historical

THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER: a blowhard plans a stunt, gets an education

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Photo caption: Zak Efron and Russell Crowe in THE GREATEST BEER RUB EVER. Courtesy of AppleTV.

In the surprisingly thoughtful anti-war comedy The Greatest Beer Run Ever, an ignorant blowhard’s neighborhood pals are serving in the Vietnam War, and he thinks he can uplift their spirits by bringing them beer. It’s a plot too idiotic to be credible – except that it really happened.

Our protagonist is Chickie (Zak Efron), a slacker ne’er-do-well (although we didn’t call them slackers back then) who has the intellectual curiosity of a stump. Offended by non-rah rah media coverage of the Vietnam War and by the burgeoning anti-war protest movement, he thinks a simplistic gesture is in order. As a merchant marine, he actually has means to GET TO Vietnam – by signing on a freighter. So, off he goes, with a duffel packed with cans of beer.

Once he is on the ground in country, of course, he sees that press is accurately reporting that the war is not going well and that the LBJ Administration and the military commanders are indeed lying about it. He learns that not all Vietnamese welcome Americans. And that war is very, very dangerous and very, very scary. Nor do his pals all welcome his crazy stunt.

A lesser director could have made this film as an empty-headed Bro comedy, only about the stunt itself. But Peter Farrelly, as he did with the Oscar-winning Green Book, has made an entertaining movie about a serious human experience.

And give Farrelly credit for something rarely seen in a Hollywood Vietnam War movie – Vietnamese characters are more than cardboard cutouts. Chickie has interactions with a goofy traffic cop, a savvy bartender and, most stirringly, a peasant mother and her young daughter in the countryside. The carnage and grieving among Vietnamese of all persuasions is depicted, too.

That being said, The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a very funny film, with most of the humor stemming from Chickie’s dunderheadness and the military characters all assuming that an American civilian asking for a helicopter ride into a combat zone MUST be CIA.

The very underrated Zak Efron carries the movie as Chickie gets force fed a life-changing reality check. Russell Crowe is excellent as a world-weary war correspondent. Bill Murray, without a single wink at the camera, is perfect as the lads’ bar owner, a WW II vet who just doesn’t get it. Matt Cook is very funny as a junior Army officer who idolizes the CIA.

Make sure you watch the closing credits.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is streaming on AppleTV.

THE AUTOMAT: nickels in, memories out

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Photo caption: THE AUTOMAT: Actress Audrey Hepburn photographed by Howard Fried in New York City as part of a multi-day photo shoot for Esquire magazine, 1951. Courtesy of A Slice of Pie Productions.

The charming documentary The Automat traces the fascinating seven-decade run of the marble-floored food palaces where one could put nickels in a slot and be rewarded with a meal. The story of the automat is essentially a business history of Holt & Hardart, which pioneered the automat concept in Philadelphia and New York, and dominated the market for years, at one point the nation’s largest restaurant chain. Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Colin Powell speak to how the automat touched their lives, and Starbucks founder Howard Schulz credits the automat as his inspiration; (Mel Brooks even wrote and performed a song for the film).

The Automat is the first film for director Lisa Hurvitz, who spent eight years on the project. Along with the celebrities, Hurvitz has sourced her film with longtime Holt & Hardart employees, members of the founding families and even the guy who titled his Ph.D. dissertation, Trapped Behind the Automat: Technological Systems and the American Restaurant, 1902-1991.

The Automat is filled with unexpected nuggets, including:

  • The New Orleans origin of Holt & Hardart’s signature coffee.
  • The astounding percentage of the NYC and Philly populations once fed by Holt & Hardart.
  • The devastating impact of a nickel price increase.

Above all, The Automat features the automat as a democratic institution – a place and an activity enjoyed by a diverse collection of customers from all classes, genders and races.

The Automat gives voice to those nostalgic about the automat, but it is clear-eyed about why it didn’t survive – a business model based on volume when the volume of customers moved to the suburbs, along with social changes in post-war America.

The Automat had a blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical run in March, but now you can stream it from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and KinoNow.

