Movies

1917: why all the fuss?

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George MacKay in 1917

The WW I thriller 1917 is a only a solid movie, despite groundbreaking technical achievements. The story is simple – two British soldiers must race across nine miles of enemy territory to prevent a doomed attack. One of them has been cynically selected because his brother would be one of the soldiers to walk into the German deathtrap. Will they survive a series of perils and make it in time?

There are moments which are essentially the equivalents of video games or amusement park rides, especially a tunnel cave-in, a crashing biplane and an unexpectedly roaring river. Now, a viewer knows that there is NO MOVIE HERE AT ALL if at least one of these guys doesn’t reach the objective, or at least come heartbreakingly close; that knowledge removes some of the tension from the dangerous situations in the first three-quarters of the film.

The screenplay, co-written by director Sam Mendes, is very lame; unbelievably, it has been nominated for an Oscar. One of the leads regards his tranquil surroundings with “I don’t like this place,” which is movie foreshadowing as obvious as “It’s quiet…too quiet.” I don’t consider it a spoiler to let you know something bad happens in “I don’t like this place“,

On to the technical achievements. Mendes has constructed the film as if it were one, continuous shot. This is NOT a gimmick; the continuity and the illusion of a single shot is all in service to the story by reinforcing the POV of our protagonists. It is brilliantly photographed by cinematographer Roger Deakins.

Deakins is a lead pipe cinch to win a deserved Cinematography Oscar. He won in 2018 for Blade Runner 2049 and has 12 other Oscar nominations. 1917 is in amazing achievement for Deakins.

At one point, a protagonist is creeping through a decimated town that is filled with enemy snipers. Every so often, a flare lights up the ruins as if it were daylight, and our soldier has to sprint toward darkness, essentially racing the flares. It’s a remarkable visual, and I never seen anything like it before.

There are scenes where we follow the soldiers down miles of trenches – a remarkable job of production design. Mendes also seems to have gotten all of the period details right.

George MacKay is excellent as one of the protagonists, Corporal Scofield. As a character, Scofield spends the movie in fear, determination or both simultaneously, so MacKay doesn’t need to use much range, but he is compelling. MacKay has the kind of face that is well-suited for a character haunted by dread and tragedy.

The always-charismatic Benedict Cumberbatch makes the most out of his two minutes on screen. as does Andrew Scott.

I admired the movie wizardry of 1917, but I wasn’t thrilled or moved by it. 1917 won a Golden Globe and has garnered a zillion Oscar nominations. I see 1917 as this year’s Avatar, a technical marvel that no one will be talking about in five years.

HONEYLAND: bees good, neighbors bad

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HONEYLAND

The documentary Honeyland is about a fiftyish Macedonian woman named Hatidze, who lives in an otherwise abandoned mountain village. She cares for her mother, who is blind and bedridden, and she clambers over rocky mountains to collect honeycombs and bees; she sells the honey in a nearby city for a living.

Suddenly, a thoroughly disorganized family moves in next door, sprawling litter and rowdy kids across the previously serene landscape. The father, Hussein, thinks that he will strike it rich raising cattle and bees; the fact that it’s not that easy utterly escapes him. Hussein is foolish, makes the lazy choice at every opportunity and blames the resultant misadventures on others.

Despite Hatidze’s best efforts, her mother’s health declines and Hussein’s self-made disasters continue. That’s all that happens in Honeyland. As my longtime readers will know, I’m more patient with the slowly paced, indie cinéma vérité than the next guy; but but I lost interest in Honeyland. The only reason I watched Honeyland to the end was because The Wife wanted to see if something more interesting was going to happen.

In fact, the only reason that I’m writing about this film at all is that it has somehow been Oscar-nominated for both the Best International Film and the Best Documentary, which I find baffling.

Reportedly, the filmmakers lived in tent in the remote village and filmed Honeyland over four years.

Hatidze is sweet, decent and fully aligned with popular values of sustainability. She has a sense of humor and some measure of snaggle-toothed charm. The film is only one hour 26 minutes, but it seems longer. I streamed Honeyland, but I don’t know why you should.

Stream of the week: CARLITO’S WAY – Pacino illuminates another gangster epic

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Al Pacino (right) in CARLITO’S WAY

Brian De Palma’s 1993 neo-noir Carlito’s Way is one of the great crime films.  If you like The Godfather, you’ll like the similarly operatic Carlito’s Way. Al Pacino is brilliant, and we so sympathize with this anti-hero that we’re hoping he will avoid the heartbreakingly noir ending.

