Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My husband has insisted, since we saw the Coen Brothers' "True Grit", that the John Wayne version was better.  I vaguely remembered seeing it in the distant past, but could not imagine that it would equal the newer film.  So I'm shuffling away in the five dollar bins of DVDs in Barnes and Noble the other day (yes, I really do have too much time on my hands), and decide I'll buy it and prove my husband wrong.  The allure of making him eat his words is ignoble but real.  Long marriages do this to people and I am not immune.  Last night we watched the older film, and I convinced my husband that he was right.  Very unsatisfying.

I was surprised that the movie story lines are practically twins, despite all the hype about the Coen version being truer to the book, which I have not read and will never read.  The scenes mirror each other.  The dialogue is similar.  The endings are different, but not enough to make a new movie.  So, the fact is, the question comes up, why was this movie repeated?  It was okay enough the first time out.  John Wayne was fine, even though he's not a favorite of mine.  Kim Darby was fine in the role of the girl.  Even Glen Campbell was fine as La Beouf.  It has Robert Duvall and other great character actors.  The scenery is gorgeous, as it was filmed in the mountainous area of Ouray, Colorado. 

But the first film, rated G, though it's unbelievably inappropriate for kids, is basically a comedy.  A weird one, but with a kind of happy ending, and an exit by Wayne that is delightful.  I figure the Coens couldn't stand such a sunshiny take on such a tale, and they wanted to do THE DARK VERSION.  I give them credit for succeeding in that goal.  And their casting is terrific, with Jeff Bridges an even more delapidated version of Rooster Cogburn, and Matt Damon very funny and touching as La Beouf.  Hailee Seinfeld is good as the girl, and everyone supports that cast.  The big shift is that in this film the landscape is harsh and unforgiving instead of beautiful, and the people in it are at it's mercy.  It's the Coen Brothers take on randomness and fate.  So the girl loses her arm from the rattlesnake bite, and never marries, and when she searches for Cogburn years later he's already dead.  As an adult, she is rigid and dried up.  There are signs that she could become that woman in both movies, but ending with a kind of unrequited love and failure is ironic, because a lot of people died for her to avenge her father, and she has not gone on to marry, have kids and be reconciled with her lot in life as the viewer expects.

So the two films become a kind of Rashomon test:  the first is created out of a basic optimism about life and the second a pessimism.  The same scenes, seen through different lenses, made me reflect differently on what the story means.  The Wayne version says that a girl with true grit can find the father figure she deserves, and he will not disappoint.  The Coen version says that some wounds cannot be filled, and striving to do so leaves a lot of collateral damage.  In both, the girl is the enigma, headstrong to the point of suicide, naive yet nasty in her need to see a man hanged, a man down on his luck, a drunk, a pitiful hurt thing himself.  She's not really likeable, and the Coens remind us of that, whereas the early film glosses over that fact.  Pick your poison, as Cogburn would say.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Speaking of Russell Crowe, a little known gem, "Last Three Days" is exciting and a great action/adventure film.  Crowe stars as a junior college professor whose world is turned upside down when his wife is arrested for murder.  The movie hides whether she is innocent or not, which I liked, and concentrates on how the wife, played so well by Elizabeth Banks, Crowe and their young son adjust to their new reality.  I strongly felt how being at the wrong place at the wrong time, or a series of coincidences, or fate can pull the rug out from under you.  Have you ever had a car accident and realized that if you had killed someone or badly injured them your life would be "before and after"?  Most of us have had someone we love taken away suddenly:  a heart attack, suicide, accident, whatever.  This movie makes you FEEL how precious life is, and how tenuous.

The plot is terrific, with an intricate plan hatched by the husband and not shared with us, so we are on pins and needles watching it play out.  The supporting actors include Liam Neeson, as a man the husband quizzes who escaped jail seven times, Brian Dennehy as the husband's father, and Bryan Cranston as one of the detectives investigating who feels in his skin something is wrong when the wife is convicted and sentenced to life, but he can't get a handle on it.  The pace is perfect, and the film picks up speed as the escape and chase do.

