HBO

Gideon’s Army: Sisyphus goes to court

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GIDEON'S ARMY

Gideon’s Army, another gem from HBO’s fine summer documentary series, explores the work of public defenders in the South.  By defending indigent criminal defendants, these lawyers preserve the American legal principles of fair trials and the presumption of innocence.   But the game is rigged against them – they are starkly under-resourced and, in the South, face shockingly high bail requirements and extremely severe mandatory sentencing laws.  Each responsible for 120-150 cases at a time, they suffer long hours and low pay, defending the mostly guilty – a recipe for burnout.  One PD even has had one client who planned to murder her in open court.

To tell this Sisyphean story, Gideon’s Army focuses on a handful of public defenders and their cases.  There’s probably more optimism in the film than in real life (which is necessary, because a more realistic depiction would probably be depressingly unwatchable).    It’s an important subject and a good watch.  Gideon’s Army is currently playing on HBO.

The Out List: as clear as clear can be

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Neil Patrick Harris in THE OUT LIST

Another in HBO’s excellent summer documentary series, The Out List is a talking head documentary about the value of being out – both personally valuable and to the community.   There are the celebrity performers that you would expect: Neil Patrick Harris, Cynthia Nixon, Wanda Sykes and Ellen DeGeneres.  But it’s amazing to hear from Lupe Valdez, a lesbian Latina Democrat elected by the fine people of Dallas County, Texas to be their Sheriff.  (There’s also the current favorite in the race for Mayor of New York City Mayor, Christine C. Quinn.)   The most compelling stories come from drag queen promoter Lady Bunny, personal finance guru Suze Orman and transgender writer Janet Mock.

Their stories represent the range of all human stories – some funny, some touching and some both at the same time.  Like in every group of humanity, there is some edginess and not everybody is trying to be appealing.  But I would doubt that anyone could watch The Out List and still feel justified to be a hater.  The Out List is not just for those interested in LGBT issues, but for everyone with an interest in people, society and the human experience.

Love, Marilyn: a closer look at Marilyn Monroe

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LOVE, MARILYN

The insightful HBO documentary Love, Marilyn uses Marilyn Monroe’s own words and those of people in her life to give us a candid yet sympathetic inside look at Marilyn.  The core of the film is from a recently discovered trove of Marilyn’s own letters and journals.

Her friends Susan Strasberg and Amy Greene appear in this film. Others speak from file footage, including husband Arthur Miller, acting coach Lee Strasberg and her first Hollywood agent.  For the rest, especially Marilyn herself (and biographer Norman Mailer, friends Elia Kazan and Truman Capote and frustrated director Billy Wilder), an all-star cast of readers bring their words to life. 

The readers include four Oscar winners and six Oscar nominees.  The most effective are Marisa Tomei reading Marilyn’s earnest efforts at educational self-improvement and Lili Taylor reading Marilyn’s struggles with a recipe she trying to put on the table for traditional hubby Joe DiMaggio. Everybody else (especially Evan Rachel Wood and Viola Davis) is really good, too, except for Ben Foster, who is mannered and overtheatrical when reading Mailer’s words.

There are some rel nuggets here. We see the book on human body movement that Marilyn used to create her signature jiggling walk.  We hear Kazan’s description of how Arthur Miller made a good first impression by refusing to let Marilyn take a cab to a party.  We understand how she flipped potential career-killing nude photo scandal into a huge publicity boost and better film roles.  We even hear Amy Greene relate Marilyn’s assessment of DiMaggio’s most intimate skill.

Entertaining and sometimes moving, Love, Marilyn is a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of Marilyn, the person, the actress and the phenomenon.

June movie doldrums

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FAST & FURIOUS 6

Yeeesh.  The pickings are slim in theaters.  For example, take this one local multiplex that usually offers some appealing films for adults.  This week, it is devoting all sixteen of its screens to the 2D and 3D versions of After Earth, Epic, The Hangover: Part III, The Great Gatsby, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast & Furious 6, Now You See Me and Iron Man 3.  I’ve seen the flashy, hollow and lame Gatsby.

