tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243251462024-03-13T06:47:08.540-07:00Mostly MoviesEst. 2006. Movie reviews with occasional other thoughts. There is always time for Natalie Portman. Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.comBlogger4157125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-17206456558452645092023-10-22T06:45:00.005-07:002023-10-22T08:53:22.602-07:00Killers of the Flower Moon <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCN9wbv82O0ftYE2TOrd8gRk0kPutSHA-93VtNs0vclB-KPUnd0q7XpuJOeCTkdXEoVire2f3E7czvf0n3nslWCSOgGNl8LZmvPgXMwRLEy-uug2b1GRfCgGYAeBxcs6KkigrUtwsLrvIGj1_TwEWOL1rMHpMueBkXxo3h2empk7Je9WYP0Ppy/s1952/flower%20moon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1952" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCN9wbv82O0ftYE2TOrd8gRk0kPutSHA-93VtNs0vclB-KPUnd0q7XpuJOeCTkdXEoVire2f3E7czvf0n3nslWCSOgGNl8LZmvPgXMwRLEy-uug2b1GRfCgGYAeBxcs6KkigrUtwsLrvIGj1_TwEWOL1rMHpMueBkXxo3h2empk7Je9WYP0Ppy/w640-h276/flower%20moon.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Early on in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Killers
of the Flower Moon</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, there is a black-and-white sequence designed as an old-fashioned
newsreel. The subject is the Osage people of Oklahoma, who in the 1920s had
become wealthy due to the discovery of oil on Osage land. The newsreel contains
images of Osage people in handsome cars, shopping, playing football. The Osage
were the vision of American success, but in Martin Scorsese’s </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Killers of the
Flower Moon</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> (based on the nonfiction book by David Grann) that success does
an unfortunate dance with another essentially American quality: violence.
Scorsese’s film, made with cooperation of and advice from Osage leaders, is both
an urgent crime drama and a call for America to examine its own heart.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The leading white
citizen of Osage County is William Hale (Robert DeNiro), who is referred to by
most people by his middle name “King”. Hale is a prosperous rancher, but he
also knows that the amount of money coming to the Osage from oil will shift the
balance of economic power in the region. King explains the situation to us and to
his newly arrived nephew Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) in a few brief scenes before
unveiling his plan. Ernest, an agreeable fellow whom DiCaprio makes very
credulous, is to woo and marry an Osage woman named Molly (Lily Gladstone).
Molly controls a large oil reserve with her mother (Tantoo Cardinal) and
sisters, and King wants his family connected to Molly’s so that her wealth
might come to him. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If <i>Killers
of the Flower Moon</i> seems like odd territory for Scorsese (who wrote the screenplay
with Eric Roth), let us consider how it contains themes that have resonated through
his work. Besides violence, there’s greed, power, the American soul, and of
course religion. Molly and her family attend a Catholic church but also
participate in Osage rites, and it isn’t too much of a stretch to see <i>Flower
Moon</i> as a film about two objects of faith – God (whatever that means) and capitalism
– in conflict with each other. But I don’t want to present <i>Killers of the
Flower Moon</i> as a film in which ideas are presented and then just sit there. Scorsese
and his collaborators have made something vital about individuals caught up by forces
we still struggle with today. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">You may already
be familiar with Lily Gladstone before seeing <i>Flower Moon</i>, and if you are it’s
most likely from <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU0caOeu_Ag">Certain Women</a></i>. That 2016 Kelley Reichardt film brought
Gladstone good notices as a shy ranch hand who develops a crush on Kristen
Stewart’s night school teacher. Gladstone’s performance is quiet and deeply
felt, with layers of unacknowledged emotion just under the surface. Her work
here as Molly is similarly internal, but in a larger role the facets of feeling
are even more complex. Molly is full of love, grief, and fury in various
measures, to say nothing of the fact that her mother seems to favor her sister
Anna (lively Cara Jade Myers) over her. Gladstone doesn’t concede any ground to
her scene partners, and Molly is as indomitable in her last moment as she is
when we first meet her. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Killers of
the Flower Moon</i> becomes more procedural as it goes on. Molly risks her health
by traveling to Washington, D.C. to appeal directly to Calvin Coolidge for
federal help investigating the murders, and soon Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and a
team of fellow F.B.I. agents arrive in Osage County to pursue the multiple
homicides we’ve been witness to. It’s at this point that the plot trips over
itself a bit, because we haven’t seen DiCaprio’s Ernest give much thought to
the things King asks him to do even though the bloodshed is advancing on his
front door. Ernest is a man with little internal life – though his love for
Molly and their children seems genuine – and DiCaprio plays that expertly. When
the turn comes it’s handled well, DiCaprio has rarely been as still as he is in
a brief testimony scene with a prosecutor (John Lithgow, who seems to have
shown up just to help out). Ernest has little agency, but maybe that’s the point.
Every one of these characters is stung to varying degrees by the way they can’t
escape their situation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Martin
Scorsese recently shared a photo of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CymT0iCvzZC/?hl=en">himself and Robert DeNiro</a> on social media,
with the caption “50 years. 10 films.” If <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> is the end
of their collaboration, then the highest compliment I can pay them is that they
haven’t compromised a bit. DeNiro’s King is a portrait of calculated evil
wearing virtue’s mask that will linger long after the credits have rolled. Or will
it? As King points out to Ernest, “People forget.” Martin Scorsese hasn’t made
that mistake. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-65208111004860760432023-08-03T02:23:00.002-07:002023-08-03T02:23:26.719-07:00Barbie/Theater Camp <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdW14_W7n2P2BiMieI1rSNyPtNPaokSAoaQdDmiG7W90Z5evoBjRc1WZ1dtBDuco6or0QBwEZ8ZhmbQSswyE2TlP9TO9p7bJpkfmaZ4EkERGYN-mYLQDR0l-UyrrvCAFbmqK1__jrpaaSE4Y8wL0qGAx7vq-QLuPLPTItYn7sUD3ZDm_oHAm23/s1500/margot-robbie-barbie-movie.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="845" data-original-width="1500" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdW14_W7n2P2BiMieI1rSNyPtNPaokSAoaQdDmiG7W90Z5evoBjRc1WZ1dtBDuco6or0QBwEZ8ZhmbQSswyE2TlP9TO9p7bJpkfmaZ4EkERGYN-mYLQDR0l-UyrrvCAFbmqK1__jrpaaSE4Y8wL0qGAx7vq-QLuPLPTItYn7sUD3ZDm_oHAm23/w640-h360/margot-robbie-barbie-movie.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Even if you
don’t care about Barbie the doll, there is a good chance that you saw the
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zIf0XvoL9Y&t=9s" target="_blank">teaser trailer</a> released last winter for the new movie <i>Barbie</i>. The 75-second
clip, which also serves as the movie’s opening sequence, is a reconstruction of
the famous opening of Stanley Kubrick’s <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>. The apes using
bones you may remember from Kubrick have been replaced by young girls playing
with baby dolls. A narration by a knowing Helen Mirren informs us that for
decades young girls have been playing with baby dolls, because being a mother
is the highest goal a woman can aspire to. Right? A central conceit of <i>Barbie</i>,
directed and co-written (with Noah Baumbach) by Greta Gerwig, is that the
Barbies we meet at the beginning of the movie have taken the world a long way
from the baby doll. Barbies can be doctors, lawyers, Nobel Prize winners, even
Presidents, and so the “real world” must be a place where women enjoy a
cherished place in society and equality of opportunity.</span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After the
opening we are introduced to the world of “Barbieland”, a place of life-sized
Mattel Barbie Dream Houses and accessories. Nothing is ever wrong in
Barbieland, and we’re quickly introduced to “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot
Robbie, who also produced and brought Gerwig to the project), who lives her
best life every day and has a host of fellow Barbie friends. Issa Rae is the
President of Barbieland, Hari Nef is a doctor, and there are many more. The
Barbies like to hang out with the Kens, though of course things never go too
far. As the movie’s central Ken, Ryan Gosling gives a performance of great
comic commitment that never falls in to cleverness. Robbie’s Barbie becomes
aware of a sort of crisis of the spirit in Barbieland – thoughts of death begin
to intrude – and on the advice of “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon) undertakes a
journey to the real world to find the girl who’s playing with her. Gerwig’s
script takes its time setting up in these early scenes: the opening tour of
Barbieland is mostly repeated after Barbie begins to have existential thoughts,
and there’s a dance sequence as well before things really get going. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Once Barbie
and Ken (who tags along unexpectedly) reach modern day Los Angeles, the pace
picks up considerably. Robbie is quite touching in these scenes, as Barbie is
overwhelmed by the beauty and energy of the world around her. Barbie’s brief
interaction with an older woman (played by Oscar-winning costume designer Ann
Roth) at a bus stop is perhaps the movie’s best articulation of its fundamental
belief in the strength and beauty of all women. Gosling’s Ken returns to
Barbieland earlier than planned, armed with a definition of the word
“patriarchy” that really overemphasizes the importance of horses. Any
description of the rest of <i>Barbie</i> would spoil the fun, except to say it
includes a Mattel employee (America Ferrara) and her daughter (Ariana
Greenblatt) with a surprising connection to Stereotypical Barbie. Gosling is
terrifically funny in this part of the movie, which climaxes with the Kens (who
also include Kingsley Ben-Adir and Simu Liu) performing maybe the most Ken song
of all time. The choice Barbie makes at the end – aided by a mysterious figure
played by Rhea Perlman – leads to a last line that I’m quite sure has never been
spoken before in the history of movies. <i>Barbie</i> is an unapologetically clever
success, a movie unafraid to make us both think and laugh. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><i></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ_fgFH8phhXcv41ZjPodOzrwOR_E_CTfiIlBAWHz09H5KAZiLm2LPoeS4W20BAtlW0OXsRFr-vV2jlI6UG7uH469N08fkNTKPLZyfK-0yY_3yZQli8EtFEkjoVRuxWHX9Snt-N9ur9c6f-TEMUHLxm13_BI_jxilMIfO0ol8XA1WcYWC3RqxU/s1486/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="836" data-original-width="1486" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ_fgFH8phhXcv41ZjPodOzrwOR_E_CTfiIlBAWHz09H5KAZiLm2LPoeS4W20BAtlW0OXsRFr-vV2jlI6UG7uH469N08fkNTKPLZyfK-0yY_3yZQli8EtFEkjoVRuxWHX9Snt-N9ur9c6f-TEMUHLxm13_BI_jxilMIfO0ol8XA1WcYWC3RqxU/w640-h360/download.jpg" width="640" /></a></i></div><i><br />Theater
Camp</i>, co-written and directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, is a winning
lo-fi comedy about how some adults won’t stop being theater kids. Amos (Ben
Platt, also a co-writer) and his best friend Rebecca-Diane (Gordon) are former
campers and current faculty of AdirondActs, a Upstate New York summer camp
whose founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) has fallen into a coma. Over the course of
three weeks, Amos and Rebecca-Diane must come up with an original show (“Joan,
Still”) while also dealing with the fact that Joan’s son Troy (Jimmy Tatro)
might sell the camp. All of the adults in <i>Theater Camp</i> are very skilled and
funny, but the movie works because the filmmakers found funny children who are
entirely believable as aspiring actors. It is quite lovely to laugh out loud at
a movie – an experience I had at both <i>Theate</i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>r Camp</i> and <i>Barbie</i> – and the level
of commitment the kids display as “Joan, Still” becomes more absurd is a very
deep pleasure. One other performance must be recognized. Noah Galvin as Glenn,
the camp’s beleaguered technical director, has such a light comic touch that
the surprise that awaits his character at the end is actually joyful. Let
<i>Theater Camp</i> be your summer sleeper.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-8226150420991028522023-07-26T16:18:00.008-07:002023-07-26T16:18:53.817-07:00Oppenheimer <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMa3zAQN2ILnxam6b3xXvvj6PoLKiaRuSBpLVwbFRwZbF_-MqAg7JQ1GTKrq5FUCGtvqNY-JoX_r58S2tFFXbGyRnOE032x20LiO8l2QQtyUYDKleUAJ5LsfQIjv50v1Jv2aJ3ct-HzlKOfM5kWrbkeiuEXuHttMztC3st2UsS9L3_Z39zAzuL/s1280/oppy%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMa3zAQN2ILnxam6b3xXvvj6PoLKiaRuSBpLVwbFRwZbF_-MqAg7JQ1GTKrq5FUCGtvqNY-JoX_r58S2tFFXbGyRnOE032x20LiO8l2QQtyUYDKleUAJ5LsfQIjv50v1Jv2aJ3ct-HzlKOfM5kWrbkeiuEXuHttMztC3st2UsS9L3_Z39zAzuL/w640-h360/oppy%202.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Christopher
Nolan’s <i>Oppenheimer</i> opens with the nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer
(Cillian Murphy) staring at small pool of water. Oppenheimer, still a young
scientist at this point, is fascinated by the way raindrops cause the water to
move and change its form. Unseen forces both scientific and political are a large
part of what <i>Oppenheimer</i> is about, and Nolan has succeeded in making those
forces dramatically viable in a movie of terrific scope and ambition.
<i>Oppenheimer</i> functions both as the story of a singular individual and a critique
of the power that made and then broke him.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nolan’s
script wastes no time on Oppenheimer’s childhood, all we need to know is that
he has an affinity for the New Mexico countryside that dates to well before
World War II and that his brother Frank (Dylan Arnold) was a Communist in the 1930s.
We meet Oppenheimer studying in Europe, where he is encouraged by an encounter
with Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh). Quantum physics had yet to penetrate the
American scientific community, and it’s Bohr’s inspiration that causes
Oppenheimer to bring the new science to America as he begins his academic
career at Berkeley. While we move towards Oppenheimer’s meeting General Leslie
Groves (Matt Damon) and his appointment as head of the Manhattan Project, a
second timeline unfolds after the war. In the post-war years Oppenheimer began
to speak in a more measured way about nuclear energy, falling out of favor with
many in government who had a protected him before. At a month-long hearing in
1954, which Nolan depicts at great length, Oppenheimer’s security clearance is challenged after copious testimony about past associations with Communist party
members like his mistress Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and wife Kitty (Emily
Blunt). We also follow a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Lewis
Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr. playing a vain man with incredible nuance) to be
Secretary of Commerce. Strauss had been Oppenheimer’s boss at the Atomic Energy
Commission and the two men’s philosophical disagreements turned to personal
malice as the years went on. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Oppenheimer</i> takes
pains to give its main character – “hero” isn’t the right word – dimension
while still leaving him somewhat opaque. Oppenheimer, marshalling a large crew
of scientists (most notably Benny Safdie as Edward Teller), becomes more of a
logistician than a physicist while at the newly constructed Los Alamos
facility. His colleagues often ask Oppenheimer what he thinks of the moral
dimension of the work they’re doing, but there are so many problems to solve
and battles to fight that there isn’t time to consider the question.