It's a small film, but gripping and a lesson on terrific, non-showy acting.  And it sticks with you, as you go about your ordinary day that could turn dark if luck isn't with you.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Then there's Russell Crowe.  Okay, I have a thing about him.  I've been ridiculed, teased and worse.  But at least he's a great actor as well as being, to me, mighty sexy.  But even with Crowe, I don't see everything he's in.  I'm not totally irrational.  But I do love one of his movies that you'd think no red blooded girly girl would tolerate:  "Master and Commander".  No, I haven't read any of the book series, any more than I would read a Tom Clancy book.  I have my gender identification intact.  But "Master and Commander" is engaging, well-written and edited and terrifically acted.  I found myself fascinated by life on a boat in the seventeen hundreds, as well as battle stations, pirates, and the whole nine yards.  Peter Weir is a great director, and here, as in "Witness" and others of his films, he has pulled us into a foreign world in time, place and thinking and made it come fully alive.  Crowe as the captain and Paul Bettany as his best friend and physician on board with a Darwinian taste for describing the exotic species of plants and animals they encounter, are pitch perfect together.  The music they play is exquisite, and their harmony passionately fought for over personality differences.  The man of action and the man of contemplation are atune.  Crowe learned to play the violin for this role.  One of the subplots involves two young boys, living on the sea away from their families for years, and those actors are riveting as well.  It was as if Jane Austen's brother's life was finally made manifest for those of us centuries later.  I've seen this movie probably eight or ten times, and I find new delights in it each time I watch it.  I wish I'd seen it in the theater on a big screen, but then, I assumed I'd hate it.  Instead, I see the beauty of that long ago life option, and the fellowship and depth of feeling these sailors shared.  I'm not ready to enlist on a submarine, but I respect the life and understand it's appeal at last.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"All the President's Men" is a great film.  The fact that the actual events happened long ago does not diminish the tension and excitement of the drama.  It stars two amazing actors as Woodward and Bernstein, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, but it is glowing with small parts that shine with vividness and intelligence:  Jane Alexander as the secretary nervous about revealing what she knows, Jason Robards Jr as Ben Bradlee, and many others.  Somehow, though we know how it all ended, we are fearful, jumpy, on edge, as if this has never happened before, and it hadn't.  Physically, the humor in Redford's and Hoffman's casting is delightful.  They are both consummate comedians, so they make us like them and root for them by convincing us they are not superstars, but young eager beavers out for the story that will get them noticed.  The pacing and editing is impeccable.  The strength of the film is the two stars' movements, more than dialogue.  They are watchable and we understand everything from their body movements.  The dialogue could almost be absent.  This is like the best of silent filmmaking.  And how perfect, because the movie thematically is about what isn't said, what shouldn't have been said (on tape) and what must be said.  You can't silence our heroes, or scare them into silence, and we look longingly at this film and wonder where that integrity has gone in journalism.  Now there is news, prepackaged and outsourced from corporations.  Then, important stories were followed up and tenaciously, doggedly pursued.  It's a nostalgic film.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night my husband and I watched again Steven Speilberg's "War of the Worlds".  We both love the one from the 1950's, but this version is a lot of fun, and keeps the basic premise and moral structure of the first, with Morgan Freeman voicing over, instead of Sir Cedric Hardwicke.  Instead of the main character being a elite scientist (from Cal Tech) in this one he's a dock worker, an ordinary guy, and instead of a romance, he has the chance to bond with his two kids from his previous marriage, who are now living an upper middle class life, and look down upon him as a loser.  The class angle is nice, and after all, who, these days would listen to a scientist?  In congress, anything that smacks of scientific thought is considered subversive.

Tom Cruise as Ray is in his element here, and Dakota Fanning is terrific as his ten year old daughter.  I have problems with the son, Robbie, who doesn't have any back story for why he's so hostile, but more importantly, why he wants to join the army and get himself killed.  That he survives stretches our credulity.  If you think about some of what the alien machines do, it makes no sense, but Speilberg keeps us on the edge of our seats and not overthinking the plot.  Tim Robbins is great as a guy gone psycho, a kind of amped up variation of Robbie.  But the movie belongs to Cruise and Fanning, and they make us really feel for them and need them to survive.

