QUALITY PROBLEMS: a screwball comedy for the sandwich generation

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QUALITY PROBLEMS
Brooke Purdy in QUALITY PROBLEMS

The remarkably successful dramedy Quality Problems plunges us into a contemporary world that most of us in the sandwich generation recognize – a life so busy that the relative importance of our stress-inducers can blur. Something like the cake for your kid’s birthday party can seem as important as paying the bills or dealing with an aging parent. Until cancer reshuffles the deck. Quality Problems‘ insights in navigating modern life are accessible because it’s so damn funny.

Bailey (Brooke Purdy) and Drew (Doug Purdy) are a couple in their early forties with two school-age kids. Each is comfortable taking on one child-rearing or domestic task while handing off a competing responsibility to their partner. Each knows – and accepts – what the partner is – or is NOT – good at. Both have wicked senses of humor, and they are affectionate and even playful. Their relationship has weathered the usual financial and parental challenges, along with an episode where Bailey beat back breast cancer.

Brooke Purdy wrote the screenplay and also co-directed with Doug Purdy. The breezy banter between characters is often flat-out hilarious. This is not sitcom-grade humor, it’s much closer to a Hawksian screwball comedy. The characters deal with cancer and parental dementia with a dark humor that is realistic and funny.

Bailey’s single neighbor and bestie Paula (Jenica Bergere) is an essential member of the family’s support structure, but Paula and Drew loathe each other. Chained together because of their attachment to Bailey and the kids, every interaction sparks a new round of insults. This isn’t good-natured teasing – the jibes, in particular about his job and her reproductive health, are aimed to hurt. The Paula-Drew relationship adds some edginess to the mix and contributes to the film’s authenticity.

Watch for an uncredited cameo by the prolific and versatile character actor Alfred Molina (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Love Is Strange). Veteran Chris Mulkey is excellent as Bailey’s dad, who is sinking into dementia.

Quality Problems is the directing debut for Brooke and Doug Purdy, and I attended its world premiere at Cinequest.  Quality Problems can now be streamed from Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE RIDER: a life’s passion is threatened

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Brady Jandreau in THE RIDER

In her contemporary Western The Rider, director Chloé Zhao has made a beautiful and emotionally powerful film and announced herself as an American filmmaker of significance. In The Rider, 20-year-old Brady is a rodeo rider and horse trainer who lives on the least romantic ranch on the windblown South Dakota prairie. Brady lives with his 15-year-old sister, who has a cognitive disability somewhere on the autism spectrum, and his non-touchy feely dad. The mom has died a few years before. The family lives in a trailer on a hardscrabble working ranch.

Brady’s soaring career as a rodeo star has been ended by a bronco’s hoof; Brady now has a metal plate in his skull and seizures in his hand. His rodeo career – and his only shot at fame and fortune – is over. But Brady is also a gifted horse trainer – and he may not even be able to ride horses without risk to his health and life. What makes that risk not at all theoretical is that Brady’s rodeo friend Dane is in even worse shape and lives in a rehab facility. So Brady’s story is one of confronting loss and figuring out how to negotiate the rest of his life without access to his passions.

Brady’s story is emotionally powerful and devoid of cheap sentiment.  The Rider is not even the least bit corny.

I went to see The Rider knowing almost nothing about it.  When the end credits rolled, I was stunned to see that the actors playing Brady, his sister and his dad are a real family.  Indeed, ALL of the cast are non-professional actors.

Director Chloé Zhao met The Rider’s star, Brady Jandreau, when he wrangled horses on her first film Songs My Father Taught Me, also shot on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.  After the making of that film, she reached out to Brady after he suffered a serious real life rodeo injury.  When he told her that he would risk his life to continue training horses, she determined to make Brady’s story into this movie.

THE RIDER

Zhao’s partner, the Brit cinematographer Joshua James Richards, shot both of her films.  The cinematography, in The Rider is exceptional, especially the weather in the Big Sky above the prairie. There’s a cowboy campfire scene which may be the most beautifully shot scene in movies this year.  The Jandreaus live on a scruffy working ranch, neither romantic or picturesque.

I’m not fascinated by horses, but I found the horse training scenes in The Rider to be riveting.

