Sidse Babett Knudson and Mads Mikkelsen in Susanne Bier’s AFTER THE WEDDING
The Danish director Susanne Bier’s 2006 After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) is a successful melodrama in the very best sense. There’s also a remake – a big Hollywood movie to be released this Friday also called After the Wedding, and I can’t say if it’s any good (early reviews are favorable for the stars but not the film overall). But I can tell you that I love, love, love Bier’s 2006 film.
The Danish expat Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) runs an orphanage in Calcutta, and his non-profit badly needs an infusion of cash. He gets the offer of a huge contribution, but it’s conditioned on his travel to Denmark. There, he meets the prospective philanthropist, the industrialist Jorgen (Rolf Lassgård). Jacob just wants to finalize the money and return to India, but the forceful and wily Jorgen is a difficult guy to close. While apparently stalling, Jorgen sets up Jacob with a driver and a luxury hotel room; this makes the anti-poverty crusader Jacob, a true believer, ever more uncomfortable. Finally, Jorgen invites Jacob to attend the wedding of Jorgen’s daughter. Jacob gets a big surprise when he meets Jorgen’s wife Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen). A second shocker is unveiled at the wedding by the bride. And then, after the wedding, Jorgen delivers yet another jaw-dropper.
Bier, who co-wrote the film, paces the reveals just perfectly. The plot twists could easily have been preposterous and the ending could have been phony – but Bier skillfully avoids every misstep and delivers a gripping, genuine drama.
Mads Mikkelsen is an especially charismatic actor, and After the Wedding, along with The Hunt, is among his very best work.
After the Wedding was nominated for Best Foreign Language Oscar (and would have won most years, but it had to compete with The Lives of Others). After the Wedding, which I had listed as the second-best movie of 2007, can be streamed from Criterion and Amazon.
Sword of Trust is a wickedly funny comedy with an emotionally powerful personal story embedded. Great performances by Marc Maron and Lynn Shelton. The family dramedy
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of inner lives reacting to a changing city – and it’s one of the best films of the year.
The wildly successful comedy Booksmart is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW.
Mindy Kaling’s very smart, privilege-skewering comedy Late Night stars Emma Thompson (and contains a performance gem by John Lithgow).
ON VIDEO
My Stream of the Week is the engaging documentary Satan & Adam, much more than an odd couple story. You can stream it from Netflix and iTunes.
ON TV
Tonight, Turner Classic Movies airs In a Lonely Place(1950). The most unsettlingly sexy film noiress Gloria Grahame falls for the troubled screenwriter Humphrey Bogart, a guy with a MAJOR anger management issue; once she’s hooked, she realizes that he might be a murderer after all…Nicholas Ray directs. In a Lonely Place justifiably made the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest American Films. The Czar of Noir Eddie Muller has named it as his #1 noir.
Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in IN A LONELY PLACE
From L:R – Subjects Adam Gussow and Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee in a still from SATAN & ADAM. Photo courtesy JFI
In the engaging documentary Satan & Adam, Adam, a young white Ivy Leaguer, takes a stroll through Harlem and encounters an older African-American street guitarist, who calls himself Mr. Satan. Adam, a talented amateur blues harmonica player sits in, and soon the odd couple are a busking team, a popular attraction at their regular sidewalk venue in Harlem.
“Mr. Satan” is an alias for an artist of note. Mr. Satan’s talent and the odd couple novelty allows the act to soar to totally unexpected heights. But Satan has emotional and medical issues, and Adam might be a better fit for a career in academia, so this is a story with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. Let’s just say that, over the past 23 years, there have been some significant detours on this journey.
The core of the film is about this unusual relationship and the peculiarities of these two guys, but it also traces the evolving race relations in NYC.
Satan & Adam is told primarily from Adam’s point of view, which is understandable because of Mr. Satan’s periodic unavailability and, when we see him unfiltered, his oft puzzling inscrutability.
I saw Satan & Adam at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), a fest noted or its especially rich documentaries. It cn now be streamed from Netflix and iTunes.
Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
In Quentin Tarantino’s spectacularly successful Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, two fictional characters, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and the actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) navigate a changing Hollywood in 1969. The next evolution of Hollywood is filled only with promise for Sharon, but presents an unseen threat to Rick and Cliff.
Rick is an actor, a former star of TV Westerns who has aged into guest appearances on the shows of a new crop of TV stars. Cliff is Rick’s longtime stuntman, who now works as Rick’s driver, gofer and drinking buddy. Cliff lives in a San Fernando Valley trailer; Rick lives on exclusive Cielo Drive, next door to Sharon and her husband Roman Polanski, but he’s slipped too far down the showbiz ladder to know them.
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is about a lot of things, expertly braided together. It’s about a specific time and place. It’s about a woman, filled with innocence and zest, who is justifiably hopeful. It’s about two guys – one tortured and the other decidedly not – facing age and irrelevance. It’s about the guys’ relationship, at once interdependent and asymmetric. And it’s a love letter to vintage Hollywood, the Hollywood that six-year-old Quentin Tarantino lived near to, but was not a part of.
The story follows the three characters through a series of vignettes, right up to the most startling ending in recent cinema. This is a Quentin Tarantino masterpiece, right up there with his best, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction.
The movie’s title begins with “Once Upon a Time…“, so you are on notice that this isn’t actual history.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is set in the locations most evocative of the 1969 Hollywood: movie studio sets, legendary showbiz hangout Musso & Frank, the Playboy Mansion, the ill-fated Cielo Drive and Spahn Ranch – famous for both its use as a movie set and as the home base of the Manson Family.
There’s a dazzling montage of neon signs being lit up at sunset. Not many contemporary directors still know how to film galloping horse riders, but Tarantino brings us some great shots from Spahn Ranch, where so many Westerns were shot.
Of course, Tarantino’s soundtrack takes us right into 1969 with superbly curated period radio hits like the Deep Purple version of Hush and the Jose Feliciano cover of California Dreamin’. A February scene is perfectly set to Neil Diamond’s Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show, with its hot August nights lyrics presaging the Manson murders to come in LA’s stifling August 1969. (Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show got me wondering how Tarantino restrained himself from using it in some – or all – of his previous films; it’s every bit as Tarantinoesque as Misirlou or Stuck in the Middle with You.) A snippet of a full-bearded Robert Goulet singing MacArthur Park even turns up on somebody’s TV.
In 1969, American culture and the nation itself were in turbulence. Hollywood showbiz was also being rocked – major movie studios were slipping both financially and creatively, floundering to react to the primacy of television and the public’s changing taste (and growing disinterest in Westerns). The studios were about to reach out in desperation to auteur directors like Polanski. Rick and Cliff are behind the curve – but they haven’t noticed that their world is dying.
As hedonists, Rick and Cliff have embraced the drugs and free sex of the counterculture. But they still drive gas guzzlers – a luxury sedan for Rick and a muscle car for Cliff – and refer to “dirty hippies”.
How does the Manson Family play into all this? There was a time when people actually believed that drug-infused peace and love would cure all that ailed us as a society. By 1969, the Summer of Love had already turned dark in San Francisco; but the Manson killings made the unmistakable point that the counterculture, for all its promise, didn’t have an answer to murderous psychopaths any more than did the mainstream.
We very briefly glimpse Manson himself (in an encounter that is pretty close to historically accurate). Tarantino knows that the best way to depict Manson’s evil is to reflect it in the cult he created.
DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, drinking way, way too much, is still treated like a star around town, and he’s grown complacent – until the truth about his career staleness finally hits home. DiCaprio shines in the scene where Rick, cast as a one-dimensional villain in a disposable TV Western, shows his acting chops with an explosive performance; Rick, having internalized that his career may be over, lets it all go in the scene. The character of Rick has the movie’s greatest arc, but he’s less interesting overall than Cliff or Sharon.
Margot Robbie in ONCE UPON TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD,
Sharon Tate is the soul of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Robbie is absolutely transcendent,. She doesn’t need a lot of lines to make her character unforgettable. Sharon gets a ticket to watch herself in a Dean Martin movie, and it’s impossible to imagine a moment with more goofy innocence.