THE AUTOMAT: nickels in, memories out

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Photo caption: THE AUTOMAT: Actress Audrey Hepburn photographed by Howard Fried in New York City as part of a multi-day photo shoot for Esquire magazine, 1951. Courtesy of A Slice of Pie Productions.

The charming documentary The Automat traces the fascinating seven-decade run of the marble-floored food palaces where one could put nickels in a slot and be rewarded with a meal. The story of the automat is essentially a business history of Holt & Hardart, which pioneered the automat concept in Philadelphia and New York, and dominated the market for years, at one point the nation’s largest restaurant chain. Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Colin Powell speak to how the automat touched their lives, and Starbucks founder Howard Schulz credits the automat as his inspiration; (Mel Brooks even wrote and performed a song for the film).

The Automat is the first film for director Lisa Hurvitz, who spent eight years on the project. Along with the celebrities, Hurvitz has sourced her film with longtime Holt & Hardart employees, members of the founding families and even the guy who titled his Ph.D. dissertation, Trapped Behind the Automat: Technological Systems and the American Restaurant, 1902-1991.

The Automat is filled with unexpected nuggets, including:

  • The New Orleans origin of Holt & Hardart’s signature coffee.
  • The astounding percentage of the NYC and Philly populations once fed by Holt & Hardart.
  • The devastating impact of a nickel price increase.

Above all, The Automat features the automat as a democratic institution – a place and an activity enjoyed by a diverse collection of customers from all classes, genders and races.

The Automat gives voice to those nostalgic about the automat, but it is clear-eyed about why it didn’t survive – a business model based on volume when the volume of customers moved to the suburbs, along with social changes in post-war America.

The Automat is opening this weekend at the Vogue in San Francisco, the Rafael in San Rafael, the Landmark Albany Twin in Albany and the Summerfield in Santa Rosa.

THE LAST DUEL: power, gender, superstition and knights in armor

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Photo caption: Adam Driver and Matt Damon in THE LAST DUEL. Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

Based on accounts of the last medieval trial by combat, The Last Duel is both a thriller and a thinker. Director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, The Martian) brings alive medieval superstition and savagery, and embeds an exploration of the power dynamics within feudal society, especially for women.

The setting is France in the 1380s. Jean (Matt Damon) and Jacques (Adam Driver) have been born into the nobility as squires, which means that they serve as mounted, armored warriors and can own land and castles supported by their very own peasants. Jean is later promoted to the higher title of knight. That puts Jean and Jacques in the elite one percent, but they are totally subservient to the region’s count, Pierre (Ben Affleck), who in turn owes the same absolute fealty to King Charles VI (check him out on Wikipedia).

Jean is an impressive fighter, but not very strategic. He’s a dunderhead, devoid of any social or political skill. Jean has married the beautiful and intelligent aristocrat Marguerite (Jodie Comer), whose father had fallen out of royal favor. Try as she might, Marguerite is only moderately successful in helping Jean from bulling his way through life’s china shop.

Jacques is a canny smoothy, with a rare business sense and charm that melts the ladies. Those financial smarts, along with his appreciation for culture, makes Jacques a protege of Pierre, the count. Pierre favors favors Jacques over Jean, who resents it.

Finding Marguerite alone at home, Jacques rapes her. When Marguerite accuses him, Jacques denies it. Jean presses the case, which culminates in the film’s titular trial by combat.

Ridley Scott tells the story first from Jean’s point of view, then from Jacques’ and, finally, from Margeurite’s. Unlike in Rashomon, the three versions of what occurred don’t diverge much from each other. Instead, we see how Jean and Jacques, who both adhere to the code of their class, see themselves. Jean really thinks that he is a good husband. Jacques, although he has forced himself on Marguerite without her consent, really doesn’t think he has committed rape. (They have their Code of Chivalry, but it sure isn’t very chivalrous.)

Jodie Comer in THE LAST DUEL. Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

We learn that, in 1300s European legality, rape wasn’t even a violent crime against the woman, but was a property crime against her guardian; (she was essentially the property of her father or husband). Ridley Scott slyly emphasizes this when he shows Jean’s reaction to an equine assault on his favorite breeding mare.

