CHANGELING (2008)
The problem with real life is that it
doesn’t divide easily into three acts or have a smoothly defined dramatic arc.
In Clint Eastwood’s latest film, the director sacrifices drama in an effort to
recreate every aspect of this sensational child-abduction case from 1928.
Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins, a
single mother working as a telephone company supervisor in Los Angeles, who
comes home from work one Saturday to find her nine-year-old son gone. Five
months later, the LAPD make a big to-do when they claim to have found the boy
in the Midwest and reunite him with his mother. The only problem is that
Christine tells the police right off that this isn’t her son. They’ve brought
her another boy claiming to be her son and despite her continued protests, the
police refuse to admit to the mistake.
This nightmarish scenario, along with the
portrait of a thoroughly corrupt police department, is superbly told by
Eastwood and his screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, as is the other aspect of
this story---a series of murders that took place on a chicken ranch in the
Riverside County community of Wineville (now Mira Loma). At the same time
Jolie’s Christine is fighting to get the police to look for her real son,
information comes to light about these murders of young boys 50 miles away.
Jolie doesn’t allowing Christine to be
reduced to just a collection of screaming and crying scenes, instead creating a
believably strong, independent woman in an era when those weren’t admired
female qualities who refused to give up on her child.
But too many of the other characters---a
publicity-conscious police captain (Jeffrey Donovan), an anti-police radio
preacher (John Malkovich), a mental institution doctor (Denis O’Hare)---are either
completely evil or saints. In the last third of this overly long picture, the
drama grinds to a halt as Eastwood shows us the conclusion to each aspect of
the case. As interesting as it is to know how it all turned out, that approach
doesn’t make for compelling cinema and most of the actors just go through the
motions. What the film spends close to an hour on could have been artfully
wrapped up in 15 minutes.
The last part of the “Changeling”
(referring to folktales of children being switched by mystic creatures) is
partially salvaged by a fabulous performance by Jason Butler Harner (who’s
mostly working in television) as the disturbed Wineville mass murderer. Though
he doesn’t have much screen time, his twitchy, wild-eyed performance is one of
the year’s most memorable. Also quite impressive is Eddie Alderson as the boy
who first alerts the police to this horrid series of murders.
Eastwood remains in the midst of an
incredible creative run that has produced three great films, “Mystic River”
(2003), “Million Dollar Baby” (2004) and “Letters from Iwo Jima” (2006), and
two very good ones, “Blood Work” (2002) and “Flags of Our Fathers” (2006) in
the past seven years, but this time he’s faltered a bit by not being tough
enough on himself in the editing room. Still, for an hour and a half,
“Changeling” is a heckuva film. And, on top of that, his second 2008 picture,
“Gran Torino,” opens in a couple of weeks.
TANNER ‘88
(1988, TV) and TANNER ON TANNER (2004, TV)
Robert Altman’s acclaimed HBO series
about a Michigan congressman running for the 1988 Democratic presidential
nomination hasn’t aged well.
Written by “Doonesbury” creator Garry
Trudeau and starring Michael Murphy (“Nashville,” “Manhattan”), “Tanner ‘88” is
a behind-the-scenes look at the ugly side of the campaign trail, where
over-caffeinated, win-at-all-cost politicos do their best to manipulate the
press, the public, even the candidate in search of the ultimate prize.
Twenty years later, it plays like a
film-school student’s project, filled with enthusiastic, but amateurish
performances (save for Murphy, who is the calm, steady center of this 11-part
series), unresolved story lines, one-note characters that quickly become
tiresome and totally lacking original insight into the process.
Altman’s
films and Trudeau’s comic strip had been mining this territory for years before
“Tanner ‘88” with more insight and humor. And this series looks awful, having
been shot on videotape rather than film to make it look more immediate.
