Month: July 2012

Take This Waltz: a women’s movie, in the best possible sense

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Take This Waltz is a woman’s movie, but in the best possible way.  It’s not a shallow chick flick and there’s no wedding scene.  Instead, it’s an exploration of attraction and fulfillment from a woman’s perspective.

Margot (Michelle Williams) and Lou (Seth Rogen) have been happily married for five years.  They are affectionate and playful with each other, but they have hit a patch where it’s easy for one to kill the other’s buzz and for a romantic moment to misfire.  But Lou is a fundamentally good guy who loves Margot, and he is definitely not driving her into the arms of another man.

But Margot meets Daniel (Luke Kirby) and is fascinated by him. He is completely attentive – not in a chocolates and flowers kind of way, but by observing her deeply and pointing out things about her personality that she hasn’t recognized herself.  Daniel exhilarates her, and she can’t keep herself from engaging with him.

Michelle Williams is once more transcendent.  She is our best actress.  We know that Rogen can play a goodhearted, ambling guy, but when his character is profoundly hurt, he delivers a tour de force.  Sarah Silverman co-stars as Margot’s sister-in-law, a recovering alcoholic whose relapse sparks a fierce moment of truth telling.

Take This Waltz could not have been made by a man.  In particular, there is a remarkable shower scene in which women of a variety of ages and body types have the type of frank conversation that women share with each other.  Although they are all naked and fully visible, the scene is shot as to be devoid of any eroticism or exploitation.  All that is there is the content of the conversation and the female bonding.

33-year-old Canadian actress Sarah Polley wrote and directed;  Polley’s debut feature was Away From Her, my pick for best movie of 2006.

Take This Waltz is a beautifully shot film, but generally not in a showy way.  The film opens with Williams backlit as she prepares a batch of muffins; it’s a simple kitchen scene, but Polley showcases Williams as Margot reflects on her choices and their consequences.

In one extraordinary scene, the camera swirls with Margot and Daniel on an amusement park ride blaring “Video Killed the Radio Star”.  Their faces show fun, then an urge to kiss, then regret that they can’t kiss, then fun again and, finally, disappointment when the music and the ride end way too harshly.

Later, Polley reprises the muffin baking scene, paired with “Video Killed the Radio Star” in an unexpectedly rich way.  After just two features, Sarah Polley is established as one of today’s top filmmakers. Take This Waltz makes my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Andy Griffith: much more than cornpone

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Today we remember a great TV star who left us with one of the great performances in movie history – Andy Griffith.

During every year of the 1960s, Griffith entered the living rooms of most Baby Boomers as Sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and in guest appearances on Mayberry R.F.D.   Younger folks knew him from another ten seasons on television starring as Matlock.

But, in his very first feature film, Griffith shed the likeability and decency that made him a TV megastar and became a searingly unforgettable villain.  In the 1957 Elia Kazan classic A Face in the Crowd, Griffith plays Lonesome Rhodes, a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal).  It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television.  He quickly rises in the infotainment universe until he is an A List celeb and a political power broker. To Jeffries’ horror, Rhodes reveals himself to be an evil, power hungry megalomaniac. Jeffries made him – can she break him?  The seduction of a gullible public by a good timin’ charmer predicts the careers of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, although Lonesome Rhodes is meaner than Reagan and less ideological than Bush.

Amazingly, A Face in the Crowd did not garner even a nomination for an Academy Award for Griffith – or for any of the other filmmakers.  Today, it is well-regarded, having been added to the library of Congress’ preservation list in the US National Film Registry and rating 91% in critical reviews tallied by Rotten Tomatoes.  It is one of the greatest political films.

Thanks, Andy.

Turn Me On, Dammit!: wise, sympathetic and funny

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Alma is pushing 16 and lives in rural Norway, in a tiny community so remote that her mom works in a turnip factory.  Her hormones have been unleashed, and she can think of nothing but sex.  She spends her free time having poignantly innocent (and incomplete) sexual fantasies, masturbating and running up phone sex bills.  Her schoolmates misinterpret her encounter with a boy and ostracize her as the village slut.  So begins this wise, sympathetic and funny Norwegian coming of age comedy.

The humor comes from the film’s knowing view of human nature and, especially, of teenagers.  One of Alma’s pals aspires to move to Texas and end capital punishment by raising awareness.  For another, no amount of lip gloss can be enough.  None of them can figure out how to pilot their budding urges without embarrassing awkwardness.  And all the while, Alma’s beleaguered mom tries to figure out what to do with her.

The laughs are mostly chuckles instead of guffaws.  Turn Me On, Dammit! is only 76 minutes of long, which is just the right length for this story.  It’s a good-hearted and funny movie.

 

To Rome with Love: amusing minor Woody

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The title says it all – To Rome with Love is Woody Allen’s affectionate missive to Rome, more amusing than the average greeting card but no more substantial.  It’s not great Woody, nor is it bad Woody.  But minor Woody (like To Rome with Love) is still funny and smart, even wise sometimes.

Allen cuts between four unrelated and more or less simultaneous stories.  In the first, a comedy of manners, Woody and Judy Davis play an American couple in Rome to meet their daughter’s (Alison Pil) Roman beau and his family.  There’s a culture clash and the impulses of Woody’s character create comic havoc.

In the second (and best) tale, Alec Baldwin plays a man in his fifties who is recalling the Roman adventure of his twenties, this time imparting his life wisdom to his younger self (Jesse Eisenberg).  What mature man wouldn’t want to relive his single days knowing what he now knows about women? In this case, Eisenberg’s girlfriend introduces him to her alluring but surely unreliable gal pal, played by Ellen Page.  Baldwin’s sage is warning him off, but the younger man can’t help but become entranced with a woman who strews relationship carnage behind her.  When Eisenberg thinks that he is seducing Page, Baldwin cynically points out that Page has just popped a Tic-Tac to be ready for a kiss.  When Woody has him “melt” Page’s actress with a line about her being deep enough to play Strindberg’s Miss Julie, we recall that the real Woody has dated the likes of Louise Lasser, Diane Keaton, Stacy Nelkin and Mia Farrow.  It’s good stuff.

The third story, and least successful, is a farce in which a young Italian bridegroom must impress his uptight relations despite some contrived mistaken identity.

The fourth story is an allegory on today’s culture of silly and unearned celebrity.  Roberto Benigni is perfect as an ordinary Giuseppe plucked out of his hum drum routine and made an instant celebrity.  No comic can play befuddlement or nouveau entitlement like Benigni.

To Rome With Love stars the usual splendiferous Woody cast.  Judy Davis, Penelope Cruz, Alison Pil, Alec Baldwin and a host of Italian actors are all just fine, but don’t have to stretch; (this also applies to 2012’s annoyingly ever-present Greta Gerwig).  But Woody himself is outstanding, as are Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg and Roberto Benigni.