December 2019

 

PARASITE (2019)

     The film introduces the seemingly hapless Kim family as they all pitch-in to make a bit of money folding pizza boxes. Squeezed into their hovel of a home, living hand to mouth, you’d never guess what this South Korean family is capable of.

     What begins as a simple story of doing whatever it takes to survive turns into an unrelenting examination of human dignity, the growing gap between those at the top and those at the bottom and the manner in which we see and treat others.

      The film, superbly acted by the entire cast and brilliantly directed by acclaimed Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho (“Mother,” “Snowpiercer”), working from a script he wrote with Jin Wan Han, veers from comic to tragic in a split second while never losing its focus on the human impact of self-centered decisions. This Palme d’Or winner is 2019’s best movie and one of the finest foreign-language pictures I’ve seen in years.

      The action kicks into gear when the family’s son (Choi Woo Shik) scores a job tutoring the high school-aged daughter of a wealthy family. The love-hungry daughter immediately becomes enamored, giving him leverage as he convinces the naïve mother (Cho Yeo Jeong) to hire an acquaintance (actually, his sister, played by Park So Dam) as an art therapist for her unruly son.

    Before long, the father (Song Kang Ho) is employed as the husband’s driver and the wife (Chang Hyae Jin) replaces the devoted housekeeper (Lee Jung Eun) who they trick out of the job.

      This is just the beginning of this incredibly dense, wild domestic horror film that sprinkles elements of master filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch and Luis Bunuel into this very 21^st Century look at economic and social disparity.

     While I have always been reluctant to judge acting in non-English pictures as I have no way of properly judging how effectively lines are delivered, the performers in “Parasite,” all three families of the story, seemed so immersed in their roles that the almost surreal aspects of the plot came off as completely believable.

    And while Bong is clearly attacking the upper one percent, he doesn’t turn them into easily hated targets; in fact, their gullibility and self-importance makes them more pitiful than despicable.

    The huge chasm between the cramped, almost desperate lifestyle of the Kims and the sleek, cold modernism of the Parks’ home, precisely captured by cinematographer Hong Kyung Pyo, offers, without a single line of dialogue, a powerful metaphor for the challenge the world faces in 2019 and beyond.

FORD V. FERRARI (2019)

       If auto racing is a sport—the eternal debate among fans and detractors—James Mangold’s thrilling re-creation of the legendary rivalry between U.S. auto maker Henry Ford II and Italy’s race car mogul Enzo Ferrari is one of the best sports movies ever made.

      Few, if any, sports pictures have been better acted, written sans the usual portion of sentimentality and included so many thoroughly convincing and riveting competition sequences.

      Ford (a terrifically gruff and arrogant Tracy Letts) son of the iconic founder is persuaded by a young, ambitious executive named Lee Iacocca (later CEO of Chrysler and the face of the industry in the 1980s and ‘90s) that the company need to build a race car to add some sizzle to the brand and attract younger buyers.

      The designer Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) selects to put Ford in the running at the prestigious Le Mans Race is former driver Carroll Shelby, who by the 1960s was customizing engines at his Los Angeles-based company. Of course, in a classic clash of creativity and business, Shelby constantly butts heads with the other Ford executive, mostly over his instance of using rough-around-the-edges British ex-patriot driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale, yet again hitting the mark perfectly).

    As the film chronicles the experimenting and competitions leading up to the 1966 Le Mans, the brotherly relationship between Shelby and Miles serves as the heart of the story. They seem polar opposites yet share the burning desire to go faster and faster and cross the finish line first.

     Mangold, who has shown in the past that he’s a first-rate storyteller and knows how to craft a crowd-pleasing, well-acted film (“Walk the Line,” “3:10 to Yuma”), again turns out a superbly paced movie that builds toward the big race without becoming tedious or overdramatic. This picture is more accomplish than anything he’s done, combining the messy left turns of real life with the intensity of the racetrack into an entertaining feature, smartly written by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller.

