Mark Ruffalo

POOR THINGS: brazen, dazzling, feminist and very funny

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Photo caption: Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Well, here’s a movie unlike any you have ever seen. Poor Things begins as a Frankenstein movie, and evolves into an outrageously raunchy, funny and thoughtful feminist triumph. The kindly mad scientist Dr. Baxter (Willem Dafoe behind geologic makeup) implants the brain of a fetus into the body of a young woman and creates Bella (Emma Stone). The adult-sized Bella acts like a baby, then a toddler, then a child and so forth as her brain develops.

The key is that Dr. Baxter, confining her to his house, shields the developing Bella from all societal constructs, like common views of morality, manners, religion and gender roles. Bella is driven by the most basic natural human impulses – for pleasure and safety – without ever having learned any inhibitions.

When Bella’s teenage brain rebels, the scientist allows her independence, accepting that she will make mistakes while she learns how to navigate an outside world populated with humans behaving with avarice, lust and ignorance. One such character, hilariously played by Mark Ruffalo, is only too happy to harness Bella’s urges for sexual pleasure to his own benefit. Unfortunately for him, Bella’s brain develops beyond his ability to exploit her.

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Poor Things is based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, so he’s the guy who actually imagined this bizarre and singular story, but director/jokester Yorgos Lanthimos has imbued it with his often zany and transgressive sensibilities. I was a big fan of Lanthimos’ absurdist breakthrough film Dogtooth, but then I didn’t like his acclaimed The Favourite and downright hated The Lobster and The Killing of a Scared Deer. I was encouraged by Glenn Kenney’s New York Times dispatch from Venice about how much he despised previous Lanthimos films and yet still loved and admired Poor Things.

The one thing that I didn’t like in Poor Things was when Lanthimos aped Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam with some overly fanciful sets. Totally unnecessary to the story and a distraction.

Emma Stone’s performance is the year’s most startling. For one thing, she is certainly courageous and a good sport about spending so much of the movie unclothed and simulating sex. But the extraordinary element of her performance is in calibrating the subtle growth in Bella’s development.

Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo are both great, too, and Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth) elevates yet another supporting role.

Poor Things won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, and made my list of the Best Movies of 2023. A feminist message is cleverly embedded in this brazen, dazzling and very funny movie.

Stream of the Week: ZODIAC

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Robert Downey, Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal in ZODIAC

In the 60s, 70s and 80s, we in Northern California suffered more than our share of serial killers, to the point that I couldn’t even remember the Golden State Killer, recently snagged by a much ballyhooed foray into ancestry DNA. But the list topper has to be the Zodiac Killer, a random thrill killer who used the news media to taunt the police and terrify the Bay Area.

Officially, this case has never been solved.  But there’s a pretty convincing theory about the killer’s identity advanced in David Fincher’s 2007 Zodiac.

Fincher spins his story through the separate obsessions of three Zodiac-hunters.  There’s the dogged homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) and the renegade newspaper reporter (Robert Downey, Jr.).  Then there’s the oddball, a newspaper cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal);  unlike the other two, it’s not his job to track down the killer.  He’s a puzzle hobbyist who takes on the killer’s cryptogram and then plunges down the rabbit holes of matching handwriting and the availability of various suspects.

Ruffalo, Gyllenhaal and Downey are all superb.  And John Carroll Lynch takes the creep-o-meter off the scale as the prime suspect.

The supporting cast is brilliant and unusually deep, including Chloe Sevigne, Elias Koteas, Clea DuVall, Donal Logue, Philip Baker Hall, James Le Gros and an unrecognizable Candy Clark.  Brian Cox nails the bluster and wit of that prototypical celebrity attorney, Melvin Belli.

John Carroll Lynch in ZODIAC

Fincher, of course, is the master of the serial killer movie.  Before Zodiac, he made what is probably still the most thrilling serial killer movie, Se7en.   He followed Zodiac with the top-notch  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl.  In Zodiac, Fincher builds the tension, occasionally giving the audience relief with some laughs, especially when Gyllenhaal’s amateur sleuth finds himself in a situation that he thinks is much more dangerous than it really is.

The film is also a dead-on time capsule of the 70s in the San Francisco Bay Area, from the opening shot, a drive through a Vallejo neighborhood on the 4th of July.  The fashions and the music of the period are perfect, especially the Donovan and Santana songs.  This was before law enforcement had DNA to work with – and, in the case of two of the investigating police departments, even a newfangled fax machine.  As the 70s approach the 80s, we even see an early Pong video game.  One thing that I did not personally remember from the era, but have verified really did exist, is the Aqua Velva cocktail.

