political

Stream of the Week: CITY OF HOPE – life is complicated, so are American cities

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Joe Morton and Angela Bassett in CITY OF HOPE

John Sayles’ City of Hope, almost thirty years old, is still searingly relevant on race in America and is still one of the most incisive films on American politics.  Life is complicated, so is America and so are politics.  Most political films are NOT complicated, but Sayles respects the audience enough to give us a realistic story in a realistic community setting.

City of Hope features over twenty characters braided together in interlocking story threads.  It’s set in an Eastern US City very much like Newark, New Jersey.  An Italian-American business and political establishment is still clinging to the levers of power, as an emerging black and brown majority pushes for inclusion.  There is racial tension and everyday political corruption – and people must get on with their lives. 

Tony Lobianco and Vincent Spano in CITY OF HOPE

A self-made contractor (Tony Lo Bianco) is trying to finish a big project but the driving forces of race and politics intervene, just as his troubled and immature son (Vincent Spano) is flaming out.  An African-American professor-turned elected official (Joe Morton) is trying to keep his integrity, maintain credibility with the black community and be effective – which is hard to do at the same time.  And that really just kicks things off.

City of Hope has an extraordinary cast that includes many stars early in their careers:  Angela Bassett, Chris Cooper, Gina Gershon, Frankie Faison, Miriam Colon.  Kevin Tighe is absolutely brilliant as a police union official whose every personal interaction is designed to increase his political leverage (this is a guy that I’ve met many times on my day job).  Tom Wright is compelling as Malik, a distrustful activist.  The great David Strathairn, who has appeared in six of Sayles’ films, is unforgettable as Asteroid, a schizophrenic street dweller.

Sayles and Sayles’ life partner Maggi Renzi, who has produced all his films, carved out juicy – and the least sympathetic roles – for themselves. In a hilarious turn, Renzi plays a Greek Chorus in the form of an Italian homemaker (They don’t LISTEN!).  Sayles himself plays Carl, a treacherous and reptilian scumbag of a local crime lord.

City of Hope was released in 1991, right on the heels of 1989’s Do the Right Thing – both remain as insightful on America’s race issues as they were thirty years ago.   City of Hope is said to have influenced The Wire.  City of Hope may be streamed from iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Tony Lobianco and John Sayles in CITY OF HOPE

Stream of the Week: ALL THE WAY – LBJ comes alive

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Bryan Cranston in ALL THE WAY

Lyndon B. Johnson, one of American history’s larger-than-life characters, finally comes alive on the screen in the HBO movie All the Way. Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Trumbo) is the first actor who captures LBJ in all his facets – a man who was boring and square on television but frenetic, forceful and ever-dominating in person. All the Way traces the first year in LBJ’s presidency, when he ended official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

LBJ was obsessed with gaining and keeping political power, and he was utterly ruthless and amoral about the means to do that. His tools of persuasion included deceit, flattery, threats, promised benefits and horse-trading. He was equally comfortable in playing to someone’s ideals and better nature as well to one’s vanity or venality. In All the Way, we see one classic moment of what was called “the Johnson treatment”, when LBJ looms over Senator Everett Dirksen, and it becomes inevitable that Dirksen is going to be cajoled, intimidated or bought off and ultimately give LBJ what he wants.

LBJ was so notoriously insincere that one of the joys of All the Way is watching LBJ tell completely inconsistent stories to the both sides of the Civil Right battle. Both the Civil Rights proponents (Hubert Humphrey and Martin Luther King, Jr.) and the opponents (the Southern Senators led by Richard Russell) must determine whether LBJ is lying and to whom. Each of them must make this calculation and then bet his own cause on his perception of LBJ’s real intentions.

But LBJ amassed power for two reasons – he needed to have it and he needed to do something with it. Along with the LBJ’s unattractive personal selfishness and the political sausage-making that some may find distasteful, All the Way shows that Johnson did have two core beliefs that drove his political goals – revulsion in equal parts to discrimination and poverty. We hear references to the childhood poverty that led to the humiliation of his father, to the plight of the Mexican schoolchildren in Cotulla, Texas, that he mentored as a young man, and his outrage at the discriminatory treatment suffered by his African-American cook Zephyr.

