Movies

THE FATHER: as reality shifts

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Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in THE FATHER

Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman deliver heartbreaking performances in The Father, an unsettling exploration of memory loss.

As we meet the elderly Anthony (Hopkins), he is insisting on independence that he can no longer sustain. That makes it hard on his daughter Anne (Colman), who is trying to keep him safe and healthy, despite his resistance. But Anthony is losing his memory and becoming ever more suspicious. Soon, all the characters are experiencing disorentation, even fantasies and hallucinations.

The Father is the directing debut for Florian Zeller, who wrote the original play. Along with the superb acting, the key to The Father is Zeller’s ever shifting of reality as understood by the characters and by the audience. As we think we understand what is going on and then have it unraveled, we, like Anthony, lose confidence in our orientation.

Anthony Hopkins has an Oscar and a long list of great performances (The Silence of the Lambs, The Remains of the Day, Nixon, The Human Stain, The Two Popes), but none is better than this one. His Anthony is a man whose characteristic wilfulness is finally self-defeating; he is a man ever confident of his opinions, but the factual basis for those opinions is eroding. He is a man who firmly believes he is always right, facing a new reality in which he demonstrably is not.

Colman is also superb as the able and devoted daughter who is hurt by her father’s perception that she is betraying him. The rest of cast – Rufus Sewell, Imogen Poots, Mark Gattis and Olivia Williams – is impeccable.

The Father, which I saw while covering the virtual Mill Valley Film Festival in October, had been set for a December release, but Sony Pictures Classics has now scheduled a February 26 release. Nevertheless, it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2020.

AMMONITE: when the slow burn is a dud

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Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan in AMMONITE

The fine acting of Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan can’t save Ammonite, a slog of a period romance.

Winslet plays a 19th century paleontologist isolated in the inhospitable climate of an English coastal village. Ronan plays a young wife whose clueless husband has diagnosed as melancholy, although her biggest issue seems to be him; he thinks that leaving her with Winslet’s loner in the brisk ocean breeze might be therapeutic.

The general arc of the story is predictable – these two underestimated women will come to appreciate each other’s gifts and will fall in love, a forbidden love in this time and place. Of course, it takes a long time to break down the anti-social barriers that the Winslet character has constructed to protect herself emotionally. In the mean time, there’s only so much smoldering that the audience can stand to consume.

The problem here is the directing and editing – the pace needed to be picked up. There’s not enough of a payoff to this story to reward a slow, slow, slow burn. The Wife and I just couldn’t hang in there with it. We stopped caring.

The Winslet character is so solitary – and so terse when she’s not alone – dialogue in Ammonite is scant. And the sound design is intentionally rigged to emphasize this – and it’s a problem. All of the non-dialogue sounds are louder than usual. Now, this works near the crashing surf; we all know that voices are drowned out by waves crashing on rocks. But every footstep and creaking hinge a makes a pronounced, even jarring, sound. Once you figure out what’s going on, it’s very distracting.

The sound design, because it is so innovative, has prompted some Oscar buzz. But it’s innovative-bad, not innovative-good.

Ammonite is available to stream; I watched it on Amazon.

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD: Dickins alive at last

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Dev Patel in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

Here’s an unexpected treat: Amando Ianucci’s vivid and brilliantly constructed The Personal History of David Copperfield. Unexpected because I’ve never warmed to the work of Charles Dickins or to any Dickins movies (except for the 1951 A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim).

Of course David Copperfield IS a storyteller and Ianucci uses the device of David’s storytelling to frame the tale as David remembers it and as his readers and listeners imagine it in their own minds. Ianucci makes the highs in David’s life so vibrant and the lows so piercing, that the total package is a dazzling delight.

Dev Patel, he of the instantaneous appeal and the gleaming smile, is perfect as the quick-witted and charming David Copperfield. Patel’s David suffers grievance after grievance, just waiting for a moment of good luck when he can control his destiny.

That the talented David Copperfield, because of his station, cannot control his destiny in the class-constricted Victorian society is the whole point of David Copperfield, social criticism which Dickins keeps from stridency with his humor.

That’s prime territory for Armando Ianucci. Ianucci is a master of wickedly funny political satire, having directed In The Loop and Death of Stalin and created the television series Veep. (In case you want to know what I do on my day job, I am basically Malcom Tucker in In the Loop, whom you can find on YouTube.) Ianucci’s production designer, Cristina Casali, deserves a shout-out, too.

Peter Capaldi in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

It’s a wonderful cast, including Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie. The standouts are:

  • Laurie as the addled, but dignified, Mr. Dick.
  • Ben Whishaw as one of literature’s most distinctive villains, Uriah Heep.
  • Peter Capaldi (who played the aforementioned Malcom Tucker) as Mr. Micawber, a character modeled after Dickins’ own father.
  • Rosalind Eleazer as the even-smarrter-than-David Agnes.
  • Morfydd Clark as the sweetly vacant Dora Seamans.
  • Bronagh Gallagher (who played one of the backup singers in The Commitments) as the remarkably glass-half-full Mrs. Micawber.

