Movies

LADY BIRD: genuine and entirely fresh

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Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in LADY BIRD

In Greta Gerwig’s triumphant debut as a writer-director, Lady Bird, Saoirse Ronan plays Christine, a Sacramento teen in her final year of high school. I’ve seen lots of good coming of age movies and lots of high school movies, but rarely one as fresh and original as Lady Bird. Gerwig is an insightful observer of human behavior, and she gets every moment of Christine’s journey, with all of her aspirations and impulses, exactly right.

Movies rarely explore the mother-daughter relationship, but this is the biggest thread in Lady Bird.  Christine and her mother (Laurie Metcalf) deeply need each other but just can’t get out of each other’s way, perpetually on each other’s very last nerve. Christine insists on being called “Lady Bird”, rejecting even the name her mother gave her.  From the very first scene to the last, Lady Bird probes how this most complex relationship evolves.

A girl’s relationship with her father is also pretty central, and the great writer Tracy Letts’ understated performance as the dad is extraordinary.  Letts can play a despicable character so well (Andrew Lockhart in Homeland), I hardly recognized him as Christine’s weakened but profoundly decent father.  The dad is a man whose career defeats have cost him his authority in the family and he is suffering silently from depression.  Yet he remains clear-eyed about the most important things in his children’s lives and is able to step up when he has to.  It’s not a showy role, but Letts is almost unbearably authentic.

There isn’t a bad performance in Lady Bird.  Ronan soars, of course.  The actors playing her high school peers nail their roles, too, especially Beanie Feldstein as her bestie.

Lady Bird’s soundtrack evokes the era especially well. Thanks to Sheila O’Malley for sharing Gerwig’s letter to Justin Timberlake, asking to license Cry Me a River. It’s a gem.

Visually, Gerwig is clearly fond of her hometown, and fills her film with local landmarks. It’s not my favorite California city (and I’ve worked in the Capitol), but Sacramento has never looked more appealing than in Lady Bird.  I did really love the shots of the deco Tower Bridge and the Tower Theater sign.

I don’t care for Gerwig’s performances as an actress, and, in writing about them, I have not been kind. As a director, she is very promising, eliciting such honest and singular performances from her actors and making so many perfect filmmaking choices.  As a writer, she’s already top-notch.  Write another movie, Greta.

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED): who cares and why?

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Grace Van Patten, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler in THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED)

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), writer-director Noah Baumbach’s latest family comedy, is entirely character-driven (usually a very good thing). We really don’t see anything on screen that isn’t intended to reveal something about a character – a man’s lack of confidence, his father’s vanity, his daughter’s surprising well-groundedness. The story (not really a plot) moves from set piece to set piece, beginning with a funny (and futile) search for a Manhattan parking space, each depicting the family quirks and tensions.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is star studded (Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Grace Van Patten, Emma Thompson, Judd Hirsch, a cameo by Sigourney Weaver) and very well-acted. The problem is that, once I was introduced to these characters, I really wasn’t interested in what would happen to them next. I only lasted 42 minutes before reaching for the remote.

Baumbach has become somewhat of a brand name for naval-gazing (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, Mistress America), and his work has tended toward the Woody Allen neurotic New Yorker genre, only with less depth and FAR less comedy.

You can stream The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) on Netflix Instant, but I can’t imagine why you would want to.

LBJ: a Cliff Notes portrait of LBJ, traced through three relationships

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Woody Harrelson in LBJ

Woody Harrelson captures the essence of Lyndon B. Johnson in Rob Reiner’s LBJ.  The best thing about this movie is the main character – probably the most complex and self-contradictory in American history.

LBJ was amazingly talented, aspirational, mean, charming, vulgar and surprisingly needy. LBJ was so masterful and tough and powerful, yet extremely thin-skinned for a politician.  His eternal grasping seems rooted in personal desperation.  LBJ had the need to dominate others and get everything he wants all of the time, and still needed to be loved (which is impossible when you are running over everyone else).

With all of his personal flaws, no American Presidents (except maybe Lincoln and FDR) have been able to roll up a record of legislative accomplishments in two short years to match the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start.  Yes, this was a guy who was able to end legal racial segregation and systemic repression of voting rights and to bring medical security to the elderly and the poor.  (And then be capable of an equally huge policy mistake – the escalation of the Vietnam War.)

How do you tell the story of a larger-than-life character in only 90 minutes?  LBJ focuses on an eight-year period of LBJ’s career.  We first see him in 1956 as Senate Majority Leader, at his most energetic, masterful and powerful.  We then see him in his period of frustration and weakness as Vice-President.  The JFK assassination makes him President, and the film concludes after the enactment of Civil Rights Act in June 1964.