Pacino stars as Carlito Brigante, a successful Puerto Rican drug dealer just released back to New York City from prison.  He’s looking to invest in a nightclub and develop a legitimate nest egg so he can retire to the tropics with his girlfriend.  But the crime world he comes from isn’t going to make that easy. This isn’t the bombastic Pacino – his Carlito is ever-watchful and shrewd, like his Michael Corleone in The Godfather films.

Carlito’s Way’s high points are three unforgettable set pieces: a drug deal rendezvous where Carlito senses something is amiss, a nightclub confrontation with an aspiring gangster, and an extraordinary chase scene through Grand Central Station. In the chase, Carlito must escape two skilled and determined Mafia hit men, one of whom is profoundly obese.

Carlito’s Way features top rate supporting performances from Luis Guzman, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller and Viggo Mortensen, along with John Leguizamo’s breakthrough.  Penn’s coke-fueled shady lawyer is the juiciest role, but don’t overlook Jorge Porcel as Sasso; this Argentine comic actor was near the end of his 54-movie and 32 -television series career, and he is perfect as Sasso.

The two hours and 24 minutes never drags.  Carlito’s Way plays frequently on premium television channels and is available on DVD and Blue-Ray from Netflix. Carlito’s Way can also be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Sean Penn and Al Pacino in CARLITO’S WAY. Credit:The Kobal/Universal. Collection
John Leguizamo, Luis Guzman and Al Pacino in CARLITO’S WAY.

UNCUT GEMS: neo-noir in a pressure cooker

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Adam Sandler in UNCUT GEMS

Adam Sandler and filmmaking brothers Benny and Josh Safdie serve up neo-noir in a pressure cooker in the relentlessly tense Uncut Gems.

Howard (Adam Sandler) is a Jewish jewelry dealer in New York City’s Diamond District, who makes his big bucks catering to NBA stars brought in by his associate (LaKeith Stanfield). He’s also a gambling addict. One of the consequences of gambling addiction is losing more than you can afford and owing money that you don’t have to very nasty people.

Kevin Garnett, LaKeith Stanfield and Adam Sandler in UNCUT GEMS

Howard has a lot – a wife and kids in a luxurious suburban house, a young mistress in a Manhattan apartment, a thriving business. But he’s always on the verge of losing it all because it’s not enough; his life is driven by the compulsion to make five figure exotic sports bets.

That means that he is constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul, shifting money, jewelry, schemes and bullshit around like a spinning plate act on The Ed Sullivan Show. Throughout Uncut Gems, the chaos elevates, as Howard bets on being bailed out by the Big Sale and the Big Bet. There’s a massive Ethiopian opal (a MacGuffin like the Maltese Falcon), a spine chilling auction and an even more gripping sports bet.

It’s clear that the inevitable will catch up with Howard – we just don’t know where it will fall on the continuum between having all of the bones in his hand broken and wearing cement shoes in the East River. Or whether his spiking blood pressure will send him out with a stroke or heart attack. Come to think of it, this probably isn’t the best movie choice for a cardiologist.

Adam Sandler in UNCUT GEMS

Here’s the challenge that the Safdies faced in writing this character and that Sandler faced in playing him. How do you make him just appealing enough to keep us engaged with his situation? This is a guy who, were we in the same family or community, we would dread his every approach (Here comes trouble).

This is an extraordinary, awards-worthy performance by Sandler; he inhabits a perpetually frenetic guy, fueled by his compulsions and by the resultant desperation.

Idina Menzel is superb as the wife who knows Howard best and assesses him the most accurately (and cruelly). Stanfield is very good, as are Julia Fox as the girlfriend and Eric Bogosian as a frustrated creditor. Former NBA star Kevin Garnett plays NBA star Kevin Garnett and holds his own with the professional actors.

The 2 hours and 15 minutes of Uncut Gems flies by (and you feel like you’ve been running the whole time). This is one of the Best Movies of 2019.

THE TWO POPES: surprising complexity

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Anthony Hopkins in THE TWO POPES

Refusing to play it safe, director Francisco Meirelles elevates The Two Popes from would have been a satisfying acting showcase into a thought-provoker. The Two Popes is based on the transition of the papacy from the reactionary German Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) to the tolerant, social justice advocate Argentine Bergoglio (Pope Francis).

Of course, we expect great performances from two of our greatest screen actors, Anthony Hopkins (as Ratzinger) and Jonathan Pryce (Bergoglio). These guys are great, especially Hopkins, who has the task of making us see the humanity in a cold, humorless, doctrinaire character.

