Movies

Electrick Children: magical Mormon runaways in Vegas

by

With Electrick Children, a new filmmaker has created an entirely unique teen coming of age story.  Electrick Children employs an element of magical realism that requires the audience to accept a premise which cannot be real.  The result is a highly original success.

A 15-year-old Utah girl has been raised in a remote fundamentalist Mormon enclave where everyone dresses as 19th century pioneers.  She has been immersed in Bible stories, but hasn’t been exposed to any modern culture or to the facts of life.  She happens upon a hidden cassette tape and finds her first rock and roll song revelatory – so revelatory that she thinks that the song has moved her to pregnancy.  Here comes the magical realism – she really is a virgin, and she really is pregnant.

Because of her faith, she doesn’t find immaculate conception to be the least bit implausible.  Not so with her parents, who wrongly blame her 17-year-old brother.  Their answer is to kick the boy out of the home and to marry off the girl to a neighboring fundamentalist.  Facing the unwanted shotgun wedding, the girl commandeers the family pickup and flees; her brother, seeking a way to prove his innocence, stows away.

The kids surface in Las Vegas, where they fall in with a band of runaway teens.   Of course the Mormon kids are completely unprepared to navigate any modern city, let alone Vegas.  Their guides, the more streetwise kids, are more comfortable with the glitz and sleaze of Vegas, but are just as untethered.  The Mormon kids and the suburban runaways have life-altering adventures on the streets.

The girl embarks on a quest to find the singer who she thinks has fathered her child, not understanding that there is more than one rock band in the world (or that Blondie’s Hanging on the Telephone has not made her pregnant.)  Central to the film’s success is that the girl is naive but never silly.  The young actress Julia Garner shines in a performance that is never ironic and always completely sincere.  The girl is determined and devout, seeking teen independence in ways that are logical for someone with her isolated upbringing.

As good as Garner is, the real talent here is writer-director Rebecca Thomas, a Mormon from Nevada with an MFA from Columbia.  This is her first feature film, and I can’t wait for her next one.

Phil Spector: look at the freak

by

Who better to play the explosively wacked-out music genius in Phil Spector than Al Pacino?  Here, Spector is living in self-delusional isolation and still taking way too many drugs, and he’s on trial for his life.  His defense lawyer (Helen Mirren) faces a dilemma – the only way the court will hear her best evidence is if she first calls her very unsympathetic client to the stand.

Phil Spector is written and directed by David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, House of Games), but it’s very minor Mamet.  The only reason to watch Phil Spector is for the inevitable Pacino meltdown.  That meltdown is a doozy, but it exposes Phil Spector as more of a freak show than a complete film.

On the Road: surprisingly little energy from all that Benzedrine

by

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful movie adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel.  The novel is itself primarily remembered as memoir of the Beat Generation’s defining literary voices, for its stream of consciousness narrative and for the unforgettable portrait of Keroauc’s muse Neal Cassady as the character Dean Moriarity.  Director Walter Salles succeeds in creating a wonderful time capsule of the Beats – but that’s not enough.

The story is centered on the famous series of road trips where Keroauc latches on to the the charismatic and erratic Cassady, hoping that their adventures will unclog Kerouac’s writer’s block.  Although he has some independent escapades, Kerouac is essentially the observer, unleashing Cassady on North America.  Cassady had insatiable appetites for sex, Benzedrine, marijuana, nonstop talking and driving long distances at high rates of speed, and he was a pillar of unreliability.  If Cassady is known for anything, it’s for his twitchy freneticism and speedy monologues.  If you’ve read On the Road and especially if you’ve seen film footage of the real Neal Cassady, you’ll find the actor Garret Hedlund’s portrayal too measured.  Except for one jazz party scene, it seems as if Hedlund has never witnessed the effects of amphetamines.  Unfortunately, the Cassady character – the throttle for the novel – is the brakes to the movie.

The narrative is pretty linear.  We are SHOWN stream of consciousness at the end of the movie when Kerouac bangs out On the Road on his single 120-foot roll of typewriter paper.  But the movie has none of the novel’s helter-skelter flavor.

But if anyone knows how to direct a road movie, it’s Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries).  Salles captures the long hauls across the vast continent and vividly depicts settings from gritty NYC to the never ending Nebraska plains. In one particularly nice touch, the characters enter San Francisco on a completely fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge, which Bay Area residents know to be a more typical experience than postcard weather on the Bridge.

The Keroauc character is ably played by Sam Riley, who has the less showy role of Kerouac’s cultural sponge.

Kristen Stewart plays Cassady’s 16-year-old bride; since she’s a big movie star, she gets more screen time than she gets pages in the book.  That’s a good thing, because, despite all the grief she gets for the Twilight movies, Stewart can really act.

