Movies – Page 149 – The Movie Gourmet

At Any Price: psychological drama on the corporate farm

December 26, 2013May 6, 2013 by movie gourmet

At Any Price is – at long last – a movie about today’s Farm Belt that farmers will recognize. American cinema has been romanticizing the small family farm for at least a quarter century since, to survive, US farmers have moved on to industrial scale agribusiness (with all its tradeoffs). The corporate farmer at the center of At Any Price is Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid). Henry is a driven man, consumed by a need to have the biggest farm and to sell the most genetically modified corn seeds in southern Iowa. Henry is also stupendously selfish, utterly tone-deaf to the needs of anyone else.

Despite Henry’s dream to hand the business to one of his two sons, they despise him. The older son has avoided conflict by escaping to a vagabond life in international mountain climbing. The younger son, Dean (Zac Efron), plans his escape as a NASCAR driver and seems well on his path. Stuck on the farm for now, he can barely tolerate his father’s incessant grasping. But he’s small town royalty, he’s got a pretty girlfriend (Maika Monroe) and he’s as good-looking as Zac Efron, so life isn’t unbearable.

But Henry’s smug perch on top of the haystack is not as impregnable as it would seem. Along the way, he has cut some corners and stepped on other people, and it catches up to him. Henry’s empire threatens to topple, Dean clutches at his big career chance, and the two men – each and together – must react to developments that they never saw coming. Writer-director Ramin Bahrani spins a deeply authentic psychological drama as each man is forced into some uncomfortable self-examination.

It’s interesting that such a realistic exploration of New Agriculture in Middle America comes from Bahrani. Himself North Carolina-born, he has used nonprofessional actors to make three brilliant movies about struggling immigrants in America: Chop Shop, Man Push Cart and Goodbye, Solo. Goodbye, Solo was #5 on my list of Best Movies of 2009. Here’s a recent interview with Bahrani in the New York Times touching on At Any Price.

One of Bahrani’s insights is that the impacts of today’s capitalism aren’t necessarily from the malevolently rapacious (like Henry F. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life), but from the indifference of the selfish. With almost every step that he takes, Henry Whipple screws other folks, but he’s convinced himself that he’s a prince of a guy.

At Any Price is a showcase for Quaid and Efron. Quaid’s portrayal of Henry is brilliantly textured, projecting a self-righteous bluster which barely masks the desperation threatening to erupt through his pores. And I’ve come to always look forward to seeing Efron, who, in Me and Orson Welles, The Paperboy and Liberal Arts, has proven that he is more than just the pretty boy of High School Musical.

Bahrani’s actors have taken full advantage of his screenplay. The character of Dean’s girlfriend is especially well-written. Beginning as a simple teen from a broken family looking for some fun, her journey takes several surprising turns. The actress Maika Monroe pulls it off with a memorable performance. In many ways, the story is anchored by Kim Dickens (Deadwood, Treme) as Henry’s wife and Zac’s mom, resolutely dragging her men out of their self-created sinkholes. Veteran character actor Clancy Brown (the guy has 209 acting credits on IMDb) is superb as Henry’s chief rival.

We are left with two men who finally must appreciate who they really are, whether we like them or whether they like themselves. After seeing At Any Price, I didn’t leave the theater thrilled, but that’s probably because a brilliant examination of two ambiguous men is more thought-provoking than stirring. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist: a thriller with an intense star (but with Kate Hudson, too)

May 6, 2013 by movie gourmet

Director Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) brings the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist to the screen. A young Pakistani man flourishes at Princeton and on Wall Street, and he becomes an American Master of the Universe. But then September 11 changes his world, as Americans reacting and overreacting to terror start treating him badly. Suddenly, he no longer sees a fit with his American girlfriend, a flighty, overprivileged artist. He returns to Pakistan to teach in a university, and becomes an intellectual leader for Pakistanis seeking to resist the West. The movie becomes a thriller when the question arises, has he become a terrorist?

The thriller works – if you haven’t read the novel, you don’t know whether the guy we’ve been rooting for is or is not a terrorist until the final minutes. The best thing about the movie is the remarkably intense performance of British actor Riz Ahmed as the protagonist. Ahmed is a compelling screen presence, and he clearly has impressive acting range when you contrast his hyper-alert role here with the dim terrorist he played in the hilarious terrorist parody Four Lions. As one would expect, Liev Schreiber is also excellent as the guy who must determine whether Ahmed has become a terrorist.

What didn’t work for me? First there was the odd choice of Kate Hudson as the girlfriend. The character is just too vapid to captivate a Wall Street whiz kid, and Hudson just doesn’t project the sensuality to make up the difference for a guy in his early 20s.

