Movies

Stream of the Week: GRIZZLY MAN – a fool’s misadventure

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GRIZZLY MAN

Werner Herzog’s mesmerizing and darkly funny documentary Grizzly Man is about Timothy Treadwell, who had spent summers observing the brown bears (grizzlies) in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, and believed that he had “gained their trust”. Driven by his ill-advised dream to befriend the grizzlies, Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard essentially moved in with the grizzlies, camping by their fishing spot and personally interacting with them at close quarters. It did not end well.

Basically, grizzlies are hard-wired to hunt and eat humans. They are so fast that a human can’t escape one without a vehicle (or, possibly – but not for sure – tree climbing); They are so strong and fierce that a human can’t fend one off without a firearm (or, possibly, bear spray). This makes Treadwell’s’s quest remarkably foolhardy, This also makes Grizzly Man hilarious in a Darwin Awards way.

GRIZZLY MAN

As ridiculous as is Treadwell’s plan, this story had its life-and-death drama. Herzog’s presentation of a wristwatch and an audio recording is a moment that makes the hair on your neck stand up.

Werner Herzog, known for his German New Cinema art house hits of the 70s and 80s (Aguirre:The Wrath of God, Strozek Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo), switched gears in 1997 with the underrated documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and followed it with Grizzly Man. Since, Herzog has become a prolific and masterful documentarian.

In Grizzly Man, Herzog makes use of 100 hours of Treadwell’s own video footage of his misadventure. As we’ve come to expect, Herzog’s research is impressively resourceful, and he assembles his finds to construct a masterpiece of story-telling Most remarkably, Herzog has also become one of the greatest narrators of English language documentaries; somehow, his German-accented narrations are hypnotic.

Grizzly Man is a superb film, which made my own list of Best Movies of the 21st Century (and Sophia Coppola’s, too) and my Best Movies of 2005. It can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play, and it’s available on DVD from Netflix.

MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND – a movie fan’s primer

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Steven Spielberg and Saving Private Ryan in AKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND

We usually say that we SEE a movie, but what we hear (or don’t hear) is just as essential to the movie’s impact. The impact of movie sound is SUPPOSED to be subliminal, so we often enjoy a film without appreciating the sound. The documentary Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound is a comprehensive primer on the art and science of movie sound.

Making Waves begins with the first decades of cinema, when movies aspired to include sound with images, but could only be accompanied by live music and live sound effects at their exhibition. Technology caught up in 1926 with synchronization of recorded sound and images.

The end of the studio period in the late 1960s coincided with the arrival of Walter Murch, the genius who invented modern movie sound design. Thankfully, Making Waves serves up plenty of Murch (The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now!), before introducing us to Ben Burtt, who won an Oscar in his first gig (Star Wars) and Pixar’s Gary Rydstrom, who pioneered digital sound design. We also see the impact on movie sound of George Martin and the Beatles (multi-track recording), Barbra Streisand (movie exhibition in stereo) and Robert Altman (shooting with multiple mics).

Making Waves is best described as thorough and systematic, and I wouldn’t call it thrilling. But it’s a great choice for anyone who wants to understand and appreciate filmmaking.

There are plenty of cool tidbits, like how Burtt came up with Chewbacca’s vocalizations with the help of a bread-loving bear. And we see Foley artists at work, rolling a pine cone across dry lasagna to create just the right effect.

Making Waves is the feature debut for director Midge Costin and will be released theatrically later this fall. I saw Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound at Cinema Club Silicon Valley, with a Q&A with Costin.

DOWNTON ABBEY: wrapping up a beloved series

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Carson (Jim Carter) returns in DOWNTON ABBEY

Downton Abby is writer Julian Fellowes’ satisfying wrap-up of the beloved series. So how good is it? It’s well-crafted and brings a hopeful, romantic and sentimental conclusion to virtually every character in the series.

It’s now 1927, and the aristocratic Crawley family and the Downton Abbey staff must host a visit from the King and Queen on short notice. There are two sources of conflict. Upstairs, there is a question of inheritance, which is where the series began, and which introduces a new character (played by the great Imelda Staunton) to do social combat with Violet (Maggie Smith). Downstairs, the royal family has a traveling squad of servants who try to humiliatingly push aside the Downton staff for the visit.

Fellowes gets credit for creating the marvelous character of Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham. The delightfully unfiltered Violet has allowed Maggie Smith to scene-steal for a decade, and she returns with her cutting bon mots and appalled reaction to modernity.

There is one shark-jumping scene, an action thriller sequence that isn’t really necessary for the story. It serves to make a point about the character of Tom, but that point could have ben made without the Jack Ryan moment.

