THE WAY WAY BACK (2013)
Sometimes it only takes a couple of
well-written, expertly acted roles to turn a run-of-the-mill picture into a
first-rate entertainment. In this coming-of-age film, about a young teen dealing
with his divorced mother’s smug boyfriend during a summer vacation, veteran
character actors Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney not only steal every scene
they’re in but transform the film into one of the funniest of the year.
Sam Rockwell’s Owen, the proverbial
jokester with the gift of gab, who works as manager of the local water park,
takes Duncan, our depressed, frustrated young man, under his wing, imbuing him
with the confidence he needs to survive adolescence. With his off-centered hat,
half-shaven face and a twinkle in his eye, Owen is the most incompetent manager
the Water Wizz could possibly find, but also the most entertaining. He offers endless
excuses for not working, or why someone else should do the work, while
supplying a constant patter of sarcasm and stream-of-consciousness observations
on the park, the world around him, and Duncan’s state of being. It’s the kind
of role that Bill Murray virtually invented early in his career; here, Rockwell
and writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (screenwriting Oscar winners for
“The Descendents”) hone it to contemporary perfection.
Rockwell, best known for playing the wild
and crazy Chuck Barris in “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” has provided spot-on,
memorable supporting work in two dozen films over the last 20 years, including
“Safe Men,” “Heist,” “Matchstick Man,” “The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford” and “Frost/Nixon.”
Janney, who recently gave fine
performances in “Juno” and “The Help” but remains most associated with her role
in the TV series “The West Wing,” plays Betty, the slightly soused,
uncomfortably blunt single mother whose vacation cottage is next to Trent’s
(Steve Carell, excellent as the full-of-himself boyfriend). Her child rearing
skills—she’s constantly reminding her young son of his floating eye—and permanent
role of happy drunk puts her at the center of this group of dysfunctional
adults who need to grow up as much as Duncan. But she never becomes a
caricature of the middle-aged party girl; she sprinkles her comic observations
with slivers of wisdom, displaying an understanding in her huge eyes well
beyond her sometimes idiotic conversation.
Toni Collette has the thankless role of
Duncan’s mother, who is basically a sad figure who doesn’t know what to say to
help her son, struggles to fit in with Trent’s crowd and fails to see him for
the jackass he is.
Liam James, from the AMC series “The
Killing,” seems as if he’s play acting as the schlepy, mopey Duncan in the beginning
of the film; once the character comes alive under the spell of the Water Wizz
crew James becomes a more convincing teen.
First time directors Faxon and Rash also
succeeded in perfectly casting themselves: Faxon as the leering waterslide
operator and Rash as the whinny nerd who works the souvenir stand. What you’ll
remember about this film—what makes it worth seeing—is the priceless scenes
inside the water park as Duncan somehow learns what it takes to grow up even as
he’s surrounded by a bunch of adult kids.
PACIFIC RIM (2013)
While it lacks even a pulse of
originality, Guillermo del Toro’s dark vision of the future is as enjoyable as
any sci-fi action adventure since “Batman Begins,” as it steals liberally from
“Iron Man,” “War of the Worlds,” “Aliens,” all those Japanese monster movies of
the 1950s and ‘60s, and even “Chinatown.” It’s all about how you package all
that, and Del Toro does it with his usual flair. In some ways, the fact that it
seems so familiar turns “Pacific Rim,” for all of its high-tech futurism, into
a version of cinematic comfort food
Best known for “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the
“Hellboy” series, the Mexican filmmaker and his screenwriting partner Travis
Beacham don’t waste the viewer’s time with a laborious set-up, jumping right
into the story. Giant monster emerge from the ocean, out of a portal from
another dimension, and start destroying coastal cities around the globe. The
world unites—remember, this is science fiction—to build giant robots called
Jaegers, which are operated by two pilots, working as a single united after an
induced mind meld (called neural bridging here). It’s the cleverest aspect of
the picture.
After years of successfully winning this
war, the Jaeger program loses its luster as the Kaijus evolve into stronger,
more skillful fighters. The downsized program, still run by Stacker (a stoic,
rather stiff Idris Elba, set to play a young Nelson Mandela in the upcoming
film bio) is moved to Hong Kong with just four Jaegers. Disgraced pilot Raleigh
(Charlie Hunnam, star of “Sons of Anarchy”) rejoins the team at Stacker’s
insistence and then he reluctantly allows his young ward Mako (Japanese actress
Rinko Kikuchi) to partner up with Raleigh.
