This weekend, Charlize Theron stars in Tully, from screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) and director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air). Seven years ago, in Young Adult, this same team challenged the current mode of comedy itself. They turned many comic conventions on their heads in this nastily dark comedy, and Young Adult was on my list of Best Movies of 2011.
Played by Charlize Theron, the main character is stunningly non-empathetic, utterly self-absorbed and thoroughly unpleasant. She was the prom goddess in her small town high school, and has moved to the city for a job with a hint of prestige. With a failed marriage, a looming career crisis and no friends, she’s drinking too much and is in a bad place. So she decides to return to her hometown and get her old boyfriend (Patrick Wilson) back – despite the fact that he’s gloriously contented with his wife and newborn infant.
Naturally, social disasters ensue. Along the way, the story probes the issues of happiness and self-appraisal.
Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron in YOUNG ADULT
Patton Oswalt is wonderful as someone the protagonist regarded as a lower form of life in high school, but who becomes her only companion and truth teller.
Young Adult is inventive and very funny. Its cynicism reminds me of a Ben Hecht or Billy Wilder screenplay (high praise). Note: This is NOT a film for someone expecting a light comedy. Young Adult is available on DVD from Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg in ISMAEL’S GHOSTS
Suppose that you’re in mid-life, mid-career and mid-relationship, and your ex-spouse – whom you have thought dead for a decade – suddenly shows up. In Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, that is exactly what happens to a filmmaker (Mathieu Amalric) when his long-disappeared ex (Marion Cotillard) pops in. So far, so good. But then Ismael’s Ghosts begins to slide off the rails.
The filmmaker accompanies his ex-father-in-law, who is being honored in Israel, but then the story becomes unhinged and, finally, impossible to follow. It’s just one indecipherable mess.
I was actually looking forward to this movie. I loved Desplechin’s My Golden Days, and I admire Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg (who plays the filmmaker’s current partner). But Ismael’s Ghosts is just a waste of their talent and my time. I saw Ismael’s Ghosts at Cinequest before its US theatrical release.
Min-hee Kim in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Claire’s Camerais the latest nugget from writer-director Hong Sang-soo, that great observer of awkward situations and hard-drinking. Jeon (Min-hee Kim of The Handmaiden) is a film company assistant who ia traveled to the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of a Korean film. It turns out that the film company executive has had a long-term relationship with the movie’s director, and she immediately fires Jeon when she learns of Jeon’s fling with the director. With several days sill to go before her return flight, Jeon wanders around Cannes. Jeon meets the French schoolteacher and amateur photographer Claire (Isabelle Huppert) and they hang out. Coincidentally, Claire also meets the director. Most of the dialogue is in English, the common language of the French and Korean characters – and the earnestly imperfect English-speaking supplies some of the film’s humor.
Not only does Claire have a camera, she IS the camera through which we observe the foibles of the other characters. Jeon is breathtakingly clueless (or in denial) about the reason for her dismissal. The director, as many Hong Sang-soo characters, has an enthusiastic relationship with alcohol. It’s all dryly funny, although the director and the executive redefine their relationship in a powerfully realistic scene.
This is an especially fine performance by Min-hee Kim. She pulled off some deadpan humor in The Handmaiden, a film more thought of for its eroticism and mystery. Here, she’s often just wandering around in reflection and making small talk. But Kim is just so watchable, she keeps the audience’s interest keen.
Claire’s Camera is not as surreal as last year’s Hong Sang-soo entry, Yourself and Yours, but just as observational and droll. I saw Claire’s Camera at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), where Hong Sang-soo has a cult following and always appreciative audiences. It’s now playing at the 4 Star in San Francisco.
Min-hee Kim and Isabelle Huppert in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
So there are about a hundred movie screens in Silicon Valley, and this weekend you can see Avengers: Infinity War on THIRTY of them. I have nothing against Avengers: Infinity War, which I do not plan to see even though I really like Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Christ Pratt, Tom Hiddleston and Robert Downey, Jr. It’s just that this latest from the Marvels franchise is taking up a third of our theater capacity. If only we could devote twenty-five screens to the Marvel movie and make room for another five movies about and for adults…I’m getting grouchy, because in the last year we’ve lost most of our art house screens with the closure of Camera 7, Camera 3 and the Bluelight, all after losing Camera 12 the year before. Still waiting for the opening of Pruneyard Dine-in Cinema…
OUT NOW
This week’s top picks:
A Quiet Placeis as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career. This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). The more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin is still in a few theaters, and it’s worth the drive.
Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.
ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is a comedy, Miloš Forman’s bitingly satire of Communism, The Firemen’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Fireman’s Ball). It can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix.