The
key players are Tanner’s savvy campaign manager T.J. (Pamela Reed); Tanner’s
girlfriend (Wendy Crewson) who works for Michael Dukakis’ campaign; NBC
reporter Molly Hark (a constantly panicked Veronica Cartwright) and Cynthia
Nixon as Tanner’s daughter Alex, his biggest supporter.
“Tanner ‘88” earned its hype from Altman’s
willingness to shove his fictional candidate into real situations, meeting
other candidates and working the delegates on the convention floor. Those are the best scenes, but there aren’t
enough of them. The shenanigans of the Tanner campaign staff get old quickly.
Altman presents Tanner as too smart and
too honest to ever get the nomination, but what chance did he ever have when he
calls for legalizing drugs and gets arrested protesting for change in South
Africa.
The director and screenwriter returned to
the subject with a four-part series set during the 2004 Democratic convention.
Tanner’s daughter (still Nixon) is now a struggling documentarian working on a
film about her father’s 1988 run for the presidency.
I actually enjoyed this new “Tanner” more
than the original, as it focuses on the hurdles and frustrations faced by
documentary filmmakers rather than the same old political infighting. Nixon
gives a striking performance as she and her production crew keep losing out on
key interviews at the convention, all captured not only by Altman but in the
show itself by one of Alex’s film students who follows her around with a video
camera.
The best scene in the series occurs when
Ron Reagan Jr. accidentally schedules interviews with Alex Tanner and Alex
Kerry at the same time, causing a bit of a tiff between the two political
daughters. There is also an amusing scene at Elaine’s (the famed New York
eatery) featuring Martin Scorsese, Steve Buscemi and Mario Cuomo mingling with
the fictional cast.
While neither of these series come close
to ranking with Altman’s best works, there is still a sampling of Altmanesque
moments (the occasional appearances by E.G. Marshall as Tanner’s estranged
father; reporter Hark’s battles with her cameraman), all reminders of the
brilliance of this one-of-a-kind filmmaker.
BOEING
BOEING (1965) and THREE ON A COUCH (1966)
I watched these two badly dated sex
comedies in my annual attempt to understand Jerry Lewis. My quest, as
impossible as it is unpleasant, has revealed little beyond the fact that
Hollywood knew how to make embarrassing, unwatchable comedies long before “SNL”
alumni became the go-to guys for laughs.
In “Three on a Couch,” Lewis makes fun of
his loyal following in France by having his character, Christopher, a
commercial artist, win a prize given out by the French government. When his
girlfriend Elizabeth (Janet Leigh), a psychiatrist, says she can’t join him in
France because she can’t leave three troubled female patients, you don’t need a
French passport to know what Christopher’s next move is. He disguises himself
as the perfect man for each of the girls, wooing them in hopes of ridding them
of their anti-man fears. It’s pop psychology at its most demeaning: The women,
all gorgeous but portrayed as gullible as children, fall for Christopher’s
bizarre characters in a matter of days.
There isn’t a moment in this
Lewis-directed mess that rings true, even under the parameters of a nutty
comedy.
“Boeing Boeing” is equally sexist (the
opening credits include measurements of the actresses) as playboy-journalist
(isn’t that an oxymoron?) Tony Curtis shuffles three stewardesses in and out of
his Paris apartment with the help of his put-upon housekeeper, amusingly
portrayed by the great Thelma Ritter.
Lewis, for once under control and playing
his character relatively straight (TV veteran John Rich, not Lewis, directs),
shows up uninvited---he’s also a foreign correspondent---and must play the
sensible one to Curtis’ frantic neurotic. Originally a stage play, the comedy
is primarily an unending opening and closing of doors as Curtis does his best
to keep the women from running into each other, which was funny in the 1930s
and ‘40s, but feels mean-spirited and tiresome in the bright colors of the
1960s.
The abiding rule in both of these films
(ah, those innocent ‘60s) is that for all the winking and innuendo and leering
at cleavage and too-tight skirts, no one ever sleeps with anyone. The movies
were still living in a PG world, but bursting at the seams to become an R.