Oppenheimer, who Cillian Murphy plays with a clenched-fist control, doesn’t
appreciate the irony of his situation until it is too late: his work, once
finished, no longer belongs to him. The filmmaking that supports Nolan’s
conception of <i>Oppenheimer</i> as a naïve genius is of a very high order. Frequent
Nolan collaborator Hoyte Van Hoytema shoots the New Mexico desert as an
unforgiving place, and the wooden buildings and new laboratories of Los Alamos
feel like a portal to a new world just as weapons Oppenheimer and his team are
making are the key to a door that can never be closed again. The filmmakers have
claimed that the sequence involving the “Trinity” test detonation was done with
no digital effects, and if that is true then the visual effects team deserves
an award right now. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The last
third of <i>Oppenheimer</i> centers on Oppenheimer’s security clearance hearing, along
with some revelations about which of his enemies is maneuvering behind the
scenes to discredit him. While we already know the outcome – Oppenheimer is
told many times the result is a forgone conclusion – Nolan is more interested
in Oppenheimer’s apparent passivity in front of the counsel (Jason Clarke)
questioning him. Cillian Murphy is at his most restrained in these later scenes,
internalizing Oppenheimer’s guilt and conflict even as Kitty urges him to
fight. The final conversation in <i>Oppenheimer</i> is between Oppenheimer and Albert
Einstein (Tom Conti). It is a moment of acceptance both for Oppenheimer and the
audience. We are living in the world that Robert Oppenheimer created. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-44524927531112341812023-07-02T08:48:00.003-07:002023-07-02T08:49:48.035-07:00Past Lives <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqWtQu-lkTP-aYslUQlAuIVOMe0bLCpmP0_bvNZRrEQG4b2l1TyBemSCIDK1l23EImxeb6EEX9gdCzbVCYHxsrM1N6RQjbHkhgLkUf2Zixb2igsxu2A7VVZp0fwf2I8FG0DRtxlNdAvSCfznQIrX3cv6Nr5UEtOYQPCgT9LpxZ1bleS4zLzQKV/s310/past%20lives.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="310" height="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqWtQu-lkTP-aYslUQlAuIVOMe0bLCpmP0_bvNZRrEQG4b2l1TyBemSCIDK1l23EImxeb6EEX9gdCzbVCYHxsrM1N6RQjbHkhgLkUf2Zixb2igsxu2A7VVZp0fwf2I8FG0DRtxlNdAvSCfznQIrX3cv6Nr5UEtOYQPCgT9LpxZ1bleS4zLzQKV/w640-h337/past%20lives.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />You leave
<i>Past Lives</i> thinking about motion. Celine Song’s sublime and autobiographical debut
feature contains a number of shots of characters in moving cars, but while travel
and distance are a part of the film on a plot level Song has something much
deeper in mind. <i>Past Lives</i> is a small film about large ideas: the forward
motion of the world and way that endings often resolve into new beginnings. We
begin in a New York bar, where offscreen voices observe a group of three people
whose relationship to each other isn’t quite apparent. Before too long we’ve
jumped back 24 years to Seoul, where 12-year-olds Na Young (Moon Seung-ah) and
Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min) are beginning to understand what their feelings for
each other mean just as Na Young’s family are about to immigrate to Canada. The
children’s mothers set up a “date” for them so that Na Young can have a last
Korean memory, and there is something touching and ineffable about watching them
laugh and play on a statue while knowing they will soon be separated.</span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">12 years
later. Na Young is now called Nora and she is a playwright living in New York.
Greta Lee’s performance of this character as an adult should be among the
awards contenders this year. Lee’s Nora is ambitious but not closed off to
moments of connection, and she is very happy when she and Hae Sung (played as
an adult by Teo Yoo) reconnect via Facebook and subsequent Skype calls. <i>Past
Lives</i> really has no supporting characters – we don’t see either Nora or Hae
Sung’s parents after the early scenes – so the conversations Nora has with Hae
Sung are our window into her life to this point. Nora is happy in her career
but still missing something, and Lee plays all of this with a subtle
confidence. (I previously knew Lee best as the friend who<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHcKoAMGGvY"> repeatedly says “Sweet birthday baby!”</a> to Natasha Lyonne in<i> Russian Doll</i>.) We know less about Hae Sung’s
life since Nora left him in childhood; he’s studying engineering, may be going
to China, and still thinks about the time he spent with Nora when they were
young. There is a deep well of feeling between the two old friends and talk of
an in-person reunion, but just when a lesser movie might become cloying and
contrived Nora makes a choice that sends bot of them in new directions. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">When we meet
Npra and Hae Sung again 12 more years have passed. We know a little about what
each character has been through. Hae Sung did indeed go to China and have a relationship,
while Nora met her now-husband Arthur (John Magaro) on a writer’s retreat. It’s
around the time that Nora meets Arthur that Song’s script introduces the Korean
concept of <i>in yun</i>, a word which might be translated as “fate” but which<a href="https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/past-lives-greta-lee-celine-song-love-triangle-17869932"> Lee says implies a more holistic connection</a>:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-family: Karla, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><i>Much of “Past Lives” is in Korean, with English subtitles, and is centered around a Korean phrase, <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;">in yun</span>. “It translates closest to destiny or fate,” Lee explained, “but actually it’s a lot more pedestrian and more commonplace than when we say destiny or fate in English.”</i></p><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-family: Karla, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><i>But the phrase, which can describe “anyone we encounter,” holds varying degrees of connection. </i></p><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-family: Karla, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><i>“If you brush up against each other in the street, this is also <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;">in yun</span>. Even someone who brings you a cup of water, is <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;">in yun</span>,” Lee said. “The person who brings you a cup of water is different than your husband, for example. That’s a more serious and deeper <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;">in yun</span>.” </i></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>In yun</i>
exists for Nora both with Arthur and Hae Sung, and the last section of <i>Past
Lives</i> brings Hae Sung to New York for the long-delayed visit. One of the many remarkable
things about <i>Past Lives</i> is that it never even hints at making Arthur an
antagonist or a problem for Nora and Hae Sung. John Magaro plays Arthur with a
halting sweetness (masking a deeper uncertainty), and he and Lee share a scene
in bed together of such emotional delicacy it made me almost want a movie just about
their lives together. (<i>Past Lives</i> doesn’t have many outright laughs, but my
favorite might be when it is revealed Arthur has published a book called
<i>Boner</i>.) Nora, Hae Sung, and Arthur end up at the bar in the scene the movie
began with, and Arthur is secure enough to let his wife and Hae Sung have the
conversation in Korean that they’ve always needed to have. We’ve been told
Arthur has learned some Korean, so it isn’t clear how much he gets of what they
say. The first time we meet Na Young she is crying, and <i>Past Lives</i> ends with
Nora’s tears. How much you cry will vary of course, but Nora’s tears aren’t
wholly of sadness. <i>Past Lives</i> is about what Nora cries for: the beauty of human
connection, and the way that one life speeds forward into the next. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-family: Karla, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-59883188186899454872023-06-25T06:11:00.002-07:002023-06-25T06:11:33.665-07:00Asteroid City <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHWvo20smmtVoMXSM4_hkqsjiUUl8TVsbHDOdzZl0d4fziu0cu_cNp_A--DLganPziwQbq_j1QflwV3qZJpzrWqFEOmh7mK1iCzlbt-lIEklhHR-HzqLtoXiCHkrvaFwrbkANcCdu8N5rfynl3JGuUWqGobVKgBeaRshVxEqlHicVf8EQ6q92/s347/acity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="145" data-original-width="347" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHWvo20smmtVoMXSM4_hkqsjiUUl8TVsbHDOdzZl0d4fziu0cu_cNp_A--DLganPziwQbq_j1QflwV3qZJpzrWqFEOmh7mK1iCzlbt-lIEklhHR-HzqLtoXiCHkrvaFwrbkANcCdu8N5rfynl3JGuUWqGobVKgBeaRshVxEqlHicVf8EQ6q92/w640-h268/acity.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-size: 12pt;">If you are
what is sometimes referred to as an “extremely online” person, then you know
that Wes Anderson is one of the most discussed filmmakers currently working.
Yet the discussion too often veers into a kind of fussiness, or a displeasure
at Anderson’s manner and style. We know what we’re talking about here, right?
The immaculate production design, the careful blocking of actors, the studied
camera movement, Bill Murray? The new <i>Asteroid City</i> finds Anderson working in
high style indeed, the small Southwestern town in which much of the movie takes
place is designed (by Adam Stockhausen) with a kind of mid-20</span><sup>th</sup><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
century formalism that loudly says “The Future!”. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman
– a regular collaborator with Anderson – has come up with a creamy desert light
that is described as “unforgiving”. (Much of the movie was shot in Spain.) The
technical skill on display in <i>Asteroid City</i> is indeed on a par with Anderson’s
previous work.</span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Yet <i>Asteroid
City</i> also shows Anderson working with a playfulness and an earnest desire to
connect emotionally that can sometimes get lost in his other movies. As rich as
the movie’s colors are, we begin in black-and-white. We are watching a
television program in the manner of something Edward R. Murrow or Dave Garroway
might have hosted in the 1950’s, what’s meant to be a self-serious piece of
nonfiction. Our host (Bryan Cranston) introduces us to our subject: Conrad Earp
(Edward Norton), a playwright whose script “Asteroid City” we will follow
through production. We’re introduced to the major characters – or rather the
actors who play them – in this opening sequence, and while we do return to the
framing device throughout <i>Asteroid City</i> the scenes in color are meant to be
Earp’s play. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If this
structure sounds confusing or overthought, it plays with a light-footedness
that’s genuinely charming. Anderson’s script contains as many laugh out loud
lines as I can remember from him in some time, as well as plenty of visual
gags. The movie is self-aware: at one point Cranston’s host pops up in a desert
scene – inside the play – and then he apologizes and backs out. “Asteroid City”
the play begins with the arrival in town of war photographer Augie Steenbeck
(Jason Schwartzman) and his children. The family are on their way to California
to visit Stanley (Tom Hanks), the father of Augie’s recently deceased wife.
Augie’s wife passed away three weeks earlier but he hasn’t told his children
yet, and Schwartzman makes Augie’s reluctance to be vulnerable both funny and
touching. The family is stranded because their car breaks down, but they had
planned to stop in Asteroid City (the town takes its name from an asteroid that
landed circa “3000 B.C.”) anyway because Augie’s oldest son Woodrow (Jake Ryan)
is in a science competition at a government research station. The contestants
also include Dinah (Grace Edwards), whose mother is a movie star named Midge
Campbell (Scarlett Johanssen, doing quite a bit with stillness).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A surprising
event keeps everyone in town for longer than expected, and Augie and Midge grow
closer as their children also develop an attraction. Augie has not really even
begun to process his grief over his wife’s death, but working with Midge on
lines for an upcoming movie begins to draw him out. Woodrow, Dinah, and their
fellow contestants investigate what’s happened and Anderson’s script states a
key theme in a moving scene between young Clifford (Aristou Meehan) and his
father (Liev Schreiber). Why do humans behave they way do? So other people will
know they’re alive. Conrad Earp’s play-within-a-movie parodies a kind of
muscular post-WWII style of playwriting – characters sometimes explain
themselves with a very funny bluntness – but it’s also getting at truths best
articulated in one of the framing scenes. In an acting class led by a character
named “Saltzburg Keitel” (Willem Dafoe, the last line of <i>Asteroid City</i> is a
urgent push into what’s next for all of its characters. <i>Asteroid City</i> the
movie is Wes Anderson showing is heart in a way he never quite has before.</span></p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-89243853872779787642023-05-30T16:01:00.002-07:002023-05-30T16:01:24.175-07:00You Hurt My Feelings <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipOAECghvnL5xeT0hBVo0Mw3gRSqXb7pyB0_sm3qqGY7VtNOVfVVPqhjfTsRAyY4fd_jhtpIRh6trfsodRgUbbEEsoFIT4yzK7Qwxao7jz36NhTKZ50BPp97oPe0Td3gCNugytV5JkKho3DOCLEvfnlLwQpwp3UR9Bps70jNA2z_vYiGFHHg/s318/yhmf2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="318" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipOAECghvnL5xeT0hBVo0Mw3gRSqXb7pyB0_sm3qqGY7VtNOVfVVPqhjfTsRAyY4fd_jhtpIRh6trfsodRgUbbEEsoFIT4yzK7Qwxao7jz36NhTKZ50BPp97oPe0Td3gCNugytV5JkKho3DOCLEvfnlLwQpwp3UR9Bps70jNA2z_vYiGFHHg/w640-h320/yhmf2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Nicole
Holofcener’s sharply observed and very funny <i>You Hurt My Feelings</i> asks
questions that most of us encounter every day but usually don’t think about
that much. Is the cost of a so-called “white lie” greater than we think? When
is total honesty too much? Is the social lie a way to smooth over relationships
or a path towards complacency? Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus in top form) is the
author of a memoir that everyone agrees “should have done better”. She is also
attempting to sell a second book, a novel, but her agent hasn’t weighed in on
whether the new work is good or not. Beth’s husband Don (Tobias Menzies) is a
somewhat complacent therapist whose clients (including a married couple played