The music by John Williams is perfect and the sets and people's faces are as well.  In the end, it is Ray's mechanical expertise that saves him, his daughter and a lot of people caught up in a machine.  So the working class guy is what's needed in this version, and he wins over his kids by his tenacity.  He is going to keep his promise to get them to their mother, and he does.  A Speilberg theme throughout his oeuvre, and the right one for our fractured, divorced times.  The world is saved by nature, not science, and that echoes H.G. Wells to a tee.  This is not a movie for kids, and it is disturbing.  But I found myself thinking of what I would do if a big earthquake hit, or flooding or some natural disaster.  Could I remain human and compassionate in the face of my fear, as Ray does?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

One of my all-time favorite movies is "People Will Talk" with Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain and Hume Cromyn.  Made in the fifties, it has a nice liberal progressive tone to it, and the sentiments are right up my alley.  Cary Grant plays a OBGYN teaching at a university and with a private clinic as well.  He also conducts the student orchestra at the university.  Another professor is jealous of his popularity with students, and is manipulating appearances to get him fired from the faculty.  He focuses on Dr. Pretorious' assistant, a man named Shunderson.  Along with this plot line is a romance between the doctor and a young woman who faints in an anatomy class, goes to his clinic, discovers she is pregnant, tries to kill herself, and to keep her alive, he tells her the test was mixed up and she is not pregnant.  Concerned for her, when she leaves to live with her father, Pretorious visits them, and realizes he's in love with her and she with him, and they elope.  After several months married, she discovers she's pregnant, and then he tells her, in effect, it isn't his baby but he will love it as his.  After being reassured that he didn't marry her to rescue her, she is more than ever devoted to him, and champions him against the professor with the grudge. 

I may not seem like I've left anything out, but there is plenty of plot untold, and the story of Shunderson, which gives the movie it's surprise and moral integrity.  As an example of what a doctor's Hippocratic oath should be all about, this film is worth it's weight in gold.  But it is also humorous, tender, and thought provoking.  This film is unforgettable.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night my Buddhist teacher was here, and we watched the documentary "Buck".  It's one of my favorite documentaries ever, and I delighted in sharing with her the story of a man who is extraordinary and serves as an exemplum of wholesome mind and heart.  Buck Brannihan is a horse trainer, and the model for the film "The Horse Whisperer" starring Robert Redford.  He had an abusive childhood as a forced child rope trick star with his older brother.  When their mother died, the father became more violent, until a Deputy Sherriff took the boys away to a foster family, where the parents were so loving and understanding that Buck's whole life slowly turned around.  He had several mentors in the horse training business, and he is a shining example to many owners and trainers.  He travels the country nine months of the year, then is home with his wife and four dogs the rest of the time.  They have three grown daughters. 

The film takes its time showing clips from Buck's childhood, interspursed with pieces of his workshops, and interviews with him and with his wife, youngest daughter and various friends and even Robert Redford.  He is a man who has demons, but he has chosen to not be a violent man, and fortunately he has had other gentle models of manhood.  His compassion and kindness with horses is limitless.  He respects these beings as if they were human.  He guides them away from fear and toward a trusting relationship with their riders.  I cry every time I see this film, because this man represents how we can overcome what we were born into and choose a better life.  And he spreads his gospel of compassion and respect for all beings everywhere he travels.  He chooses to remain in the present:  as he says, "You can't be in two places in one moment and I want to be in the present, not the past."  He's a gentle man, a kind man, a friend to all beings.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My husband was watching "Rango" last night, and I sat down for a few minutes before I left for a reading.  The film is sheer delight!  You can tell that Gore Verbenski and Johnny Depp had a lot of fun making it, and the jokes are fast and furious.  The script is a super witty hodgepodge of old western movies, "Chinatown" and everything else but the kitchen sink.  The animation, or whatever it's called these days, is brilliant, original and goofy.  The voices of the characters are hilarious and distinctive.  Isla Fisher as Beans and Abigail Breslin as the little girl are especially great.  Though Depp is the glue that holds this chaos together.  I love the "quest" theme, the spiritual search of a lost and lonely soul, Rango, to be exact.  He's the perfect incarnation of "act as if".  He's been a lizard dreaming of acting and shaping his world, then he falls off the car and gets his chance.  The quartet of owls as a marharchi band is the coup de grace.  I laugh out loud every time I see it.

