July 2022

ELVIS (2022)

    This fictional telling of Elvis Presley’s meteoric rise to fame and his slow descent isn’t really worth a sentence of criticism. Obviously, to expect a biopic to stick to the truth about its subject is absurd—even the most illustrious lives aren’t exciting enough to sustain a big-screen entertainment.

    But director Baz Luhrmann has invented an Elvis life that didn’t exist. And, even worse, his lead actors—Austin Butler as the King and Tom Hanks as his shady manager/puppet master—fail miserably in turning their characters into anything more than cartoon figures. Actually, Hank’s Col. Parker comes off as more Muppet than human. This will be remembered as the low point of this legendary actor’s career.

     Butler possesses an “Elvis” look—though the filmmakers are very slow in altering him into the prematurely aging, drug-abusing singer—but he seems incapable of expressing emotions other than shaking his body.

      The first sin of “Elvis” is to turn Presley’s on-stage performance into a national crisis while exaggerate his gyrations into something almost spasmatic. I’ve seen hundreds of videos of Presley performing and he never shook like Butler does in the film. (I can’t wait until someone does the Joe Cocker story.) In addition, Lahrmann and his screenwriters leave the impression that Elvis is headed for jail for his lascivious performances and that spurs his draft notice.  Yes, Elvis stirred up the conservatives who feared the influence of Black music becoming part of mainstream white culture, but there was no doubt that Presley’s career would be ending.

     The movie star part of Presley’s life is glossed over, both his success and how it pushed the singer to record middle-of-the-road material at the same time that British-invasion rock left him behind. But the film hits its heights with the recreation of, and behind the scenes look at, Presley’s 1968 television special, a rare instance of the thrill of rock ‘n’ roll music captured on TV. It also marked the moment Elvis stood up to Col. Parker’s safety-first approach, but it didn’t last.   

    The attempts to show Elvis’ sensitivity to what the country is going through in the late 60s—the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy—ring hollow and the film’s constant flashbacks to remind viewers of his Black music influences come off as heavy handed. (Pointedly, the film never mentions Presley’s biggest singing influence, Dean Martin.)

    After the slam-bang editing of the first two hours of the picture, the final, sad conclusion of his life drags to a close. Butler’s laid-back performance fails miserable by the end as I could barely tell the difference between a clean Elvis and a drugged-up one. The only change seems to be a willingness to call out Parker for the manipulator he was.

      And that is the saddest aspect of Elvis’ life and career—allowing Parker to control it, never growing up and taking over his own life.

     If you really want to know about Presley, seek out the 2018 HBO documentary “Elvis: The Searcher” or watching the superbly done 1979 TV movie “Elvis,” starring Kurt Russell.

     This “Elvis” isn’t even very good at myth-making: If I didn’t already know it, nothing in this film would persuade me that Presley is one of the most important figures of modern music. But, then again, if this film inspires those who don’t know Presley’s music to take a listen, then it has done something worthwhile.

  

PHILIP BAKER HALL (1931-2022) and JAMES CAAN (1940-2022)

    More than once in this blog I’ve lamented the disappearance of the roster of great character actors who made 20^th Century movies so entertaining

     Philip Baker Hall, a latecomer to film who died last month at 90, was among the last of those actors whose skills, instant recognition and commitment to even the smallest role, continued that traditional into this century. (Paul Sorvino, who also recently died, also fits the category, mostly in mob roles.)

     I first encountered the sad-eyed Hall in a lead role—a little-seen one-man performance filmed by Robert Altman—as a drunken, ranting, but spot-on Richard Nixon. In “Secret Honor” (1984), the 53-year-old Hall, after a decade of toiling in small roles on television, gives nothing less than a career-making performance as the disgraced former president. It should have propelled him to stardom, but it took a while.

     Twelve years later, he was top billed in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Hard Eight” (1996), as a veteran Vegas gambler who schools a struggling John C. Reilly in the life. Though little seen, the role, along with a smaller role in Anderson’s masterpiece “Boogie Nights” the following year, made Hall one of the leading supporting players over the next 20 years. (In 1991, he made his now legendary appearance on “Seinfeld” as a library cop.) 

