Movies

THE LOOK OF SILENCE: chilling and powerful

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THE LOOK OF SILENCE
THE LOOK OF SILENCE

In the powerful and chilling The Look of Silence, documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer explores the aftermath of genocide in a society that has never experienced a truth and reconciliation process. This is Oppenheimer’s second masterpiece on the Indonesian genocide of 1965-66 in which regime-sponsored death squads executed over one million suspected political opponents.  Today, the victims’ families live among the murderers.

The Look of Silence centers on 44-year-old optometrist Adi as he investigates the murder of Ramli, the older brother he never knew.  Earlier, Oppenheimer had filmed Ramli’s killers as they describe and act out Ramli’s savage torture, mutilation and murder.   They are unrepentant and even nostalgic about their crimes.  Their matter-of-fact recollections are sickening.  We see Adi watching this video, trying to contain his rage and disgust.  Later, Adi – in the guise of fitting them for new glasses – is able to confront those responsible.   He faces the actual machete-wielding killers, the leader of the village death squad, the higher-up who ordered the killings and even one of his own relatives.

What makes this bearable to watch (and even more affecting) is meeting Adi’s family: his earthy 80-something mother, his frail and batty 103-year-old father, his giggly 7-year old daughter and his 10-year-old son.   There’s plenty of humor in this warm family.  But in one scene, the son receives a ridiculously twisted propaganda version of the genocide in public school.

The “Silence” in The Look of Silence is reinforced by the spare soundtrack.  We often hear only “crickets” (frogs, actually).

The Look of Silence is the companion to Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, which made my list of Best Movies of 2013.  In The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer got the unapologetic killers to re-enact their atrocities for the camera – even relishing their deeds.  The Act of Killing contains some of the most bizarre moments in any documentary EVER, including a cross-dressing mass murderer and a staged Bollywood-like musical number of Born Free, complete with dancing-girls in front of a waterfall, in which the garotted dead reappear to thank the killers for sending them on to the afterlife. The Act of Killing is more of a jaw-dropper.  The Look of Silence – because it is more personal – is more powerful.

The Look of Silence stands alone – you can fully appreciate it without having seen The Act of Killing.  But what I wrote about The Act of Killing is true for both films:  “hypnotically compelling – you can’t believe what’s on the screen, can’t believe that you’re still watching it and can’t stop watching”.

I saw The Look of Silence at the San Francisco International Film Festival before its limited theatrical release slated for July 17.  It’s one of the best films of 2015.

SINATRA: ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL – as told by his wives and his kids

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SINATRA: ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL
SINATRA: ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL

Sinatra: All or Nothing At All is a solid and sometimes revelatory biopic of Frank Sinatra now playing on HBO. It’s shown in two two-hour segments. Sinatra fans should watch the whole thing. For everyone else, the middle part is especially strong – focus on the stretch from his affair and marriage to Ava Gardner through the Frank, Jr., kidnapping and the marriage to Mia Farrow.

Documentarian Alex Gibney has an unusual gift for finding the best possible source material, including coaxing interviews from the most intimate witnesses. The strength of Sinatra: All or Nothing At All comes from interviews of Sinatra’s children Tina, Nancy and Frank, Jr., along with audio of Sinatra’s first three wives – Nancy Sinatra, Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow – and girlfriend Lauren Bacall.

Gibney has another strong doc running on HBO right now: Going Clear: The Prison of Belief. He won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and he made the excellent Casino Jack: The United States of Money, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer and Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.

Sinatra: All or Nothing At All is a pretty comprehensive biodoc, tracing the Italian immigrant parents, the humble (but not destitute) Hoboken upbringing, rocketing to pop stardom, the career fade with the Great Comeback – along with his womanizing and friendships with the Mob, the Rat Pack and JFK. There are also some tidbits that I hadn’t seen before, for example, not being able to get an US government security clearance to entertain troops in Korea because of his political associations, plus an awkward performance with Elvis in the 50s. See “Spoiler Alert” below for the movie’s take on how Sinatra got the role in From Here to Eternity that launched his comeback. And, although I lived through it, I had completely forgotten about the kidnapping of Frank, Jr.

Sinatra: All or Nothing At All is playing on HBO and is available streaming from HBO GO.