In recent years, no filmmaker has created as many unforgettable characters as Mike Leigh. David Thewlis’ Johnny in “Naked” (1993), Brenda Blethyn’s Cynthia in “Secrets & Lies” (1996), Jane Horrocks’ Nicola in “Life Is Sweet” (1991) and Katrin Cartlidge’s Hannah in “Career Girls” (1997) are just a few of the confused, often troubled and usually quite blunt individuals this insightful British writer-director has centered movies around.
His latest protagonist is also quite
unforgettable, but not in the way Leigh’s past characters have been. Poppy, played by Sally Hawkins, is a
high-energy, positive-thinking grade-school teacher whose nonstop, chipper,
jokey conversation is alternately irritating and endearing. As a movie
character, she has unlimited potential. But Leigh doesn’t do much with her. The
most interesting relationship in the movie develops between Poppy and her
driving instructor (Eddie Marsan), a
nervous, angry, bigoted man who, for no good reason, falls for her.
Another relationship---a mysterious
encounter Poppy has with a disturbed homeless man---turns out to be just an odd
little incident unconnected to anything else that happens in the film. Had
Leigh developed this intense meeting, it might have opened up a fascinating new
aspect to Poppy, but it comes and goes like it’s an outtake from another film.
Hawkins, who has appeared in smaller roles
in Leigh films, works hard to create a character who isn’t just a one-note
smiley face, but someone who has found a way to deal with life’s
disappointments and, at the same time, shed light on those with more gloomy
lives. I kept waiting for Leigh to take this character where she’d encounter
more than everyday life. But the director had something else in mind, and for
me, it didn’t make for a successful movie.
THIRTEEN
WOMEN (1932)
Sadly, this minor pre-Code movie isn’t
remembered for the performances of two up-and-coming stars, Irene Dunne and
Myrna Loy, or for its lurid topic of female murder. All that was swept away,
when, two days after the premiere, a supporting player in the picture,
24-year-old British actress Peg Entwistle, jumped to her death off the
Hollywood sign. Despondent over being dropped by RKO and other matters, this
promising stage actress who made her film debut in “Thirteen Women” committed
suicide in an eerie reflection of the movie’s storyline.
The movie stars Loy as Ursula Georgi
(described by police as a “half-breed”), an exotic, intimidating woman who uses
her hypnotic skills to enact revenge on the women who rejected her from their
school sorority many years ago.
Because the studio wanted to give more
screen time to Dunne, who had starred in the best picture winner “Cimarron” the
year before, thirteen women are cut back to seven women. Entwistle’s Hazel
appears in the opening scenes when she visits her friend May, who is part of a
circus aerialist duo with her sister. She confides to Hazel that the horoscope
predictions they all received from Swami Yodadachi (a confidant of Ursula)
forecast the death of someone close to her. Predictably, her sister falls to
her death during their act.
Hazel is then seen killing her husband
(another prediction by the Swami) as the scene fades to a newspaper headline
about her being sent to prison.
The last part of this 59-minute thriller
focuses on Ursula’s attempt to kill Dunne’s young son. Again, she allures
another man to aid her in her sinister plot, but you understand how they fall
to her charms; Loy has never looked sexier playing this Eurasian vamp. The cast
also features Jill Esmond, then Mrs. Laurence Olivier, and Florence Eldridge,
then Mrs. Fredric March.
At its full length, this might have been
an interesting picture, but little is left other than its part in a promising
actress’ pointless death.
I’VE LOVED
YOU SO LONG (2008)
Most
great film performances are given by actors playing charismatic, energetic,
bigger-than-life characters. Which makes Kristin Scott Thomas’ performance in
this film all the more remarkable. Working in her second language, the British
actress is mesmerizing as a sullen, broken, almost lifeless woman adjusting to
freedom after years in prison.