     The POV racing sequences make you feel like you’re part of the race; the 24-hour French race actually feels like the physical and mental marathon it must be. Phedon Papamichael, who earned an Oscar nod for “Nebraska” and has shot most of Mangold’s films, provides the inventive, edge-of-your-seat cinematography.

     Damon, a solid actor who always seems to be trying too hard, looks more comfortable, authentic, relax than usual, maybe knowing that he can play Shelby with cool command in a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, as Bale delivers in the showier, fiery role. He’s at his best in a showdown with Ford after his team failed in its first try at Le Mans.

     Still somewhat under the radar, Bale keeps delivering memorable performances as he has compiled a diverse collection of recent roles, staring with the “Dark Knight” films and then continuing in “The Fighter” (2010), “American Hustle” (2013), “The Big Short” (2015), “Hostiles” (2017) and “Vice” (2018).  As Miles, he has the rare chance to use his natural British accent while turning the renegade driver into the classic American film character: thoroughly professional, anti-authority and answering only to his own moral compass. It should earn the 45-year-old his fifth Oscar nomination.

      The supporting cast is equally strong, including Letts, Bernthal as the enthusiastic Iacocca, Ray McKinnon as Damon’s righthand man and 14-year-old star-in-the-making Noah Jupe (“A Quiet Place”) as Miles’ beloved son.

      While I have zero interest in car racing, I was more entertained by “Ford v Ferrari” than any film this year. It’s a perfect melding of the gear-head details of engineering and aerodynamics with the machismo of racing as seen through two charismatic legends of the sport.

RICHARD JEWELL (2019)

     It’s all a matter of perspective. Director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray clearly intended the moral of this re-telling of the investigation into the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing to be that both the FBI and the media thoughtlessly destroy people’s lives in the name of uncovering the truth. The message I came away with was that the press puts way too much trust in what law enforcement disperses out to them.

     If you’re unaware of the case, Richard Jewell (impressively portrayed by Paul Walter Hauser, who played a similar role as the “bodyguard” in “I, Tonya”) was the security guard who first alerted authorities to a suspicious backpack during pre-Olympic festivities in an Atlanta park. Despite his and others’ efforts, the home-made pipe bomb exploded, killing two and injuring over 100. While Jewell was first portrayed in the press as a hero, a leak by the FBI led to reports that Jewell was the prime suspect in the planting of the bomb.

      Sam Rockwell plays a lawyer and former co-worker of Jewell’s, who takes up his case, quickly realizing that law enforcement’s only hope is to pressure Jewell to admit to the crime, utilizing the media to paint him as a loner desperate for attention and Jewell’s naïve admiration for cops of all stripes.

     The story is a stark example of how society, both officially and gossipy, continues to judge the value of someone by outward appearances. Jewell, who died of a heart attack in 2007, was overweight, lived with his mother and tended to overstep his bounds no matter what low-level job he held. This “evidence” seemed to be given more credence than the facts of the case.

     There has been a backlash against the film’s portrayal of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, Kathy Scruggs, who first broke the story of the FBI’s case against Jewell. In the movie, she is shown offering sexual favors to the lead FBI investigator (Jon Hamm) for a scoop. That has been disputed by the paper and other reporters and would probably never have shown up in the film if she was alive to defend herself or sue.

     That a woman, especially a reporter, is portrayed offensively in a Hollywood movie shouldn’t surprise anyone. For me, what was even more offensive was showing her crying during a press conference given by Jewell’s mother (Kathy Bates, excellent as always). That wouldn’t have happened, and neither would the scene in which Jewell and his lawyer visit the newsroom and berate her. (Oddly, they then go into a meeting with the editor, but we are never shown what came of that).  Ray, who wrote and directed the excellent “Shattered Glass” (about plagiarist Stephen Glass) and co-wrote “State of Play,” another newspaper film, should be more knowledge about how newsrooms work; he relies on tired clichés in this new film.

     In truth, there’s not much plot to “Richard Jewell,” but it remains interesting throughout because of the first-rate work of Rockwell and Hauser along with the abiding storytelling skills of 89-year-old Eastwood.