I don’t want to see any of the others.  Fast and Furious 6 is supposed to be pretty entertaining, but it’s just not my kind of movie.  Same with the fantasy Epic.  Now You See Me is getting critically trashed, but nothing like After Earth and The Hangover: Part III, which are battling for recognition as the year’s very worst film.

The indie that is opening widely this weekend is Frances Ha, but after Greenberg and Damsels in Distress, I am never sitting through another annoying Greta Gerwig movie.

Alas, Sarah Polley’s superb documentary Stories We Tell is gone after a mere two week run in local theaters. Thank God for The East.

So, what is a movie junkie to do?  Fortunately, there are some fine choices on TV, especially with TCM’s June noir festival and HBO’s upcoming summer documentary series (including Casting By), plus some promising films coming out on VOD.

And we can wait for some good stuff later this summer, among them the indie heartbreaker Fruitvale Station, the Brie Larson star-maker Short Term 12, Pedro Almodovar’s I’m So Excited, and Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine.  I’ve already seen the brilliant teen coming of age film The Spectacular Now, which is on my Best Movies of 2013 – So Far.  You can read descriptions and watch trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Behind the Candelabra: when sugar daddy is a queen

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BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

HBO’s Behind the Candelabra is the well-worn story of a rich older guy and his pretty young thing – except the rich older guy is Liberace.  Michael Douglas (of all people) completely inhabits the character of Liberace, nailing his every mannerism of speech and gesture and delving deeply into his ego, neediness, self-absorption and genius for showmanship.  Matt Damon (of all people) enthusiastically and skillfully plays Scott Thorson, Liberace’s boy toy of the late 1970s.

We have all seen the arc of this story before, with the relationship doomed by the power imbalance between the lovers.   Of course, this is the story of a celebrity who was tightly closeted while he was intentionally projecting the persona of a flaming queen.  And because Liberace was the Emperor of Excess, we don’t get often a chance to witness such extravagance (except for historical movies about Louis’ Versailles, Cleopatra’s Egypt, etc.).

Steven Soderbergh directed Behind the Candelabra in the smart and economical way he uses to elevate genre films like Side Effects, Haywire and Magic Mike.  Rob Lowe is hilarious as a 70s Dr. Feelgood plastic surgeon to the stars.

There’s not that much to Behind the Candelabra, but it is entertaining.  If you were missing Liberace, Michael Douglas definitely brings him back to life. 

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God: the blame climbs until it cannot climb higher

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In Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, documentarian Alex Gibney explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top).  The film begins with the horrifying and disgusting abuse of the most vulnerable – children at a residential Catholic school for the deaf whose devout parents cannot communicate with them through American Sign Language.

At first it seems like another story of Church leaders suppressing the truth to avoid bad publicity and lawsuits – and it is for the first few years.  But then we learn about an American bishop trying to remove a pedophile from ministry, but being thwarted by superiors across the Atlantic.  As Gibney pulls apart the onion, the focus of the story climbs the Church hierarchy.  The brilliant and prolific Gibney’s work includes Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Casino Jack and the United States of Money and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side.

I also recommend another documentary on this difficult subject, Deliver Us From Evil, which made my top ten list for 2006.  That is the story of a serial pedophile priest moved from parish to parish in the Diocese of Stockton, California.  This has become, sadly, a familiar narrative, but what distinguishes Deliver Us From Evil is its breathtaking interviews with the pedophile himself.

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is now playing on HBO.

 

Ethel: an interesting woman who has lived an extraordinary life

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Ethel is a fine HBO documentary on the life of Ethel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s widow.   The filmmaker is Ethel’s daughter Rory, her 11th child, born six months after RFK’s assassination.  Rory Kennedy had the advantage of access to a trove of photos and home movies, along with on-camera interviews with her mother and her siblings.  The result is an affectionate and insightful portrait of Ethel, with the view of RFK’s career by his own family.  We are surprised to learn that Ethel was the most competitive member of the family.  We also learn of her impish liveliness, such as dropping “Get a new Director” into the FBI’s basement suggestion box.  Ethel is an interesting woman who has lived an extraordinary life.  Anyone interested in 20th Century American history should see Ethel.

Ethel debuted last week and is being rebroadcast on HBO.