Which brings me to a film from last year universally reviled:  "The Lone Ranger".  Same director, same star.  It's on the five worst films lists, the ten worst films lists, you name it.  And I really don't care.  I adored this movie and laughed my head off in the theater.  I recently bought the DVD and confirmed that either I am crazy, or the whole world is.  What do you think?  I found the script hilarious, and I loved the fact that Tonto was the smart one and the Ranger an idiot.  The mask repartee was fantastic.  The horse deserves an Oscar.  Helena Bonham Carter was terrific, as usual.  Tom Wilkinson was a complicated, tricky villain.  I feel the cost of a ticket was nothing compared to the sight of the Lone Ranger riding through a train at full speed. 

I don't always love Johnny Depp, really I don't.  There are movies he makes I don't even see, including any based on Hunter S. Thompson.  But I love the crow on his head, the makeup, the comments he makes, his voice, which is a mixture of every Italian who ever played an Indian in the movies.  His humor in this role is closer to Indian than about anything I've ever seen, and he is part Cherokee, so it makes sense.  I'm part Indian, and I delighted in this version of Tonto.  He's not a loyal sidekick, he's a guy thrown into a situation with an idiot white man and making the best of it. 

Yes, this film is over the top.  Did we need a homage to the TV series?  I think not.  This film is not sacrilege unless you felt some religious meaning from a silly TV series.  It is a PARODY.  It's satirical.  No, it is not made for kids.  It's made for adults.  So was "Rango".  Hello.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched the DVD last night of "The Butler".  I was again impressed with the acting of the whole ensemble, and felt, while not a great movie, it's a film with legs, and it's flaws are not too disturbing.  The main characters felt REAL, and their lives honest.  Forest Whitaker was terrific, with his face transforming over time, and his core understandable.  Oprah Winfrey was excellent, and her many sides and her fears and hopes were transparent.  I think they should have been nominated for Oscars, but that's okay.  The Oscars, as we know, are not the gold standard.  There were certain scenes that maybe were too cliched or melodramatic, but the viewer feels forgiving, because the EVENTS chronicled were so dramatic.  The film is rich in humor, tragedy, small, simple moments, and huge grand ones.  One of the joys of seeing the film is the cameos of the Presidents:  Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Nixon, Liev Schreibner as Johnson, James Marsden and Minka Kelly as JFK and Jackie, and Allan Rickman and Jane Fonda as Reagan and Nancy.  They are all a kick, but the later are really fun. 

Perhaps the film should not have ended with the Obama win, even though it is neat and tidy, but I understand the irresistableness of the choice.  Gaines' irritated comeback when a White House aide offers to show him the way to Obama's office is delightful.  Blacks have always been in the White House, and they helped build it, they've just been invisible.  When you think back to the beginning of the film, which rivals "Twelve Years a Slave" for horror, African Americans have indeed come a long way, with great sacrifice, and it's time their contributions were noticed by all of us.  "The Butler" works as history, as story, and as a lesson in how we may serve our country, and how many have chosen to do so.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"Her" is quite a film.  It is tender, sweet, disturbing and familiar.  Joaquin Phoenix is terrific as the nerd, Theodore, in what looks like a city of nerds, who falls in love with his operating system.  If his character thinks he can't keep up with his ex-wife, played by Rooney Mara, he REALLY can't keep up with Samantha, his OS.  It's amusing that he feels so lost with women, confused and clueless, and we recognize that befuddlement, and forgive him through most of the movie.  His relationship with his pal Amy (Amy Adams) helps soften and blur his ignorance of women.  But in the end, he is dangerous, because he prefers controlling to risking, and it backfires on him.  He thinks Samantha is a sure thing and cannot abandon him, but boy, is he wrong.  As she develops feelings (at light speed) she reacts in the way real women have reacted to him.  He can't have a fantasy cost-free. 

