September 2013

 

DON JON  (2013)

    Boldly stylish, sarcastically funny and unabashedly crude, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s debut as a writer-director is a surprisingly unflinching look at how the proliferation of sexual images has altered romantic expectations. Starting at the same place as a typical Judd Apatow comedy—young men reducing sex and women to sport—“Don Jon” presents a character who has put thought into his life, living an orderly, disciplined existence, yet has chosen to make online pornography the center of it.

     Title character Jon Martello (Gordon-Levitt) keeps his apartment immaculately clean, screams obscenities at bad drivers, works out religiously at the gym, goes to confessional every Sunday and spends most weeknights with his “boys” at nightclubs scouting for “dimes”—women rating a 10 deemed worthy of one-night stands. Yet whenever he has a free moment, even after sex while his partner slips off to sleep, Jon is in front of his computer enjoying porn videos.

      His exactingly planned life is upended when the ultimate beauty, Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson, sporting a hot, slutty New Jersey look) enters his life. But before she’s staying over, Barbara wants Jon to enroll in night classes, attend a baby-dominated party at her mother’s and have the obligatory dinner his parents (funny clichés played by Tony Danza and Glenne Headly) who, of course, just love her.

     Then she discovers his “hobby” and while he talks his way out of it at first, you just know this is going to be a problem. At the same time, in class he meets an emotionally fragile, talkative “older” woman (Julianne Moore, spot-on in this small but crucial role). She quickly sees problems he didn’t know he had, causing him to rethink his entire life.

      What impressed me about filmmaker Gordon-Levitt is the manner in which he matched the film’s visual style with the content, reflecting Jon’s narrow viewpoint of life with the repetitive scenes of his weekly routines and making the numerous sex scenes as mundane as his gym workouts. This is a very accomplished debut behind the camera for the 32-year-old actor, along with a fearless performance in front of it. Interestingly, his grandfather, Michael Gordon, was a Hollywood director from the 1940s to the ‘60s, helming such hits as “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1950) and “Pillow Talk” (1959).

      If you are uncomfortable watching images of pornography—so many that I am amazed the film didn’t earn an NC-17—you probably should avoid “Don Jon.” For everyone else, this is the rare American film that addresses sex, in the age of hookups and the internet, as more than the opportunity for sophomoric jokes and attractive skin; “Shampoo” for the cellphone generation.   

THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011)

      It’s rare that I write about a television series, or any work that I haven’t seen to the end. But this British documentary, showing in one-hour segments on TCM each Monday into December, is a must see for anyone who loves movies.

     Directed and narrated by Irish film historian and TV host Mark Cousins, “The Story of Film,” by focusing on filmmakers who moved the medium forward, offers a fresh look at a well-travelled road. Cousins, with his superb use of clips, an extensive knowledge of the entire century plus of movies, and a world-view that doesn’t always center on Hollywood, is able to establish the who, what, when and how of the advancement of narrative film.

    In an early episode of the 15-hour documentary, Cousins shows the first time a film offered multiple views of the same action: an apartment fire seen from the street and then a shot of those trying to escape from the inside. It is easy to forget that the idea of seeing action in this way is purely cinematic; we don’t experience that in real life or even in live theater. For turn of the century audiences, it was a revelation.

    Unlike most film histories, “The Story of Film” uses Hollywood moviemaking not as the centerpiece but as a comparison to the artistic developments taking place around the globe, where filmmakers, not producers and major corporations, were deciding what made it to the screen. Even as someone who has spent a good portion of my life reading about film history, I have already been introduced to films and filmmakers I was either unfamiliar with or only knew their name. To support the documentary, TCM is showing three or four films each Monday that are highlighted in Cousins’ narrative.

      I watched “The Goddess” the other night, a 1934 Chinese silent featuring Lingyu Ruan, a huge star in that country whose suicide (at age 24) and funeral was front page news in the New York Times. It’s to these types of lost figures that Cousins clearly hopes to bring new recognition, along with the works of such masters as Abel Gance, Marcel Carné, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean Vigo, Carl Dreyer and Dziga Vertov, who he discusses along side of Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, Busby Berkeley and Howard Hawks. This documentary reminds me of Martin Scorsese’s two exceptional film histories, “My Voyage to Italy” and “A Personal Journey.” Like Scorsese, Cousins is making a very personal survey of film history.

        Cousins sometimes stretches believability as he attempts to connect filmmaking styles and influences through the years, but, overall, this chronology offers a fresh view of the medium’s fascinating evolution. In last week’s episode he points out the dream world vs. reality theme of three 1939 pictures, “Ninotchka,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind.” In the final line of the show, he states in his self-assured, dramatic manner, “Ninotchka, Dorothy and Scarlett show that escapism was the main melody in 1939, but listen carefully and you can hear the distant drums: war, realism and Orson Welles.”

      If you don’t get TCM, or want to watch it from the start, “The Story of Film” is available on Netflix.

