Movies

The Master: a visual and acting masterpiece that fizzles out

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This ultimately unsatisfying film is a visual masterpiece with an extraordinary performance by Joaquin Phoenix.  It’s also a brilliant depiction of alcoholism.  But the story fizzles out like a spent Roman candle.  With all of its achievements, it’s hard for me to imagine The Master pleasing more than the narrowest audience.

The story is about an emotionally troubled WW II vet (Joaquin Phoenix) who drifts through post-war America, leaving social carnage in his wake.  His only success is in making moonshine out of available ingredients ranging from torpedo fuel to paint thinner.  He happens upon the charismatic and manipulative author of a new path for seekers (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the two men forge a bond.  The leader enjoys the drifter’s moonshine and, when he needs a thug,  harnesses the younger man’s rage.  The drifter finds someone who seems to care about him, who offers a place and a sense of belonging.

Phoenix’s performance as Freddie Quell is one of the best of the century.  Phoenix took some risks with the physicality of the performance, employing a hunch and a scowl that could have been too much, but instead help create a flawless performance.  Freddie can stand quietly at the back of a room filled with people and fidget just enough so you absolutely know that he’s trouble.

Freddie is a damaged soul who self-medicates with alcohol.  Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of his compulsion to drink and the inevitably unhappy (and sometimes lethal) consequences makes for one of the best ever movie portraits of an alcoholic.

(Two scenes of Freddie’s experience at a military hospital for battle traumatized vets are lifted directly from the brilliant John Huston documentary Let There Be Light, which I have written about and which you can watch for free on-line.)

Philip Seymour Hoffman is superb as the charismatic charlatan.  Amy Adams and the rest of the cast give uniformly excellent performances.

Every single shot has been carefully composed, framed and photographed in especially beautiful 65 mm.  The story takes place in the early 1950s, and every period detail is perfect.  You could use any 100 shots from this film and make one glorious coffee table book.

The Master has been perhaps the years most awaited movie for two reasons.  First, the Philip Seymour Hoffman character is inspired by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of controversial and ever litigious Scientology.  But the movie is really the story of the young transient (Phoenix’s character), and the cult created by Hoffman’s character is merely the setting.

Second, it was written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood).  Since the fun and accessible Boogie Nights, Anderson has been specializing in critically anointed films that are not that audience-friendly.  This time, Anderson has done his best job of directing, but the movie fails because his screenplay peters out.

I would happily invest two hours and 17 minutes into a good story that looks this good and is about a character this compelling.  In the first half of the movie, I was on the edge of my seat, wondering “What will Freddie do next and what will happen to him?”.  Unfortunately, the last half of the film takes Freddie a few thousand miles with very little dramatic payoff.  So, like a boat inexpertly tied to the dock,  the movie drifts in and out and bangs against the pilings.  This could have been a masterpiece, but you need a good story to make one of those.

Trouble with the Curve: an enjoyable day at the ballpark, but no surprises

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There isn’t a surprising moment in Trouble with the Curve, but as predictable as it is, the fine performances and the setting in an often obscure part of the baseball world combine to make it an enjoyable time at the movies.

It’s a story about a dad-daughter relationship.  The dad (Clint Eastwood) is a crusty geezer whose failing eyesight threatens his job as a Major League Baseball scout.  The daughter (Amy Adams) is an overachieving, workaholic lawyer who is unsatisfied with a relationship that her dad keeps as superficial as possible.  They are improbably forced together on a road trip.

Now you know that she is going to run the pool table at the hick roadhouse.  You know that the unlikely kid will turn out to be the real MLB prospect.  You know that the geezer’s insight will be proven right in the end.  And you know that the daughter will find closeness with the dad and a new boyfriend along the way.  As I said, there are no surprises.

Nevertheless, Eastwood and Adams are just perfect in their roles.  Eastwood’s graveside monologue and song are particularly moving.  Justin Timberlake and John Goodman are excellent, too.  Matthew Lillard is dead on perfect as a frat boy turned know it all baseball exec.

And then there’s the baseball setting.  The movie had me with the gaggle of elderly scouts traipsing through South Carolina from one high school baseball field to another, breaking each others’ balls at dive bars every night.  The Wife, who does not lapse into baseball reverie, didn’t enjoy it as much.

The Words: the filmmakers think you’re idiots

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The infuriating drama The Words does have a story to tell –  a young man finds success by publishing a found manuscript as his own, and then the old man who really wrote the novel shows up.  But no aspect of this story is left for the audience to figure out.