The story is a natural odd couple match-up set in a moment of historical drama, and, with Pryce and Hopkins, that would be enough for most filmmakers. But Meirelles takes it up a notch with an unexpected second flashback to Bergoglio’s career as a Jesuit leader during the brutal Argentine coup in the 1970’s. I didn’t se this coming, and it illuminates Bergoglio’s experience, more complicated than initially apparent. Credit the construction and the added complexity to Meirelles (City of God) screenwriter Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour The Theory of Everything).

BTW The Two Popes is shot in the Vatican, including the Sistine Chapel, and the papal summer getaway, Castel Gandolfo. Way cool.

The Two Popes is streaming on Netflix.

MIDNIGHT FAMILY: an all-night race for pesos

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Luke Lorentzen’s MIDNIGHT FAMILY. Cuurtesy of SFFILM

In his gripping documentary Midnight Family, filmmaker Luke Lorentzen takes us on ridealongs with an all-night ambulance crew in Mexico City. It’s even wilder than you may expect.

Midnight Family is set in an absurd situation with life-and-death stakes. We learn right away that there are only 45 government-operated ambulances in Mexico City, a metropolis of 9 million. The rest of the ambulances are private and mostly independents.

Competition is cut throat. The private ambulances listen to police scanners and then TRY TO OUTRACE each other to the scene. One of these independent ambulances is the Ochoa family’s business.

Fernando Ochoa is the head of the family, and he collects the ambulance fee from hospitals and patients. His 17-year-old son Juan is the voluble front man and driver, who careens them through the Mexico City streets at alarming speed. The Ochoa’s colleague, the even-tempered medic Manuel, rides in the back. The youngest Ochoa son, pudgy, Ruffles-devouring 10-year-old Josue, rides along as a gopher. BTW there are no seat belts in the back.

The private ambulances operate in a shady world of semi-formal licensing, so they can always be shut down arbitrarily by the cops. Indeed, we even see the Ochoas arrested while trying to take a patient to the hospital. It’s common for the police to extract bribes from the vulnerable ambulance crews.

There is an incentive to steer patients to the private hospitals that will pay the ambulance crews, so their business is, by its nature, often a hustle; there are some instances of ethical ambiguity. Aiming to depict a “wide spectrum”, Lorentzen balances life-saving heroics with the more sketchy moments. Getting payment out of a grieving family when the loved one dies on the way to the hospital is, well, awkward.

Here is the Ochoa’s business model. Ideally, they get paid about $250 to deliver a patient to a private hospital. They deduct the cost of gasoline, medical supplies and police bribes, and then split what’s left four ways. If a patient can’t or won’t pay, if the vehicle breaks down, or if the cops shut them down – the Ochoas are out of luck.

Luke Lorentzen’s MIDNIGHT FAMILY. Cuurtesy of SFFILM

Fernando is silent but expressive. Carrying an alarming belly, he stoically juggles an assortment pills to treat his chronic illness. The loquacious Juan is a born front man, and basically provides play-by-play commentary throughout the film in real time. We see him downloading the previous night’s drama over the phone to his girlfrend Jessica and, by loud speaker, directing other Mexico City drivers out of his way.

Fernando and Juan sleep on the floor of a downscale apartment, and they never know if they’ll make enough money for tomorrow’s gasoline. It’s an incredibly stressful existence. How resilient can they be? Is there any limit to the stress they can absorb? As Lorentzen himself says, this is “a world where no one is getting what they need”.

I saw Midnight Family at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), which included an in-person Q&A with Lorenzen. Lorentzen spent 80-90 nights with the crew. About 70% of the film comes from the last three nights that he rode with the Ochoas.

Midnight Family joins a mini-genre of rogue ambulance cinema. The very dark Argentine narrative Carancho stars the great Ricardo Darin as a LITERALLY ambulance-chasing lawyer. In the Hungarian dark comedy Heavenly Shift (I saw it at the 2014 Cinequest), an outlaw ambulance crew gets kickbacks from a shady funeral director if the patient dies en route to the hospital.

Midnight Family is just concluding a run at the Roxie in San Francisco. I’ll let you know when it’s streamable. Midnight Family is one of the nest documentaries of the year, and on my Best Movies of 2019.

ASH IS PUREST WHITE: a survivor’s journey

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Fan Liao and Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

Ash Is Purest White is writer-director Zhangke Jia’s portrait of an unforgettable woman surviving betrayal, the crime world and the tidal waves of change in modern China, all embedded in a gangster neo-noir.