by David Cross and Amber Tamblyn) seem to be growing more dissatisfied with his
work. Don’s sense of stagnancy leads to a conversation with his friend Mark
(Arian Moayed) that includes an honest opinion of Beth’s new book. What he
doesn’t know is that Beth and her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) overhear
Don’s real feelings.</span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>You Hurt My
Feelings</i> suggests that when supportive lies are a lubricating force in modern
life to an almost existential degree. Beth is almost unable to communicate with
Don after learning that he doesn’t like her new book. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is superb
at capturing the sense of wounded pride that Beth never expected to feel, and
as might be expected she also nails the many funny lines in Holofcener’s
script. Holofcener has a great deal of fun depicting situations in which a
small lack of honesty prevents every day interactions from breaking down,
including a doctor’s appointment at which Beth’s mother (Jeannie Berlin) agrees
to a “concierge fee” that she has no intention of paying. The marriage of Sarah
and Mark is a counterpoint to Beth’s situation, as Sarah seems to know just the
right moments to inflate the ego of her gently neurotic actor husband. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Holofcener
is an underrated chronicler of female friendship, and in <i>You Hurt My Feelings</i>
the relationship between the sisters is among the movie’s pleasures. Michaela
Watkins, much better used here than in the recent <i>Paint</i>, gives an excellent
performance as a woman balancing her own needs with the problems of the people
in her life. She’s a loyal friend and confidant to Beth, but the script gives
her a well-realized life of her own in a small amount of screen time. As Don,
Tobias Menzies gives a performance of middle-aged confusion that is perfectly
balanced between vanity and vulnerability. The cast also includes Owen Teague
as Beth and Don’s early 20’s son, whose feelings about the way his parents
“encouraged” him lead to a comic turning point. It’s heartening that <i>You Hurt
My Feelings</i> was released in theatres, even at this time of low multiplex
supply. (Holofcener’s last movie was released on Netflix.) Nicole Holofcener is
one of our best Adults Having Conversations filmmakers, and <i>You Hurt My
Feelings</i> finds her working in a comic but not unserious key that delivers one
of the year’s best. <o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-61562277244413413982023-02-07T13:22:00.002-08:002023-02-07T13:22:47.219-08:00Knock at the Cabin <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5g_TYstmgKQiNWyPi18kNIyMADR37i6cfl3jZYN0_sAqbDb6k_839x9Hrtcnt_h9a-7YxKgOhh-wuKyhAAYGoQ1UrJ4kHGw-G8a6fo0Fkk7IumhuLy6Zc78uR9LrhpaYjuwJrwcRo5cI7QIBTTbX_yoo1rod1dOkRfA8bodZ3tv0dZcyeqw/s750/knock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="750" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5g_TYstmgKQiNWyPi18kNIyMADR37i6cfl3jZYN0_sAqbDb6k_839x9Hrtcnt_h9a-7YxKgOhh-wuKyhAAYGoQ1UrJ4kHGw-G8a6fo0Fkk7IumhuLy6Zc78uR9LrhpaYjuwJrwcRo5cI7QIBTTbX_yoo1rod1dOkRfA8bodZ3tv0dZcyeqw/w640-h360/knock.jpg" width="640" /></a></i></div><i><br />Knock at
the Cabin </i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">doesn’t
waste time. Moments after the opening credits – ghoulish, scary images drawn on
medical forms – we meet Wen (the charming Kristen Cui), a young girl
vacationing at the titular cabin with her dads Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric
(Jonathan Groff). Wen is perfectly happy to amuse herself catching grasshoppers
while Andrew and Eric relax, but the family’s idyll is quickly disrupted by the
arrival of a stranger named Leonard (Dave Bautista). Leonard at first appears
benign, though it feels odd to say that about a man who looks like Dave
Bautista. But he frightens Wen with his talk of choices and sacrifice, and she
retreats to the cabin as Leonard’s partners arrive. Leonard does in fact knock
at the cabin, but he and his friends are coming inside despite Andrew and
Eric’s efforts to barricade the house. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">M. Night
Shyamalan (who directs and who adapted Paul Tremblay’s novel with co-writers
Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) sets up the stakes with ruthless efficiency
in these first few minutes. Leonard is traveling with Redmond (Rupert Grint),
Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and Adriane (Abby Quinn). The four connected via
message board and have come to the cabin with a not-so-modest proposal: Andrew,
Eric, and Wen must choose one member of their family to sacrifice in order to
prevent a global apocalypse. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_Hlk126435048"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Much of <i>Knock at the Cabin</i> takes place in one room,
and Shyamalan never lets the lack of space get dull. The tension is managed
with great control as the rituals of Leonard and his friends become stranger
and a rift slowly develops between Andrew and Eric. Brief flashbacks explain
the couple’s history and chart a course to the ending, and the balance between
Andrew’s temper and Eric’s need to smooth things over feels well-judged. I’m
less sure what Shyamalan is up to with his need to have Leonard and the others
share their stories and explain themselves; the funniest line is <i>Knock at
the Cabin</i> is Leonard saying “I’m a second-grade teacher.” Holes begin to
appear in Leonard’s story, even as they all watch TV coverage of a tsunami, a
deadly virus, and planes mysteriously falling out of the sky. (Yes, everyone in
rural Pennsylvania gets their news from the BBC. Just let it go.)</span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_Hlk126435048"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If <i>Knock
at the Cabin </i>can be said to be “about” something then it is about a way of
looking at the world, personal responsibility, accountability. Yet it is on the
question of what’s going on that the movie falters. Andrew has good reason to
think that his family is the target of homicidal bigots, but the cable news
reports of disasters suggest something bigger at work. So why then do Leonard
and his friends speak of judgment, as though humanity had failed to pass a test
and were now being punished? This all feels very shaky, especially as one
character begins to shift their view of the situation. God is mentioned once or
twice, but of course no specific religion is invoked to explain anything, so
it’s as if Shyamalan just wound the movie up and let it play out to an
unsatisfying conclusion. There didn’t need to be a twist, but there did need to
be a motivating idea about what the world is doing to itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_Hlk126435048"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></a></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-23641686333055806202022-11-21T14:39:00.003-08:002022-11-21T14:39:19.284-08:00She Said<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj38dms9F4K0X7UrarFs9Y07tVeCFNYfJZjNEq22-wWwrTFRA1p44vcQ-1F2ypm1pM34VMRoIFfEAmYTzAXBE3cqbUAXVk6m2f8gGTP2kQG1yy6Wt-Roe6OGm9HN-5kE4jJYmPrf7M01DVhfDDtqBQAGWIhkuAgPphGAXM_VNMwCCGuSSesxQ/s1296/she1.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="730" data-original-width="1296" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj38dms9F4K0X7UrarFs9Y07tVeCFNYfJZjNEq22-wWwrTFRA1p44vcQ-1F2ypm1pM34VMRoIFfEAmYTzAXBE3cqbUAXVk6m2f8gGTP2kQG1yy6Wt-Roe6OGm9HN-5kE4jJYmPrf7M01DVhfDDtqBQAGWIhkuAgPphGAXM_VNMwCCGuSSesxQ/w640-h360/she1.webp" width="640" /></a></i></div><i><br />She Said</i>,
directed by Maria Schrader, is the story of the two <i>New York Times</i> reporters
who in 2017 broke the story of movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual
misconduct. Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) based
their reporting on interviews with well-known actresses – Ashley Judd, whose
decision to go public about Weinstein’s behavior lends a additional layer of
credibility to the story, makes a moving appearance as herself – as well as
Weinstein’s former employees. Twohey and Kantor expanded their story into a
successful book also called <i>She Said</i>, and the movie has enough space to depict
how the story affected the two reporters’ personal lives. Twohey, who reported
on accusations against Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential campaign,
struggled with a period of postpartum depression before joining Kantor on the
Weinstein story. Carey Mulligan is quite good in these early scenes, giving
Twohey notes of a deep sadness that subsequently drives her reporting as the
Weinstein story deepens. Later on, new information emerges regarding
settlements Weinstein paid to avoid lawsuits, and Twohey reveals herself as
being adept at schmoozing with Weinstein’s fixer Lanny Davis (Peter Friedman)
to get information. The scenes involving Lanny Davis are the moments when <i>She
Said</i> sags the most, since the screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz doesn’t do a
good job of explaining why Davis says certain things and not others. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is a
sense in which <i>She Said</i> is a movie about people doing their jobs well and yet
also of course the story of women abused by a powerful man. The scenes of
Twohey and Kantor interviewing people and talking things over with their
editors (Andre Braugher and Patricia Clarkson) are presented exactly as the <i>New
York Times</i> might wish them to be, with all of the journalists displaying a
seriousness and rectitude about the thoroughness of their reporting. Braugher,
as executive editor Dean Baquet, is especially good at a kind of quiet and dignified urgency.
When Kantor interviews former female Weinstein employees about his behavior,
the horrors they experienced are filtered in flashback through Schrader’s
restraint. Shots of clothes strewn on a floor or of a running shower are
meant to suggest Weinstein’s hotel room assaults of women who feared for their safety
and their careers. Schrader has cast actors more than up to the challenge of
playing these emotionally grueling scenes, with Samantha Morton almost burning
a hole in the movie with her story of what the experience with Weinstein did to
her character’s career. Morton’s scene, which takes place in a quiet
restaurant, requires a sense of long-simmering rage that she locates just under
her character’s reserve. It’s a stunning little bit of acting just about
matched by Jennifer Ehle and Angela Yeoh playing former employees with their
own harrowing stories of Weinstein’s assaults. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As moving
and vital as <i>She Said</i> intermittently is and always wants to be, it is still a
movie about process. Harvey Weinstein is only portrayed as a voice on a phone
or – in one sequence – a man seen only from behind, and his blustering denials
of the initial accusations barely ruffle the institutional cool of the <i>Times</i>
reporters. There are no last-minute changes of story or doubts about the
authenticity of documents, only scenes of journalistic thoroughness and
self-reflection. Of course, that’s what happened, and yet the movie rolls to a
stop when it could open out into the broader impacts of Twohey and Kantor’s
reporting. The strength of its cast helps <i>She Said</i> be more than just an ad for
good journalism. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-35552076460086939792022-11-06T05:56:00.001-08:002022-11-06T05:56:14.062-08:00Armageddon Time <p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHp2hxlAn8y1K37ob1XJQDiV51sYUKjYNGii05L1PN-AmA5yNUc7CJ3hxFiLvJJy9nXjxcSgp2rnbJLZ22gYJelbISi02lSwBObKz0L1KQkkaHSzAtXa0h_SSehGpeLfV5QA4F36g1pu5to9C7eU308LavhPb6DhgKi05XTVTqsOJZniOKcg/s740/ArmageddonTimeTrailer1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="740" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHp2hxlAn8y1K37ob1XJQDiV51sYUKjYNGii05L1PN-AmA5yNUc7CJ3hxFiLvJJy9nXjxcSgp2rnbJLZ22gYJelbISi02lSwBObKz0L1KQkkaHSzAtXa0h_SSehGpeLfV5QA4F36g1pu5to9C7eU308LavhPb6DhgKi05XTVTqsOJZniOKcg/w640-h328/ArmageddonTimeTrailer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />It is, of
course, a cliché to say that a movie has “aged well”. We all bring our own
context to art, and a movie that has aged well for one person may be a hard
watch for another for any number of reasons. Sometimes the reasons that a movie
still feels alive and relevant aren’t good: I recently saw an action figure of
the character that Giancarlo Esposito plays on <i>The Mandalorian</i>, and that sent
me into a chain of thought about how Spike Lee’s <i>Do the Right Thing</i> feels as
though it could have been made within the last ten years. James Gray’s
<i>Armageddon Time</i> is a period piece that arrives at a time when its themes feel
all too urgent. It will age well, to our shame. Gray’s movie is by all accounts
heavily autobiographical, drawing on the director’s childhood in Queens, New
York. It is 1980 and Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) is starting sixth grade at the
local public school. Paul is a shy kid with a budding passion for art, a
passion that his parents Irving (Jeremy Strong) and Esther (Anne Hathaway,
excellent) don’t understand. The Graffs are very focused on the future plans of
Paul and his older brother Ted (Ryan Sell), wanting both to go to college and
get well on their way to establishing themselves. Paul may be shy but he isn’t
incapable of mischief; an early scene where he steals cash from his parents
isn’t his only wrongdoing. The one running semi-joke in <i>Armageddon Time</i> is that
Paul believes he is immune from consequence because his mother is the PTA
president. Paul uses the money so that his friend Johnny (Jaylin Webb) can join
him on a school trip to the Guggenheim Museum, where Paul has a funny daydream
of getting recognized for his superhero art. The friendship of Paul and Johnny
– who is Black – drives much of the story of <i>Armageddon Time</i>, as Johnny remains
in Paul’s life even after Paul transfers to his brother’s private school. Johnny
has no home life to speak of and imagines a future in the Air Force or maybe
even as an astronaut. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Armageddon
Time</i> is a coming-of-age story to be sure, but there are broader ideas at work
in Gray’s script. The Graffs are, though largely secular in their practice,
proudly Jewish. Late in the movie, Paul’s grandmother (Tovah Feldshuh) enthuses
that Paul and his brother will have a “seat at the table” thanks to their
schooling, and it is this idea of an American life as a destination that needs
to be reached – further away for some than others – that permeates the movie.
