2012: BIOPICS...OR NOT

Red Tails is pretty darned awful, and that's a crying shame because the story of the 332nd Fighter Group, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, deserves better. Even very good actors, like David Oyelowo (wonderful in The Paperboy), are wooden, and the love interest is unnecessary and contrived. It is the first feature film directed by Anthony Hemingway, but it is really the product of its executive producer George Lucas who, according to Stephen Holden's NYT review, described the film to Jon Stewart as “Patriotic," “jingoistic,” “old-fashioned,” “corny” and “inspirational for teenage boys.” Nuff said.




If only Red Tails had a contemporary character who was in some way channeling historical figures, it could have joined the ranks of what I'm calling "Layer after Layer ...after Layer." Into this category go Madonna's W.E., along with Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal's The Words, and that morass of layers written and directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski, Cloud Atlas. The principle problem with this narrative trope is that the contemporary story always falls dreadfully short of the historical story. Is this a novelistic tic that has infected film through Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Gilles Paquet-Brenner's adaptation of Tatania de Rosnay's Sarah's Key, Wayne Wang's adaptation of Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and the Wachowski-Tykwer adaptation of David Mitchell's novel?

Bored wife Wally obsesses over Wallis Simpson, the commoner for whom King Edward (Get it? W. E.) abdicated the throne of England. Wally believes she is channeling Wallis, especially when she attends the Sotheby's 1998 auction of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's estate. W.E.'s narrative structure can't get out of its own way. It trips and falls over its layers, and has more and more trouble getting up.

The second major quarrel I have with the film (setting aside its general vapidity) is that it dredges up the hysterical female (as did last year's Black Swan and A Dangerous Method and this holiday season's Anna Karenina). Observing this phenomenon last year in the NYT, Terrence Rafferty put these films into context with their progenitors from Lady in the Dark, The Snake Pit, The Three Faces of Eve to Marnie, Repulsion, A Woman Under the Influence, The Story of Adele H., Face to Face to Frances and Mulholland Drive.

Movies hold up a critical mirror to the tragic fact that, in the narrative ways through which we make movies and the uncritical ways in which we receive them as audiences, sexist stereotypes remain just as entrenched as racist ones.




So while we're on the subject of parallel lives and layering, we might as well take up the aforementioned The Words, directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal. (The Words' layers required two directors; the stratum of Cloud Atlas required three!) The foundation of the story rests on an historical incident in 1922 when Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife, lost a suitcase containing some of his manuscripts in a Paris railway station. The Words has blocked, contemporary author Rory Jansen -- whose publisher, public and girlfriend are anxious for his second book after his first success -- find a valise in an antique shop. In it is -- you guessed...a manuscript, which will turn out to be, not by Hemingway but by an unnamed Old Man (Jeremy Irons as our only bright light). The film moves into the manuscript's historical story as Rory reads. When he turns down the last page, and after only a brief hesitation, he plagiarizes word for word his brilliant best seller. So we have Rory and his girlfriend, the ghost of Hemingway and Hadley, the couple in the WWII manuscript, and the Old Man and his story. As Robert Ebert said, "I doubt if either one of us could pass a quiz on [the] plot. It's a level too many and sidesteps a more promising approach: What if the movie were about the real Ernest Hemingway discovering that his lost manuscript had been found and published by a stranger?" Exactly. (Stephen Holden's NYT review)


This still sorta says it all...


Curtis Hanson and Michael Apted directed Chasing Mavericks, a nice little movie based on the Santa Cruz surfing legend Jay Moriarity. Jay's (Johnny Weston) father has abandoned him and his mother. Having dreamed of the surf seemingly all of his days, Jay longs to follow his bliss and dogs surfer Rick (Frosty) Hensson (Gerard Butler) to coach him. Frosty finally gives in and becomes, naturally, both mentor and surrogate father. The ensuing story is pretty formulaic, but with big waves and impressive surfing spectacles. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review)




Unlike Manohla Dargis in the NYT, I thoroughly enjoyed Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock based on the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello. The film is as much a biopic about Psycho as it is about Hitchcock and his wife Alma. Dargis finds the characterization of Hitchcock prurient, but it seemed to me that Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren clearly enjoyed playing off of each other and brought intelligence and insight into the dynamic of a complicated yet mutually respectful relationship. The film chronicles the difficulty Hitchcock went through and the risks he and Alma took to get Psycho made.