Take, for example, the initial writing of the novel.  We see, in flashback, that a man’s baby dies and his wife leaves; he then bangs out the novel in a paroxysm of angry grief. Thanks to the actors, we understand that’s what is happening.  But – just in case that we’re really dim – it is explained to us in voice over narration.   In case we don’t know how to feel about this, there is an overbearing score of soap opera music.  But wait – this story is a novel within a novel, so the actors playing the exterior story can explain it to us again.  Just to make sure that we get it.

The ham-handed storytelling and the overwrought music combine to make The Words corny.  The double and triple explanations of the story are just insulting to the audience.

One good thing about The Words –  Jeremy Irons’ performance is superb.

Sleepwalk With Me: engaging and successful comedy

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As Sleepwalk With Me begins, the filmmaker lets the audience figure out three basic things about the main character.  First, he has the perfect girlfriend and, no matter what happens in his life, he will never do any better.  Second, despite her patience after being together eight years, it’s time for him to marry her or not.  Third, he is absolutely unready to make that commitment.

That filmmaker is co-writer/co-director Mike Birbiglia, a standup comic whose screenplay is based on his autobiographical one man show.  His protagonist’s unpromising career as a comedian is feeding his ambivalence to marry a woman whose career has already stabilized.  As he feels more and more relationship and career pressures, he develops REM Behavior Disorder – a rare and particularly dangerous form of sleepwalking.

The sleepwalking, of course, sets up some funny moments, as do the stumbling start to the standup career, the girlfriend angst and the usual maddening set of parents.  In a comic triumph, Birbiglia gently and intelligently milks the laughs out of each situation while never losing focus on the fundamental truth of each situation.

The girlfriend is beautiful, good-hearted, smart, sexy and full of life.  She is played impeccably by Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under. Starting Out in the Evening).  Veterans James Rebhorn and Carole Kane are excellent as the protagonist’s bickering parents.  Here’s a nice touch:  the pioneer scientist of sleep disorder science himself, Stanford professor Dr. William C. Dement, provides a funny cameo.

Lawless: good looking, well-acted and completely predictable

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Lawless is a good looking, well-acted and completely predictable crime drama among moonshiners in Prohibition Era Appalachia.  The filmmakers were careful to enrich the film with all kind of period detail – not just the cars and the clothes, but down to the advertisements at the gas station and the footwashing and the Sacred Harp singing at the Church of the Brethren. However, we always know that [minor spoilers] the good guys will defeat the villain and Jessica Chastain will fall for Alpha male Tom Hardy.

The story by musician Nick Cave is based on a real family of Virginia bootleggers and, as typical for Cave, is severely violent.  Hardy grunts and snorts, but is convincing as the leader of his brothers, played by Jason Clarke and (why is he a movie star?) Shia LaBeouf.

But the best acting is by the supporting company.  As the villain, Guy Pearce plays a lethal dandy.  Gary Oldman sparkles as a gangster ally. Mia Wasikowska, looking like she stepped out of a Dorothea Lange photo, is perfectly cast as a teen girl with an eye for bad boys.   And every time Jessica Chastain is on camera, she commands the screen and elevates the entire film; her beauty is especially breathtaking in Lawless, particularly when naked.

Robot & Frank: funny and revealing as a man ages

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Frank Langella’s performance in Robot & Frank elevates the film from a pretty good comedy to a revealing study of getting older.  Langella’s character Frank lives an isolated retirement in upstate New York, and he is experiencing some symptoms consistent with the early onset of dementia.  Naturally, his adult kids are worried.  The story takes place in the near future, so his son helpfully provides Frank with robotic personal healthcare assistant.  Frank resists, and this is where, in lesser hands,  Robot & Frank could have become just another comedy about a crusty old curmudgeon.

But the focus of Robot & Frank is deeper than that – it’s about an older person’s strategy to accept, resist, deny or adapt to the various ravages of becoming older.  As the robot institutes a daily routine with improved diet and exercise, Frank becomes less addled.  With his new-found lucidity, he can now try to resist aging by making some new goals.  It turns out that Frank’s career was as a cat burglar  – and he would prefer to be only semi-retired – so….

It’s an enlightening exploration, which becomes more profound when a fact is revealed very late in the film.

The supporting cast, including the always appealing Susan Sarandon, is very good. The sardonically detached Peter Sarsgaard was the perfect choice to voice the robot.  Jeremy Strong is very good as a particularly despicable yuppie.

The trailer makes Robot & Frank appear lighter than it is.  It is a funny movie, but also has some heft.

Premium Rush: cool bike chase, not much else

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Premium Rush is a thriller set in Manhattan’s bike messenger subculture and is basically one 90-minute chase scene.  It is cool to watch skilled outlaws bob in and out of NYC traffic, running red lights and just missing cabs, more cabs and the occasional baby carriage.  But that’s all that Premium Rush has to offer.