The closest connection in young Paul’s life is the one he has with his
grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins, touching even though the character isn’t
played for sentiment). Aaron’s speech about the horrors his grandparents
suffered in the Ukraine summarizes the adult Graffs’ view of the world as a
place where the breaks are few and had better be taken when they come. Jeremy
Strong’s Irving as much as says this outright in a speech near the end of the
movie, and Strong is very good as a humble man trying very hard to preserve his
own sense of dignity. When Paul goes to his brother’s school, he finds both the
rules and the expectations different. A teacher reprimands him about his
clothes seconds after introducing him as a new student. A fellow student uses a
racial slur (the only time we hear it in the movie) when he sees Paul talking
with Johnny. I don’t know if the choice James Gray makes regarding the speaker
at Paul’s first day assembly is based on a real event or if it’s just an
effective conceit, but the character played by Jessica Chastain sets the stakes
for this chapter of Paul’s life: There is a path to real success, and now is
the time to get on it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If I have a
reservation about <i>Armageddon Time</i>, it is the way that the script uses Johnny
just as an engine to drive the story. We’re told Johnny (who Jaylin Webb plays
with a fine mix of charm and anger) lives with his grandmother, but we only
glimpse her briefly and we know almost nothing else. When Johnny hides out from
“some guys” in Paul’s backyard clubhouse, the development feels like a twist as
opposed to something that had to happen. In a climactic scene in which Paul -
beginning to feel the existence of a moral universe – makes a choice that could
doom him and rescue Johnny, the emotion should feel bigger but Johnny’s
inscrutability as written undercuts the moment. Johnny being underwritten is an
unfortunate flaw in a movie made with a sense of simmering anger about what James Gray believes are America’s false promises. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-33579554496956280252022-07-02T07:42:00.000-07:002022-07-02T07:42:02.398-07:00Elvis <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJMSv6UsOC6TaWTBlsSUG8EJwj2T4Yo1q_bep0A8cDcLNegi_0vTL-zWUOJLKx0KNuQCJ2nAFFZR6lVcwzMK50mn8clQ_lY896ATonH2IK2qpvWtwnr1xYdl9kYo9WmDVtrPAQb80VsBhKhTY7yzsuaXgENhEGuGLOu1s2qW3kc6asomiRQ/s700/elvis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="368" data-original-width="700" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJMSv6UsOC6TaWTBlsSUG8EJwj2T4Yo1q_bep0A8cDcLNegi_0vTL-zWUOJLKx0KNuQCJ2nAFFZR6lVcwzMK50mn8clQ_lY896ATonH2IK2qpvWtwnr1xYdl9kYo9WmDVtrPAQb80VsBhKhTY7yzsuaXgENhEGuGLOu1s2qW3kc6asomiRQ/w640-h336/elvis.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Never has
the phrase “only in movie theatres” been so accurate. Baz Luhrmann’s <i>Elvis</i>, the
maximalist new biography of the rock legend, crams so much visual energy,
music, and glossy history into its 2 hour and 39-minute running time that
viewing the movie anywhere other than on the largest screen possible seems like
a crime. Austin Butler as Elvis Presley gives a performance of both physical
grace and surprising vulnerability, it is a turn that if the studio plays their
hand correctly might have traction in year-end awards. The other major figure
in <i>Elvis</i> is of course “Colonel” Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), Presley’s manager from
the time Parker found him in the mid-1950’s to Presley’s death in 1977. The
story of <i>Elvis</i> is, in Luhrmann’s conception (he shares writing credit with
several others), Parker’s monologue to the audience after he is hospitalized
following a fall. It is worth pointing out here that Parker, who lived until
1997, was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Tom_Parker#After_Elvis">found by courts after Presley’s death</a> to have not acted in the singer’s
best financial interests. So, the idea of Parker as narrator of Presley’s story
is at once both Luhrmann’s best idea and the movie’s biggest shortcoming. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Elvis</i> quickly
takes us – via Parker’s narration – through Presley’s early years in
Mississippi. After Presley’s father Vernon (Richard Roxburgh) was jailed for
forging a check, Elvis and his beloved mother Gladys (Helen Thomson) were
forced to move into a black neighborhood. Luhrmann implies both that these
years were the reason Elvis was comfortable on a personal level with black people
and that the music he heard as a child shaped him into the artist he would
become. In a sequence remarkable both for its narrative economy and for the assumptions
that it makes, Elvis (played as a boy by Chaydon Jay) hears the blues singer “Big
Boy” Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) perform “That’s All Right” – which Presley would
record early in his career – and then immediately hears gospel music in a
nearby revival tent. The blues and gospel would shape Presley’s career until
the day he died, but his voice as an artist can’t have developed as easily as
all that. Right? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Austin
Butler is very good as Elvis throughout, but his performance is the most fun
during scenes of Elvis playing some of his first live shows. Butler at once
suggests the charm of Presley and the nervousness that he must have felt in
those early days, and also commits to the physicality that made Presley the
enemy of 1950’s parents everywhere. Butler reportedly <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/does-austin-butler-really-sing-elvis-movie-1718936" target="_blank">did his own singing</a> in
some early scenes, and his vocals were blended with Presley’s in the later
numbers. Whatever, the effect is seamless and Butler is always up to depicting Presley
onstage even as the movie gets closer to the end of Presley’s career. Whenever
the movie is allowed to slow down Butler is also good, as in his early scenes
with future wife Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge). We can only wish that Tom Hanks
was equally as good as Col. Parker, but Hanks seems to have made too many
choices (including vocally) and it’s never quite clear how someone so openly
manipulative could have lasted as long in Presley’s good graces. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The choice
to make Parker the narrator means <i>Elvis</i> must always stay on the outside of its
subject to a degree. Presley interacts with a number of black musicians during
the movie, including an encouraging B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), but we
never quite are clear if Presley understood how much he benefited from the work
of these black artists. Luhrmann inserts a split-screen of “Big Boy” Crudup in
a scene where Presley is performing “That’s All Right” at his triumphal Las
Vegas residency, but the effect is only to remind us that Luhrmann – not Presley
– knows where the music comes from. Likewise, while Presley’s family and
friends understand his 1970’s pill addiction it isn’t clear to what degree
Presley understood his situation. Elvis is a bustling movie full of incident and
song, and Austin Butler proves himself a charismatic leading man. Yet I wish
Luhrmann had gotten over himself a bit and let <i>Elvis</i> find a deeper groove. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-75480966408260852572022-04-17T09:34:00.005-07:002022-04-17T09:37:36.110-07:00Everything Everywhere All at Once<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZQ8XpIeRPVVTzAwVOHHy-dqWLCCKJ-rwUPNMLcfhrfDro_6cgJxzF87NhNLf64FL6NHx2PNQcDYSkqXrbJVEizIi4vapag01czLkBDPfIHKxnktKk43ZQ-bawCuqbXM4kswt_04k2dhw3Jukoxz88ZDaV-skIyyPOuhHWyVMGFR-mCSxqw/s1200/everything-everywhere-irs-1649431350381.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZQ8XpIeRPVVTzAwVOHHy-dqWLCCKJ-rwUPNMLcfhrfDro_6cgJxzF87NhNLf64FL6NHx2PNQcDYSkqXrbJVEizIi4vapag01czLkBDPfIHKxnktKk43ZQ-bawCuqbXM4kswt_04k2dhw3Jukoxz88ZDaV-skIyyPOuhHWyVMGFR-mCSxqw/w640-h334/everything-everywhere-irs-1649431350381.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Everything Everywhere All at Once</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> is the new film by “Daniels”, the filmmaking team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Kwan and Scheinert have made a maximalist movie about </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpS3k9KOXQs" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">what Paul Simon called “the chorus of a lifetime”</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> – that is, the way that human life moves forward despite the cloud of relationships, choices, regrets, happiness, and love that is constantly shifting around each one of us in different ways. </span><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Everything Everywhere All at Once</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> succeeds, to the extent that it does, because of the craft of the directors and the talent of the cast, but the style and 2+ hour length of the movie actually wind up confusing the scale of the story that is trying to be told.</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Talking and writing about </span><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Everything Everywhere</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> (I’m abbreviating for readability) isn’t easy without getting into plot specifics, but the basic set up really doesn’t do justice to the elaborate construction of this movie. Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) owns a laundromat with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, who </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/movies/ke-huy-quan-everything-everywhere.html" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">played the young boy in </a><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/movies/ke-huy-quan-everything-everywhere.html" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #1a1a1a;">Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</a></em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">) that has drawn the attention of an I.R.S. auditor named Dierdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). The Wang’s daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) has a strained relationship with her mother, in part because Joy has come out and introduced her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) to the family. It is when Evelyn and Waymond are on route to the I.R.S. office alongside Evelyn’s father Gong Gong (93-year-old James Hong, who to the movie’s credit has real things to do here) that Kwan’s and Scheinert’s agenda begins to reveal itself. Evelyn learns there is more than one universe, and that she has a role to play in the survival of an infinite number of “verses”. She also learns that she can travel between them, and that in different universes she is a martial arts master, a movie star, and a woman with hot dog fingers. You read that right, and the previous sentence should give you an idea of the experience of watching </span><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Everything Everywhere</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">: We hurtle between universes, some of them absurd, and each one presents a life that Evelyn might have lived if she hadn’t angered her father by impulsively marrying Waymond.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">In lesser hands than those of the great Michelle Yeoh, all of this setup would feel very labored indeed. Yeoh gives a fully realized emotional performance and she is as always a compelling physical actor. The martial arts fight scenes don’t need to make allowances for Yeoh’s age, they are instead full of her grace. Yeoh is matched by Ke Huy Quan as Waymond; Quan gets to play different versions of the same character and all of them are devoted to Evelyn (or to versions of her) with equal fervor. My favorite of the paths that Everything Everywhere goes down – Yeoh and Quan’s characters at a movie premiere – both looks and feels like a Wong Kar-Wai movie. The survival of the multiverse depends on Evelyn’s ability to defeat a being known as Jobu Tupaki, who experiences all universes at once and has created an “everything bagel” that will suck all universes into a void. The biggest problem with</span><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> Everything Everywhere</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> is that while Jobu Tupaki does take a physical form, the character never really exists as more than an idea that the world is too loud. Evelyn is in effect a warrior for the messiness and busyness of life, a provocative idea but one that also requires her to resolve every situation she stumbles into on her travels. This choice drags out the movie, especially since all of these detours aren’t as funny as one involving a chef (Harry Shum, Jr.) whose inspiration comes from a very odd place.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">It is a shame that we’re slightly exhausted when the emotional climax of </span><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Everything Everywhere</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> arrives, because Kwan and Scheinert have made movie of great originality and daring that also is executed with some technical bravado. I’d look for Paul Rogers (editing), Jason Kisvarday (production design), and Shirley Kurata (costume design) to be among the awards at year’s end if there is any justice. </span><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Everything Everywhere All at Once</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> falls short only at the end, when the movie becomes too big to appreciate small choices.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-82170438169936420552022-03-05T16:19:00.003-08:002022-03-05T16:19:51.665-08:00Drive My Car<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJeZImf0tNlD17VCvlXBAEPNRTtJp038hKL5crUYr00XIWR94buK9E7YkfodV_Kq6OS7NOzV17OA9vUo7w_5YDtt7wd7DeQazjP3_Eg5PVygXu2fPKHh0m6wUZ3aEkSOvX9VN_dpnu0Uf_jPavIJsHI2QcBR0ZMQnboquiU4lhyMCFRntsMw=s740" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="740" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJeZImf0tNlD17VCvlXBAEPNRTtJp038hKL5crUYr00XIWR94buK9E7YkfodV_Kq6OS7NOzV17OA9vUo7w_5YDtt7wd7DeQazjP3_Eg5PVygXu2fPKHh0m6wUZ3aEkSOvX9VN_dpnu0Uf_jPavIJsHI2QcBR0ZMQnboquiU4lhyMCFRntsMw=w640-h328" width="640" /></a></i></div><i><br />Drive My Car</i>
is perhaps an even more unlikely Oscar multi-nominee than Bong Joon-ho’s <i>Parasite</i>,
which arrived in America with a Cannes win and was directed by a filmmaker who
already had a foothold with American audiences. Co-written and directed by Ryusuke
Hamaguchi, <i>Drive My Car</i> is a movie of stunning emotional rigor that never lapses
into sentiment or contrivance. Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a theatre
actor and director of some reputation. His wife Oto (Reika Kirishima) is a
screenwriter, and as we watch them go about their daily activities – Yusuke is in
a production of <i>Waiting for Godot</i> – it is hard not to feel a sadness underneath
the veneer of contentment they seem to share. Yusuke’s main form of relaxation
seems to be driving, and he learns lines on tape as he goes back and forth to
work. There is indeed, a good deal of driving in <i>Drive My Car</i>, and the
screenplay (based on a short story by Haruki Murakami) doesn’t oversell the way
that driving from one place to another can provide a feeling of a kind of
reset. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Two things
happen in the first 45 minutes of <i>Drive My Car</i> that require Yusuke to make
journeys both physical and emotional. (Hamaguchi confidently delays the opening
credits until after this first act.) Yusuke is hired to direct a production of
<i>Uncle Vanya</i> in Hiroshima, but the festival he is working for requires him to
have a driver. Misaki Watari (Toko Miura) is an unassuming young woman who has
to pass a test drive before Yusuke will trust her with his well-maintained, 15-year-old
Saab, but once she does he is more than happy to sit in the backseat. Watari
works her way into <i>Drive My Car</i> slowly, we see her waiting as Yusuke casts and
begins to rehearse <i>Uncle Vanya</i>. Koji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), the actor
playing Vanya, is a former TV star also connected to Oto. Seemingly too young
for the role, Takatsuki seems a callow young man who Yusuke will have to mold
in order for the show to succeed. We also meet Lee Yoon-a (Park Yu-rim), a
Korean in the cast who can hear but must use sign language because she cannot
speak. When Yusuke and Watari dine with Lee Yoon-a and her husband (Jin
Dae-yeon) one night after rehearsal, it’s the happiness the couple share that
starts Yusuke on a path of evaluating his own life and also of getting to know
Watari. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Drive My Car</i>
is a hard film to describe because – despite all the driving – the journeys are
internal and the moments of revelation played and directed with great understatement.
There is a lesser version of this movie in which Yusuke and Watari (whose story
we learn in the movie’s second half) heal each other’s psychic wounds and
strike out into a happy future, but Hamaguchi isn’t playing that game. He is
more than content to linger in silence and pauses, and the slow rhythm of
travel. The shot you may have heard of in which Yusuke and Watari hold their
cigarettes up through the sun roof of the car is exactly as good as described.
The 3-hour running time is appropriate for a film that takes place over two
years, and the ending promises nothing but that the characters will continue to
move forward while never forgetting the feelings of grief and loss that they
share. As someone who once spent the better part of a summer studying Chekhov
but who has never been in a full-length Chekhov play, I also appreciated
Hamaguchi’s reverence for Chekhov’s words. We hear Oto reading <i>Uncle Vanya</i> on
tape quite often in <i>Drive My Car</i>, and Hamaguchi seems to regard Chekhov’s text
as a sort of design for living amid feelings of loss and missed opportunities. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We are in
very good hands in <i>Drive My Car</i> thanks to Ryusuke Hamaguchi (and Chekhov), who
at age 43 seems in full command of both his craft and an emotional
understanding of his characters. <i>Drive My Car</i> is all the more powerful for the
way it challenges our expectations of what a movie should look, sound, and feel
like – and indeed, how long it should be. We can all benefit from the lesson. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-37494201313259066322022-02-13T07:27:00.011-08:002022-02-13T08:45:19.672-08:00Belfast/Kimi <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjV7PAh2H2epMdq9WhzYyljQngHcKy9kQyWzVHNdlHGdVIuCD7XK7QOfqnq06fdjvrMEssJinLP2VlOf35f78L5i6VfJzW9U-F7EuSIotSJB4VuM2q6gvefOefzVBEh8nKIOKoo5Ps3f18y3Ip3YdOudFrcdy60V33TCVO_bexm3fI7pkSe9A=s1000" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjV7PAh2H2epMdq9WhzYyljQngHcKy9kQyWzVHNdlHGdVIuCD7XK7QOfqnq06fdjvrMEssJinLP2VlOf35f78L5i6VfJzW9U-F7EuSIotSJB4VuM2q6gvefOefzVBEh8nKIOKoo5Ps3f18y3Ip3YdOudFrcdy60V33TCVO_bexm3fI7pkSe9A=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br />Within the
first few minutes of Kenneth Branagh’s<i> Belfast</i>, this handsome and earnest movie
has changed from color into black-and-white and also put a young boy in
jeopardy as violence erupts on a quiet street. Branagh’s Oscar-nominated story
of a few months during The Troubles is a well-executed movie about a family and
the ways that a few city streets can feel like a whole world. What<i> Belfast</i>