Bryan Cranston brilliantly brings us the complete LBJ – crude, conniving, thin-skinned, intimidating and politically masterful. Besides Cranston’s, we also see superb performances by Melissa Leo as Ladybird, Anthony Mackie as MLK, Bradley Whitford as Hubert Humphrey and Frank Langella as Richard Russell.

All the Way is remarkably historically accurate. It does capsulize some characters and events, but the overall depiction of 1964 in US history is essentially truthful. As did Selma, All the Way drills down to secondary characters like James Eastland and Bob Moses. We also see the would-be scandal involving LBJ’s chief of staff Walter Jenkins, a story that has receded from the popular culture. Vietnam is alluded to with a reference to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which is fitting since Vietnam grew to become LBJ’s nemesis and the national obsession only after the 1964 election.

All the Way was adapted from a Broadway play for which Cranston won a Tony.  LBJ’s 1964 makes for a stirring story, and All the Way is a compelling film. You can stream it from HBO GO, Amazon’s HBO Now,  iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

LORO: just eye candy

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Kasia Smutniak and Toni Servillo in LORO

Loro is director Paolo Sorrentino’s take on the career end of the despicable Italian media mogul and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Berlusconi character has a different name, but there’s no mistake that it is the hair-dyed, ever-grinning Berlusconi.

The movie Loro is actually the combination of two television programs. In the first, we see Berlusconi’s corruption through the POV of another amoral grasper, Sergio (Ricardo Scarmacia). Sergio seeks his fortune by collecting a brigade of cocaine-fueled escorts to sexually entertain Berlusconi. In the second half, we follow Berlusconi himself as, out of power, he is unable to climb back into power, he loses his wife and he is sexually humiliated by a 20-year-old aspiring actress. Sorrentino gets his licks in by making Berlusconi, finally, pathetic.

Loro stars Sorrentino’s frequent collaborator Toni Servillo, who is able to play the Berlusconi character as a figure powerful to get all he desires…and then not.

I had high expectations of Loro because I loved Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and Youth. Sorrentino is a master of the eye candy and those movies are especially beautiful, but also tell stories compelingly. Ultimately, Loro is much more interesting visually than it is thematically.

Loro, which got a screening at the San Francisco international Film Festival, has just concluded a wisp of a theatrical release in the Bay Area. It can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

JOJO RABBIT: a joyous and hilarious movie about the inculcation of hatred

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JOJO RABBIT

Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. His protagonist is the ten-year-old German boy Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), growing up during the final years of World War II. Jojo lives with his mom (Scarlett Johansson) because his dad is away (and we learn that the father is likely dead), It’s a tough childhood in these conditions, and Jojo copes with the help of an imaginary friend, who happens to be Adolph Hitler, played uproariously by Waititi himself.

Waititi doesn’t play the historical Hitler; he plays a benign and reassuring figure that is imagined by a child brought up on Nazi propaganda. He fills that role that uncles and grandads get to be with kids – the cherished figure who is always on your side and never make you do your chores. Of course, a playful and nurturing Hitler is absurd, and Waititi is brilliantly funny.

Jojo tries to fit in with the Hitler Youth, and his hobby is innocently filling a notebook with illustrations of the most hideous Jewish stereotypes that he has been taught. What we understand but Jojo doesn’t, is that his mom is risking her life in the anti-Nazi Resistance. She’s also been hiding the Jewish girl Elsa (Thomasin Mackenzie) in the attic a la Anne Frank.

Thomasin MacKenzie in JOJO RABBIT

Jojo discovers Elsa, and , as is usually the case with a ten-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old girl, she becomes the boss of him. He gets an up close lesson in Jewishness, and it’s a revelation to him. It’s also clear that Germany is losing the war, although Jojo, as a child, is slower to connect the dots about that than are the adults. As the propaganda is unpeeled, the absurdities of the hatred and scapegoating are revealed to Jojo.

Roman Griffin Davis is a perfect choice to play the relatable innocent Jojo. Thomasin MacKenzie, so genuine and ethereal in Leave No Trace, is wonderful here, too. The entire cast is good, especially Johansson, Sam Rockwell as a cynical army officer, Rebel Wilson as a Nazi true believer and Stephen Merchant as a grinning Gestapo goon.

