The enjoyable documentary An Honest Liar tells the at times surprising story of magician James Randi – “The Amazing Randi”. A staple of television talk shows for decades, Randi relished exposing and debunking fakirs who claimed that mere trickery constituted some supernatural power.
Randi became famous for hounding celebrity spoon-bender Uri Geller (and good sport Geller shows up in the movie). I didn’t know that magic fan Johnny Carson had reached out to Randi before Geller’s appearance on The Tonight Show with satisfying results.
The Can’t Miss segment of this film is Randi’s elaborate unmasking of Peter Popov, the Christian “faith healer” – it’s priceless.
Finally, An Honest Liar takes a VERY unexpected turn when there turns out to be a deception at the heart of Randi’s own personal life. This makes the movie’s ending especially heartfelt.
An Honest Liar is available streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
Amy, documentarian Asif Kapadia’s innovative biopic of singer-songwriter is one of the most heart-felt and engaging movies of the year.
In a brilliant directorial choice, Amy opens with a call phone video of a birthday party. It’s a typically rowdy bunch of 14 year-old girls, and, when they sing “Happy Birthday”, the song is taken over and finished spectacularly by one of the girls, who turns out to be the young Amy Winehouse. It shows us a regular girl in a moment of unaffected joy and friendship, but a girl with monstrous talent.
In fact ALL we see in Amy is footage of Amy. Her family and friends were devoted to home movies and cell phone video, resulting in a massive trove of candid video of Amy Winehouse and an especially rich palette for Kapadia.
We have a ringside seat for Amy’s artistic rise and her demise, fueled by bulimia and substance addiction. In a tragically startling sequence, her eyes signal the moment when her abuse of alcohol and pot gave way to crack and heroin.
We also see when she becomes the object of tabloid obsession. It’s hard enough for an addict to get clean, but it’s nigh impossible while being when harassed by the merciless paparazzi.
Amy makes us think about using a celebrity’s disease as a source of amusement – mocking the behaviorally unhealthy for our sport. Some people act like jerks because they are jerks – others because they are sick. Winehouse was cruelly painted as a brat, but she was really suffering through a spiral of despair.
The Amy Winehouse story is a tragic one, but Amy is very watchable because Amy herself was very funny and sharply witty. As maddening as it was for those who shared her journey, it was also fun, from all reports. Everyone who watches Amy will like Amy, making her fate all the more tragic.
Tomorrow night, July 24, Turner Classic Movies presents the groundbreaking French noirElevator to the Gallows. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.
Elevator to the Gallows (1958) is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first of the neo-noir. It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old. It’s difficult now to appreciate the originality of Elevator the Gallows; but in 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together.
A thriller that still stands up today, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) is about the perfect crime that goes awry. The French war hero Julien (Marcel Ronet), is now working as an executive for a military supplier. He’s having an affair with Florence (Jeanne Moreau), whose husband owns the firm. Seeking to possess both his lover and his company, Julien implements an elaborately detailed plan to get away with his boss’ murder. Everything goes perfectly until he makes one oversight; then the dominoes begin to fall, and soon he is trapped in a very vulnerable situation. He is incommunicado, and he remains ignorant of the related events that transpire outside.
Almost every character makes false assumptions about what is going on. Florence mistakenly believes that Julien has run off with a young trollop. A young punk and his peppy girlfriend incorrectly assume that they are on the verge of arrest. The police pin a murder on Julien that he didn’t commit – but his alibi is the murder that he DID commit. And there’s a great scene where Julien is striding confidently into a busy cafe, unaware that he has become the most recognizable fugitive in France.
It’s a page-turner of a plot, and the acting is superb, but Malle’s choices make this film. When Florence thinks that she’s been dumped, she walks through Paris after dark. Jeanne Moreau doesn’t have any lines (although her interior thoughts are spoken in voice-over). Instead, she embodies sadness and shock through her eyes and her carriage – the effect is heartbreaking. Mile Davis’ trumpet reinforces the sadness of her midnight stroll.
The Miles Davis score is brilliant, but Malle often makes effective use of near silence, too. And he reinforces the kids’ shallowness and over-dramatizing with strings. Every audio choice is perfect.
There’s vivid verisimilitude in a Paris police station at 5 am – all grittiness with drunks sobering up, and the holding cage filled with thieves and prostitutes. The contrast in how the police treat the wealthy and influential is stark and realistic.