It’s clear that Zhao and Richards are major artists. The Rider is a significant movie and one of the year’s best.

Movies to See Right Now

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THE RIDER

The MUST SEE is The Rider, which I’ll be writing about this weekend. A young man’s rodeo injury threatens to keep him from his passions. Filmed in South Dakota with non-professional actors, The Rider is emotionally powerful and genuine – and not a bit corny. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2018 – So Far.

OUT NOW

This week’s other top picks:

  • A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
  • Claire’s Camera is the latest nugget from writer-director Hong Sang-soo, that great observer of awkward situations and hard-drinking.  Stars Min-hee Kim (The Handmaiden) and Isabelle Huppert.
  • Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career. This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). The more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin is still in a few theaters, and it’s worth the drive.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
  • I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

Not to see:

  • The completely indecipherable Ismael’s Ghosts, a waste of a talented cast and my time.
  • Bobby Kennedy for President – a disappointing Netflix documentary that recycles the best of RFK’s video clips but ignores many pivotal aspects to RFK’s journey, most especially his personal feud with LBJ.

ON VIDEO
Actress Charlize Theron, director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody are coming out with Tully this weekend. So this week’s video pick is their game-changing comedy Young Adult. Its cynicism reminds me of a Ben Hecht or Billy Wilder screenplay (high praise). Note: This is NOT a film for someone expecting a light comedy. Young Adult is available on DVD from Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV
On May 5 and 6, Turner Classic Movies presents one of my personal favorites, and it will be introduced by the Czar of Noir Eddie Muller on Noir Alley. Director Richard Fleischer’s overlooked film noir masterpiece The Narrow Margin (1952) is a taut 71 minutes of tension. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. It’s highly recommended on my list of Overlooked Noir.

Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

DVD/Stream of the Week: YOUNG ADULT – comedy game-changer

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Charlize Theron in YOUNG ADULT

This weekend, Charlize Theron stars in Tully, from screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) and director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air).  Seven years ago, in Young Adult, this same team challenged the current mode of comedy itself. They turned many comic conventions on their heads in this nastily dark comedy, and Young Adult was on my list of Best Movies of 2011.

Played by Charlize Theron, the main character is stunningly non-empathetic, utterly self-absorbed and thoroughly unpleasant. She was the prom goddess in her small town high school, and has moved to the city for a job with a hint of prestige. With a failed marriage, a looming career crisis and no friends, she’s drinking too much and is in a bad place. So she decides to return to her hometown and get her old boyfriend (Patrick Wilson) back – despite the fact that he’s gloriously contented with his wife and newborn infant.

Naturally, social disasters ensue. Along the way, the story probes the issues of happiness and self-appraisal.

Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron in YOUNG ADULT

Patton Oswalt is wonderful as someone the protagonist regarded as a lower form of life in high school, but who becomes her only companion and truth teller.

Young Adult is inventive and very funny. Its cynicism reminds me of a Ben Hecht or Billy Wilder screenplay (high praise). Note: This is NOT a film for someone expecting a light comedy. Young Adult is available on DVD from Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ISMAEL’S GHOSTS: indecipherable waste of talent

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Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg in ISMAEL’S GHOSTS

Suppose that you’re in mid-life, mid-career and mid-relationship, and your ex-spouse – whom you have thought dead for a decade – suddenly shows up.  In Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, that is exactly what happens to a filmmaker (Mathieu Amalric) when his long-disappeared ex (Marion Cotillard) pops in.  So far, so good.  But then Ismael’s Ghosts begins to slide off the rails.

The filmmaker accompanies his ex-father-in-law, who is being honored in Israel, but then the story becomes unhinged and, finally, impossible to follow.  It’s just one indecipherable mess.

I was actually looking forward to this movie.  I loved Desplechin’s My Golden Days, and I admire Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg (who plays the filmmaker’s current partner).  But Ismael’s Ghosts is just a waste of their talent and my time.  I saw Ismael’s Ghosts at Cinequest before its US theatrical release.