Even more than most movies, this is a film of its time. Five years ago, we might not have seen the value of a movie discrediting the Joseph Goebbels approach – pounding outrageous lies into a mass audience made gullible by its own dissatisfaction, targeting the “other” as blameworthy for all ills. But here we are, 74 years after the destruction of the Nazis, once again watching blowhard demagogues drumming up hatred for minority groups and scapegoating immigrants – in the US and Europe and around the globe. With its skewering of manufactured hatred and the Big Lie, this witty and ultimately sweet film resonates.

I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter. This is going to be an audience favorite.

WHERE’S MY ROY COHN?: vile begets vile

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Roy Cohn (center) in WHERE’S MY ROY COHN? Credit: Photo by Henry Burroughs/AP/REX/Shutterstock. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics.

Where’s My Roy Cohn? is Matt Tyrnauer’s superb biodoc of Roy Cohn – and is there a more despicable public figure in America’s 20th Century than Cohn? Has there been a more shameless hypocrite? A bully more cruel? A crook more craven?

It would be accurate but unhelpful to say that Roy Cohn didn’t invent scorched earth tactics, like saying that Hitler didn’t invent genocide. Cohn and his proteges certainly popularized what Bill Clinton called “the politics of personal destruction”.

I can’t remember ever before quoting movie publicity materials, but I can’t improve on this trenchant description of Cohn’s legacy from Sony Pictures Classics:

“Cohn formulated his playbook in the 50s, but it is all too familiar today: always attack; never admit blame or apologize; use favors and fear to ensure support for your objectives; expertly manipulate the media to gain advantage and destroy your opponents; lie shamelessly, invalidating the idea of truth; weaponize lawsuits; evade taxes and bills; and, most importantly, inflame the prejudices of the crowd by scapegoating defenseless people.”

Cohn’s central role in McCarthyism is well known, as is his role as a storied, self-promoting fixer (or legal terrorist) in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, Cohn’s formative mentorship of the young Donald Trump has come to light.

Roy Cohn and Donald Trump in WHERE’S MY ROY COHN? Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics.

In Where’s My Roy Cohn?, Tyrnauer provides us with less well-known revelations. Cohn’s cousins and his longtime boyfriend are key witnesses. We learn about Cohn’s father, who exposed him to the seamy world of a political machine, and Cohn’s mother, from whom Cohn seems to inherited his ruthlessness. There’s an absolutely jaw-dropping anecdote about how far Mrs. Cohn would go to avoid interrupting her Seder. And there’s the important story of his Uncle Bernie’s financial ruin and public disgrace, which seems to have taught Cohn all the wrong lessons. Tyrnauer also brings us Cohn’s wresting control of the Lionel Train company from family members. And there’s an “insurance fire” on Cohn’s Florida yacht, which resulted in a homicide.

Cohn was the chief henchman leading Joseph McCarthy’s Lavender Scare to persecute LGBTQ Americans in public and military service. The famous Army-McCrthy hearings were sparked by Cohn’s seeking favorable treatment for David Schine, Cohn’s assistant and the object of his infatuation, as they cavorted across US bases in Europe, making life hellish for American gay soldiers. Despite a legendary reputation for same-sex encounters and relationships, Cohn always denied being gay himself or having AIDS, of which he died.

And, for good measure, one of his cousins also pegs Cohn as a self-loathing Jew.

There are also clips of Cohn on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder. (Man, I haven’t thought of Tom Snyder in decades.) In one clip, Cohn defines “tough” as “vicious”, and says that his clients “buy scare value”.

Why spend almost two hours with Roy Cohn? Because Roy Cohn’s story is important to our understanding of 20th Century American history and of our current public culture.

Where’s My Roy Cohn? played at the Mill Valley Film Festival and opens in Bay Area theaters this weekend.

ROJO: bobbing in a sea of moral relativism

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ROJO. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Rojo is Argentine writer-director Benjamín Naishtat’s slow burn drama.  Rojo is set just before the 1970s coup that some characters expect – but no one is anticipating how long and bloody the coup will be.  Several vignettes are woven together into a tapestry of pre-coup moral malaise.

A prominent provincial lawyer Claudio (Darío Grandinetti) is invited to participate in a scam. There’s a scary encounter of lethal restaurant rage. It looks like Claudio, bobbing on a sea of moral relativism, may well remained unscathed, but the arrival of crack detective becomes a grave threat.

As Claudio weaves through his life, his society shows signs of crumbling. There’s a failed teen seduction, an emotional breakdown at a formal reception and a natural metaphor – a solar eclipse.

