Here’s a treat – Paul Williams Still Alive, an affecting documentary about the songwriter, omnipresent in the 70s, but not now. Because Paul Williams’ life story follows the arc of every episode of VH1’s Behind the Music (hits the show biz big time, does too many drugs, career crashes and burns), this film could have been trite. Instead, it’s fresh and appealing, chiefly because filmmaker Stephen Kessler is such an unabashed fan boy who glories in following Williams around, uncovering tidbits like Williams love of eating squid.
The documentary’s other cornerstone is that Paul Williams himself – now twenty years sober – is a very appealing guy. Williams doesn’t dwell on the time when he was rich, famous and unhappy. He has an edge, and doesn’t suffer fools, but he lives in the moment and it’s fun to see a guy now so content in his skin.
Paul Williams Still Alive is available now on Video On Demand, including Amazon Instant Video.
HBO’s The Girl is the story of a beautiful young woman being sexually harassed by the much older and very unattractive male boss who is responsible for her career success. In this case, the woman is Tippi Hedren, the boss is Alfred Hitchcock, and they’re making The Birds and Marnie. Unfortunately, the movie just grinds along as Hitchcock becomes more twisted and Hedren becomes more wearily traumatized. The story is based on a book by Donald Spoto, whose version of Hitchcock is not shared by other film historians.
The Girl wastes some excellent acting. Toby Jones and Sienna Miller are good as Hitchcock and Hedren. As Hitchcock’s wife and secretary, Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake) and Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) are splendid. The Girl, which is just a dreary movie-watching experience, is now playing on HBO.
Set in 1969 Florida, The Paperboy is a coming of age film nestled within a deliciously pulpy crime drama. The story is centered around an overlooked younger son (talented up-and-comer Zac Efron) who is thrilled when his older brother (Matthew McConaughey) returns to their swampy backwater after making it in the big time of Miami. The older brother is an investigative reporter who seeks the truth about a sensational death row case.
The strength of the film is in the supporting characters. David Oyelowo plays the older brother’s cynical and self-absorbed partner. John Cusack’s death row inmate is utterly animalistic, a real departure for Cusack. Nicole Kidman plays the convict’s pen pal fiance; the younger brother falls for her, but she’s apparently screwing everyone except him.
But the surprise performance in The Paperboy is by recording artist Macy Gray, who plays the family domestic. With complete authenticity, Gray is playful, hurt, dignified, angry, funny, tough, cagy and vulnerable and, as the narrator, she keeps the movie together. It’s a really superb performance, and I look forward to seeing Gray in more high profile parts.
This is director Lee Daniels’ follow up to his heart rending Precious. Once again, his character driven story-telling is first rate. The Paperboy is dark, violent, sexy and gripping with vivid characters.
Watch for Kidman’s particularly alarming treatment for jellyfish stings.
Ben Affleck directs and stars in Argo, unquestionably the best Hollywood movie of the year so far. In this true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis, a down-on-his-luck spy rescues six Americans hiding in the Canadian Ambassador’s Tehran home by pretending to make a cheesy Hollywood sci fi movie. The scenes in Tehran and Washington are pure thriller, leavened by the very funny Hollywood thread.
It’s a gripping story. Setting up the audacious plan is only the beginning. It must be sold to risk averse government officials. And it must be sold to the “house guests”, who clearly understand how risky it is. The diplomats must learn their cover identities as Canadian filmmakers well enough to withstand interrogation. And the team must be shuttled past layer upon layer of suspicious, trigger happy and completely unpredictable revolutionaries. Helluva story, well told.
Thanks to director Affleck, editor William Goldberg and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, Argo is brilliantly photographed and constructed.It is economical story-telling at its best, with each shot revealing critical information – the lethal chaos in the streets of Tehran, the paralyzing fear of the house guests, the determination of Affleck’s operative.
It’s a deep cast. John Goodman and Alan Arkin are hilarious as the movie industry guys. Scoot McNairy and Christopher Denham are especially good as house guests. Farshad Farahat is compelling as the commander of the final revolutionary checkpoint. The rest of the cast is equally superb: Bryan Cranston, Philip Baker Hall, Richard Kind, Michael Parks, Clea DuVall, Adam Arkin, Chris Messina and Victor Garber. Watch for a bit role played by 80s horror maven Adrienne Barbeau.
This could have been jingoistic, but Affleck starts the movie with an animated historical primer to remind (or teach) the audience about why the Iranians were so angry. And he generously included another American perspective during the end credits. Much more nuance than the standard Hollywood movie – good for Affleck!
Upon leaving the theater, The Wife asked the revelatory question: “How come it wasn’t as good as its parts?”. True, Seven Psychopaths is well-acted by a very deep team of my favorite actors and is embedded with belly laughs, but, as a whole, it’s just not that satisfying.
Colin Farrell plays an alcoholic writer struggling to get past the title of his new screenplay. He expertly plays the straight man against an assortment of raging oddballs. Sam Rockwell is brilliant as the writer’s not-a-good-influence friend who, underneath a shiftless exterior, is profoundly psychopathic. Christopher Walken hits another home run as a dignified eccentric. And Woody Harrelson plays a pedal-to-the-metal raging psycho crime boss as only he can.
The supporting cast includes the immortal Harry Dean Stanton, Abbie Cornish, Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), Michael Pitt (The Dreamers, Boardwalk Empire), Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man), Olga Kuylenko and the always reliable Zeljko Ivanek. The best performances are by Tom Waits (as a bunny-petting retired serial killer) and Linda Bright Clay (as Walken’s tough-as-nails wife).