       

THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019)

     Setting is one of the most underrated elements of a successful film. Most great movies turn its location, both real and the sets, into another character. But few films have used the setting as the dominate element of the story like this quirky, dreamlike picture by director Robert Eggers.

     The lighthouse of the title sits on an unhospitable rocky island off the eastern Canadian coast, where two mismatched men enact a mythological tale of power, ego and loneliness. Winslow (Robert Paterson) is the neophyte apprentice, assisting the grizzled, domineering lighthouse keeper Thomas (Willem Dafoe, looking very 19^th Century), who orders around the younger man with sadomasochistic glee.

   The film, shot in gritty black and white by Jarin Blaschke —it reminded me of Guy Maddin’s gloriously bizarre creations—details in sweaty, filthy detail the unrelenting labor Winslow carries out each day to keep the pre-electricity lighthouse glowing.

    There’s not much to the story, in fact there are probably at least two too many scenes of them drinking themselves into drunken stupors and acting like children, but this isn’t a film about story, it’s about a mood, atmosphere, human character under duress and harshness of surviving day after day after day.

    The movie also offers another off-beat, unforgettably performance by the 64-year-old Dafoe, who has been a major presence, but criminally underappreciated, in American film since the mid-1980s.  Just in the past few years, he has earned Oscar nominations for his sympathetic landlord in “The Florida Project” (2017) and his heartbreaking portrayal of Vincent van Gogh in “Eternity’s Gate” (2018), while continuing as a regular in Wes Anderson films.

     This year, he also plays the central figure in the mystery of “Motherless Brooklyn” and the title character in two Abel Ferrara’s films, “Tommasu,” about an artist working in Italy and “Pasolini,” a bio-pic of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. And then he shows up in last year’s “Murder on the Orient Express.”

    Here’s something to look forward to: Dafoe is among the cast of Guillermo del Toro’s remake of the 1947 carnival-noir Tyrone Power picture “Nightmare Alley” that will star Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper.

 

DOWNTON ABBEY (2019)

     Few prime-time soap operas have been treated with such respect as this well-written, superbly acted British import created by screenwriter Julian Fellowes that ran on public television from 2010 through 2015.

    Starting with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which forever changes the future prospects of the Crawley family, through the growing modernism of post World War I England, both the privileged and their help staff reflect a society that is going through seismic changes.

      Juggling no less than two dozen major character, Fellowes, who wrote every episode of the series and this movie, developed each with the kind of detailed care one rarely finds in filmed drama, allowing them come alive for viewers as if they were part of an epic novel.

    While Maggie Smith as the dowager countess of the family, Violet Crawley garnered most of the accolades, the actors who turned essential stock characters—the show owes a great debt to the British classic “Upstairs, Downstairs”—include Jim Carter as the imperious, loyal-to-a-fault butler Carson; Hugh Bonneville as Robert, the earl of the manor; Elizabeth McGovern, the American wife of Robert; Laura Carmichael as their neglected middle daughter Edith, who eventually has her day; Joanne Froggatt as the devoted wife of Bates, the master’s dresser, who fights various battles with law enforcement; and Robert James-Collier as Barrow, footman turned butler who begins the series as a despicable troublemaker but eventually earns the viewers’ sympathy. 

     Most of the cast is back for the movie, but not, ironically, the one cast member who has become a film star, Lily James, who in the series was the dowager’s rebellious young niece.  But in the world of “Downton Abbey,” she’d hardly be missed.

     The movie is a much-anticipated visit with old friends working out old and new challenges, allowing audiences to smile or tear up as we’re updated on characters’ lives. But as a movie that should stand on its own, it is hopeless. There is little attempt to re-introduce the characters or set up the relationships anew. The story revolves around a royal visit to the Abbey by King George V (Simon Jones) and Queen Mary (Geraldine James).    

       Fellowes and director Michael Engler (TV veteran who worked on “Sex and the City” and “Six Feet Under”) rightly assumed that no one was going to wander into this film without having at least experienced a handful of “Downton Abbey” the TV series. I can’t recall a film made so exclusively for a select TV audience.  