[Spoiler Alert: By the early 50s, Sinatra’s career was floundering and he was desperate for the acting role of Maggio in the upcoming From Here to Eternity. For years, there has been a legend that Sinatra called on his buddies in the Mafia to put the arm on Columbia Pictures to cast him. This tale is depicted in The Godfather with the horse’s-head-in-the-bed scene. Sinatra: All or Nothing At All persuasively debunks this story, explaining that, instead, his recent ex Ava Gardner pressured the studio filmmakers to cast Sinatra. Another appeal was that Sinatra was also a big name who worked for very cheap. This is consistent with Director Fred Zinnemann’s version .]

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: a muddled mess

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CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Man, what a disappointment! Somehow the Clouds of Sils Maria lets us lose interest in the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche and wastes a performance by Kristen Stewart that made her the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar). But it’s just a muddled mess.

Binoche plays a Margot Channing-aged actress, and Stewart plays her personal assistant. The star is about to take the older woman role in a play that launched her career (in a younger role to be played by the star of a Hollywood comic book movie). As the movie begins, the play’s author dies and the Binoche character must deal with the loss of her mentor. She’s also going through a difficult divorce and fending off the advances of a onetime co-star, and generally being pretty difficult amid her midlife crisis. None of this interesting and some of the story is confusing to boot.

The only time that Clouds of Sils Maria perks up is when Chloë Grace Moretz shows up as the younger actress, a train wreck who is the epitome of paparazzi-bait . (Kudos to Kristen Stewart – the Moretz role is close enough to Stewart’s real life to demonstrate that Stewart doesn’t take herself too seriously.) It’s a funny role and Moretz nails it.

Oddly, Clouds of Sils Maria is almost entirely in English (for Kristen Stewart?), and Binoche just isn’t as enthralling as she usually is. It’s also odd that a French celebrity would hire a non-French speaking personal assistant for travel in French-speaking country – what’s up with this?

I blame director Olivier Assayas. I really liked Assayas’ miniseries Carlos , but he now has engineered three clunker features in a row (Summer Hours, Something in the Air and Clouds of Sils Maria)., so I’ll have to persuaded to see his next project.

SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION: a master class in teaching from a piano master

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Seymour bernstein and Ethan hawke in SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION
Seymour Bernstein and Ethan Hawke in SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION

As Seymour: An Introduction opens, we see an elderly man giving piano lessons to VERY talented pianists.  His gentle instructions address tiny details in the performances that we in the audience can’t notice – such as how deeply to press the piano key.  Each of his tips is constructive and easy to understand  As  exacting as his corrections are, his overall demeanor never fluctuates from entirely supportive.  This extraordinary teacher is the concert pianist Seymour Bernstein.

Bernstein long ago abandoned a career in the spotlight. We’re meeting Bernstein only because the actor Ethan Hawke met him by chance and benefited from his life advice.  Hawke directed this film.

Thank you, Ethan.  It’s a deep privilege to meet this gifted and kind man, and spend an hour-an-a-half watching him treat others as he does.  When the Wife and I caught a screening, no one left the theater until the end credits were completed.

SLOW WEST: a Western that never gets into the rhythm

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SLOW WEST
SLOW WEST

Slow West, which I saw at Cinequest, is out on VOD today, ahead of a theatrical release in mid-May. I suggest that you skip it.

I love Westerns, but Slow West just didn’t work for me. It’s a film of some ambition, and it won an award at Sundance, but the movie kept sliding in and out of self-consciousness, and I could never settle in to the story.

Kodi Smitt-McGee plays a sixteen-year-old Scot completely unsuited for survival in the Old West. Nonetheless, he is devoted to a young woman and he launches a determined quest to track her down. He soon picks up a veteran Westerner (Michael Fassbender) who can guide and guard him. The two, of course, have a series of adventures along the way.

There’s some appealingly dark and droll humor in Slow West (quite a few good laughs, actually). The problem is that Slow West can’t figure out whether it should have the tone of a straight Western (Unforgiven, The Homesman) or wink at the audience (Little Big Man). Accordingly, some of the period details are so wrong that they distracted me from the story. For example, in an otherwise very funny scene with arrows and a clothesline, the Indians look like tiny, skinny Asians. Smitt-McGee employs a Scots accent in every fifth line. And Fassbender sounds like he just stepped out of a time machine from 2015.

Slow West was filmed in New Zealand, so there are grand vistas that kind of look like the American West, but then kinda don’t. This DID work for me, because it contributed an almost subconscious edge to heighten some scenes.

Bottom line: Slow West is a mess.