But the story isn’t tight enough. Writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) (who doesn’t admire Quentin Tarantino) here only delivers Tarantino Lite. Instead, I recommend McDonagh’s brilliant In Bruges (and The Guard which McDonagh produced). For those who like dark, dark comedy with lots of violence, Seven Psychopaths is entertaining. For everyone else, nothing special.
I liked Looper because it’s old school sci fi – based on an idea, in this case, what happens if humans learn how to time travel? I think that much of the sci fi in that past thirty years hasn’t been idea-based, but more an excuse to clothe a monster movie or an action movie in cool-looking sci fi settings. The credit here goes to writer-director Rian Johnson who has imagined a 2044 in which the richest 10% (including organized criminals) live pretty well, but the rest of us vie for scraps in decayed cities that haven’t seen any investment since maybe 2012. In Johnson’s foul future, time travel is discovered, but by 2074, is used by criminals to dispose of their victims back in 2044.
In Looper, 2044 hit man Joseph Gordon-Levitt is confronted with the 2074 version of himself, played by Bruce Willis. Willis is on a mission to do something in 2044 that will change an outcome in 2074. The mission is shocking – would you murder a child to prevent him from growing up to become a Hitler-like monster?
In a year with many excellent performances by child actors, Pierce Gagnon plays one compellingly terrifying four-year-old. As a bonus, one of my favorite character actors, Garret Dillahunt (No Country for Old Men, Assassination of Jesse James, Winter’s Bone) has a nice turn near the end of the movie.
As Looper climaxes, the audience needs to think along – if history is altered, how will the dominoes fall?
In a fine movie debut, Stephen Chbosky directs the screen version of his novel. A shy high school freshman in 1991 is adopted by two unapologetically misfit seniors, played by Harry Potter’s Emma Watson and Ezra Miller (very different here than in We Need to Talk About Kevin). The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming of age story, and a very good one. We’ve all experienced adolescence, so my test for a film in this genre is whether the moments of adolescent awkwardness, peer obsession, self-doubt and discovery feel real. I felt that authenticity with Perks. In addition, the story is textured and unpredictable, and the performances – especially those by Watson and Miller – are excellent.
I liked so much about Liberal Arts that I wondered why I felt so unsatisfied leaving the theater. I finally realized that the central character just didn’t work for me, making an otherwise good movie into a hollow one.
Liberal Arts is written and directed by TV sitcom star Josh Radnor, who also plays the lead character, Jesse, a college admissions officer in NYC. Jesse is now 35 and adrift. He returns to his old college to speak at the retirement of his favorite professor, falls back in love with college life and meets a spirited 19-year-old coed. As Jesse examines where he is in his life, he is book ended by his world weary professors and by the naive young students that he meets.
That’s a promising premise and the very well written supporting characters provide some funny and thoughtful moments. Richard Jenkins is brilliant as a man grappling with the end of his career, and Alison Janney has some delicious moments as a very tough broad whose expertise is Romantic literature. Elizabeth Olsen is very good as the coed, and Zac Efron is downright hilarious as a college age stoner dude.
But it comes down to a main character that has it pretty good, but resists acting like a grownup. He doesn’t get credit from me for figuring it out at least thirteen years too late. The movie wants to give him credit for that, and for a “noble” decision that is implausible.
I am a huge fan of Werner Herzog’s documentaries (Grizzly Man, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Cave of Forgotten Dreams). So I was particularly pleased to come across this 1980 Herzog gem. It’s a 43 minute made-for-TV documentary called God’s Angry Man.
God’s Angry Man is about the late Dr. Gene Scott, a TV preacher who would rail at his audience until they sent him money. You would think that people would turn off a television personality who was hectoring them, but Scott tapped into something spooky within his flock. He was mesmerizing. I myself watched him for many hours late at night, amazed that his followers would tune in to his hard-edged bellowing and choose to be bullied.
Herzog plays it straight and lets Scott speak for Scott, although Herzog must have been puzzled and bemused by the American phenomenon of the TV preacher.
End of Watch is a top notch thriller of a cop movie. Two cops, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, patrol a hell hole beat in South Central LA. They are well-intentioned cops, but they are testosterone-fueled young guys. They are always looking for action, and this neighborhood has plenty of action. They ultimately bite off more than they should try to chew.
Writer-director David Ayer (Training Day) has made a movie that rises above the genre because of the well-written main characters and their relationship. We watch them chiefly from a camera on the dashboard of their squad car. We learn that they are both decent guys and both adrenaline junkies, but one is more aspirational and one is more settled. They are both funny, and the multiracial theater audience at my screening was howling at the ethnic ball-breaking.
There are also some impressive chases, often filmed with the dashboard camera facing forward. It’s thrilling stuff. There’s a lot of shaky cam (which I usually hate), but here it works well to enhance the chaos of the setting as well as the action.
The rest of the cast is excellent, most notably Natalie Martinez and Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) as the love interests, David Harbour, America Ferrera and Frank Grillo as fellow cops, and Diamonique as a fierce gangbanger.
And here’s a shout out to Michael Peña. In End of Watch, Peña nails both the humor and the action; he’s on-screen almost the whole movie and has an engaging presence. He has played so many Latino cops, and he really deserves a chance to show what he can do with a different type of role.