The surrounding cast is excellent.  Tom Sturridge stands out as the young Allen Ginsburg.   Alice Braga sparkles as the Mexican-American single mom that Keroauc picks cotton with.  We glimpse Viggo Mortensen and Amy Adams as Beat figures William S. Burroughs and June Vollmer.   Steve Buscemi is always welcome in a movie, and here he gets a creepy pencil-thin mustache.  Kirsten Dunst and Elisabeth Moss do what they can with the roles of women scolding their unreliable men.

On the Road, with its fine secondary cast, is a leisurely tour through the Beat period, but without the energy of its pioneers.

Beware of Mr. Baker: please don’t hit me again, Ginger

by

The documentary Beware of Mr. Baker traces the life of the extremely volatile legendary rock drummer Ginger Baker (Cream, Blind Faith).  Baker is undeniably a musical genius, and the film highlights the stature of his work in both rock and jazz.  Unfortunately, the nasty combination of his aggressively anti-social personality and his heroin addiction precluded successful professional and familial relationships.  We hear about Baker’s good and bad sides from his former Cream band mates Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton, several of his ex-wives and his son, drummer Kofi Baker.  And we meet Ginger Baker himself, for better and for worse.  At one point, the septuagenarian Baker employs his cane to break the nose of the film’s director, Jay Bulger.

Bulger gets credit for comprehensive research into Baker’s life and times, for his inventive use of animation in depicting stages of Baker’s life and for getting the combustible Baker himself on camera.  Beware of Mr. Baker is the skillfully told story of a fascinating life.  Beware of Mr. Baker is now available on VOD through Amazon and other outlets.

 

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: Jim Carrey gets to be funny again

by

In The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Steve Carrell plays the title character, a schlub who has lucked into Vegas headliner success as a magician and has developed narcissistic entitlement, along with some destructive spending habits.  Steve Buscemi plays his long suffering partner.  Their prop-driven act, with its Siegfried and Roy schtick, is challenged by an emerging street magician a la David Blaine (Jim Carrey).  Laughs result when the clueless Burt Wonderstone sabotages his own successful act and must come to terms with his own limitations; this being show biz, there’s a lot of unabashed backstabbing.  There’s also a brief but very funny poke at celebrity charity in the Third World.

As we remember from his breakthrough performance in 1994’s The Mask, there are things that Jim Carrey can do that no other performer can.  His movie vehicles since The Mask, however, have tempted him to preen and wink at the audience.   Here, he has a well-written role that is perfect for his rubber face, physicality and sheer force of character, and he takes it to the max. It turns out that, while he can make us wince in a Jim Carrey movie, Carrey can make us belly laugh in a Steve Carrell movie.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone benefits from a deep cast.  The very game and able Olivia Wilde plays the exploited intern.  James Gandolfini plays a deliciously ruthless and self-interested casino tycoon.  The great Alan Arkin just gets funnier as he ages.  And Jay Mohr is delightful in one his best recent roles, a hopelessly unsuited comedian named Rick the Implausible.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is fluff, but it’s fun fluff.  And a showcase for Jim Carrey.

 

 

 

 

 

Barbara: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you

by

As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”.   Barbara’s suspenseful story is set in Cold War East Germany, so everyone is indeed being watched by the Stasi and informed on by their closest associates.  Barbara is a doctor who has applied for an exit visa and has therefore been exiled to the hinterlands from a top Berlin hospital.   Harassed by the Stasi, she is ever aware of everyone’s motives.  She is played by Nina Hoss in a performance that is extraordinarily controlled, alert and suspicious.

Barbara herself is driven by two imperatives – to escape from East Germany and to provide expert and compassionate medical care.  The story is a series of moments, some seemingly random, which tie together as the story builds to the climax, when the doctor must bet her life on a decision.

Barbara was co-written and directed by Christian Petzold (he won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for his work).  Given that’s it difficult to imagine how anyone else could have improved Barbara, I’ll be looking for Petzold’s next movie.

No: when the soft sell is the most subversive

by

In No, Gael Garcia Bernal stars as an ad man brainstorming the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet in a 1988 plebiscite.  It turns out that the key was not to rehash the atrocities of the repressive Pinochet dictatorship, but to get his audience to picture the alternative democratic future.  The ad man’s biggest challenge is to pitch his soft sell campaign to Pinochet’s ideologically driven opponents.

No has a grainy look and was shot in the same aspect as is television (i.e., not widescreen).  This allows the transition between the filmed scenes and the inserted historical footage (including the original Yes and No campaign commercials) to be seamless.