It’s funny when the audience finally connects the dots and understands who the character nicknamed “the Hippie” is. And Naishtat and Grandinetti get the most out of the scene where Claudio finally dons a toupee.

We know something that the characters don’t know – or at least fully grasp – how bloody the coup will be. Watch for the several references to desaparecido, a foreboding of the coup. Argentina’s coup was known for the desaparecidos – the disappeared – thousands of the regime’s political opponents went missing without a trace, having been executed by death squads. In Rojo, a very inconvenient madman dies and his body is hidden, there’s a disappearing act in a magic show, and a would-be boyfriend vanishes.

This is a moody, atmospheric film that works as a slow-burn thriller. I saw Rojo earlier this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) and it opens this weekend in Bay Area theaters.

THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE: pointed satire in the form of a heist movie

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Alexandre Landry and Maripier Morin in THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

In the pointed satire The Fall of the American Empire, Pierre-Paul (Alexandre Landry) chafes at his dead-end blue-collar job as an express freight delivery driver; he feels that, with his PhD in Philosophy, he has been unjustly screwed out of a much better life by the System. He may be right, but he’s also a self-absorbed putz, who is justifiably dumped by his girlfriend. But then he happens across a windfall fortune of ill-gotten cash – and keeps it. The critical questions, of course, are how he can escape from the ruthless gang and the corrupt police who want to recover the money, and how will he be able to spend the money without getting caught? Pierre-Paul is a heads-in-the-clouds intellectual, and he is totally over-matched.

Fortunately, Pierre-Paul makes the acquaintance of a criminal mastermind, Sylvain ‘The Brain’ Bigras (Rémy Girard), who has just been released from prison. Pierre-Paul also can’t resist blowing some of his newfound treasure on Montreal’s most expensive escort, the astonishingly beautiful Aspasie (Maripier Morin). She used to be the mistress of the powerful banker Taschereau (Pierre Curzi), and soon Pierre-Paul has a team of confederates with real know-how.

Veteran French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand portrays a society corrupted head-to-toe by the capitalist imperative to acquire more and more money. And all of the characters make a point of insisting getting theirs in American dollars. The two older guys – one a lifelong outlaw and convict and the other a socially and politically prominent banker – hit if off immediately; after all, they’re both crooks.

Arcand comes at his films from the the Left, but he skewers the doctrinaire Left with equal glee. He pokes fun at the personal foibles of individuals on the Left, but saves his savagery for the inequalities of Capitalism. While he is sending up the entire Capitalist system. he makes his points without descending into a screed. All the fun in The Fall of the American Empire is dotted with realistic – and some real – plight of the homeless – depicted neither with finger-wagging or as maudlin.

The satire fits into the formula of a heist film – the assembling of a team to pull off a job. Of course, here they already HAVE the money, and they don’t need to steal it. To get the benefit of the money, they need to launder it and hide it from tax authorities.

Rémy Girard in THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

Arcand stalwarts Rémy Girard and Pierre Curzi both give superb performances. Vincent Leclerc, as a homeless man who volunteers at a soup kitchen, has an especially moving scene.

Arcand is known for his trilogy The Decline of the American Empire (1986), The Barbarian Invasions (2003 and Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film) and Days of Darkness (2006 – which I haven’t seen).

While the love story between Pierre-Paul and Aspasie and the Robin Hood aspect of our heroes’ plans are fantasies, The Fall of the American Empire has an authenticity at its core – the impact of disparity of wealth in a system rigged in favor of the Haves. And it’s damn funny – progressively funnier as the money-laundering scheme takes shape. The Fall of the American Empire opens June 7 in the Bay Area, and will spread to more local theaters in June.

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. A brisk 60 minutes, it will be broadcast on PBS in May 20.

MEETING GORBACHEV: uncritical but humanizing

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Mikhail Gorbachev in MEETING GORBACHEV

Meeting Gorbachev is Werner Herzog’s admiring biodoc of Mikhail Gorbachev, unquestionably one of the 20th century’s most pivotal figures. Herzog filmed three conversations with the then 87-year-old Gorbachev in 2018.

Gorbachev is revered in Germany – particularly by Werner Herzog – for allowing the peaceful, and startlingly quick, reunification of Germany. This biodoc is, to a fault, uncritical. At one point, Herzog even tells Gorbachev, “I love you”.