Throughout the movie are scenes of people on their phones, paying no attention to the real world or the people in it.  Read Dave Eggers' "The Circle" and see this film if you want to discover the downside of virtual reality.  Theodore works all day in an office writing personal letters between people:  parents and children, husbands and wives, long time friends.  People in the near future pay to have virtual thoughtfulness, emotions, feelings constructed by strangers.  Ironically, everything he reads us is cliched and trite.  In the new world, this passes for originality and sincerity.  Pretty scary.

When Samantha arranges a book deal to publish "his" letters, it is ironic, because he only receives one copy, as people don't read books, so he has no readers.  In his apartment, his big expanse of bookshelves is mostly empty, with a few knickknacks, and no books.  This world has no place for books, though perhaps some people are listening to books on their IPhones, but there is no evidence of this, as they seem to be responding to their phones.

The ultimate image of loneliness is his vacation with Samantha up in the snowy mountains at a cabin.  She stops responding when he wishes, and he is essentially on an isolated retreat, with no impulse to look inside himself and learn and grow.  He's projecting everything onto his fantasy, which is crumbling apart.

The horror comes when Samantha wants to use a woman, a stranger to Theodore, to experience vicarious sex through her reactions as well as his.  Theo is decent guy, basically, and cannot go through with this bizarre plan.  But the fact that the young, innocent looking woman would wish to "get closer" to Samantha in this way, mirrors our confusion about what are desires are and if they are OUR desires.

In the end, Theo is left with his friendship with Amy, who has also been enchanted by an OS.  They share a REAL relationship, which is reassuring, yet, yet, at the same time, all OS systems have somehow united and are growing and expanding like pods in an invasion from outer space.  How can these mere humans protect themselves?  What have they unleashed by their desires to have perfect relationships?  Why won't anyone settle for messy and real?  Who has sold us this bill of goods?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Another Hitchcock film I adore is "Spellbound".  Sure, it's over the top dramatic, and the sets and dream sequences by Salvador Dali, are, well, Dali.  But it's ultra romantic, and Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck are at their height of beauty and charisma.  They make a sexy pair, and it's fun that she is the psychiatrist and he the patient (even though he proves to be a doctor).  She thinks she can be neutral, not believing in love at first sight, but he is the emotional one, totally irrational and helpless.  This was filmed at the height of psychoanalysis' popularity, and though a lot of the talk seems dated or is discredited now, it gives a perfect snapshot of it's time.  The movie is filled with charming irony and humor, and the actors are uniformly excellent.  It's fun, and scary in a good way, with the "experts" being lost at sea, and a murderer running the psychiatric institution.  The fun house is that all the danger is really within the supposed protected environment, and the world outside is where the couple escape to, both to find out the truth about him, and in the end, to escape the constricted environment of doctors and patients.  In the real world, life is much more complicated, more gray than black or white, and little lines with a fork on a white tablecloth do not guide us to wisdom.  Only taking risks, trusting our hearts and leaving our protective concepts gives us true freedom.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I probably will see "Her" tomorrow afternoon, but, truth be told, I'm a little bit done with the Oscars, except for watching them for the outfits.  Even if aged, I am a girl, and it's all about the dresses. 
We watched "Shadow of a Doubt", Hitchock's film, on Saturday night, and I really think it's one of his best.  His wife, Alma Reville, stated that it was Hitch's favorite.  We've always been interested in it for personal reasons:  our older daughter was born in Santa Rosa, the setting, and our older son and his wife now live there.  In fact, the house where the movie was filmed is nearby their place.  More than that, which I agree would not move you to rent it, is that it is probably the scariest and best acted of his films before Psycho.  The cast is tremendous, with Joseph Cotten as the villain, Teresa Wright as his niece and veteran stars of the era, including Hume Cronyn, adding greatly to the fleshing out of an ordinary town, that, when you scratch the surface, reveals that nobody is really that normal.

Cotten plays a spoiled younger brother whom his older sister worships.  He's vaguely in business back east, and drops in every few years, sends presents, and makes himself tantalizing in his absence.  His niece, the oldest of three children, just graduated from high school, is named after him:  Charlie, and she idolizes him.  As he visits, having been chased out of an eastern city by detectives, his dark shadow reveals itself to Charlie, as she is now a young woman and notices discrepancies.  She gradually sees, with the help of a young detective played by MacDonald Carrey, that her uncle is evil, but she is afraid such knowledge would crush her mother, who dotes on him, so she keeps her secret.

