Movies

INSIDE OUT: smart but not gripping

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INSIDE OUT
INSIDE OUT

I’m a huge Pixar admirer, and I usually walk out of a Pixar movie THRILLED.  That didn’t happen with Inside Out, a smart and entertaining movie, but one that got more attention from my head than my heart.

Inside Out is the story of a well-adjusted girl named Riley, who is yanked out of her comfort zone when her Dad’s job suddenly takes the family to San Francisco.  The story is told from the perspective of her emotions, five characters (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust) who command her behavior from a Head-Quarters (get it?).   In watching what happens to Riley, kids in the audience get to understand how emotions are okay and how  even sadness is normal; that’s all fine, but, as The Wife reminded me, Inside Out, along with Pixar’s recent Up and Wall-E, is a little preachy.

As one would expect, the animation and the voice acting are top-rate.  Where writers-directors Pete Dockter and Ronaldo Del Carmen really excel, however, is in imagining and then depicting the mechanisms of human thinking and feeling: the Emotions, Islands of Personality, Core Memories, the Train of Thought and the Subconscious.  It’s very smart and original stuff.

The sad parts are very pronounced and, in my opinion, too slow and deeply sad.   As someone scarred by the death of Bambi’s mother,  I was distracted by worrying about the little kids in the theater.  That being said, I accompanied eight-year-old twins and a ten-year-old to Inside Out.  The eight-year-olds were engrossed, and afterwards didn’t mention being too scared or too sad.  The ten-year-old grunted apprehensively a few times during the movie, but afterwards resolutely denied that it was ever too scary.  So there.  But, still, it was too sad for ME in places.

None of the children at the screening got fidgety, despite there being far less than usual of the slapstick humor that kids favor.   Most of the humor seemed adult-centered, evoking lots of knowing chuckles from the grown-ups.  The end credits – with dog, and then cat, emotions – are hilarious.

After those meh comments, I need to draw attention to Lava, the Pixar animated short that precedes the feature.  It’s seven minutes of cinema magic by filmmaker James Ford Murphy.  It’s a musical love story between two Hawaiian volcanoes.  The volcanoes are named Uku and Lele, and the message is a simple and sentimental one (“I Lava You”), but Lava isn’t the least bit corny.  The story is told through song – just two voices accompanied by ukulele – by Hawaiian musicians Kuana Torres Kehele and Napua Greig.   For sheer beauty, it’s up there with the recording of Over the Rainbow by the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.  I’m pretty jaded, but anyone too cynical to enjoy Lava should re-examine himself. Loved it.

GEMMA BOVERY: jumping into the plot of a novel

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Fabrice Luchini and Gemma Arterton in GEMMA BOVERY
Fabrice Luchini and Gemma Arterton in GEMMA BOVERY

In the delightful dark comedy Gemma Bovery, Fabrice Luchini plays a guy who has left his Type A job in Paris to take over his father’s bakery in a sleepy village in Normandy. He gets new neighbors when a young British couple named Bovery moves in. The young British woman (played by the delectable Gemma Arterton) is named Gemma Bovery, and only the baker notices the similarity to Emma Bovary. But, like the protagonist of Madame Bovary, the young British woman is also married to a Charles, becomes bored and restless and develops a wandering eye. The baker rapidly becomes obsessed with the Flaubert novel being re-enacted before his eyes and soon jumps into the plot himself. Gemma Bovery, which I saw at Cinequest 2015, is a French movie that is mostly in English.

Fabrice Luchini is a treasure of world cinema. No screen actor can deliver a funnier reaction than Luchini, and he’s the master of squeezing laughs out of an awkward moment. For me, his signature role is in the 2004 French Intimate Strangers, in which he plays a tax lawyer with a practice in a Parisian professional office building. A beautiful woman (Sandrine Bonnaire), mistakes Luchini’s office for that of her new shrink, plops herself down and, before he can interrupt, starts unloading her sexual issues. It quickly becomes awkward for him to tell her of the error, and he’s completely entranced with her revelations, so he keeps impersonating her shrink. As they move from appointment to appointment, their relationship takes some unusual twists. It’s a very funny movie, and a great performance.

