Monday at the Movies - June 24, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies” – this week, we massage the title of this feature by profiling two HBO biopics from the past year.

Behind the Candelabra (2013) – “Too much of a good thing is wonderful,” the late Liberace was fond of saying, but the trouble with Behind the Candelabra is that there’s not enough of a good thing to be wonderful in the first place.  Ostensibly Steven Soderbergh’s last film, this biopic stars Michael Douglas as the flamboyant pianist who woos Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) in a complicated and torrid relationship not unlike the stuff of Lifetime movies.  Therein lies the problem; the story as we have it isn’t substantive enough to sustain a full two hours without feeling thin or repetitive.  As is often the case in biopics like this, Michael Douglas is note-perfect as Liberace, capturing the extravagance of the performer while layering in just enough of the creepy menace the film suggests was key to understanding Liberace (then again, when is Douglas not exceptional?).  Doing less exceptional work by virtue of being in the shadow of a great performance, Damon’s Scott Thorson is also less compelling, largely due to Damon’s failure to transcend his own ethos in the way Douglas does; moreover, Damon as Scott is petulant and largely static, equal parts the fault of the slim script and the muscled actor.  Kudos, though, to the makeup department for creating a lifelike Liberace and an uncanny doppelganger after Scott undergoes plastic surgery to look more like his lover.  Keep your eyes peeled for a gaggle of cameos – Dan Aykroyd, Rob Lowe, Paul Reiser, and an unforgettable Debbie Reynolds as Liberace’s mum – though ultimately the film is a great deal like Liberace himself:  talented, but more style than substance.

Phil Spector (2013) – Pacino, Mirren, Mamet.  Throw these three into a crazy (semi-) true story, and I’m there.  Oddly, the film begins with a disclaimer absolving itself of facticity, a bizarre technique which distances the audience until the true game reveals itself.  What David Mamet’s really after is a character study unfettered by pragmatic (and legal) concerns, profiling defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren) as she’s drawn into the entirely strange orbit of famed music producer Phil Spector (Al Pacino) when he’s accused of murder.  The film wisely avoids finger-pointing (indeed, the film leans toward but never fully endorses Spector’s innocence), and it’s to Pacino’s credit that he reins in his stereotypical “big voice” for a more subdued portrait.  The real star – and the vehicle which communicates the degree to which Spector seems wholly unhinged – is Mamet’s dialogue, as snappy as it’s ever been.  In many ways more a stage play than a fully cinematic film, Mamet’s script includes long dialogues, compelling conversation pieces where the restrained delivery allows us to appreciate the subtext; it’s especially worth rewatching the conversations between Spector and Baden, as the former reveals his madness while the latter, astoundingly, becomes convinced of his legal innocence.  Pacino pulls back, as I’ve noted, but Mirren really lets loose the full range of her craft; Baden is suffering from pneumonia during the trial and – like Cosmo Kramer’s gonorrhea – you feel it all the way in the back row.  It may not be the all-out crazy train that the actual trial was, but Mamet’s script is riveting in a slow-burn kind of way.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - June 3, 2013

In honor of last month's stellar first season finale of Bates Motel, the A&E show I ended up loving more than I ever thought I would, we take a look at the myth behind the filming of Psycho before turning to the film itself.

Hitchcock (2012) – One of our finest actors portrays one of the greatest directors of all time, yet somehow the results leave something to be desired.  Sacha Gervasi’s directorial debut follows the corpulent Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) during the making of his ostensible masterpiece, Psycho.  It sounds like a recipe for success, but something’s missing; my vote is that, engaging though they all are, there are far too many subplots going on in the film.  We’ve got Helen Mirren doing fab work as Alma Reville, but it’s a performance dulled by a lifeless tease of adulteries (Danny Huston, usually equally compelling, is uninteresting here).  The bits where Hitch hallucinates encounters with Ed Gein are wacky in a Tim Burton kind of way, but these scenes are mere sidebars to other narratives.  And the making of Psycho itself, which was the major draw for me, gets short shrift – a shame, since it’s Hitch/Hopkins at his liveliest, and we have solid turns from Scarlett Johansson and James D’Arcy (as Janet Leigh and an uncanny doppelganger of Anthony Perkins, respectively).  On top of all that, though Hopkins is divine as always, his own star power sometimes overshadows the role, so it’s difficult to see him just at surface level; his Hitch voice is killer and his mannerisms accurate, but Hopkins still bleeds through.  All told, there’s nothing wrong with the movie, but it teases so many fascinating movies within itself that nothing feels fully fleshed out.  If nothing else, you’ll be itching to rewatch Psycho when all’s said and done.