LBJ shows us the many sides of LBJ by tracing three of his personal relationships:

  • Georgia Senator Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins), the leader of Southern segregationists and one of LBJ’s most important mentors.  LBJ rose to power with Russell’s guidance and loyalty, but LBJ, to find his own place in history, needed to destroy everything Russell stood for.
  • Lady Bird Johnson (a superb Jennifer Jason Leigh), the only person who could handle the vulnerable, needy, whiny, disconsolate LBJ.
  • LBJ’s nemesis Robert F. Kennedy (Michael Stahl-David). Because RFK was a martyr, the public tends to forget about his nasty and “ruthless” side, which did exist.  LBJ and RFK took an instant dislike to each other in the early 1950s, a situation which built into a profound and fundamental mutual hatred.
  • Bill Pullman plays Senator Ralph Yarborough, a very minor character in history, but one who serves here as a composite for liberal politicians and for those bullied by LBJ.

The highlights of LBJ are found in that fateful week in November 1963.  At Dallas’ Love Field, it’s clear that JFK’s star power has eclipsed the weakened and resentful LBJ even in Texas.  Then we see LBJ just after the assassination, taking command and plunging into action, taking command and knowing exactly what to do when everyone else was paralyzed by shock.

The history in LBJ is very sound.  I’ve read and re-read the over three thousand pages of Robert Caro’s four-volume biography of Johnson.  Much of LBJ’s dialogue is word-for-word historically correct; I’ve even heard the real LBJ himself utter these words on phone calls that he taped himself.

Woody Harrelson is excellent, capturing both the human tornado and the vulnerable sides of LBJ.  The fine actors Randy Quaid, Rip Torn, Michael Gambon, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber and Tom Wilkinson have all had their cracks at playing LBJ on the screen.  Woody is significantly better than all of those guys, but I still prefer Bryan Cranston’s LBJ in All the Way.

Yes, it’s a Cliff Notes version, but LBJ, with its top rate performances by Woody Harrelson and Jennifer Jason Leigh, is a fine historical introduction and pretty entertaining, too.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Woody Harrelson in LBJ

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS: moderately entertaining lark

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Kenneth Branagh in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Although I love mysteries, I have never warmed to Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot.  In this year’s remake of Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh actually made Poirot marginally appealing to me.  Branagh, who also directed, brings to the role a more explicit OCD diagnosis and a mustache that has its own architecture.

It’s the same plot as in the 1970s version – as the increasingly more improbable coincidences pile up, it becomes clear that they may not be coincidences at all.  And this year’s Murder on the Orient Express is also star-studded, with fine performances from Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, Judy Dench, Olivia Colman, Penelope Cruz, Derek Jacobi and Johnny Depp, who can pull off a pencil thin mustache better than anyone in the last 60 years.

Murder on the Orient Express begins with a spectacular overhead shot of the Wailing Wall and concludes with an amusing Last Supper tableau (see M*A*S*H*).  It’s moderately entertaining, at its best when it acknowledges that it’s just a lark.

Michele Pfeiffer in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

DVD/Stream of the Week: SMOKE SIGNALS – Native American roadtrip to laughs and a long-buried secret

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Evan Adams and Adam Beach in SMOKE SIGNALS

The smart and bitingly funny dramedy Smoke Signals is a film about Native Americans written and directed by Native Americans.  Evans Adams plays Thomas Builds-the-Fire, an Indian nerd, a character type almost certainly unique in cinema.  Adam Beach plays his oft-surly friend Victor.  The two had contrasting relationships with Victor’s father, who has recently died.  Thomas and Victor embark on a road trip to unearth a family secret.

Smoke Signals was written with an acerbic wit and is often downright uproarious. The laugh lines are as funny as in any screwball comedy: Sometimes it’s a good day to die, and sometimes it’s a good day to have breakfast. One of the high points is a rendition of the original song John Wayne’s Teeth.

As Thomas and Victor banter, we get to glimpse inside both Indian Country and mainstream culture from the Indian point of view. Smoke Signals unflinchingly takes on alcoholism and other issues within the Native American community, as well as resentment of how Native Americans are treated by the dominant American culture.

Adam Beach and Evan Adams in SMOKE SIGNALS

Smoke Signals’s screenplay was written by Sherman Alexie, based on his own novel. Alexie set the core of the story on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation on which he grew up. It was directed in 1997 by then 28-year-old Chris Eyre. Eyre, a Cheyenne-Arapaho, has since directed the Native American-themed Skins and Edge of America, along with episode of Friday Night Lights and American Experience.