Gemma Bovery is directed and co-written by Anne Fontaine (The Girl from Monaco, Coco Before Chanel). Fontaine has a taste for offbeat takes on female sexuality, which she aired in the very trashy Adore (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright as Australian cougars who take on each other’s sons as lovers) and the much better Nathalie (wife pays prostitute to seduce her cheating hubby and report back on the details).

Gemma Bovery isn’t as Out There as Nathalie, but it’s just as good. The absurdity of the coincidences in Gemma Bovery makes for a funny situation, which Luchini elevates into a very funny movie.

THE ROUTINE: wicked comment on technology

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Today, in only 9 minutes and 35 seconds, we have a wickedly effective commentary on the limits of technology – the 2014 short film The Routine.  The actress Tara Price wrote, produced and stars in The Routine – and it’s quite a performance.  Directed by Brian Groh.  Here’s the entire film.

The Routine (short film) from Tara Price on Vimeo.

ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL: a Must See, perched on the knife edge between comedy and tragedy

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Ronald Cyler II and Thomas Mann in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
Ronald Cyler II and Thomas Mann in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

Here’s a MUST SEE – the unforgettable coming of age Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a brilliant second feature from director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.  The title suggests a weeper (and it is), but 90% of Me and Earl is flat-out hilarious.

Greg (Thomas Mann)  is a Pittsburgh teenager who has decided that the best strategy for navigating high school is to foster good relations with every school clique while belonging to none.   Embracing the adage “hot girls destroy your life”, he gives the opposite gender a very wide berth.  Outwardly genial, Greg is emphatically anti-social in practice, except for his best friend Earl (Ronald Cyler II).  But he even refuses to admit that Earl is his friend, describing him “as more of a co-worker”.

Greg’s parents disrupt Greg’s routine by forcing him to visit his classmate Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who has just been diagnosed with leukemia.  Rachel doesn’t want any pity, so this is awkward all around until Greg makes Rachel laugh, which draws him back again to visit -and again.  A friendship, based on their shared quirky senses of humor, blossoms, but – given her diagnosis – how far can it go?

Rachel is delighted to learn that Greg and Earl shoot their own movies – short knock-offs of iconic cinema classics.  She first laughs when she finds that he has remade Rashomon as MonoRash.  Their other titles include Death in Tennis, Brew Velvet and A Box of Lips Now.

Why is Me and Earl so successful?  Most importantly, it perches right on the knife-edge between tragedy and comedy, and does so more than any movie I can think of.  As funny as it is, we all know that there’s that leukemia thing just under the surface.  But, with its originality and resistance to sentimentality,  Me and Earl is the farthest thing from a disease-of-the-week movie.

Any movie lover will love all the movie references, as well as Greg and Earl’s many short films.   Gomez-Rejon shot these shorts with Super 8, Bolex, digital Bolex and iPhone.  Jesse Andrews adapted his own novel, and, as Gomez-Rejon expanded the number of “films within the film”, he called on Andrews to supply him with the new titles – and there are scores of them, right through the ending credits.

Finally, Me and Earl’s art direction is the most singular of any coming of age film.  In fact, all the art direction led to the movie’s very satisfying ending; Gomez-Rejon brought in those surprises on the wall at the end – it’s not in the novel.

But Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is at its heart a coming of age story.  Sure, the character of Greg is an original, but the life lessons that he must learn are universal.