Psycho (1960) – What do you say about a movie which the universe has already agreed is a landmark classic?  Alfred Hitchcock, the undisputed master of suspense, directs the hell out of Robert Bloch’s pulpy novel about the shady Bates Motel and its troubled proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), burdened with his own unique brand of mother issues when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) arrives with a bundle of stolen cash.  Though it’s part of the air we breathe, the rest is criminal to spoil just in case, and I can only say that what Hitch does with the material is nothing short of golden.  He’s helped by a more than able score by the legendary Bernard Herrmann, who crafts no less than three unforgettable themes for the film (including those unmistakable violin screeches); indeed, Herrmann’s compositions are almost characters in themselves, governing the mood almost as much as Hitch’s own deliberate direction.  But oh, those directorial decisions:  the black and white, the montage (Eisenstein’s idea of montage as violence never felt so appropriate), the angles, the shadows, even the color of Janet Leigh’s underwear – all are the marks of an obsessive genius lending all his skill to a real project of passion.  Each visual is a treat unto itself, the shots of Norman’s taxidermy lending a beautiful horror to his calm conversation.  And from an industry standpoint, much about the film is delightfully innovative, making twist endings and arriving on time part of the moviegoing lexicon.  In short, it’s not crazy to love Psycho.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here on Friday for the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!

Lincoln (2012)

Four score and two years ago, Walter Huston starred as Abraham Lincoln in the D. W. Griffith biopic of the Sixteenth President, the first “significant” portrayal of the man on film.  Here in 2012, we have another – Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, ably helmed by Daniel Day-Lewis.

Lincoln subverts the normal biopic pattern by beginning with the President (Daniel Day-Lewis) on the eve of his second term.  Allied with Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) and Congressional Republican Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), Lincoln presses to pass the Thirteenth Amendment before a negotiated peace with the Confederacy would maintain slavery as part of the terms of surrender.

In a sense, Lincoln is more civics lesson than characteristically Spielberg film, with the director backing off his signature style in favor of a more subdued experience that puts the actors fully in charge of translating the political maneuvering.  It’s a wise choice, especially with a cast as gifted as this one.  Day-Lewis is unsurprisingly engrossing as Lincoln, disappearing behind the gaunt cheekbones and stovepipe hat with a voice that recalls a timid Daniel Plainview.  To paraphrase Cornel West, “Do not be afraid to say Oscar!”  Day-Lewis’s totalizing performance is the stuff Academy Awards are made of; he’s practically a lock for a nomination, and a third Oscar for his mantel wouldn’t be a surprise.

The perfection of Day-Lewis’s performance is no surprise; when I heard that Liam Neeson had left the project, I was dejected only until hearing who would be replacing him.  But what’s more surprising is the plethora of familiar – and talented – faces rounding out one of the best ensemble casts in history.  Strathairn handles well the friendship with Lincoln, one of mutual respect tempered by political disagreement.  Jones is the true scene stealer here, inspired casting for an aging curmudgeon with a proclivity for verbose condemnation.  Though Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln is the weak link, Spielberg wisely restricts her to only a few scenes.

But the film is populated with veteran character actors, each of whom does wonderful and memorable work with only a few minutes of screen time.  James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson play rabble-rousers courting Congressional votes, while Jackie Earle Haley appears as the Confederate vice-president.  There’s Hal Holbrook as an influential Republican, Walton Goggins (best known as Boyd on Justified) as a hesitant Ohio representative, and Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant.  It’s almost enough just to list these folks, because you know the kind of work that they do; it’s as exceptional and entertaining as it’s always been.