Bill Murray as FDR and Laura Linney as his distant cousin Daisy are pleasant enough in Roger Mitchell's Hyde Park on Hudson, but the real stars of the film, the ones who give it sparkle, are Samuel West as Bertie and Olivia Coleman as Elizabeth, the King and Queen of England on the eve of WWII. Where I did not object to a bit of titillation in Hitchcock, I was bothered by it in Hyde Park. I'll use that hackneyed excuse that one should not demean the office of the president. As it is portrayed here, Roosevelt surrounds himself with a bevy of women whom he uses as emotional crutches in parallel to his wooden crutches. The film is redeemed, however, as I say, by the wonderful portrayals of Bertie and Elizabeth by West and Coleman, who have a wonderful onscreen rapport and convey the sense not only of a deeply loving and reciprocal marriage but of a keen friendship far deeper than anything between Roosevelt and any woman in his circle. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review)

2012: MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTARIES

Manohla Dargis's NYT review argues that Dan Lindsay and T. J. Martin's "Undefeated is all about uplift, about cranking the spirituals and making you cry and laugh and root for its subjects.... [who are] waiting to get called in, to go home, to realize their dreams, to have a future that may never arrive, a trajectory that this movie scarcely considers." Maybe this documentary does not overtly consider that a hoped for future may never arrive in spite of the football players' hard won victory game, but I thought about it throughout every frame. Bill Courtney and Mike Ray, two white volunteers, coached the North Memphis Manassas Tigers, the worst team in the state of Tennessee, all the way to the season final play off game. This is as much a film about race in America as it is about football, though, again, it is not overtly discussed. Finally, it is about confronting odds in the face of almost certain futility. Courtney says, "You think football builds character. It does not. Football reveals character." (The film opened in February 2012, but was a 2011 Oscar Documentary contender.)




It is the controversial policy of the United States Bureau of Land Management to round up wild horses each year, arguably to control populations. In 2007 the Mustang Heritage Foundation partnered with the Bureau to organize the first Extreme Mustang Makeover, and in the ensuing years has facilitated the adoptions of more than 3,3000 mustangs. Husband-wife Greg Gricus and Alex Dawson's Wild Horse, Wild Ride follows nine trainers of widely varied backgrounds through the 100 days they have between being assigned a wild horse and showing it at the two-day Extreme Mustang Makeover showcase in Fort Worth, Texas. (There are as many as six Extreme Mustang Makeover challenges across the country in any given year.)  The day after the showcase the horses are auctioned in what is most often a heart-wrenching breakup with their trainers, who are rarely able to afford to bid what the horses bring. (Another documentary, Mara LeGrand's 2011 Wild Horses in the Winds of Change, challenges "the current management system and the non-scientific myths and biased views about wild horses" says the film's website.)





Last year's My Own Private Cinema covered Buck: The inspiration for Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer is Buck Brannaman, the subject of Cindy Meehl's debut film Buck. Brannaman grew up performing, with his brother, trick rope routines from the age of three, in an act promoted by their brute of a father. Finding himself without direction in his early 20s, Buck encountered Ray Hunt and his teacher, Tom Dorrance, the pioneers of natural horsemanship, a method of training horses that focuses on creating a bond of trust rather than a breaking into submission. The philosophy struck a chord with the young man who himself had suffered relentless abuse. There are moments when Meehl's inexperience as a filmmaker shows, but watching Buck and his horse move as one is a dance you will not soon forget. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review/A NYT Critics' Pick)




David Siegel is the mogul of Westgate Resorts. In the way housing loan agents cajoled people into signing onto mortgages they would never be able to service in order to profit from the transaction, Seigel's agents cajole people into extravagant time-share packages. It was very lucrative, and his wife, Jackie (Seigel's third and younger by 30 years), indulged herself by proceeding to build and furnish the largest and most expensive single-family residence in the U.S. at 90,000 square feet ...until the banks halted construction. The Great Recession had arrived.

