KILLER ELITE (2012)
Robert De Niro recently celebrated his 70th
birthday, dining with Christopher Walken (“The Deer Hunter”), Harvey Keitel
(“Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver”) and Samuel L. Jackson (“Jackie Brown”). If
only De Niro’s recent films were as entertaining as this get together
undoubtedly was.
From the moment I watched his Johnny Boy
amble into the bar to Keith Richards’ riff “Jumping Jack Flash,” in Martin
Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” (1973), De Niro became my favorite actor. That was
solidified two years later when in February 1975 I first saw “The Godfather
Part II.” The 31-year-old actor had
transformed himself from the fun-loving, irresponsible punk from “Mean Streets”
into the soft-spoken, commanding Vito Corleone. It was hard to believe it was
the same actor; Vito’s cool dignity, gaunt, Old World face, and unstoppable
resolve to make something of himself is everything the cocky mook Johnny Boy
wasn’t.
Then came Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver”
(1976), still one of the scariest characters in film history; jazz romantic
Jimmy Doyle, one of the best film portrayals of a World War II-era musician, in
“New York New York” (1977); Michael in “The Deer Hunter” (1978), the stoic,
exacting survivor of the horrors of Vietnam; and, in the definitive statement
of Method acting, low-life boxing champ Jake La Motta in “Raging Bull” (1980),
arguably the finest film performance by an actor in the last 40 years.
Capping a 10-year stretch that probably
has never been matched by an American actor was his Father Des in “True
Confessions” (1981), a heartbreaking tale of faith and loyalty and, completely
shifting gears, his hilarious, outrageous Rupert Pupkin, prophetic in his
obsession with TV celebrity, in “The King of Comedy” (1982).
But that was 30 years ago. Since he turned
40, career highlights have been few and far between: the sympathetic bounty
hunter in “Midnight Run” (1988), the second level mobster in “Goodfellas”
(1990), an overbearing alcoholic in “This Boy’s Life” (1993), Sam Rothstein,
the legendary Vegas bookmaker, in “Casino” (1995), as the cynical mercenary in
the thriller “Ronin” (1998) and the football fanatic and dysfunctional father
in “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012). For most actors that’d be a great
three-decade run, but it was a surprising comedown for De Niro.
I’m not going to go through De Niro’s
questionable choice of roles since the turn of the century, except to state
that he’s appeared in 29 films in 13 years. Like many British actors, his
philosophy seems to be that he’d rather be working (and getting paid) than wait
for a great role. Hard to argue with the finances of that approach to the
business, but it makes it hard for longtime fans, who remember the years when
every role was complex, challenging, unforgettable, to keep the faith. The
second half of his career has seen him turn into one of two clichés: the stern,
dangerous tough guy or the stern, dangerous funny guy. His range, once the
hallmark of his talent, has narrowed to A through B.
I’ve
stopped trying to catch up with all his films, especially the cookie-cutter
actioners and one-joke comedies, but to celebrate the great man’s birth I
decided to check out “Killer Elite,” allured by co-stars Jason Statham and
Clive Owen, both solid action actors. My mistake.
The film never rises above the
standard-issue thriller, with Statham’s Danny, a veteran mercenary, forced out
of retirement when a sheik in exile kidnaps his mentor Hunter (De Niro) and
demands that he assassinate three men who killed his sons.
Of course, it’s never that easy and Owen
turns out to be the obstacle as the enforcer for a group of retired British
intelligence agents who go after Statham’s team. There are no real good
guys—Statham is sympathetic because he has a conscious and a cute girlfriend
back in Australia and you root for De Niro because, well, he’s Bob De Niro,
still looking cool firing an automatic weapon and sporting a full beard and
shaggy hair. The last 40 minutes of “Killer Elite” (no relation to the Sam
Peckinpah film of the same name) drags on for what seems like hours as opposing
sides trade blows without any clear-cut winner.
As a result, I really have no desire to
see “Stone” or “Limitless” or “Red Lights” or “The Big Wedding” or “Killing
Season,” just a few of the movies De Niro has appeared in during the last few
years that I’ve skipped. If someone had told me even 20 years ago that I would
have no interesting in seeing a film featuring De Niro, I would have shouted
back, “You talkin’ to me?”
I guess I should be please that,
occasionally, he gets the chance to deliver a sparkling performance as he did
in last year’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” And maybe I need to spend more time
rewatching those classics from the 1970s and early ‘80s when he reigned as the
best actor in the world.