     Just a small sample of his roles include CBS executive Don Hewitt in “The Insider,” a fictional game show host Jimmy Gator in “Magnolia” (again for Anderson), another TV exe in “The Truman Show,” a detective in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” as Sen. Everett Dirksen in the TV film “Path to War,” as the CIA director in “Argo,” a police captain in “Rush Hour” and a mob boss in “You Kill Me.” His last role was as part of the ensemble of the TV series, “Messiah” in 2020.    

    (For a heartfelt remembrance of Hall, look for the article by LA Times sportswriter Sam Farmer, who was a friend of the actor.)

     Any remembrance of James Caan begins with his Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather,” a supporting role that concludes with one of the cinema’s most famous death scenes. “Sonny at the tollbooth” has become a standard idiom describing any situation that ends badly. But before that bloody takedown, Caan supplies the fire in an otherwise underplayed, surprisingly quiet film.

    Though the actor felt cheated that some of his best moments were left on the cutting room floor, his combative, boisterous Sonny—overreacting to the shooting of this father even as he’s unsure of how to fill the Don’s chair—earned an Oscar nomination.

    But before that landmark role and after years of working in television, he established himself as a leading man, first as a scientist-astronaut in Robert Altman’s “Countdown” (1967); as a dangerous character who hooks up with a woman running away from her life in Francis Coppola’s “The Rain People” (1969), both co-starring Robert Duvall; as author John Updike’s one-time high school star Harry Angstrom running from the drudgery of middle-class life in “Rabbit, Run” (1970); and, to much acclaim, as real-life doomed NFL running back Brian Piccolo in the TV movie “Brian’s Song” (1971).

      His “Godfather” performance raised his profile and for the next 10 years he starred in both challenging low-budget pictures and in less successful, but higher-profile movies. Caan’s best post-“Godfather” performances were in Mark Rydell’s “Cinderella Liberty” (1973), an offbeat romance between a sailor and a prostitute; in Karel Reisz’s “The Gambler,” writer James Toback’s tale of a college professor obsessed with gambling; and in Michael Mann’s superb psychological study of a safe cracker “Thief” (1981). If only he had sought out more roles like these, but the call of big money and stardom led him to “Freebie and the Bean” (1974), “Funny Lady” (1975), “Rollerball” (1975), “Chapter Two” (1979), badly cast as the fictional version of Neil Simon.         

      For a time, Caan succumbed to the destructive habits of stardom, becoming persona non grata in Hollywood before Coppola cast him as the by-the-book military man facing family problems in “Gardens of Stone” (1997). That led to starring roles in “Alien Nation” (1988), a big budget bust; “Misery” (1990), a mega hit that won co-star Kathy Bates an Oscar; and then, opposite Bette Midler, in “For the Boys” (1991).

     From the mid-90s onward, Caan was relegated to mostly touch guy supporting roles, memorably in Wes Anderson’s debut “Bottle Rocket” (1996), a corrupt contractor in “The Yards” and as Will Ferrell’s long-lost father in “Elf” (2003). But he never stopped working: romancing Ellen Burstyn, another 1970s legend, in the “seniors” comedy “Queen Bees” (2021) and as an elderly mobster in “Fast Charlie,” scheduled for next year. 

       While Caan’s career doesn’t match what Duvall and Al Pacino, his “Godfather brothers,” have accomplished, he remains an icon of 70s-80s cinema who, at his best, was just as believable as a twitchy mobster, a professional athlete or a discontent husband.

   

THE MOB (1951) 

    I watch a ton of low-budget film noirs from the 1940s and ‘50s and even those with sophomoric scripts and awful acting hold my interested better than most new films. And then, occasionally, I catch a gem that I’ve previously never seen or even heard of.

    This fast-paced police vs. mobsters starring Broderick Crawford, just a couple of years after winning the best actor Oscar for “All the King’s Men” (1949), and filled with great character actors, benefits from a first-rate script and its moody, deep-shadow cinematography by legendary cameraman Joseph Walker (“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “His Girl Friday,” among over 100 others).

     The film opens with Crawford, a Los Angeles cop, buying a ring for his fiancé at a pawn shop when he witnesses what looks like another policeman shooting a suspect. He tells the cop to call in the shooting but instead the guy bolts. Turns out, the man killed was the cop and the shooter was a mob gunsel disguised as a cop.

