April-May 2012

BERNIE  (2012)

    This strange hybrid—part docudrama, part reality show, part Christopher Guest-style mockumentary—had me laughing out loud more often than any movie has in years.

     Richard Linklater previous best efforts were the mainstream comedy “School of Rock” and his thoughtful romances “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset.” Yet “Bernie” may be this Texan’s most assured, mature work, as he lets the real-life residents of Carthage, a small burg in East Texas (the state’s regions are eloquently defined in the opening moments of the film), tell the story of Bernie Tiede, the town’s gregarious, fastidious, upbeat and generous to a fault assistant funeral director. The script, by Linklater and Skip Hollandsworth, whose magazine article the film is based on, just supplements the off-the-cuff commentary from the locals.

     Bernie’s kindness to elderly widows leads him to court the richest and meanest woman in town, Marjorie Nugent. Unfortunately for both parties, after a few years, their giddy relationship hits a slight bump in the road.

    As portrayed by Jack Black and the indomitable Shirley MacLaine, they make the strangest couple anyone in town could have imagined and, luckily for moviegoers, they all have plenty to say about them. The talkative neighbors offer up small-town gossip, Bible-based philosophy and a catalogue of hilarious regional idioms. It all adds up to a collection of colloquial insight as rich as any Faulkner novel.

      While the Carthage citizens are the real stars, Black, sporting pitch-black hair and a perfectly-trimmed mustache, shows he can deliver a disciplined, buttoned-down performance, creating a comic character without turning Bernie into a buffoon. As Bernie’s nemesis, Matthew McConaughey, a Texan himself and longtime Linklater collaborator, contributes to the small-town landscape as a flamboyantly clueless local prosecutor, with oversized glasses and cowboy hat.

      For MacLaine, this continues her recent run of quirky, lively character roles, including as Endora in “Bewitched,” the thoughtful grandmother in “In Her Shoes,” and as the “Mrs. Robinson” in “Rumor Has It…”  Next year, she’ll join the cast of the hit British series, “Downton Abbey.” Few 78-year-olds have had a career resurgent like MacLaine. This week she became only the seventh woman to receive the American Film Institute’s lifetime achievement award.

      The less you know about the real life Bernie and Marjorie the more you’ll appreciate the story as it plays out, but in many ways the true enjoyment of the film has nothing to do with the couple; it’s all about life in a small town and the judgments and values that entails. Anyone who has lived in small-town American will recognize these folks and the perspective they bring to the table. For those from Texas, I’m guessing this may be the most essential film since “The Alamo.”

 

ISHTAR (1987)

    Twenty-five years ago, this big-budget disaster was instantly labeled as one of the worst movies ever made. That distinction had more to do with the expectations of a Warren Beatty-Dustin Hoffman comedy directed by critical darling Elaine May than what was on the screen.

    Revisiting this infamous picture a quarter century later, I found that the script’s central idea is pretty funny and the stars, playing against type, deliver surprisingly good comic performances. What sunk the movie was turning what should have been a small, quirky picture into an overblown, overwritten and misguided slapstick.

       The setup is superbly written and executed: two clueless losers are sincerely convinced they can make it as pop music songwriters. They are utterly talentless and their songs (by May and Paul Williams) are laughably awful. Yet they persist, unaware of how bad they are, and score a gig in a tourist-trap hotel in Morocco.

       Lyle Rogers and Chuck Clarke, sporting glittery headbands and too-tight blazers (ah, the ‘80s), actually hit it off with the crowd, but before they (and we) can enjoy their success, they are knee-deep in an idiotic spy-CIA plot. French actress Isabelle Adjani (Beatty’s paramour at the time) plays a revolutionary who uses these two American stooges to smuggle a map into the country, while Charles Grodin brings his sly sarcasm to this mess as a suspicious CIA agent.

      While every bit of stupidity from Lyle and Chuck is completely believable, owing to excellent performances by Beatty and Hoffman, I kept hoping the film would dispense with the adventure and get these two back on stage.

      In an amusing reversal to their real life images, Beatty’s Lyle struggles to converse with women, playing a stumbling, uncouth hick while Hoffman’s Chuck is the ever-confident man about town. Challenging these two for the film’s best performance is the blind camel who accompanies these goofballs into the Moroccan desert. Beatty, Hoffman and a blind camel—what else could you want?

     “Ishtar” turns out to be the perfect example of the long-held showbiz adage: tragedy plus time equals comedy.

WAR HORSE (2011) and

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (2011)

     The boy wonder of Hollywood, who changed, for better or worse, the course of American film at 28 when his “Jaws” reinvented the genre of summer blockbuster, is now eligible for senior discount tickets.