Next week, he’s back on screen as a
mob-connected dad who moves with his family to France. “The Family” is meant to
be a comedy; I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
LEE DANIEL’S THE BUTLER (2013)
This uncomfortable mix of historical events
and fictional characters might have worked as a weeklong television miniseries,
but on the big screen it comes off as little more than highlights of both a
man’s life and the Civil Right movement. Forest Whitaker, a great actor in the
right role, plays Cecil Gaines, who spends 30 years as a White House butler,
standing in the Oval Office as the great issues of the day are being discussed
yet living in a world where he is always a second-class citizen.
There is a heck of a movie in there
somewhere but it’s not in director Lee Daniel’s version, in large part because
Gaines is such a passive, blank slate of a character, seemingly blind to the
important changes taking place in the 1960s and too timid to utilize his close
relationship with a half-dozen presidents. While “inspired” by the true story
of butler Eugene Allen and the article about him written by Washington Post
reporter Wil Haygood, the film doesn’t hew to Allen’s life, instead inventing a
son who, while the father is obediently serving in the White House, is involved
in every aspect of the Civil Right movement. In the way it places its
characters at every important event concerning blacks gaining equal rights,
it’s hard not to see “The Butler” as a black version of “Forrest Gump.” And
like Gump, Gaines doesn’t provide much insight or even reaction to what’s
happening around him.
Daniels
and screenwriter Danny Strong also give Gaines a feisty, occasional alcoholic
and cheating wife played in a very by-the-numbers performance by Oprah Winfrey.
But the script doesn’t give anyone much of a chance to shine. David Oyelowo,
the fine British actor who spent a few seasons on the TV series “MI-5” and also
co-starred in Daniel’s “The Paperboy,” plays Gaines rebellious son, who displays
the attitude but never the conviction of a true believer in the cause. It was
also a stretch to have the 37-year-old Oyelowo portraying a college student.
And then there’s the presidents: Robin
Williams as Eisenhower; John Cusack as Nixon, Liev Shreiber as LBJ and Alan
Rickman as Reagan, all coming off as comic characters, like the caricatures of
FDR in World War II vintage Warner Bros. cartoons. More believable is Jane
Fonda, in the unlikely role of Nancy Reagan.
The liveliest performances are given by
Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz as a pair of Cecil’s co-workers, who unlike
the title character actually have some blood flowing through their veins.
Daniels, who earned a best director nod
for “Precious” (2009) and then helmed the over-the-top white-trash fest “The
Paperboy,” clearly prefers to tell his stories using a 12-gauge shotgun rather
than a can opener. Every plot point, every character is presented as if he’s
making a TV sitcom, determined to ensure that everyone in the audience will
understand immediately. That’s probably why “Lee Daniel’s The Butler” (the
clumsy title was required because Warner Bros. refused to give up rights to the
title “The Butler,” a little known 1916 silent) topped the box office rankings
its first three weeks in theaters.
BLUE JASMINE (2013)
There’s a good movie that occasionally
peeks through in “Blue Jasmine,” but mostly it is kept at bay by choppy writing
and editing and Woody Allen’s inability to transform a handful of fantastic
scenes into a coherent piece of drama.
But it’s easy to ignore the film’s
flaws—as many critics have—because at its center is an astonishing portrayal of
a delusional, desperate, depressed woman by Cate Blanchett, playing the title
character who haplessly tries to restart her life after the death of her
cheating, crooked and very wealthy husband. Blanchett has proven to be
excellent in almost everything she’s been in since her breakthrough role in
“Elizabeth” (1998), as the 17th Century English queen. She played a
resistance fighter in “Charlotte Gray” (2001), a vengeful wife in “Heaven”
(2002), gave an Oscar-winning performance as Katharine Hepburn in “The Aviator”
(2004), was the sick wife in “Babel” (2006), chewed the scenery as a lesbian
teacher in “Notes on a Scandal” (2006), offered up a version of Bob Dylan in
“I’m Not There” (2007), played a feisty Marion in “Robin Hood” (2010) and starred
as the elegant Galadriel in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
But nothing the 44-year-old Australian
has done in the past equals her work here, as she mixes Allen’s trademark
jittery delivery with an intensely emotional slide into the abyss of
hopelessness. She and Allen have created a modern day Blanche DuBois (a role
Blanchett played in a stage revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 2008), a
delicate, pampered woman unprepared for the ugly reality of life among the
working class. After she moves in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and
her two boys in a cramped San Francisco apartment, she faces the ire of two
versions of Stanley Kowalski—Ginger’s ex-husband (a very convincing Andrew Dice
Clay), who was a financial victim of Jasmine’s late husband (Alex Baldwin), and
Chili (Bobby Cannavale), the sister’s tactless mechanic boyfriend.