ON TV
On April 30, Turner Classic Movies presents the Otto Preminger masterpiece Anatomy of a Murder (1959). This movie has everything: Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of a wily lawyer, content to underachieve in the countryside, Stewart’s electrifying courtroom face-off with George C. Scott, great performances by a surly Ben Gazzara and a slutty Lee Remick, a great jazz score by Duke Ellington and a suitably cynical noir ending. That jazz score is one of the few movie soundtrack CDs that I own. The music perfectly complements the story of a murder investigation that reveals more and more ambiguity as it proceeds. Stewart’s character relaxes by dabbling in jazz piano, and Duke himself has a cameo leading a bar band in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (of all places).
James Stewart and George C. Scott tangle in ANATOMY OF A MURDER
As a tribute to the great director Miloš Forman, who just died at age 86, this week’s video pick is Forman’s 1967 Czech comedy The Firemen’s Ball. Forman came of age in Communist Czechoslovakia, and the prevalent thread in his films was the challenging, even mocking, of authority. That’s what The Firemen’s Ball is all about.
It’s a comedy of errors set during the annual ball of a small town fire brigade. It’s an obligatory occasion, and everyone is just going through the motions. No one is willing or able to do what they are supposed to be doing, whether it is protecting the raffle prizes or even putting out fires. The film eviscerated the moral bankruptcy of the Communist society.
The bumbling old farts on the ball committee try to put on a beauty contest, and they shanghai a bunch of young women in attendance and parade them around the committee room to prep them for the pageant. The Wife was offended by the sexism of the scene, but she didn’t stick around to see the committee get their comeuppance when the contestants themselves blow up the Big Announcement and turn the committee members into objects of ridicule. Stick with it – the whole movie is only 73 minutes long.
In his youth, Forman lived through the Nazis, who he described as evil, and the Communists, who he described as absurd. Indeed, the Czech ruling Politburo did recognizer themselves in The Firemen’s Ball’s bumbling firemen’s ball committee, and they concocted a pretext to ban the film in Czechoslovakia.
The Firemen’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Fireman’s Ball) can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix. It’s only one hour, thirteen minutes long, and it’s a hoot.
Louis Garrel in a scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Godard, Mon Amouris a bitingly funny portrait of flawed genius. Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) pays tribute to the genius of filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s early career while satirizing Godard’s personal excesses.
Godard, Mon Amour traces the three pivotal years after Godard married Anne Wiazemsky, the 19-year-old star of his La Chinoise. Godard (Louis Garrel) is age 37. In the preceding seven years he has helped revolutionize cinema as a leader of the French New Wave. He has made three masterpieces: Breathless, Contempt and Band of Outsiders. This is the Godard of “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.”
But now Godard has become a doctrinaire Maoist and rejects his past work. He sees himself as a thought leader of revolutionary politics – but that is a delusion. He’s just a political amateur, a poseur, a tourist.
Stacy Martin (center) in a scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
“Godard is dead”, Godard declaims. But young Anne (Stacy Martin) has hitched her star to the old Godard, the master of cinematic innovation and rock star, not this new dogmatic Godard.
This is also a snapshot of 1967, when many on the French Left believed that revolution in France was around the corner. By 1969, it was apparent to virtually everyone that this had been a mirage, that revolution was not going to happen. To everyone but Godard, who stubbornly stuck with his dogma.
Louis Garrel, his dreamboat looks glammed down with Godard’s bald spot, is often very funny as he deadpans his way through Godard’s pretensions. In Godard, Mon Amour, Godard’s thinking has become so devoid of humor, nuance, texture and ambiguity that his art has become one-dimensional and boring. Indeed, I have found all of the Godard films since 1967’s Weekend to range from disappointing to completely unwatchable. Godard is alive at age 87 and still making movies today – and they all suck.
In his very biting send-up of Godard’s personal failings, Michel Hazanavicius pays tribute to Godard’s groundbreaking cinematic techniques. We see jump cuts, breaking the fourth wall, shifting between color and negative imagery, subtitling the characters’ interior thoughts over their spoken dialogue and references to earlier movies. It’s all very witty.
There’s even a motif of repeatedly broken spectacles as an homage to Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run. In one of the more obvious jokes, Godard and Anne debate whether either would choose to appear nude in a movie while they walk around their room in complete, full-frontal nudity.
The more of Godard’s films you have seen, the more enjoyable you will find Godard, Mon Amour. If you don’t get the allusions to Godard’s filmmaking, you may find the protagonist of Godard, Mon Amour to be miserably tedious. I saw Godard, Mon Amour at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It opens this Friday in the Bay Area.
A Quiet Placeis as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.
ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is Art and Craft, a startling documentary about an art fraud. Of prolific scale. And which is apparently legal. By a diagnosed schizophrenic. Art and Craft is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube nd Google Play.
ON TV
Tomorrow night, Turner Classic Movies will air the enigmatic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Australian filmmaker Peter Weir. An Australian girls school goes on an outing to a striking geological formation – and some of the girls and a teacher disappear. What happened to them? It’s beautiful and hypnotic and haunting. It’s a film masterpiece, but if you can’t handle ambiguous endings – this ain’t for you.