    Yet it’s done well at the box office, with close to $100 million in receipts in North America. The line between television, be it old traditional networks, cable or streaming, and the cinema is very quickly crumbling; in another 20 years will anyone even recognize the difference?

SOUVENIR (2019)

    I’ve always prided myself on being empathetic to other’s plight in life, a trait that I think contributes to my interest in movies and the variety of lives one experience through the cinema.

    But as I age, I find myself becoming less tolerant of those who make one bad decision after another, while—in the case of film characters—expecting audiences to sympathize.

     That attitude colors my opinion of this critically lauded indie (some have put it on Top 10 lists) that came out earlier this year. Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is a college film student who barely seems awake most of the time. I would expect someone pursuing a career in film to be full of ideas and energy.

     But she is anything but that, which may explain why she’s attracted to low-key Anthony (Tom Burke), a well-to-do foreign minister in the British government. Even before his dark side is revealed, he comes off as a petulant, arrogantly sarcastic bore.

     Julie acts oblivious when she doesn’t recognize needle track marks on his arms or is questioned by one his friend as to why she’s hanging out with a heroin addict.

     The low-budget, slow-moving, under-written picture barely kept me awake; if I had seen it in a dark theater, I would have been dozing 30 minutes in.

     “Souvenir,” named for an 18^th Century French painting the couple admires, offers a few interesting scenes with Julie’s mother (played by her real-life parent Tilda Swinton), but writer-director Joanna Hogg does nothing to make me care about this foolish character. Astonishingly, to me, a sequel is in the works (even indie films have Part II now).

     Here’s a tip to young filmmakers: If you want to receive good notices for your work, include something about moviemaking in your script and, if possible, cast someone related to a famous actor. Mainstream critics seems to fall for that every time.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—FALLOUT (2018)

       After six of these, during which Ethan Hunt (better known as Tom Cruise) has aged from 34 to 57, its difficult to work up much enthusiasm for yet another evildoer from Hunt’s past with WMDs at his disposal.

    But I must admit that as action films go—and I’m not talking about those that ignore Earthly physics—this franchise continues to deliver thrilling chases, complex double-crosses and amusing banter between Hunt and his team, all of which come off as believable enough to keep me coming back.

    What isn’t believable is that an intelligence agency would keep an operative in the field who’s older than all his desk-bound bosses and has disregarded direct orders more often a rebellious teenager. Neither is the beaten-to-the-ground plot crutch that involves a corrupt or compromised agent playing a crucial role in every film. There have been more turncoats in “Mission: Impossible” films than there have been in the entire history of U.S.-British espionage.

    One particular aspect of Hunt—compared to that legendary ladies’ man Bond—is that he never has time for the sexual assignations that usually are as essential to the genre as the last-second cutting of red and green wires (or was it the blue and yellow ones?).

    Whether to maintain a PG rating (to increase box office) or something Cruise insists on, Hunt shows no interest in the temptation of either fellow agents or villainous seductresses. What kind of spy is that? In “Fallout,” both Hunt’s ex-wife (Michelle Monaghan) and ex-girlfriend (Rebecca Ferguson) play vital roles, but the only emotion the stoic agent shows is regret for putting them in harm’s way.

     In this episode, Hunt is still after the plutonium from “Rogue Nation” (2015), now under the control of renegade Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a former IMF agent who hates Hunt and the world.  Hunt’s immediate boss (Alec Baldwin), who once wanted Hunt jailed, is now his biggest fan, while the new CIA chief (Angela Bassett) sends the hulking August Walker (Henry Cavill) to keep an eye on Hunt and maybe, if he feels the need, to kill him.

    Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg are back as Hunt’s comrades in arms as is director Christopher McQuarrie, who orchestrated the previous film and is signed up for the next two.

    And then there’s Lalo Schifrin’s theme music, intensifying the action while serving as a constant reminder of the franchise/TV show’s iconic place in popular culture. It’s been in our heads for over 50 years and doesn’t seem to be going away.