DIANE
KEATON (1946-2025)
Although I’d seen Diane Keaton in many
films previous to “Annie Hall”—“The Godfather” films, of course, and numerous
Woody Allen comedies, most memorably “Love and Death”—her performance in
Allen’s comic take on New York City romanticism, knocked me out.
She, Keaton or Hall, I’m not sure which
(it’s one of the most autobiographical fictional roles in film history),
exemplified the girlfriend of my dreams, even though it eventually ends in a
breakup. When Annie takes the microphone at a New York nightclub, the kind of
place I’d dreamt of being a regular at, and poignantly croons “Seems Like Old
Times,” she completely captured my heart, earning a fan for life.
So associated with Allen’s pictures, it’s
easy to forget her early success as Kay Adams, the occasionally defiant wife of
Michael Corleone, highlighted in “Part II” when she tells her husband she
aborted a second son. “An abortion Michael, just like our marriage is an
abortion, something that’s unholy and evil.” Kay’s monologue was among the most
powerful moments in Francis Coppola’s film that’s overflowing with acting
brilliance. (Being in “The Godfather” wasn’t Keaton’s first role in a cultural
landmark; her first Broadway performance was in “Hair.”)
The
same year she established her screen persona with “Annie Hall,” winning the
best actress Oscar, she also starred in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” a dark,
controversial film about one-night stands and the New York bar scene.
She continued as Allen’s muse (though they
had long since ended their romantic relationship) in “Interiors” (1978), as one
of three daughters dealing with the breakup of their parents, and “Manhattan”
(1979), considered by many as the director’s masterpiece, as the
pseudo-sophisticated journalist Mary who has an affair with Allen’s Isaac. She
deserved, but didn’t receive, Oscar nomination for both films.
In 1981, Keaton was the female lead in
another masterpiece, Beatty’s “Reds,” playing poet-revolutionary Louise Bryant,
partner of fellow true believer Jack Reed (Beatty), activist for the Communist
revolution in Russia, and later mistress to Reed’s friend, dramatist Eugene
O’Neill (Nicholson). Bryant is the linchpin in this historic epic.
She concluded a spectacular, 11-year run
of first-rate performances in one of the most underrated films of the 1980s,
“Shoot the Moon” (1982) playing a wife and mother, tellingly named Faith,
fighting to keep her family together after her husband (Albert Finney) leaves
her for a younger woman.
I’m not going to list them all here, but
take a look at her films from 1972 (“Play It Again, Sam” and “The Godfather”)
through 1982. Rarely in movie history has an actress had a more impressive run
of film roles. She’s the only actress to be nominated for a leading performance
Oscar in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s.
In the late 1980s and ‘90s she cashed in
on her popularity with box office hits “Baby Boom” (1987), “Father of the
Bride” (1991) and “The First Wives Club” (1996), but occasional scored
challenging roles, including “Crimes of the Heart” (1986) and the neglected
“Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993).
In later years, she played the jittery,
confused woman-girl a bit too often, especially once she was in her 60s, but
with the right script, she could still deliver nuanced performances, as seen in
three senior romances, “Something’s Gotta Give” (2003) with Nicholson, “And So
It Goes” (2014) with Michael Douglas and “Hampstead” with Brendan Gleeson.
While she never reached the dramatic
pinnacles given, at their best, by Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda, Kate Winslet or
Nicole Kidman, but she had a career for the ages, as a comedian ranking with
Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, Claudette Colbert and Katharine Hepubrn.
But
for Keaton, it was more than her memorable film performances—she was her own
greatest character; in later years, she had redefined Annie Hall with her
shoulder-length gray hair, black glasses, usually dressed in a black and white
outfit topped off with a cool-looking hat. Iconic may be the most overused word
in entertainment, but Diane Keaton, on and off screen, represented what it
means, or used to mean, to be a movie star.
ONE
BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)
I hate to critique the critics, but it’s
hard to ignore the cult-like raves that have welcomed Paul Thomas Anderson’s
tenth movie.
Like in all of his films, there are moments
in his new picture of exhilarating cinema and comically bigger-than-life
characters. But, as in “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master,” the
virtuoso set-pieces don’t connect into a cohesive story, if that is even his
goal.
