek Beyond

Best Visual Effects: Deepwater Horizon

Best Foreign Film: Toni Erdmann (Germany)

Best Original Score: La La Land

Best Original Song: "City of Stars" La La Land

Best Documentary Feature: O.J.: Made in America

Best Sound Editing (good year for this category): Arrival, would also be happy with Deepwater Horizon 

Best Costume Design: Jackie

Best Cinematography: La La Land

Best Production Design: La La Land

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silence (2016)

Having at one point in his life hoped to be a Catholic priest Martin Scorsese is one of our more unconventionally religious filmmakers. He's made a number of religiously themed films before, such as Kundon, and most famous and controversially The Last Temptation of Christ. Scorsese first started working on turning Silence, a 1966 historical novel about Roman Catholic priests in 17th century Japan by the author Shūsaku Endō, into a film around 1990. As can often happen with an unconventional passion project the movie got pushed back. The finished feature is a tale of two Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who go to Japan in search of a lost colleague (Liam Neeson) who disappeared in an intense period of persecution years before, and are subsequently horribly tortured and forced to confront the limits of their faith. The film juxtaposes some of the worst of humanity with some its best, beautiful locations, horrible acts, humility and pride. It does all of this with a disagree of silence that can be somewhat disorienting. It is a meditative movie that even in the few instances when it can be said to force feed you interpretations of things, does so with enough ambiguity to keep you wondering. The film is unmistakably a work of art, I can admire it in a number of ways, though in its quietness it did not prompt the strong emotional reaction one might typically expect of a movie of this sort. Non the less it rates the full ****

House of Strangers (1949)

House of Strangers is a nourish adaptation of Jerome Weidmans' novel I'll Never Go There Any More, which has also been adapted as a western in 1954 (Broken Lance) and a film about German circus performers (The Big Show) in 1961. The core of the story seems to be about how an overbearing father can tear his family apart by choosing a favorite son (in this case Richard Conte) at the expense of the others, and endanger a family empire (in this case, banking). Edward G. Robinson won a best actor award for this at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival, though to its determent the performance now plays very strongly of its time. The plot is actually fairly complicated, though at the same time not a lot seems to happen. Still its an interesting enough film and contains several story and thematic parallels to the later Godfather Trilogy, not the least of which is Conte's presence. ***

The Lego Batman Movie (2016)

I must admit that I have never seen The Lego Movie, I want to, it's on my list, but I've yet to see the film. I was however well aware of Will Arnett's breakout vocal characterization of Batman in that film, gravelly, megalomaniacal and dry. Said portrayal carries the bulk of this spin off film, The Lego Batman Movie, with Arnett getting many great lines. Even though I have not seen the original Lego film I get the sense this movie must in many ways be a pale imitation of it, it has a safe message about the importance of families, most of the gages are safe, its full of pop culture cross reverences of everything from Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings to Jaws and Gremlins, as well as songs that are maybe not quite awesome. Enjoyable, but unless you have kids maybe don't pay full price. **1/2

The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)

H.G. Wells helped expand and adapt his own short story of the same title The Man Who Could Work Miracles into this comedy fantasy picture for famed English producer Alexander Korda. As part of a bet between three God's, one of whom is played by a young George Sanders, an Essex haberdashers assistant (Roland Young) is granted nearly limitless super human powers, which he spends the whole movie dithering over how to use. Intriguing premise feels largely squandered, this movie aims for the fanciful but comes off dull and ineffectually preachy. I have a similar feeling about the work of George Bernard Shaw, and Well's earlier fiction is much better then this, maybe its a Fabian Society thing. *1/2

The Last Five Years (2014)

The Last Five Years is the (rather modestly budgeted) film version of the (presumably modestly budgeted) off Broadway musical of the same title. It the story of the rise and fall of a five year relationship between aspiring actress Cathy Hiatt (Anna Kendrick) and budding novelist Jamie Wellerstein (Jeremy Jordan). The chronological presentation of events is notably a-typical as "all of Cathy's songs begin after they have separated and move backwards in time to the beginning of their courtship, while Jamie's songs start when they have first met and proceeds through their crumbling marriage." (Wikipedia) The novelty wears thin however in that Jamie is not all the likeable, in fact he's kind of jerk, and even Anna Kendrick's best efforts can't make any of the songs memorable. This movies a slog and I can't recommend it. *1/2