Dickins wrote this story about white people in Victorian England. As is obvious with the casting of Patel as David, The Personal History of David Copperfield has an interracial cast, based on a premise that any actor can play any role. I’m okay with that, and I think as more directors cast their movies this way, the distracting aspects will evaporate for most viewers.

The Personal History of David Copperfield is streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

MARTIN EDEN: Jack London in an Italian art film

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Luca Marinelli in MARTIN EDEN

A hunky and charming seaman, devoid of education, aspires to become a writer. Sound like Jack London? Indeed London authored the novel Martin Eden, in part modeled after himself. The lush art film Martin Eden is Pietro Marcello’s adaptation, which he set in Italy.

Luca Marinelli plays the eponymous protagonist with charisma and physicality. His Martin Eden is a zealous autodidact.

Martin ingratiates himself with a wealthy family and seeks the approval and affection of the daughter, whom he begins to idolize.  She sees him as a noble savage, a primitive ready to be cut and polished into a gemstone, and she encourages his education. She is attracted to him physically, but also appreciates his drive and intelligence. But she hopes he would harness his talents for something more commercial and more practical than writing.

Martin, however, attains fame as an author and public intellectual. Unlike Jack London himself, he rejects socialism and goes to the other Ayn Rand-like extreme. He becomes more confident in his philosophy. His political stridency leads to his rudeness at the girlfriend’s family table. She scolds, “you are unbearable“, and, indeed, he is.

Martin Eden has a very rich look and feel. Director Pietro Marcello’s work here has been compared to that of Visconti. There are some odd pop musical interludes, but the visual collages are much more interesting.

Martin Eden is a well-crafted and well-acted film, but its appeal is limited by the protagonist as he strives himself right into obnoxiousness. I watched Martin Eden on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.

BELUSHI: more texture to the story that you already know

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John Belushi in BELUSHI

We all know the story of John Belushi – a career soaring like Icarus, propelled by comic genius and then death by drug overdose at age 33. The new biodoc Belushi brings us more texture because of unprecedented access to Belushi’s friends and widow and to Belushi’s own letters, notes and journals.

There are many insights into Belushi’s family and his upbringing, the fodder for some of his unhappiness. We learn about a year of white-knuckle sobriety when he was protected by a bodyguard named Smokey. Friend and fellow addict Carrie Fisher weigh in regarding that unsupported year of sobriety.

And their are some new stories of Belushi’s zaniness, like when he wandered off a movie set to be found in a house across the street by Dan Aykroyd – Belushi had convinced the resident, a total stranger, to feed him a sandwich and milk and to let him stretch out for a nap.

Belushi is streaming on Showtime.

THE MYSTERY OF D.B. COOPER: the hijacking that keeps on giving

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THE MYSTERY OF D.B. COOPER

We are justifiably still intrigued by the only unsolved American air hijacking. The documentary The Mystery of D.B. Cooper takes us back and adds some detail to the story. Most importantly, it makes four suspects become almost tangible to us.

We get to meet the flight attendant forced to sit next to the hijacker, and the guy who sat across the aisle and the pilot. But, the highlights come from the folks that are today convinced that they knew D.B. Cooper. These stories range from odd to bizarre.

The Mystery of D.B. Cooper is streaming on HBO.

MY PSYCHEDELIC LOVE STORY: Errol Morris and the unreliable narrator

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Timothy Leary and Joanna Harcourt-Smith in MY PSYCHEDELIC LOVE STORY

The documentarian Errol Morris has a remarkable gift for finding interview subjects with bizarre stories to tell. In My Psychedelic Love Story, Morris introduces us to Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who was swept off her feet in 1972 by bad boy celebrity Timothy Leary and spent a few years as his romantic partner. This was a period when Leary, hounded by US authorities for advocating psychedelic drug use, was on the lam in Europe and the Middle East, and finally imprisoned.

Joanna Harcourt-Smith in MY PSYCHEDELIC LOVE STORY

Morris extracts the tale from Harcourt-Smith herself. We learned that Harcourt-Smith came from a wealthy but difficult and unconventional upbringing. She plunged into a hippie version of what we would now call a Eurotrash lifestyle.

While much of her story is undeniably factual, we suspect that Harcourt-Smith is less than a reliable narrator. She drops bits like “I was happy we were stopping in Lebanon because the President was in love with my mother”. It’s either an astonishing fact or a an astonishingly brazen lie. Either way, she’s entertaining.

I’ve loved Morris since his first feature in 1978, Gates of Heaven, the story of a Bay Area pet cemetery and its quirky owners and customers (plus digging up all the dead pets and moving them from Cupertino to Napa). For bizarre personal stories, it’s tough to top Morris’ Tabloid, about a woman who kidnapped and sexually abused a Mormon missionary in England and retired in North Carolina to a pastime of tending dogs cloned in Korea,

My Psychedelic Love Story, which is minor Morris, is streaming on Showtime.