Lauren Greenfield's The Queen of Versailles traces their humble beginnings and their classic rags to riches to, well not quite rags again, but at least a slip in the trajectory. Jackie, to her credit, got herself a college education in her former, younger life and worked professionally, though by the time we see her she's almost become another person, shopping obsessive-compulsively even if that now means Walmart. Their current digs, a mere 26,000 square feet, are littered with fast food debris, dog shit from their litter of fluffy white pups, pet snakes and turtles and lizards dead from neglect, and the various tacky accouterments of eight children. Watching, Schadenfreude might be the first reaction, but it ebbs, for there is something about the Siegels that speaks simply to a matter of degree. In his NYT review, A. O. Scott observes that "Schadenfreude and disgust may be unavoidable, but to withhold all sympathy from the Siegels is to deny their humanity and shortchange your own. Marvel at the ornate frame, mock the vulgarity of the images if you want, but let’s not kid ourselves. If this film is a portrait, it is also a mirror." (A NYT Critics' Pick)

Joe Nocera's NYT article on David Siegel's lawsuit against Greenfield.








I'm including Bart Layton's The Imposter here, though it's really a mix of documentary (interviews and home video footage) and re-enactment -- a biopicdoc? Nicholas Barclay was a blond, blue-eyed 13-year-old living in San Antonio, Texas, when one day he disappeared. He showed up in Spain, where authorities contacted the family who sent his sister to bring him home. I have often argued that the dominant theme of David Mamet's plays and screenplays is the limitless desire and uncanny ability so many people possess to deceive themselves. This is a true story of just such inexhaustible self-deception. Despite the 23-year-old French-Algerian Frédéric Bourdin's general lack of likeness and his black hair, he gets away with the con. "Everyone is contaminated," as Jeannette Catsoulis says in her NYT review, "from Child Protective Services and the United States Embassy in Madrid to the American news media and the F.B.I." And what became of Nicholas Barclay -- and why?

2012: COUTURE DOCUMENTARIES

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (a subtitle any good curator is bound to appreciate) is the only 2012 film here. I include the others because, taken together with Vreeland, they make a perfect quartet. Certainly without knowing it at the time, I came of age under the aesthetic influence of Vreeland, Yves St. Laurent, and Vidal Sassoon. They have all had an indelible impact on how we dress, how we wear our hair, and consequently, how we live our day to day lives. Meanwhile, Bill Cunningham has been documenting fashion as it is translated day in, day out by real people outside the ateliers.



The word "doyenne" might have been invented for Diana Vreeland, who reigned over Harper's Bazaar for two and a half decades and then Vogue for almost a decade more. Lisa Immordino Vreeland's Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel chronicles a woman born in Paris, of a British father and American mother, into a world  of art and culture, a girl who consorted with the likes of Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes. The early years of her marriage, to Reed Vreeland, were spent in England, where she was presented at court to King George V and Queen Mary. The couple returned to New York during the Depression. With finances short, Vreeland realized that in order to live the life she wished to invent for herself, she needed money, so in 1936 when Carmel Snow, editor at Harper's Bazaar, asked her to write a column for the magazine (Vreeland would call her trifles "Why Don't You?"), she embarked on a half-century-long career as the self-made "high priestess of fashion."

Like Yves St. Laurent, she was an admirer of Coco Chanel, and like Laurent, she sensed the need for fashion to be reinvented to fit the needs of women in the age of modernity -- streamlined, yet chic; practical, yet extraordinary. Always at the forefront, not just of fashion but of pop culture (she hobnobbed with Jagger, the Beatles, Warhol, Catherine Deneuve, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Oscar de la Renta, et al.), she took the potential flaw (Streisand's nose, Jagger's lips, Twiggy's anorexic look) and made it the centerpiece of a person's style. She made models' careers -- Veruschka, Penelope Tree, Lauren Hutton. When she departed Vogue, friends arranged a post at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, then a dusty little afterthought. Despite the Met's initial consternation, Vreeland transformed the department into a showcase, a vibrant, living tribute to the history of fashion, bringing to it the curatorial brilliance she had brought to the fashion magazine -- for what is a successful fashion editor if not a curator of the body on the page?







