movie gourmet

Elway to Marino: a great story in 1983 and a better story now

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Dan Marino in ELWAY TO MARINO

ESPN’s fine documentary series 30 for 30 has produced another winner in Marino to Elway, an insider’s view of the 1983 NFL draft.  That year, an astonishing six QBs were picked in the first round, including Hall of Famers John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly.  That crop of QBs would lead the AFC Super Bowl teams in eleven of the next sixteen years.  The impact to NFL history aside, the draft contained some forehead slapping individual stories:

  • Elway’s threat to play baseball for the New York Yankees if he were drafted by the Baltimore Colts;
  • five QBs getting drafted ahead of Marino, whose stock dropped because of inaccurate rumors of drug use;
  • Jim Kelly swearing that he would never play in Buffalo and jumping to the USFL’s Houston Gamblers;
  • Steeler first round pick Gabriel Rivera, an amazingly fast defensive tackle who paralyzed himself in a drunk driving accident after just 6 games in the NFL;
  • plus an assortment of draft busts and the machinations of NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Raiders owner Al Davis.

Elway and Marino were represented by the same agent, Marvin Demoff, who kept a daily journal.  That journal, plus interviews with Demoff, Elway and Marino, is the core of the movie.  But there are also interviews with Colts General Manager Ernie Accorsi, and first-rounders Rivera, Ken O’Brien, Todd Blackledge, Chris Hinton and Jimbo Covert. 

It was a great story in 1983, and Elway to Marino fills in the blanks with nugget after nugget.  It’s a must see for NFL fans.

The Angel’s Share: a heartwarming surprise

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THE ANGEL'S SHARE

The Angel’s Share is an endearing tale of a hard luck guy’s life changing after a visit to a Scotch whisky distillery.  Released back to hardscrabble Glasgow after doing prison time, a young man becomes a father and determines to change his life.  As focused as he is, that wouldn’t be possible without the encouragement of the guy who leads his community service work crew and the prodding of his girlfriend.  The odds are against him, but he gathers an oddball team from the work crew and devises an ingenious (and funny) heist.

The story begins with a clever court sentencing montage that only gradually settles our attention on the protagonist.  This young man (Paul Brannigan) is terse and always potentially destructive, yet we root for him because of his single-minded commitment to acting on his good intentions.  His potential is not apparent to any other characters (or to the audience for a long time).  His mentor (John Henshaw) has seen it all, but isn’t so jaded as to write off every unemployed and unemployable ex-con; more complex than he seems, he lives a lonely life, sparked by a single hobby.

The movie’s accessible tone surprised me because militant British director Ken Loach is known for far grimmer socialist realist films; here, Loach’s filmmaking skills and his unvarnished depiction of Glasgow slums enhance his warm story and hopeful characters. 

Fortunately, because the Glaswegian accent is very difficult for we Americans to follow, The Angel’s Share is subtitled.  The Angel’s Share is a fun and heartwarming movie that a wide audience will enjoy.

Coming Up on TV: 3 noir classics

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OUT OF THE PAST

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting three classics of film noir.

You really haven’t sampled film noir if you haven’t seen Out of the Past (1947).  Perhaps the model of a film noir hero, Robert Mitchum plays a guy who is cynical, strong, smart and resourceful – but still a sap for the femme fatale…played by the irresistible Jane Greer.  Greer later reported that she received this guidance from director Jacques Tourneur: “First half of the picture – good girl.  Second half – bad girl.”  Kirk Douglas plays The Bad Guy You Don’t Want to Mess With, emanating a mix of evil and power.  With Out of the Past, Tourneur crafted one of the most dramatically lit and photographed noirs – not one puff of cigarette smoke goes uncelebrated.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE

In The Asphalt Jungle (1950), the crooks assemble a team and pull off the big heist…and then things begin to go wrong.  There aren’t many noirs with better casting – the crooks include Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe and James Whitmore.  The 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe plays Calhern’s companion in her first real speaking part.  How noir is it? Even the cop who breaks the case goes to jail.  Directed by the great John Huston.