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES  (2013)

     Filmmaker Derek Cianfrance makes it clear right from the start that this movie, no matter what transpires in the course of the story, is about Luke, played by a blonde and tattoo-covered Ryan Gosling. In a dazzling opening shot, the director’s handheld camera follows the cool, confident Luke from his dressing room, through a busy carnival and into the tent where he performs as a motorcycle daredevil. He’s James Dean reincarnated; at least until he discovers that a fling he had with a local waitress (Eva Mendes) resulted in a baby boy.

     Quitting his carnival gig, Luke tries to settle down in Schenectady, New York, in hopes of being a real father to his young son and win over his ex-girlfriend, even though Romina is with another man.

    Frustrated by his meager earnings as a mechanic, he joins his employer in a series of local bank robberies, which, at first, pay off handsomely.

    Then, unlike any other film in recent memory, the focus shifts and the main character of the film becomes police officer Avery (Bradley Cooper), who takes advantage of a high-profile police action to promote his ambitious goals. His decisions, Luke’s decisions and those made by others around them collide in the film’s final act, set 15 years after the main action and focusing on the two men’s sons.

     Cianfrance, along with co-screenwriters Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, offers a deeply cynical view of life and the way one’s fate can ultimately be determined based on decisions we have no control over. While this multi-generational, almost epic, drama seems a bit too pat, with so many life-changing events affecting this small group of people that you can see the puppet strings, it still resonates in the way it shows how lives are shaped by offhanded, often hasty choices.

      The director’s equally intense film “Blue Valentine” was among the best films of 2010 and earned Michelle Williams an Oscar nomination. Gosling, who should have been nominated for “Blue Valentine,” richly deserves a nod for “Pines,” a complex role that shows how different two sides of a man can be. The performance has the theatrical bravado and brooding undercurrents of the brilliant film work of Al Pacino in the ‘70s.

    Cooper and Mendes, along with Ray Liotta as a very scary, very corrupt cop are also terrific, but the performance that really jumped out at me was Ben Mendelsohn’s as Luke’s robbery partner Robin, who quickly becomes devoted to his friend but gets little back in return. Unlike Luke, Robin has no moral compass, but he recognizes when a good thing has run its course. In the world of “The Place Beyond the Pines” that’s a very valuable asset.

BREEZY  (1973)

     It seems strange to me now, but when I first saw this cross-generational romance on television when I was in my early 20s I just loved it. Somehow, even 35 years ago, I could relate to a middle-age man finding some kind of love with a much younger girl. Seeing it again, now a few years older than William Holden was when he played Frank, a cynical, divorced Los Angeles real estate agent, (as I write this I really can’t believe it—how can I be older than Bill Holden?) he’s easy to understand; in many ways, he’s every middle-age man, whether we’re married, divorced or single.

      Frank’s life changes one day when he walks out of his rustic Laurel Canyon home to find a talkative teenage hippie who insists he drive her down the hill. Turns out that Breezy (Kay Lenz) has just arrived in L.A. from the Midwest with the kind of youthful optimism that died sometime around the arrival of MTV. Soon she’s spending most of her time at Frank’s, making herself at home despite his rather-unconvincing protests. Before you know it, this fiftysomething World War II generation suit-and-tie man is walking hand-in-hand down the beach with a free-spirited girl just out of high school. It may be the most romantic film ever directed by Clint Eastwood (at least before “The Bridges of Madison County”)—it was just his third effort behind the camera.

     Of course, there are plenty of obstacles to make this love to work and who would you rather carry you through them than Holden? He was always a great actor—see his work in the 1950s in “Sunset Boulevard,” “Stalag 17” and “The Bridge Over the River Kwai”—but his performances in the late ‘60s and 1970s I find even more interesting. By then, he’d grown into his cynicism, looking like a man who had lived a life, who had endured the disappointments and losses inevitable as the years pile up.

      And that voice: a skillfully modulated tenor with impeccable diction; few actors of the era could deliver a meaningful soliloquy with as much conviction. The obvious examples are his Pike Bishop in “The Wild Bunch” and Max Schumacher in “Network”—two of the smartest and self-aware characters in modern film. Like his Frank in “Breezy,” the characters are dinosaurs in a world they can’t quite understand yet are determined to make a stand for dignity’s sake. 

        Maybe when I was 20, I just wished I could grown into the confident, smart dude that Holden’s Frank was, yet I was naively unaware of how to get there. Or maybe it was the idea of having an uninhibited, sexy girl fall for you, whether you’re 20 or 50. Some things never change.

ON THE ROAD  (2012)

     Few novels as well known and influential as Jack Kerouac’s audacious temperature-taking of mid-century America have taken longer to arrive on the big screen.

    For what must have been 20 years, it was mentioned as Francis Coppola’s “next project” (he’s an executive producer on the finished film) but it never made it to the screen until last year, with Coppola as an executive producer and Brazilian Walter Salles (“The Motorcycle Diaries” “Central Station”) directing. While I didn’t anticipate a great film—rarely do novels as iconic as “On the Road” lead to brilliant cinema, this bland, tame and conventional movie is so forgettable that it seems a crime that this legendary title is attached to it.