     His commanders explain to Crawford’s Johnny Damico that the dead policeman had infiltrated the mob that controls the docks. So they send Johnny to New Orleans to create a new identify and then, eventually, return to Southern California and find work on the docks.

    Union corruption is hardly a fresh film topic—best examined in Elia Kazan’s masterpiece “On the Waterfront” in 1954—but “The Mob” stands out with its snappy, sarcastic dialogue and willingness to show across-the-board criminality. The screenplay by William Bowers, one of Hollywood’s best writers of the era, is based on a book by Ferguson Findley. Credits for Bowers, who 20 years later showed up as a congressman questioning Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” include “The Gunfighter,” “Cry Danger,” “30“ and “Support Your Local Sheriff!” to mention just a few.

     It’s probably Crawford’s second-best performance—his Johnny is convincing as both an uncompromising tough guy and a humble, working-class cop. He’s well supported by Richard Kiley, a superb actor who should have been a star, as a dockworker who befriends Johnny; Ernest Borgnine as a smooth-talking mob boss; Neville Brand as the mob enforcer; Jay Adler as a slimy hotel manager; Matt Crowley as an in-the-know bartender; Lynn Baggett as a sexy blonde who tries to get info out of Johnny; along with Charles Bronson and John Marley in small roles.

     This is the actual first film directed by Robert Parrish, who served as editor on “All the King’s Men,” as he was replaced by actor Dick Powell on his first assignment, “Cry Danger.” He made high profile pictures through the 50s (“Lucy Gallant,” “Fire Down Below,” “The Wonderful Country”) but never directed a better film than “The Mob.”

 

 OFFICIAL COMPETITION (2022)

     While it’s an easy target, actors and their egos and pretense inevitably make for amusing comedies. “Tootsie,” “My Favorite Year,” “Birdman,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” are just the most prominent examples of the laughs that are easily mined when filmmakers take aim at their own business.

     Add this uncompromisingly biting Spanish-language gem to that list. Argentine co-writers-directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat (Andrés Duprat also gets a writing credit) offer a sausage-making look at the process, from the financing process to rehearsals to post-screening press conferences and the indulgent, childish ways that actors and directors go about their business.

    Penélope Cruz, fresh off her down-to-earth, Oscar-nonmined performance in “Parallel Mothers,” sports a frizzy, mountainous red wig as determinedly serious avant-garde director Lola Cuevas, whose antics to elicit the performances she seeks is just this side of torture. Suffering under her martinet-style direction are two full-of-themselves actors, movie star Felix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) and acclaimed thespian Ivan Torres (Victor Martinez). It’s as if Anthony Hopkins and Sylvester Stallone were cast as brothers in a Wes Anderson film.

      Nearly the entire film takes place during rehearsals Lola orchestras with the two actors. As repetitive as this seems, the filmmakers never run out of new ways to show the bloated egos of this trio.

       Martinez, who has spent most of this career on Argentina television, nails the persona of an “artiste,” whose life is devoted to intellectual pursuits: in one scene he and his wife, a children’s book author, rhapsodized while listening to a pretentiously awful classical record.

     This may be Banderas’ best film performance as he hits all the right notes of fake sincerity and cluelessness. His Felix never tires of bragging about his various acting awards.

    Like few actresses, Cruz has the ability to portray a classic beauty, as glamorous as Elizabeth Taylor or Ingrid Bergman, or play a quirky comic figure as well as Diane Keaton or Sandra Bullock.

     In what thus far has turned out to be an uneventful year at the movies, this import might be the best film I’ve seen.

  

THE GRAY MAN (2022)

     If this is the best Netflix can deliver, I think I can safely predict that its stock will continue to plummet. Generic, predictable and lacking any sense of quirkiness, this lifeless actioner from Anthony and Joe Russo, directors of “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” doesn’t give star Ryan Gosling much to do beyond firing his gun.

     Gosling plays “Six,” a “Bourne”-like creation of a secret CIA program who discovers that his latest assigned killing was of a fellow assassin. Like Jason in “Bourne,” he realizes he’s next on the list and goes on the run, skipping around from one world capital to another (each proudly labeled when the action shifts).