Margeurite’s insistence on bringing the rape charge publicly is a major problem for both Jean and for Jacques. It’s also an annoying inconvenience for the count, the king and the Church, who would sweep it under the rug. Jean thinks that he cleverly found away around the cover-up, but he overlooks one disturbing factor – if he dies in the duel, Marguerite will be immediately burned at the stake.

The performances by Comer, Driver, Damon and Affleck are all excellent. Harriet Walker is very good as Jean’s mother, a role which seems at first like a stereotypical stereotypical shrewish mother-in-law, until we learn of her own complicated journey navigating a world where men are unaccountable.

Scott shows us some savage medieval battles to prepare us for the final duel. Warfare at the time was desperate and brutal hand-to-hand butchery, within a sword’s length, like fighting in a phone booth. To stab, slash or impale an opponent, a combatant needed to find an unarmored body part. The jousting in The Last Duel seems especially authentic.

The Wife didn’t want to accompany me when I described it as the “medieval rape movie”; I should have said it’s the “trial by combat movie”.

I was late to The Last Duel, catching up with it several months after its summer 2021 release. Due to the distributor’s blustery publicity campaign, I had underestimated it; it’s one of the Best Movies of 2021, The Last Duel is streaming from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, HBO and redbox.

THE PACT: a pawn in someone else’s story

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Simon Bennebjerg and Birthe Neumann in THE PACT. Photo by Rolf Konow courtesy of Juno Films.

The Pact is the story of a real life Faustian bargain. In 1948, Karen Blixen (Birthe Neumann) was the rock star of Danish literature, having written Out of Africa under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen was also a baroness, and from her seafront country estate near Copenhagen, she presided over a salon of leading Danish intellectuals and artists.

Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg) was an unknown poet whose promise intrigued Blixen. Blixen offered Bjørnvig the titular pact – she would help him achieve his artistic potential, but only if he followed all her guidance. She is transparent – she only cares about elevating his writing, not about his family or his personal happiness. Driven by ambition and entranced by her magnetism, he takes the deal.

She immediately finds him a financial patron and moves him into her estate to write without the distractions of his wife and their adorable but chirpy toddler. His writing starts to blossom, but then her direction becomes more and more intrusive. Soon she dictates his daily schedule, where he lives and even who he sleeps with.

She isolates him from his family, and he doesn’t know what, if any, power he still has.

Does a real life Faustian bargain sound farfetched? This really happened. Director Bille August (the Oscar winning Pelle the Conqueror) adapted the screenplay from Bjørnvig’s memoir.

Simon Bennebjerg and Birthe Neumann in THE PACT. Photo by Rolf Konow courtesy of Juno Films.

Although the story is told from Bjørnvig’s point of view, it’s really about what makes the singular Blixen tick. The Pact works because of Birthe Neumann’s exquisite performance as a woman who masks her neediness with a steely willfulness. Neumann had a key role in the 1998 classic Festen.

Tellingly, Blixen says, “It’s you who need to understand that we’re all playing a role in the story.” Not A story, but THE story. Blixen’s story.

Bennebjerg ably portrays Bjørnvig, a character difficult to sympathize with because of his submissiveness and his willingness to expose others to Blixen’s cruelty.

Naturally, Bjørnvig’s wife finds herself whipsawed as he follows Blixen’s whims. Nanna Skaarup Voss is very good in a role that seems doomed to passive victimhood until she delivers a definitive insight near the end of the story.

Asta Kamma August is also excellent as a sweet innocent whose life is upended by Blixen’s manipulation.

Throughout the film, other characters address Bjørnvig as magister, an unfamiliar word for me. Magister is a medieval term for scholar still in use in 1940s Denmark.

The Pact is opening in theaters, including at the Bay Area’s Opera Plaza and the Rafael on February 18.

DANCE OF THE 41: overreaching while gay

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In the rapturously filmed period drama Dance of the 41, Mexican politician Ignacio de la Torre (Alfonso Herrera), a political Icarus if there ever were one, marries President Porfirio Diaz’s daughter Amada (Mabel Cadena). It’s the turn of the 20th Century, and de la Torre starts scheming with breathtaking recklessness.