lacks in political complexity it makes up for in its attention to the nuances
of a neighborhood. <i>Belfast</i> begins in August of 1969, as anti-Catholic
protestors turn a city street into a war zone just as 9-year-old Buddy (Jude
Hill) is coming home for his tea. Buddy’s family are Protestants, but neither
his mother (Caitriona Balfe) nor his father (Jamie Dornan) has any issue with
their Catholic neighbors. The issues within the family are more immediate, as
Buddy’s father – none of the adult family members are named – is often away in
England for work and the family is still paying off back taxes. <i>Belfast</i> sticks almost exclusively to Buddy’s point of view, with
Branagh alternating between Buddy confronting the changing world around him and
scenes of sweeter childhood moments.<o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If <i>Belfast</i>
stuck to Buddy’s coming of age, then it would be a winning but slight story of
growing up. Buddy has trouble in math at school, he has a crush on a classmate
(Olive Tennant), and he likes nothing better than going to the movies. Buddy’s
paternal grandparents (Oscar nominees Ciaran Hinds and Judi Dench) live nearby,
and when they’re not good-naturedly insulting each other, they are free with
support and advice for their grandson. Hinds and Dench do a wonderful buddy act,
sticking to each other even as the world they know seems to be crumbling around
them. Their scenes are also a welcome relief as Buddy’s home life becomes more
fraught: his parents are arguing more and more about money and Buddy’s father
wants them to move to England for better opportunities and the safety of Buddy
and his brother Will (Lewis McAskie). Caitriona Balfe as Buddy’s mother has the
trickiest role in <i>Belfast</i>, fighting for her family even as she can’t quite let
go of the life in Belfast she has always known. Buddy’s mother is reluctant to
leave Belfast even amidst the violence; she views it as a betrayal of her
identity. It’s a largely internal performance, and Branagh undercuts the character’s
moment of decision by choosing to end with sentiment. Yet Balfe’s performance
is the one in <i>Belfast</i> that will linger for me. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Buddy’s
understanding of what is happening around him is limited, and those limits put
a damper on the power of <i>Belfast</i>. Branagh includes no voice-over, no sense of an
older Buddy looking back. Instead, the black-and-white cinematography (by Haris
Zambarloukos) and songs by Van Morrison put the events of his movie in the
realm of hazy childhood memory, in the way that I remember playing badminton on
our lawn with cousins who were visiting from Scotland or of once seeing Queen
Elizabeth get out of a car in Edinburgh. Buddy knows there is an angry,
dark-haired man (Colin Morgan) who seems to want something from his father, and
that his friend Moira (Lara McDonnell) would like him to join her “gang”. But
Buddy is simply too young to be faced with any choice more complicated than
whether or not to steal a candy bar, and indeed his father – who seems to have
no politics other than a broad humanism – is called upon only to defend his
family only in the most general and instinctive way. It is Buddy’s mother whose
choices define the family’s future, and somehow <i>Belfast</i> doesn’t quite give her
her due. The shape of <i>Belfast</i> mirrors the shape of Kenneth Branagh’s young life
– he was about Buddy’s age when his family left Belfast for England – but I
wish the movie didn’t treat these years as something out of a photo album. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuA_8dh2CDNWlga4X4m653XF5T5oyht1JtZTgYjTh1UTvrNIpu8K3Ml1iqcu8PDwL4MML2dKMFMn6xZAhRvfiMT8jCj1f1nl0oPCERp7Y8qpA6_qC2pMn0Rzja6BbKYNu37HCwevVvd_BP5taUFFo7zCIPeRVmCy-2JJuNMCYcP7dxZRcQdg=s2506" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1174" data-original-width="2506" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuA_8dh2CDNWlga4X4m653XF5T5oyht1JtZTgYjTh1UTvrNIpu8K3Ml1iqcu8PDwL4MML2dKMFMn6xZAhRvfiMT8jCj1f1nl0oPCERp7Y8qpA6_qC2pMn0Rzja6BbKYNu37HCwevVvd_BP5taUFFo7zCIPeRVmCy-2JJuNMCYcP7dxZRcQdg=w640-h300" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">It has
become a commonplace to say that without streamers like HBO Max we won’t get
movies like Steven Soderbergh’s <i>Kimi</i>, a thriller that in a lean 90 minutes
manages to tell a modern story while evoking a certain kind of older film that
gets an anniversary re-release. If that’s the case it ‘s too bad, but for now
we have Soderbergh operating like he is still the most confident director in
town no matter where his films are screened. Angela (Zoe Kravitz) works for a
tech company in Seattle called Amygdala that is about to go public and has
created an Alexa-like product called Kimi. The central of feature of Kimi, as
defined by the company’s CEO (Derek DelGaudio), is that each Kimi query is
heard by a human being who uses the technology to improve the system. Angela is
one of the people who hears those queries; she’s agoraphobic after a traumatic
incident so her large apartment is both home and office. When Angela hears a
Kimi recording from a woman (Erika Christensen) who may have been the victim of a
crime, things change. She is determined to report the incident and troubled by
the way a company higher-up (Rita Wilson) seems to be putting her off. To say
more would be to say too much, but suffice it to say that <i>Kimi </i>makes ordinary
spaces feel ominous while building to a conclusion of real tension. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Zoe
Kravitz, our Catwoman-elect, is perfectly cast as a woman who has mastered
technology but all but given up on life. </span></div></span></div><o:p></o:p><p></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-48805151282903104572022-01-30T17:33:00.010-08:002022-01-30T17:35:08.155-08:00Parallel Mothers<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi8ppXuCPmo19g8gFWVL626BTVpiUVKitA0FL4j7IghC-Up3z30KwXXk6TT_H_Nu7enDcLXDoqee_a2BXSF-hr3NnTTSN58YkozChQhRn1dyZv3ovwuINYp2ZKgqm0mzDcXyB2_EmBn9NVcWhIt2H7Q_Gbe8BkKIjbVjU7Pp936Ag_24rbuOg=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi8ppXuCPmo19g8gFWVL626BTVpiUVKitA0FL4j7IghC-Up3z30KwXXk6TT_H_Nu7enDcLXDoqee_a2BXSF-hr3NnTTSN58YkozChQhRn1dyZv3ovwuINYp2ZKgqm0mzDcXyB2_EmBn9NVcWhIt2H7Q_Gbe8BkKIjbVjU7Pp936Ag_24rbuOg=w640-h266" width="640" /></a></div><br />At the
beginning of Pedro Almodovar’s<i> Parallel Mothers</i>, a Madrid photographer named
Janis (Penelope Cruz in top form) is shooting a forensic archeologist named
Arturo (Israel Elejade). It is never clear why exactly Arturo merits a fancy
photo shoot, but perhaps it’s the fact that in Almodovar’s conception Arturo is
the character who can unlock the past.<i> Parallel Mothers</i> is an ambitious movie
about the pain of missing someone you never really knew, and Almodovar attempts
to connect a personal and a nationwide story. Janis asks for the help of
Arturo’s foundation in unearthing a mass grave in her hometown, a grave filled
with remains of those killed by Francoist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Among
the dead is Janis’s great-grandfather. <i>Parallel Mothers</i> begins in 2016, when
Spain’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Memory_Law">Historical Memory Law</a> had been in force for about a decade but was no
longer a priority of the government. Those wanting to locate the remains of
family members were forced to turn to private organizations like Arturo’s in
lieu of state support. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Arturo wants
to help Janis, but bureaucracy prevents any immediate action. In the meantime,
he and Janis begin an affair that results in Janis giving birth to a daughter
named Cecilia. The central relationship in <i>Parallel Mothers</i> is actually between
Janis and Ana (Milena Smit), a young woman Janis shares a room with in the maternity
ward. Ana is younger and with only an actress mother (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) in
her life who is by turns absent and overbearing. Janis and Ana are poised at
opposite extremes: Janis has a career and can afford to hire live-in help –
though her first au pair doesn’t work out – while unemployed Ana must cope with
her daughter Anita alone when her mother leaves for a touring production of a
Lorca play. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Almodovar is
attempting to do a great deal here, putting the two women’s situations in
contrast while also trying to dramatize how not knowing one’s past can affect
the present. We learn a little about the relationship between Janis and Arturo
– they are together for a year before Janis gets pregnant – but it isn’t until
Arturo sees Cecilia for the first time that <i>Parallel Mothers</i> takes shape as an
examination of loss, memory, and grief. While there are turns and surprises in
the plot that smack of melodrama, Almodovar is working in a restrained key
throughout and the “twists” feel more like part of the flow of life. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The presence
of Penelope Cruz adds an inestimable amount to <i>Parallel Mothers</i>, both in terms
of personality and emotion. Cruz, despite her Oscar win for <i>Vicky Cristina
Barcelona</i> and years of steady work, has never quite carried over to American
audiences. (The now-playing<i> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV0s2S9reT0">The 355</a></i> doesn’t seem to be helping, but I’m sure
that’s not her fault.) Here, working again with Almodovar, Cruz is as funny,
sexy, or bereft as each moment requires and a remarkable close-up of her face
when Janis is giving birth serves as example of the level of trust between star
and director. The chemistry between Cruz and the surprising Milena Smit, who
sends the movie in another direction when Ana reenters Janis’s life, is very
much welcome and adds yet a further layer of unexpected feeling. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The question
of Janis’s great-grandfather and the mass grave is returned to in the last act
of <i>Parallel Mothers</i>, and if Almodovar has tripped up at all in his writing it
comes here. Both Janis and Ana have found a measure of happiness, and the
scenes of Janis and Arturo visiting older women - though the fact we only hear from women is part of the point - in Janis’s hometown feel like
they’re part of a different movie. Almodovar handles the testimonies of these family
members with great respect, but by this point the movie is at a place where all
we can do is join the villagers and bear witness. That activity is a worthy one,
and a sober conclusion to a film about how what has come before is always with
us. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-62832203350683438182022-01-15T13:18:00.007-08:002022-01-15T13:18:30.793-08:00The Tragedy of Macbeth <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggJIqw4cIQo8YdFHrOVUsIpG7V-5Uj6z6xAdqcEaq1C7l7l-2jSqhShB4wYMk61U6cCxqwdRJTUVUyc9cHyEqbl-HG4S7s2zwWDm0x3IHLCV42ukzREfwrxHvHkLjgSjHRMbFzwLfsgjfiZuHWZwycBKZhu4Jm855F0xuJ-qbYTshbq49_yw=s681" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="681" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggJIqw4cIQo8YdFHrOVUsIpG7V-5Uj6z6xAdqcEaq1C7l7l-2jSqhShB4wYMk61U6cCxqwdRJTUVUyc9cHyEqbl-HG4S7s2zwWDm0x3IHLCV42ukzREfwrxHvHkLjgSjHRMbFzwLfsgjfiZuHWZwycBKZhu4Jm855F0xuJ-qbYTshbq49_yw=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>The Tragedy
of Macbeth</i> does a few things very well and some other things very oddly, but
what Joel Coen’s new adaptation does best of all is convey the feeling that
something is wrong with the world. That’s an idea that has relevance in 2022,
right? Credit for the overarching sense of dread goes of course to Coen, but
also to cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. Delbonnel’s black-and-white images are
ravishing and strange, and almost tactile in the way that the constant play of
light and shadow seems to work upon the characters’ faces. The first face we
see in <i>Macbeth</i> belongs to the Weird Sisters, played as a single being by
Kathryn Hunter in a performance that feels like someone inventing a new type of
art. Hunter is both physically dexterous – with some frightening contortions –
and more than able to embody three different spirits, but what she is more than
anything else is unsettling without Coen resorting to obvious trickery. The
scenes between the Weird Sisters and Macbeth (a commanding Denzel Washington)
are all the more effective for how quiet they are and how sparely the special
effects are used. There’s a sequence of Macbeth seeing faces in a pool and
trying to hold on to what’s in front of him that sums up what is going on in a
moment, and yet the movie is so confident in what it’s doing that the point
doesn’t need to hammered home. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Joel Coen sets
up what’s at stake with terrific economy, and if you’re reading this then of
course you already know. Macbeth has come into the favor of King Duncan
(Brendan Gleeson) after a battle, but Macbeth has heard the Sisters’ prophecy
and has a larger design. If <i>The Tragedy of Macbeth</i> hits a bump for me it is in
the scenes of Macbeth and his wife (Frances McDormand) debating the murder of
Duncan. There are a lot of famous words in this part of <i>Macbeth</i>, and all that
language combined with Coen’s sense of control means the movie loses a little
drive. I also probably shouldn’t have been thinking about the differences between
film and stage acting at this point in the movie, but there is a good deal of
whispering at points when we might feel the dread of oncoming violence instead.
Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth puts a great deal of spine into her scenes
though, and it is easy to imagine this particular Lady Macbeth pushing her husband
towards what she considers greatness. Washington gives this older Macbeth great
vigor, but in certain moments a choice has clearly been made to play him as
tired and doubt-ridden. Lady M is the alpha in this marriage. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The best
part of <i>The Tragedy of Macbeth</i> comes as the world begins to fall apart for the
newly crowned King and his wife. One of Washington’s best scenes is with the
two men (Scott Subiono and Brian Thompson) he has engaged to murder Banquo (Bertie
Carvel). Macbeth is at his most ruthless and coldly logical here, and Washington
plays the encounter as a man who knows there is no going back. The subsequent
mad scene when Banquo’s ghost appears almost goes into Macbeth’s point-of-view,
with the host of lords and ladies at the royal feast essentially a faceless
mob. The arrival of Lady Macbeth’s madness – heralded by a shot of her pulling
out a lock of hair – works all the better for how quickly it comes on, and
McDormand doesn’t overplay the guilt. Instead, she finds something essential in
the scene; it is as if the sum of her choices has inevitably led her here. The shots that linger most come as armies and
rivals close in on Macbeth: the arrival of Birnam Wood at Dunsinane, and the staging
of Macbeth’s fight with Macduff (Corey Hawkins) on a narrow battlement. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ll start
this review where I began it, by praising how Joel Coen, Bruno Delbonnel, and
their collaborators created a world where chaos seems just a short distance
away. That style drives the movie, even if the actors occasionally seem to
fight against it. <i>The Tragedy of Macbeth</i> is a work of great visual confidence that
gives a genuine freshness to Shakespeare’s words. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-88927368909211379552021-12-28T14:55:00.009-08:002021-12-28T14:58:11.804-08:00Licorice Pizza <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh5FkHPrBHT3TUth3qYDgGKDN8O-venIvMUO0hl4XPK_HqJsQsf1ZxUxJ1R8JToVBua4x1fLWbazdTMhJ8ub-zi5mdnkP4DRnqpis7K9mh0lSGflM1Kv22_vwOhgA1zfSQH3CrxVgJ1SeIh8YH9B8c7pUio8Au-_wOE8L4-9vvsbkZBkbDJjg=s1916" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="1916" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh5FkHPrBHT3TUth3qYDgGKDN8O-venIvMUO0hl4XPK_HqJsQsf1ZxUxJ1R8JToVBua4x1fLWbazdTMhJ8ub-zi5mdnkP4DRnqpis7K9mh0lSGflM1Kv22_vwOhgA1zfSQH3CrxVgJ1SeIh8YH9B8c7pUio8Au-_wOE8L4-9vvsbkZBkbDJjg=w640-h268" width="640" /></a></div><br />It seems odd
to describe a film with as much incident and so many characters as “relaxed”,
but with the new<i style="font-size: 12pt;"> Licorice Pizza</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has let
both his heart and mind run free in a way we’ve never seen. The result is the
most blissed-out film of a career that seems to be driving towards portraying
new levels of emotional specificity on screen.</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"> Licorice Pizza</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> isn’t without
moments of gravity for its characters, but when I think about the movie and
eventually see it again, I’ll be most moved by the shots of Alana (Alana Haim
in an exceptional debut) and Gary (Cooper Hoffman) running. Running towards
each other at times, but in a broader sense running towards joy.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We are in
the San Fernando Valley of 1973. Anderson starts in a school bathroom on
picture day as Gary and some other boys comb their hair, with 15-year-old Gary
just a few moments away from meeting the person who will change his life. That
person is of course Alana, age 25, who works for the photographers but who
would (her boss slaps her bottom in the middle of the school gym) rather be
almost anywhere else. It is worth asking who the main character of <i>Licorice
Pizza</i> is exactly, because we are introduced to Gary as a teenaged pickup artist
with unnerving confidence. Gary is comfortable asking out an older woman
because he is already a working actor. The first big set piece of <i>Licorice Pizza</i>
involves Gary and a passel of other child actors on a talk show performing a
number from a movie starring a famous actress (Christine Ebersole) that sounds
like it was based on this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq9Q-0e9mBM">late-career Lucille Ball vehicle</a>. Cooper Hoffman (the
late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son) plays Gary with a vigor and a lack of guile
that serve the movie well, but Anderson seems more invested in Alana. Gary’s
family life isn’t shown in much detail – the movie has great fun with the idea
that Gary has the resources to start a business – but Alana’s family life is
depicted as a kind of old-world nexus of expectation and disappointment. Alana
needs to “get her life together” (as she puts it), and the most affecting parts
of <i>Licorice Pizza</i> involve Alana searching for a life in which she is treated
with integrity. Care is taken to depict that Alana and her family are also
proudly Jewish, and the movie takes place at a time when that is still enough
to make Alana feel like an outlier. Alana Haim -of the band HAIM – gives a
performance remarkable for its comic zing and vulnerability in equal measure. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Paul Thomas
Anderson shows a complete lack of fear as a filmmaker in <i>Licorice Pizza</i>,
structuring the movie in a series of short-story like segments but also
unafraid to use silence. A sequence involving an older, well-known actor (Sean
Penn, not taking himself too seriously) who is putting the moves on Alana
becomes a sketch of Alana’s sadness as she realizes that Penn’s character only
sees her as a way to feed his ego. (Tom Waits also scores in these scenes as an
aging director.) Alana is repeatedly disappointed: later she’ll learn secrets
about a politician (Benny Safdie) she’s working for that alter her view of him.