Cliff Booth is one of Tarantino’s greatest characters. Cliff is secure in his abilities, without any need for recognition or self-promotion. Unambitious, he is absolutely content to be Rick’s second banana. That being said, he’s not going to take any shit from anyone.
Brad Pitt in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
In Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Brad Pitt shows us what a movie star is and why he is one. I haven’t been a Pitt enthusiast, although I’ve liked him in Fight Club, The Assassination of Jesse James, Moneyball and Inglorious Basterds. Pitts’ Cliff Booth is off the charts, and it’s tough to imagine any other actor in the role. Other male stars can match the physicality, but not the unique combination of confidence and humility.
Right up there with Pitt and Robbie is Margaret Qualley, who plays a fictional Manson girl named Pussycat. She is kooky in the cute way and kooky in the scary way. Qualley fills her with manic energy, brimming with wit and sensuality.
Julia Butters plays a precocious child actor in the pilot Rick is shooting; she’s the best possible counterpoint to Rick’s flabby professional complacency. Michael Moh is very funny in a send-up of Bruce Lee. Damien Lewis has a priceless moment as Steve McQueen.
For his supporting players, Tarantino pulls out an abundant cornucopia of acting talent and Tarantino sentimental favorites: Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell, Emile Hirsch, Brenda Vaccaro, Clu Gulager, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Luke Perry, Timothy Olyphant, Zoë Bell, Clifton Collins Jr. (Perry Smith in Capote), Lena Durham and Scoot McNairy.
Tarantino’s exquisite filmmaking skills blend together the verisimilitude of time and place, the vivid performances and a rock ’em, sock ’em story to make Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood an instant classic.
Note: Deep into the closing credits, there’s an Easter egg.
D.A> Pennebaker invents the music video in BOB DYAN: DON’T LOOK BACK
The influential filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker has died at age 94. Among Pennebaker’s innovative achievements:
His 1968 Monterey Pop is in the conversation as the best ever concert film, and it undeniably influenced the other great concert movies that have followed (Woodstock, The Last Waltz, Stop Making Sense). This is one of the few DVDs that I still own, for the performances by Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Canned Heat, Simon and Garfunkle, Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Country Joe and the Fish and The Who. Pete Townsend and Jimi Hendrix had a guitar-destroying competition, which Hendrix, aided by lighter fluid, undeniably won. The Otis Redding set is epic.
Pennebaker’s 1993 The War Room, about the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign, sets the standard for the insider political campaign documentary.
Pennebaker directedBob Dylan: Don’t Look Back(1967), the story of Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, when he was transitioning from an acoustic to an electric artist. In the film’s opening, Pennebaker invented the music video, as Dylan holds up cards with the lyrics for Subterranean Homesick Blues. The pump don’t work ‘Cause the vandals took the handles
In the heartfelt family dramedy The Farewell, Awkwafina plays Billi, a Chinese-American woman whose grandmother in China is diagnosed with a terminal illness. The Chinese wing of the family decides not to tell the grandmother the bad news, and opts to rush a wedding as a pretext to gather the extended family to say farewell. The American branch of the family is not OK with the deception, but goes along, in varying degrees of reluctance.
Writer-director Lulu Wang based the story on her own family, and opens the film with the title, “Based on an actual lie“.
Indeed, ALL of the family members are constantly telling lies to each other, mostly to avoid conflict or social awkwardness. Is the film’s central Big Lie to avoid unpleasantness? To foster denial? Or, as one uncle posits, to let the entire family absorb the burden of the grandmother’s illness?
Naturally, there’s all the usual forms of family conflict, enhanced – when the grandmother isn’t present – by the stress of grieving. When the grandmother IS present, we have all these very sad people acting artificially happy with ridiculous enthusiasm. The Japanese bride doesn’t understand Chinese, and her reactions to what’s going on are frequently hilarious.
Awkwafina is a tremendous talent; she’s very good here, but underutilized. She only gets one brief, emotionally powerful speech, and the role could have been written into an acting tour de force (like Virginia Madsen’s in Sideways). Too bad. The rest of the cast, especially Hong Lu as the pepper pot grandma, is excellent, too.