As tense and absorbing as this main plot is, with an amazing turn by Cotten, it is the viewer's realization that every person in this ordinary family (emphasized by the ruse that the detectives perpetrated that they are interviewing and photographing a typical American family) is anything but ordinary that carries the humor and irony of the film.  The father is absorbed with his friend Herb in discussing how they could murder each other without being caught.  These conversations are overheard by the children, and gruesome in the extreme.  The mother is so fragile that everyone treats her like a person one inch from a nervous breakdown, and her hysteria is bizarre.  Charlie is bored but lethargic, overidentifying with her mother, and fearful clearly of becoming her if she marries.  Anne, the middle child, is obcessed with books and stories to the point of detachment, and her braininess is funny but irritating.  She is oblivious, yet, when she refuses to continue to sit by her uncle at the dinner table, like the dog who barks, you wish somebody would listen.  The baby of the family, a boy about seven, is the most obviously normal, but in such a family, what will be his phobias and obcessions as he ages?

Uncle Charlie may be a person who murders women for their money, but the family has within it the darkness that is present in all of us, and perhaps, in certain circumstances, takes a only gentle tipping to descend into madness.  Much is made of a childhood accident of Uncle Charlie, when he was hit by a streetcar and almost died.  Before he'd been a reader and quiet and gentle, but afterwards, as his sister describes, he became wild and overly energetic.  But in Hitchcock's world, even a reader can be sinister, as are the father and his friend.  What secrets lie in the heart of a sleepy American town?  You begin to wonder.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Yesterday afternoon I saw "All is Lost".  I was pleasantly surprised, as the story going around is that the movie is boring and you should only go to see Redford.  Not true.  The film is an adventure, filled with gripping details about how a person can survive with the equipment standard on a sailing boat.  The equipment is fascinating, and, by the way, I am adverse to boats, boating and especially being in a sailboat.  The character's ingenuity is remarkable, but always believable.  Redford lets his face do his work, and it is not a slient movie, as there is a voiceover at the beginning, and he occasionally speaks to himself.  The cinematography is gorgeous, and you feel you are on the boat, in the same way you feel up in space in "Gravity", which this movie reminds me of in several ways.  There is the isolation of the characters, the adversarial nature of the sea and space, the final reaching out to the idea of others. 

First mistake is naming the film "All is Lost".  It makes you assume he dies.  I haven't seen "Lone Survivor" with Mark Wallberg, but there are similar complaints about that title.  This is a technical film, in a way, and the title should be something like:  Sumatran Sea or Year Away.  Anything but the current title.  Secondly, that title makes the metaphor obvious, when it should be something we work out as viewers.  "Gravity" allows us to see what the movie "means", but "All is Lost" assumes we can't figure it out and constricts us.

I love the ending, because it could be anything.  Is he rescued?  Is it an hallucination?  Is it an image of heaven?  Is it about needing a helping hand and not being alone on the planet?  It's all of those things.

I love the big cargo boats, all business, who first cause the accident, then don't see him, the little guy, in their rush to commerce.  It takes a tiny, one person boat to truly see another human being in need and danger.  That is a beautiful message.  We look to the big entities, but our salvation is usually one on one with our ordinary fellow human beings.

So now I think it is a pity this film wasn't seen more, and Redford's performance.  There is no one to blame any more.  The Oscar nominations are out, so it got lost in the shuffle.  A few gems always do get lost.  But not all is lost.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I still have to see "Her" and "All is Lost".  I'm interested in Joaquin Phoenix's acting and that of Robert Redford as well.  Both have amazing screen presence and usually pick interesting scripts.  Because a friend of mine wanted to see it, I watched "August:  Osage County".  It was embarrassing.  Meryl Streep did every dramatic mannerism imaginable.  I know her character was meant to be over the top, but I cringed.  She's received a lot of flack, but it seems to me the play is not interesting.  It piles on cliched meladramatic twist after twist, all predictable, and the language is supposed to shock us, but it's boring instead.  Since the playwright wrote the screenplay, I feel the problems are with the material.  Perhaps Streep was trying to save or elevate the script, or, she lost her mind.  It's all like a bad soap opera, and such a downer, that is, if I cared about the characters.  I don't really, though the cast is superfine.  Julia Roberts shines as a believable person, but nobody is given enough back story or screen time to be more than a shadow except Roberts and Streep.  It might as well have gone all the way and become a horror movie.  Just an inch or two further. "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" comes to mind. Then I wouldn't have bothered to go see it, and I wouldn't want my money back. 