What the film doesn’t do particularly well is tell us who Lincoln was.  The performance is entirely enthralling, with Day-Lewis giving it more than his all (as he always does).  But the film relies almost too much on Lincoln’s legend, taking for granted our reverent regard for him.  We never really get much access to Lincoln the man, with almost every scene feeling like a performance; in this particular month, Lincoln was the master strategist, playing each side and timing each move to achieve his goal.  It’s compelling and probably more honest than most whitewashing historians are willing to acknowledge, confronting the performativity of politics without bowing entirely to the “Great Man” simplification.  But it’s a bit of a cop-out when Lincoln refuses to tell his wife’s dressmaker what he really thinks about slavery, as if the movie doesn’t want to press too hard against our canonization of Honest Abe.  The truth is here somewhere – it’s likely that this Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union first without sacrificing his moral convictions against slavery, but the film never goes there, instead allowing this Lincoln to remain inscrutable.

But for this moment of historical disingenuousness, Lincoln is a marvelously gripping film, a certain Oscar contender on the other side of 2013.  It’s a showcase for an actor at the top of his game, a museum exhibit populated by an array of talented moving parts, and a Spielberg film that doesn’t hit you over the head with base sentimentality.  A film this talky ought to be a snoozefest, but the performances are lively and the politics accessible – a bit like The Wire at its most viewer-friendly.

Lincoln is rated PG-13 “for an intense scene of war violence, some images of carnage and brief strong language.”  The film begins with a brutal war scene, and there are several visits to battlefields strewn with bodies and dismembered parts, though these scenes are by far in the minority.  A few period-era profanities occur, but this is more Yosemite Sam than Deadwood.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for our Thanksgiving surprise!

Monday at the Movies - June 4, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-One of “Monday at the Movies,” another lackluster week in the domain of the Cinema King.

The Beaver (2011) – The Beaver is a cautionary tale, but the warning it carries bears no relationship to the movie you may have seen.  Rather, it’s an advisory not to trust the marketing campaign of a film.  If you’re expecting a kooky comedy in which Mel Gibson sorts through his psychological problems and reunites with his family thanks to the help of a lovable British beaver puppet, you’re out of luck.  The Beaver is extremely depressing, albeit with good performances all around.  Gibson communicates his character’s illness effectively, leading the viewer to feel on edge as he falls further from sanity, while Jodie Foster as his wife (and the film’s director) is appropriately earnest.  Cinema King favorite Anton Yelchin’s hatred of his father seethes off the screen, and his chemistry with valedictorian Jennifer Lawrence is perceptible and plausible (after an initial clichéd first encounter).  And perhaps there’s a very good movie in here somewhere, an honest depiction of mental illness led by an allegedly troubled actor, and perhaps this is merely a case of expectation misaligned with reality; that is, maybe my preconception of the movie got in the way of my appreciation for the film.  What I can say, though, is that The Beaver was a very unpleasant and uncomfortable viewing experience, making me squirm in more than a few places and grimace in others.  If this is what Foster was intending, job well done, because this is a very depressing movie.  But if we’re meant to be inspired by the film, mission not accomplished.

Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) – Ordinarily TV movies aren’t quite under the purview of the Cinema King, but we have a bit of a Hemingway thing going on here lately.  After being disappointed by the (mis)use of Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I was gratified to see that HBO was working on a biopic about Hemingway’s tempestuous marriage to Martha Gellhorn.  Even better news:  Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman – a talented cast, mind you – were headlining.  (Recall, I was clamoring loudly for Clive Owen to succeed Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.)  So much for the good news.  The bad news?  The result, Hemingway & Gellhorn, is unorganized and meandering, focusing more on character than on plot.  Ordinarily this would be fine, but the characters here are too static to be interesting.  Owen and Kidman are very compelling and capture the essences of their characters, but they neither do anything very interesting nor evolve in any significant way.  The same is true for other big names who appear briefly – Tony Shalhoub, Robert Duvall, David Strathairn, etc.  Consequently, we have a novelty act that wears off once you realize it’s careening around the globe without purpose.  Worse, the film muddles history by implying that Gellhorn’s divorce from Hemingway caused his suicide years later, a move which seems to contradict the film’s attempts to canonize Gellhorn.  Ironically, the film finds many characters telling Hemingway that a film adaptation of A Farewell to Arms failed to capture his work accurately; similarly, our great Hemingway film, it seems, is yet to be.