After struggling to learn computers and
working as a lecherous dentist’s receptionist, she meets a well-heeled,
good-looking man (Peter Sarsgaard) with political ambitions. It seems to be her
ticket out of Palookaville, but this isn’t a Hollywood movie, and Allen, for
the first time in awhile, has created a truly tragic character.
Writing about the film makes it seem much
better than it plays, as so many of the scenes come off as clumsy, poorly
structured, uncomfortably long. As fine as both Blanchett and Hawkins are, the
men come off as hackneyed clichés who add nothing but the obvious to the story.
While I enjoyed every scene with one-time foul-mouthed comedian Clay, the
performances of the usually reliable Cannavale, Sarsgaard and Baldwin plus the
talented standup Louis C.K. never go beyond the words. Even worse, the jokes
fall so flat you won’t even recognize them as attempts at comedy.
Of course, it’s worth seeing; for my money
every movie that bears those magical words “Written and Directed by Woody
Allen” is a must see. Just don’t go in expecting much, except a truly
unforgettable, devastating performance by Blanchett.
CHANDLER (1971)
Few actors ever maintained a more
nonchalant manner on screen than Warren Oates. Not only did he never give the
impression that he was “acting,” Oates, most of the time, seemed to barely
notice that he was in a motion picture; and that, of course, was his appeal.
Primarily a supporting player in television
series (mostly Westerns) from the mid 1950s, Oates had an occasional film role,
including in Sam Peckinpah’s “Major Dundee” (1965) and “The Wild Bunch” (1969),
with Jack Nicholson in Monte Hellman’s cult classic “The Shooting” (1966), and
as a racist cop in the best picture winner “In the Heat of the Night” (1967),
before his breakthrough in 1971.
In “Two-Lane Blacktop,” Oates plays
G.T.O., a talkative driver who challenges a couple of hippies to a cross
country drag race. It’s one of the great allegorical road trip pictures, with
Oates giving the performances of his life, Oscar worthy in a perfect world.
Then, in the same year, he’s in this strange, very forgettable crime picture,
but, in a coup for Oates, in the lead role.
He plays an underemployed private
detective (is there any other kind, really?) ironically named Chandler, who is
fired from his security guard job as the film opens. An old friend, who works
for the government, tracks down Chandler and offers him a too-easy-to-be-true
job, keeping tabs on the girlfriend of an East Coast mob boss.
It’s all a setup with Chandler pegged as
the fall guy, which he figures that out soon enough, but, just like his
namesake’s Marlowe, keeps playing along because he falls for the dame (a badly
miscast Leslie Caron). While the plot doesn’t make as much sense as a Three
Stooges short, watching Oates stare with that eternal smirk of his as others
huff and puff in seriousness is very entertaining.
I also found it interesting to see how
undeveloped the pier area of Monterey, Calif., now packed with fish restaurants
and bars, was as recently as the 1970s. It is also amusing how the film shifts
locales from Los Angeles to Monterey as if it was across town, instead of a
five-hour drive up the coast.
Like most films of the ‘70s, “Chandler” is
filled with interesting supporting players, including 1950s noir regulars
Charles McGraw and Gloria Grahame along with Richard Loo, Scatman Crothers and
John Mitchum.
After the film’s release, writer-director
Paul Magwood, the rare director who made just one film, took out an ad in the
Hollywood Reporter apologizing for the film, claiming it was butchered by MGM
studio chief James T. Aubrey. Just maybe that’s why he never got another chance
to direct.
Better film roles followed for Oates,
scoring lead roles in “Dillinger” (1973), “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”
(1974) and “China 9, Liberty 37” (1978) along with key supporting roles in such
quirky pictures as “The Hired Hand” (1971), “Kid Blue” (1973), “Badlands”
(1973) and “92 in the Shade” (1975). He was memorable as Bill Murray’s put-upon
sergeant in “Stripes” (1981) and in the Roy Scheider action picture “Blue
Thunder” (1983), released the year after his death from a heart attack at age
53.