I write that a lot these days; story and
themes and insight have taken a step back as filmgoers revel in high-impact
moments that have come to define “great” filmmaking. Sometimes it seems as if
the goal is to make the most thrilling trailer.
In “One Battle After Another,”
Anderson’s attempt to make light of the foolhardy and insincere commitments of
both the left and right (a cynical view that I can’t align with), he presents a
tyrannical military leader (Sean Penn), acting under whose authority it’s never
made clear, sexually obsessed with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), the young black
female leader of a group of anarchists. At one point, he sits in his car ogling
her body through his binoculars as they blow something up.
In case you find Penn’s Col. Lockjaw
offensive, Anderson has Perfidia give in to his lusts. She arranges for a
sexual rendezvous and eventually uses him to escape federal authorities. In the
second half of the picture, set about 20 years later, Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio),
the one-time committed partner-in-revolution to Perfidia—she’s split the scene
and, unfortunately, the movie—is a drugged out middle-aged slacker living with
his daughter in semi-hiding. Then Lockjaw, who doesn’t seem to have aged, still
jacked up with a painted-on tan and a haircut that went out of style when the
Third Reich retreated to Argentina, comes charging back into their lives.
The plot seems to be sputtering when
Anderson’s script introduces a secret society of racists who learn that new
member Lockjaw (every time I write his name it seems more juvenile) may have
sired an African-American child. The only solution, of course, is for him to
kill her.
Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel
“Vineland,” I have no idea how much of this lunacy is from the novel, but if
you’ve read much Pynchon, you won’t be surprised by the cartoonish style of the
film. Anderson loves extremes, in both his best “Boogie Nights” (1997) and in
lesser works like “Magnolia” (1999) and “There Will Be Blood” (2007). This film
is no different, with moments of brilliance undercut by disarrayed
storytelling.
It’s telling that the secret white
supremacy society seems to be only group that has a clear vision of purpose,
amoral as it is. The terrorists certainly don’t and Lockjaw is more than
willing to toss his duty aside for personal revenge.
For my money, Benicio del Toro provides
the picture’s only sympathetic character, as a border-city martial arts
instructor who knows what to do when “the man” shows up. Without him, Bob’s
flailing attempts to protect his daughter or escape Lockjaw would have been
easily crushed.
To state the obvious, one viewer’s
insightful sarcasm is another’s heavy-handed cliché: In this movie, I think you
recognized which camp I fall into. “One Battle After Another” will undoubtedly
win a bushel full of Oscar nominations, but to me it’s less a film than a
collection of riveting clips.
SPRINGSTEEN:
DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE (2025)
At some point, a writer must accept the
paradox that a story can be both painfully truthful and a tired cliché.
Writer-director Scott Cooper falls into that trap and then fills his script
about Bruce Springsteen’s trouble childhood and fear of success with needless
conversations between Bruce and his producer, between Bruce and his composite
girlfriend, even between his producer and his wife. Every character keeps
telling us about Bruce’s problems instead of just letting the audience
experience it.
(I was surprised the film doesn’t depict
Bruce consulting with Little Steven, his bandmate and friend since they were
teens. That would have been more logical.)
The story picks up Springsteen (Jeremy
Allen White) as he’s coming off his hugely successful 1980-81 “The River” tour,
questioning his identity and struggling with issues with his father lingering
from childhood. Holed up in a rental near his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey,
he meets Faye (Odessa Young), the sister of a high school classmate, after
sitting in with the house band at the Asbury Park club where he cut his rock
‘n’ roll teeth, the Stone Pony.
Putting aside that the film portrays the
low point of one of the biggest stars in the entertainment industry (imagine
Frank Sinatra cooperating with filmmakers telling the story of his depression
after his marriage to Ava Gardner?), the script is a worthy attempt to show the
realities of clinical depression and how one’s level of success isn’t a cure.
But the script never lets the viewer think
for themselves. Essentially, it presents a series of conversations (no doubt, a
new record for the most movie scenes inside diners) that explain the character
and his journey, reiterating what we’ve already seen play out.