This French film unfolds at a leisurely
pace, letting the back story emerge naturally as Juliette (Scott Thomas) moves
in with her sister’s family and gradually comes out of the protective shell
she’s built around herself. With very few words Scott Thomas creates a
character so depressed and self-hating that it’s almost impossible to connect
with her, yet you root for her as she quietly finds reasons to keep living.
Nearly matching Scott Thomas’ work is veteran
French actress Elsa Zylberstein as Lea, the younger sister who juggles work,
her two daughters and her husband, while doing what she can to reconnect with
Juliette. This is as moving and complex a portrayal of sisters you’re likely to
see on film. It’s a tribute to writer-director Phillipe Claudel, making his
first film behind the camera, that every emotional revelation is earned and
feels true.
Scott Thomas, married to a Frenchman and
living in the country, gave a first-rate performance in the French film “Tell
No One” earlier this year, but here she goes to the next level. Her Juliette
has the deep inner sadness that reminded me of Meryl Streep’s brilliant
performance in “Sophie’s Choice”; both actresses convey the pain their
characters carry inside even when smiling. Scott Thomas gives a dark, searing
performance that’s heartbreaking and unforgettable.
GOYA’S
GHOST (2008) and THE DUCHESS (2008)
There’s not much connecting these two
unsuccessful period pieces other than they both are set in the late 18th
Century and star similar looking leading ladies, Natalie Portman and Keira
Knightley.
“Goya’s
Ghost,” directed by two-time Oscar winner (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
and “Amadeus”) Milos Forman, is the more interesting picture if only because
it’s about an important world event, the end of the Spanish Inquisition after
the country was invaded by Napoleon. Portman, playing the daughter of a
well-to-do family, is targeted by vigilant Catholic monk Lorenzo after he sees
her portrait as painted by the country’s leading artist, Francisco Goya.
The great painter, rather dull and
soft-spoken as portrayed by Stellan Skarsgard, tries to help the girl over the
years as circumstances change---Napoleon takes over and jails the clergy---but
is shockingly ineffective. She remains the pawn of Lorenzo (Javier Bardem,
almost as scary in robes as he was in “No Country for Old Men”) and the story
turns out to be just another sad tale set during a terrible chapter of history.
But Forman uses the story to assail America’s actions in Iraq and the country’s
use of torture. Even for someone sympathetic to his viewpoint, the parallels he
makes aren’t nearly enough to enliven this creaky story.
“The Duchess” plays out like so many other
English upper crust arranged marriages gone-wrong films that I kept thinking
I’d seen another version of the same story. Knightley becomes the Duchess of
Devonshire when she’s wed to the much older, passionless Duke (Ralph Fiennes)
and soon after, having failed to produce a male heir, becomes a society star.
The film bears similarities to the Marie Antoinette story, except that it
doesn’t end at the guillotine. Maybe it should have.
The marriage takes a strange turn when
Knightley’s Georgiana brings a voluptuous divorced mother (Hayley Atwell) into
their home and---who would have guessed?---she quickly schemes her way into the
Duke’s bed. Just as quickly, my interest in the film fizzled.
Fiennes gives an intense, uncompromising
portrayal of a strident, self-centered 18th Century man more
interested in his dogs than his wife; if it wasn’t for his performance there
would be no reason to see “The Duchess.”
This film seemed reasonably normal, especially for a Charlie Kaufman-written picture, until the scene in which a real estate agent successfully sells a house that’s on fire. And the buyer continues to live in the house the rest of her life as small fires burn throughout the home.
As he did in his scripts for “Being John
Malkovich” (1999), “Adaptation” (2002) and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind” (2004), this astonishing writer bends reality nearly to the breaking
point as he examines the very real barriers people face as they attempt to
carve out a life. Kaufman was an actual
character in “Adaptation” and he might as well be here: Caden Cotard is a
fidgety, hypochondriac stage director who attempts to recreate his messy life
in an ambitious, never-ending rehearsal with a cast and crew of hundreds.