     The story, published in 1957, begins with Sal Paradise (Kerouac alter-ego), a struggling writer living in New York, finally meeting the much-talked about Dean Moriarty (a fictionalize Neal Cassady) by way of his poet friend Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg in real life). Dean, described as having spent one-third of his life in prison, one-third in bars and one-third in the library, is the ultimate free-living bohemian, embodying the Beat-generation that this trio is on the verge of inventing or, at least, bringing into the mainstream.

    There are various trips, with Sal alone or with Dean and his teenage wife Mary Lou and other assorted friends, from New York to Denver to San Francisco to Louisiana and, eventually, to Mexico. The road and the charismatic, adventure-loving Dean are at the center of everything.

      The book offers Kerouac’s observations of the places and people he meets on his cross-country treks, along with his tales of the hard-living Dean. But the film spends too much of its time on the soap opera of the trio of Mary Lou, Dean and Sal, all but eliminating the writer’s sublime insight into the America he discovers.

      None of the principle actors do much to elevate the picture. Sam Riley as Sal, Garrett Hedlund as Dean and Kristen Steward as Mary Lou don’t give bad performances, but don’t come close to matching the richness these characters have on the pages of the book. Hedlund, best known as young Sam Flynn in the “Tron” sequel, is an especially disappointing Dean, whose real life counterpart Cassady was one of the most memorable characters of the counter-culture movement—he went on to drive the bus for Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters as the mid-1960s LSD movement hit the road. Nick Nolte made a much more interesting Cassady in the underrated gem “Heartbeat” (1980), about the real life events behind the novel.

     An all-star lineup of supporting characters show up throughout the film: Terrence Howard as a cool jazz musician; Viggo Mortensen as the fictionalize version of beat writer William S. Burroughs and Amy Adams as his insane wife; Kirsten Dunst as Camille, Dean’s second wife; and Steve Buscemi as some weird dude. But they enlivened things up only for a scene or two.

     What makes the novel so memorable are passages like this:

    “What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plane till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

     Not a moment in the film comes close to matching the poetic vividness of those lines.

THE BLING RING  (2013)

     Sofia Coppola’s film about a group of over-indulged rich kids from a suburban Los Angeles high school who break into and rob celebrity homes could not have been more sympathetic if it had been written and directed by the actual criminals.

      In fact, I would rather have seen that film than Coppola’s slow-moving, repetitive and exploitive movie. In the long pointless scenes inside the celebrity homes, as the teens ooh and aah over the clothes and bags and jewelry of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Audrina Patridge, Coppola seems to be asking the viewers to share in this admiration of unchecked materialism. If there was a hint of condemnation, I missed it.

     The kids, led by new best friends Rebecca (Katie Chang) and Marc (Israel Broussard), and also including students played by Emma Watson and Claire Julien, are portrayed as the coolest in the school and their criminal adventures admired by everyone—even after they’re caught.

    I don’t write this often, but there is absolutely nothing in this picture for me to recommend it; unless you’re fascinated by Coppola’s train-wreck of a career.

      What has become clear recently is that the only reason she continues to receive backing for her projects is her last name. After a very impressive debut with “The Virgin Suicides” (1999), in which she captures the same type of morally ambiguous teens yet in a much truer fashion, she moved into the big time with the overrated “Lost in Translation” (2003). Lacking in energy and plot, her breakthrough film benefitted greatly from charismatic performers Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, who make you believe their unlikely relationship can work.

      Since then, Coppola has made three box office and critical failures, with “Marie Antoinette” (2006), “Somewhere” (2010) and this latest dud.

     “The Bling Ring” could have been a very funny, sarcastic look at the misguided admiration of celebrity and wealth that is an epidemic among the youth; instead it’s a dull docudrama of spoiled brats.

 

THE WORLD’S END  (2013)

    It has almost become an official movie genre in Great Britain: old friends who haven’t seen each other in years, usually because of some ugly incident, are brought together by the one member of the group who refuses to grow up.

   Inevitably, drinking, women, confessionals and overcoming an outside threat are involved and, along the way, each one of the group is provided with a moment to reveal his deepest fears and regrets about life.

     For good measure, this version of the cliché throws in blue-blooded aliens who have taken over the gang’s hometown.

     Idiotic? Beyond words. But Edgar Wright, who also directed many of these actors in “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” keeps it entertaining by giving plenty of rope to his cast, which includes some of the UK’s best character actors. They’ve come together, most reluctantly, to complete the town’s legendary 12-bar pub crawl that they failed to finish 20 years ago after high school.

     The instigator of this slightly juvenile adventure is Gary King (Simon Pegg), who we first see in a group therapy session; he’s a rootless alcoholic still telling the same jokes he thought were cool in high school. Gary convinces (in some cases, deceives) his more successful friends (played by Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan) to head back to Newton Haven for an epic night of imbibing. But before they can get close to the final tavern (appropriately named The World’s End), they discover that their beloved town has been appropriated by robot-like aliens.

   The main joke, played to death, is that Gary is a childish bore who stopped being funny for the other guys at least a decade ago. It takes the evil invaders to rouse their school spirit again, as they refused to give up the pub crawl. Adding to the nonstop, sophomoric humor is Rosamund Pike, as a crush from the old days, and Pierce Brosnan as their ageless teacher.