      Steven Spielberg turned 65 last December. He’s not much younger than the legendary John Ford was when he gave advice to the aspiring filmmaker about the importance of properly framing the horizon. Not only are there gorgeous horizon shots in “War Horse,” but it is Spielberg’s most Fordian picture—it could and probably should have been made in 1943. Which means it contains masterful visual storytelling; sentimental, didactic dialogue; and a storyline that might as well have included every 20 minutes or so, the subtitle “Audience Tears Up Now.”

     Like so many of Ford films, “War Horse” begins in the innocent years before World War I set on the English countryside, where a struggling sharecropper (Peter Mullan) overpays at auction for a magnificent-looking horse. Albert, the man’s teen son (Jeremy Irvine), falls instantly in love with the large chestnut stallion, determined to turn him into a workhorse, a role the animal is clearly ill suited for.

      Though separated when the Great War does come, both Albert and his horse Joey end up on the front lines in Europe, experiencing the living hell that the costly conflict created across the French countryside. In the film’s most riveting sequence, a British soldier and his German counterpart work together in the midst of “no-man’s land” to cut Joey out of the tangle of barbed wire he has trapped himself in. If you thought Spielberg had lost his ability to create cinematic magic, this visually and emotional powerful scene will erase any doubts. 

     Adapted from the novel and later stage play written by Michael Morpurgo, “War Horse” earned a best picture nomination but didn’t do well at the box office. Why?

      Though great films are often referred to as timeless, they really aren’t. Even a period piece reflects the ideas and style of the times when it was made: a 2011 film about the 1920s is very different from a 1950s film about the 1920s. In some ways, it is a tribute to the writers’ and Spielberg’s rigorous focus that this picture feels so much like a work from the 1930s or ‘40s, with only CGI touches hinting at a 21^st Century production. Yet to make a movie relevant to the audience, to convert the past to the present, filmmakers need to inject those slivers of today into even the grandest tale from what is now, for most of the filmgoing public, ancient history. (If it wasn’t for the numeral designations, young Americans would struggle to differentiate between the two world wars.)

     Yet this flawed, often ridiculously clichéd tearjerker—flawless photographed by Janusz Kaminski and heavy-handedly scored by John Williams—is somehow  irresistible for its pure-hearted morals, salt-of-the-earth characters and the filmmaker’s uncanny ability in channel the spirit of John Ford.

      Less successful was Spielberg’s other 2011 release, “Tintin,” yet another old-fashioned picture that, sans the technology, seems like a product of the 1940s or ‘50s.

      Using motion-capture technology that utilizes real actors’ facial expressions to create animated characters—to me it’s “Avatar” meets “Toy Story”—the film is neither fowl nor beast, but some emotionally detached version of humanity. Other than allowing the characters to do astonishing things that would be more costly if human performers were involved, it seems to be a pointless technology. Reading stories about this and other tech-heavy film projects (from 3-D to that odd plasmatic reality that Robert Zemeckis is into), I’m left with the impression that filmmakers, like teens with short attention spans, are tired of making “movies” and would rather experiment with the latest technical advances.

     No matter the method of delivery, “Tintin” doesn’t add up to much. Based on a series of 1920s Belgian comic books written by Hergé that have remained popular throughout Europe, this rather inert adventure follows Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell), a young reporter with distinction red hair and unbound curiosity, as he chases down a secret “buried” treasure after innocently purchasing a model of a famous 19^th Century ship at a flea market.

    His rival for the treasure is Sakharine, voiced by Daniel Craig but looking suspiciously like the director, who is a slightly more dignified and thoughtful version of “The Simpson’s” Mr. Burns. (Why are maniacal bad guys always incredibly rich who hardly need more treasure?) “Tintin” struck me as nothing more than an extended version of a “Scooby-Doo” episode. Amazingly, two more films are in the works.

     Journalist Tintin has a bit more spunk than most animated protagonists, yet I never saw him take any notes nor was it clear who was paying him for his reporting. The picture’s only character with any real bite to him is Captain Haddock (the omnipresent Andy Serkis), a hopeless drunk whose life is given new purpose when he joins Tintin’s adventure.

     But I have to give Spielberg credit for his impressive productivity; unlike so many of his contemporaries, he continues to crank them out (nine films as a director this century along with his countless producing credits). While I’m not sure this consummate showman has any more “Close Encounters,” “E.T.” or “Raiders” left in him—meaning great films not sequels—his work in the past 10 years has included smart and entertaining adult fare such as “Minority Report” (2002), “Catch Me If You Can” (2002) and “Munich” (2005). And next year will see the arrival of his anticipated biopic “Lincoln,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

 

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—GHOST PROTOCOL  (2011)

     Though this fourth edition of the incredibly successful series is far from the best—I thought the first film was the best action picture of the 1990s—it features enough breathtaking stunts and perfectly timed con jobs to make it worth renting. Especially for those, like me, who prefer their action films to be populated by humans rather than superheroes.

    Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, about as close to a superhero as a normal human can be, is stuck in a Russian prison as the film opens, but is sprung by a pair of IMF operatives—the nerdish Benji (Simon Pegg) and Carter (Paula Patton), the requisite hot female spy. Their mission—should they decide to accept it—is to track down Russian nuclear codes and keep them out of the hands of a rogue scientist.

     After Jeremy Renner joins the team (he claims he’s a government analyst) and they are cut off from any support from the Washington, they go from the Kremlin to Dubai. There, Hunt rappels up and down the glass-surfaced tallest building in the world. It’s hard to tell how much of the stunt is actually done by Cruise, but even pretending to do these stunts is pretty astonishing for an actor who turns 50 next month.

     Taking over the director’s chair for the franchise is Brad Bird, best known for the animated films “The Iron Giant” and “Ratatouille.” In his live-action debut, he keeps the plot moving at a brisk pace without glossing over plot details and never allows the action to become too cartoonish.

      But these films are all about the star. Hunt has become Cruise’s signature role with a fifth film already in the works. But I still hope he learns a lesson from Harrison Ford’s mistake and retires from action before it becomes ludicrous and, instead, takes advantage of the next 10 years, essentially his last chance for interesting dramatic roles.    

 

THE IRON LADY   (2011)

    This is a movie that is hard to take seriously. Without the presence of Meryl Streep, who ridiculously won her third Oscar for her performance as Margaret Thatcher, this film would have gone straight to DVD and would be selling for $3 in Big Lot’s bargain bin.

     The problem with the movie is that it never lands long enough on any one thing about this influential and controversial British prime minister to make any impact. The film plays as if it’s one long trailer for an upcoming, and more coherent, movie about Thatcher. The excuse for this method is that the years of her rise to power and time in office in the 1980s are played out as the one-time world leader’s memories as she meanders around her house, occasionally confused and speaking with her late husband.

     Streep creates an interesting elderly Thatcher (she’s 86), bringing out her humanity as a doting wife, but in the career of this masterful screen actress, it’s not even close to one of her best roles. Playing the PM in her prime, Streep is never allowed to break free of the script’s paint-by-numbers history lesson. Actually, the best Thatcher in the movie is Alexandra Roach, who plays her when she was a young, ambitious politician.

     The always reliable Jim Broadbent plays her deceased husband Denis, strangely aware that he’s not really there. This oddly structured approach to such a serious figure is the work of British theatrical director Phyllida Lloyd, whose only previous feature was the giddy musical “Mamma Mia!” also starring Streep, and screenwriter Abi Morgan, who also wrote last year’s controversial “Shame.”

      Not only does “The Iron Lady” fail to offer any real insight into this polarizing leader, but it never takes a stand as to whether her stridently conservative policies were good or bad for England. In other words, what was the point?  

LORD OF THE FLIES (1963)

      This spare, home-movie like rendition of William Golding’s allegoric story has some frighteningly powerful moments but never captures the nightmarish atmosphere of the novel’s paradise lost.

     Forced by producers to squeeze this famous tale of English schoolboys attempting to survive on a desert island into 92 black-and-white minutes, director Peter Brook loses much of the subtleties of Golding’s prose, reducing the story to its basic good vs. evil theme. The boys, ranging in age from six to 12, are the only survivors after a plane, evacuating them from war-torn England, is shot down.

      By virtue of finding a large shell on the beach and blowing on it, Ralph is elected chief, much to the irritation of Jack, the tough-talking leader of a group of choir boys (dressed in concert wear). They appease Jack by giving him and his followers the role of hunters and keepers of the all-important signal fire.

     Ralph and his trusted helper Piggy assign jobs and attempt to keep order, but it’s hopeless and soon the island is divided between those loyal to Ralph and his rules and those standing with Jack and his rebellious spirit.

    In a matter of months, these proper English schoolboys have become undisciplined, heartless, cruel and much worse. For Golding, the horrors of two European wars had changed his view of what mankind was capable of.

   The film, like the novel, ends rather abruptly, but the last act offers a chaotic glimpse of the ugly reality this desert paradise had become. The young actors were all amateurs, but James Aubrey, who is quite good as the thoughtful Ralph, went on to a long career on British television before his death two years ago, while Tom Chapin (Jack) and Hugh Edwards (Piggy) never worked in the business again. One of the young performers, Nicholas Hammond, played one of the von Trapp children two years later in “A Sound of Music.”