Downton Abbey is not really a stand-alone movie. If you haven’t watched the series, it won’t mean as much. This is a series finale – it’s just in theaters instead of on TV

This is not The Sopranos, Throne of Blood or Tales of the City. Pretty much all Downtown Abbey fans will feel good about where the story concludes.

DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME: all the bridges I have burned

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David Crosby in DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME
Photo by Edd Lukas and Ian Coad. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

The notoriously irascible Robert Altman and a drinking buddy once amused themselves by inventing titles of fake country-western songs; Altman came up with I’m Swimming Through the Ashes of All the Bridges I Have Burned. That’s the experience of watching the biodoc David Crosby: Remember My Name.

Most of the doc is a series of interviews with Crosby as he goes on yet another concert tour at age 76; before leaving, he cruises around his old haunts on Sunset Boulevard and Laurel Canyon. Remember My Name’s producer, the director Cameron Crowe, replays an interview with Crosby from 1974, when Crowe was the wunderkind rock writer portrayed in Crowe’s film Almost Famous. Crosby reacts with a telling observation about his friendships.

With the perspective of age, Crosby reflects on his musical achievements, his addiction and recovery and his trail of relationship carnage. He notes that “all” of his intimate collaborators – Roger McGuinn, Graham Nash, Steven Stills and Neil Young – “hate me”, and ruefully observes, “if it were just one, it could be an accident”. The film includes clips of McGuinn, Nash and Young (plus Stills’ emphatic silence) to corroborate.

Crosby’s well-known battle with cocaine and heroin came into play with his estrangements. I would reflect that recovery from addiction will generally IMPROVE behavior, but is no guarantee of ACCEPTABLE behavior. The drugs certainly didn’t help Crosby avoid his “two or three heart attacks” eight cardiac stints, his liver transplant and his diabetes.

Contemplations aside, David Crosby: Remember My Name does an excellent job of tracing Crosby’s musical career and personal life. We get his side of his romance with Joni Mitchell, and the story of getting dumped by Mitchell in front of all their friends – with a song Mitchell composed for the occasion. There’s an wonderful telling of the writing and recording of Neil Young’s great song Ohio.

And here’s an odd note for movie fans: Crosby’s father was Floyd Crosby, a prolific but usually pedestrian cinematographer whose career topper was his Golden Globe-winning work in High Noon. I compared the father-son career paths and found that in 1964-65, when David was starting with the Byrds and hanging out with the Beatles and Miles Davis, Floyd was cranking out Bikini Beach, Pajama Game, Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and Beach Ball. While David was in the vanguard of the 1960s Counterculture, Floyd was winding up the Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon teen culture that had been hanging on from the 1950s.

ROJO: bobbing in a sea of moral relativism

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ROJO. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Rojo is Argentine writer-director Benjamín Naishtat’s slow burn drama.  Rojo is set just before the 1970s coup that some characters expect – but no one is anticipating how long and bloody the coup will be.  Several vignettes are woven together into a tapestry of pre-coup moral malaise.

A prominent provincial lawyer Claudio (Darío Grandinetti) is invited to participate in a scam. There’s a scary encounter of lethal restaurant rage. It looks like Claudio, bobbing on a sea of moral relativism, may well remained unscathed, but the arrival of crack detective becomes a grave threat.

As Claudio weaves through his life, his society shows signs of crumbling. There’s a failed teen seduction, an emotional breakdown at a formal reception and a natural metaphor – a solar eclipse.

It’s funny when the audience finally connects the dots and understands who the character nicknamed “the Hippie” is. And Naishtat and Grandinetti get the most out of the scene where Claudio finally dons a toupee.

We know something that the characters don’t know – or at least fully grasp – how bloody the coup will be. Watch for the several references to desaparecido, a foreboding of the coup. Argentina’s coup was known for the desaparecidos – the disappeared – thousands of the regime’s political opponents went missing without a trace, having been executed by death squads. In Rojo, a very inconvenient madman dies and his body is hidden, there’s a disappearing act in a magic show, and a would-be boyfriend vanishes.

This is a moody, atmospheric film that works as a slow-burn thriller. I saw Rojo earlier this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) and it opens this weekend in Bay Area theaters.

GASLIGHT, GASLIGHT and gaslighting in domestic violence

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Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in GASLIGHT

On September 10, Turner Classic Movies will air Gaslight (1944), a classic suspense thriller that still has a lot to say about domestic violence and abusive power in relationships.