CLAIRE’S CAMERA: a deadpan human camera observes…

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Min-hee Kim in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Claire’s Camera is the latest nugget from writer-director Hong Sang-soo, that great observer of awkward situations and hard-drinking.  Jeon (Min-hee Kim of The Handmaiden) is a film company assistant who ia traveled to the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of a Korean film.  It turns out that the film company executive has had a long-term relationship with the movie’s director, and she immediately fires Jeon when she learns of Jeon’s fling with the director.  With several days sill to go before her return flight, Jeon wanders around Cannes. Jeon meets the French schoolteacher and amateur photographer Claire (Isabelle Huppert) and they hang out.  Coincidentally, Claire also meets the director.  Most of the dialogue is in English, the common language of the French and Korean characters – and the earnestly imperfect English-speaking supplies some of the film’s humor.

Not only does Claire have a camera, she IS the camera through which we observe the foibles of the other characters.  Jeon is breathtakingly clueless (or in denial) about the reason for her dismissal.  The director, as many Hong Sang-soo characters, has an enthusiastic relationship with alcohol.  It’s all dryly funny, although the director and the executive redefine their relationship in a powerfully realistic scene.

This is an especially fine performance by Min-hee Kim.  She pulled off some deadpan humor in The Handmaiden, a film more thought of for its eroticism and mystery.  Here, she’s often just wandering around in reflection and making small talk.  But Kim is just so watchable, she keeps the audience’s interest keen.

Claire’s Camera is not as surreal as last year’s Hong Sang-soo entry, Yourself and Yours, but just as observational and droll.  I saw Claire’s Camera at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), where Hong Sang-soo has a cult following and always appreciative audiences.  It’s now playing at the 4 Star in San Francisco.

Min-hee Kim and Isabelle Huppert in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Movies to See Right Now

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Emily Blunt (left) in A QUIET PLACE

So there are about a hundred movie screens in Silicon Valley, and this weekend you can see Avengers: Infinity War on THIRTY of them. I have nothing against Avengers: Infinity War, which I do not plan to see even though I really like Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Christ Pratt, Tom Hiddleston and Robert Downey, Jr. It’s just that this latest from the Marvels franchise is taking up a third of our theater capacity. If only we could devote twenty-five screens to the Marvel movie and make room for another five movies about and for adults…I’m getting grouchy, because in the last year we’ve lost most of our art house screens with the closure of Camera 7, Camera 3 and the Bluelight, all after losing Camera 12 the year before. Still waiting for the opening of Pruneyard Dine-in Cinema…

OUT NOW
This week’s top picks:

  • A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
  • Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career.   This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist).  The more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin is still in a few theaters, and it’s worth the drive.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
  • I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is a comedy, Miloš Forman’s bitingly satire of Communism, The Firemen’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Fireman’s Ball). It can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix.

ON TV
On April 30, Turner Classic Movies presents the Otto Preminger masterpiece Anatomy of a Murder (1959). This movie has everything: Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of a wily lawyer, content to underachieve in the countryside, Stewart’s electrifying courtroom face-off with George C. Scott, great performances by a surly Ben Gazzara and a slutty Lee Remick, a great jazz score by Duke Ellington and a suitably cynical noir ending. That jazz score is one of the few movie soundtrack CDs that I own. The music perfectly complements the story of a murder investigation that reveals more and more ambiguity as it proceeds. Stewart’s character relaxes by dabbling in jazz piano, and Duke himself has a cameo leading a bar band in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (of all places).

James Stewart and George C. Scott tangle in ANATOMY OF A MURDER

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE FIREMEN’S BALL

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THE FIREMEN’S BALL

As a tribute to the great director Miloš Forman, who just died at age 86, this week’s video pick is Forman’s 1967 Czech comedy The Firemen’s Ball.  Forman came of age in Communist Czechoslovakia, and the prevalent thread in his films was the challenging, even mocking, of authority.  That’s what The Firemen’s Ball is all about.

It’s a comedy of errors set during the annual ball of a small town fire brigade. It’s an obligatory occasion, and everyone is just going through the motions. No one is willing or able to do what they are supposed to be doing, whether it is protecting the raffle prizes or even putting out fires. The film eviscerated the moral bankruptcy of the Communist society.

The bumbling old farts on the ball committee try to put on a beauty contest, and they shanghai a bunch of young women in attendance and parade them around the committee room to prep them for the pageant.  The Wife was offended by the sexism of the scene, but she didn’t stick around to see the committee get their comeuppance when the contestants themselves blow up the Big Announcement and turn the committee members into objects of ridicule.  Stick with it – the whole movie is only 73 minutes long.