Every police procedural from 1948 through today’s Law and Order and CSI owes something to the prototypical The Naked City (1948). Tenacious New York City cops solve a murder amid gritty streets and shady characters. Unusual for the time, it was shot on location.   Directed by noir great Jules Dassin, The Naked City won Oscars for black and white cinematography and film editing.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE

DVD of the Week: Flight

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Denzel Washington stars in this top rate thriller about an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then falls into legal jeopardy when alcohol is found in his blood.  The plane crash is thrilling, but the high stakes suspense in the final 90 minutes is about whether he can get his drinking under control.  (The trailer below overemphasizes the plane crash and paints Flight as an action movie, thereby qualifying it for my list of Most Misleading Trailers.)

What makes Flight singular is that the hero can take control of a crisis at 35,000 feet and rise to superhuman performance, but is completely out of control when he spots a mini bottle of Ketel One. 

And what a hero Denzel Washington makes!  The guy is among our very best actors, and here, his edginess and bluster mask the pilot’s achingly vulnerable loneliness and self-loathing.  And the charisma and confidence in Denzel’s screen presence makes him totally credible as an action hero.

Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) delivers a plane crash scene for the ages, and he does an excellent job of keeping up the suspense.  Flight is pedal-to-the-metal intensity until the final ten minutes, when the ending didn’t quite work for me.  For me, only the ending kept Flight from being a Must See and one of the year’s best; however, The Wife and several of my friends did like the ending.

The English actress Kelly Reilly is really, really good as a trashy southern heroin addict whose life intersects with the pilot’s, and who must make the same choice between recovery and demise.  John Goodman is hilarious as a gonzo enabler right out of Hunter S. Thompson.  The rest of the cast shines, too, especially Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood and Tamara Tunie.

Flight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from many VOD outlets.

The Prowler: Van Heflin takes a dark turn

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Van Heflin (right) in THE PROWLER

On April 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the oft overlooked 1951 film noir The Prowler, starring usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin as the twisted bad guy.  Heflin is a beat cop responding to a call – a woman has reported a prowler outside her house.  By the time Heflin and his partner arrive, the prowler is long gone, but Heflin is lusting after the comely woman (Evelyn Keyes), who is home alone every night because her husband works as an all-night DJ.  Under the ruse of making sure that the prowler has vamoosed, Heflin returns and overcoming her reticence, seduces her.  As befits a film noir, once he finds out about the husband’s insurance policy, sleeping with the guy’s wife just isn’t enough anymore.

It’s a strong screenplay, penned by the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (who also provides the voice of the DJ).  Heflin sheds his usual decency to cast a predatory eye at another man’s wife and stuff.   This isn’t the Double Indemnity film noir sap who does the bidding of the femme fatale; it’s all his idea, and she just triggers his rapaciousness.  Keyes plays a woman who wants to pretend she’s on the level, but kinda knows what’s going on.

And of course, the cop has figured out how to get away with the scheme…except for one thing.

The Prowler has been restored by the Film Noir Foundation and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.  It’s an underrated noir thriller.

Movies to See Right Now

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Bradley Cooper in THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

Best bets in theaters this week:

  • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
  • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
  • Read my ambivalent comments before going to see the enigmatic Upstream Color.

I haven’t yet seen (but I’ve been eagerly awaiting) the drama Mud, with Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepherd, Michael Shannon and the kid from The Tree of Life.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

PBS is broadcasting the compelling doumentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al.  It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy.  I’m not a big fan of the shaky cam noir Sun Don’t Shine from promising indie director Amy Seimetz, available from various VOD outlets.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the authentic and evocative coming of age movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

On April 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the oft overlooked film noir The Prowler, starring usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin as the twisted bad guy.

Sun Don’t Shine: shaky cam noir

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Kate Lyn Shein and Kentucker Audley in SUN DON'T SHINE

Thirtyish Crystal and Leo are on the run and coaxing his weathered (and probably uninsured) sedan through central Florida.  Crystal is a white-hot mess.  I was going to describe her as needy and erratic, but those adjectives seem inadequate.  She is a unfiltered, explosive bundle of nerves, filled with impulses that are unfailingly ruinous.  The suspense in Sun Don’t Shine stems from whether Leo can navigate an escape path through her emotional minefield; we can tell from the neo-noir undercurrent that she’s going to bring him down no matter what.

In her first feature, writer-director Amy Seimetz combines a command of pacing with a Malickesque visual sense.   Watching her sweaty characters, we can feel both the Floridian humidity and the relief from air conditioning in a tourist trap. (A promising actor, Seimetz just turned in a compelling performance in the controversial Upstream Color.)  

The strength of the screenplay is that the audience only gradually learns why the two are on the run, from what and to where.  However, those revelations are not surprising.  Fortunately, Seimetz has chosen not to send her characters on yet another hyper-violent nihilistic crime spree.

But why doesn’t Leo leave Crystal on the side of the road and drive the hell away?  After about fifteen minutes, we know that’s his only chance.  He’s not very bright, but he is grounded in reality, and we wonder why he is so drawn to this wackadoodle. It may be a fim noir, but she sure isn’t Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy in Maltese Falcon. 

Watching Sun Don’t Shine is a 96-minute simulation of having an annoyingly clingy and scarily volatile girlfriend.  Long ago my friend Steve advised me, “Never sleep with anyone crazier than you are”.  Sage words, my friend.

Sun Don’t Shine is available for streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD outlets, and is beginning a limited theatrical release.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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In a fine movie debut, Stephen Chbosky directs the screen version of his novel.  A shy high school freshman in 1991 is adopted by two unapologetically misfit seniors, played by Harry Potter’s Emma Watson and Ezra Miller (very different here than in We Need to Talk About Kevin).  The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming of age story, and a very good one. We’ve all experienced adolescence, so my test for a film in this genre is whether the moments of adolescent awkwardness, peer obsession, self-doubt and discovery feel real.  I felt that authenticity with Perks.  In addition, the story is textured and unpredictable, and the performances – especially those by Watson and Miller –  are excellent.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

Movies to See Right Now

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Amy Seimetz in UPSTREAM COLOR

Best bets in theaters this week:

  • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
  • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
  • Read my ambivalent comments before going to see the enigmatic Upstream Color.

PBS is broadcasting the compelling doumentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al.

On Video on Demand:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.
  • Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

I haven’t yet seen the Norwegian scientific true adventure Kon-Tiki. Also opening today is Terence Malick’s To The Wonder.   You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the indie drama Smashed, with its breakthrough performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

Upstream Color: “enigmatic” is an understatement

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UPSTREAM COLOR

I have never been as ambivalent about a movie as I am about Upstream Color.  (More about that later.)

A character named Thief concocts a drug from corpulent worms, doses a woman and scams her out of her savings.  Another character, named Sampler, deworms her in a surgical tent at a pig farm.  This experience washes away her memory, and she happens into a relationship with a man, another loner trying to move on from a traumatic episode.  Along the way, we see vividly colorful shots of the human bloodstream and riparian ecology.  Sampler periodically reappears to solemnly observe the goings on and experiment with sound recordings, and he spends lots of time with the herd of pigs.

Yes, this is one trippy movie.  The worming and deworming scenes could fit in a sci-fi or horror movie.  The second half has the air of a romantic thriller.  The overall tone is of an art film or experimental film.  Upstream Color is written, directed, produced and co-edited by Shane Carruth, who also plays the male lead and composed the score.  Indeed, the cinematography and Carruth’s editing and music are strikingly unique and effective.

Even viewers who admire Upstream Color find it baffling.  What’s going on and what’s it all mean?  Halfway through, I put it all together:  Sampler represented the writer himself who was imagining – and trying on – different characters, plot elements and settings.   So I thought this was a brilliant film about the creative process.  But then Carruth himself set me straight.  At the screening Q & A, Carruth said that I was wrong about Sampler, that the film is about how people might relate if their identities are stripped away, and that Upstream Color is intended to be a coherent narrative.

So here’s my problem –  it’s not a coherent narrative – not even close.  If Sampler is merely an observer, how can he play a critical part in the plot by deworming the woman?  Why are the characters doing the same thing simultaneously at the pig farm and in the highrise? And what gives with the bearded guy and his wife (seemingly unrelated to the other plot threads)?  So I don’t think that Upstream Color is a success on the filmmaker’s own stated terms.  But my interpretation did work for me, and the music, visuals, editing, and lead actress Amy Seimetz combined to make the overall experiece worthwhile.

Amy Seimetz is excellent as this haunted and confused character.  (Seimetz is a director in her own right and is getting enough acting parts now to demonstrate that she has the chops of a potentially significant actress.  (BTW 25 years ago, Lindsay Crouse would have played this role.)

If you like your movies understandable, stay away from Upstream Color – you will hate it.  If you want a unique art film experience, go with it.