White, star of the acclaimed streaming
series “The Bear,” has Springsteen’s facial expressions down pat, even the way
he tilts his head, and does a fine job of imitation his throaty singing voice.
I have no doubt the performance will earn him an Oscar nomination.
Cooper, who guided Jeff Bridges to an
Oscar in “Crazy Heart” (2009), has done his best work partnered with Christian
Bale, making three smart but little-seen pictures, “Out of the Furnace” (2013),
“Hostiles” (2017) and “The Pale Blue Eye” (2022). “Deliver Me from Nowhere” is
his highest profile picture but unlike those earlier films, he doesn’t seem to
trust the audience to get it.
Strong, so memorable as Roy Cohn in last
year’s “The Apprentice,” doesn’t get much to work with playing Landau---he’s
the one who wrote in 1974 “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce
Springsteen.” As portrayed by Strong, he wears the same sour face throughout
the picture.
More convincing are veteran British actor
Stephen Graham as Bruce’s abusive, inarticulate father and Paul Walter Hauser
(“Richard Jewell”) as Mike Batlan, an engineer who helps the singer create the
introspective mood of the “Nebraska” songs.
Bruce’s fight with depression isn’t
breaking news; he wrote about it in his 2016 autobiography and was the subject
of a book by Del Fuegos guitarist-turned-writer Warren Zanes, which is the
source for the movie. But for non-fans, it will probably come as a revelation
that this energetic performer who has been a worldwide superstar for 40 years
ever doubted himself.
As a fan of Springsteen, I wanted to love
this film. The most spiritual moments I’ve ever experienced have been at his
concerts. And, at times, I was moved by seeing his story re-created---the
sequence depicting the E-Street band finding it’s groove on “Born in the USA”
may be the best recording studio scene ever.
But this isn’t about Springsteen the
performer; it’s about a fragile man facing an identity crisis and the script
doesn’t do that man justice.
PETER
PAN (1924)
One of the most impressive silent
productions not directed by D.W. Griffith, this adaption of the famed stage
play was personally overseen by Scottish author J.M. Barrie. The play debuted
in London in 1904, but later Barrie revised it, eliminating the dialogue,
turning the story of Wendy, Peter and the Lost Boys into a pantomime. When
Paramount Pictures bought the rights, Barrie insisted it remain wordless (it
was a silent film, right?) and that he be given final say on the actress
playing Peter. (Even in its original form, a female was always cast as
Peter—interpret that as you may.)
Despite interest by stars Gloria Swanson
and Mary Pickford, the writer chose Betty Bronson, a 17-year-old unknown. She’s
properly spirited as the boy who lives in a fairy tale world on Neverland;
where he and a group of youngsters battle wild animals, American Indians
(including Anna May Wong) and dastardly pirates.
Why Peter flies into the world of Wendy
Darling and her brothers John and Michael is never clear, but he leads them
back to Neverland and riotous, tongue-in-cheek adventures.
Stealing all of his scenes is Ernest
Torrence, one of the great silent film villains, as Captain Hook, comically
harassing this group of children while a crocodile stalks him.
Director Herbert Brenon, who had been
making films since 1912, is best known for the first film version (sadly, now
lost) of “The Great Gatsby” (1926) and one of Lon Chaney’s best pictures
“Laugh, Clown, Laugh” (1928). In the stagey “Pan,” he keeps the action moving
while emphasizing the relationship between Wendy (Mary Brian) and Peter.
As in the stage play, the animals, including the Darling’s nanny-dog, are played by actors in furry costumes. George Ali, a stage actor in his only film appearance, is quite animated as the bossy but loyal canine.
The more famous versions of “Peter Pan”
arrived in the 1950s when Disney made the 1953 animated picture and then, in a
musical version, Mary Martin recreated her Tony Award-winning stage performance
as Peter for television.
I still remember watching the musical on
TV as a child—I believe it was a Christmas annual—and, of course, tearing up
when Tinker Bell almost disappears until the audience claps her back to life.
Psychologically, it’s a story ahead of its
time: Wendy wants a boyfriend, Peter wants a mother, and, at the end, the
Darlings adopt all the Lost Boys into their brood, even though they barely paid
attention to the three of their own.