The risk comes from the fact that de la Torre is in a secret club of gay aristocrats, closeted in plain sight in the most macho and homophobic mainstream culture. He has married Amada so she can be his beard, but his new bride, unaware of her new hubbie’s secret, was expecting her own sexual awakening. Instead, he spurns her for a torrid love affair with Evaristo (Emiliano Zurita).

De la Torre had married the boss’ daughter in a bid for advancement, expecting her to submit to being his pawn. But, hurt at not being desired, she calls on her dad’s capacity as an enforcer. It all culminates in a formal queer bacchanal that turns heartbreaking.

Dance of the 41 is a fictionalized (but very plausible) telling of a historical event, the salacious scandal called the “Dance of the Forty-One” or the “Ball of the Forty-One”.

I found the century-old story of Mexican LGBTQ history and the forbidden love between the men to be less interesting than the story between the husband and the young bride he had wildly underestimated. He is trapped because he’s gay and ambitious, but he is also a dick who is relying on male privilege to dismiss a young woman’s needs and aspirations and to cynically use her.

Director David Pablos and cinematographer Carolina Costa have created a visually extravagant film that makes use of its architecturally stunning locations. Much of Dance of the 41 takes place in gorgeously lit – candlelight.

I screened Dance of the 41 for the 2021 SFFILM. It is now streaming on Netflix.

Coming up on TV – the hard to find GEORGE WALLACE

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Photo caption: Gary Sinise in WALLACE.

On January 12, Turner Classic Movies brings us George Wallace, with its brilliant performance by Gary Sinise. Sinise captures the character of the driven, morally flexible Alabama Governor, whose political opportunism took him to personify the defense of racial segregation in America. His wild personal journey included presidential campaigns, becoming paralyzed by an assassination attempt, and mellowing in a redemption-seeking epilogue.

Originally a 1997 TV miniseries, this three-hour work was based on the fine Marshall Frady biography and was directed by the legendary John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May).

Mare Winningham plays Wallace’s first wife Lurleen, who succeeded him as Alabama’s Governor, and Angelina Joie plays his second wife Cornelia. Sinise, Winningham and Frankenheimer all won Primetime Emmys.

George Wallace is not available to stream and is rarely broadcast, so set your DVR.

Angelina Joie and Gary Sinise in GEORGE WALLACE

BELFAST: a child’s point of view is universal

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Photo caption: Jude Hill in BELFAST. Courtesy of Focus Features.

In Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s superb coming of age story, we see Northern Ireland’s Troubles through the eyes of eight-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill). His dad (Jamie Dornan) works for two weeks at a time in Britain, so his mom (Caitriona Balfe) is raising Buddy and his older brother by herself most of the time. The family is under severe financial pressure. They are a nominally Protestant family living in a working class Belfast neighborhood, integrated with Catholics.

The movie’s opening is set on August 15, 1969, the day the Troubles intrude on Buddy’s neighborhood. Branagh perfectly captures the moment – the very second – that external events upend Buddy’s life. Overnight, his block has barbed wire at one end and a barricade at the other. Catholics are pressured to move out in a measure of ethnic cleansing.

Things get real, and the dad has the chance to move the family to Britain. There are factors that make uprooting the family a complicated decision. The audience is thinking, get the HELL out of THERE. After all, the family doesn’t know what we know – that the Troubles will persist for 29 more years.

This is autobiographical, the story of Kenneth Branagh’s own family. They escaped the Troubles by moving to from Belfast to Britain in 1970 when Branagh was Buddy’s age.

Although this story is about a specific child, telling it from the child’s point of view makes it universal. Children need security, but adult grievances, however valid, are prioritized over the security of children. The sectarians may think that they are targeting Catholics or Protestants, but the impact of their violence is to destroy safety, civility and predictability for all.

Judi Dench, Jude Hill and Ciarán Hinds in BELFAST. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The performances are impeccable, especially those by Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds as Buddy’s grandparents. (The grandfather has the best line in the film.)

And where did Branagh find this kid actor Jude Hill? He is completely believable in every scene – and he might just be the most adorable child on the planet.

Belfast is a family drama, but the family is Irish, so there’s plenty of humor.

Branagh has shot Belfast in a glorious black-and-white which amplifies both the historical period and the grittiness of the setting. The use of Belfast’s own Van Morrison on the soundtrack is perfect.