DVD/Stream of the Week: LIVING IN OBLIVION

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Peter Dinklage and Steve Buscemi in LIVING IN OBLIVION
Peter Dinklage and Steve Buscemi in LIVING IN OBLIVION

The hilarious 1995 comedy Living in Oblivion follows a grossly under-resourced indie movie director (Steve Buscemi), who must  somehow finish his low-budge/no-budget art film despite being surrounded by zanies.  He’s got a neurotic female lead (Catherine Keener), a preening and slumming A-list star named Chad Palomino (James Le Gros) and an elderly actress who can’t remember her lines (Rica Martens).  His stubborn and sullen cinematographer (Dermot Mulroney) is bedding the First Assistant Director (Danielle von Zerneck), who has an agenda of her own.  With this outfit, everything that CAN go wrong…

Living in Oblivion is filled with lines like “I can’t act. I can just do shower scenes in Richard Gere movies for the rest of my life!” and “Hey! That’s my eye patch and I don’t want anyone else wearing it. It’s insanitary.”

But the pièce de résistance is the feature debut of Peter Dinklage, 8 years before his breakout role in The Station Agent and 16 years before becoming a star in Game of Thrones.   He plays an tiny actor with a gargantuan chip on his shoulder:   “Why does my character have to be a dwarf?” and “I don’t even have dreams with dwarves in them. The only place I’ve seen dwarves in dreams is in stupid movies like this!”.

Director Tom Dicillo, having been Jim Jarmusch’s cinematographer, was no stranger to indie filmmaking.  After Living in Oblivion, Danielle von Zerneck moved on to a producing career.

Living in Oblivion is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Xbox Video.

Stream of the Week: INHERENT VICE

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Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in INHERENT VICE
Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in INHERENT VICE

Adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson from a Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice is a funny and confused amble through pot-besotted 1970 Los Angeles.  Joaquin Phoenix plays a bottom-feeding private eye who is contacted by an old girlfriend and, of course, finds himself knocked out and implicated in a murder.  Thus begins a plot so convoluted that it makes The Big Sleep look as linear as a Bud Light commercial.

We meet a wide array of characters with names like Dr. Buddy Tubes, Japonica Fenway and Puck Beaverton.  We hear sly wit along with seeing low brow sight gags (nose-picking. etc.).  There are funny lines, as when Phoenix’s pothead detective is described as “You smell like a patchouli fart”.  Perhaps the funniest moment is when our addled hero writes himself a note in block letters: “NOT HALLUCINATING”.

Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Eric Roberts, Jeannie Berlin, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph and Martin Short all pop up in Inherent Vice, and Joaquin Phoenix is as good as one would expect.  The most memorable performances, though are by Josh Brolin and Katharine Waterston.  Brolin is hilarious as a flat-topped hardass cop.  Waterston plays the former girlfriend, Inherent Vice’s female lead, and she pretty much captivates every scene that she’s in.  Musician Joanna Newsom, who also plays a minor character, narrates very effectively.

Paul Thomas Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, The Master) is a brilliant filmmaker, and Inherent Vice gets the time and place just right, with an especially evocative color palette.

It’s mildly entertaining all the way through, but never compelling.  And all the way through is two hours and twenty-eight minutes – not really a slog, but you’re never on the edge of your seat.  And you’re certainly not going to think about it tomorrow.

I finally got around to watching Inherent Vice on DirecTV PPV.  It’s also streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER: droll but tiresome

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KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER
KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER

The title character in Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (Rinko Kikuchi – Oscar nominated for Babel)  flies from Japan to Minnesota on a quest to unearth the suitcase of loot that Steve Buscemi hid in the snow in the movie Fargo.  Because she doesn’t speak English or have any money, navigating the frigid 200+ miles from the Minneapolis Airport to Fargo, South Dakota makes for a fish-out-of-water comedy, albeit a tiresome one-joke comedy.

We meet our heroine  living a solitary life of utter dissatisfaction in Tokyo, where she spits in every cup of her boss’ tea.  At night, she watches and re-watches a scratchy VHS tape of Fargo.  As we watch her increasingly bizarre actions, it becomes clear that she is starkers.  The absurdist humor in Kumiko comes from the completely deadpan depiction of the bizarre.  It’s all very droll, with many genuinely funny moments, but it finally becomes tedious.  And I didn’t buy the glimpse of magical realism at the ending.

Here’s something I liked about Kumiko – the director and co-writer David Zellner also plays the role of the rural deputy sheriff – and he’s really great at capturing the essence of a well-meaning man driven to help, but utterly unequipped to do so.

So, how funny, really, is mental illness?  Having seen it up close in my own life, I don’t seek it as necessarily cute or quirky.  This woman is raving mad, but she’s been able to remain (barely) functional with a highly regimented life in her own culture.  When she plunges herself into an alien world, she inevitably decompensates.  I am able to enjoy mental health humor (and I aspire to be the farthest thing from a scold on the subject), but just watching someone flail around within their disability isn’t entertaining for me.