Weir has gone on to make high quality hits (The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Master and Commander), but Picnic at Hanging Rock – the movie that he made at age 31 – is his most original work. Besides playing periodically on TCM, Picnic at Hanging Rock is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon and Hulu Plus.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a more satisfyingly scary movie than A Quiet Place. Director John Krasinski proves an economical story-teller – with essentially no dialogue, he helps us learn the set-up in few minutes. The earth has been overrun by man-eating monsters, who are blind but have a super-acute sense of hearing. Anyone who makes noise is immediately eaten by a monster. There aren’t many human survivors, but one family is holding out on their remote farm – a dad (Krasinski), a mom (Krasinski’s real life wife Emily Blunt), a daughter who is eleven or twelve and a son who is a year younger.
They walk only barefoot, speak only in sign language, and have devised ways to do every possible task silently. However, the mom is pregnant; childbirth and babies tend to be noisy, so there’s a ticking time bomb element to the story.
In fact, the characters (and we) are in a state of intensely heightened alertness during the entire movie – except for when a monster shows up and plunges us into outright terror. Mercifully, the gore and splatter happen off-screen, but the monster is plenty scary, and it hunts the family members at the closest of quarters and when they are at their most vulnerable. I saw A Quiet Place in a theater, and the audience stayed in a state of tense silence – like we were all afraid to make any noise by gasping or shrieking.
Each family member blames himself or herself for the loss of the third and youngest child, so there’s also an element of family drama in A Quiet Place. Krasinski and Blunt are excellent, and the kid actors (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) are, too.
I’m not a big horror movie fan, but I enjoyed and admired A Quiet Place.
The startling documentary Art and Craftis about an art fraud. Of prolific scale. And which is apparently legal. By a diagnosed schizophrenic.
We start with a guy named Mark Landis. He is very good at photocopying (!) great art works, applying paint to make them seem like the real thing, putting them in distressed frames and donating them to museums in the name of his late (and imaginary!) sister. He has done this hundreds of times, fooling scores of snooty museum curators in the process.
Why does he do this? Why can’t he stop? What’s with the imaginary sister? Those answers probably lie within his schizophrenia, a disease which doesn’t impair his skill or his cunning. Landis himself, once you get over his initial creepiness and become comfortable in his Southern gentility and wry mischievousness, is one of 2014’s most compelling movie characters.
Why doesn’t his fraud constitute a criminal act? Because he doesn’t profit from selling his fakes, he just gives them away. And he doesn’t take the tax write-off.
How come he doesn’t get caught? These are PHOTOCOPIES for krissakes! Those answers are in the self-interest and professional greed of the museum professionals – embodied by one puddle of mediocrity who becomes Landis’ obsessive Javert.
All of these combine to make Art and Craft one of the year’s most engaging documentaries. I saw Art and Craft at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it was an audience hit. Art and Craft is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Miloš Forman. Photo: Robert Clark/Courtesy of LA Times.
The great director Miloš Forman has died at age 86. Forman directed only 14 features over his forty-year career, but four are masterpieces or near-masterpieces – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, The People vs Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon. That’s a remarkable batting average, especially when you add in such fine Forman films as Hair, Ragtime and Valmont.
Forman came of age in Communist Czechoslovakia, and the prevalent thread in his films was the challenging, even mocking, of authority. There’s no better example than Nurse Rached in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Nurse Rached is every bit the tyrant as any jack-booted fascist dictator, but Forman chose to have little-known actress Louise Fletcher play Rached as soft-spoken, always-composed and superficially benevolent, which made Nurse Rached’s fiats even more emasculating an soul-crushing. Fletcher won an Oscar for her performance.
In Amadeus, Jeffrey Jones’ performance as the all-powerful but dim Emperor Joseph II punctured the idea of the divine right of kings. And, of course, Forman also made movies about Andy Kaufman and Larry Flynt, two outsiders who reveled in defying conventions.
Forman was also a master of casting. Not any director would have thought of casting Fletcher and Will Sampson in Cuckoo’s Nest or Jones, F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce in Amadeus. Not to mention Woody Harrelson in The People vs Larry Flynt. All turned out to be inspired choices.
I particularly love Forman’s final Czech movie before coming to Hollywood, The Fireman’s Ball from 1967. It’s a comedy of errors set during the annual ball of a small town fire brigade. It’s an obligatory occasion, and everyone is just going through the motions. No one is willing or able to do what they are supposed to be doing, whether it is protecting the raffle prizes or even putting out fires. The film eviscerated the moral bankruptcy of the Communist society and was predictably suppressed by the regime.
The Fireman’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Firemen’s Ball) can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix. It’s only one hour, thirteen minutes long, and it’s a hoot.