The Girl: just dreary

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Sienna Miller and Toby Jones in THE GIRL

HBO’s The Girl is the story of a beautiful young woman being sexually harassed by the much older and very unattractive male boss who is responsible for her career success.  In this case, the woman is Tippi Hedren, the boss is Alfred Hitchcock, and they’re making The Birds and Marnie.  Unfortunately, the movie just grinds along as Hitchcock becomes more twisted and Hedren becomes more wearily traumatized.  The story is based on a book by Donald Spoto, whose version of Hitchcock is not shared by other film historians.

The Girl wastes some excellent acting. Toby Jones and Sienna Miller are good as Hitchcock and Hedren.  As Hitchcock’s wife and secretary,  Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake) and Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) are splendid.  The Girl, which is just a dreary movie-watching experience, is now playing on HBO.

Hemingway & Gellhorn: helluva story in a flawed epic

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That Martha Gellhorn was Ernest Hemingway’s third wife only begins to tell the story.   Gellhorn’s work as a war correspondent eclipsed Hemingway’s.  She was also the only one of Hemingway’s wives to kick his butt to the curb.  (A year ago, I had a drink at the Key West bar where Gellhorn, according to local lore,  had paid the bartender $20 to introduce her to Hemingway.)  In HBO’s  Hemingway & Gellhorn, Gellhorn is played by Nicole Kidman and Hemingway by Clive Owen.

Gellhorn once said, “We were good in war. When there was no war, we made our own.”  She’s a prototype of a liberated woman and he’s an unreconstructed alpha male preoccupied with machismo, so things are not destined to end well.  (Thought:  maybe if Hemingway hadn’t thought so much about masculinity, his own masculinity would have been less selfish.)

Theirs is a helluva story, and the movie is an epic.  As the story sweeps across the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet invasion of Finland,  the liberation of China and D-Day, the  2 1/2 hours goes pretty quickly.

Hemingway & Gellhorn is directed by the great Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff,  Invasion of the Body Snatchers,  The Unbearable Lightness of Being). He keeps Hemingway & Gellhorn shifting from color to sepia to black and white, seamlessly mixing in actual historical footage and inserting the characters Zelig-like into the documentary stock.

Kaufman lives in the Bay Area and shot Hemingway & Gellhorn’s Key West, Havana, Carnegie Hall, Finland, Germany and Spain scenes in San Francisco, San Rafael, Livermore and Oakland.

I enjoyed seeing it once, but it’s definitely not a “can’t miss”, and I’m having difficulty putting my finger on why that is.  My guess is that the screenplay lingers on the Spanish Civil War a little too long and then brings on Hemingway’s dissolute period too abruptly.  The acting and the direction are just fine.

Coming up on HBO: Hemingway and Gellhorn

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HBO has released the trailer for Hemingway & Gellhorn, which will broadcast beginning on May 28.  It’s the story of Ernest Hemingway and his third wife Martha Gellhorn.   Gellhorn was a leggy blonde whose work as a war correspondent leading up to and during World War II eclipsed Hemingway’s.  She was also the only one of Hemingway’s wives to kick his butt to the curb.  Gellhorn is played by the leggy Nicole Kidman.  Clive Owen is Hemingway.

(A year ago, I had a drink at the Key West bar where Gellhorn had paid the bartender $20 to introduce her to Hemingway; I understand that the movie may move the bar to Bimini).

Hemingway & Gellhorn is directed by Philip Kaufman, one of the great American directors.  His masterpiece is The Right Stuff, the story of the Mercury astronauts.  But his remake of the sci fi horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers is also excellent.  And I just rewatched his art film about love and sex set in the Prague Spring of 1968 and its aftermath, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and it still stands up.  That’s three top-rate movies in three different genres, an accomplishment few filmmakers can claim.

Kaufman lives in the Bay Area and shot Hemingway & Gellhorn’s Key West, Havana, Carnegie Hall, Finland, Germany and Spain scenes in San Francisco, San Rafael, Livermore and Oakland. Incidentally, earlier this year, Kaufman was in the house at Noir City this year for Bad Girl Night.

I’ve added Hemingway & Gellhorn to Movies I’m Looking Forward To.