Over the holidays I rented David Teboul's 2002 double documentaries YSL: His Life and Times and Yves St. Laurent: 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris. YSL covers Laurent's childhood (at age three he told his great aunt that she needed to change her dress, and she complied!) and early career. A fashion contest got him a position with Christian Dior, and by 26, he had opened his own house of couture. An ardent admirer of Coco Chanel, Laurent appreciated the simplification Chanel had brought to women's clothing while retaining, though pared down, elegance. The film chronicles a vanishing world of which Laurent may have been the last great couturier, and also makes clear that Laurent understood that the working woman deserved accessibility to chic fashion and was the first to champion ready-to-wear lines. YSL is slow-paced, but 5 Avenue Marceau moves at a crawl...and that's OK. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the 8-week-long creation of a single season's collection, specifically the spring/summer collection for 2001. From conception to sketch to toile (the term for the plain, white linen fabric and for the test garment made from it) to final preparation, which itself is a laborious process of fabric selection, adjustments, meticulous collar and flounce creation, nipping and tucking, sometimes on a dress form, but most often on the living person of the model. There is no hustle and bustle, just a hush of concentration and a palpable mutual respect amongst everyone involved in the process. The designer's admiration and gratitude toward the men and women dedicated to the art of drape and handwork, and their admiration and gratitude toward him, are infectious. 





I was in Houston last spring and though my cheap hotel had no ice machine, much to my chagrin, it did have HBO. Playing was Craig Teper's 2010 Vidal Sassoon: The Movie. I know several women who wear Vidal Sassoon haircuts. One is an artist who patronized Sassoon's salon in the 1970s. The others probably have never heard of Sassoon except as the name of a product line, nor do they know that he was the first to utilize the success of his name to create a product line brand. Vidal Sassoon probably understood hair better than anyone who ever lived. While my mother was still going to a "beauty parlor" to have her hair rolled onto curlers, teased and sprayed into a helmet, Sassoon was making hair bounce and swing for the swingin' '60s. He made it look effortless, when in fact it was exactingly difficult (to which I, as one who has been given dozens of botched efforts at Sassoon-esque haircuts, can attest). It took years for Sassoon to perfect the five-point haircut that would forever transform the way women wear their hair.




For those who don't know, in her New York Times review Carina Chocano explains that Bill Cunningham is "the legendary street-fashion photographer and society chronicler for The New York Times." Richard Press's 2010 Bill Cunningham New York was previewed at my theater in 2011, and then never came, so I rented it over the holidays. For decades Cunningham's eye has synthesized what fashion means. From the abstraction of couture runways, to the society events where the wealthy who can can afford to don such creations go to see and be seen, to the person on the street from the flaneur to the Wall Street MBA to the housewife to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker -- Cunningham is not simply interested in fashion, he is interested in how it is translated into real clothes on real people and morphed into individual style.

Fashion is our most immediate manifestation of the aesthetic, and by extension, serves a valuable function. "In Paris, every six months," says Cunningham, "fashion educates the eye. Why would the world [perceive] fashion as ... a frivolity that should be done away with in the face of social upheavals and problems that are enormous. The point is that fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life. I don't think you could do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization."

Whether cycling around traffic or crouching amongst street bustle in his signature Paris street sweeper jacket, Cunningham, with his encyclopedic knowledge of fashion history, is the omnipresent arbiter of where fashion stands on any given day. He would self-effacingly reject the idea. "I don't decide anything. I let the street speak to me, and in order for the street to speak to you, you've got to go out there and see what it is."


Bill Cunningham photographing women attending a Fashion Week show in Chelsea

2012: MUSIC DOCUMENTARIES

Each of these three marvelous music documentaries is a 2012 NYT Critics' Pick.


As Stephen Holden points out in his NYT review, Kevin Macdonald's Marley "is far from hagiography; and while stocked with musical sequences, it is not a concert film. Few if any of his songs are heard all the way through [a fact that bothered me]. Marley is a detailed, finely edited character study whose theme -- Marley's bid to reconcile his divided racial legacy -- defined his music and his life." As Marley becomes more absorbed in Rastafarianism, he takes on an almost cult guru persona. This grandiosity may have played a  part in his refusal of treatment for the melanoma that would eventually kill him.