In Gaslight, an evil husband (Charles Boyer) isolates his wife (Ingrid Bergman) and uses manipulation to convince her that she’s going crazy. He’s seeking to conceal his crimes and gain unfettered control of her house and fortune. He’s also dallying with the maid (a nubile 18-year-old Angela Lansbury). Fortunately, the wife’s longtime admirer (Joseph Cotton) works for Scotland Yard and starts to investigate…

Domestic Violence is abuse of a partner, generally characterized by asserting power and control over the partner. Not all domestic violence is physical, and this phenomenon of abuse by manipulation takes it name – gaslighting – from this movie.

The Film Noir Foundation recently screened Gaslight to an audience of domestic violence survivors and support professionals. I recommend Noir Talk, the Film Noir Foundation’s excellent podcast on iTunes. Search for Gaslight and domestic violence in Episode 10. Here’s one of the tidbits from the podcast: Ingrid Bergman thought she was too vibrant and healthy-looking for the part; but that works to show how the manipulation can work on a woman who doesn’t look like a victim.

This famous Gaslight is actually a remake of the original 1940 version, which is also especially well-acted. Anton Walbrook is suave and evil as the hubbie and Dyana Wyngard is unforgettably haunting as the wife. Only 19 minutes in, we see his duplicity, manipulation and control. Frank Pettingell is very good as the detective, and the cast includes Robert Newton (Long John Silver in the 1950 Treasure Island). Cathleen Cordell plays the oversexed maid Nancy in a less nuanced performance than Angela Lansbury’s. This film version is reportedly the most faithful to the stage play source material. (Oddly, there’s a very good can-can dance in this 1940 movie, too.)

Stream of the Week: JIMMY CARTER – “What people say they want”

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In PBS’ American Experience documentary Jimmy Carter, The New Yorker writer and former Carter speechwriter Henrik Hertzberg says:

Jimmy Carter was what the American people always SAY they want – above politics, determined to do the right thing regardless of political consequences, a simple person who doesn’t lie, a modest man, not someone with a lot of imperial pretenses.  That’s what people say they want.  And that’s what they got with Jimmy Carter.

And herein lies the rub. 

In 1976, Americans were reacting to Watergate and wanted a President LEAST like Richard Nixon. We got him, in the form of Jimmy Carter; it turned out that Carter could deliver non-Nixon decency, but not the leadership that the era required.

Today, many – and the polls indicate, most – Americans seek a non-Trump. I share the view that ANYONE would be better then Trump, but Jimmy Carter is instructive that “anyone”, while better than Trump, might not be the best for the country.

In Jimmy Carter, we hear from those who know Carter best – including his wife Rosalynn Carter, his vice-president Walter Mondale, and right-from-the-start Carter insiders Jody Powell, Pat Caddell and Bert Lance. How the times made this man, then propelled him to such improbable electoral success and then finally doomed his Administration, is a great and cautionary story.

To stream Jimmy Carter from iTunes, search for “Jimmy Carter” under TV Episodes (not under Movies). Jimmy Carter is also available on DVD from American Experience. 

GHOSTBOX COWBOY: a dim bulb tries to re-invent himself

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GHOSTBOX COWBOY

In John Maringouin’s inventive satire Ghostbox Cowboy, we first meet Jimmy (David Zellner) in an American store, gazing at that aisle in every Walgreens or CVS that is filled entirely with crappy plastic gizmos made in China. We later learn that he’s thinking, “somebody is getting rich making this stuff and that person should be me.”

Wearing a cowboy hat for effect, Jimmy takes his small nest egg to the capitalist frontier of China and tries to re-invent himself as an entrepreneur. He has the prototype for an absolutely phony product, which he tries to pitch to young Chinese capitalists. Jimmy thinks that he can outsmart the locals because he is an American, but the joke is on him – he’s now the dumbest guy in China.

Jimmy doesn’t bother to learn any Mandarin, so he leans on or two shady, super-marginal ex-pats (Robert Longstreet – just great – and Specialist) to help him navigate the local scene. One of his “buddies” fleeces him, and Jimmy is hired by contemptuous Chinese when they need a Caucasian stand-in. As Jimmy is stranded near Mongolia, Ghostbox Cowboy gets mystical, and the cringe humor gives way to the surreal.

The filmmaking itself is a remarkable story. Ghostbox Cowboy was shot in the massive boomtowns around Dongguan, Guangzho and Shenzhen (each a city with a population between 8 and 15 million). Because the Chinese government frowns on critique cinema, Maringouin had to shoot on the sly, guerilla style. To photograph the illegal factories that manufacture knock-offs, he pretended to be a potential investor. Maringouin and his two SAG actors spent ten days in China, essentially pretending not to shoot a movie.