Thomas Mann is hilarious as Greg; he could be a great comic talent in the making.  Cooke and newcomer Cyler are also excellent.  Nick Offerman and Connie Britton are perfect as Greg’s well-meaning parents, as is Molly Shannon as Rachel’s needy mom.  Jon Bernthal also rocks the role of Mr. McCarthy, another great character we haven’t seen before – a boisterously vital, but grounded history teacher; Mr. McCarthy lets Greg and Earl spend their lunch hours in his office watching Werner Herzog movies on YouTube.  (And Herzog himself reportedly loves the references.)

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon started as a personal assistant to Martin Scorsese and worked his way up to second unit director. With the startling originality of Me and Earl, he’s proved his chops as an auteur.

I saw Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in early May at the San Francisco International Film Festival at a screening with Gomez-Rejon.  It also just screened at San Jose’s Camera Cinema Club, another fine choice by Club Director Tim Sika,  President of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and a Must See.  It’s one of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far.

 

DVD/Stream of the Week: HIS KIND OF WOMAN – he knows the deal is too good

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HIS KIND OF WOMAN
HIS KIND OF WOMAN

Here’s a selection from my list of Overlooked Noir – His Kind of Woman. Robert Mitchum plays a down-and-out gambler who is offered a deal that MUST be too good to be true; he’s smart enough to be suspicious and knows that he must discover the real deal before it’s too late. He meets a on-the-top-of-the-world hottie (Jane Russell), who is about to become down on her luck, too.

They are stuck in the confines of a Mexican beach resort with a full complement of shady characters, played by noir standard-carriers Charles McGraw, Jim Backus and Philip Van Zandt. And there’s the star of movie swashbucklers (Vincent Price), who is hiding out from his unhappy marriage. Tim Holt (Treasure of the Sierra Madre) shows up as another guy who isn’t what he seems. And, anchored just offshore, is the ruthless Italian crime lord (Raymond Burr at his most pitiless).

What makes this a noir classic is the complete amorality of the very sympathetic Mitchum and Russell characters. They’re not bad people, but they are playing the hands that they have been dealt. Neither questions the justice of their situations – they don’t feel sorry for themselves, they just deal with it. And they don’t worry about sleeping around or breaking a few laws if they have to. They may not be lucky, but they are determined to survive.

Reportedly, studio owner Howard Hughes fired the director John Farrow and replaced him with noir-master Richard Fleischer (Cry Danger).

His Kind of Woman plays on Turner Classic Movies and is also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

THE 100-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED: two Swedish comedies in one

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100 year old
The Swedish comedy The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a rich mixture of absurdity and broad physical humor.  As a geezer escapes from his nursing home and (slowly) embarks on an adventure, he see flashbacks to his earlier Zelig-like life.  As the local police launch a half-hearted (or quarter-hearted)  search for him,  he happens into a criminal gang’s suitcase of cash and picks up a motley crew of confederates.  There are two comedies here – the series of absurd coincidences that put him in the most salient moments of 20th Century history AND the guffaw-inducing chase story.   Both comedic threads are satisfying and very funny.

Robert Gustafsson is effective playing the protagonist Allan from ages 18 through 100.  I loved Iwar Wiklander as Allan’s partner-in-adventure Julius.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared has also edged its way into a four-way tie for 12th place on my list of Longest Movie Titles.  It’s a hoot.

DVD of the Week: BOXING GYM – human and hypnotic

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BOXING GYM
BOXING GYM

There is no narration in Frederick Wiseman’s 2010 brilliant and mesmerizing 2010 documentary Boxing Gym. Nor are there on-screen titles or talking heads. All we see are the owners and patrons of a scruffy Austin, Texas, boxing gym going about their daily routines – conditioning and instruction. Except for a one- or two-second shot of the gym’s entrance, all 91 minutes is shot inside the small gym. The effect is hypnotic.

This is a gym for people of all ages, ethnicities, levels of fitness and genders. It’s unusually welcoming to women, and we see lots of women working out (and never being hassled by the men). There are kids, and even a baby who is moved from workout station to workout station in his carrier seat. Former pro boxer Richard Lord and his wife run the gym, where a membership runs only $50 per month – and that’s negotiable.