The young couple is completely believable. The joyride is absolutely what these characters would do. The young guy is sullen and the girl is hooked on his moodiness. And, of course, with the self-absorption of youth, they over-dramatize their own situation.
Every scene in Elevator to the Gallows is strong, but the scenes with Moreau pop off the screen. This was her star-making role, and perhaps the definitive Jeanne Moreau role (yes – even more than Jules et Jim).
Marcel Ronet is also excellent as Julien. Julien is a guy with serious skills, and the confidence and poise to use them. When Julien is trapped in the situation that would cause most of us to freak out, he immediately starts working on an Apollo 13-like solution without any hint of panic. The harrowing scenes of Julien’s entrapment and escape fit alongside the mot suspenseful moments in the great French crime thrillers Rififi (1955) and Le trou (1960). The means of his eventual escape is one of the most ironic moments in cinema.
Marcel Ronet in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
Eventually we see the marvelous Lino Ventura as the detective captain. A former European wrestling champion, Ventura had debuted five years earlier in the great Touchez pas au grisbi and had followed that with several gangster/cop supporting roles. Immediately after Elevator to the Gallows, Ventura started getting lead roles. Ventura had an almost unique combination of charm, wit and hulking physicality; he’s one of the few actors I can envision playing Tony Soprano.
The high contrast black and white photography, the voiceovers and the city at night all scream “noir”. So does the amorality of the main characters seeking to get what they want by murder, the ironies of the miscommunications and mistaken assumptions and the profoundly cynical ending.
But the look and sound of Elevator to the Gallows is entirely new. The experience of viewing Elevator to the Gallows seems closer to the American indie triumphs of the early 1970s (The Godfather, Chinatown, The Conversation) than to the likes of The Postman Always Rings Twice or The Big Sleep. Elevator to the Gallows remains a starkly modern film that is still as fresh today as in 1958.
The compelling and affecting true-life drama Omagh(2004) begins with the infamous 1999 car bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland. But Omagh is more about the aftermath – the pain and grief of the survivors as they strive for justice and accountability.
The bombing, by a nationalist splinter group, killed 29 on the small town’s market street. It had been just four months since the Good Friday Accord, and both mainstream republicans and unionists were getting used to the day-to-day peace of a post-Troubles era. The bombing was a jarring interruption of that peace, and many felt even more betrayed because the “warning” actually worked to draw more victims toward the lethal blast.
Omagh vividly depicts the carnage and chaos after the blast. The desperate search for loved ones amid the confusion is profoundly moving. We experience Omagh through the perspective of Michael Gallagher, father of one of the victims. He takes the helm of the survivors group as they seek answers – and run into a series of stone walls and cover-ups. The soft-spoken Gallagher may be the least histrionic leader in human history, and he is able to lead because the other survivors rely on his decency, good sense and quiet courage. We also see that – as in real life – people grieve at different paces, and the obsession of some in the family doesn’t work for others.
Michael Gallagher is played by the veteran actor Gerard McSorley (In the Name of the Father, Widow’s Peak, Braveheart, The Boxer, Bloody Sunday). It is McSorley’s powerful and profoundly sad performance that elevates Omagh.
Director Pete Travis employs a jiggly camera and a spare soundtrack to focus our attention on the characters with intimacy and immediacy. When we hear the door closed after the last guest leaves a funeral, the sound of the latch communicates more finality than would any dialogue.
The biodoc What Happened, Miss Simone?opens with the middle-aged singer Nina Simone coming on-stage for a come-back concert in the mid-1970s. We see her regarding the audience – and we ask, is she a temperamental artist or is she high or is she unhinged?
Nina Simone led a remarkable life, presented in this documentary by filmmaker Liz Garbus. Growing up as a poor girl in the segregated South, Simone’s talent as a classical pianist led her to Julliard. A racial glass ceiling in classical music, redirected her to earning a living singing blues in nightclubs. Her gifts as a vocalist and as a songwriter earned her a recording deal. Then she became consumed by militant political activism to the expense of her career.
That’s a pretty interesting arc, but the core of What Happened, Miss Simone? is that she was bipolar and long undiagnosed and untreated. The illness made what was already a turbulent life more erratic and self-destructive. Garbus has the benefit of testimony from Simone’s intimates – her daughter, husband, musical director, managers and friends. We even see Simone’s own thoughts through her often heartbreaking journal entries.
What Happened, Miss Simone? is available to stream on Netflix Instant.
It’s 1947 and 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes has been self-exiled to the Dover coast in retirement for almost thirty years. He’s still keenly observant, but his memory is deteriorating with age, and he knows it. That’s a problem as he feels an urgent need to summon up the facts of his final case, left unresolved in 1919. In Mr. Holmes, Ian McKellen plays Sherlock in his 1947 frailty and desperation and in the flashbacks to 1919, when he’s at the top of his game.
As Mr. Holmes, opens, Sherlock has just returned home from a trip to Japan. So desperate to refresh his memory, he has sought a Japanese homeopathic cure (“prickly ash”), in the process meeting a Japanese family with an unsolved disappearance of their own. Back home, he lives with his housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her gifted son, Roger (Milo Parker). Holmes recognizes the boy’s exceptionalism and quasi-adopts as a grandchild. The boy has lost his father in World War II, and his relationship with the old man is another central thread in the movie.
Ian McKellen is delightful and endearing as the crusty Holmes. McKellen is an actor of enough stature to pull off this iconic role, and he is able both to project the Holmes genius and to deliver the humor in this very witty screenplay.
Holmes resents how his former roommate Dr. Watson has depicted him in fiction – and doesn’t like fiction at all (until the very last scene). At least, when they lived together, Watson avoided an onslaught of tourists by publishing the wrong address for their rooms (they actually lived across the street from 221B Baker Street). And Holmes goes to a theater to see a very bad 1940s Sherlock Holmes movie.
I saw Mr. Homes at the San Francisco Film Festival at a screening in which producer Anne Carey and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher spoke. When Carey read the source material – the novel “Slight Trick of the Mind” by Mitch Cullin – she recognized the appeal of the central role, the settings and the theme of “don’t wait too long for things important to your heart”. It took her eight years to get director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls) on board, who brought in McKellen.
Hatcher was attracted by Holmes’ relationship to the boy Roger and by theme of how we rewrite our own stories. He pointed out that the 1919 story in Mr. Holmes has four versions: what really happened, how Watsone added a happy ending in his book, the Hollywood melodrama of the film-within-the-film and, finally, as Holmes himself connects it to the Japanese story thread at the end.
Carey and Hatcher revealed that Condon playfully referenced Hitchcock in Mr. Holmes: Ambrose Chapel from The Man Who Knew Too Much, carrying of tea a la Notorious and a “Vertigo” sequence under the arches.
It’s a good story with a superb performance by McKellen. Mr. Homes opens tomorrow.
The all-around outstanding actor Jake Gyllenhaal excels at playing guys who are just a little too obsessive (Zodiac, Prisoners, Enemy) to let you get comfortable with them. In the thriller Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal gets to play a 100% psycho. His character is seriously twisted, but in that high functioning way so the other characters don’t suspect it until IT’S TOO LATE.
Gyllenhaal’s bug eyes come in handy in playing the ever-too-intense Lou Bloom, a hustler who talks like a super-caffeinated sales guy, full of the argot of self-help and inspirational speakers. His bromides about success seem mainstream, but his hyper affect puts off regular folks. He’s thieving copper when he sees an opportunity to turn himself into a free-lance video journalist. Nightcrawler is an acid commentary on the TV news world, and Lou has finally found an arena where being balanced is not an asset.
In fact, a cynical TV producer (Rene Russo) finds Lou’s intrusiveness and utter disregard for social boundaries to be helpful. When placing her order with Lou, she can be entirely unfiltered: “What we re looking for is a woman running down the street with her throat cut”, preferably a “White well-off victim”.
Riz Ahmed, so compelling as The Reluctant Fundamentalist
is unrecognizable here as Lou’s tweaked and shifty homeless assistant Rick. It’s an effective transformation, and it’s equally great not to see Ahmed stuck playing a terrorist again.
Nightcrawler is successful both as a biting satire and as a charter-driven thriller. You can stream Nightcrawler from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu and rent it on DirecTV PPV.