The Ides of March (2011) – Continuing the trend of people who should be doing better work, George Clooney (who did so well with Good Night and Good Luck) directs Ryan Gosling (whose work was a surprise gem in Lars and the Real Girl) in this fable about American politics.  Gosling plays an idealistic campaign worker who falls for the American dream pitched by Clooney’s candidate, but Gosling is jaded by a series of revelations about the way the political scene really operates and drops his idealism for cynical throat-cutting and backstabbing.  Again, a fantastic supporting cast – Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, even President Logan – turns in good performances all around (Hoffman especially is, as always, engaging) but is criminally underused in yet another story that goes nowhere.  Literally.  The film ends just as it’s picking up steam, and all we’re left with is yet another film that offers up the trite moral “American politics is a dirty game.”  With so many interesting characters assembled, one wishes the writers had pushed the material at least one step beyond what we already know.  It’s not that The Ides of March is a bad movie; what we have is entertaining enough, but there’s no “pay off.”  It’s a lot of sound and fury, but it signifies nothing, ending as only a tale told by an idiot can.  If I can channel my inner Gene Shalit for a moment, “Beware The Ides of March.”

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!  (And hopefully things turn around before July 20, because that’d be a heck of a dry spell otherwise.)

Raging Bull (1980)

Move Raging Bull off of the "I can't believe I've never seen this" list and onto the "great American classics" list.

Martin Scorsese's "rebirth" picture, made at a tumultuous time in the film icon's life, is a biopic about boxer Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro) on his way to a title challenge. Raging Bull follows Jake from his first fights to his later years of ignominy as a nightclub performer, but the film spends less time in the ring and more time examining the ways in which Jake's paranoia ends up dismantling his relationships with his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and his gorgeous second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty).

Raging Bull is many things at once - a feat that many films reviewed on this blog have tried and failed - but the most significant thing that it is not what a first-time audience expects. I had assumed I was in for standard biopic fare, a rise and fall story on a par with pretty much everything else Scorsese has done (and done well); imagine my surprise when boxing scenes take up very little of the film's runtime and lets the focus linger on Jake's private life - a move that makes an interesting statement about what makes a life significant. It is our relationships, Scorsese suggests, that define us, and consequently it is our own nature that determines how our relationships are to progress.

Raging Bull is dominated by absolutely gorgeous and breathtaking cinematography on Scorsese's part. While every Scorsese picture reviewed herein on this blog has earned high marks for aesthetics, the decision to film Raging Bull in black-and-white almost makes (as distinct from "breaks") the movie. The subconscious associations with nostalgia, the past, and moral absolutism - as well as the accompanying paranoia that befalls La Motta - create an ironically vibrant atmosphere amid the grayscale visuals on the screen.

This is due also in large part to DeNiro's stellar central performance. I think DeNiro - like Al Pacino, who's often connoted with him - has a tendency to phone in performances; there's nothing particularly stellar about his work in Meet the Parents or Jackie Brown, but he's earned a certain "DeNiro credit" for past services rendered. So if you're wondering why DeNiro is considered a top actor, look no further than Raging Bull, in which DeNiro plays a range of emotions and personality traits within one very complex yet fully plausible figure. All this is to say nothing of the sheer physical tranformation exhibited on the screen; no fat suits here - the extra pounds DeNiro carries as an older, doughier Jake La Motta are the genuine article. Featured co-lead Pesci (here in one of his earliest roles) does a solid job as the film's second banana, evoking lifelike chemistry with DeNiro and demonstrating his ability to be restrained rather than consistently over-the-top (as in Goodfellas and Casino). Moriarty kind of floats through this one, never misstepping but merely existing for the purpose of coming between Jake and Joey; she's pretty, which is all the script asks of her, but she doesn't have enough of a presence to ever take the spotlight away from DeNiro and Pesci - which is, of course, a good thing.