This is a sports movie without a climactic Big Fight. We don’t even see a boxing match – just lots of hitting the bags, shadow boxing, jumping rope, footwork on a giant tire and instruction. And more hitting the bags. Everyone is concentrating – getting in a self-isolated zone so they can achieve the rhythmic pattern of footwork and pat-pat-patting the speed bag. Wiseman edits his own films, and Boxing Gym is a masterpiece of editing. He lets us fall into the pace of the place and meet the characters by watching them and eavesdropping on them. He lingers on shots for a reason, skips to another vignette at precisely the right moment and the film is perfectly paced.

There is one extraordinary scene. Near the end of the movie, a man and a woman are sharing the ring as they each workout. In his half of the ring, he is practicing his footwork and throwing punches, simulating a fight. In the other half of the ring, she is doing the same. These are separate individual workouts, and the two never make eye contact. Each is in his/her own bubble of concentration. But their footsteps are rhythmic, they’re both breathing heavily, and the man grunts when he throws punches. If you listen without watching the screen, it sounds like sex. The result is a powerfully erotic scene – perhaps even more powerful because the two people are not interacting with each other at all. Unforgettable. (Wiseman may not have known what he had when he shot this sequence, but he certainly recognized it in the editing room.)

Wiseman was 80 when he made Boxing Gym, his fortieth movie.  Since then, he’s directed the critically praised La Danse, At Berkeley and National Gallery.  Wiseman was a law professor who made a career change at age 37.  His breakout film was the pysch hospital expose Titicut Follies in 1967.

Boxing Gym is available on DVD from Netflix.

LOVE & MERCY: a tale of three monsters and salvation

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Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in LOVE & MERCY
Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in LOVE & MERCY

Love & Mercy, the emotionally powerful biopic of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, is the true life story of an extraordinarily gifted person facing three monsters.  Wilson is a musical genius, one of the great songwriting, arranging and producing talents of his century.  But his art and his very survival were tested by his tormentors until unselfish love found him an escape to treatment, and, ultimately, his salvation.

In his first feature as a director, veteran producer Bill Pohlad chose to depict two phases of Wilson’s life, with Wilson played by Paul Dano and John Cusack.

The first monster is Wilson’s father Murry (Bill Camp), an abusive father whose adult sons still fear after they have fired him as their manager.  What kind of father needs to belittle and sabotage his sons so he doesn’t have to acknowledge that their success surpasses his own?  Brian Wilson is deaf  in one ear from his father’s punches, but the psychological scars are even more deeply felt.

The second monster is Brian’s own schizoid affective disorder, a condition causing auditory hallucinations.  Brilliantly, Pohlad has chosen to let the audience hear what Brian hears. This can be thrilling in moments of musical inspiration.  And, of course, it is terrifying most of the time.

The third monster is charlatan psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), a Svengali-like manipulator, who over-medicates Brian, then confines him, while controlling and watching his every move.  Landy leeches off Brian’s fortune and is ruthlessly protective of his racket.

Murry and Landy are so scary that Beach Boy Mike Love, known to be (and portrayed here as) a colossal jerk, almost seems sympathetic by comparison.

In the younger Dano segments, we see Brian at his creative peak, emotionally tortured by Murry and about to be driven into a breakdown by his condition.   In the middle-aged Cusack parts, we see Brian, broken down by his illness, utterly helpless against and captive to Landy’s web of control.

Dano shows us Brian’s vulnerable genius. Cusack shows us Brian as gentle and genuine. The story of Love & Mercy is about how he escapes being under the thumb of his monsters, chiefly from the perspective of Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), the woman who would become his second wife. As good as are Dano and Cusack, Banks is absolutely stellar; her character must continually react to the unpredictability of Brian’s illness and the increasing horror of Landy’s tyranny.