Robert Redford may be right when he stated that "All is Lost" had terrible distribution.  Certainly, "August" has been hyped to the gills and in our faces for months.  It seems the strategy was to have so much hyperbole that we were snowed, and couldn't tell a skunk from a cat.  The promoters must think we are really, really stupid.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

So the Oscar nominations came out today.  I'm not going to waste my time and yours analyzing the picks.  You already know what I think about "Fruitvale Station" being left out, and I'm sorry "The Butler" didn't get some recognition.  I think Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey might have gotten a nod for best actor and supporting actress.  It's ridiculous Tom Hanks wasn't nominated.  But it's all water under the bridge.  I haven't talked about "Dallas Buyer's Club", and I really enjoyed the film.  Matthew McConnehay was terrific, and Jared Leto quite striking as well.  The story was riveting, and the pace kept me wide awake and amazed at how truth is stranger than fiction.  It's not in the league as "Gravity", "12Years a Slave", "Captain Phillips" and others.  But neither is "Philomena", which I found overly melodramatic and awful in the case of Judy Dench.  Steve Coogan saved the film.  He should have been up instead.

There was a film this year that I can't forget:  "Elysium".  This movie was riveting from the first moment to the last.  There was action, mother love, life lessons, and then there is the message:  universal health care is a human right and moral imperative, and we can't keep trashing our planet and moving on if we're lucky enough and rich enough.  I cry every time I see the end of this film.  Because it's subject is so important, and it pays attention to class and race and the growing inequities in our culture and others around the world.  This film is a wake up call.  The heart and soul of it is Matt Damon's performance, and he is his usual unshowy amazing self.  Because he cares, we care.  The overriding imagery is the locket the nun gave him as a child, a picture of earth from space, so he can remember how beautiful our planet is.  This film expands the heart and mind.  And in it's love of life and earth, it got there before "Gravity" came out.  If you haven't already, please see this film.  It is not just another sci-fi extravaganza.  It means something.  Actually, quite a lot.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I have mixed feelings about "American Hustle".  The acting is terrific, and I don't begrudge Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence the Golden Globe wins.  But frankly, as I was watching, it seemed long, boring and convoluted.  I somehow was not interested in the plot.  They lost me.  I didn't think about it afterward much either.  Russell just goes a little bit too far in some scenes, and the absurdity sets in.  The scene with Bradley Cooper's character and his mother and girl friend, not to mention the hair curlers, is off putting.  It doesn't work.  That happened in "Silver Linings Playbook" as well, and "The Fighter".  People are clowns, and then you disengage not just from that character, but in a subtle sense, the whole movie.
I thought both Adams and Lawrence developed complete, believable characters, and you end up rooting for them, no matter what their flaws.  Bale's character was also believable, and, though he is a crook, you understand him and feel forgiving.  Cooper's character is weakest, because he seems too dumb for his position, and he somehow doesn't belong in the same movie with the others.  Cameos are usually terrible, in my opinion, and Robert de Niro's detracts from the story.

I'm thinking the story is weak, and great actors strengthened a weak script.  It doesn't need to be seen on the big screen, and it is not an Oscar film, even if it has a great central idea, made manifest for us dumb viewers by the film title.  These are Americans, yes, but it could be India or Japan or any other country.  Give me a break.