In his youth, Forman lived through the Nazis, who he described as evil, and the Communists, who he described as absurd.  Indeed, the Czech ruling Politburo did recognizer themselves in The Firemen’s Ball’s bumbling firemen’s ball committee, and they concocted a pretext to ban the film in Czechoslovakia.

The Firemen’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Fireman’s Ball) can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix. It’s only one hour, thirteen minutes long, and it’s a hoot.

THE FIREMEN’S BALL

GODARD, MON AMOUR: squandering artistic genius with political dilletantism

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Louis Garrel in a scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Godard, Mon Amour is a bitingly funny portrait of flawed genius. Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) pays tribute to the genius of filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s early career while satirizing Godard’s personal excesses.

Godard, Mon Amour traces the three pivotal years after Godard married Anne Wiazemsky, the 19-year-old star of his La Chinoise. Godard (Louis Garrel) is age 37. In the preceding seven years he has helped revolutionize cinema as a leader of the French New Wave. He has made three masterpieces: Breathless, Contempt and Band of Outsiders. This is the Godard of “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.”

But now Godard has become a doctrinaire Maoist and rejects his past work. He sees himself as a thought leader of revolutionary politics – but that is a delusion. He’s just a political amateur, a poseur, a tourist.

Stacy Martin (center) in a scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

“Godard is dead”, Godard declaims. But young Anne (Stacy Martin) has hitched her star to the old Godard, the master of cinematic innovation and rock star, not this new dogmatic Godard.

This is also a snapshot of 1967, when many on the French Left believed that revolution in France was around the corner.  By 1969, it was apparent to virtually everyone that this had been a mirage, that revolution was not going to happen.  To everyone but Godard, who stubbornly stuck with his dogma.

Louis Garrel, his dreamboat looks glammed down with Godard’s bald spot, is often very funny as he deadpans his way through Godard’s pretensions.  In Godard, Mon Amour, Godard’s thinking has become so devoid of humor, nuance, texture and ambiguity that his art has become one-dimensional and boring.  Indeed, I have found all of the Godard films since 1967’s Weekend to range from disappointing to completely unwatchable.  Godard is alive at age 87 and still making movies today – and they all suck.

In his very biting send-up of Godard’s personal failings, Michel Hazanavicius pays tribute to Godard’s groundbreaking cinematic techniques.  We see jump cuts, breaking the fourth wall, shifting between color and negative imagery, subtitling the characters’ interior thoughts over their spoken dialogue and references to earlier movies.  It’s all very witty.

There’s even a motif of repeatedly broken spectacles as an homage to Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run.  In one of the more obvious jokes, Godard and Anne debate whether either would choose to appear nude in a movie while they walk around their room in complete, full-frontal nudity.

The more of Godard’s films you have seen, the more enjoyable you will find Godard, Mon Amour. If you don’t get the allusions to Godard’s filmmaking, you may find the protagonist of Godard, Mon Amour to be miserably tedious.  I saw Godard, Mon Amour at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It opens this Friday in the Bay Area.

Movies to See Right Now

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John Krasinski (right) in A QUIET PLACE

A new cohort of movies is out in theaters and on cable and streaming platforms.

ICYMI, here’s my tribute to the great director Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus).

OUT NOW

This week’s top picks:

  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin.
  • A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
  • I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

 

ON VIDEO

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Art and Craft, a startling documentary about an art fraud. Of prolific scale. And which is apparently legal. By a diagnosed schizophrenic. Art and Craft is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube nd Google Play.

 

ON TV

Tomorrow night, Turner Classic Movies will air the enigmatic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Australian filmmaker Peter Weir. An Australian girls school goes on an outing to a striking geological formation – and some of the girls and a teacher disappear. What happened to them? It’s beautiful and hypnotic and haunting. It’s a film masterpiece, but if you can’t handle ambiguous endings – this ain’t for you.

Weir has gone on to make high quality hits (The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Master and Commander), but Picnic at Hanging Rock – the movie that he made at age 31 – is his most original work. Besides playing periodically on TCM, Picnic at Hanging Rock is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon and Hulu Plus.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK