Movies

Stream of the Week: LEAVE NO TRACE – his demons, not hers

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Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Here is the best movie of 2018 – the unforgettable coming of age film Leave No Trace. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie star as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting.  Leave No Trace is writer-director Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of 2010).

When we meet Will (Foster) and his daughter Tom (McKenzie), they are engaging in extremely low impact camping in a fern-rich Oregon forest, to the point of solar cooking foraged mushrooms on a mylar sheet.  Dad and daughter are both survivalist experts and work together as a highly trained team.  They have the fond, respectful, communicative relationship that most families with teen children aspire to but can only fantasize about.

But Will and Tom are not on vacation. They do not consider themselves homeless, because the forest is their home.   However, their lifestyle just isn’t consistent with contemporary thinking about child welfare.  Furthermore, living in a public park is illegal,and when they are discovered, social service authorities are understandably and justifiably concerned.  Investigators find Tom to be medically and emotionally healthy, Will to be free of drug or alcohol abuse, and there has been no child abuse or neglect – other than having ones child living outdoors and not going to school.

Will is a veteran who has been scarred by his military service, and he is clearly anti-social.  But Will is not your stereotypical PTSD-addled movie vet.  He is a clear thinker.  His behavior, which can range to the bizarre, is not impulsive but deliberate.

Fortunately, the Oregon, social services authorities are remarkably open-minded, and they place Will and Tom in a remote rural setting in their own house at a rural Christmas Tree farm.  Will can work on the farm, Tom can go the school, and there’s a liberal non-denominational church filled with kind folks.  It’s a massive accommodation to Will and Tom’s lifestyle, only with the additions of living under a roof and public education.

Tom blossoms with social contact, and particularly enjoys the local 4-H and one kid’s pet rabbit named Chainsaw.  Tom begins to understand how much she needs human connection – and not just with her dad,

But Will can’t help but feel defeated.  When Tom suggests that they try to adapt to their new setting, he scowls, “We’re wearing their clothes, we’re living in their house, we’re eating their food, we’re doing their work. We’ve adapted”.  She argues, “Did you try?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “Dad, this isn’t how it used to be”.

Ben is so damaged that his parenting can nurture Tom for only so long.  Leave No Trace is about how he has raised her to this point.  Has he imparted his demons to her?  Has he helped her become strong and grounded enough to grow without him?

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer Thomasin McKenzie.  McKenzie is riveting as she authentically takes Tom from a parented child to an independent young woman.  At the San Francisco International Film Festival screening, producer and co-writer Anne Rosellini said “there’s an ‘otherness’ to McKenzie,” who had “tremendous insight into the character”.  Rosellini added that McKenzie and Ben Foster bonded before the shoot, as they rehearsed with a survivalist coach.

Foster is no stranger to troubled characters (The Messenger, Rampart, Hell or High Water).  Here, he delivers a remarkably intense and contained performance as a man who will not allow himself an outburst no matter what turbulence roils inside him.  Rosellini noted that “Will is elusive, a mysterious character to everybody”.  It’s a performance that will be in the conversation about Oscar nominations.  Actors Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican and Isaiah Stone (the little brother in Winter’s Bone) are also excellent in smaller roles.

Leave No Trace is thoughtful and emotionally powerful.  Superbly well-crafted and impeccably acted, it’s a Must See. Leave No Trace is available for streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

DVD/Stream of the Week: TAKE ME TO THE RIVER – fresh, unpredictable and gripping

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TAKE ME TO THE RIVER
TAKE ME TO THE RIVER

San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me to the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged.

A California couple and their teenage son drive to an annual family reunion in rural Nebraska. The son is gay and out, but that’s not going to be the drama here. There’s almost immediately an unexpected development that rocks the extended family. Then we settle in for over an hour of simmering unease and tense dread until something REALLY disturbing happens.

The story may be told from the teen’s point of view, but the real story turns out to be in the highly-charged relationship between his mom (Robin Weigert) and her brother Keith (Josh Hamilton). Keith, the boy’s uncle, is not a redneck rube, but very angry and very manipulative. By the end of the movie, we understand why. It’s an excellent performance by Hamilton, and whenever he’s on-screen, we fidget and wait for him to explode.

Weigert (Calamity Jane in Deadwood, Ally in Sons of Anarchy) is also excellent – her character is a Los Angeles physician who hasn’t lost the Nebraskan gift of never referring to the elephant in the room, no matter how huge. She embraces the Nebraskan imperative of avoidance with persistent geniality, covering up any unpleasantness with with niceties. My family is from rural Nebraska, which I have visited many times, so I know of what I speak.

The child actress Ursula Parker (the youngest daughter in Louie) is also especially outstanding here. Take Me to the River contains some sexual behavior by a child which is very uncomfortable for the audience, but central to the story and non-exploitative. Here are some notes from an interview with Sobel.

Take Me to the River played at Sundance in 2015 and was finally released in the Bay Area in Spring 2016. Before its release, I viewed it at the Cinema Cub Silicon Valley.  It made my Best Movies of 2016. You can stream Take Me to the River on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play or rent the DVD from Netflix.

GASLIGHT, GASLIGHT and gaslighting in domestic violence

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Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in GASLIGHT

On September 10, Turner Classic Movies will air Gaslight (1944), a classic suspense thriller that still has a lot to say about domestic violence and abusive power in relationships.

In Gaslight, an evil husband (Charles Boyer) isolates his wife (Ingrid Bergman) and uses manipulation to convince her that she’s going crazy. He’s seeking to conceal his crimes and gain unfettered control of her house and fortune. He’s also dallying with the maid (a nubile 18-year-old Angela Lansbury). Fortunately, the wife’s longtime admirer (Joseph Cotton) works for Scotland Yard and starts to investigate…

Domestic Violence is abuse of a partner, generally characterized by asserting power and control over the partner. Not all domestic violence is physical, and this phenomenon of abuse by manipulation takes it name – gaslighting – from this movie.

The Film Noir Foundation recently screened Gaslight to an audience of domestic violence survivors and support professionals. I recommend Noir Talk, the Film Noir Foundation’s excellent podcast on iTunes. Search for Gaslight and domestic violence in Episode 10. Here’s one of the tidbits from the podcast: Ingrid Bergman thought she was too vibrant and healthy-looking for the part; but that works to show how the manipulation can work on a woman who doesn’t look like a victim.

This famous Gaslight is actually a remake of the original 1940 version, which is also especially well-acted. Anton Walbrook is suave and evil as the hubbie and Dyana Wyngard is unforgettably haunting as the wife. Only 19 minutes in, we see his duplicity, manipulation and control. Frank Pettingell is very good as the detective, and the cast includes Robert Newton (Long John Silver in the 1950 Treasure Island). Cathleen Cordell plays the oversexed maid Nancy in a less nuanced performance than Angela Lansbury’s. This film version is reportedly the most faithful to the stage play source material. (Oddly, there’s a very good can-can dance in this 1940 movie, too.)

Stream of the Week: JIMMY CARTER – “What people say they want”

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In PBS’ American Experience documentary Jimmy Carter, The New Yorker writer and former Carter speechwriter Henrik Hertzberg says:

Jimmy Carter was what the American people always SAY they want – above politics, determined to do the right thing regardless of political consequences, a simple person who doesn’t lie, a modest man, not someone with a lot of imperial pretenses.  That’s what people say they want.  And that’s what they got with Jimmy Carter.

And herein lies the rub. 

In 1976, Americans were reacting to Watergate and wanted a President LEAST like Richard Nixon. We got him, in the form of Jimmy Carter; it turned out that Carter could deliver non-Nixon decency, but not the leadership that the era required.

Today, many – and the polls indicate, most – Americans seek a non-Trump. I share the view that ANYONE would be better then Trump, but Jimmy Carter is instructive that “anyone”, while better than Trump, might not be the best for the country.

In Jimmy Carter, we hear from those who know Carter best – including his wife Rosalynn Carter, his vice-president Walter Mondale, and right-from-the-start Carter insiders Jody Powell, Pat Caddell and Bert Lance. How the times made this man, then propelled him to such improbable electoral success and then finally doomed his Administration, is a great and cautionary story.

To stream Jimmy Carter from iTunes, search for “Jimmy Carter” under TV Episodes (not under Movies). Jimmy Carter is also available on DVD from American Experience. 

Stream of the Week: THE EAST – how do we punish corporate crime?

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Brit Marling in THE EAST

The East is a smart and gripping thriller that explores both our response to corporate criminality and the unfamiliar world of anarchist collectives. Brit Marling plays a brilliant up-and-comer in an industrial security firm who goes undercover to hunt down and infiltrate a band of eco-terrorists named The East.

The East seeks to brings deadly personal accountability to corporate leaders who injure people and the environment. These aren’t Hollywoodized corporate villains – all of the corporate crimes depicted in the movie have occurred in real life. Lesser filmmakers would have made The East into a revenge fantasy with a Robin Hood-like merry band of earnest kids – or a conventional espionage procedural, hunting down a gang of wild-eyed terrorists.