More interesting and underutilized are
Geiszler and Gottlieb (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman), a pair of crazed, high
strung researchers, and Hannibal Chau (Del Toro veteran Ron Perlman, channeling
Lee Marvin) who runs the black market for Kaiju remains. The scenes with Day
and Perlman, acting as if they are in another, more lively, movie, are what
you’ll remember when you leave the theater.
The CGI is impressively realistic—I never
felt as if I was watching a big-screen video game—and makes for intense
battles, many of them underwater, as the monsters and robots face off for the
future of civilization. Every moviegoer has seen a version of this scenario yet
Del Toro plays with the formula and the visuals to keep “Pacific Rim”
energized, creating a very entertaining retread.
L’ATALANTE (1934)
Jean Vigo directed just four films in his
short life—he died of tuberculosis
at age 29—yet he’s considered by many as one of the great filmmakers of the
French cinema. His reputation rests with just two works, his short film “Zero
for Conduct,” about harsh conditions at a boarding school, and “L’Atalante,”
his only feature.
This touching, comical slice-of-life
picture stands up as one of the masterpieces of the 1930s, a surprisingly
honest and complex look at newlyweds trying to survive their first few days of
marriage aboard a river barge.
Jean (Jean Dasté) makes his living as
captain of the barge and lives there as well, so when he takes a bride,
Juliette (Dita Parlo), she joins him there. Not exactly a new bride’s dream
home, but the mundane life of the boat is countered by the news that they’ll be
docking in Paris soon.
Life on the barge is made more
entertaining (or more irritating if you’re Juliette) by the antics of Jules,
the older ship hand (Michel Simon) who is devoted to his captain and his
collection of wild cats. It’s Jules that brings the barge alive, always
attempting, often clumsily, to amuse the new resident and make her feel at
home. It’s one of Simon’s signature roles in a film career that spanned from
1925 to his death in 1975.
This bear-like character never failed to
dominate any scene he was in and was always in demand by France’s greatest
filmmakers. His most memorable roles were in two 1931 Jean Renoir films, “Boudu
Saved from Drowning” (1931), as the suicidal title character, and “La Chienne,”
as an unhappily married man, and in Marcel Carne’s “Port of Shadows” (1938),
playing a young girl’s devious uncle.
Simon’s best known role in an American film was as a defiant train
engineer in John Frankenheimer’s “The Train” (1964).
Like Renoir, Vigo makes the most of the
natural surroundings; by shooting on an actual barge on the Seine, he creates a
living metaphor of newlyweds floating down a river isolated from a world just
out of touch on the shore. Once in Paris, tension increases and Juliette
strikes out on her own, leaving it to the gentle Jules to reunite them.
This sweetly romantic but hardly naive
look at young love, brought to earth by the salty presence of Simon’s
unforgettable Jules, deserves repeated viewings, an essential work of the
French cinema.
I’m a sucker for rock ‘n’ roll movies, especial when it involves washed up musicians trying to recapture the magic of their youth. While members of rock bands have a bit more colorful (and destructive) history than most of us, the theme applies to anyone who attempts to hold onto (or recapture) the glories of their past.
In this entertaining British version,
Strange Fruit was a cultish band of the 1980s that first lost their lead singer
to drugs and then their founder and lead guitarist dropped out of sight.
Stephen Rea, Timothy Spall, Jimmy Nail and
Bill Nighy make up the remaining band members, along with Billy Connelly as the
engineer-producer, collected from their less-than-perfect lives by manager
Karen (Juliet Aubrey) for a reunion tour. After recruiting a young, hot-shot
guitarist, the band hits the road and immediately all the old grudges and
resentments re-emerge, mostly focusing on Nighy’s Ray, a sensitive, egotistical
lead singer (a clear victim of what Keith Richards describes as “Lead Singer Syndrome”).
There is nothing surprising about the
film; the jokes, the infighting, it’s all predictable, yet the quality of
acting elevates what in lesser hands would have quickly become maudlin. The
film’s best moments are with the band on the bus, evaluating the previous
night’s gig or bonding with games like “bands with body parts in their name.”