      Sober, “The World’s End” was a mindless amusement; more appropriately, the film should be enjoyed after three or four stops on your own pub crawl.

 

GET SHORTY  (1995)

    I won’t pretend to be a big fan of crime writer Elmore Leonard now that he’s dead. While I could never warm up to his prose, I have to admit that Leonard’s stories were the source of more first-rate movies than almost any writer of the  20^th Century. You’d have to include him with literary giants Graham Greene, E.M. Forster and Ernest Hemingway—nice company—among those whose books made for excellent cinema.

    Two of the best Westerns of the 1950s—when cowboys ruled the screen—were based on his short stories, “The Tall T” and “3:10 to Yuma,” both released in 1957.  “The Tall T” is one of director Budd Boetticher lean, smart and tough actioners starring Randolph Scott as the saddle-worn loner who never strays  from his moral compass, while “3:10 to Yuma” has bad guy Glenn Ford (in one of his best performances) in a battle of wits with solid-citizen Van Heflin. Even the 2007 remake with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale was pretty good.

     In the same vein as these films—a standoff between outlaws and ordinary folks—is “Hombre,” an underrated Western released in 1967 starring Paul Newman.  

     The next Leonard-sourced film that stands out for me is John Frankenheimer’s “52 Pick-Up” (1986), the story of a respected businessman (Roy Scheider) who heads into Detroit’s slimy underbelly to take on blackmailers. Dismissed at the time, the film captures the era’s inner-city hopelessness as well as any picture of the 1980s.

     Then there’s “Get Shorty” (1995), a smorgasbord of sarcasm and cool that eviscerates Hollywood like few other films ever have. Director Barry Sonnenfeld and screenwriter Scott Frank maintain the perfect temperature for a crowded parade of marvelous characters all trying to make sense of loan shark turned producer Chili Palmer. As this slick, fearless made-man, who also is an obsessed movie lover, John Travolta gives one of his best performances (along with his work in the Leonard-influenced “Pulp Fiction”), completely believable as a discontent mobster who fits right in with the Hollywood crowd.

    In addition to the film forming a fine stage to remember Leonard’s film contributions, it’s also a good place to honor Dennis Farina, who died earlier this summer.  Sporting a pink jacket that looks as dumb as he is, Farina’s Ray “Bones” Barboni, another Florida mobster and the bane of Chili’s existence, provides many of the film’s funniest moments, include a fascinating debate on the difference between “e.g.” and “i.e.”   The movie also includes one of Gene Hackman’s best comic roles, playing Harry Zimm, a heavily in debt horror-film producer who first brings Chili into the biz.

       Filling out the superb supporting cast are Rene Russo as Zimm’s unhappy girlfriend, a second-rate actress tired of the Hollywood game; Delroy Lindo and James Gandolfini as unlikely drug runners also looking to invest in movies; Bette Midler as Zimm’s bossy mistresses; David Paymer as a nerdy dry cleaner living the high life on someone else’s money and Danny DeVito, absolutely priceless as the typically egotistical movie star who everyone wants to star in their latest project.  

      It’s Leonard’s keen ear for sparkling dialogue that makes “Get Shorty” such an entertaining picture, e.g.: “You think we watch any of your movies, Harry? I’ve seen better film on teeth” and “I spent all day crawling out of a grave. The director said I was incapable of reaching the emotional core of the character” and “What is the point of living in L.A. if you’re not in the movie business.” The movie also features loving tributes to Howard Hawks’ “Rio Bravo” and Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” to secure its film buff bona fides.

       Hollywood cashed in twice more with major Leonard-sourced hits: “Out of Sight” (also scripted by Frank) with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez and “Jackie Brown” (from “Rum Punch”), indulgent in ways only Tarantino can achieve but filled with great performances and characters.

       Another, barely released, film from a Leonard novel “Killshot” (2008) doesn’t completely hold together, but is well worth catching. Mickey Rourke is very effective as a low-keyed hit man after a family under witness protection. The well-made film by John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) also stars Diane Lane and, as a psychotic killer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

     No doubt, this is hardly the end of the Elmore Leonard-Hollywood story; in fact, later this year there’s a version of the writer’s “Life of Crime,” starring Jennifer Aniston and Tim Robbins.

 

August 2013

 

KILLER ELITE  (2012)

    Robert De Niro recently celebrated his 70^th birthday, dining with Christopher Walken (“The Deer Hunter”), Harvey Keitel (“Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver”) and Samuel L. Jackson (“Jackie Brown”). If only De Niro’s recent films were as entertaining as this get together undoubtedly was.

    From the moment I watched his Johnny Boy amble into the bar to Keith Richards’ riff “Jumping Jack Flash,” in Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” (1973), De Niro became my favorite actor. That was solidified two years later when in February 1975 I first saw “The Godfather Part II.”  The 31-year-old actor had transformed himself from the fun-loving, irresponsible punk from “Mean Streets” into the soft-spoken, commanding Vito Corleone. It was hard to believe it was the same actor; Vito’s cool dignity, gaunt, Old World face, and unstoppable resolve to make something of himself is everything the cocky mook Johnny Boy wasn’t.