The East is so good because it explores our helplessness in the face of corporate malfeasance. The corporate targets deserve to be held accountable, and their crimes cry out for punishment. Yet the vigilante violence of The East is clearly unacceptable. No self-selected group of avengers – no matter how legitimate their grievance – should be able to inflict extra-legal violence. (If you don’t think so, just substitute white supremacist militia, fundamentalist Mormons or Chechen immigrants for the hippies in this movie.)

We view this dilemma through the perspective of Marling’s protagonist, whose own views evolve through the course of the story. Marling co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij. Marling and Batmanglij spent over three months in an anarchist collective, living a cash-free life off the grid; that experience has paid off with an unusual authenticity in the depiction of the anarchist lifestyle.

Marling and Batmanglij also co-wrote the indie The Sound of My Voice, and Marling wrote and starred in last year’s sci-fi hit Another Earth. Here, they have created a set of original characters and invented some really ingenious plot points, especially a very powerful initiation dinner and an astounding bit of tradecraft involving dental floss.

Besides Marling, Ellen Page is especially good as one of the eco-terrorists. Julia Ormond is brilliant in a tiny part as a business executive. There are other fine performances by Patricia Clarkson as Marling’s nasty boss and by Alexander Skarsgaard and Toby Kebell as anarchists.

There may be some holes in the plot, but The East is such a tautly crafted thriller that we don’t have time to notice. There is one unfortunately corny scene between Ellen Page’s character and Jamey Sheridan’s (he’s become the Go To Guy to play entitled white male scumbags). But those are quibbles – The East is a very strong film.

The East is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, iTunes, GooglePlay and other VOD outlets.

Stream of the Week: THE GREAT BEAUTY – decadence, stunning imagery and the beauties of Rome itself

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As The Great Beauty (La grande belleza) begins, its protagonist Gep Gambardella is celebrating his 65th birthday in a feverishly hedonistic party. Gep authored a successful novel in his twenties, which has since allowed him the indulgent life of a celebrity journalist, bobbing from party to party among Rome’s shallow rich. Gep is having a helluva time, but now he reflects on the emptiness of his milieu and the superficial accomplishments of his past 40 years. As he alternates introspection and indulgence, we follow him through a series of strikingly beautiful Roman settings. (And, because Gep parties all night, we see lots of gorgeously still Roman dawns.)

The Great Beauty is foremost an extraordinarily beautiful art film. If you’ve been to Rome, you know that it is a generally chaotic city with unexpected islands of solitude. The Great Beauty captures this aspect of the Eternal City better than any other film I’ve seen. On one level, The Great Beauty is very successful Rome porn.

Writer-director Paolo Sorrentino also explores the moral vacuity of the very rich and the party life. It’s the Italy of Silvio Berlusconi, whom Sorrentino blames for enabling a national culture of escapism. These themes, along with the main character and the movie’s structure are of course nearly identical to Fellini’s great La Dolce Vita (1960), but The Great Beauty is more accessible, funnier and a bit more hopeful – and much more of a showcase for the cityscape of Rome. Sorrentino provides plenty of laughs, especially with a gourmet-obsessed cardinal and a cadaverous celebrity nun with a Mephistopheles-looking handler.

It’s hard to imagine an actor better suited to play Gep than Toni Servillo. Servillo perfectly captures both the happiness Gep takes in carnal pleasure and his self-criticism for giving his entire life to it. Servillo’s Gep is brazenly proud of his own cynicism, until we see his humanity breaking through at a funeral. Servillo is even magnificent in wearing Gep’s impressive collection of sports jackets.

There’s so much to The Great Beauty – stunning imagery, introspection, social criticism, sexual decadence, fine performances, humor and a Rome travelogue – each by itself worthwatching the film.  The Great Beauty won the Best Foreign Language Oscar and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the Week: PROJECT NIM – a chimp learns the foibles of humans

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PROJECT NIM

The documentary Project Nim tells the extraordinary story of a chimpanzee that was taught a human language – American Sign Language.  In a remarkable and compelling journey, the chimp Nim is first placed as a baby with a human hippie family and then at a university-owned country estate and at college laboratories.  Amazingly, he learns to use an ASL vocabulary – not just responding to commands, but initiating communication and forming sentences.  Then, the experiment ends, and he is off to an assortment of post-placements, some terrifying.

Along the way, we hear from the motley assortment of humans involved in his raising, his exploitation and his care. One human who enters the story as a grad student, Bob Ingersoll, emerges as the hero of the story.  It’s the story of a chimp, but we learn more about the foibles of humans.