Qiao (Tao Zhao), is the tough and spirited girlfriend of the provincial jianghu gang leader Bin (Fan Liao). They are the big fish in their little pond, and they are relishing life. Then circumstances change – great and unperceived economic forces are enervating their hometown and a younger rival gang emerges. Qiao takes a heroic action with severe consequnces. When she re-emerges, she finds herself personally betrayed and unsupported. The seventeen-year span of Ash Is Purest White follows Qiao as she roams across China to rebuild her life. She is at times devastated but refuses to accept permanent defeat.

Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

Tao Zhao is Jia’s wife and muse. Ash Is Purest White is a sweeping epic, and it is her movie. Her performance is a tour de force. Watch her portray Qiao’s confidence in the opening scenes, her resourcefulness and ingenious cons when she is dumped out on her own and the resolve that powers her quest. Fan Liao is also excellent as Bin.

As Qiao’s journey spans almost two decades and thousands of miles, we get insights into contemporary China. Jia’s China is a place where, when the coal industry plays out in one city, the government builds a new city for hundreds of thousands of people to movie into the oil industry. Economic forces sweep across China like flash floods that inundate and sudenly recede. Qiao rides these changes like a fishing bobber on the surface of a tsunami.

Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

We are familiar with movies about the Mafia and yakuza, but Ash Is Purest White is a glimpse into jianghu – their Chinese equivalent.

Ash is Purest White is on my list of Best Movies of 2019, and it’s streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE IRISHMAN: gangsters – an epic reflection

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Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro in THE IRISHMAN

I know that I’m late to the party with these comments, especially since I saw The Irishman at its first Silicon Valley screening. Since then, I’ve been ruminating on why it’s so good.

The titular Irishman is Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a WW II vet, who starts out as a truck driver who diverts his meat deliveries to his own “buyers”. He meets Mafia leader Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), who mentors him, and Sheeran becomes a professional hit man. Through Bufalino, Sheeran also becomes close to Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Like Hoffa, Sheeran and Bufalino were real people. Scorsese takes Sheeran’s life through the decades in this gangland saga.

The Irishman is based on real events. Even the Frank Sheeran appreciation banquet with Jimmy Hoffa and Jerry Vale really happened. Of course, Scorsese ‘s solution to the What Happened to Jimmy Hoffa mystery is imagined, but it does conform to one of the more credible hypotheses.

Besides Bufalino and Sheeran, the characters of real life gangsters Tony Pro Provenzano, Fat Tony Salerno, Angelo Bruno and Crazy Joe Gallo figure in The Irishman’s plot, and we also glimpse Allen Dorfman, Tony Jack Giacalone, Joe Colombo, Sam Giancana and Albert Anastasia.

There is plenty of familiar mob lore – I particularly love the reference to a nickname, “the OTHER Whispers“. But this is a less glamorized Mafia than is usual for a gangster flick – the violence is decidedly unheroic. The toxic impact upon family members is unvarnished.

The Irishman is also a comment on the decline of the Mob. By the end, for all the omerta, we’ve reached a world where these guys (except for Frank Sheeran) routinely rat each other out. When we see the aged Sheeran in the retirement facility, we understand that his storied criminal career hadn’t gotten him any more creature comfort than if he had retired with the Teamster’s pension of an honest trucker. – and he might have instead had the support of an affectionate family.

DeNiro is excellent in The Irishman, as are all the cast members. I really enjoyed Steven “Little Steven” Van Zandt in his cameo as crooner Jerry Vale. British actor Stephen Graham has gotten a lot of plaudits for his as Tony Pro. Four other performances stand out for me.

Joe Pesci has made his acting career playing hair-trigger, tinderbox gangsters. In contrast, his Russell Bufalino is completely contained and ever in control. At one point, Hoffa refuses his request, and Bufalino does not explode or threaten; Pesci’s eyes barely register that Bufalino has made n irreparable decision.

Al Pacino, of course can play chilly (Michael Corleone in The Godfather or volatile (in Dog Day Afternoon and thirty other roles). Here, he perfectly captures Hoffa’s strong will, audacity and smarts (the key to his success) and his hotheadedness (his Achilles heel). This is one of Pacino’s many Oscar nomination-worthy performances.

Anna Paquin and Marin Ireland play the grown-up versions of Sheeran’s daughters. Sheeran’s murderous life has impacted them in ways that he will never understand. As adults, the daughters are no longer afraid of their father and become estranged from him. Paquin shows us her character’s feelings with very few lines. In one brief but riveting monologue, Ireland tries to connects the dot explicitly.