The lazy cool demeanor of Oates, even in a
waste of time like “Chandler,” made every film he appeared in more believable,
more entertaining. Every time I see him in a film reminds me of how effect a
performer this unorthodox actor was.
TO THE WONDER (2013)
Iconoclastic director Terrence Malick uses
the language of cinema like no other American filmmaker, telling his stories
through his immaculately composed images rather than with words, especially
since his comeback, after 20 years of silence, with his masterful “The Thin Red
Line” (1998).
The
reclusive Texan has always examined his characters and the events of their
lives in terms of their place in the universe, their connection to the physical
earth and beyond. Two years ago, in “The Tree of Life,” he and his equally
adventurous cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (back for “To the Wonder”) not
only offered a short history, literally, of the Universe, but imagined a
version of heaven and the place that dream holds in many people’s lives.
Malick’s latest, released in April,
takes his consideration of the presence of God’s hand in the world to the
forefront, cutting the dialogue (too human?) to the minimum and allowing the
actors’ expressions and movement to tell this story of an exasperating love
affair. And while it is nearly impossible not to admire the stunning images of
wind-swept wheat fields; the flat, endless landscape of Oklahoma; characters in
constant motion, away and toward one another—even a gas station at dusk looks
gorgeous in a Malick movie—the film fails because it lacks a compelling story
or even a character worth caring about.
The picture opens with scenes of a man and
woman falling in love in Paris, followed by his seemingly reluctant decision to
bring her and her young daughter back to his home in Oklahoma. Neil (played
with a strange detachment by Ben Affleck) is a serious-minded environmental
scientist who studies workplaces and communities for dangerous pollutants while
emotionally fragile Marina (Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko of “Quantum of
Solace” and “Oblivion”) wonders through the streets and field of the farming
community contemplating life and her relationship.
At least that’s what I think is going on
in “To the Wonder.” The only attempt at traditional storytelling is Marina’s
occasional narration of her esoteric thoughts and snippets of conversation.
Affleck’s Neil has about five lines in the entire film even though he’s in
nearly every scene. No one but Malick could pull this off so effectively, yet
it still didn’t work for me.
There’s an underdeveloped subplot
concerning the town’s priest (Javier Bardem) who, we learn through his
narration, is questioning his faith, struggling to find God as he tends to the
poor and afflicted. As a realist and nonbeliever, I wanted these characters to
face the world as it is and stop looking for guidance from above; start seeking
their spiritual salvation from their heads not their hearts.
Neil and Marina’s relationship has its
ups and downs before visa problems force her and her daughter to return to France.
Meanwhile, Neil has a brief affair with a local woman (Rachel McAdams), who
seems to make him happier than Marina does. But it’s hard to tell—he’s such a
dour, unexpressive and frankly uninteresting character.
Marina eventually returns and they
marry, but continue to struggle with their relationship because, it seems clear
to me, Neil doesn’t really love her. But in Malick’s big-picture view, this is
barely about whether or not these two survive as a couple, but about the
choices we make and why we make them as we strive for something we believe to
be happiness.
To me, “To the Wonder” is a muddle of
faith, transcendental philosophy and sketchily drawn characters who take
themselves way too seriously. At one point, probably while she’s roaming
through a wheat field looking back at the camera, Marina asks, “Where are we…when
we’re there?” That’s exactly how I felt watching this film.
STOKER
(2013)
I have to give South Korean director
Chan-wook Park props for not compromising his vision, such as it is, in his
first Hollywood film. His theme of complex, bloody revenge, brilliantly
constructed in his acclaimed “Oldboy” (2003) and “Lady Vengeance” (2005), is
repeated in this American film about the aftermath of a family tragedy.
It’s hard to break through the icy wall of
“Stoker”; there are no characters to root for, to care about; only three rather
cold, calculating and essentially corrupt individuals in an odd battle of wits.
At least in “Oldboy,” also filled with unpleasant, self-serving characters,
there is one person—a young girl who is tricked into playing a role in the
revenge plot—who you can feel sympathy for.
His
new film opens at the funeral of the husband of Evelyn Stoker, who was found
burned to death in his car. At the reception after the burial, the dead man’s
brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode), presents himself out of the blue. Neither Evelyn
(Nicole Kidman) nor her teenage daughter, India (Mia Wasikowska), have ever
seen or heard of the brother, at least it seems that way.