One of the truest connections Alana makes in <i>Licorice Pizza</i> is with a man (Joseph
Cross, another actor shining with brief screen time) who shares her sense that
the world lets people down. Quieter moments work as well, as when Alana and
Gary fall asleep on a waterbed that looks like a strip of celluloid or Alana
navigating a gasless truck backwards down L.A. hills at night. The scene with
the truck concludes a section of the film in which Gary, Alana, and their
friends meet Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper, very funny), a real-life figure whose
Hollywood career took him from hairdressing to a relationship with Barbra
Streisand to producing movies. This character could have wrecked Licorice
Pizza, but Cooper wisely underplays – Peters comes across as quietly out of his
mind – and Anderson doesn’t linger on him. Peters is part of another Los
Angeles that Alana and Gary bump into for a night.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Licorice
Pizza</i> ends on an emotional high, and it is the sort of movie where you’ll think
about what happens to the characters after the credits roll. Anderson has
pulled off a real mid-career – I’m being optimistic – triumph here; he seems to
be peaking after the successes of <i>Inherent Vice</i> and <i>Phantom Thread </i>revealed a
director with a bigger heart than we had first suspected. Let’s hope there is
still a place in the culture for a filmmaker working in such a personal key who
also has such command of craft. <i>Licorice Pizza</i> is stuffed with plot, character,
laughter, sadness, longing, and incredible tracking shots, but what I’ll think
about most is the light, and the joy, and the running,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-89879624986532090762021-12-13T16:24:00.010-08:002021-12-13T16:31:39.365-08:00West Side Story <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKhpEhjN4qQEa6M0epLYBLIP-rR8D7ipXryufUfF-ejDN7f2-IeAKY4gXxs6KQ4Mak7wuNfoPiTZAzA8xtJh6NyKMf1l_Cs8nDHlx-iP6Pcki78hOes6kiVir7gK8uD_W0rIokjhkj14YI8WKxAUEcbrVIMgPkSuP5X9Jb-dhmcQ0RRcp8Sg=s681" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="681" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKhpEhjN4qQEa6M0epLYBLIP-rR8D7ipXryufUfF-ejDN7f2-IeAKY4gXxs6KQ4Mak7wuNfoPiTZAzA8xtJh6NyKMf1l_Cs8nDHlx-iP6Pcki78hOes6kiVir7gK8uD_W0rIokjhkj14YI8WKxAUEcbrVIMgPkSuP5X9Jb-dhmcQ0RRcp8Sg=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">What is most surprising about the new </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">West Side Story</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> is how light-footed it is, how it honors its own legacy while also staring us straight in the face with relevance and urgency. Steven Spielberg is working with a level of self-assuredness here that is very welcome, and his choice to reunite with screenwriter Tony Kushner – which might have seemed odd at first glance – has produced an almost completely satisfying movie that forgoes nostalgia for a churning emotional energy. The opening shots of half-knocked down buildings (on the site of what will become Lincoln Center) set up a framework that Kushner’s script explains: New York is changing, and soon the old neighborhood where the Jets and Sharks battle for turf will be a thing of the past. The Jets, who we first see under the command of Riff (excellent Mike Faist) stealing paint to deface a Puerto Rican flag mural, view Puerto Ricans as interlopers while Bernardo (David Alvarez) and the Sharks see every day as an existential struggle for identity in a new country.</span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Spielberg
and Kushner are interested in something that the creators of the Broadway show
and 1961 movie knew but couldn’t say directly. West Side Story is about how
ambition and identity collide in America, and in this new version the city that
Riff and his friends know is building something new on the rubble of the old.
Half the buildings in the neighborhood seem to be in the process of being
knocked down, to be replaced by a New York that Riff will be priced out of.
Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican community is organizing to fight evictions. (The
name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses">Robert Moses</a></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> is seen briefly on one protestor’s sign. There’s a sense that
in Kushner’s conception Moses is the real villain.) But neither Riff nor
Bernardo can see the struggle in these larger terms, and as we know the story
turns on older hatreds. The one character who transcends the gang vs. gang
conflict is Valentina (Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing Anita in the
1961 version). We are told Valentina is the widow of Doc, the shopkeeper
character in the original show, and Moreno plays Valentina with the toughness
required of someone who married into another world. In the movie’s biggest
surprise, one of the signature songs is recontextualized into a moment for Valentina
in a way that both works emotionally and signals the broader ideas that
Spielberg and Kushner have in mind.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">West Side Story</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> is of course also a love story, and it is in the story of ex-Jet Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Bernardo’s sister Maria (Rachel Zegler) that this </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">West Side Story</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> falls short. Rachel Zegler is a real find, an appealing newcomer whose voice sounds exactly as Maria’s should sound. That is, the voice of a young girl falling in love. Zegler isn’t just a voice though; her performance is about Maria finding herself in a world that isn’t ready for her yet and she more than pulls it off. Maria’s song “I Feel Pretty” takes on an entirely new shade under Spielberg’s direction, as Maria’s job as a nighttime cleaning lady at Gimbel’s puts her in front of some very white ideas of taste and beauty. If only Spielberg had found a Tony to equal Zegler. Ansel Elgort seems at once both too old and too immature for the role, and when Elgort is face to face with Zegler he acts with what I can only describe as “I didn’t make the lacrosse team” energy. Elgort’s modern poutiness (he never seems like someone capable of violence) fails the movie but doesn’t wreck it, because there are ideas and music and other good performances all around. Zegler’s Maria deserves better, though.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">When I saw the 1961 </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">West Side Story</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> on the big screen, I was struck by how director Robert Wise kept the dancers in full frame. That movie honors its characters and their need for self-expression by emphasizing their physicality, and here Spielberg takes a similar approach. The dance where Tony and Maria first meet is shot with great verve, with Janusz Kaminski’s camera weaving though the crowd as two communities battle for space on the floor. “America”, the most ebullient song, starts in an apartment and turns into a full-scale dance blowout in the street led by Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose). DeBose is very good throughout, buying into a promise that other characters are more skeptical of but again never losing her sense of self.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">We didn’t strictly “need” another </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">West Side Story</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">, but Steven Spielberg has given us one that both honors the source material and still feels very much of these times. Cities change, neighborhoods come and go, and things seem like they never get any better who have less than others. Part of being an American is speaking freely about people different from you. (Though the tone is different, parts of </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">West Side Story</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> reminded me of </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgL_5QcZCMo" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">this scene</a><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">. ) Spielberg understands all of this, and he and Kushner – who I’d argue has a high degree of authorship here – make it all sing. I want to be in America.</span></p><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"></span><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-87926469322830955442021-12-04T12:56:00.010-08:002021-12-04T12:56:47.357-08:00The Power of the Dog<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIBp-dDMLrKyJ3GrR9_G2CeU3Y7Z-dQUFCXpROIeAMpGSvxyEisoQs_4-DLfd-1W_zAXVQh7AXIk6oyxphhYccdo62m9ifpNXLuMwTIINMy-nvYB2LGJjFVDEx21EdNv8Whg9x/s2740/powerdog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="2740" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIBp-dDMLrKyJ3GrR9_G2CeU3Y7Z-dQUFCXpROIeAMpGSvxyEisoQs_4-DLfd-1W_zAXVQh7AXIk6oyxphhYccdo62m9ifpNXLuMwTIINMy-nvYB2LGJjFVDEx21EdNv8Whg9x/w640-h268/powerdog.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Some movies
strive for everything at once. Jane Campion’s <i>The Power of the Dog</i> is on its
face a story of lonely people trapped by time and circumstance, but it is
actually that and a great deal more. <i>The Power of the Dog</i>, adapted by Campion
from a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, is about the place where desire and self-denial
meet and the resulting corrosion of a family. It is also about the oppressive
power of obligation. Some of the first words we hear spoken come from Peter
(Kodi Smit-McPhee), a teenager living in 1925 Montana. “For what kind of man
would I be if I did not help my mother?” asks Peter in voice-over, and Campion
builds her movie towards an uncomfortable answer to that question. Peter’s
mother Rose (Kirsten Dunst) is a widow working in an inn deep in the Montana
countryside. Shy and awkward Peter helps out, but he prefers to stay in his
room making paper flowers and studying with dreams of becoming a doctor. We
know little about Rose and Peter’s previous lives – we’re told Rose’s husband
committed suicide – but Kirsten Dunst gives Rose the bearing of someone with a
deep sadness that can only be masked by work.<p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The inn
where Rose and Peter work is the stopping place for a cattle drive led by Phil
Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), a rancher who hides his own secrets even as he
runs the drive with a strong hand. Phil and his brother George (Jesse Plemons)
have run the ranch their father started for twenty-five years, but there is an
odd disconnect between the brothers. George (who Plemons plays with a wonderful
courtliness) has little of Phil’s appetite for the ranch work, and when Phil
bullies Peter while the men dine at the inn – driving Rose to tears – George responds
with empathy. Soon George and Rose are married, and Rose and Peter come to live
in the large house that the brothers share. It is worth stopping at this point
to describe just how tense and finely balanced all of this looks and feels
like. Campion is in control of all her effects here, from the Jonny Greenwood
score (ominous but not overstated) to the way that the spaces the movie takes
place in feel both Edenic and slightly scary. <i>The Power of the Dog</i> was shot in
New Zealand, and the vastness creates a disorienting effect that is to the
movie’s benefit. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is a
character in <i>The Power of the Dog</i> that we never see, but who matters perhaps
most of all. Phil often speaks of “Bronco Henry”, a deceased cowboy who taught
Phil the ways of the West and formed an attachment with him that the movie
takes its time revealing. It is only mentioned once that Phil was educated in
the East, but as <i>The Power of the Dog</i> goes on we come to understand both just
how much his persona – he refuses to bathe in the house – is a work of massive
self-construction and why he seems to be so skilled at exploiting other people’s
weaknesses. Benedict Cumberbatch is perfectly believable as a rancher and leader
of cowhands, but Phil’s palpable sense of relief at being able to drop his
guard when he is alone is very moving and Cumberbatch really is great at
getting at something about the complicated bob-and-weave of masculinity here. Phil’s
sad eyes tell the real story; it is almost as if he only sustains himself by
paring away the happiness of other people. Kirsten Dunst has previously proven
herself more than capable of playing fine nuances of emotion, and here as Rose
she is at her best. Rose’s story turns when she is asked to play piano at a
dinner party that George is hosting for his parents and for the Governor (Keith
Carradine). The evening goes wrong, and she is left alone to begin what will be
a slide into an alcoholic haze. Dunst plays the dissolution beautifully, but
she also never loses sense of her fight both to hold onto herself and protect
Peter from Phil. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Phil and
Peter – who Kodi Smit-McPhee plays with both terrific vulnerability and a sense
of hidden depth – do become closer, and there are scenes late in <i>The Power of
the Dog</i> that feel as they could go in any direction. The end when it comes is bracing,
and the final shot suggests a future for Peter full of both possibility and great
complication. <i>The Power of the Dog</i> is a difficult movie to discuss without
giving away certain secrets, which I’ve elected not to do, but Jane Campion and
her collaborators have a produced a work both of great craft and of the most
complex humanity. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-7303280444909411042021-11-14T11:06:00.000-08:002021-11-14T11:06:30.567-08:00Passing <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZMqat-ad2sRcX4xVlk3koj9Hr7Cy8wCLDrTli0WkcWkGGl-cwsDIyIH7egezFrY6go0jTjShvsZ3Sm7ZNzbPKGV78wmjF_bJmYKH5LLUr8wEOf4nNOXFgegIBpzdtOurupfva/s1920/netflix-passing.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZMqat-ad2sRcX4xVlk3koj9Hr7Cy8wCLDrTli0WkcWkGGl-cwsDIyIH7egezFrY6go0jTjShvsZ3Sm7ZNzbPKGV78wmjF_bJmYKH5LLUr8wEOf4nNOXFgegIBpzdtOurupfva/w640-h360/netflix-passing.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Early on in Rebecca Hall’s </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Passing</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">, a woman named Irene (Tessa Thompson) sits alone in the tea room of a Manhattan hotel. She examines the few other patrons with an air of nervousness, though they take no notice of her until Irene notices one woman staring at her openly. That woman is Claire (Ruth Negga), an old school friend of Irene’s, and their unexpected reunion is the starting point of a movie that examines with great nuance questions of what it means exactly to be black, white, and even American. Claire is visiting New York with her husband John (Alexander Skarsgard), a successful banker who is both openly racist and completely unaware that his wife is black. Claire has decided to “pass” as white in search of a comfortable life, while Irene (who in a tense first meeting with John must also pass) lives in Harlem with her doctor husband Brian (Andre Holland) and children and is part of a vibrant, engaged community. </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Passing</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> was adapted by Rebecca Hall from Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, and Hall locates Irene and Brian right in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. Irene is active in charity work, and the couple’s social life involves interaction with a fair number of whites including a novelist (Bill Camp) whose interest in Harlem’s cultural life gets gently called out by Irene in one of the movie’s best scenes. But it is in the relationship between Irene and Claire where </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Passing</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> is at its best.</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">After their chance meeting, both Irene and Claire become unmoored in different ways. Claire becomes enamored of what she sees as the happy, social lives of Irene and Brian, and she is soon a part of their circle while John is away from New York on business. Ruth Negga plays Claire with a buoyancy that masks a deeper unhappiness; it’s easy to understand why Irene and Brian’s friends would like Claire but Negga also gets at the desperation that Claire must have felt when she decided to pass. Irene’s situation is more complicated, because Brian -consumed by accounts of lynchings he reads in the newspaper – is talking about leaving the United States, and Irene isn’t sure she wants to. Irene has no interest in passing as white as she loves her life and her family, but Tessa Thompson does a good job with a slow-burn performance as a woman whose assumptions around race and color slowly unravel.</span></p><p><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Passing</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> succeeds to the degree that it does because of its performances. Andre Holland as Brian is very good as man whose sense of foreboding about the state of black people in America is creeping into his marriage. Yet </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Passing</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> is also a visual triumph, with first-time director Rebecca Hall and cinematographer Edu Grau controlling the frame with great precision. The</span><a href="https://nofilmschool.com/4x3-aspect-ratio-frame" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> 4:3 aspect ratio</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> that Hall and Grau shoot in does a great deal of work here, creating a feeling that Irene and Claire’s lives are somewhat walled off even in New York. The house that Irene and Brian live in with their children even feels oppressive in certain shots, as Irene’s feelings about the life around become more confused. In a movie in which skin tone is everything, the lighting is doing fine, understated work. The play of light and shadow across the actors’ faces adds immeasurably to a movie that is all the more gripping for its subtlety. Rebecca Hall signals great promise as a director with </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Passing</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">, a movie that lingers in the mind long after its conclusion.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Further reading- </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/27/rebecca-hall-race-regret-personal-history-any-family-legacy-of-passing-very-tricky" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Rebecca Hall on race, regret, and her personal history</a></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-47053889612966106562021-11-08T15:09:00.002-08:002021-11-08T15:10:58.626-08:00Spencer <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8vwbPD8KIHAC-B6faSl4RTmp0-kHgIYsCBisdw2FoMGDK5eHk12pfJUGwpLCLosF1axzmFvlyBnOX0VeJ-ZT5B8pvAXWgw7frVJe4dfECFdsoCtBjkiv3U9XEkBUvvPfbBE7/s1000/spencer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="1000" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8vwbPD8KIHAC-B6faSl4RTmp0-kHgIYsCBisdw2FoMGDK5eHk12pfJUGwpLCLosF1axzmFvlyBnOX0VeJ-ZT5B8pvAXWgw7frVJe4dfECFdsoCtBjkiv3U9XEkBUvvPfbBE7/w640-h336/spencer.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> takes place at Christmas in 1991, with the Royal Family gathered at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate for several days of meals, shooting, presents, and other traditions. Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) is first seen driving herself to Sandringham, getting lost, and stopping at a café to ask for directions in front of stunned commoners. Did it happen? Who knows, and that uncertainty is a big part of the problem with </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">. Director Pablo Larrain’s 2016 film </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Jackie</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> was another portrait of a cultural icon in crisis, but </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Jackie</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> had public events and familiar photographs to work off of in telling the story of Jacqueline Kennedy in the days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> is a movie about being trapped, and while screenwriter Steven Knight has</span><a href="https://www.vulture.com/2021/11/what-is-fact-and-what-is-fiction-in-spencer.html" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> shared some information about what elements are fictionalized</a><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">, the script’s take on Diana still seems to work backwards from what we have come to know about her after her divorce and then her death. The result is a movie that is really one good performance supported by a very thin layer of handsome cinematography by Claire Mathon, a score by Jonny Greenwood that works hard to generate tension, and Larrain’s instincts about when to get out of a scene.</span><p></p><p><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">By Christmas 1991, Diana and Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) had been married for a decade and rumors of Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles were widespread. Diana arrives late at Sandringham and is immediately confronted by a retired Major (Timothy Spall) charged with coordinating security for the weekend and insisting that Diana participate in a (real) ritual involving weighing herself on a full-sized scale. Diana’s only joy is reunion with her sons William (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry), but she is quickly reminded that the rest of the family is waiting for her to join them. Moments of Diana being reminded to hurry up recur throughout </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">, and that conceit is one of a few that the screenplay pushes too far. Diana is told multiple times that there are no secrets at Sandringham regarding how one speaks or behaves, and that even her “friends” on the staff (Sean Harris as a chef and Sally Hawkins as Diana’s dresser) are powerless to quell the gossip. There is also a good deal of discussion about how the Royal Family are stuck in a loop of performative celebrity, and that Diana is a part of it (her curtains are sewn shut to avoid photographers) and should just go along. As Charles puts it – in a scene that works though Charles has almost nothing else to do – a Royal must be “two people”.</span></p><p><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> is certainly committed to the bit that its version of Diana will function as a kind of running commentary on the vacuousness of Royal Family life, and Kristen Stewart works well within that frame to give an internalized but charismatic performance. Stewart’s natural modernity – </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> is a rare period film for her – gives the awkward moments between Diana and the Sandringham staff a real uneasiness, but she can’t do much with a deadly obvious running thread involving reading a book about Anne Boleyn. While Stewart is good and nervy throughout, those awkward moments with the household staff – there’s a running argument about which dress to wear when – feel as blunt as a bad editorial. If Diana and Charles’s marriage was as bad as the movie would have it five years before their actual divorce, wouldn’t Diana have spent less time arguing about clothes and more time with her children? Stewart’s scenes with the young actors playing her children are the sweetest moments in </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;">, as both Jack Nielen and Freddie Spry are playing boys first, princes second. </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Spencer</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 19px;"> has a noble ambition: to give us an understanding of what the Princess we all loved was going through as her marriage fell apart. But the filmmakers have rigged the game, ginning up emotional turmoil with only a few moments of relief while forgoing a chance to let this woman breathe.</span></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-36200983124727938122021-10-31T13:43:00.001-07:002021-10-31T13:43:17.089-07:00The French Dispatch <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnQ1RLFGU22BJbSV_iT9gVCNqIHS_VrjL7851M7ndUOnfOmAxfRZgSW13kXnjQpGd3q4mjXqS-uHHh_883-sVx0hqNWaEjPpIZ_1Mwqy19qiFMGQdWLaOYj9h2bA0NfUV85VW/s750/french+dispatch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="750" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnQ1RLFGU22BJbSV_iT9gVCNqIHS_VrjL7851M7ndUOnfOmAxfRZgSW13kXnjQpGd3q4mjXqS-uHHh_883-sVx0hqNWaEjPpIZ_1Mwqy19qiFMGQdWLaOYj9h2bA0NfUV85VW/w640-h342/french+dispatch.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">There is an anecdote I’ve shared online a couple of times about the Lou Reed song “</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb_r-IwB8t8" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Halloween Parade</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">” and my reaction to it. The song is one of the best on Reed’s masterful 1989 </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">New York</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> album, and it is Reed’s response to the early years of the AIDS crisis. When I first heard “Halloween Parade” as a teenager, I had an idea of who Reed was and (</span><a href="https://simoncrowe.substack.com/p/the-velvet-underground" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">as explained earlier</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">) knew a bit about the Velvet Underground and that </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">New York</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> was regarded as a major comeback in the arc of Reed’s solo career. But my appreciation of the album was all contextual; Reed was a “classic” rock artist who was dryly funny in interviews and wrote clever, pointed lyrics. (“</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66qe76gkCxo" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Good Evening Mr. Waldheim</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">” still bangs over 30 years later.) Flash forward to me as an adult, and I encounter “Halloween Parade” again in reading articles about the thirtieth anniversary of </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">New York</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">. I listen to the song, which by Reed’s standards is nakedly emotional, and it is hard not to cry at the vision Reed conjures of absence, of lives lost. I think this is maybe how art is supposed to work? It was only when I was ready that I understood just how much Reed’s song had in store for me.</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Talking about Lou Reed seems like a funny way to begin to talk about Wes Anderson, whose new film </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The French Dispatch</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> is one of his best. </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Bottle Rocket</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> - Anderson’s first feature - came out in 1996 and while my appreciation of his movies has only grown in the ensuing 25 years, I still find him somewhat hard to discuss. Anderson is so committed to doing his specific thing, to making a “Wes Anderson movie” if you like, that in talking about his work it is easy to get lost in descriptions of his visual detail or habit of casting certain actors over and over. Yet coming back to his work, both the newer movies and familiar ones, does yield great reward. The last time I watched </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The Royal Tenenbaums</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> I was moved by how clear-eyed the film is about how one’s parents divorcing effects children even into adulthood. (Ben Stiller’s performance needs to be reclaimed.) </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The French Dispatch</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> contains many elements that will seem familiar to Anderson’s fans – the complicated movements of actors within a still frame, a folded-up narrative structure, Bill Murray – but it also has an emotional through-line and a point of view that reveal increasing maturity.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">We are introduced to the world of </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The French Dispatch</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> by a narrator (Anjelica Huston) who relates the story of Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Murray): he traveled to Europe as young man and eventually founded “The French Dispatch” in the city of “Ennui-sur-Blase”, a place big enough to contain all of Anderson’s imagination. “The French Dispatch” looks and feels very much like </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The New Yorker</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">, a magazine that probably gave young Wes Anderson (and me) an idea of a certain kind of life. Anderson dedicates </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The French Dispatch</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> to Harold Ross and other early </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">New Yorker</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> luminaries, and what we learn about the workings of Howitzer’s magazine – complicated accounting, writers who never write – feels lovingly borrowed from </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">New Yorker</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> history. Howitzer is not the main character of </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The French Dispatch</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> though, indeed the movie has no central character but is structured like an issue of the magazine itself – a “casual” piece by a bicycling reporter (Owen Wilson) that functions as an introduction to Ennui followed by longer pieces and an unexpected end note. It is in the stories that Anderson both finds the emotion of the film and has the most fun with technique.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) relates the first piece in the form of a public lecture.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">It’s the story of a convict (Benicio Del Toro) who becomes a celebrated artist with the inspiration of his guard/muse (Lea Seydoux) and an ambitious art dealer (Adrien Brody). Anderson cuts to black-and-white for the story Swinton’s character is telling and keeps the camera still until he doesn’t: there’s complicated shot of a brawl breaking out at an art opening that very funny and must have been hell to shoot. Del Toro gets to play some notes of longing and regret here that we don’t usually see in his roles, and the story builds to a moment of achievement followed by a manic fight – Anderson has developed a taste for characters breaking through walls. There is such a great deal to look at in each frame here, which is true of the whole movie, but of course things never feel out of control. Anderson is working with great assuredness, and he gets a lovely performance from Swinton (who interrupts her own lecture with “I’ll have my drink now.”) which is paid off in a scene with Murray where we realize just why Berensen ran up so many expenses while writing the piece.</p><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The second piece is written by Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand), and is the story of a late 1960’s-style student rebellion. There is a theme that emerges here – it is hinted at in the first section – of loneliness amidst the tumult of the times. Krementz is a stubborn woman who lives a bare existence outside of her work, and the absence of an ornate set design in her apartment is striking. She is touched by her involvement with a young revolutionary (Timothee Chalamet) and begins to question her own neutrality, for the first time perhaps. The student uprising culminates in a chess match, but the resonance in this part of the film comes from McDormand, who plays a type of woman that maybe we don’t talk about enough anymore. Krementz is in the mold of writers like Rebecca West or</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Flanner" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> Janet Flanner</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">, women who made careers and lives for themselves outside of expectations or conventional judgment. I wanted one more scene with Krementz maybe, one that showed a different side of the character, but the last scene of Krementz and Howitzer together is all the better for its simplicity.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The best part of </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The French Dispatch</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> is the third story, written by Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright). Roebuck recounts his article on a television program at the prompting of an interviewer (Liev Schreiber), but when we cut back into the story Anderson throws color, black-and-white, and even animation at us. (You have to admire the confidence required to just simply animate the movie’s one action sequence.) The story itself is food piece about a “police chef” (Stephen Park) that turns into something else entirely and even breaks off to show how Roebuck Wright wound up at the magazine. There are two short scenes of connection in this section of the movie – one between Jeffrey Wright and Murray, the other between Wright and Park – that are very effective and suggest that Anderson has really made a movie about people finding meaning in their own individuality. Jeffrey Wright, whose character is drawn from James Baldwin, is asked to deliver reams of dialogue while wandering through elaborate sets, He does that and a great deal more superbly of course, all while engendering enormous empathy for Roebuck – a distinguished man not quite at home in his own skin.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></div><div><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The French Dispatch</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> ends with several of the characters gathered together with one more story to write, one that no doubt will be as thorough and textured as those we’ve already seen. There is a peace in the ending that makes this movie Anderson’s most graceful yet, and his direction is as confident as ever. Wes Anderson is still becoming a more compelling artist 25 years in; the only question is if we are ready to meet him where he is.</span></div>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-36336399151603056912021-10-26T16:58:00.000-07:002021-10-26T16:58:16.302-07:00Dune<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuD4vaDiom6TLLp2gSlTBzG0UGwgIopj9H8df3DvaT6We9f2ORkxhwLHHZ6bo5Sz9TdG8QsEOlaHw5YZHJ0UQdm4sdEZNK0PItyMAT-ZLzGBrxTyTWgFZe5yA6P7DwCWk1DDbd/s1200/dune-movie-6-1599669050.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuD4vaDiom6TLLp2gSlTBzG0UGwgIopj9H8df3DvaT6We9f2ORkxhwLHHZ6bo5Sz9TdG8QsEOlaHw5YZHJ0UQdm4sdEZNK0PItyMAT-ZLzGBrxTyTWgFZe5yA6P7DwCWk1DDbd/s600/dune-movie-6-1599669050.jpeg"/></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Any copy of
Frank Herbert’s <i>Dune</i>, first published in 1965, contains several
appendices that aim to provide context, clarity, and (on the subject of
religion) reasoning for what has happened in the world of the book we’ve just
read. Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation of <i>Dune</i>, just released after a
year’s delay due to COVID, could easily have sunk under the weight of all of
the supplementary information. Villeneuve’s first and maybe most important
success in making <i>Dune</i> – which he co-wrote with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth
– is the way that he quickly sets up the stakes and conflicts of the world. The
amounts of other things that <i>Dune</i> does well is significant, and the
movie as a whole possesses a wide screen grandeur and depth of ambition that
feels like it’s from another time. Yet this laying in of who’s who and what’s
it all about had to be gotten right, or else <i>Dune</i> would have gone down under
the weight of its own complexity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Chani
(Zendaya) is our introduction to the world of Arrakis, the desert planet where
most of </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Dune</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> takes place. Her narration describes a key conflict:
Arrakis is mined for “spice” – a chemical that provides the basis for
interstellar travel – by the brutal House Harkkonen, who treat Chani and her
indigenous people (the “Fremen”) as an irritant to be swept away. The editing
suggests here and several other places that Chani is through dreams speaking to
and looking at Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), the son of the House assigned
by an unseen emperor to replace the Harkkonens on Arrakis. As he expresses to
his father Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), Paul is concerned about his family’s move to
Arrakis and his own future as a leader. But there’s more: Paul’s mother Jessica
(Rebecca Ferguson, excellent) – Duke Leto’s consort – is a member of a
religious order called the Bene Gesserit who think Paul’s dreams may have
meaning. There is an early examination scene involving a Reverend Mother
(Charlotte Rampling) that suggests that Paul is special, and also that </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Dune</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
isn’t afraid to lace a little magic into its science fiction.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">All of these
details wouldn’t matter if Dune weren’t so well executed by Villeneuve and his
team, with special honors going to Greg Fraser’s cinematography, Patrice
Vermette’s production design, and to the music of Hans Zimmer. It is a pleasure
to see so many elements working in harmony at this scale, as Villeneuve and
Fraser both put actors in wide shots set in modernist huge rooms and get some
remarkable closeups. Rebecca Ferguson, who gives the best performance in the
movie, pulls off some great interior acting in a sequence of shots charting
Jessica’s journey from discovering Paul has powers greater than she knows to
realizing that he still needs her protection. The natural expressiveness of both
Chalamet and Zendaya is used well too, as Villeneuve is keen to keep the story
working on a human level. But it’s the shots of Ferguson’s Lady Jessica framed
in the middle of negative space that linger, both as an expression of her
terror and as foreshadowing of what’s to come. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dune </span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">is full of political maneuvering even
as the question of Paul’s safety becomes more dire. The Baron Harkkonen
(Stellan Skarsgard, whose character is slightly less grotesque than in the book
but who has been made to resemble Brando in <i>Apocalypse Now</i>) wants