David Zellner in GHOSTBOX COWBOY

I saw Ghostbox Cowboy at Cinema Club Silicon Valley, with a Q&A with writer-director-camera operator John Maringouin. Bay Area filmmaker Maringouin wanted to focus on White entitlement, with a protagonist who adds no value of his own but imagines that he should still be “a participant” in China.

Ghostbox Cowboy was selected to play the Tribeca film festival and earned a NY Times Critic’s Pick. Ghostbox Cowboy can be streamed on Amazon (included with Prime).

THE SOUVENIR: amplification by stillness

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Honor Swinton Byrne and Tom Burke in THE SOUVENIR

The slow-burn romantic tragedy The Souvenir is a study of a bad romantic choice, exacerbated by co-dependence.

In the 1980s Thatcher Era UK, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is a 24-year-old Ken Loach wannabe trying to make her first socially aware film. She’s from a middle class background and has a set of artsy friends. She meets Anthony (Tom Burke), who affects the chalk-stripe pinstripe suits and the bored drawl of the upper classes, and says that he works at the Foreign Office. She is intrigued.

It’s an unusual courtship. He takes her to a stupefyingly posh tearoom. They visit an art gallery and deconstruct the Fragonard painting The Souvenir. But are these dates? Kinda dates? She lets him crash at her place. All of this precedes any physical intimacy or hint of passion. He wants her, but never pushes the pace. They do become lovers, and it turns out that he is not as he seemed. (Kudos to the trailer below for NOT spoiling Anthony’s biggest secret.)

This is a remarkable piece of filmmaking. Writer-director Joanna Hogg frames each shot exquisitely, and lets the characters’ feelings unspool before us. This is a movie with lots of stillness, and the stillness serves to amplify the emotional power.

This is the first feature film performance as an adult for Honor Swinton Byrne, the daughter of Tilda Swinton. Byrne is superb as Julie, whom we care about because she is so genuine and vulnerable. This is also the first time I’ve seen Tom Burke, and he is excellent as a quirky guy who might really appeal to some woman, but who can’t escape his fatal flaw. Tilda Swinton appears in the supporting role as Julie’s protective mom, and nails the character.

Joanna Hogg, just like her Julie, was a young British filmmaker in the 1980s, and this story seems searingly personal. I don’t know to what extent it is autobiographical, but the heartbreak is so powerfully vivid, that I hope Hogg didn’t have to endure it in real life. There’s a sequel already in post-production.

The Souvenir is universally acclaimed by critics and has a Metacritic score of 92. I admired the film and the filmmaking, but was not engrossed; most viewers will find the deliberate pace makes The Souvenir a challenging watch for one hour and 59 minutes. It certainly is the most profoundly sad film of the year. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

NON-FICTION: Olivier Assayas has wasted too many hours of my life

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Guillaume Canet (left) and Vincent Macaigne in NON-FICTION

I finally got around to watching writer-director Olivier Assayas’ Non-Fiction. I had been eager to see it because I generally find the French actor Vincent Macaigne hilarious, and I will pretty much watch Juliette Binoche in anything. My conclusion: Olivier Assayas has wasted too many hours of my life, and I am over his films.

Non-Fiction is a comedy of manners that revolves around the once-successful novelist Leonard, whose books are very lightly disguised re-tellings of his own sordid romantic life, and Leonard’s publisher Alain (Guillaume Canet). Alain is married to Selena (Juliette Binoche), an actress in TV cop shows. Everybody sleeps with somebody else’s partner, and everyone wrings their hands over e-books, audio books, blogs and the impending death of the book industry. That’s about it. None of it is engaging.

In 2006, Assayas, a veteran screenwriter, wrote and directed an okay segment (the one with Maggie Gyllenhaal as an actress pining for her drug dealer) in the delightful anthology Paris, je t’aime. He followed it in 2008 with the fine family drama Summer Hours. And then, in 2011, he did the excellent true crime mini-series Carlos. This was a promising start, and he developed a fan base of admiring critics.

But since then, Assayas has wasted brilliant performances by Binoche and Kristen Stewart in the Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper – two muddled messes that masquerade as cinema. And now, the off-putting Non-Fiction. I am over this guy.

SPOILER: There is one funny moment in Non-Fiction, which I shall now spoil for you, so you won’t need to watch the movie. In the last quarter of the film, the characters decide to publish an audio book read by a celebrity, and they aspire to get Juliette Binoche (who is, of course, in this scene playing her character). I’ll concede that this is a genuinely witty moment, if self-referential.

Non-Fiction is now streaming on Amazon and other platforms.