The story also suggests that non-violent, democratic nationalism can have widespread appeal in Pakistan, and, while I would hope that Pakistanis embrace that path, I’m not sure that it’s a likely outcome.

If you need a sermon on the blowback from our War on Terror, then you can sit in the pew for The Reluctant Fundamentalist. But, for an ambiguous thriller, Homeland is a better choice.

Outrage Beyond: glorious gangster exploitation

May 5, 2013 by movie gourmet

Takeshi Kitano returns to star in the Japanese gangster movie Outrage Beyond. It’s a sequel to writer-director Kitano’s 2011 Outrage, of which I wrote:

If you’re looking for a hardass gangster movie with deliciously bad people doing acts of extreme violence upon each other, Outrage is the film for you. But what makes Outrage stand out is the pace and stylishness of all the nastiness, as if Quentin Tarantino had made Goodfellas (only without all the extra dialogue about foot rubs and the Royale with cheese)…Kitano, much like Charles Bronson, has the worn and rough face of a man who has seen too much disappointment and brutality.

Outrage was more of a tragic noir, because you know that most of the characters probably won’t survive – and they know it, too. There is less foreboding in Outrage Beyond, which is just glorious exploitation – gangster mayhem splattering the streets. Because this is a Yakuza film, Kitano delivers the minimum one full body tattoo and one severed finger. But he also makes ingeniously lethal use of a pitching machine in a batting cage, and “Let’s play baseball” is the cruelest line in the film.

I saw Outrage Beyond at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Mud: a big dose of realism about love

May 3, 2013 by movie gourmet

In the brilliant drama Mud, two Arkansas boys venture onto a river island and discover a man named Mud (Michael McConaughey) hiding from the authorities. Ellis (Tye Sheridan of The Tree of Life) is a hopeless romantic, consumed by an ideal view of love. His more hard-eyed buddy Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) is on the outlook for cool stuff. Both are ready for the excitement of a secret adventure.

Mud is another triumph for writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter). The story has aspects of a boyhood adventure and of an escape thriller which hook the audience. But Mud is, at its heart, a coming of age story in which Ellis (primarily) gets a big dose of realism about love and human constancy.

Neckbone doesn’t have many illusions about human nature. His parents aren’t in the picture, and he lives with his wacky uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) in a trailer. Neckbone has a knack for immediately getting to the core of situation by bargaining an errand for a pistol or asking “Didja feel her titties?”.

A step down from Neckbone’s trailer lifestyle, Ellis lives on a floating shack tied to the riverbank. His parents are together, but, it seems, not for long. Somehow, Ellis believes in an ideal and forever love. There are many relationships for Ellis to observe: his parents’ troubled journey, the sacrifices Mud makes for his lover (Reese Witherspoon), the mysterious relationship between Mud and another houseboat dweller (Sam Shepherd), a rich man’s (Joe Don Baker) own obsession with his sons, his partnership with Neckbone and Ellis’ own first foray into dating. It’s all a bigger mouthful than Ellis was expecting.

The two kid actors are great. So are McConaughey, Shepherd, Witherspoon, Baker and Nichol’s favorite actor, Shannon. Mud primarily succeeds because Nichols has created compelling characters and woven a top-rate story, both gripping and thoughtful. Mud is one of the best movies of 2013.

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

May 3, 2013 by movie gourmet

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 Prowler: Van Heflin takes a dark turn

April 28, 2013 by movie gourmet

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.

Sun Don’t Shine: shaky cam noir

April 25, 2013 by movie gourmet

sun diont shine — 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.

Upstream Color: “enigmatic” is an understatement

April 18, 2013 by movie gourmet

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.

The Central Park Five: a sense of outrage

April 17, 2013April 17, 2013 by movie gourmet

PBS is now broadcasting the excellent documentary The Central Park Five, about the media-driven rush to wrongly convict five young men of the rape attack upon the Central Park Jogger. The film is co-directed and co-written by famed documentarian Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball) , his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon from Sarah’s book of the same name. The Central Park Five is just as credibly researched as Ken Burns’ previous work but has more of a bite, more of a sense of outrage.

The Central Park Five begins with the actual perpetrator of the crime, so we immediately are reminded that the Central Park Five teens are innocent, which helps us absorb their experience through their eyes. That’s critical for us to understand how they could have been browbeaten into confessing to crimes that they did not commit.

We see their video confessions and hear from the Five and their families today. We also hear from lawyers, politicians and journalists, but not from the police or prosecutors.

The story of The Central Park Five is remarkably compelling. It’s also an important film. Viewers will never assess confessions induced by police interrogations in the same way again.