THE PROM: airy confection

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Meryl Streep and James Corden in THE PROM

The Prom brings the musical to the screen, with Meryl Streep and James Corden as the self-absorbed Broadway stars who seek to rebound from a disastrous theatrical closing. They lead a cultural rescue party to Indiana, where a high school lesbian has been denied her prom. They bring along their less successful buddies (Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells) in a comic misadventure in Flyover America.

The first part of the film, with the focus on the narcissism of the is performers, is pretty funny. As the story settles into standard fish-out-of-water territory, it’s less compelling.

Nicole Kidman in THE PROM

The cast is just fine at singing and dancing. Nicole Kidman (who better to play a leggy chorus girl?) is exceptional. I also admired Keegan-Michael Key as the local principal and Broadway fanboy. (And I have evidently aged to the point where I now watch movies where Kerry Washington plays somebody’s mom.)

The Prom is an airy confection, the movie equivalent of cotton candy. It’s streaming on Netflix.

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI: four icons share one pivotal moment

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ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI

The marvelous actress Regina King directed One Night in Miami, a study of four American Black icons – Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, Malcolm X and Sam Cooke – as they spend an evening together.  The encounter is imagined, but the four guys did know each other.

Cooke was a star, Brown was a superstar, Malcolm was emerging as a national figure and Clay was about to become whatever is superior to “icon”. 

The titular One Night is a unique one.  Cassius Clay had just stunned the world by winning the world’s heavyweight boxing championship in an unthinkable upset over ferocious Sonny Liston.  And he was about to shock America again by announcing his embrace of the Nation of Islam and his name change to Muhammad Ali. 

The most interesting aspect is the emphasis on each man at a pivotal point in his career.  Brown is at the top, recognized as an all-time great with nothing else to prove in pro football; the question is whether he can transition his fame into a movie career and other pursuits.  Malcolm is about to move away from the leadership of the Nation of Islam and into a new level of public thought-leading.  Cooke has been at the top, but his career arc may be descending.  And, of course, Clay is seven days from becoming Muhammad Ali; enough said there.  And none of them know that Malcolm and Cooke will be murdered within three years.

Of course, all four were faced with struggling against American racism – systemic and personal, flagrant and subtle.  King’s unflinching eye introduces the particular ingrown racism of the 1960’s South with a gut punch of a scene, when Jim Brown visits a white acquaintance from his youth, played by Beau Bridges. 

One Night in Miami is well-acted.  Clay is played by Eli Goree, Malcolm by Kingsley Ben-Adir, Brown by Aldis Hodge and Cooke by Leslie Odom, Jr. 

One Night in Miami is more intellectually interesting than enthralling. This is very talkie, however, and feels too much like a play to be excellent cinema. 

I screened One Night in Miami at the 2020 Mill Valley Film Festival. You will be able to stream it on Amazon on Christmas Day.

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM: searing, with an electric performance

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Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a searing revelation of the impacts of racism, with charged performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis.

The plot is about a turbulent recording session in 1927 Chicago, featuring the ferocious diva Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues. But the movie is really about how each character has been traumatized by racism. We see overt racism in the American North – in a cop, a working class deli, a recording studio and a crushing final shot of cultural appropriation. But the key is the reflection of racism in how it has shaped each of the characters.

There is a violent eruption that literally stuns the audience, and then, as Billy Wilder advised, the movie doesn’t stick around too long after. This is a dark film.

Chadwick Boseman in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

The core of the film is Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of Levee, the trumpet player in Ma’s backup band. He sees himself as a star in the making, which doesn’t sit well with Ma. Boseman’s Levee is a peacock, but Boseman reveals that Levee understands superficiality and transcends it. At his core is a rage and a unhealed wound, profound emotional damage that he is able to hide…until he doesn’t.

Whether blowing his horn, hanging in the band room or canoodling with Ma’s oversexed sweet young thang (Taylour Paige), Levee is charismatic. The highlight of the film is his gripping monologue, and he’s absolutely electric at the climax.

Boseman died earlier this year at 43 after playing Jackie Ronbison, James Brown and Thurgood Marshal, and soaring to superstardom as Black Panther. There’s been a lot of buzz about a posthumous Oscar for this performance, which is both sentimental and richly deserving. I certainly haven’t seen a better performance in 2020.

Viola Davis, as one would expect, has the presence and ferocity to make an excellent Ma Rainey. The real Ma Rainey wore exaggerated makeup and was constantly sweaty, and Davis uses here characteristics in her performance.

Davis and Boseman are big stars, but Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is an ensemble work. Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts, Jeremy Shanos and Paige are all excellent.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Blues is the second August Wilson play, following Fences, that Denzel Washington has brought to the screen in a deal that originated at HBO and moved to Netflix. This is obviously a play, but it doesn’t feel too stagey, especially with the scenes of the Chicago streets and an earlier Ma Rainey live performance in the rural South.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is one of the Best Movies of 2020 – So Far and a Must See. It’s streaming on Netflix.