Beset by real and imagined ailments, Caden
(played to perfection by Philip Seymour Hoffman) loses all sense of time and
his grasp on reality after his painter wife (Catherine Keener), with their
young daughter, moves to Germany. But after winning a MacArthur grant and screwing
up his relationship with Hazel, a vivacious theater employee (Samantha Morton),
Caden buys an abandoned airplane hanger and starts mounting a theatrical
production based on his life.
As confusing as it is brilliant, this
movie reminded me of Federico Fellini’s “8 ½,” Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” and
Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories,” all attempts by the directors to understand
their lives as both artists and men. Kaufman’s version (his directing debut) is
messier and less visually interesting, but it overflows with fascinating ideas
on balancing art and real life and discerning the difference between the two;
it’s about the unexplainable, unpredictable nature of relationships and ever
present shadow of mortality.
The film is jam packed with extraordinary
performances. No one working in film can portray unstable, obsessive loners
better than Hoffman and he delivers again here, turning Caden into a pathetic
but sympathetic character whose failures in life are balanced by his insatiable
desire to understand those mistakes.
Morton, another actor who gets better
with each role, is hilarious and heartbreaking as Hazel, who becomes Caden
trusted assistant after their affair ends. Emily Watson, as the actress who
plays Morton in the stage version of Caden’s life, manages to be both a real
person and a convincing doppelganger of Morton (to whom she bears a close
physical resemblance).
Also doing impressive work with complex,
confusing roles are Michelle Williams as an actress playing Hazel who ends up
marrying Caden; Hope Davis as a very aggressive therapist; Dianne Wiest as an
actress who ends up playing Caden; Keener as his artist-wife and Jennifer Jason
Leigh as her angry, man-hating friend.
Maybe the weirdest role in a film filled
with weirdness, is that of Sammy, a man who, for some unknown reason, has
followed Caden most of his life. When Caden is interviewing actors to play
himself, Sammy reveals himself as the perfect guy to play him. Tom Noonan, a
tall, thin actor with no resemblance to Hoffman, gives a memorable performance
as a man attempting to live the life of someone else, who usually has more
insight into Caden than Caden does.
The odd title refers to both the setting
of the film in Schenectady, N.Y., a community that has long been a center of
the arts, and the word synecdoche, a figure of speech in which a word for a
small part of the whole is used to indicate the whole or vice versa. Confused?
Kaufman’s film is just as confusing, but well worth the effort spent figuring
it out.
BE KIND REWIND (2008)
Michel Gondry, who directed the Charlie
Kaufman-penned “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004), among the finest
films of the past decade, hasn’t had much luck on his own. Like Kaufman, he
portrays reality as fluid and unreliable; unlike Kaufman, he doesn’t have much
of interest to say.
“Be
Kind Rewind” is more entertaining than his last, dreary romance “The Silence of
Sleep” (2006), but falls apart when it turns into a typical feel-good Hollywood
film. Jack Black, wild-eyed and acting with no reasonable restraint, plays
Jerry, a paranoid, conspiracy theorist slacker who spends his days hanging out
at a neighborhood video store. It seems to be the last business still renting
tapes until Jack’s body becomes magnetized and he accidentally erases the
store’s entire inventory.
In true Jack Black fashion, he convinces
the store’s clerk Mike (a gently goofy Mos Def) to shoot short versions of the
films and rent those. They start with “Ghostbusters” and “Rush Hour 2” and
before you can even figure out how they’re paying for all this, customers are
lining up for these offbeat videos (they called them “Sweded”).
The film is wacky and energetic when the
making of these videos is front and center (including “Driving Miss Daisy,”
“Robocop” and “The Lion King”) but when the plot turns to the plans by the
owner (Danny Glover) to save the dying store, Gondry seems to have fallen under
the spell of the spirit of Frank Capra.
It’s not a pretty sight when born
anarchists like Gondry and Black slip into Hollywood sentimentality.