Still, this is a very funny and emotionally evocative film. The family dynamics in The Farewell are authentic and universal, and this is a sure-fire audience-pleaser.
I’m still thinking about Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and why it is so wonderful. That’s why I haven’t written about it yet, but I will this weekend. Don’t wait for my review – just go see it now.
OUT NOW
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (link to go live this weekend) is a Must See – one of Quentin Tarantino’s very, very best.
Sword of Trust is a wickedly funny comedy with an emotionally powerful personal story embedded. Great performances by Marc Maron and Lynn Shelton.
The family dramedy The Farewell (link to go live this weekend) is an audience-pleaser.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of inner lives reacting to a changing city – and it’s one of the best films of the year.
The wildly successful comedy Booksmart is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW.
Mindy Kaling’s very smart, privilege-skewering comedy Late Night stars Emma Thompson (and contains a performance gem by John Lithgow).
ON VIDEO
My streams of the week are the Australian crime dramas Mystery Road and Goldstone. Both feature writer-director Ivan Sen’s wholly original protagonist, Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson). Both movies can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; Mystery Road is also available on DVD from Netflix.
ON TV
Screenwriter Anthony Veiller fleshed out a very brief Hemingway short story, resulting in Robert Siodmak’s compelling 1946 film noir The Killers, which Turner Classic Movies airs on August 8. The Killers was the screen debut of former circus acrobat Burt Lancaster and the breakthrough for the 23-year-old Ava Gardner. The toughest of noir tough guys – Charles McGraw and Broderick Crawford – are hunting down Lancaster for offending their mob boss…and the clock is ticking.
Writer-director Ivan Sen’s Australian crime dramas Mystery Road and Goldstone both feature Sen’s wholly original protagonist Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson). Swan is an indigenous police investigator who must face racist locals and his own demons. Pederson’s performances in both movies are very strong, bringing out the inner conflict within a guy who needed to leave his hometown and his marriage but is tormented by the consequences of those decisions.
In the contemporary murder mystery Mystery Road, Detective Swan returns to his small town in the Australian outback to encounter racist co-workers, a drunk and shiftless ex-wife and a resentful teenage daughter. The daughter is a concern because her gal pals are starting to turn up murdered one by one. Mystery Road is a solid but unexceptional police procedural except for two things: the movie’s climactic gun battle between guys using hunting rifles through telescopic sights – a real show stopper .
Hugo Weaving chews up some scenery with a supporting role as a cop with ambiguous motivation. Weaving, with his supporting roles in The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, etc., may be the world’s most financially successful character actor.
Aaron Pederson and Jacki Weaver in GOLDSTONE
In Goldstone, Swan is still reeling from a family tragedy when he finds a dark personal tie to the latest crime scene. Alcohol doesn’t help. A missing persons case brings Swan to a remote mining outpost. There’s a young local cop of ambiguous motivation – will he obstruct Swan, compete with him or become an ally? The local cop is working a human trafficking case, and the two cops pursue their investigations on dueling separate tracks until they inevitably converge.
Once again, the great Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook) plays a peppy, ever-pleasant cutthroat as only she can.
The dialogue and most of the plot in Goldstone are pretty paint-by-the-numbers, but just as with Mystery Road, the character of Jay Swan and the performance by Aaron Pederson, along with the Outback setting, make Goldstone very watchable.
Both Mystery Road and Goldstone played at Cinequest. Mystery Road is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. Goldstone can be streamed on Netflix, Amazon , iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
In Lynn Shelton’s brilliant comedy Sword of Trust, Mel (Marc Maron) runs a Birmingham, Alabama, pawnshop with his worthless Millennial assistant Nathaniel (Jon Bass – very funny). Cynthia (Jillian Bell) has returned to Alabama, with her partner Mary (Michaela Watkins), to claim an inheritance that disappointingly turns out to be a single antique sword. But the grandfather’s incoherent letter about the sword fits the Internet ravings of a White supremacist cult called the “Provers” (like “Truthers”), who are hunting for artifacts that “prove” that the Conderacy really won the Civil War. The four resolve to cash in an a windfall by dealing the sword to the scary underground racist cult. Comic situations, naturally, ensue.