Like Casino, Raging Bull isn't exactly the kind of movie about which I can immediately gush after seeing it. In fact, the movie is unsettling in a lot of places: La Motta's fall from fame is heartbreaking, and his brief stint in prison is so violently uncomfortable that it's difficult not to look away (the latter being a perfect example of Scorsese's gift at knowing when not to cut a scene). It's also not straightforward (also a good thing), deftly avoiding cliches that in 1980 hadn't even been invented yet and thereby remaining freshly original. Though it's not a comfortable film, it's a viciously well-made one, representing the apex of the creative partnership betwixt Scorsese and DeNiro - two American filmmakers doing some of their finest work.

Raging Bull wouldn't be a Scorsese movie if it weren't rated R, this time ffor some very strong brutal violence - most of it set in the boxing ring - as well as about 100 F-bombs and occasional moderate sexual dialogue. One of Scorsese's tamer movies, but it's got its moments.

W. (2008)

W, Oliver Stone's so-called biopic of the 43rd President of the United States, is a bit like a veggie burger - it's somewhat enjoyable, but it's brutally unable to convince you that it's the real deal despite its distracting claims to authenticity.

Plot summary of a biographical film always seems a bit awkward, more like an attempt to tell you who plays who. Suffice it to say that it's the story of George W. Bush (Josh Brolin), from his college years to the final days of his presidency with all the sordid details in between (seemingly exaggerated for effect). There's a running conflict with his father George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell, who's not acting so much as he is standing around being tall) as well as the headbutting between V-P Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and Secretary of State Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) over issues of the Iraq invasion.

First, the good news. Brolin is entertaining and turns in a plausible performance as Dubya, oscillating between pages from the books of Will Ferrell and Dennis Quaid (thanks, Dad!) but with the credibility of a more seasoned and serious actor. I'd heard Dreyfuss was "scary good" as Cheney, and while he's not a doppleganger for Cheney where voice is concerned he certainly looks the part and does a good job at being what this movie needs him to be - namely, a Vader-esque villain. As Karl Rove, the diminutive Toby Jones makes me giggle but only because I really enjoy his career choices, and Thandie Newton looks a heck of a lot like Condi Rice, even if she doesn't do much in the film other than frown.

That's the bad news - like Condi, I frowned a lot during this movie. Though Brolin delivers the famous "Bushisms" well ("Is our children learning?" or "Fool me once..."), eliciting chuckles when they crop up, they're out of place, forced, and decontextualized in order to more adequately lampoon the president. And so the film plays out a lot more like a Saturday Night Live sketch (love him or leave him, is the pretzel-choking incident really that significant in Dubya's life?) than a serious biopic; that the film tries to fob itself off as "the true story" is downright clownery. What's also patently offensive is its unequivocal partisanship, ladled on like so much maple syrup on a stack of pancakes; "POWELL SAINT!" the movie cries like Al Franken-stein's monster, stitched together in a lab somewhere near Flint, Michigan; "CHENEY DEVIL! DUBYA DUMMY!" Please, Mr. Stone; 1981's Caveman, starring Ringo Starr, was subtler.

Subtle? Certainly not. Entertaining? You could do a lot worse, but Stone's done better films. At least JFK had the dignity to present itself as merely a collection of theories. W, on the other hand, professes to straighten up and fly right, but - as Nat King Cole once sang - "Your story's so touching but it sounds just like a lie."
The MPAA rated W "PG-13 for language including sexual references, some alcohol abuse, smoking and brief disturbing war images." The sexual references weren't anything that I really picked up on, though the war images did indeed disturb when they appeared near the end of the film. As for substance abuse, get over it; the film depicts alcohol abuse as enough of a negative for me not to want to indulge myself without a rating box telling me what to think. Sorry, almost went off on a rant there.