From the beginning, Love & Mercy sweeps us up into the highs and lows of Brian Wilson’s life – and it’s a helluva life. Love & Mercy is one of the Best Movies of 2015 – So Far.  Watch the end credits all the way to the end.

 

SPY: Melissa McCarthy spoofs Bond

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Melissa McCarthy and John Cusack in SPY
Melissa McCarthy and Jude Law in SPY

Melissa McCarthy spoofs James Bond-type spy movies in the winning comedy Spy. She plays a put-upon back-of-the-house CIA operative who supports a glamorous super spy (Jude Law). She is extremely skilled, but he gets all the credit for their successes. She is so low self-esteemed that even SHE doesn’t recognize her own competence and achievements. Then circumstances pull her out of the basement at Langley and into the field for an operation – and the joke is on everyone else.

McCarthy carries Spy with her gifts for both verbal and physical comedy. She is so damned appealing, and she represents every one of us who has felt underestimated. And NOBODY delivers a filthy insult with more comic effect.

Law is as suave as he can be. Jason Statham sends up his own scowling action hero roles by playing an agent swaggering with macho braggadocio but who really a buffoon. The villainess is played by Rose Byrne, who broke out as a first-rate movie comedienne in last year’s Neighbors; she’s at least as good in Spy. New York City-born swimsuit model Nargis Fakhri has starred in a few Bollywood movies, and she has a rockin’ action sequence here that indicates that she has a future in mainstream American films.

Spy was written and directed by Paul Feig, the creator of Freaks and Geeks who directed the hit picture that McCarthy stole, Bridesmaids , and the hilarious McCarthy vehicle The Heat. In Spy, he starts us off with a Shirley Bassyesque title song, and then parodies all the conventions of the super spy movie genre, one by one.

Spy sustains its laughs throughout. It’s maybe not quite as funny as The Heat, but it’s a an entertaining diversion, and a great chance to enjoy the unique talent of Melissa McCarthy.

WOMAN ON THE RUN – a sassy gal in 1950 San Francisco

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Deenis O'Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN
Deenis O’Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN

On Friday night, June 5, Turner Classic Movies is presenting one of my Overlooked Noir, in its wonderful film noir series Summer of Darkness.   The character-driven thriller Woman on the Run (1950)  is notable for its San Francisco locations, making it a veritable time capsule of the post-war City By The Bay.

The movie opens with a murder, and the one terrified witness goes underground.  When the police coming looking for him, they are surprised to find his wife (Ann Sheridan) both ignorant of his whereabouts and unconcerned.  While still living in the same apartment, the couple is estranged.  And the wife has a Mouth On Her, much to the dismay of the detective (Robert Keith), who keeps walking into a torrent of sass.

But soon the wife starts hunting hubbie, along with the cops, a reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) and the killer.  It’s a race to see who can find him first.  One character is revealed to be more dangerous than was apparent, and the audience learns this before our heroine does.

One quirky nugget – when she visits his workplace, we learn that his job is making mannikins in the basement of a large department store.

Sheridan is great in this uncharacteristically insolent role.  So are O’Keefe and Keith.  But the real star of Woman on the Run is San Francisco itself, from the hilly neighborhoods to the bustling streets to the dank and foreboding waterfront.  Oddly, the finale is at an amusement park which seems to be Playland At the Beach (but was actually filmed at the Santa Monica Pier).  (Further trivia – that Laffing Sal is the one at Santa Monica, not the one at Playland which now resides at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.)  The only movie that rivals Woman on Run for its depiction of San Francisco in the 1950s is The Lineup.

The story is a taut 77 minutes of mouthy Ann Sheridan, the life-or-death manhunt and stellar period San Francisco.  Woman on the Run is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video (free with Amazon Prime).

Ann Sheridan (far left) sasses Robert Keith (far right) in WOMAN ON THE RUN
Ann Sheridan (far left) sasses Robert Keith (far right) in WOMAN ON THE RUN