    Then came Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver” (1976), still one of the scariest characters in film history; jazz romantic Jimmy Doyle, one of the best film portrayals of a World War II-era musician, in “New York New York” (1977); Michael in “The Deer Hunter” (1978), the stoic, exacting survivor of the horrors of Vietnam; and, in the definitive statement of Method acting, low-life boxing champ Jake La Motta in “Raging Bull” (1980), arguably the finest film performance by an actor in the last 40 years.

      Capping a 10-year stretch that probably has never been matched by an American actor was his Father Des in “True Confessions” (1981), a heartbreaking tale of faith and loyalty and, completely shifting gears, his hilarious, outrageous Rupert Pupkin, prophetic in his obsession with TV celebrity, in “The King of Comedy” (1982).

    But that was 30 years ago. Since he turned 40, career highlights have been few and far between: the sympathetic bounty hunter in “Midnight Run” (1988), the second level mobster in “Goodfellas” (1990), an overbearing alcoholic in “This Boy’s Life” (1993), Sam Rothstein, the legendary Vegas bookmaker, in “Casino” (1995), as the cynical mercenary in the thriller “Ronin” (1998) and the football fanatic and dysfunctional father in “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012). For most actors that’d be a great three-decade run, but it was a surprising comedown for De Niro.

       I’m not going to go through De Niro’s questionable choice of roles since the turn of the century, except to state that he’s appeared in 29 films in 13 years. Like many British actors, his philosophy seems to be that he’d rather be working (and getting paid) than wait for a great role. Hard to argue with the finances of that approach to the business, but it makes it hard for longtime fans, who remember the years when every role was complex, challenging, unforgettable, to keep the faith. The second half of his career has seen him turn into one of two clichés: the stern, dangerous tough guy or the stern, dangerous funny guy. His range, once the hallmark of his talent, has narrowed to A through B.

    I’ve stopped trying to catch up with all his films, especially the cookie-cutter actioners and one-joke comedies, but to celebrate the great man’s birth I decided to check out “Killer Elite,” allured by co-stars Jason Statham and Clive Owen, both solid action actors. My mistake.

    The film never rises above the standard-issue thriller, with Statham’s Danny, a veteran mercenary, forced out of retirement when a sheik in exile kidnaps his mentor Hunter (De Niro) and demands that he assassinate three men who killed his sons.

   Of course, it’s never that easy and Owen turns out to be the obstacle as the enforcer for a group of retired British intelligence agents who go after Statham’s team. There are no real good guys—Statham is sympathetic because he has a conscious and a cute girlfriend back in Australia and you root for De Niro because, well, he’s Bob De Niro, still looking cool firing an automatic weapon and sporting a full beard and shaggy hair. The last 40 minutes of “Killer Elite” (no relation to the Sam Peckinpah film of the same name) drags on for what seems like hours as opposing sides trade blows without any clear-cut winner.

       As a result, I really have no desire to see “Stone” or “Limitless” or “Red Lights” or “The Big Wedding” or “Killing Season,” just a few of the movies De Niro has appeared in during the last few years that I’ve skipped. If someone had told me even 20 years ago that I would have no interesting in seeing a film featuring De Niro, I would have shouted back, “You talkin’ to me?”

     I guess I should be please that, occasionally, he gets the chance to deliver a sparkling performance as he did in last year’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” And maybe I need to spend more time rewatching those classics from the 1970s and early ‘80s when he reigned as the best actor in the world.

      Next week, he’s back on screen as a mob-connected dad who moves with his family to France. “The Family” is meant to be a comedy; I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

 

LEE DANIEL’S THE BUTLER  (2013)

    This uncomfortable mix of historical events and fictional characters might have worked as a weeklong television miniseries, but on the big screen it comes off as little more than highlights of both a man’s life and the Civil Right movement. Forest Whitaker, a great actor in the right role, plays Cecil Gaines, who spends 30 years as a White House butler, standing in the Oval Office as the great issues of the day are being discussed yet living in a world where he is always a second-class citizen.

     There is a heck of a movie in there somewhere but it’s not in director Lee Daniel’s version, in large part because Gaines is such a passive, blank slate of a character, seemingly blind to the important changes taking place in the 1960s and too timid to utilize his close relationship with a half-dozen presidents. While “inspired” by the true story of butler Eugene Allen and the article about him written by Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood, the film doesn’t hew to Allen’s life, instead inventing a son who, while the father is obediently serving in the White House, is involved in every aspect of the Civil Right movement. In the way it places its characters at every important event concerning blacks gaining equal rights, it’s hard not to see “The Butler” as a black version of “Forrest Gump.” And like Gump, Gaines doesn’t provide much insight or even reaction to what’s happening around him.

    Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong also give Gaines a feisty, occasional alcoholic and cheating wife played in a very by-the-numbers performance by Oprah Winfrey. But the script doesn’t give anyone much of a chance to shine. David Oyelowo, the fine British actor who spent a few seasons on the TV series “MI-5” and also co-starred in Daniel’s “The Paperboy,” plays Gaines rebellious son, who displays the attitude but never the conviction of a true believer in the cause. It was also a stretch to have the 37-year-old Oyelowo portraying a college student.

   And then there’s the presidents: Robin Williams as Eisenhower; John Cusack as Nixon, Liev Shreiber as LBJ and Alan Rickman as Reagan, all coming off as comic characters, like the caricatures of FDR in World War II vintage Warner Bros. cartoons. More believable is Jane Fonda, in the unlikely role of Nancy Reagan.

      The liveliest performances are given by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz as a pair of Cecil’s co-workers, who unlike the title character actually have some blood flowing through their veins.

     Daniels, who earned a best director nod for “Precious” (2009) and then helmed the over-the-top white-trash fest “The Paperboy,” clearly prefers to tell his stories using a 12-gauge shotgun rather than a can opener. Every plot point, every character is presented as if he’s making a TV sitcom, determined to ensure that everyone in the audience will understand immediately. That’s probably why “Lee Daniel’s The Butler” (the clumsy title was required because Warner Bros. refused to give up rights to the title “The Butler,” a little known 1916 silent) topped the box office rankings its first three weeks in theaters.

BLUE JASMINE  (2013)

    There’s a good movie that occasionally peeks through in “Blue Jasmine,” but mostly it is kept at bay by choppy writing and editing and Woody Allen’s inability to transform a handful of fantastic scenes into a coherent piece of drama.

     But it’s easy to ignore the film’s flaws—as many critics have—because at its center is an astonishing portrayal of a delusional, desperate, depressed woman by Cate Blanchett, playing the title character who haplessly tries to restart her life after the death of her cheating, crooked and very wealthy husband. Blanchett has proven to be excellent in almost everything she’s been in since her breakthrough role in “Elizabeth” (1998), as the 17^th Century English queen. She played a resistance fighter in “Charlotte Gray” (2001), a vengeful wife in “Heaven” (2002), gave an Oscar-winning performance as Katharine Hepburn in “The Aviator” (2004), was the sick wife in “Babel” (2006), chewed the scenery as a lesbian teacher in “Notes on a Scandal” (2006), offered up a version of Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There” (2007), played a feisty Marion in “Robin Hood” (2010) and starred as the elegant Galadriel in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

      But nothing the 44-year-old Australian has done in the past equals her work here, as she mixes Allen’s trademark jittery delivery with an intensely emotional slide into the abyss of hopelessness. She and Allen have created a modern day Blanche DuBois (a role Blanchett played in a stage revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 2008), a delicate, pampered woman unprepared for the ugly reality of life among the working class. After she moves in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and her two boys in a cramped San Francisco apartment, she faces the ire of two versions of Stanley Kowalski—Ginger’s ex-husband (a very convincing Andrew Dice Clay), who was a financial victim of Jasmine’s late husband (Alex Baldwin), and Chili (Bobby Cannavale), the sister’s tactless mechanic boyfriend. 

      After struggling to learn computers and working as a lecherous dentist’s receptionist, she meets a well-heeled, good-looking man (Peter Sarsgaard) with political ambitions. It seems to be her ticket out of Palookaville, but this isn’t a Hollywood movie, and Allen, for the first time in awhile, has created a truly tragic character.

      Writing about the film makes it seem much better than it plays, as so many of the scenes come off as clumsy, poorly structured, uncomfortably long. As fine as both Blanchett and Hawkins are, the men come off as hackneyed clichés who add nothing but the obvious to the story. While I enjoyed every scene with one-time foul-mouthed comedian Clay, the performances of the usually reliable Cannavale, Sarsgaard and Baldwin plus the talented standup Louis C.K. never go beyond the words. Even worse, the jokes fall so flat you won’t even recognize them as attempts at comedy. 

     Of course, it’s worth seeing; for my money every movie that bears those magical words “Written and Directed by Woody Allen” is a must see. Just don’t go in expecting much, except a truly unforgettable, devastating performance by Blanchett.

CHANDLER  (1971)

    Few actors ever maintained a more nonchalant manner on screen than Warren Oates. Not only did he never give the impression that he was “acting,” Oates, most of the time, seemed to barely notice that he was in a motion picture; and that, of course, was his appeal.

    Primarily a supporting player in television series (mostly Westerns) from the mid 1950s, Oates had an occasional film role, including in Sam Peckinpah’s “Major Dundee” (1965) and “The Wild Bunch” (1969), with Jack Nicholson in Monte Hellman’s cult classic “The Shooting” (1966), and as a racist cop in the best picture winner “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), before his breakthrough in 1971.

      In “Two-Lane Blacktop,” Oates plays G.T.O., a talkative driver who challenges a couple of hippies to a cross country drag race. It’s one of the great allegorical road trip pictures, with Oates giving the performances of his life, Oscar worthy in a perfect world. Then, in the same year, he’s in this strange, very forgettable crime picture, but, in a coup for Oates, in the lead role.