     Brook, the leader of Britain’s avant-garde theater in the 1960s, only dabbled in film, but with some impressive results, including the remarkable inventive “Marat/Sade” (1967) and a memorable “King Lear” (1971) with Paul Scofield.

A DANGEROUS METHOD  (2011)

     Who would have ever guessed that David Cronenberg, the director of such startling films as “Dead Ringers,” “Crash” and “Eastern Promises,” could make a ponderous, overly talky movie?  His latest, about early experiments in psychotherapy by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, is interesting only in an historical scene; the treatment of mental illnesses offered new insights into the human mind, a realization that affected all aspects of the 20^th Century.

     But as a film, there isn’t much going on beyond the back-and-forth discussions between Jung (Michael Fassbender) and his mentor Freud (Viggo Mortensen and an affair Jung has with his star patient (Keira Knightley). 

     Fassbender, best known for his performance as the English spy in “Inglourious Basterds,” had a very busy 2011, playing Rochester in “Jane Eyre,” Magneto in “X Men: First Class” and a sex obsessed New Yorker  in the NC-17 rated  “Shame.” Here, his Jung is properly fussy and career-obsessed but he never creates a very distinctive character, probably more of a script (Christopher Hampton from his play) problem than anything else.

     Mortensen, a Cronenberg regular (“A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises”) plays Freud as a confident, super cool professor who is very guarded about his legacy. One of the most interesting aspects of the film, which isn’t fully explored, is the concern Freud has that his theories will be ignored because most of his Viennese followers, unlike Jung, are Jewish.

     Knightley does her best to portray an abused young woman who is “cured” by Jung but is never quite up to the task. She always seems to be giving a performance; especially in the unconvincing romantic scenes with Fassbender.

    The highlight of this rather monotonous picture is the performance by Vincent Cassel (he was strident choreographer in “Black Swan) as Otto Gross, a brilliant colleague of Freud, who is treated by Jung. His calm, almost otherworldly, demeanor as he talks Jung into acting with his heart rather than his head, and the intensity he brings to stories he tells of his life, made me wish the film was about him.

     Cronenberg’s next project seems equally high-minded: “Cosmopolis,” the story of a young Wall Street financier from acclaimed novelist Don DeLillo. It’s due in theaters later this year.

UNCLE BOONME WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2011)

    Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, on the basis of “Tropical Malady” (2004), “Syndromes and a Century” (2006) and this picture, has become an international film festival darling. “Syndromes” won the top prize at Venice and “Uncle Boonme” was the Palme d’Or winner at the 2010 Cannes. But please don’t ask me to explain why.

      “Syndromes,” a confusing and, to me, rather pointless drama (told in parallel stories), and “Tropical Malady,” which I have yet to endure, both landed in last decade’s Top 10 as voted on by critics for Film Comment. “Uncle Boonme” is slightly more attuned to Western audiences, but I doubt Weerasethakul will ever need to work on an Oscar acceptance speech.

     Boonme, played by first time movie actor Thanapat Saisaymar, is a farmer living near the Thailand-Laos border who is dying of kidney failure.

     While Boonme is having dinner with his visiting sister-in-law and her son, his wife, who died years ago, materializes at the table and begins interacting with everyone. A bit later, Boonme’s son arrives looking like the wolf man, after having disappeared into the woods year ago.

      While the sister-in-law, the nephew and Boonme’s nurse are left speechless, Boonme takes it all in stride. Knowing that he has little time left on Earth, he accepts these unexpected dinner guests as part of the process. The filmmaker’s meditative pacing matches both the solemn story and the character’s reverent approach to life and death.

       Weerasethakul almost had me won over (yes, even with the Wolfman son) when he cut away from Uncle Boonme and introduces a story of a lonely, aging princess traveling in the countryside. She’s lured into a picturesque pond by a talking catfish and, eventually, they engage in inter-species relationship. Seriously.

    This movie first (I hope), along with the son turning into a wolf after taking some mythical forest creature as a mate, makes this the most radical “get in touch with nature” film of all time.

      Despite his acclaim, I’m guessing that this director isn’t the James Cameron of Thailand; he’s probably closer to Wes Anderson or Steven Soderbergh. But even those guys can’t hold a candle to the strangeness that seems inevitable in Weerasethakul’s pictures.

NOWHERE BOY (2010)

    Connecting three of the most influential musicians of the 20^th Century—Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and John Lennon—was the high-profile, almost domineering role of their mothers in their lives and art. This unpretentious British movie offers a small slice of the life of Lennon and the emotionally confusing family life he faced as a teenager.