Adams is hysterically funny as Thomas, and Beach is a capable straight man. Smoke Signals also features the fine Native Canadian actor and actress Gary Farmer and Tantoo Cardinal and the Native American actress Irene Bedard. Michele St. John and Elaine Miles are very funny as Victor and Thomas’ reservation friends Velma and Lucy.

The film won the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Smoke Signals is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Paul Manafort ripped from the headlines in GET ME ROGER STONE

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Roger Stone in GET ME ROGER STONE
So this week’s biggest news has been the indictment of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort.  The indictment comes out of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe of the Russian hacking of last year’s presidential campaign.   Earlier this year, Netflix released the documentary Get Me Roger Stone, and IMDb bills Paul Manafort third in the “cast”, right behind Roger Stone and Donald Trump.

Get Me Roger Stone is an insightful look at the career of political consultant/provocateur Roger Stone, one of the most outrageous characters on the American political scene.  What’s especially relevant today is that Roger Stone and Paul Manafort together invented a new model of lobbying – where the political consultants who help get a candidate elected to high office, then sell their influence over said elected official.

Even without the Manafort angle, Get Me Roger Stone is an entertaining watch, although you might find Roger Stone himself too loathsome to watch.  Stone will do anything – no matter how duplicitous – to win a political campaign.  He will do anything to bring public attention (i.e., notoriety) upon himself.   And he is utterly unapologetic about both.   Stone is the political world’s version of a pro wrestling villain.

Roger Stone is the unmatched master of high jacking a news cycle with a preposterous smear.  The man has a tattoo of Richard Nixon’s face on his back, which tells you a whole lot about him.

Get Me Roger Stone also chronicles Stone’s decades-long quest to get Trump to run for president, and then Stone’s role as an unofficial/official/unofficial Trump strategist.  The documentary also touches on a Roger Stone sex scandal.

Anyway, it’s ripped from the headlines, and you can stream it from Netflix Instant.

MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE: American history’s greatest mystery with the excitement sucked out

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Liam Neeson in MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE

In the sagging docudrama Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, Liam Neeson plays the title character – the man at the center of modern American history’s most compelling mystery. The Washington Post source known as Deep Throat was responsible for keeping the Watergate scandal alive until it dethroned Richard Nixon from the presidency. Deep Throat’s identity remained secret for thirty years. It turned out to be Mark Felt, the number two official at the FBI.

Think about it – this was one of the most compelling people in America for thirty years. Deep Throat was clearly one of a handful of men so well-positioned at the center of government power that we would know him, but no one could finger him. The intrigue was brilliantly captured in All the President’s Men, in which Hal Holbrook played Deep Throat.

In Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, Neeson plays Felt as a stolid, principled and crafty bureaucratic survivor. Somehow the character just isn’t that personally interesting. The story attempts to flesh him out with a troubled wife (Diane Lane, always superb, even in this thankless role) and a runaway hippie daughter.

As we watch Mark Felt, it gradually becomes apparent that this is a one-note character in a one-note movie. The leaden, pseudo-dramatic soundtrack doesn’t help. Mark Felt also fumbles the chance to get some spark out of Watergate icons John Dean, John Erlichman and John Mitchell. The real-life mystery is so much more interesting than this movie. The movie may be irresistible to Watergate buffs like me, but probably should be resisted.

Mark Felt was directed by Peter Landesman, who recently made the near-masterpiece Parkland. Parkland explores the JFK assassination from the viewpoints of the secondary participants. Mark Felt, however, is not a work of directorial mastery.

Marton Csokas is excellent as weak-willed and overmatched FBI Director L. Patrick Gray.  Nixon handpicked Gray to be his stooge only to leave Gray, as henchman John Erlichman indelibly described, to “twist slowly, slowly in the wind”.

In Loving, Csokas, with pitiless, piercing eyes, was remarkably effective as the Virginia sheriff dead set on enforcing Virginia’s racist statute in the most personally intrusive way. Too often, actors seem to be impersonating Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night when they play racist Southern sheriffs, but Csokas brought originality to that performance.  Here Csokas is able to portray a man of ability and ambition, but not spine.

The great but personally turbulent actor Tom Sizemore showcases his talent once again in the film’s most showy role, a bitter and cynic relic of the FBI’s most sordid skullduggery.  Sizemore brings a magnetic cocktail of menace and humor to the role. Besides Diane Lane, the always welcome Bruce Greenwood and Eddie Marsan show up in minor roles.