      He plays an underemployed private detective (is there any other kind, really?) ironically named Chandler, who is fired from his security guard job as the film opens. An old friend, who works for the government, tracks down Chandler and offers him a too-easy-to-be-true job, keeping tabs on the girlfriend of an East Coast mob boss.

     It’s all a setup with Chandler pegged as the fall guy, which he figures that out soon enough, but, just like his namesake’s Marlowe, keeps playing along because he falls for the dame (a badly miscast Leslie Caron). While the plot doesn’t make as much sense as a Three Stooges short, watching Oates stare with that eternal smirk of his as others huff and puff in seriousness is very entertaining.

    I also found it interesting to see how undeveloped the pier area of Monterey, Calif., now packed with fish restaurants and bars, was as recently as the 1970s. It is also amusing how the film shifts locales from Los Angeles to Monterey as if it was across town, instead of a five-hour drive up the coast.

    Like most films of the ‘70s, “Chandler” is filled with interesting supporting players, including 1950s noir regulars Charles McGraw and Gloria Grahame along with Richard Loo, Scatman Crothers and John Mitchum.

   After the film’s release, writer-director Paul Magwood, the rare director who made just one film, took out an ad in the Hollywood Reporter apologizing for the film, claiming it was butchered by MGM studio chief James T. Aubrey. Just maybe that’s why he never got another chance to direct. 

     Better film roles followed for Oates, scoring lead roles in “Dillinger” (1973), “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974) and “China 9, Liberty 37” (1978) along with key supporting roles in such quirky pictures as “The Hired Hand” (1971), “Kid Blue” (1973), “Badlands” (1973) and “92 in the Shade” (1975). He was memorable as Bill Murray’s put-upon sergeant in “Stripes” (1981) and in the Roy Scheider action picture “Blue Thunder” (1983), released the year after his death from a heart attack at age 53.

     The lazy cool demeanor of Oates, even in a waste of time like “Chandler,” made every film he appeared in more believable, more entertaining. Every time I see him in a film reminds me of how effect a performer this unorthodox actor was.

TO THE WONDER  (2013)

    Iconoclastic director Terrence Malick uses the language of cinema like no other American filmmaker, telling his stories through his immaculately composed images rather than with words, especially since his comeback, after 20 years of silence, with his masterful “The Thin Red Line” (1998).

      The reclusive Texan has always examined his characters and the events of their lives in terms of their place in the universe, their connection to the physical earth and beyond. Two years ago, in “The Tree of Life,” he and his equally adventurous cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (back for “To the Wonder”) not only offered a short history, literally, of the Universe, but imagined a version of heaven and the place that dream holds in many people’s lives.

       Malick’s latest, released in April, takes his consideration of the presence of God’s hand in the world to the forefront, cutting the dialogue (too human?) to the minimum and allowing the actors’ expressions and movement to tell this story of an exasperating love affair. And while it is nearly impossible not to admire the stunning images of wind-swept wheat fields; the flat, endless landscape of Oklahoma; characters in constant motion, away and toward one another—even a gas station at dusk looks gorgeous in a Malick movie—the film fails because it lacks a compelling story or even a character worth caring about.

     The picture opens with scenes of a man and woman falling in love in Paris, followed by his seemingly reluctant decision to bring her and her young daughter back to his home in Oklahoma. Neil (played with a strange detachment by Ben Affleck) is a serious-minded environmental scientist who studies workplaces and communities for dangerous pollutants while emotionally fragile Marina (Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko of “Quantum of Solace” and “Oblivion”) wonders through the streets and field of the farming community contemplating life and her relationship.

     At least that’s what I think is going on in “To the Wonder.” The only attempt at traditional storytelling is Marina’s occasional narration of her esoteric thoughts and snippets of conversation. Affleck’s Neil has about five lines in the entire film even though he’s in nearly every scene. No one but Malick could pull this off so effectively, yet it still didn’t work for me.

      There’s an underdeveloped subplot concerning the town’s priest (Javier Bardem) who, we learn through his narration, is questioning his faith, struggling to find God as he tends to the poor and afflicted. As a realist and nonbeliever, I wanted these characters to face the world as it is and stop looking for guidance from above; start seeking their spiritual salvation from their heads not their hearts.

       Neil and Marina’s relationship has its ups and downs before visa problems force her and her daughter to return to France. Meanwhile, Neil has a brief affair with a local woman (Rachel McAdams), who seems to make him happier than Marina does. But it’s hard to tell—he’s such a dour, unexpressive and frankly uninteresting character.

       Marina eventually returns and they marry, but continue to struggle with their relationship because, it seems clear to me, Neil doesn’t really love her. But in Malick’s big-picture view, this is barely about whether or not these two survive as a couple, but about the choices we make and why we make them as we strive for something we believe to be happiness.

     To me, “To the Wonder” is a muddle of faith, transcendental philosophy and sketchily drawn characters who take themselves way too seriously. At one point, probably while she’s roaming through a wheat field looking back at the camera, Marina asks, “Where are we…when we’re there?” That’s exactly how I felt watching this film.