    Director Sam Taylor-Wood (a visual artist making her feature debut), screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh and stage and TV actor Aaron Johnson combine to find just the right balance of rude boy John and the sensitive artist-in-the-making as he gets tossed between his mother, Julia, who was more interested in her boyfriends, and his Aunt Mimi, who raised him as her own.

     What elevates this film beyond TV biopic level are the dynamic, intense performances of Kristin Scott Thomas as Mimi, the stern, rather cold disciplinarian determined to see John stay on the straight and narrow, and Anne-Marie Duff as Julia, the flighty, devil-may-care girl on the make (including flirting with her son’s mates).

     It’s Julia who introduces John to rock ‘n’ roll when they dance in a diner to “Rocket 88,” the Ike Turner disc that many credit as the first rock record, and later as they watch Elvis perform on a newsreel at the movies. The overarching sadness of their reconnection is the knowing of how it ends—with her senseless death in a car accident when John was just 17. (His conflicting emotions about his mother fueled his masterpiece as a solo artist, “Plastic Ono Band.”)

      “Nowhere Boy” is less about the music and how the Beatles evolved and more about the evolution of young John’s character. This portrayal of the artist as a young man clearly takes advantage of hindsight, especially in the way it shows the McCartney-Lennon relationship. Even early on, John is shown resenting the attention Paul, the superior musician, receives, but appreciating his sensitivity and insight into his life (Paul’s mother died when he was 14).

       For anyone who loves the Beatles and is interested in the personal dynamics that turned a couple of lads from Liverpool into songwriting icons, “Nowhere Man” is a must-see. Yet even if the film was about John Smith, it would be smart, successful study of the struggles every teen goes through to discover who they really are and who they want to be.

      As an aside, the production caused a slight scandal in British filmmaking circles as the first-time feature director and her star began a relationship. Now, three years later, Sam (nee Samantha) Taylor-Wood, 45, and Johnson, 22, have two children together.

March 2012

THE GODFATHER  (1972)
     After a delay of over three months because of the director’s obsessive editing and re-editing and unending battles with studio bosses, “The Godfather” was released to theaters on March 15, 1972. Originally envisioned by Paramount Studios as a B-level mob picture, the film became an immediate hit, breaking box-office records and quickly become an integral part of popular culture.

     The next spring, the period piece was nominated for 10 Oscars and won three, for best picture, best actor for Marlon Brando and screenwriting for director Francis Ford Coppola and the source novel’s author Mario Puzo.

     In the 40 year since, “The Godfather” has only grown in stature and acclaim and is now widely acknowledge as the greatest American film of the last half century (though I might argue for “The Godfather, Part II). Few films have ever been referenced as often in other films or on television or have remained on the radar of multiple generations of filmgoers.

         Lines such as “he sleeps with the fishes,” “we’re going to the mattresses,” “leave the gun; take the cannolis,” “this is business, not personal” and “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” are likely to show up anywhere—from a bad TV sitcom to a New Yorker feature on pop culture.

     I’m not sure how my times I’ve seen the film in these 40 years—I’m guessing around 20—but for this anniversary, I watched it while reading along in “The Annotated Godfather” by Jenny M. Jones. In addition to the screenplay, it offers behind the scenes notes, production details and explanations of how the scene evolved from page to screen. Here are a few observations and nuggets of trivia about this landmark movie:

      Undertaking: One of the film’s most memorable performances is given by Salvatore Corsitto as the funeral director Bonasera, who pleads for justice from Don Corleone for the rape of his daughter. He was chosen from a casting call for the role yet held his own in the opening scene with the legendary Brando. He is the first to call the Don “Godfather” and intones the prophetic opening lines of the film “I believe in America. America has made my fortune.” His only other credit is as a waiter in a 1973 Larry Hagman TV film, “What are Best Friends For?”         

     Spousal newcomers: Playing Tom Hagen’s wife Theresa is Tere Livrano, who was a music editor for Paramount. Her only acting credits are in the three “Godfather” films. Also making her acting debut was Morgana King, a jazz singer, who plays Mama Corleone.

     Perfect coincidence: The day that Coppola filmed the scene in which Sonny has sex with Lucy against a door while the wedding is going on downstairs, Sofia Coppola was born in a nearby hospital. In “Godfather, Part III,” Sofia plays Michael’s daughter Mary, who has a relationship with Vincent (Andy Garcia), the son born of that extra-marital affair.

     You couldn’t do that today: That’s a real horse’s head (from a pet food slaughterhouse) in studio chief Woltz’s bed.

     Italian food: Richard Castellano’s Clemenza not only instructs Michael on how to make spaghetti sauce for 20 and exit a restaurant after killing two men, but he improvises one of the film’s most memorable lines. After Rocco kills the traitor Paulie in the car, Clemenza’s line is “Leave the gun.” He added “take the cannolis,” referring to the box of Italian pastries his wife asked him to pick up.

