Rants and Ruminations

The Movie Mitt Romney Doesn’t Want You To See

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Mitt Romney has been formally nominated by this week’s Republican Convention in Tampa.  Imagine if Michael Moore directed a profile of Mitt’s career as co-founder of Bain Capital.  Well, the 28-minute short film When Mitt Romney Comes to Town is an even more devastating critique of Romney than a Moore film would be.

The storyline of When Mitt Romney Comes to Town is essentially 1) you are happily living in Middle America, working in a factory and paying your mortgage and your taxes; 2) Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital buys and then loots your company; 3) you lose your job and then your home; and 4) repeat several times.

Amazingly, the film was directed by Jason Killian Meath, a Republican media consultant and culture warrior. During the GOP primary season, it was shilled by a Newt Gingrich-friendly SuperPAC.

Meath’s film is heavy-handed and manipulative (as a Michael Moore film would be). Meath doesn’t have Moore’s sense of humor, but also doesn’t have Moore’s abrasiveness and self-righteousness, which makes his film smoother, more broadly accessible and ultimately more persuasive. In an appeal to Republican primary voters, Meath uses Reaganesque “Morning in America” music and imagery, and I don’t think that it’s an accident that most of Bain Capital’s victims in the film are White.

The oddest thing about When Mitt Romney Comes to Town is that it is not just an attack on Mitt Romney, but against the type of Vulture Capitalism tolerated or even promoted by all recent Republican Congressional leaders and presidential candidates. This is a major thread of the Obama narrative against Romney.

Here’s the entire 28-minute movie.

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

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Warren William with Loretta Young in EMPLOYEES ENTRANCE

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

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

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

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

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

The Year of the Child Actor

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Quvenzhane Wallis in BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a special film, and its star Quvenzhane Wallis carries the movie.   Although this is her first film and she was only six years old during the filming, I would not be surprised if she is nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. That’s how stirring her performance is.

As I wrote in my comments on Beasts, writer-director Benh Zeitlin was specially audacious to bet his movie on the performance of a six year old.  But we’ve seen some remarkable performance by child actors this year – and in many of my Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

In my current pick for the top film of the year, the Dardennes brothers’ The Kid with the Bike , the story revolves around the 12-year old first time actor Thomas Doret. Doret pulls it off, delivering a performance of gripping intensity.

Although Mohammed Fellag is the lead in Monsieur Lazhar, there wouldn’t be a film without the performances by the kids, Sophie Nelisse and Emilien Neron.

Similarly, Wes Anderson’s delightful Moonrise Kingdom  is carried by newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayman.  Moonrise Kingdom is their movie; even Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand and Bill Murray are just along for the ride.

And in Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, the key point of view is that of the ever watchful teenage daughter.  She desperately wants her parents back together, views everything through this prism and is powerless to make it happen.  She is played by Farhadi’s real life daughter Sarina.

Overall, it’s an uncommonly impressive year for child actors.

Andy Griffith: much more than cornpone

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Today we remember a great TV star who left us with one of the great performances in movie history – Andy Griffith.

During every year of the 1960s, Griffith entered the living rooms of most Baby Boomers as Sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and in guest appearances on Mayberry R.F.D.   Younger folks knew him from another ten seasons on television starring as Matlock.

But, in his very first feature film, Griffith shed the likeability and decency that made him a TV megastar and became a searingly unforgettable villain.  In the 1957 Elia Kazan classic A Face in the Crowd, Griffith plays Lonesome Rhodes, a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal).  It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television.  He quickly rises in the infotainment universe until he is an A List celeb and a political power broker. To Jeffries’ horror, Rhodes reveals himself to be an evil, power hungry megalomaniac. Jeffries made him – can she break him?  The seduction of a gullible public by a good timin’ charmer predicts the careers of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, although Lonesome Rhodes is meaner than Reagan and less ideological than Bush.

Amazingly, A Face in the Crowd did not garner even a nomination for an Academy Award for Griffith – or for any of the other filmmakers.  Today, it is well-regarded, having been added to the library of Congress’ preservation list in the US National Film Registry and rating 91% in critical reviews tallied by Rotten Tomatoes.  It is one of the greatest political films.

Thanks, Andy.

Susan Tyrrell: celebrating the cheap and tawdry

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Susan Tyrrell in FAT CITY

Last week I recommended Turner Classic Movies’ broadcast of the under appreciated Fat City (1972) .  It’s the story of boxer on the slide who inspires a kid to become a boxer on the rise.  Stacy Keach and Susan Tyrrell give dead-on performances as pathetic sad sack barflies. Tyrrell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  Sadly, Susan Tyrell died on Saturday.

In this wonderful 2000 profile in LA Weekly, Tyrell said,  “The last thing my mother said to me was, ‘SuSu, your life is a celebration of everything that is cheap and tawdry.’ I’ve always liked that, and I’ve always tried to live up to it.”

Best Movies of 2012 – So Far

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I’ve started my ongoing list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far. I’ve included the foreign films The Kid with a Bike, A Separation, Polisse and Monsieur Lazhar, and the American indies Rampart and Detachment.  When Take This Waltz comes out at the end of June, it will go on the list, too.

Polisse is still playing in theaters.  Here’s the trailer.

Worst Movie Mothers

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Piper Laurie as Margaret White in CARRIE

Mother’s Day is coming up, so I’ll trot out my list of Worst Movie Mothers.   Piper Laurie played one scarily twisted mom in Carrie, but she’s only Number Four on my list.  Note:  some readers have found this list very unpleasant.