There is a town in north Ontario...
Whereas the 2006 Heart of Gold was a poignant foray into nostalgia, a reunion of old friends playing familiar favorites in an easy, loving ramble, the solo performances that constitute Jonathan Demme’s third concert film with Neil Young, Neil Young Journeys, are at times almost confrontational, as if to say – especially in the first set – we’ve been talking about slaughter, love and war, the rumblin’ in the ground, and still we have to ask: When will I learn how to listen, learn how to give back, learn how to heal? The question is not asked plaintively. It is howled, wailed, implored. The second song is "Ohio," delivered as an incantatory denunciation as we watch the historical footage of the events at Kent State and tributes to the four who died.

The second set is tempered with a few lighter pieces – "My My, Hey Hey (Into the Black)," the then unreleased "Leia," which oscillates between the tinkling of a toy piano sounding much like a calliope and a thunderous antique pipe organ – but the set is only slightly less intense with a magisterial rendition of "After the Gold Rush" on the same organ.

The whole often has an almost operatic quality, while at the same time being a palpable valentine to his audience. Just as we think the concert is over, Young seems to have second thoughts in his dressing room and returns to the stage for an encore of "Walk with Me," which he addresses directly to his fans. He closes by setting the reverberating guitar in front of the speakers. As it sings its feedback across the music hall, he periodically shakes and adjusts it in a musical equivalent of action painting, looks back again over his shoulder to the crowd, and heads back to the road.

The concert is juxtaposed with Young’s road trip in a 1956 Crown Victoria, from his hometown of Omemee, Ontario, 90 miles southeast to Toronto’s Massey Hall. Reminiscing, he says that we may lose people along the way but will always have them with us in memory. “I lost some people I was traveling with, I missed a soul and the old friendship.” (Stephen Holden's NYT review)

      

I have a problem when 1% celebrities -- musicians, movie stars, athletes -- drop in to show their solidarity with the Occupy movement. The elephant in the crowd leaves me squirming. So as I came to know Rodriguez over the course of an hour and three quarters, my admiration for both the music and the man grew exponentially. Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul's documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, is the story of a poor poet/singer-songwriter who had the good fortune to record two albums in Detroit, and then the misfortune to have them go unheard by his countrymen. It is the story of the South African anti-apartheid movement, an uprising fueled, at least by its white proponents, with bootleg recordings of Rodriguez's music, a development of which the musician was wholly unaware in a pre-Internet era and a South Africa sealed off from the rest of the world. It is the story of an ascetic artist who languished in obscurity, but in 1998, learns of his South African fame, flies there to play to what he does not realize will be packed adoring crowds and will result in a series of South African tours in subsequent years (as well as tours of Sweden and Australia). Sold-out concerts are profitable, and yet, Rodriguez gives the money away, and continues to work as a construction laborer and to live in a tiny, ramshackle house. Not least, it is the story of family devotion and love and the redemptive power of art.






I saw Searching for Sugar Man the weekend before I saw the South African artist Jane Alexander's exhibition Surveys (From the Cape of Good Hope) at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston. It was an astounding synchronicity. Art in America conducted an interview with the artist.

2012: MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

As a Matthew McConaughey fan I was glad to see him in many incarnations this year. There were the Southern Gothic freaks of Flannery O'Connor descent, and small town characters that faintly evoked Sherwood Anderson's grotesques.


Richard Linklater trekked to Carthage, Texas (not just Texas, but East Texas, which the film makes clear distinguishes it, in dialect, conventions and inclinations, from other distinct Texas regions) to tell the true story of undertaker Bernie Tiede, delightfully portrayed by Jack Black -- a compelling figure on the screen. Shirley MacLaine plays the wealthy, widowed sourpuss Mrs. Nugent, whom Bernie sets himself the challenge to befriend -- a challenge he achieves too successfully as she increasingly circumscribes his independence to the point of essentially holding him hostage. He finally reaches the breaking point, for which we, and the Greek chorus of Carthaginians, forgive him. DA Danny Buck alone, in a seriocomic turn by Matthew McConaughey, sees Bernie as deserving of punishment rather than as a victim of the smothering Mrs. Nugent. The townspeople of Carthage play themselves, including McConaughey's mother Kay. By turns charming and menacing, Bernie is a must-see for anyone who has ever experienced small town Texas. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review)



Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike is mostly just plain terrible. I was at lunch with a friend, when out of the blue she said, "Let's go to a movie!" Magic Mike was the movie she picked. Walking out I remarked, "Well, that was the thinnest plot possible," to which she replied, "What plot??!!" Manohla Dargis, writing in the NYT, found Channing Tatum in the lead, as a construction worker who opens up his new employee to the world of male stripping to make an extra buck, "terrific." I simply found him miscast. By contrast, Matthew McConaughey as the club owner gives it his all and ya gotta love him for it.
 


My indie theater staff tells me I saw the cut version of William Friedkin's Killer Joe, adapted from Tracy Letts's play. If so, the film still does what it can to earn its NC-17 rating. Matthew McConaughey can be superb (even in a failure of a movie like Magic Mike), and he does not disappoint as Joe. Chris has gambling debts and decides the easiest way out is to have his mother Sharla killed for the insurance money. Joe, the hit man he invites into his self-destructive American Gothic family, sees where the whole scenario is headed, and insinuates himself into the dysfunction with cunning manipulation. Manohla Dargis argues in the NYT that "The other characters are merely supporting players, and so too are the actors wrangling the roles," and believes Emile Hirsch (brother Chris) and Juno Temple (sister Dottie) are particularly miscast. I disagree. I think the ensemble works. I have peripherally known people like Hirsch's Chris. (I was rejected for a jury in juvenile court for a trial of a girl accused of a stabbing. She was 14, but if you didn't know that and saw her on the street you would have guessed a weary 35-40.)

Dargis also takes issue with Friedkin's direction. Again I disagree. Friedkin uses the seedy landscape to excellent effect as the backdrop for the domestic abjection of a family whose greed and stupidity bring their own downfall. Scenes oscillate between gritty vistas and the family's cramped trailer with fewer and fewer open spaces as the claustrophobia tightens. Dargis says Friedkin "...takes such a creepily intimate approach to Sharla’s and Dottie’s violent degradation that you might think he enjoys it." The camera work, it seems to me, doesn't intend to revel in the degradation; rather it seems designed to show us what we would rather not confront in the underbelly of human nature. The shots are artfully framed, the camera work interesting without getting in the way. And I defy anyone to fail to enjoy the moment at which Joe has had it with the drivel on the ever present TV!

Alert: This is not a movie for the squeamish. If you're bothered by psychopathic violence, physical and psychological, this is NOT for you.




Lee Daniels (Precious) adapted The Paperboy from Pete Dexter's novel. A. O. Scott, writing in the NYT, calls it a "hot mess" -- and what a hot mess it is. A Southern Gothic Bildungsroman set in and around a pre-air conditioned Florida Everglades in 1969, every frame drips with humidity, sweat, sex. Nicole Kidman is Charlotte Bless who, in the course of pen pal exchanges with convicted killer Hillary Van Wetter (!), chillingly executed by John Cusack, has come to believe in his innocence. She convinces Fort Lauderdale investigative reporter Ward Jansen (McConaughey) and his researcher Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) to come to town and set justice right. The paperboy is Ward's younger brother Jack (Zac Efron), who can't help his hormone-fueled id from falling for the teasing, tease-haired vamp. To avoid a spoiler, suffice it to say that Charlotte and Hillary's first jailhouse encounter implicates the audience in its voyeurism as much as anyone physically present in the scene. The story slithers deeper into the Everglades, as it penetrates deeper into the id. Every performance is a gem in this steamy primordial ooze.