STOKER  (2013)

     I have to give South Korean director Chan-wook Park props for not compromising his vision, such as it is, in his first Hollywood film. His theme of complex, bloody revenge, brilliantly constructed in his acclaimed “Oldboy” (2003) and “Lady Vengeance” (2005), is repeated in this American film about the aftermath of a family tragedy.     

     It’s hard to break through the icy wall of “Stoker”; there are no characters to root for, to care about; only three rather cold, calculating and essentially corrupt individuals in an odd battle of wits. At least in “Oldboy,” also filled with unpleasant, self-serving characters, there is one person—a young girl who is tricked into playing a role in the revenge plot—who you can feel sympathy for.

    His new film opens at the funeral of the husband of Evelyn Stoker, who was found burned to death in his car. At the reception after the burial, the dead man’s brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode), presents himself out of the blue. Neither Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) nor her teenage daughter, India (Mia Wasikowska), have ever seen or heard of the brother, at least it seems that way.

      Charlie immediately makes himself at home, clearly intent on taking the place of his brother (played in flashback by Dermot Mulroney) with both Evelyn and India. As the mother-daughter is already tense, treating each other as irritating strangers, it is easy for Charlie to split them further and turn the household into a tinderbox. On top of that, India, through whose viewpoint the plot unfolds, starts to discover that her soft-spoken uncle doesn’t mind killing anyone who crosses him.

     Park brings an overly polished, exacting style to his films—every shot is perfect composed and elaborately staged, with the actors’ movement carefully choreographed. It creates a reality that is chilly, claustrophobic, unbending; a bit Kubrick like, but without the freedom the late filmmaker gave his actors. But in both “Stoker” and “Oldboy,” the style fits the films, turning them into sad commentaries on the state of human relations.

     I could never get over the fact that these three characters all accept the strange, frankly unacceptable, behavior of each other as if it was completely normal. 

MILDRED PIERCE  (2011)

    James M. Cain’s story of a divorced mother reinventing herself as a restaurateur only to be done in by her devotion to her self-centered daughter is one of the great novels about the 1930s; ahead of its time—it was published in 1941—in its frank depiction of female empowerment and sexuality and showing how the generous nature of mothering women can easily be taken advantage of.

    Mildred Pierce is such a hard working, sincere individual that she trusts that those around her have the same ethics, never seeing their ulterior motives. In Cain’s world—he is also responsible for “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity”—money, sex and the desire for prestige inevitably brings out the worst in human nature.

    In 1945, Warner Bros. and its stable of screenwriters (including William Faulkner) retooled the novel into a film noir crime picture that earned Joan Crawford an Oscar for best actress, but used little but the main plot points from the novel.

   This HBO miniseries is an extraordinarily faithful adaption, providing Kate Winslet with one of her greatest roles in an already illustrious career. Because the story is told here completely from Mildred’s point of view, the actress is in every scene of this five-hour plus drama.

    The series begins when Mildred’s husband walks out on the Glendale, Calif., housewife, forcing her to find work in a Depression-ravaged job market. She lucks into a waitressing job (but hides it from her proud daughter) and gains a reputation as a first-class pie maker. It’s not long before she takes a shot on opening her own restaurant—a chicken and waffle dinner—with the help of the family’s lawyer and her husband’s former real estate partner Wally (James Le Gros).

    Even as her fortunes are on the rise, she meets the source of her downfall, the dashing Pasadena playboy Monty (Guy Pearce), who introduces her and her daughter Veda (Morgan Turner as a pre-teen; later Evan Rachel Wood) into the upper class world of polo, parties and, for Veda, a more prestigious piano tutor. Her daughter’s dreams of becoming a concert pianist consume Mildred, even as the girl despises her mother’s commonness. The ruthlessly Veda sets her sights on a world far beyond her mother’s reach and beware to anyone who stands in her way.

    Winslet, a six-time Oscar nominee and the 2008 best-actress winner for her role as a mysterious woman hiding her Nazi past in “The Reader,” creates a Mildred who is just as believable as a naïve, put-upon 1930s housewife as she is when she’s working herself ragged to make her restaurant a success or showing her passion for sex. But she’s never manipulative, never taking advantage of others even as they are scheming to use her.

    Like all miniseries, there are slow sections and repetition, but overall this five-part drama captures Cain’s roller-coaster plot and the flavor of Southern California of the 1930s. The movie becomes increasingly fascinating as Veda moves into her late teens, becoming openly rebellious, heartlessly mocking her mother’s sacrifices.

     The outstanding supporting cast also includes Melissa Leo as Mildred’s sympathetic neighbor who helps her into the liquor business after Prohibition ends and Mare Winningham as a fellow waitress who shows her the ropes of running a restaurant and eventually becomes her partner. Like Winslet, they are very convincing Depression era women—tough, resilient and resourceful—and completely comfortable slinging around Cain’s hard-boiled, snappy dialogue.

    “Mildred Pierce” was nominated for 22 Emmys, with Winslet and Pearce both going home winners. For anyone who is a fan of Cain or Winslet, this is a must see.