Arrakis back, and the attack he launches on the Atreides compound is expertly
staged even as it has the hazy quality of a nightmare. There is a superb set piece
(within a larger set piece) in a helicopter that comes after Paul and Jessica
have been rescued by Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), an Atreides agent who Momoa
plays with an unexpected sensitivity. The final act of <i>Dune</i> puts Paul in
the desert, far from his father and the world that he knows. It is no secret at
this point that <i>Dune</i> is actually <i>Dune Part One</i>, a film that ends
in the middle of the novel (at a natural stopping place and with a <a href="https://variety.com/2021/film/news/dune-part-2-sequel-1235094974/">sequel to come</a>)
and that reintroduces Paul to Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and the Fremen. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As Paul’s visions
become more specific and violent, the movie does justice to what surprised me
most about the book: Paul’s terror over the fact that many people – the Bene Gesserit,
the Fremen – believe he may be “The One” who brings a new order. For a novel
that was published in the mid-60s this refusal of the call seems quite modern,
especially since the book is also concerned with environmental issues, the encroachment
of technology on our lives, and in the possible uses of religion to oppress. Villeneuve’s
film begins to address much of this thematic stuff, and <i>Part Two</i> will be
required to address even more. <i>Dune Part One</i> is large-scale filmmaking
made with craft and care, and it is a movie that honors the deeper ambitions of
its source material. Worth the wait.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><strong style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Further reading:</strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> </span><a href="https://www.tor.com/2021/10/18/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-reading-of-appendix-ii-the-religion-of-dune/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The Muslimness of </a><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"><a href="https://www.tor.com/2021/10/18/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-reading-of-appendix-ii-the-religion-of-dune/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="color: #1a1a1a;">Dune</a></em><a href="https://www.tor.com/2021/10/18/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-reading-of-appendix-ii-the-religion-of-dune/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">: A Close Reading of “Appendix II: The Religion of Dune”</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> by Haris Durrani</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"></span><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-12602521266514036902021-10-18T14:35:00.010-07:002021-10-18T14:40:31.871-07:00The Velvet Underground<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6lrnChUFUuwWHseC3MjTU1IvJAuwsPN9UQITuI-hs4trYVdoLCl5DsVceZaknP5aXC6Gw3FMzXuFoB8JJ7__HRhUpFdwQSanmwMfkVbWOK1-1G62d1csKp6E3lVcRklyOOkX/s790/velvet.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="790" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6lrnChUFUuwWHseC3MjTU1IvJAuwsPN9UQITuI-hs4trYVdoLCl5DsVceZaknP5aXC6Gw3FMzXuFoB8JJ7__HRhUpFdwQSanmwMfkVbWOK1-1G62d1csKp6E3lVcRklyOOkX/w640-h320/velvet.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><em style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal;">I entered college in the fall of 1991, and one of the first friends I made was a prospective philosophy major who lived in a single room at the end of our dormitory hall. I say “friends I made” because he didn’t make friends with me. He didn’t ask me questions about my interests or my personal life, and he didn’t encourage me to join any clubs or fraternities. He let me sit with him in the dining hall though, and in the freshman English class we shared we did a joint presentation on Terrence Malick’s</span> </span>Badlands</span></em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt;">. But mostly he let me be a
part of the audience for his vibe, which at that time could best be described
as “Brooding with a strong dash of High Culture”. He knew about films, music,
books, and philosophy – my first college class was an 8 am intro to Philosophy
class and I don’t remember a thing – and he presented his views with an
authority I’d never encountered in someone my own age. As someone who
dates his self-knowledge to the moment in high school I asked myself “Why is
everyone wearing these T-shirts that say ‘R.E.M. Document’?”, I was in
uncharted territory.</span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt;">We mostly went our separate ways after freshman year, as
often happens. But I do remember talking to him about the Velvet Underground’s
<i>Live MCMXCIII</i> reunion album, which came out in 1993. He dismissed it out of hand
as a pale imitation of earlier genius, an opinion which shocked me since by
then I had done the following things:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Read a Rolling Stone interview with Lou Reed
and listened to Reed’s brilliant <i>New York</i> album many times on cassette. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Listened to the Reed/John Cale album <i>Songs for
Drella</i> – a song cycle about Andy Warhol – and believed I understood its
context. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Bought the baseline Velvet Underground greatest
hits CD from Columbia House. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;">What did I know? <i>The Velvet Underground</i>, the new documentary
directed by Todd Haynes, is a testament to how long it can take to appreciate a
thing you thought you already loved. Haynes began working on a Velvets doc in
2017 and shot interviews with surviving band members John Cale and Maureen
Tucker in 2018, but it feels like the dense assemblage of other interviews,
excerpts from Andy Warhol films, and other avant-garde imagery should have
taken much longer to put together. Haynes’s film is an effort position The
Velvet Underground as the product of a cultural moment, but he never forgets
that any story of a band is also a story of personalities. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;">The first section of <i>The Velvet Underground</i> is a breathless
tour of culture in late 1950’s/early ‘60s New York City. The city was the home
base for composers like John Cage and La Monte Young (a key figure for John
Cale) as well as avant-garde filmmakers like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/obituaries/jonas-mekas-dead.html">Jonas Mekas</a>. (The Velvet
Underground is dedicated to Mekas, who appears as an interviewee but who died
in 2019 at age 96.) It isn’t hard to see why New York would be a magnet for strivers
like Cale (a music student from Wales who became fascinated by La Monte Young’s
drone music), Lou Reed (a sensitive boy from Long Island who’d undergone shock
therapy to cure his supposed homosexuality), or a visual artist named Andy
Warhol. Haynes uses split-screen to emphasize the vibrancy of the times, often
putting footage of an interviewee opposite avant-garde film clips or
performance footage with music playing underneath. Heady times indeed, as the
Velvets (also including Tucker on drums and the late Sterling Morrison on
guitar) go from outsiders to stars of an anti-hippie counterculture to broken
up in just a few years. Warhol added German singer/model Nico to the band and
“produced” their first album, but he and Reed parted ways soon afterwards and
the band’s original lineup was eventually felled by a combination of neuroses,
personality conflicts, and drug use. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;">The structuring absence in <i>The Velvet Underground</i> is of
course Lou Reed, who died in 2013. Reed was a child – as described by his sister
Merrill – who never quite got over his family’s move from Brooklyn to Long
Island when he was a boy, and he soon enough found music both a salvation and
job. (Reed gave his first public performances in gay bars and later worked as a
professional songwriter for a budget New York record label.) We hear Reed’s
voice in interviews, looking back when old grudges have faded, but the Reed
that bandmates and old friends remember is by turns an inspiring figure and a
control freak concerned with his own fame. Reed quit The Velvet Underground
abruptly in 1970, and while the band continued for a short time with Doug Yule
(Cale’s replacement) moving to lead vocals, the Velvets’ larger cultural
relevance quickly faded. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;">But the relevance of The Velvet Underground never faded for
people like the musician Jonathan Richman, perhaps the most winning interviewee
besides Maureen Tucker. Richman first heard the band as a young man, and he remembers
an initial feeling that maybe Reed and the others were “people who could understand
me.” Richman recalls seeing the band many times in Boston and eventually being
taken under their wing. If you know Richman’s music then you know he is nothing
if not sincere, and while his sound may have evolved (from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy88-5pc7c8">here</a> to<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZzCi2mLgrk"> here</a>) the
Velvets still exist for him as an activating force. While I still like the ‘90s
reunion album that my friend hated, I now know it as a shadow of a memory. Todd
Haynes, who as much as any filmmaker in my lifetime has turned queer and
outsider energy into art (<i>Carol</i>, <i>Far from Heaven</i>, <i>I'm Not There</i>), has with <i>The Velvet Underground</i> given me context for
loving what I love. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt;"></span><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-44534397411881877732021-10-10T16:10:00.004-07:002021-10-10T16:35:49.000-07:00No Time To Die <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibReVoEGIQ5ZrZKQfzEDPWMImXS63UuGv11rRgz92btR0hEB_i2k8gGHFGCIEHjLBbGS4IdLEVFSKfyWPUVgyxN1D2lfD6nkHE_wB1ksQ7A6AmUiGju1jspuYJnZN-bDW9K89A/s950/bond25.webp" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="950" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibReVoEGIQ5ZrZKQfzEDPWMImXS63UuGv11rRgz92btR0hEB_i2k8gGHFGCIEHjLBbGS4IdLEVFSKfyWPUVgyxN1D2lfD6nkHE_wB1ksQ7A6AmUiGju1jspuYJnZN-bDW9K89A/s600/bond25.webp" width="600" /></a></div><p> <i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">No Time
To Die</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">, the new
James Bond film, was for a time in the public imagination referred to as “Bond
25” after its sequential place in the franchise. “Bond 25” actually feels like
it might have been the better title, given the fact that one of the central
themes of this involving if overlong installment is that the “Double-0”
designation is indeed just a number. We are here to say goodbye to Daniel Craig
as Bond, and director Cary Joji Fukunaga (working from a script he co-wrote
along with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and others) has made a plus-sized epic that in
large measure succeeds in delivering action, spy craft, and the sort of rugged
vulnerability that Craig brought to the role of Bond. Levels of tolerance for
the way the Bond franchise has become serialized may vary, so fair warning: <i>No
Time To Die</i> is very much committed to tying up threads from previous
Craig-era Bond movies, most importantly Bond’s relationship with Madeleine
Swann (Lea Seydoux). The curtain-raiser here takes place in Italy, with Bond
and Madeleine on vacation and each seeming to want to commit to the other
permanently. Duty intervenes in the form of an extended set piece that includes
both nimble driving and hand-to-hand fighting, and we catch up with the story
five years later with Bond retired and living in Jamaica.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Fukunaga has
quite a bit of story to work through, and these early scenes have time both for
the reappearance of Bond’s friend and American agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey
Wright) and the introduction of a new Double-0 called Nomi (Lashana Lynch, a
great addition). Everyone is concerned with a SPECTRE meeting in Cuba and with
what Dr. Obruchev (David Dencik), a scientist working with bioweapons, might be
doing there. The Cuba scenes are the most fun part of <i>No Time To Die</i>,
with Ana de Armas playing an agent who claims to have only had “three weeks training” but who seems to have absorbed a great deal in that
time. For a few minutes, <i>No Time To Die</i> is nominally concerned with the
overreach of Western intelligence agencies and with the viability of that old
model of spying – the long-term outlook is dim – but this movie needs an Evil
Genius and it gets just that when Safin (Rami Malek) finally reveals his plans
for the world. A movie this existential about its main character’s future
needed a villain with a more immediate agenda than what we get here. Safin
imagines the world be will be remade out of the destruction he causes, but
Malek’s performance is enervated to a point that we have to keep reminding
ourselves what he wants and at a couple of moments it doesn’t even seem as
though Bond or Madeleine should be scared of him. (There are two sequences
involving children being put in danger, a choice made I think in an attempt to
humanize Bond but one that feels out of place here.) Where is Blofeld
(Christoph Waltz) – who actually pops in for a scene – when you need him? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">No Time
To Die</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> ends with our
hero a Man in Full, a Double-0 when duty calls even as a future of domestic
contentment opens up and M (Ralph Fiennes), Q (Ben Whishaw), and Moneypenny
(Naomie Harris) look on. Craig’s Bond turns out to be a man of his time,
harried by work while figuring out how to give the people in his life the necessary time. The next James Bond will go their own way, but while <i>No Time
To Die</i> isn’t without flaws it still gives this Bond the ending he deserves. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24325146.post-78881488564506494992021-09-26T05:06:00.000-07:002021-09-26T05:06:13.280-07:00Dear Evan Hansen <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf_0K_UC0ysGY-kcDfk8INrUEXQeI7IYklWss3_P6sKDkIZVwqx8Rm1OkrssoiktOqeVpJ31K9m0-TmNynzZFXLAQfHBs9KT5PmNNRUjIOCpXZxIszzJvfhGMORJMb7GFhXFHi/s960/evan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf_0K_UC0ysGY-kcDfk8INrUEXQeI7IYklWss3_P6sKDkIZVwqx8Rm1OkrssoiktOqeVpJ31K9m0-TmNynzZFXLAQfHBs9KT5PmNNRUjIOCpXZxIszzJvfhGMORJMb7GFhXFHi/w640-h360/evan.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">It is possible to appreciate the talents of an actor, their personal qualities and their technique, while also disliking or even resenting their signature role. Establishing that binary is the way that I’m beginning my consideration of </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Dear Evan Hansen</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">, the new film adaptation of the award-winning Broadway musical. The actor in question is of course Ben Platt, who won a Tony for playing Evan Hansen onstage and who here reprises his role. Platt is 28, and – for those who don’t know – the character of Evan is a high-school senior. The pre-release discourse around the </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Dear Evan Hansen </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">film has focused to a large degree on the fact that Platt on camera appears to be much too old for this role, and that the makeup, hair, and Platt’s own physical choices don’t help. But Platt’s vocal talents can’t be faked. There’s a plaintive quality to Platt’s voice that is just right for this material, and he has a handle on the sort of tumbling, frantic stream of words that many of the songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul rely on to indicate Evan’s mental state.</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">However. While it feels cheap to belabor the degree that Platt appears to be playing an adult in high-school cosplay, it isn’t wrong. The distancing effect that Platt’s age creates is most apparent in Evan’s scenes with Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), the sister of a classmate of Evan’s who has taken his own life. That classmate, Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), was the school outcast whose interception of a letter Evan writes to himself as a therapy exercise sets off a series of misunderstandings that drive the plot. It is that plot where </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Dear Evan Hansen</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> gets into trouble, because what the filmmakers (Stephen Chbosky directed, and Steven Levenson adapted the book of his musical into the screenplay) want to be a rich affirmation of each person’s self-worth and the transformative power of friendship instead plays as a story how people manipulate the goodwill of others as a panacea for their own struggles. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy (Danny Pino and Amy Adams) believe Evan to have been Connor’s best friend, and since Evan’s own social status at school wasn’t much better than Connor’s the mistake goes uncorrected. Had the role of Evan been played by an age-appropriate actor the lies might read as a sad misjudgment, but here it plays as a grown man hiding something from grieving people. The movie doesn’t take time to give Evan much interiority outside of the songs, and Platt’s acting doesn’t suggest the degree to which Evan must be in conflict with himself.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Evan isn’t the only character to use Connor’s death as a distraction from other issues. Alana (Amandla Stenberg) is a classmate who we first meet leading cheers at a pep rally. She’s initially presented as go-getter, with friends and plenty of extracurricular activities, but in a song called “The Anonymous Ones” written just for the movie Alana confesses that she too suffers from anxiety and depression. It is Alana who turns Connor’s death from a sad event into a Cause, and it’s a choice she makes late on that will have unintended consequences that take the movie to its conclusion. Alana organizes a memorial for Connor that is the setting for “You Will Be Found”, the musical’s best-known song and in the film’s telling the moment when Connor is claimed by the Internet as a symbol of how we all must do better by each other. Chbosky cuts to a series of YouTube clips and Instagram posts of strangers thanking Evan for his memorial speech, a choice that unintentionally creates the effect of the movie congratulating itself on its own themes. Meanwhile, Evan is spending more time with Zoe and the Murphys and trying to prevent his single mother (Julianne Moore, who makes the most of limited screen time) from finding out what is really going on.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">The idea of Internet virality as a plot device is a symptom of the way the filmmakers confuse good intentions with profundity. The transformation of Connor into an Instagram sensation feels insulting and reductive and it certainly doesn’t lessen the pain that the Murphy’s feel. Connor is revealed after death to have been a Kurt Vonnegut fan, which feels like a pretty on the nose choice if you’ve ever carried non-school books to school in your backpack. The resolution of </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">Dear Evan Hansen</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;"> isn’t a surprise, but it comes at the expense of any serious interrogation of mental health or indeed its characters’ own behavior.</span></p>Simon Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16558004166061051312noreply@blogger.com0