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

The first film directed by Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki for his own studio. Based on Miyazaki's own 1982 Magna of the same name, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind concerns "a princess of a small kingdom on a post-apocalyptic Earth with a bioengineered ecological system, who becomes involved in a war between kingdoms while an environmental disaster threatens humankind."-Wikipedia. Miyazaki's imagination is super creative and original, and this film really hit home for me how consistently high quality his work has been over the course of quite the career. You have a strong female protagonist, you have what is lightly a message movie that is both very Japanese and very contemporary in it's 1980's era concerns, I'd say the film feels enjoyably of its time. The movie also has what I would consider to be the strongest score of any of Miyazaki's movies, I've been listing to selections from it over the week since I saw this picture. Hayao really came out of the gates running. Also I suspect that the fox squirrel is a direct creative ancestor of Pikachu. ****

House (1977)

House the 1977 Japanese horror film has no relation to House the 1986 American horror film other then that both movies take place partially inside of a house. The first feature film directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, who had previously directed commercials and short experimental art films, took advantage of a Japanese film industry in a moment of transition to make whatever the hell he wanted, and it turned out to be a huge hit. House is loosely a horror film but really goes all over the place in terms of tone and visuals, there are early portions of this film that play something like a Japanese version of Sesame Street, and then later there is nudity. The plot concerns seven high school girls who travel to the country home of one of the girls (Kimiko Ikegami) aunt (Yoko Minamida) for summer vacation and are all gradually killed off in various ironic ways by 'the house' itself (a girl who likes to play the piano is eaten by a piano, a girl who likes to eat watermelon is turned into a watermelon, ect). It's all very strange, very kinetic, and it all gets to be a little much. Though only 88 minutes in length the persistent, ungrounded strangeness of the film wore on this viewer, I think this could have been a great 20 minute short, but at this length I got tired. Still depending on your tastes this film could well be worth seeing, even if just to satisfy you curiosity. This movie is really something, it just turns out not to be something for me. **

Elegy (2008)

The great Nicholas Meyer adapted a lesser known Philip Roth novella, The Dying Animal, and Spaniard Isabel Coixet very capably directs his screenplay as Elegy. The narrative goes back to that very Rothian story well of an illicit romance between a successful older man and mysterious younger woman. Now that kind of thing I've seen enough times before that I got kind of bored with it, but the stuff that comes after the breakup is where things get interesting. Penélope Cruz is of course beguiling as the woman, and Ben Kingsley is rather impressive as the man. Kingsley unfortunately has become a bit of a self stereotype, he seems most often to be cast in films essentially just to be Ben Kingsely, here as the urbane, lustful, ageing literature professor he's really given a chance to act, and its wonderful to see. Dennis Hopper is joy every time he's on screen here as Kingsely libertine poet friend, and that's Blondie front woman Debbie (billed as Deborah) Harry as his long suffering wife. Peter Sarsgaard is Kingsley's mildly estranged son, and that plot line is moderately interesting counterpoint to the primary goings on. Patrica Clarkson is Kingsley's secondary love interest. The movie is in no hurry to get where it is going and lags a little at parts, but really comes together at the end and has some poignant things to say. Of the four Philip Roth screen adaptations I've seen, I'd rank this number two. ***1/2

Crazy Love (2007)

Documentary about a woman who is blinded by thugs hired by her ex boyfriend, he goes to prison, and then 15 years later they get married, and stay married for decades, in fact until her death six years after this movie came out. As strange as the story summarized above is, it gets even stranger. Really a fascinating subject for a documentary, quite well made, and with the extraordinarily candid participation of those involved. It's certainly crazy, whether its love is another question. ***1/2

A Monster Calls (2016)

Author Patrick Ness adapted his own Carnegie Medal winning children's fantasy book for this film version by Spanish director J. A. Bayona. Set in the U.K. it is the story of a quiet 12 old boy named Conner (newcomer Lewis MacDougall) whose mother (Felicity Jones, finally a movie where I can really like her performance) is dying of cancer. Bullied at school, resentful of his rather formal grandmother who is trying to help (Sigourney Weaver, attempting a vaguely British accent), and disappointed with his well meaning but largely absentee father (Toby Kebbell) who visits from America, Conner is a boy with little outlet for great pain. That is until he is visited by a tree like monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) who is intent on telling him three stories which may help him better understand and cope with his situation. The stories are parables with counterintuitive messages that are nicely rendered in water color-esque CGI. The film itself is a parable to teach children how to better process the unfairness of a loved ones death, but is also resonate to older viewers. This is a smart movie, it did make me think, and there are some nice subtleties hear that many younger viewers may not fully pick up on. I was pretty impressed. ***1/2

Maps to the Stars (2014)

Maps to the Stars is a project its writer Bruce Wagner has been trying to get made for decades. It had its start as a self published book called Force Majeure: The Bud Wiggins Stories, featuring the character of Bud Wiggins, a Hollywood limo driver, a job that Wagner had worked himself as a young man. Wagner would go on to a varied carrier as a novelist, screen writer, actor, and producer, even directing a couple of times. All of this, as well as a childhood spent in L.A., where his father was a producer on Les Crane's television talk show, would feed into this script (which Wagner would adapt into a 2012 novel called Dead Stars) and director David Cronenberg would turn into this movie.