     Casting problems: Robert De Niro was originally cast as Paulie but dropped out for a larger role in “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” Of course, if he had played Paulie he could never have played the young Don Vito in “Godfather, Part II.” Singer Vic Damone was offered the role of Johnny Fontaine (based on Frank Sinatra) but turned it down because he felt the film was “anti-Italian” and the pay wasn’t high enough. Al Martino turned out to be a poor second choice, struggling through his scene with Brando.

    Writing help: Coppola turned to an old friend, screenwriter Robert Towne, to create a scene between the aging Vito and his son Michael, back from his Sicilian exile and taking control of the family. The director realized that he had no extended scene between the old and new Don. The scene, shown right before Don Vito dies while playing with Michael’s young son, has the Don lamenting: “I never wanted this for you….I thought that—that when it was your time, that—that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone, something.” Towne stayed up all night writing the scene and then watched as they filmed it the next morning.

    Cutting room: There were two deleted scenes I wish Coppola could have left in. The first is the hospital death scene of his consigliere Genco Abbandando. It’s not crucial in this film, but when we see the flashbacks to the Don’s early days in “Godfather, Part II,” he’s the guy who is Vito’s first friend, both working at Genco’s father’s olive oil company. The company remains the Corleone’s “legitimate” business during the time of “The Godfather.” The other is a scene in which Sonny tells his mother that his father has been shot. I always found it odd how the Don’s wife never gets a chance to show her emotions in the film. While the women were always secondary in that society, it would have made the compound seem more like a home if there were more scenes with Mama Corleone. (She also had a scene in which she comforts Keaton’s Kay about “the life” which was also cut.)

     Now I get it: I never completely understood the dialogue that Michael speaks during the baptism scene that is so brilliantly intercut with the killing of the heads of the rival mob families. When the priest addresses him, he’s actually asking questions of the newborn. So when the priest says “do you renounce Satan?” and “will you be baptized,” Michael answers for his sister’s young son (played, of course, by Coppola’s newborn, daughter Sofia).

      I could write forever about this movie and its sequel, but I’d rather have you stop reading and watch it yet again. Writing, acting, directing, photography (by the brilliant Gordon Willis) and production design have rarely come together on film at such at high level while telling such a sweeping story of the American experience.

 

 A SEPARATION  (2011)

    What begins as a straight-forward dispute between a married couple sets off a series of events that explores the struggle within Iran between a modern, secular society and one based on religion and traditional values.

    The movie opens with a long, single shot of the couple, Nader (Peyman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami), as the wife explains to the unseen judge (and the camera) why she seeks a separation from her husband. She hopes to leave the country with her family, but Nader refuses to leave his Alzheimer’s-stricken father and their 10-year-old daughter won’t leave without both parents.

     I don’t know much about internal Iranian politics, but I would be surprised if the decision between staying and supporting your homeland or leaving for greater freedom and financial rewards in the West isn’t an extremely sensitive and complex topic. As much as this is a story of a family at a crossroad, it also wrestles with the cultural conflicts of a nation at a crossroad.

      Writer-director Asghar Farhadi, who received international recognition for “About Elly” in 2008, doesn’t hurry his story or overdramatized the events, but their impact become evident when, after a dispute with his father’s caretaker, Nader shoves her out the door.

     The next thing you know, the caretaker brings Nader to court, claiming he pushed her down the apartment building stairs causing her to miscarry. To make matters worse, her beleaguered husband is shocked to discover that she was working for Nader without his knowledge. Nader faces murder changes, which hinge on whether or not he knew the caregiver was pregnant.

   The insightful, pointed dialogue and low-keyed, perfectly calibrated acting keep this fascinating study of a country facing “separation” from becoming didactic.

     The film—even as the case between Nader and the caretaker and her husband goes back and forth—never loses it focus on the dynamics of his family. The sensitive, perceptive daughter (played by Sarina Farhadi, the director’s daughter) see that the case will also finalize the relationship between her parents (her mother jumps back into the picture once Nader is accused o murder) and her relationship with her father.

      I can’t say for certain that “A Separation” deserved the Oscar that it won since I haven’t seen the other nominees, but it was the best 2011 foreign-language film I’ve seen. It also makes me want to see Farhadi’s previous films, as he is clearly an exceptional, thoughtful filmmaker.

        Like “The Descendants” and “Carnage,” “A Separation” examines the importance we place on family and how we balance their needs with the desire to maintain our integrity, loyalty and self worth.

BRIDESMAIDS (2011) and BAD TEACHER  (2011)

      “Bridesmaids,” sophomoric, bombastic and determined to be offensive, was lauded by critics and filmgoers for giving women the chance to be crude and stupid. What a breakthrough.