MAPS TO THE STARS: biting Hollywood satire and Original Sin

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Mia Wasikowska and Julianne Moore in MAPS TO THE STARS
MAPS TO THE STARS

David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars is funny, dark and disturbing, but is ultimately unsatisfying.  The disturbing part shouldn’t surprise us, Cronenberg having been responsible for the exploding heads in Scanners, the auto accident sexual fetishes of Crash (1996) and the nightmarish druggy hallucinations of Naked Lunch.  But Cronenberg’s most recent A History of Violence and Eastern Promises have been very accessible, albeit with striking violence.  Maps to the Stars lures us in with a brutally witty show biz satire, and then clubs us with the most twisted family violence.

John Cusack and Olivia Williams play a rich Hollywood couple who had unknowingly committed their unique form of Original Sin, which has resulted in two damaged and dangerous kids.   Julianne Moore plays a needy and neurotic movie star grappling with middle age and her own family heritage.  These are people who take astonishing privilege for granted and treat their minions in contempt.   They react to the most even the most horrific tragedies by assessing how it will affect a book tour.  Cusack’s faux-shaman-to-the-stars ponders fixing the worst possible PR disaster by going “on Oprah and pulling a Lance Armstrong”.

What makes this such a nasty show biz satire, is that the eveil doesn’t just come from the Hollywood suits.  Here, the talent and the creatives are just as biz-oriented – always focused on box office, their fees, and cut throat competition for the next career-enhancing and remunerative gig.  There is very smart humor and lines like, “You know, for a disfigured schizophrenic, you’ve got the town pretty wired”.

Brilliant as always, Julianne Moore is a very good sport here (even with a fart gag).  The most memorable performances are by the very underutilized Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer, Hyde Park on Hudson) – always teetering with desperation just under the surface – and Evan Bird, a monstrous teen star who isn’t to blame for how he is.  Cusack and Mia Wasikowska are also very good.  I just can’t figure out the appeal of Robert Pattinson, who is in this move to be a love interest, and doesn’t add anything special.

Although there’s a lot to enjoy about Maps to the Stars, it just doesn’t pay off. There’s very disturbing violence, some involving children, and sending up Hollywood foibles with the level of sickness in these characters, just isn’t worth it.

Maps to the Stars, after a blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical release, is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

5 TO 7: what does she see in him?

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Bérénice Marlohe and Anton Yelchin in 5 TO 7
Bérénice Marlohe and Anton Yelchin in 5 TO 7

Let me start by saying that I’m apparently not the audience for the romance 5 to 7; I didn’t like it, but my female companions all enjoyed it.

A struggling Manhattan writer in his late twenties meets a ravishingly beautiful married Frenchwoman who is ten years older.  As we all know, the French are more open-minded about sex than are Americans.  She invites him to conduct a discreet affair – discreet because the romance is restricted to the two hours between 5 PM and 7 PM, the hours that she is not with her family.  He is played by Anton Yelchin (Chekov in most recent Star Trek , Like Crazy).  She is played by the stunning French actress Bérénice Marlohe (Skyfall).

And here’s the problem – the woman is rich and privileged and she’s played by Bérénice Marlohe.  This character can have any man she wants (Marlohe even could snare James Bond himself in Skyfall.) Why is she interested in this callow loser?  We just can’t connect the dots.

I blame writer-director Victor Levin (creator of Mad About You and one of the team behind Mad Men) for writing that is contrived – at a higher level than network sitcoms, for sure, but still contrived.   5 to 7 does has its moments.  When the young guys finds himself at an intimidating dinner party at his lover’s apartment, he finds that the other guests are Julian Bond (!),  famous maestro and an iconic chef – the real guys in celebrity cameos.  And New Yorker editor David Remnick plays himself in another cameo – all very witty.  Glenn Close and Frank Langella show up mid-movie as his parents, and hilarity ensues for ten minutes or so.   But then Yelchin’s loser man-boy comes back on-screen, and I just couldn’t suspend disbelief.

There’s a suitably sentimental ending.  I suspect that there’s a gender divide on this movie.  Women seem to enjoy it, while men seem to be disgusted by it.

[SPOILER ALERT:  In the epilogue, the two main characters run into each other years later with their families.  His  new wife doesn’t have a clue that her hubby had been involved with this woman.  In real life, no way THAT happens.]