The finished project has Robert Pattinson playing the young limo driver and aspiring actor/writer, only now his characters name is Jerome Fontana and he's not even the central player in the story. Instead that axial role is played by Mia Wasikowska as Agatha, a mildly disfigured 18 year old girl who comes to Hollywood from Jupiter, Florida and forces herself into the lives of a fading actress (Julianne Moore), a child star (Evan Bird), a high profile celebrity therapist (John Cusack), and others including Pattinson, Olivia Williams, and Carrie Fisher, who plays herself. Sarah Gadon also appears playing the mother of Julianne Moore's character, a long dead and more famous actress who appears in film clips, and as a ghost or hallucination who repeatedly visits Moore. This is a Hollywood indictment film in the tradition of Sunset Boulevard and The Player, and it can get pretty dark, and pretty odd. John Waters is on record as loving this film, which should tell you something about it.

One of the things I found quite interesting about this film is its repetition of themes with another of Wagner's works, one which I just saw for the first time this past weekend. Wild Palms is a television mini-series, and species of over the top, metaphysical soap opera, that aired on ABC in 1993, was written by Wagner, and based on a comic strip he first had published 1990 and later put out as a graphic novel. These are very specific, very odd themes and motifs which are repeated, including the phrases 'Maps to the Stars', and 'Everything Must Go', which appear as slogans on the walls at the headquarters of a Scientology type religion in Palms, as well as the presence of tattooed children, mantra type chants, accidental incest (though in Palms its actually between two first cousins, and secretly arranged by others without their knowledge), and dysfunction in seemingly successful, high profile Los Angeles families. There is an unusual psychology here which I am sure must permeate Wagner's other works, and which I'm oddly curious about, while at the same time it weirds me out. Why these themes?

Maps to the Stars is a strange film, it characters are mostly not pleasant, its plot peculiar, but it all works surprisingly well, leaving you with a film that's kind of fascinating. It's a voyeuristic movie that seeks the underbelly behind the surface sheen, part melodrama, part reality television, all bizarre, and ashamedly watchable. ***

Moonlight (2016)

Moonlight, director Barry Jenkins film based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney, is one of this last years most powerful movies. It is also something new, or at least new to me, and presumably most people who see this film. It is about growing up, poor, black and gay in America, and the tremendous disadvantage that puts you at in life. Broken up into three segments, and portrayed by three different actors, all quite strong, it is the story of Chiron (no last name given) as he grows from a shy boy of around 10, to a conflicted teenager, to a young man trapped in a life he wouldn't have chosen for himself. There is a rich cast of supporting characters who come in and out of Cheron's life, all rendered with impressive flawed humanity. Though I knew few of the performers in this film it is defiantly the years best cast. This movie is a great achievement all around, I felt as though I had been able to see the world, briefly, through the eyes of someone who I had never seriously considered how the world might look like to, and it is quite the enlightening experience. Like Manchester by the Sea this is a movie I would recommend seeing with limited plot foreknowledge. ****

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Casey Affleck is pretty well assured a best actor Oscar for the impressively restrained and internal performance he gives in this picture. Perhaps the only thing that could derail him in receiving this top honor is a renewed interest in some sexual harassment suits from 2010, but from the very brief investigation I did into those I thought the charges were surprisingly mild.

Afflick plays Lee Chandler, a bitter, divorced handyman in Quincy Massachusetts, who is surprised to learn after his brothers passing, that he has been made sole guardian over his 16 year old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Returning to his sea side former home town of Manchester to settle his late brothers affairs, Lee is put into renewed contact with his ex wife Randi (Michelle Williams, great as always) as well as others who knew him before, and we learn what made Lee into the man the he now is, and that is what makes this movie amazing.