      Who wouldn’t be proud to join the legacy of “American Pie,” “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Hangover” and discover that you too can be as ignorant and gross as any man? y, “Bad Teacher” offers a similar palette of stupidity and crudeness, but at least it wasn’t offered up as an Oscar candidate.

       The saving grace of “Bridesmaids,” a nonsensical story about a bride’s best friend feeling left out of wedding plans, is Melissa McCarthy’s Megan. Her unique view of the world and supreme confidence despite her size brings a legitimate comic edge to what is otherwise a pained attempted to combine lowbrow comedy with a story of fragile female friendship.

      Kristen Wiig, a “Saturday Night Live” performer, plays Annie, who finds herself in a secondary role when her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph, also of “SNL” fame) becomes engaged. It is not the fiancé that pushes her aside, but his haughty sister Helen (Rose Byrne), who suddenly becomes Lillian’s closest friend. Things go from bad to worse for Annie as she desperately tries to reassert her place in the pre-wedding planning. The insanity culminates in a long, drug- and alcohol-fueled incident on a plane ride to Vegas.

    That the screenplay (by Wiig and Annie Mumolo) was nominated for an Oscar indicates the pressure Academy voters felt to be more “inclusive” (along with the uproar that it wasn’t among the best picture nominees). I’m baffled by this push to make the Oscar nominations look like the box office Top 10. Once a year, can’t the industry take a break from rewarding their ability to find the lowest common denominator in its chase for box-office gold and give a nod to the few quality films Hollywood produces each year? That more was written about the absence of “Bridesmaids” from the best picture list than the complete lack of recognition by the Academy for the year’s one great film, “Melancholia,” says it all about the state of Hollywood priorities and mainstream movie coverage.

      “Bridesmaids” is only marginally better written than the equally low-rent “Bad Teacher.” In fact, Cameron Diaz’s title character comes off as more of a real person than anyone in the “Bridesmaids” cast other than McCarthy’s Megan.

      As a newly minted high school teacher, I hoped that “Bad Teacher” would offer me some insight into how to survive the profession without really trying. The film never gets beyond middle school teacher Elizabeth (Diaz) sleeping in class while she shows movies to her students. Even a beginner like me didn’t need to watch this film to learn that old trick of the trade.

      The real reason this film was made (and the only reason anyone would watch it) was to let 39-year-old Diaz strut around in sexy outfits, showing off her “hotness.” It’s not that I object to this opportunity to admire the sexy Diaz, but isn’t that what the Internet is for?

      As if the screenwriters were taking requests from the audience, the “plot” involves Elizabeth stealing school funds to pay for her breast implants.

       Justin Timberlake plays the devoted, innocent new teacher who turns the heads of Diaz and her hated rival (Lucy Punch), causing a catfight in the race to his bed that makes women look even worse than in the repulsive “Bridesmaids.”

       The cast also includes Jason Segel, giving a nicely textured performance as the sensible gym teacher, and the always hilarious John Michael Higgins as the principal.

      Despite my hopes that “Bad Teacher” could aid my progress in the education system, it turns out that it only raised Ms. Diaz’s position on the hottest actress list and reestablished cutoff jean shorts as an important fashion statement. Which, all in all, isn’t a bad recommendation. 

RANGO  (2011)

      It is the rare computer-animated film that keeps my interest beyond the first 30 minutes—at the point where plot and characters should be evolving into something beyond cute and clever but rarely do. But this homage to the Western movie cliché of the mysterious stranger arriving in a dusty, down-on-its-luck town to save the day turns out to be an exception to the rule.

       The film from Nickelodeon is a smartly written, amusingly illustrated action comedy that would have been just as successful if it had been done with real actors in real settings. Johnny Depp brings his quirky intonations to the title character, a pretentious lizard who finds himself in the middle of the Nevada desert desperate to find water. A chance meeting with a feisty, somewhat disturbed girl (Isla Fisher) leads him to the town of Dirt (where else would you look for water?) The lizard, utilizing his self-styled acting skills, invents a character for himself—a legendary gunfighter named Rango—and soon finds himself appointed sheriff.

     The town is filled with all sorts of critters turned into cowboy-town stock characters, written and animated in ways that make them both amusingly fresh and comfortably familiar. Among the familiar voices of these characters are Bill Nighy, Ray Winstone, Alfred Molina and Harry Dean Stanton.

     Directed by Gore Verbinski of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films and written by John Logan, whose credits include “Gladiator” and “The Aviator,” James Ward Byrkit and Verbinski, “Rango” will keep any movie lover happy with the constant reference to other movies, most notably the Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood cycle of Spaghetti Westerns, “Chinatown” (Ned Beatty does a marvelous John Huston) and “Apocalypse Now.”