As the leader of the USSR, Gorbachev’s concepts of Perestroika and Glasnost transformed the political, economic and foreign policy of the Cold War superpower. More than any other individual, Gorbachev can claim credit for ending the Cold War, abolishing and destroying mid-range and short-range nuclear weapons, and the unchallenged independence of the Iron Curtain countries.

Gorbachev is also a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions. He was intending to reform the USSR, not to destroy it. A coup by fossilized communists knocked him out of power but couldn’t be sustained, spinning out of control and leading to a chaos taken advantage of by the strong man Putin,.

Herzog’s film is excellent in its well-researched and well-told story of the rise of Gorbachev from a modest agricultural backwater – a talented achiever on the rise. Herzog’s irreverent sense of humors, as always, peeks through in the state funerals of Gorbachev’s predecessors, each more absurdly funny than the last.

The greatest gift of Meeting Gorbachev is, as the title suggests, is the unfiltered Gorbachev himself – now a grandfatherly raconteur. We get to appreciate his intellectual curiosity and his clarity of thought and direction. His charm and charisma, even at 87, help us understand how he rose to world leadership.

Werner Herzog and Mikhail Gorbachev in MEETING GORBACHEV

Herzog was a charismatic and innovative leader of German New Cinema. Between 1972 and 1982, he created the art house hits Aguirre:The Wrath of God, Strozek Nosferatu the Vampyre, and Fitzcarraldo.

In 1997, Herzog switched gears with the underrated documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and followed it with great docs like Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World. Most remarkably, Herzog has also become one of the greatest narrators of English language documentaries; somehow, his German-accented narrations are hypnotic. (In 2007, Herzog slipped in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans with Nicholas Cage in the Klaus Kinski wild man role and cinema’s funniest iguana hallucination.)

Meeting Gorbachev played at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). I saw Meeting Gorbachev at Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club.

Who is this guy Don McGahn?

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former FEC Commissioner Don McGahn

The Mueller Report has brought former White Counsel Don McGahn into semi-celebrity. McGahn was a major source for the Mueller Report, which portrays McGahn as one of the Trump Administration officials who, by disobeying and thwarting Trump’s orders, saved Trump from criminal charges of obstruction of justice. McGahn was the VILLAIN in last year’s
gripping documentary Dark Money, an expose of our new political environment, with unlimited secret money unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

The Mueller Report recounts an episode where Trump advised a note-taking McGahn that Trump’s lawyers never take notes; McGahn memorably replied “But I’m a real lawyer.” But McGahn worked his way up as a Republican Party operative, and was a GOP appointee to the Federal Elections Commission (when he wore longish preppy hair). In one particularly nasty segment of Dark Money, we witness Commissioner McGahn unashamedly grinding the FEC’s gears of enforcement to a stop.  After the FEC, McGahn went on to serve as the Trump White House Counsel, with major responsibility for the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanagh.

Dark Money’s writer-director Kimberly Reed takes us to her native Montana as conservative (but independent) Republican legislators find themselves deluged by massive and monstrous attacks from some even more conservative out-of-state sources. Intrepid small-town reporter John S. Adams and the understaffed state regulators follow the money and try to hunt down who is pulling the strings.

As the mystery unfolds, Dark Money also takes us to Wisconsin, where dark money has assaulted an unexpected branch of government. And we go to Washington, DC, to the Federal Elections Commission, where Ann Ravel, the Obama-appointed chair of the FEC, has resigned in disgust after Republican commissioners have blocked all enforcement of federal campaign finance regulation. (Disclosure: I have worked with Silicon Valley native Ravel in my day job.)

Here are some of Dark Money’s most disturbing revelations:

  • While it’s bad enough that we don’t know the extent of wealthy Americans like the Koch Brothers trying to buy elections, neither do we know about the secret election participation of FOREIGN players.
  • Dark Money sources are not stopping at trying to buy legislators and governors, but are also trying to take over state supreme courts!

And just when we need MORE scrutiny of the attempts to buy the legislative and judicial branches of state governments, we are witnessing the death of statehouse journalism.

Dark Money keeps us on the edges of our seats throughout and culminates in a real-life courtroom drama

I attended the sold-out Bay Area premiere of Dark Money, co-sponsored by Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club and by Santa Clara County. Both Ann Ravel and John S. Adams appeared at the post-screening Q&A. You can stream Dark Money from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.