Both director Brian Gibson, whose best know
film is the Ike and Tina Turner story “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” and
screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (“Across the Universe”)
understand the world of music, the road and the complicated love-hate
relationships that develop between these childlike men. “Still Crazy” was
Gibson’s last film; he died at age 59 in 2004.
FRUITVALE STATION (2013)
The straightforward manner used by this film
to recreate the final day of 22-year-old Oscar Grant’s life ends up producing a
surprisingly powerful emotional effect. In the case of this story, nothing
burns like the simple truth.
The film, by opening with the actual phone
footage taken by a witness of Oscar being fatally shot by a San Francisco
subway police officer, forces viewers to continually think about the doom Oscar
will soon face as he proceeds through his day and makes decisions about his
“future.” Filmmaker Ryan Coogler, making his feature debut at age 27, doesn’t
attempt to paint Oscar as a saint—he’s lost his grocery store job by coming in
late; he’s cheated on his girlfriend, the mother of his young daughter; he’s
supplementing his income by selling dope and recently did a prison stretch—but
he’s far from a dangerous gang member.
Michael B. Jordan, a veteran of television
who is probably best known as the star quarterback in the TV series “Friday
Night Lights,” paints Oscar as sincere, thoughtful yet frustrated by life’s
turns; of course, only his friends and family know what Oscar was actually
like, but Jordan has created a very believable fictional version. Also first
rate is Melonie Diaz as his girlfriend and Octavia Spencer, Oscar nominated for
“The Help,” as his mother, whose birthday celebration is the focus of the day.
Even in the smallest parts, the acting is convincingly real. For once, a film
presents African-Americans as just people living out their lives, neither beset
by violence nor the source of special wisdom; writer-director Coogler
understands the power of simplicity.
The Trayvon Martin case makes this film’s
theme even more relevant: if you’re young and black and display some attitude,
authorities assume you pose a threat and should be treated as a criminal. Even
as society in general retreats from this tired stereotype, it seems our law
enforcement continues to judge based on the color of one’s skin.
The tragedy of Oscar Grant isn’t that he
was killed just as he was trying to put his life back on track—that makes for a
moving drama, but it’s secondary to the “Fruitvale Station” point. To me, the
horror of this story, and the Martin case, is how easily we accept and excuse
the taking of a life with so little provocation; that the use—by law
enforcement and others—of lethal force has become the first response, not the
last.
This poignant story of a 19th Century Irish waiter who has lived her entire adult life as a man is undermined by the character’s lack of personality, a less interesting Chauncey Gardner.
Glenn Close, made up to look not so much
like a man but a cartoon character or maybe a distraught silent film actor,
offers few clues as to what makes the painfully shy Albert Nobbs tick, keeping
the viewer at arm’s length throughout the film. I wanted to care about this
woman who felt that her only hope for survival was to hide her sexuality and
live a lie, but the film offers nothing to encourage my sympathy; instead
making Nobbs an object of pity.
Working in an upscale hotel-restaurant in
Dublin, Nobbs is dutifully saving her money in hopes of striking out on her
own, but it’s clearly a pipe dream. Nobbs’ life (and hopes for the future) is
altered dramatically when Hubert, a house painter working at the hotel reveals,
literally, himself to be a woman also. (It’s either an astonishing coincidence
or a previously unexplored social trend of the era). The lively, engaging
Hubert (a superb Janet McTeer) is a sharp contrast to Nobbs and brightens the
film whenever she’s on screen. In fact, Hubert’s story might have made for a
more compelling screenplay.
The film, directed by Rodrigo Garcia, a television
director who is the son of Colombian literary giant Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
steals liberally (Close is among the credited writers) from the “Upstairs,
Downstairs” formula, especially when a roguish young man joins the staff. He
stirs the soap-opera subplot that includes encouraging a young maid to take
advantage of the delusional Nobbs.
Surprisingly, this strange little film
scored Oscar nominations for both Close and McTeer. While McTeer, who also was
nominated for her work in the offbeat mother-daughter drama “Tumbleweeds”
(1999), gives a memorable performance, well deserving of Oscar consideration, I
think Close scored a nod simply because of the oddness of the role. Yet whether
she’s a woman playing a man or a woman playing a woman, it’s all about creating
a character worth caring about, believing in. Using that measure, Close failed.