Perhaps needless to say, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House has made my list of Longest Movie Title.

THE SQUARE: ambitious, brilliant and almost cohesive

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Claes Bang in THE SQUARE. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Square, the social satire from Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund is one of the most ambitious movies of the year.  Often LOL funny, and just as often uncomfortable, The Square hits moments of triumph that would constitute a great movie if they were braided together more cohesively.

The Square is set in a world that is ripe for mockery – Christian (Claes Bang) is chief curator at a Stockholm museum of modern art.   The museum is funded by the very rich, and the art is impenetrably pretentious, inaccessible to all but those predisposed to  deconstruct it (or at least pretend to).  One installation is described in straight-faced mumbo jumbo as “relational aesthetics”.  Another is a roomful of conical piles of rubble, with a museum guard rebuking visitors with a stern “no pictures!”.

Christian is comfortable in his privilege, but he is curious about exploring social inequity – but only as an intellectual exercise. Christian is interested in street beggars (and finds one especially ungrateful one), and The Square is filled by “help me” moments.  He is victimized by a robbery that seems like performance art, and  sets off on an adventure called the “Tesla of Justice”, which goes horribly awry.

There are lots of laughs in The Square.  Christian admonishes a colleague not to use Comic Sans font in a threat letter.  There’s a very funny tug of war in a post-coital spat.  A self-congratulatory on-stage interview with a precious artist wearing a blazer over pajamas, is disrupted by an audience member with Tourette’s who ejaculates “cock godammit”  and the like, all while the audience pretends it’s all ok.  And there’s a riotous thread with PR guys making a BS pitch that results in the very most counter-productive promotional video (think Springtime for Hitler in The Producers).

Östlund is very gifted at finding the humor in interruptions.  The most serious, intimate and formal discussions are interrupted by a baby crying, construction noise and lots of cell phones ringing.

And, finally, there is a museum opening gala with a “welcome to the jungle” theme.  This segment of The Square could stand alone as a sort film and probably win an Oscar.  (Again, completely universal terror is interrupted by a ringing cell phone.)  But, it’s unclear how this fits inside The Square’s themes.

Elisabeth Moss and Claes Bang in THE SQUARE. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Square is very well-acted.  Claes Bang is exceptional as Christian, exuding the ennui of Marcello Mastroianni in 8 1/2, Gabriele Ferzetti in L’Avventura and David Hemmings in Blow-up.

As an American journalist, Elisabeth Moss (who is always excellent) gets to show us her playful side, which is a treat;  there’s a wonderful Moss moment when her eyes tell us she’s made a decision about her sex life while in the restroom line.

The most stunning performance is by Terry Notary as the performance artist at the gala.  Notary, a stunt coordinator, choreographer and movement coach, is a master of motion capture, and his work has been featured in the Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit franchises and Andy Serkis’ Jungle Book.  It’s one thing to imitate an ape, but Notary’s performance in The Square plays off of and dominates a banquet room full of other actors.  It’s a really singular performance.

Terry Notary (on table) in THE SQUARE. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

I loved Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, which made my list of Best Movies of 2014
Force Majeure was Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.  Force Majeure was a satirical drama with some very funny moments; The Square is a satirical comedy with some very serious themes.

The Square is a movie that my head liked a lot, but it didn’t thrill my heart.  Filled with brilliant moments, it just doesn’t hold together as one cohesive great movie.

[SPOILER: At the end, Christian tries to be genuinely helpful by making amends –  but he is proven ultimately and ironically helpless.]

 

PSYCHO: the movie, the documentary and the podcast

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It’s the favorite month for scary movies, so The Movie Gourmet is featuring Hitchcock’s classic Psycho, with two superb 2017 accompaniments.

I recommend that you start with the six-part series of podcasts Inside Psycho.  Podcaster Mark Ramsey begins with the real-life crime that sparked Psycho’s origin story and takes us through the purchase of the book rights, which turned out to be a very one-sided business deal.  Ramsey puts Psycho in the context of Hitchcock’s career moment and reveals the film’s stepchild status at Paramount (it was filmed at Universal with a TV crew).  He gives us a deep dive into the filming of the shower scene, including the censors’ search for the nudity (was it really in there?).   We even learned about Hitchcock’s demands as to how Psycho would be exhibited – rules that changed the movie-going habits in our culture.  Ramsey even tells us what happened to Marion’s car.