2012: RELATIONSHIP MOVIES III

Lee Toland Krieger's Celeste and Jesse Forever was not as chick-flicky as I feared it would be, but couldn't these people have some real problems? Written by its co-star Rashida Jones it's the story of a couple who have broken up but are "still friends" and annoy everyone around them with their repertoire of inside jokes. It takes way too long for them to figure out that they each need to move on. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review)




I first heard comedian Mike Birbiglia wryly recount his adventures in sleepwalking on This American Life. His film Sleepwalk with Me, a not even thinly disguised fictionalization of his story, succeeds on the same virtues that his stand-up succeeds. The man can talk exclusively about himself in a completely self-effacing manner. Adapted from his one-man stand-up show, the movie is, as the title suggests, about his sleepwalking. It's also about the tenacity required to elbow one's way into the world of stand-up comedy, and about navigating a romantic relationship in the face of real life. (Stephen Holden's NYT review)




Clint Eastwood seems to be working at creating his own brand of grumpy old man. In Trouble with the Curve, directed by Robert Lorenz, he plays long in the tooth baseball scout Gus.  His friend Pete (John Goodman), concerned about Gus's increasing eccentricities (and grumpiness), convinces Gus's big city lawyer daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to come out to check on him. She ends up accompanying Gus on a scouting trip, where they run into an aspiring baseball announcer (Justin Timberlake), who -- no surprises here -- ends up pursuing Mickey. It's pretty predictable, yet a step above Hallmark fare. (A. O. Scott's NYT review)




The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a lovely movie, but it frustrated me more than once. It contains a handful of scenes that are what a friend of mine calls "movie moments," those magical frames of film when the story, the camera, the lights, the music, the actors conspire to transport us into the world of pure cinema. Problem is, almost before we can be swept into the moment, the director cuts away. More than once I wanted to say, "Whoa there!!" I'm not sure why this happened. Stephen Chbosky directed the movie, which he adapted from his very own book. So was it in the interest of keeping the movie short that the audience is cheated? Nonetheless, it is a touching story of three adolescent outcasts who find their way through their friendship. We experience their coming of age through the eyes of Charlie, sensitively portrayed by Logan Lerman. Sensing a sympathetic soul, ostentatiously gay Patrick (played beautifully over the top by Ezra Miller, who also played the Columbine-like assassin in We Need to Talk About Kevin) and his stepsister (played equally sensitively by Emma Watson) take Charlie under their wings. (Manohla Dargis's review)




I said that Wes Anderson makes a case that dysfunction doesn't look so dysfunctional if we are willing to embrace the dysfunction. David O. Russell's Silver Lining Playbook does exactly that. Its bipolar hero Pat and likewise bipolar heroine Tiffany -- revealed in remarkable performances by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence -- are simply human as are we, if, admittedly, more intense. That intensity and lack of filters allows for keener insights into human foibles than we usually witness. One is ever aware of Pat's mother's love and concern for her son in the countenance of Jacki Weaver, and Robert De Niro again demonstrates the depth of his craft as Pat's father and a man whose emotional responses have been shaped by his generation's idea of what it is to be a husband and a father. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review)




And for THE relationship movie of the year...  I know I've read Crime and Punishment, and I know the story of Anna Karenina, but for the life of me I can't remember if I've read it. Whether I did or not, I am convinced that there must be more to hang one's hat on than there is in Joe Wright's film version. For all of the inventive staging, I just wanted to know why she hadn't thrown herself under the train already. I also want to know what the deal is with the re-emergence of the hysterical woman, teeming with repressed sexuality, who has made a comeback in Black Swan, A Dangerous Method, Hysteria, and now Anna Karenina. Terrence Rafferty did an interesting article on this subject in the NYT when A Dangerous Method came out in 2011. (A. O. Scott's NYT review)

2012: RELATIONSHIP MOVIES II

I'm guessing that with To Rome with Love Woody Allen was trying to recapture some of the charm of Paris at Midnight. Paris had to do with Paris, but Rome could have as easily been set anywhere. There we had two parallel stories; here we have, if memory serves, four? There's just a bit too much going on, especially considering no story is related to any other. At the center is the Woody Allen surrogate, the neurotic New York intellectual, an architect this time played by Jesse Eisenberg, who lives with his girlfriend (Greta Gerwig), and who is shadowed by a sort of architect alter ego/doppelgänger (Alec Baldwin). Of the various story lines, I found the most interesting to be one involving Leopoldo, a married, low-level bureaucrat (Roberto Benigni) whose routine existence is interrupted when he is plucked from his front stoop and whisked to a television station, interviewed about the most banal aspects of his life, and thus becomes a celebrity craze hounded by paparazzi. We periodically return to his story – and the others – until, toward the end of the film, a new average Joe is similarly interviewed and Leopoldo slips back into oblivion. (A. O. Scott's NYT review)