I visited Chile in the last days of the Pinochet dictatorship, after the October 1988 plebiscite but before the new democratic government took office fifteen months later.  No ably captures both the scariness of the authoritarian regime and the culture of the period.  As always, Garcia Bernal is excellent.  No was nominated for the 2013 Foreign Language Oscar.

Emperor: one romance too many

by

Completely destroyed by US aerial bombardment and facing nuclear annihilation, Japan has just surrendered.  General Douglas MacArthur has just arrived to lead the American occupation of Japan, with the long-term goal of rebuilding Japan as a modern, democratic, pro-Western and relatively demilitarized country; in the short-term, he has to punish Japan’s WW II war criminals. MacArthur makes a grand strategic decision not to blame the Emperor of Japan for the war, but to enlist the authority of the Emperor in support of MacArthur’s efforts.  Emperor is the story of this moment in world history, with Tommy Lee Jones playing MacArthur.

Tommy Lee Jones is always fun to watch, especially when he is not suffering fools,  and he does an excellent job of portraying MacArthur’s decisiveness, self-promotion and vanity.  But he is is perhaps too sympathetic here, failing to capture MacArthur’s absolute and defining narcissism.

But we only occasionally see MacArthur.  Most of the screen time is reserved for the officer (Matthew Fox of Lost) gathering the evidence that will justify MacArthur’s preferred option (absolving the Emperor).  Unfortunately, Fox’s character is also searching for the Japanese woman who was his pre-war lover.  Unpeeling the onion of the Japanese imperial bureaucracy is more interesting than the sappy love story.

Given that it was directed by Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring), I had higher hopes for Emperor.  I would recommend it only for those with an interest in WW II and Japanese history.

DVD/Stream of the Week: We Have a Pope

by
WE HAVE A POPE

It’s Papal Conclave Week here at the Movie Gourmet, and my weekly DVD pick is last year’s Italian comedy We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam) – also available on Netflix Instant.  In We Have a Pope, the papal conclave elects a Pope, but just as he is about to be introduced to the faithful, he cries out and shrinks from the balcony.  He is having a severe panic attack, and the Curia secretly sends for a psychiatrist to get him in emotional shape for a public appearance.  After some awkward attempts at individual talk therapy (with the therapist and patient surrounded by cardinals), the Pope-elect bolts from the Vatican and runs off on his own, pursued by frantic Pope-handlers.

If this premise weren’t funny enough,the psychiatrist himself can probably be diagnosed as a narcissist and becomes obsessed with organizing the cardinals into a volleyball tournament.   Another shrink diagnoses every patient with parental deficit.  The cardinals are a quirky and flawed bunch, and the Vatican bureaucrats are suitably sinister.

The troubled Pope is played by the great French actor Michel Piccoli (Contempt, Belle De Jour, La belle noiseuse).  Piccoli embues his character with humanity and authenticity –  he is not a weak or crazy man, just a good and able guy who is unable to shoulder great responsibility at this stage of his life.  Writer-director Nanni Moretti plays the shrink and is himself very funny.

We Have a Pope makes a fine double feature with the sober documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, currently playing on HBO.

Cinequest: The Hunt

by
THE HUNT

The most exhilarating moment of Cinequest has been the screening of the Danish drama The Hunt (Jagten) – one of the very best films of the year. Mads Mikkelsen won the Best Actor at Cannes for his portrayal of a man whose life is ruined by a false claim of child sexual abuse. You’ll recognize Mikkelsen, a big star in Europe, from After the Wedding and the 2006 Casino Royale (he was the villain with the bleeding eye).

The story is terrifyingly plausible.  The protagonist, Lucas, is getting his bearings after a job change and a divorce.  He lives in a small Danish town where everyone knows everyone else, next door to his best friend.  The best friend drinks too much and his wife is a little high-strung, but Lucas embraces them for who they are.  He’s a regular guy who hunts and drinks with his buddies and is adored by the kids at the kindergarten where he works.   He’s not a saint – his ex-wife can get him to fly off the handle with little effort.

A little girl hears a sexual reference at home that she does not understand (and no one in the story could ever find out how she heard it).  When she innocently repeats it at school, the staff is alarmed and starts to investigate.  Except for one mistake by the school principal, everyone in the story acts reasonably.  One step in the process builds upon another until the parents become so understandably upset that a public hysteria ensues. 

Director Thomas Vinterburg had previously created the underappreciated Celebration (Festen).   The Hunt is gripping – we’re on the edges of our seats as the investigation snowballs and Lucas is put at risk of losing everything – his reputation, his job, his child, his friends, his liberty and even his life.  Can Lucas be cleared, and, if he is, how scarred will he be?  The Hunt is a superbly crafted film with a magnificent performance by Mikkelsen.