Al Pacino in THE IRISHMAN

Hoffa is an especially interesting character who really hasn’t been captured onscreen as well as he is here. Hoffa was a strategic genius who recognized that putting every Teamster workplace under a single, unified national contract would give the union unmatched bargaining power – from the capacity to essentially shut down all of the shipping and transportation in North America. To accomplish that, he needed the Teamster locals on the coasts to temporarily stagnate their higher pay until the lower-paid locals in the middle of the country could catch up. Because the East Coast locals were mobbed up, he needed – and sought – the cooperation of the Mafia. So, his dalliance with the mob was strategic, aimed at getting him power for his members, not to personally enrich himself as would the garden-variety crook.

Netflix’s investment allowed Scorsese to use a computer special effect to alter the appearances of DeNiro (age 76), Pacino (79) and Pesci (76) so they could play flashback scenes of their characters thirty years before. I knew this technique was used before I saw The Irishman, but I didn’t notice it.

The Irishman is a three-and-a-half hour movie. As The Wife noted, that is indulgent. But it doesn’t drag, and I enjoyed every minute of Scorsese’s masterwork. I saw it in a theater, but The Irishman is streaming on Netflix.

Here’s a bonus treat: Jason Gorber dissects the soundtrack in The Slash.

63 UP: a generation faces mortality

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63 Up is the latest chapter in the greatest documentary series in cinema history (and on my list of Greatest Movies of All Time). Starting with Seven Up! in 1964, director Michael Apted has followed the same fourteen British children, filming snapshots of their lives at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49. and 56 – and now at age 63. Choosing kids from different backgrounds, the series started as a critique of the British class system, but has since evolved into a broader exploration of what factors can lead to success and happiness at different stages of human life. (Apted was the hands-on researcher, not the director on Seven Up! and then directed the next nine films in the series.)

We have seen these characters live roller coaster lives.  The surprise in 56 Up was how contented they seemed to be, having independently reached a stage in their lives where they live with acceptance and satisfaction; the subjects had already weathered their broken marriages and other dramas and seemed to have settled into themselves.  The same is true of 63 Up, but there is more reflection in light of mortality.  There’s a death and a life-threatening illness, but all the characters understand that they’re longer at the beginning of their lives.

Because Apted includes clips from earlier films to set the stage for each character, you don’t need to watch all nine movies.  Because there is so little conflict in 63 Up, it would be ideal to first screen an edgier film like 35 Up or 42: Forty Two Up.  The earlier films are difficult, perhaps impossible, to find streaming, but the entire series (Seven Up!, Seven Plus Seven, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, 49 Up, 56 Up) is available on Netflix DVDs. 56 Up is streamable on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Kanopy.

The theme of the series at the outset was “Give me a boy of seven and I will give you the man“. This time, Apted asks this question directly of the subjects, with varying results.

As usual, the voluble Tony and the utterly unpredictable Neil are the stars, but I got more out of the stories of Symon and Paul than I had ever before.  The biggest surprise for me was the earnest do-gooder teacher Bruce, who I hadn’t ever envisaged as a jovial family patriarch.

63 UP

Michael Apted is a big time director (Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist).  It is remarkable that he has returned so faithfully to his subjects in the Up series. 

I saw 63 Up at the Mill Valley Film Festival, with Apted in attendance. Apted is now 78, and hopes to direct 70 Up if he still has mental acuity. Apted acknowledges that his biggest mistake was not including enough girls at the outset (four girls out of fourteen kids); he’s tried to address it by expanding the roles of several of the male subjects’ female partners.

The Up series is significant and unique cinema – see 63 Up if you can.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL: still the best after 68 years

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Alastair Sim in A CHRISTMAS CAROL

On December 23, Turner Classic Movies brings us that Holiday classic, A Christmas Carol, and I’m talking about the 1951 version with Alastair Sim. Since the 1908 Tom Ricketts silent version, this Charles Dickens story has been made over 60 times for the screen. Scrooge has been played by George C Scott, Bill Murray, Rich Little, Cecily Tyson, Patrick Stewart, Jim Carrey and Kelsey Grammer. (But NOT, to my knowledge, by Nicolas Cage, Christopher Walken, Toshiro Mifune or Zac Efron.)

Alastair Sim’s performance as Scrooge elevates this 1951 version; Sim perfectly modulates Scrooge’s transformation from impervious meanness to vulnerability. A Christmas Carol was, by far, the highlight of Sim’s screen credits; he was primarily a stage actor, who appeared in 46 West End productions. It’s a simple but compelling story, and everyone can relate to the curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge, his touching backstory and his joyous redemption.