     There’s a wonderfully realized scene near the end when our hero, temporarily defeated in his quest to bring a regular supply of water to Dirt, comes face to face with the “spirit of the West”—riding in a golf cart, of course. A mystified Rango asks him if they’re in heaven and the spirit snarls (Clint-like) back: “If we were in heaven, we’d be eating Pop Tarts with Kim Novak.” It’s that kind of culturally in-tune yet completely absurd dialogue that makes “Rango” one of the most entertaining pictures of 2011.

MARGIN CALL  (2011)

     Is there any place more ominously beautiful than a dark, deserted office lighted only by the glare from computer screens?  It’s the primary setting of this contemporary horror picture, capturing the hushed, nourish atmosphere of this financial thriller.

      With low-level techs speaking in barely understandable lingo and their bosses only half explaining their thinking, the script forces audiences to work hard to keep up, but it’s worth the effort.

     The film kicks off with a very familiar scene: a human resources team comes marching into an office and begins summoning employees into the meeting room. One of those being laid off is Eric (Stanley Tucci), who keeps mentioning that he’s in the middle of something important and then, on the way out, hands one of his employees a flash drive, warning him to “be careful.”

       Working late while his co-workers are out partying (celebrating, I guess, that they survived the cuts), Peter (Zachary Quinto, best known for his Spock in the recent “Star Trek” reboot) is thunderstuck by what he discovers Eric was working on. Within hours, the bigwigs of the company (played with slick arrogance by Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker and Demi Moore) have been called in to deal with the unpleasant news Peter’s number crunching has revealed—the first crack in the housing market crash.

      Making his feature debut, writer-director J.C. Chandor earned a well-deserved Oscar nod for the screenplay of this little-seen gem. He manages to make the dialogue between these insiders believable—filled with vague short-hand and profane disregard for the real victims of their risky gambles—yet still understandable to those lacking an MBA.

        Quinto, Spacey, as the beleaguered office manager who maintains a sliver of integrity, and Irons, the CEO who has none, all give thoughtful, confident performances that add authenticity to the film’s hopeless, cynical tone.

      You might hesitate to spend 90 minutes with these mostly unpleasant, ruthless characters whose primary skill seems to be the ability to manipulated numbers to make themselves tons of money, yet “Margin Call” offers an unfettered look at the type of irresponsible decisions that plunged the nation into a financial firestorm. It’s a story we all know about, but this drama gives you a rare ground-floor perspective that’s extremely eye opening.

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH  (2011)
     While the horrors that took place in Europe during World War II continue to be part of the political dialogue and education of Western society, Japanese atrocities are largely forgotten in the West.

     Lu Chuan’s evocative chronicle of what’s become known as the rape of Nanking—when Japanese troops took over the Chinese capital in 1937—will leave you horrified at the incomprehensible disregard for human life that flows to the surface when fear and hatred consume a people.

    Brilliantly shot in black and white (by Cao Yu), the picture opens as Japanese troops enter the city, fighting off the last of the Chinese resistance and then go about pillaging and destroying (much of it to relieve the soldiers’ boredom) the city and its people.

     Despite the unavoidable one-sided aspect of the film, the filmmaker doesn’t depict all the Chinese as innocents—a main character (Fan Wei in a memorable performance) hides behind his position as the assistant to a Nazi military advisor (Germany, Russia and the U.S. all had advisors playing roles in the fight between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung before the Japanese invasion). His relationship with a Japanese officer (Hideo Nakaizumi) leads to a beautifully subtle and hopeful ending to this grim film.

    “City of Life and Death” is at its most heartbreaking when the remaining Chinese women are gathered in a church and told that 100 of them must “volunteer” to become prostitutes for the Japanese soldiers. Facing unthinkable degradation, many women stepped forward rather than see younger girls become victims. It is one of the countless offenses in this shockingly brutal war that cause many Chinese to still hate Japanese.

      The writer-director tells this sad chapter in humanity as matter-of-factly as possible, without turning it into a finger-pointing rant or an unwatchable exploitation. I can offer no higher praise than to say the film could be considered the “Schindler’s List” of the Chinese-Japanese war. Amazingly, this is just Lu’s third feature film, following “The Missing Gun” (2002) and “Mountain Patrol” (2004).

CORRECTIONS:  In last month’s posting, I reversed the Los Angeles Police Department motto; it is “To Protect and to Serve.” I also left the faulty impression that the majority of Angelinos were Latino immigrants. Latinos are the dominate race in the city, yet that number also includes those whose families have lived in the area for generations.