There’s plenty of grist for comedy here, and Shelton bores in on the widespread absence of critical thinking that meshes with the Internet to give platforms to crackpot conspiracy theories. From Anti-vaxxers to Truthers, folks are now somehow comfortable with denying scientific or historical fact to fit a narrative that they prefer. In Sword of Trust, that idiocy ranges to denying the Union victory in the Civil War and even the roundness of the Earth.
Sword of Trust is very successful as a comedy, but there’s another, very emotionally powerful story in here. Mel’s ex Deirdre drops by the shop in an attempt to extract some cash for a modest ring. It’s clear that Deidre has had a toxic and near-ruinous impact on Mel’s life that he can’t – and perhaps won’t – escape. This story takes up less than ten minutes, essentially book-ending the sword comedy, but it’s the meat of Maron’s performance and the heartfelt core of the film.
Maron’s performance as Mel is a tour de force. When Mel first sees Diedre, he silently freezes for an instant and takes the long way around the shop to gather himself before reaching the counter. He listens to Deidre’s story with a knowing weariness in his eyes. When Deidre says “I’m good for it” and Mel replies, “No, you’re not”, it is with the quiet certainty of a man scarred. Later, Maron’s Mel relates his own back story, and it’s all the more heartbreaking because of his matter-of-factness. This is one of the best performances of the year.
Lynn Shelton in SWORD OF TRUST
And, Deidre, what a mess! The fidgety desperation just underneath her sad story du jour just nails the manipulative addict. I made a note to look up the actress playing Deidre with such compelling authenticity – and it is Lynn Shelton herself.
The entire cast is good, especially Dan Bakkedahl (Life in Pieces) as the White supremacist kingpin and prolific character actor Toby Huss as his henchman.
Sword of Trust is a very smart and funny comedy with a bonus – a rich and moving character study.
Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Pacino in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLWOOD
The Movie Gourmet is having a busy week: Wednesday night at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival for Curtiz, last night with the remarkable Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and a date with The Wife tonight for The Farewell. I’ll be writing these up soon – stay tuned.
OUT NOW
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of inner lives reacting to a changing city – and it’s one of the best films of the year.
The wildly successful comedy Booksmart is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW.
Mindy Kaling’s very smart, privilege-skewering comedy Late Night stars Emma Thompson (and contains a performance gem by John Lithgow).
The Kid is a little movie that works, chiefly because of Dustin DeHaan’s performance, for fans of Westerns. The Kid can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON VIDEO
My stream of the week is Mud, a great film to watch with middle schoolers and teens on summer vacation. At its heart, Mud is a coming of age story in which the kids get a big dose of realism about love and human constancy. You can stream Mud on Amazon (free on Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; it’s also available on DVD from Netflix.
ON TV
I’m recommendingAnatomy of a Murder, which I featured yesterday; it airs tomorrow on TCM.
There’s also an early neo-noir on TCM on July 27 – 1962’s Experiment in Terror. It’s not one of the great noirs, but it’s a nailbiter with some high points and some curiosities. A criminal (Ross Martin) tries to heist a bank by threatening a bank teller’s little sister; he’s stalking her and scaring her over the phone, so the FBI leader (Glenn Ford) only has the crook’s asthmatic voice as a clue. The bank teller is played by Lee Remick, who is always worth watching, and the role of the little sister was one of the first for 20-year-old Stefanie Powers. Like Stefanie Powers (The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and Hart to Hart), Ross Martin became a well-known TV star (Artemus Gordon in The Wild, Wild West). The climax is a chase in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park – right where the departing throngs bottle-necked at the entrance to the long escalator – a point always to be remembered by Giants fans; oddly, the bad guy is trying to be inconspicuous by being the only person in the crowd to wear a hoodie – not yet ubiquitous ballpark fashion. Blake Edwards, much more well known for comedies, directed.
Lee Remick catching a Giants game at Candlestick in EXPERIMENT IN TERRORRoss Martin and Lee Remick in EXPERIMENT IN TERRORRoss Martin in EXPERIMENT IN TERROR