I find Steve Carrell to be something of a screen phenomenon. No matter what character he plays, he exudes empathy, and the camera loves him. Not in the way that the camera loves, say, Marilyn Monroe, John Travolta, Al Pacino. It’s something else. As if the camera isn’t even there. Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is a sweet little road trip of a movie. Carrell plays Dodge, an insurance salesman who has been made redundant, as the British say, in the face of end of days. He encounters Penny (Keira Knightly, infinitely more enjoyable here than in Anna Karenina), who can’t get back to England to be with her parents for the apocalypse, and along the way they meet a Canterbury-style collection of characters. Unfortunately, just as imminent doom hovers over the movie, so does its romcom outline. (A. O. Scott's NYT review)



  The two big stars of David Frankel’s Hope Springs are Tommy Lee Jones, who does a wonderful job playing against type, and Meryl Streep, who has spent an entire career playing a veritable multitude of diverse roles. The fire went out of Kay and Arnold’s marriage long ago. She has become increasingly troubled by their estrangement, enough to do something about it. That something is to insist they seek the guidance of a therapist played by Steve Carrell, who nicely rounds out the ensemble. It is always a pleasure watching these actors work, but Frankel’s movie is ultimately a Hollywood vehicle when it could have been a more complex and rewarding narrative. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review)

Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Ruby Sparks takes "meet cute" into another dimension, one that I found a little annoying. Zoe Kazan wrote the screenplay and stars along with Paul Dano, who seemed miscast to me as the struggling writer Calvin. In the midst of a novel, Calvin is suffering writer’s block when, one day, the manuscript’s heroine shows up in the flesh. Initial disbelief turns to romantic infatuation once he is a) certain she is incarnate, and b) certain that he can dictate her behavior by what he writes. When Calvin comes to fully realize that manipulation is the enemy of love, the idyll must be reconciled with reality. (Stephen Holden's NYT review, which gave the film a NYT Critics' Pick)

The blurbs for the DVD of Peter Hedges' The Odd Life of Timothy Green include “Brings enchantment home…”, “An inspiring, magical story…”, “Heartwarming…”, “A celebration of family….” I usually stay far away from anything described as “heartwarming,” but it must have been a really hot day or a very uneventful weekend. Jim and Cindy have been unable to have a child so, as a final act of acceptance, they write down everything they would wish their child to be on slips of paper that they place in a box and bury in the garden. After a storm of Biblical proportions, Timothy Green sprouts from the mud, complete with leaves growing from his legs. He is smart, adorable, kind, and wise beyond his years. Many Hallmark moments. (Did Hedges, who also wrote the script, avoid naming Jim "Jack" to avoid potential comparisons?) A. O. Scott's NYT review makes an interesting observation: "The Odd Life of Timothy Green is the third movie this summer featuring a magical, wish-created companion, the others being Ted, in which a child's toy becomes a foul-mouthed best buddy, and Ruby Sparks, in which a writer's imagination conjures the perfect girlfriend. Two may be a coincidence, but three is a trend, and these movies clearly represent a disturbing crisis in human relationships."

Which brings us to Jake Schreier's Robot and Frank, where aging Frank, skillfully played by the wonderful Frank Langella, in a not too distant future, receives a robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard very much like Hal) from his son to serve as a surrogate companion for the senile senior. Frank is a former "two-story man" (who's done some time as a result), and warms to the robot when he realizes it's a quick study and would be useful in a heist Frank is planning of a rich, smarmy-mouthed yuppie who wants to remove the books from the town library. Susan Sarandon is the librarian Jennifer, on whom Frank has a crush. As Frank's fondness for the robot grows, the robot is careful to remind Frank on more than one occasion that  he is a robot and does not have feelings, but Frank can't help but rely on him more and more for emotional support. The film delivers its fair share of humor and high jinks, but slowly we learn more about Frank, and Jennifer, too. Proust it ain't, but it makes no pretensions to be anything more than what it is, which is a lovely little movie about the meaning of memory and love. (Manohla Dargis's NYT review)