Alicia Viksander bids farewell to Kit Harington in TESTAMENT OF YOUTH
In Testament of Youth, Alicia Viksander plays Vera, a gifted and determined young British woman who overcomes the conventions of the day and the objections of her father to attend Oxford in the 1910s. In 1914, Vera’s brother, fiance and closest male friends all enlist in Britain’s WW I army. No one at the time could have imagined the industrialized carnage that WW I would become, and it’s poignant when the young men say that the war will probably be over before they’ve completed their basic training. The war is, of course, an unspeakable horror. We don’t expect the young men to fare well in the War, and they don’t. Vera suspends her Oxford education to work as a nurse, first in Britain and later at the front. She is in position to observe the effects of war both at the front and on the home front, where her parents are especially impacted.
Testament of Youth is based on Vera Brittain’s popular and influential 1933 memoir of the same name, which is also an icon of feminist literature. Brittain became a pacifist leader.
This story follows a familiar arc, and I often ask “why did someone feel the need to make this movie?”. Testament of Youth, however, is fairly compelling. Credit goes to Viksander and to director James Kent, who somehow prevent the film from slipping into an unwatchable slog of grimness.
The most impressive element of Testament of Youth is the performance of Alicia Viksander as Vera Brittain. Viksander is onscreen in every scene, often in close-up and she carries the film with a flawless performance. As good as she is here, Viksander is even better in this year’s sci-fi hit Ex Machina, where she plays a machine embedded with artificial intelligence. (Ex Machina is the best American movie of the year so far.)
With Ex Machina, Viksander is exploding into cinema as a major star. Most Americans first saw the 26-year-old Swede in two 2012 movies. She played a key supporting role in Anna Karenina and a lead in the Mads Mikkelsen period drama A Royal Affair. Although I thought it too long, A Royal Affair won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Now she has five films completed or in post-production, including upcoming Derek Cianfrance film The Light Between the Oscars, co-starring Michael Fassbender, who she ihas been dating. She also has the top credit in the upcoming The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which looks wretched from the trailer. Plus, she slated to co-star with Matt Damon in the next Bourne movie. It’s quite a career trajectory, and from what I’ve seen, richly deserved.
Americans will find this odd, but the Swedish Viksander reportedly had to struggle to learn Danish for A Royal Affair. It seems especially odd, given that she speaks English with a perfect American accent in Ex Machina and perfect middle class British accent in Testament of Youth.
Back to Last Testament of Youth – it’s not a Must See, but it is a well-made and evocative treatment of the tragedy of war.
The appealing coming of age comedy Dope turns a well-worn plot into an engaging movie by juxtaposing stereotypes. The conventional plot device is the Regular Guy Finds $100,000 of Drug Money In His Backpack. The regular guy, however, is not just an African-American teen who lives in a nightmarish hood (Shameik Moore), but ALSO a nerdish brainiac who aspires to vault from Inglewood to Harvard. Writer-director Rick Famuyiwa grew up in Inglewood, so the story and the characters ring true.
The cast is uniformly good. Zoe Kravitz, who has been stuck in secondary roles in the Divergent movies and Mad Max: Fury Road, plays the mouth-watering love interest here, and she dominates the movie. Gotta see more of her. Veteran supporting actor Roger Guenveur Smith is especially good as the kid’s would-be gateway to the Ivy League; Smith’s 76 screen credits include American Gangster and a whole bunch of Spike Lee films.
It may not be life-transforming, but Dope is a smart, original and entertaining little movie.
For some reason, the critical consensus on Mad Max:Fury Road has been pretty favorable. It’s 120 minutes long, of which at least 105 minutes are chase scenes that are really mobile battles. They are remarkable battles, but they are just battles. Writer-director George Miller has produced an adrenaline-filled thrill ride with some unique elements. But there just really isn’t anything exceptional – characters, dialogue, plot, setting – besides the action.
Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy are just fine as the good guys. Poor Hardy has to wear a steel mask for a third of the movie like he did for the entire The Dark Knight Rises. Theron is a fantastic actress, but all she has to do here is glint over her shoulder a lot (and she’s looks great doing that). I really loved Nicholas Hoult, who was so engaging in Warm Bodies, here as a Takes A Licking But Keeps On Ticking pawn-of-the-villain. Zoe Kravitz rides along with Theron and Hardy, looking adorable.
If you feel the need for a simplistic rock ’em, sock’em action movie, this will fill the bill. Don’t expect any more.