For those who complain that silents are
laborious (and they certainly can be), here is an example of how creative and
energetic that lost art could be.
BUGONIA
(2025)
This may be the most down-to-earth,
traditional film Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster,” “Poor Things,” “Kinds of
Kindness”) has ever made: it’s about a young man who believes aliens have
arrived on Earth to destroy humanity.
Emma Stone, in her third movie with the
director in three years, plays Michelle, a stereotypically intense female CEO
of a pharma company. Jesse Plemons, another Lanthimos regular, is Teddy, who
works in the drug firm’s factory, has imagined that Michelle is from another
planet and, to save civilization, he must persuade her to take him to her
emperor. He has the entire conspiracy all worked out, which he rants on and on
about after he and his cognitively challenged cousin (Aidan Delbis) kidnap Michelle.
Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy,
remaking the 2003 South Korean film “Save the Green Planet,” capture the unmitigated
arrogance that conspiracy nuts bring to their argument: steeped in the minutia
from obsessive study and deep-seated paranoia. And then the script turns the
premise on its head—as Lanthimos is want to do.
Stone delivers another superb
performance—she’s clearly bought into Lanthimos’ vision and that’s not easy.
The actress is thoroughly convincing as the whip-smart, manipulative CEO who tries
every psychological theory to confuse her kidnappers.
Plemons, who I still think of as the evil
bastard from “Breaking Bad,” gives his best film performance as his supremely
confident character is slowly beaten down by Michelle’s game playing. Watching
these two fine actors in a battle of wits is highly entertaining.
The film doesn’t match the outrageous anarchy
of “Poor Things”—it could have used a Willem Dafoe-type character—but “Bugonia”
confirms Lanthimos’ place among the most interesting filmmakers working today.
FRANKENSTEIN
(2025)
I’m not sure we needed another version of
Mary Shelley’s 203-year-old morality tale of a man creating life and forever
regretting his actions. But writer- director Guillermo del Toro seemed destined
to take on this classic, as he’s been making films about misunderstood monsters
(“Hellboy,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Shape of Water”) for years. Naturally, he’s
fashioned a very sympathetic creature.
The filmmaker relocates the story to
Victorian England and has scientist Victor Frankenstein (an over-the-top Oscar
Isaac) utilize electricity—a plot device from the 1931 film not Shelley—to spark
his pieced-together man to life. Like the novel, the story is told by Victor to
a ship captain (Lars Mikkelsen), bound for the North Pole, after Victor, in
pursuit of his creation, is rescued from the icy terrain. The scenes on the
ice-locked ship and in Dr. Frankenstein’s dark, elaborate
castle/laboratory—financed by the uncle (Christoph Waltz) of his brother’s
fiancée—make up the first half of del Toro’s film and are most striking. While
it’s hard to tell how much is CGI (though the filmmaker has said that he had a
ship built for the scenes), both sets are painterly in their opulence, in many
ways diminishing the characters.
The contrast between the wild-eyed, frenetic
performance of Isaac as Dr. Frankenstein and a low-keyed, thoughtful portrayal of
the monster by Jacob Elordi (the object of desire in “Saltburn”) is central to
del Toro’s vision of the story, discarding any idea of a merciful God/creator.
Less defined are Victor’s brother (Felix
Kammerer) and his fiancée Elizabeth (Mia Goth). Their roles are remade in del
Toro’s script and frankly could have been discarded. Waltz, as he always does,
steals his scenes, playing the uncle.
James Whale’s 1931 picture, which threw
out almost all of Shelley’s story except the title, is one of the great films
of the 1930s and turned the monster into a cultural icon. This new version
isn’t as impactful but is a worthy entry into the “Frankenstein” legacy.
A
HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025)
Whatever level of confidence you still
retain in the government’s ability to protect its citizens from foreign
attacks, the new Kathryn Bigelow picture won’t help to assuage those fears.
Before they can finish their morning
coffee, the men and women in charge of guarding our skies are confronted with a
nuclear-armed missile from somewhere in Asia headed toward Chicago.