You’ll enjoy the movie more after you’ve listened to this podcast.  Go to your podcast app and search for “Inside Psycho” or access the Inside Psycho website.

inside psycho

For your next course, I recommend this year’s documentary 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene, named for the 78 setups and 52 cuts in Psycho’s shower scene.  Documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe takes us through aspects of the movie, but drills most deeply into the notorious shower scene. Philippe brings us noted composer Danny Elfman to comment on Bernard Herrmann’s famously screeching strings.   We hear from Walter Murch, the brilliant film editor who invented the field of movie sound design, about the visual imagery and sound effects.   And Amy Duddleston, the film editor on the 1998 Gus Van Sant Psycho remake, ruefully recounts how it’s all even harder than it looks.

Here’s a representative nugget from both Inside Psycho and 78/52.  Before her shower, Janet Leigh as Marion enters the bathroom, tears up paper notes and flushes them down the toilet.  Amazingly, this is the first flushing toilet in hitherto prudish American cinema.  Seconds later, of course, come more shocks.

And here’s a treat, we meet the perky and amiable Marli Renfro, the Playboy Bunny and pin-up girl who was Janet Leigh’s nude body double in the shower scene.  That scene took seven grueling days to film. Jamie Lee Curtis relates her mom’s weariness with the strategic moleskin that kept slipping off.  Renfro was just happy to pick up the extra paychecks.

Finally, there’s a fun montage of Psycho references in later movies and popular culture.  In what must be a spectacular half-joke, the documentary is dedicated “to Mother”.  78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene is available to stream from Amazon,  iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

Janet Leigh in PSYCHO and 78/52: HITCHCOCK’S SHOWER SCENE

And then, of course there’s the original Psycho itself.  It’s still effectively shocking – both in killing off the star one-third of the way through (almost unthinkable even today) and in the climactic reveal.  Anthony Perkins is wonderful as Norman Bates, especially in how he gets us to understand immediately that Norman’s awkward oddness may be an indicator of more severe insanity.

Psycho is one hour and 49 minutes long. The key is to stop watching as soon as poor Simon Oakland shows up on-screen as the shrink Dr. Fred Richman.  The usually reliable character actor Oakland was thanklessly tasked with delivering an interminable five-minute lecture on Norman Bates’ diagnosis.  It’s painful overexplaining and brings downs the Psycho experience.  You’ll thank me.

You can rent the original Psycho on DVD from Netflix, stream it from iTunes, Vudu and YouTube, or catch it on Turner Classic Movies or elsewhere on TV.

Simon Oakland in PSYCHO

 

 

 

DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME: eat your broccoli

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DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME

When there’s a movie that is supposed to be good for you, but you really don’t enjoy it, I call it an “eat your broccoli” movie, and the documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time is an example.

An estimated 75% of all silent movies have been lost.  Dawson City: Frozen Time is about the discovery of hundreds of silent films.  It turns out that Dawson City, a mining hamlet in the Canadian Yukon, was the last stop on a movie distribution circuit.  When a movie played Dawson City, it was already two years after the initial release, so the distributors didn’t find it worthwhile to pay for the return of the film.  Accordingly, many movies from the silent era were stored or disposed of in Dawson City, where they were uncovered by a construction bulldozer in 1978.

That’s all interesting enough, and 5-10 minutes would be enough to tell this story, and then we could focus on the most compelling of the actual Lost Films, and that could make a fine documentary.  But the two hours of Dawson City: Frozen Time is a loooong two hours.

There are some interesting documentary nuggets.  One example is an illustration of how hand grenades were manufactured for WW I.

Baseball fans will treasure clips from the 1919 World Series, which is infamously known for the “Black Sox” scandal.  Some Chicago White Sox stars took money from gamblers to throw the series.  In Dawson City, we actually get to see some of the suspiciously inept plays by the heavily favored Sox.

The best part is about two-thirds through – a montage of found films.  The images are compelling, and the performances have a surprising magnetism.

By far the worst part of Dawson City is its off-putting score.   The drone of discordant chords (is that an oxymoron or just impossible?)  played on various keyboard instruments is distracting and then finally unbearable.  I was annoyed enough, but then The Wife, from another room in the house, called out, “That music is TERRIBLE”.

I need to tell you that I’m outside the critical mainstream on Dawson City: Frozen Time, which has an impressive Metacritic score of 85.   Major critics that I highly respect have described it as “instantaneously recognizable masterpiece”, “thrilling”, “hypnotic” and even “elevates…to the level of poetry”.  But not for me.

Dawson City: Frozen Time can be streamed from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.