Acclaimed documentarian James Marsh (Man on Wire) delivers another great story – one of the 2011’s best documentaries.  Project Nim can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the Week: OJ: MADE IN AMERICA: finally, the sensational story stripped of the sideshow

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oj-made-in-america
This week’s video choice is perfect for binging over the upcoming holiday weekend:  OJ: Made in America.  Initially, I hadn’t thought of putting it on my Best Movies of 2016 because it’s an eight-hour ESPN documentary series, but, after it wound up on lots of critic’s year-end lists, I put it on mine because it’s good enough to merit it.

I remember the OJ saga with distaste because it became a sideshow – the Bronco ride, the Trial of the Century, the bloody glove (“if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”), Kato Kaelin, Judge Lance Ito and the seemingly unfathomable verdict. The genius of director Ezra Edelman is that OJ: Made in America rights a media wrong by keeping a laser focus on the crime itself and setting out the societal factors that explain how this all went so far off track. The sideshow elements are shown to be what they really were – distractions from the greater truth of a domestic violence murder.

OJ: Made in America is an unflinching look at a marriage that disintegrated because of chronic domestic violence, and then evolved into a terrifying stalker situation. We also see glimpses of crime scene photos, grisly but not exploitative, that reinforce the gravity of the crime.

With more clarity than in any other film treatment of this case, we see OJ Simpson’s abandonment and even rejection of the African-American community and of his own racial identity – “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”. We see OJ creating a new community for himself of wealthy white men and refusing to perform advocacy, fundraising or even lending his name for African-American causes. And so we are left with the sickening irony of OJ becoming a posterchild for black victimhood and a rallying point for resistance to white oppression.

To set the stage for the trial, Edelman shows us the historic racist oppression by the LAPD and the missteps by prosecution that created an environment that the legal team for a celebrity could exploit. Through file footage and talking head witnesses, Edelman takes us through the trial to explain the critical choices that resulted in the verdict. Finally, we see the surveillance video of the bumbling, thuggish crime that OJ was imprisoned for until last year.

OJ: Made in America benefits from an impressive group of witnesses, including prosecutor Marcia Clark, detective Mark Fuhrman, defense lawyer Barry Scheck, DA Gil Garcetti, former OJ confidantes Ron Shipp and Mike Gilbert and Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister.

ESPN, with its reliably solid 30 for 30 series, is, along with PBS and HBO, one of the most prolific sources of excellent documentaries. With OJ: Made in Americas, ESPN has produced one of the top three or four documentaries of the year.

The trailer is on the film’s homepage. You can watch the entire movie on ESPNWatch and on some other streaming platforms such as iTunes and Hulu.

Stream of the Week: UNA – two twisted people

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UNA
UNA

The psychological suspense movie Una revolves around two twisted people, one of whom has been damaged by trauma. Here’s what the audience can be confident really happened: at age 14, Una (Rooney Mara) was seduced by a much older man, Ray (Ben Mendelsohn); she became infatuated with Ray and they carried on a sexual relationship for three months until he was caught and imprisoned for four years. Upon leaving prison, he changed his name and started a new life. It’s now fifteen years after the original crime and Una has tracked him down.

We can tell that Una is obsessed with Ray. What we don’t know is whether Una is seeking vengeance or whether she is in love with him – or both. She’s so messed up that even she may not know.

Lolita was a novel with a famously unreliable narrator. Una presents us with TWO unreliable narrators. Almost every statement made by Ray COULD be true, but probably isn’t. He was in love with her, he came back for her, she was his only underage lover, he’s not “one of them”, he’s told his wife about his past – we just can’t know for sure. Ben Mendelsohn delivers a performance that tries to conceal whatever Ray is thinking and feeling but allows his desperation to leak out.

The excellent actor Riz Ahmed (Four Lions, The Reluctant Terrorist) is very good as Ray’s work buddy, who must deal with one totally unforeseeable surprise after another.

Una really relies on Rooney Mara to portray a wholly unpredictable character in every scene, and she succeeds in carrying the movie. Mara’s face is particularly well-suited when she plays a haunting and/or haunted character, and it serves her well here.

I originally saw Una at Cinequest.  You can stream it from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

Stream of the Week: FRANK & LOLA – Bad Girl or Troubled Girl?

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Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA.
Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, so this week’s video pick comes from the program of the 2016 festival. The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is. Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.

Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl. Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef. He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.

In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out. Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far. She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled? A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement. Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.

Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional. There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies. I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).

Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity. But, at its heart, it’s a romance. Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either? We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.

I saw Frank & Lola in 2016 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016.  Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.