Rebecca Ferguson (recent “Mission:
Impossible” films), who runs the White House Situation Room, which monitors the
goings-on in the world for the government, starts the ball rolling after the
projectile is first spotted by the defense station in Alaska.
Without knowing who is responsible—both
the Chinese and Russia deny launching—the very unprepared president (Idris
Elba) must decide how to respond after our defense system fails to destroy the
missile.
Showing the crisis from the different
perspectives of those involved—there are many parallels between this film and
Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”—lets the viewer peak into the very human
reactions to the situation. It’s easy to forget that no matter how competent
someone may be at their job, when faced with such dire circumstances, calm
decisiveness often goes out the window. Some are clear-eyed: Gen. Brady (Tracy
Letts) is ready for a full-blown world war but also wants to talk about last
night’s Met game while the team’s Asian expert (Greta Lee) gives a detailed
analysis of the political ramifications while attending a Civil War
re-enactment. On the other hand, the secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) breaks
under the pressure.
The 74-year-old Bigelow is among the
most accomplished filmmakers of this century, directing “The Hurt Locker”
(2008), which earned her and the film Oscars, “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) and the
underrated “Detroit” (2017).
While “A House of Dynamite”—a reference
to the tinderbox nuclear world—doesn’t reach the level of intense
verisimilitude of those earlier three films, it’s a provocative and smart examination
(and sharply written by Noah Oppenheim, who wrote the superb “Jackie”) of a
very scary possibility.
My one reservation about the movie—I
watched it on Netflix—is that it isn’t shot on film but recorded digitally,
giving it a cleaner, flatter, almost videotape look. Maybe it’s just me, but the
style renders the dialogue and acting less real than old-fashioned film stock.
BLUE
MOON (2025)
I can’t imagine why, but director Richard
Linklater has portrayed legendary Broadway songwriter Lorenz Hart as a bitter,
egotistical, freakish-looking drunk—with the worst comb-over in history—in this
odd trip into nostalgia.
Set almost entirely at Sardi’s, the
classic Broadway bar, where the cast and crew will be celebrating the opening
of “Oklahoma!” Hart (Ethan Hawke) arrives early and begins his nonstop
monologue of self-pity with the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and then E.B. White
(Patrick Kennedy), the famed New Yorker writer who is minding his own business.
This nearly one-man show is filled with witty sarcasm but it’s tainted with
Hart’s self-loathing and the irony that “Oklahoma!” became one of the most
celebrated musicals in Broadway history.
Hawke is made up to look like a Muppet,
wearing an oversized suit to emphasize the songwriters 5-foot height and
looking like a cartoon character when shown walking—for what purpose? The
number of people who remember what Hart looked like (he died in 1943 of
alcoholism) couldn’t be more than .001 percent of the moviegoing audience.
When we meet Elizabeth, based on a real
person in Hart’s life, it is clear she’s showing interest in the Broadway
legend to further her career. There’s a very creepy scene in which he takes her
into the bar’s coat closet and, with too much enthusiasm, has her describe a
recent sexual encounter with a fellow student. I half expected Hart to jump
her.
Of course, Hart was primarily interested
in men—there are hints that he sees Rodgers as more than a writing partner—but
he claims to find beauty in both genders.
Despite Hawke’s best efforts—he’s working
very hard to elicit our sympathy for this character—he comes off as an obnoxious,
pitiful figure, overshadowing his standing as the songwriter of “Blue Moon,”
“My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady Is a Tramp” and many others.
On
the other side of the coin, Jean-Luc Godard receives much more reverence in
Linklater’s other fall release, “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of the
French New Wave classic “Breathless” (see next month’s posting).
I assume that Linkletter saw “Blue Moon” as
a touching remembrance of a great, if flawed, artist. Instead, Hawke’s Hart
comes off as just another drunk who won’t shut up.
PHOTOS:
Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in “Annie Hall” (United Artists)
Jeremy Allen White in “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” (20th Century Studios)
Mary Brian as Wendy and Betty Bronson as Peter in “Peter Pan.” (Paramount Pictures)
Oscar Isaac works on the monster in “Frankenstein.” (Netflix)
Andrew Scott and Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon.” (Sony Pictures Classics)