Charlie immediately makes himself at home,
clearly intent on taking the place of his brother (played in flashback by Dermot
Mulroney) with both Evelyn and India. As the mother-daughter is already tense,
treating each other as irritating strangers, it is easy for Charlie to split
them further and turn the household into a tinderbox. On top of that, India, through
whose viewpoint the plot unfolds, starts to discover that her soft-spoken uncle
doesn’t mind killing anyone who crosses him.
Park brings an overly polished, exacting
style to his films—every shot is perfect composed and elaborately staged, with
the actors’ movement carefully choreographed. It creates a reality that is
chilly, claustrophobic, unbending; a bit Kubrick like, but without the freedom
the late filmmaker gave his actors. But in both “Stoker” and “Oldboy,” the
style fits the films, turning them into sad commentaries on the state of human
relations.
I could never get over the fact that these
three characters all accept the strange, frankly unacceptable, behavior of each
other as if it was completely normal.
MILDRED PIERCE (2011)
James M. Cain’s story of a divorced mother
reinventing herself as a restaurateur only to be done in by her devotion to her
self-centered daughter is one of the great novels about the 1930s; ahead of its
time—it was published in 1941—in its frank depiction of female empowerment and
sexuality and showing how the generous nature of mothering women can easily be
taken advantage of.
Mildred Pierce is such a hard working,
sincere individual that she trusts that those around her have the same ethics,
never seeing their ulterior motives. In Cain’s world—he is also responsible for
“The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity”—money, sex and the
desire for prestige inevitably brings out the worst in human nature.
In 1945, Warner Bros. and its stable of screenwriters
(including William Faulkner) retooled the novel into a film noir crime picture
that earned Joan Crawford an Oscar for best actress, but used little but the
main plot points from the novel.
This HBO miniseries is an extraordinarily
faithful adaption, providing Kate Winslet with one of her greatest roles in an
already illustrious career. Because the story is told here completely from
Mildred’s point of view, the actress is in every scene of this five-hour plus
drama.
The series begins when Mildred’s husband
walks out on the Glendale, Calif., housewife, forcing her to find work in a
Depression-ravaged job market. She lucks into a waitressing job (but hides it
from her proud daughter) and gains a reputation as a first-class pie maker.
It’s not long before she takes a shot on opening her own restaurant—a chicken
and waffle dinner—with the help of the family’s lawyer and her husband’s former
real estate partner Wally (James Le Gros).
Even as her fortunes are on the rise, she
meets the source of her downfall, the dashing Pasadena playboy Monty (Guy
Pearce), who introduces her and her daughter Veda (Morgan Turner as a pre-teen;
later Evan Rachel Wood) into the upper class world of polo, parties and, for Veda,
a more prestigious piano tutor. Her daughter’s dreams of becoming a concert
pianist consume Mildred, even as the girl despises her mother’s commonness. The
ruthlessly Veda sets her sights on a world far beyond her mother’s reach and
beware to anyone who stands in her way.
Winslet, a six-time Oscar nominee and the 2008
best-actress winner for her role as a mysterious woman hiding her Nazi past in
“The Reader,” creates a Mildred who is just as believable as a naïve, put-upon
1930s housewife as she is when she’s working herself ragged to make her
restaurant a success or showing her passion for sex. But she’s never
manipulative, never taking advantage of others even as they are scheming to use
her.
Like
all miniseries, there are slow sections and repetition, but overall this five-part
drama captures Cain’s roller-coaster plot and the flavor of Southern California
of the 1930s. The movie becomes increasingly fascinating as Veda moves into her
late teens, becoming openly rebellious, heartlessly mocking her mother’s
sacrifices.
The outstanding supporting cast also
includes Melissa Leo as Mildred’s sympathetic neighbor who helps her into the
liquor business after Prohibition ends and Mare Winningham as a fellow waitress
who shows her the ropes of running a restaurant and eventually becomes her
partner. Like Winslet, they are very convincing Depression era women—tough,
resilient and resourceful—and completely comfortable slinging around Cain’s
hard-boiled, snappy dialogue.
“Mildred Pierce” was nominated for 22
Emmys, with Winslet and Pearce both going home winners. For anyone who is a fan
of Cain or Winslet, this is a must see.