Some films defy explanation of how talented people spent so much time and effort to create what turns out to be rubbish. Director Nicolas Roeg and then wife Theresa Russell, two of the most interesting figures of film in the 1970s and early ‘80s, hit bottom with this astonishingly amateurish and misguided collaboration, a confusing story of a bad marriage.
British filmmaker Roeg, a cinematographer
in the 1960s (he worked as second unit cameraman for “Lawrence of Arabia”),
made an immediate splash as co-director of the cult crime picture “Performance”
(1970), going on to make the masterful, Venice-set thriller “Don’t Look Now”
(1973), the David Bowie-starring sci-fi film “The Man Who Fell to Earth”
(1976), the hallucinatory love story “Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession” (1980) and
the quirky chamber drama “Insignificance” (1984), the last two starring
Russell. The director seemed to be lurching toward the deep end with “Castaway”
(1986) and, especially, “Track 29” (1988), in which his camera uncomfortably
leers as Russell’s body from all angles.
Russell was discovered by film legend Elia
Kazan, who cast her opposite Robert De Niro and Robert Mitchum in “The Last
Tycoon” (1976). Quickly establishing herself as an enigmatic sex object for the
times, Russell gave riveting performances in “Bad Timing,” “Eureka” (1983),
“The Razor’s Edge” (1984), as the Monroe-like figure in “Insignificance” and
“Black Widow” (1987), her biggest mainstream hit, battling wits with Debra
Winger. The same year that “Cold Heaven” was released, she starred in an even
more embarrassing fiasco, “Whore,” directed by Ken Russell. The director was
attempting to be daring, but the film is simply unpleasant and degrading; it
became a punch line that all-but ended the actress’ short-lived stardom at age
34.
And
if it hadn’t, “Cold Heaven” would have. It’s as amateurish and misguided as any
film ever made by a first-rate director. Starting out as a simple mystery, it
evolves into something quite different, off kilter even for Roeg.
Russell’s Marie is on vacation in Mexico
with husband Alex (a clearly baffled Mark Harmon) trying to work up the nerve
to tell him she’s leaving him for a fellow physician (James Russo). Before she
can spring the bad news on him, he’s killed in a boating accident—at least that’s
what the doctors at the local hospital tell Marie. But the next morning, the
body is gone and, she discovers, so is his passport and return air ticket. At
this point, the movie makes a sharp left.
Playing like a lame parody of a
Catholic-themed “miracle” drama, the script sends Marie to a Carmel monastery
where years ago she had a vision of the Virgin Mary. At least, I think so. This
is all explained, without much success, in a scene between Russell and Richard
Bradford, playing an unexplainably suspicious monsignor. If this was the best
take of this long, incoherent scene, I can’t even imagine how bad the rejects
were.
All the religious shenanigans (done a 1000
times better in “Don’t Look Back”) are apparently related, at least Marie
thinks so, to Alex’s refusal to die—he goes back and forth between being
deathly ill to walking and talking normally. Even the doctors can’t explain how
he rose from the morgue or what’s wrong with him now. The point of the script,
by Allan Scott (based on a book by popular novelist Brian Moore), I have to
assume, is to keep the audience as confused as the actors seem to be. By the
end of the film, Harmon looks like he’s ready to flail himself off the nearest
cliff while Russell seems to be completely exhausted from all the overacting.
Just to make sure the film doesn’t slip
into the mundane, a fanatical nun (Talia Shire) and a nosey priest (Will
Patton)—both acting as if they think they’re in a horror film in search of
zombies—become entangled in this bizarre plot. I fully expected Max von Sydow to
walk into the scene (any scene) with Bible and cross in hand.
You can see Russell struggling with the
lines, the lack of motivations, the idiocy of the religious connections as she
gives one of the worst performances of her career. Though she’s mostly done
anonymous-type roles in TV movies in the past 20 years, she’s never stopped
working; she’s now divorced from Roeg.
After “Cold Heaven,” Roeg made one more
quality movie, a television adaptation of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” At age
85, this inscrutable director seems to be retired.