Premium Rush does employ – and mostly waste – the talents of two of our greatest actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon.  Gordon-Levitt is just fine, and, Lord knows, he deserves a Hollywood payday after making all those wonderful indies.  The same goes for Shannon (who better to play a maniacal villain?), who does well when called upon to be scary and less well when he displays Elmer Fudd frustration.

Coming up on TV: Warren William, the King of Pre-Code

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Warren William with Loretta Young in EMPLOYEES ENTRANCE

I’ve recently discovered the actor Warren William, whose movies from the early 30s remain fresh today.  On August 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting sixteen Warren William movies.  Although he is not well-known today, William was “King of the Pre-Code”, starring in 25 movies between 1931 and 1934, many with the sexual frankness and moral ambiguity that was to be erased by the Production Code.  His leading ladies included the likes of Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Loretta Young, Ann Dvorak and Claudette Colbert.

With his striking features (including a prominent and noble nose) and his deep and cultured voice, William was a natural for the newfangled talkies.  William excelled in the Pre-Code movies because he could play deliciously shameless scoundrels who would use their wit and position to exploit everyone else, especially for sex, power and money.  His characters are fun to watch because they take such delight in their own depravity.  But in 1934, the new Production Code meant that movies could no longer allow his characters to have sex and otherwise behave badly and get away with it.

My recommendation among TCM’s offerings this week is the 1933 Employees Entrance.  William plays a department store manager who is viciously ruthless with his competitors and suppliers.  He abuses his own employees and is indifferent to the resultant suicide attempts.  He uses his position to have sex with a young employee (Loretta Young), even after she marries someone else.  And he keeps a floozy on the payroll to distract another executive (his putative supervisor) from meddling in the business.  And for all 75 minutes of Employees Entrance, William’s joyously despicable character is richly enjoying himself.  If you’re looking for the triumph of Good over Evil, this isn’t your movie.

One of my favorite movies is 1932’s hilarious political comedy The Dark Horse, in which William plays an equally ruthless and amoral campaign manager.  He is such a scoundrel that he must first get sprung from jail to teach his dimwitted candidate to answer every question with “Yes…and, then again, no.”  He describes his own candidate (the gleefully dim Guy Kibbee) thus:  “He’s the dumbest human being I ever saw. Every time he opens his mouth he subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge.”  (Unfortunately, TCM is not showing The Dark Horse this week.)

Ever the sexually predatory cad on the screen, the real life William led a quiet life and was married to the same woman for twenty-five years until his death.

Celeste and Jesse Forever: another actress-written, smart, funny movie

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I really enjoyed Celeste and Jesse Forever, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg as best friends who have been married, are now working on an amiable divorce and are still best friends.  The screenplay is co-written by Rashida Jones (Paul Rudd’s fiance in I Love You, Man) and, once you accept the comic premise that this couple is made for each other but not as a married couple, everyone’s behavior is authentic.  Sure, he wants to get back with her when she isn’t in a place to do that – and, then, vice versa – but the characters resolve the conflict as they would in real life.  Here’s a mini-spoiler – this movie is just too smart to end in rushing to the airport or disrupting the wedding or any of the other typical rom com contrivances.

The supporting characters are funny without being absurdly zany (except for one pot dealer).   Chris Messina pops up in Celeste, as he did in Ruby Sparks, and does a good job here, too.

I’m certainly looking forward to Rashida Jones’ next screenplay.

2 Days in New York: a diversion, sometimes funny

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Writer-director Julie Delpy and Chris Rock play a couple living together in a cramped New York City apartment with their kids from previous relationships when her eccentric French family comes for a visit.  Most French are reserved and impeccably polite; because that’s not funny, Delpy wrote her visitors to be very badly behaved extreme hedonists.  The stress of the first visit by the in-laws, the claustrophobia of packing people into a tiny apartment and language and cultural barriers are all promising comic situations.   A mid-range comedy, 2 Days in New York has its moments.

As a screenwriter, Delpy’s strengths are a keen eye for family dysfunction, brisk pacing and a willingness to get raunchy.  But much of the broadest gags in 2 Days in New York fall flat.  There is a funny bit about Delpy’s emotionally brittle artist literally selling her soul as a piece of performance art.  And it’s funny when Delpy invents a preposterous tragedy to avoid facing a complaint from a neighbor.  But the funniest moments are two Chris Rock monologues when he retreats to his man cave to converse with a large poster of Barack Obama.

I wouldn’t recommend a special trip to the theater to see 2 Days in New York, but it’s a pleasant enough diversion to watch on DVD or stream later this year.