     His nemesis is a rogue agent (pretty original, right?) played by Chris Evans, clearly trying to exorcise his “Captain America” persona. Sporting a 1970s-style black mustache and making all those “Avenger” bad guys look like humanitarians, Evan’s Lloyd is so outrageously destructive in his methods to capture “Six” that there’s nothing left to believe about the story.

      Gosling is one of the best actors of his generation, but he never has a chance in this mess. I can hardly wait for the sequel.

  

CHA CHA SMOOTH TALK (2022)

    Somewhere there’s a checklist independent filmmakers use if they have any hope to secure big-screen distribution that looks something like this:

§  Young adult working in dead end job;

§  Single or remarried mother;

§  Goofy best friend who acts like he’s still in high school;

§  Older woman whose uncertain life leads to some kind of relationship;

§  Writer-director also plays the lead character;

§  Cathartic fight breaks out during a wedding, birthday party or some type of traditional American gathering;

§  An indecipherable, yet cool title;

§  Obtain a slot at Sundance, Telluride or South by Southwest.

I could go on but you know these films; “Cha Cha” checks all these boxes except the “best friend” storyline—maybe it was cut in editing.

     But don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad film and writer-director-star Cooper Raiff presents an appealing, TV-series-like persona.     

     Fresh out of college, Raiff’s Andrew works at a generic version of Hot Dog on a Stick, but after a spirited appearance escorting his younger brother (Evan Assante) to a friend’s Bar Mitzvah celebration, he’s convinced to start a business as a party starter. Andrew becomes the go-to guy in this Jewish community (I never did catch where the film is set) to serve as organizer of Bar Mitzvahs and, most importantly, enthusiastically pushing teens to mingle and dance.

    Also, at that first gathering, he meets Domino (the effervescent Dakota Johnson), a young mother—but older than Andrew—whose autistic daughter Lola (an impressive debut by Vanessa Burghardt) struggles to socialize. He quickly wins Domino’s heart by coaxing Lola onto the dance floor.

      The rest plays out as you’d expect, though the film’s strength is its focus on the touching relationship between Lola and Andrews—he becomes her regular sitter and she grows to trust him.

        Leslie Mann as Andrew’s mother and Brad Garrett as the step-father help find some humanity in these stereotype roles, while Johnson, who became infamous in the “Fifty Shades” franchise but was quite good in last year’s “The Lost Daughter,” steals the film. Her and Lola’s story is much more compelling than the undefined difficulties Andrew faces.

       This is just the second feature for the 25-year-old Raiff, (2020’s “Shithouse”—see the checklist on titles) so I have hope that he will throw out overused plot points next time and work on writing a story that allows the lead character to grow, not just go through the motions.

   

ENCANTO (2021)

    I can’t imagine a more childish film winning an Oscar in any category. For some reason, it has become OK for animated pictures made for an audience of grade-school kids to be honored as the best in the genre.

    Occasionally, a movie with wider appeal—“Up,” “Inside Out,” “WALL-E”—have captured the best animated film Oscar, but too often it’s been kid-friendly, song-filled fare such as “Brave,” “Frozen” and “Coco.” The latest winner falls into the latter category.

     The Disney fairy tale is set in a mansion with a mind of its own, located in a small town in Colombia, where the extended family dominate the community because each has special powers. Everyone except Mirabel, the teen daughter who mopes around because she didn’t inherit the magic that has touched other family members. The rest plays out like every story about fitting in and appreciating others.

    There are plenty of songs—composed by either Lin-Manuel Miranda or Germaine Franco—that all sound the same, while the animation, though extravagantly colorful, feels as realistic as a computer game background. All the characters look like they were made from the same mold: computer versions of giant-eyed plastic baby dolls. 

     I’m happy films such as “Encanto” get made, both for their lessons and their diversity, but surely the Academy should be honoring more ambitious animated works.

 

 

Photos:

 Austin Butler in “Elvis.” (Warner Bros.)

 Philip Baker Hall as the gameshow host in “Magnolia.” (New Line Cinema)

 James Caan with Al Pacino in “The Godfather.” (Paramount Pictures)

 Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz in “Official Competition.” (The Mediapro Studio)