Belfast is justifiably one of the Oscar favorites. If you have heartstrings, they are gonna get pulled.

AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

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AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy traces the life and times of Norman Mineta, who amassed a startling number of “firsts” and other distinctions in America history:

  • The first Asian-American mayor of a major U.S. city.
  • The first Japanese American member of Congress elected from the 48 Continental states.
  • A Cabinet Secretary in both Democratic and Republican Administrations.
  • The nation’s longest-serving Transportation Secretary.

The achievements were even more remarkable given that, as a child, Mineta was imprisoned by his own US government in a WW II internment camp. And given that his political base had, during his career, an Asian-American population of far less than ten percent.

This didn’t happen by accident.  Norm Mineta is a driven man. At the same time, his ambition and will is tempered by his buoyancy and ebullience.

Documentarians Dianne Fukumi (director and co-producer) and Debra Nakatomi (co-producer) embed the story of Japanese-Americans, from immigration through internment, and on to reparations.

AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

The defining event for Mineta’s Nissei generation was the WW II internment of 120,000 Americans by their own government. The central thread in the Mineta story is that the injustice of Mineta’s internment informed George W. Bush’s resistance to treating American Muslims that same way in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Mineta being sworn into the US House of Representatives by House Speaker Carl Albert in AN AMERICAN STORY: NORMAN MINETA AND HIS LEGACY

The film’s most delightful moment may be the octogenarian Mineta sunnily taking his luggage through security at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport.

[Full disclosure: I have known Norm since I served in his 1974 primary campaign and interned for him on Capitol Hill in the mid 70s. I saw An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy at an October 2018 special screening with Norm Mineta, Fukumi and Nakatomi in San Jose.]

Norm Mineta is turning 90 years old this month, so, to celebrate his birthday, the film is streaming it for free during November at An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy.

DE GAULLE: a man and his moment

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Photo caption: Lambert Wilson in DE GAULLE. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

De Gaulle takes us to a pivotal moment in French WW II history that is no longer well-understood by most Americans. The French Army has collapsed in the face of German invasion, and the fall of Paris is both inevitable and imminent. The French government is considering asking Hitler for an armistice, seeking to end the slaughter and to repatriate its 2 million POWs.  

Charles de Gaulle (Lambert Wilson) is also losing his battle to convince the government not to surrender, but to keep fighting the Nazis from outside France itself, based in France’s colonial possessions. In this moment of catastrophe, de Gaulle is virtually alone in imagining that Great Britain, joined by America’s industrial might, could someday liberate France. It doesn’t help that, for the authoritarian and anti-Semitic French military establishment, Hitler isn’t so abhorrent.

Writer-director Gabriel Le Bomin has focused De Gaulle on only two weeks of WW II history – between June 5 and June 19, 1940. Every minute counts – and the clock is ticking.

It’s a similar approach as in Darkest Hour, where all of the story takes place in May, 1940, as Churchill is facing England’s moment of existential peril. In fact, the Darkest Hour (Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and HBO Max) would complete an excellent double feature with De Gaulle.

The tension is enhanced with a parallel thread – the political crisis has isolated de Gaulle in London while his family, completely out of communication, is scrambling to escape the Nazis in France.

Aloof, shy and an egomaniac, de Gaulle was easily dislikeable. Le Bomin has humanized him by including his most relatable attributes – his relationship with his wife and kids, especially his daughter with Down’s Syndrome.

Le Bomin and Wilson had to meet high expectations on the portrayal of an icon. After all, De Gaulle’s appearance, speech and mannerisms are as familiar to a French audience as those of Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, Jacqueline Kennedy and Muhammad Ali are to an American one.

I wouldn’t have immediately thought of Lambert Wilson for the role. Wilson, known for the Matrix franchise, is handsome and physically graceful. But, for starters, Wilson is tall enough, at 6-2, to play de Gaulle, just under 6-5. Prosthetics and makeup completed the physical transformation. Wilson’s acting craft took him the rest of the way – capturing de Gaulle’s stiffness and the physical awkwardness that some very tall people have.

I streamed De Gaulle on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.