This is a film that is best approached with minimal foreknowledge, so as tempting as it might be to go in depth, I'll limit myself to saying just what a great film this is. Afflick's performance is the stand out but the supporting cast is all good, with Hedges particularly strong in his part. It is a film that combines profound subtlety with powerful emotions, and effectively captures that numbed period after a close loved ones death, as well as the beauty of its setting, and the humanity of its characters. Perhaps the best movie of the last year. ****

Miss Sloane (2016)

Political procedural which I thought was pretty dull at first, but picks up nicely in the second half and turns out to have been very well constructed. Jessica Chastain pretty much caries the whole film, it wouldn't have worked with an actress of lesser caliber. The plot concerns the political battle over passage of a divisive (and never much elaborated upon) gun control measure, with Chastain playing a high profile lobbyist originally approached to fight against it, who switches firms in order to fight for it. Think what you will about gun control the issue is more or less a McGuffin to push the plot along, if you can sit through a mostly boring first half you might be pleased with the resolution. **1/2

The Inn of the Sixith Happiness (1958)

Very much a production of its time The Inn of the Sixth Happiness gives the life of missionary Gladys Aylward the full Hollywood treatment. Both CinemaScope spectacle and melodrama, it was directed by Mark Robson, who had just brought Payton Place to the screen the previous year. The short, plain, British missionary is here portrayed by tall, gorgeous, Swede Ingrid Bergman who pulls it off with the same sweet, religious sincerity she brought to The Bells of Saint Mary's. Among the ways the film plays lose with the truth is shoehorning a love interest in for the life long spinster who claimed never to have kissed a man. The love interest is a Chinese general who is made to be half Dutch and played by Curt Jurgans, because 1958. The local Mandarin is played by another white man, Oscar winner Robert Donat in his last performance, and he's really great in this. The movie felt a little too long to me but is generally well done, and you can tell the studio spent some serious money on this thing. It's subject Gladys Aylward was not pleased with the film and I'd be curious to see what a more faithful rendering of her life might look like in a film today. Still Hollywood would often change the truth because they felt they could get a good movie that way, and this film certainly qualifies as a good one. ***1/2

The Founder (2016)

A corruption narrative. The best description I have heard for this movie, and one which I wish I could take credit for but can't, is that it is like There Will Be Blood with french-fries. The Founder finds drama in the birth of one of the most ubiquitous of American corporate empires. It tales the story of the at first hopeful partnership between Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) an ambitious but mediocre purveyor of milkshake multi mixers, and New Hampshire born brothers Richard James "Dick" McDonald (Nick Offerman) and  Maurice James "Mac" McDonald (John Carroll Lynch) who essentially invented fast food at their small San Bernardino, California burger joint. Though the partnership begins with promise in the mid 1950's, within the next decade the brothers and Kroc despise each other, and in the end  Kroc really screws them over.

The best thing about the movie is the compelling performances in the principle three roles, particularly Keaton as Kroc, though all three impress as very unique, very individual, very believable people. Kroc had been seemingly on the edge of failure his whole life, and when he saw the true potential of the McDonald Brothers business model, he just had to have it. As portrayed here it really changed him, and though at the beginning of the film he wasn't a sterling specimen of a man, a kind of wannabe hustler, by the end pride and megalomania have set in big time.

The film is also pretty rich in its supporting players, including Laura Dern as Kroc's first wife, Linda Cardellini (as the woman who would become his third), Patrick Wilson, and B.J. Novak. I was never bored in this movie, its almost funny that this story could prove as gripping as it did, and being Machiavellian about burgers is in itself funny. Directed by John Lee Hancock, who also did Saving Mr. Banks, The Blind Side, and The Rookie, he certainly excels in these kind of off kilter success stories. ****

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

A redemption narrative. Matthew McConaughey won his Best Actor Oscar here for playing Ron Woodroof, a hard living Texas electrician who contracts HIV in the 1980's and goes on to found and run a successful  'Buyers Club' in Dallas. Buyers Clubs were apparently something of a niche phenomenon in the 80's, it was a way for people suffering from HIV or AIDs to get around laws against non approved drugs for their treatment. To avoid the legal consequences of paying for the non FDA approved drugs directly, people would pay a monthly membership fee to a Buyers Club, and get the medication as a 'free' benefit of that membership.

The movie takes its liberties with this true story, which even without them would be an inspiring one, and which McConaughey does a very good job of anchoring. To enhance the effect of Woodroof's personal transformation they make him start off as more of an asshole then he purportedly was, but fortunately never make him into to much of a saint afterword's, though by the end he is a vastly transformed man. Jared Leto won an Oscar here as well for Best Supporting Actor as Rayon, a composite character who is a flamboyant homosexual, and a counterpoint to the heterosexual Woodroof. Jennifer Garner is another composite character, Dr. Eve Saks (shades of Oliver Sacks?) a compassionate doctor and sort of chaste love interest for McConaughey.

A well balanced film with some strong performances, it finds a compelling human interest story to ground a telling of AIDS crises America from a perspective I hadn't seen. This story had been in a development hell since the 1990's and at one point Dennis Hopper was slated to direct. French Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée does a good job here with the Texas 80's setting. The movie envelops you with a feeling of its quality and importance, yet remarkably never felt that self important to me, which is something I feared some going in. ****