This is a wonderfully entertaining movie.  Zodiac can be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

another look at SPOTLIGHT

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Mark Ruffalo in SPOTLIGHT
Mark Ruffalo in SPOTLIGHT

I’ve been forced to take another look at Spotlight, a movie that I really liked and admired, but in which I incorrectly found a flaw.  I didn’t like Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the real life Boston Globe reporter Michael Rezendes.  Ruffalo plays Rezendes as high-strung, intensely fidgety and perpetually restless.  I wrote:

“Ruffalo has the most showy part, as a frenetic and volatile reporter, and his scenery-chewing put me off.

But then I played some poker.  It turns out that several guys in my monthly poker game KNOW Michael Rezendes from his time with a Bay Area newspaper.  They report that, in Spotlight, Ruffalo completely captured Rezendes’ characteristics and persona.  So my initial criticism of Ruffalo’s performance for his nervous demeanor was as valid as criticizing Anthony Hopkins for playing Hitler as too evil.

As a result, I’m taking Spotlight up a notch higher in my own rankings, and I’m pretty sure it will end up on my Best of the Year list.

FOXCATCHER: the worst mommie issues since Norman Bates

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Channing Tatum and Steve Carell in FOXCATCHER
Channing Tatum and Steve Carell in FOXCATCHER

It may be set in the macho world of Olympic wrestling, but the docudrama Foxcatcher is really a relationship movie. The relationship triangle is between Olympic gold medal winning brothers Mark and Dave Schultz and the billionaire wrestling enthusiast John E. du Pont.  Mark is uncomplicated and naive and seduced by du Pont’s offer to get him out of his older, more worldly, brother’s shadow.  But du Pont turns out to be one sick puppy, with tragic results.

And the character of John E. du Pont, as brilliantly revealed by Steve Carell, is what makes this story so fascinating.  He’s a zillionaire who is passionate about a relatively low profile Olympic sport and wants to sponsor US wrestlers – that’s all within the normal band of rich guy behavior.  But he also fancies himself a coach, a Vince Lombardi-like Leader of Men, and his wealth enables him to act out his pathetic fantasies.  It’s pretty clear that he’s driven by the worst mommie issues since Norman Bates in Psycho.  (Vanessa Redgrave, in a brilliantly understated performance, plays his perpetually disapproving mother.)

Carell wear a prosthetic nose to resemble the real du Pont (just perform a Google image search for “John E du Pont” to see the real thing).  But Carell knocks this role out of the park with his eyes – cluelessly confident, then raging when denied what he wants, then searching for a glimmer of maternal approval.  Carell deserves – and I’m sure will secure – a Best Actor Oscar nomination.  The guy can do more than comedy, that’s for sure.

All three of the main actors are getting Oscar buzz. Mark Ruffalo, is exceptional as Dave Schultz.  Two of his scenes are extraordinary.  In one, he is listening to Mark’s big plans and we can tell he thinks it’s too good to be true, but he doesn’t want to rain on his brother’s parade.  In the other, he is being prompted to say something that disgusts him in du Pont’s vanity documentary.  The story is centered on Channing Tatum as Mark Schultz.  I generally like Tatum, and he’s OK here, but I couldn’t get past his device of jutting out Mark’s chin to capture the dumb jock look.

Foxcatcher is directed by Bennett Miller, whose two other films were Capote and Moneyball.  He lets us understand Mark Schultz by watching him in his daily routine.  He lets us understand John E. du Pont by contrasting his empty, blathering coachspeak with his posing as someone accomplished in his own right.  Bennett keeps the camera right on his characters and stays out of the way, especially with his effectively spare soundtrack.  It all works very well.

The Kids Are All Right

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Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play a lesbian couple with teen kids.  The kids find their sperm donor sire (Mark Ruffalo), who invites himself into the family.  This is not what the moms had in mind.  Laughs and tears ensue.  It’s a smart dramedy with excellent performances, especially from Bening and Moore.  Bening certainly deserves an Oscar nod.  Mia Wasikowska is great as the daughter; she starred as Alice in Wonderland earlier this year and looks to have a great career ahead.

Because this was the most anticipated indie of the year. I had been expecting something more profound – and it’s not.  It’s a crowd pleaser and a good date movie that’s worth seeing, but not the game changer that I had been expecting.