Like "Blue Jasmine", which has nothing going for it but Cate Blanchett, the power of this film comes from Adams and Lawrence, and their multidimensional characters.  And frankly, Adams has a more complex role than Blanchett, and Lawrence does the Jasmine character better and more succinctly.  At this point, Amy Adams, in my opinion, deserves best actress.  She's less showy, without the mannerisms of Blanchett, and she just breaks your heart fairly and honestly.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"Inside Llewln Davis" may be an Oscar contender movie.  I always feel the Coen Brothers are worth watching, though mostly I don't buy the DVDs because they are too violent or gory for my taste.  I still love "Raising Arizona" the best, with "A Serious Man" and "No Country for Old Men" close behind.  As always, some of the characters are so absorbed with their own lives that they inflict random cruelty on others.  The Davis character is unlikeable, and unlike "No Country", there is no counterbalancing character of moral gravity.  Davis is selfish, though with a soft spot for cats, Mulligan's character is a nightmare, and Timberlake's role so reduced that he doesn't qualify.  The old couple with the cat are kind, but made ridiculous by the script.  The music is the redeeming thread of the movie, and it makes you hope Davis is a good guy, but no, he's a rat with talent.  As in "A Serious Man" we laugh as well as empathize with the main character, who wants life to be fair or just or even kind, whereas it is obviously random.The constant kindnesses bestowed on Davis are unrecognized by him, really, because he's so self-absorbed.  Our expectation that a musical gift comes in the package of worthiness is underscored by the glimpse of Bob Dylan at the end of the film: a man supremely talented but unlikeable.  I enjoyed thinking about this movie afterward more than during watching it, but it continues to make me smile several weeks after, because it captures an era, it plays with our expectations, and the cat.  The cat is the likeable main character.  The Coens nailed us.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My three favorite Oscar contenders for this year are "Gravity", "Twelve Years a Slave" and "Captain Phillips".  And they all are being given a lot of recognition.  "Gravity" has a perfection about it because it works as a metaphor for our time here on earth.  We are busy suffering, ungrateful for life, misunderstanding it's promises, which really are, as Buddhists say, birth, old age, sickness and death.  When we look at the earth clearly (same message as in this summer's "Elysium") we begin to treasure our brief life, and understand that we are not alone, as all sentient beings share this fact.  Everything is always changing, you can't control your life, even if you are a science engineer, as Sandra Bullock's character is, and once you let go of the illusion that you are separate (as she does when she imagines George Clooney's character talking to her in the cockpit) everything is possible.  When Bullock struggles out of the capsule, the confinement of her concepts and beliefs before going into deep space, she is reborn with sturdy, firm feet planted upon the warm sand of the beach.  She is now ready to live while she is alive.  She will, this time, be present.

"Twelve Years a Slave" rests on a metaphor as well.  It's the camera position in this film:  looking from foot level upward to let us know we are experiencing what slaves experienced - being below notice, not being fully in the frame, having to look upward to our supposed "betters", who are hellish indeed.  And yet again, despite the horrific treatment of Solomon, he also notices the beautiful sunsets, the little earthly treasures in his confined world, until his soul opens wide and he sings the spiritual at the gravesite, and becomes, even welcomes his slavehood.  He doesn't wait to become human again, he insists on it when everyone around him says he is not.  He will not kill Patsy either, because he will not renounce life, no matter what.  He chooses life, as does Bullock.

"Captain Phillips" is a metaphor of fear, and each character connects to the others by powerlessness and fear.  Greenglass has shown a world where life is arbitrary and valueless.  The Somalis are slaves of the tribal warlords.  Phillips is a slave of the Somalis, but also the American military, because they don't share his understanding of the position of the pirates.  He tries to save them, but his warlords choose otherwise.  His fear at the end of the movie, when the nurse is attending to him, is a testament to his humanity, his compassion and his grief over the fate of a people with no way out.  Thus the film embraces our commonality, our lack of control over what fate brings to us.  We can only choose not to lose our humanity, and Phillips, like Bullock and Northrup, stand for that choice.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Since I'm not an expert on anything, and my opinion is seldom sought, I have decided the ordinary, middle aged woman might as well pontificate.  Well, why not?  I have ideas, I have thoughts, I watch a ton of movies.  This blog will not be coming from a film school critic, and technical stuff is not my forte.  I just want to express myself about something I love, films.  I like high brow, low brow, browless, you name it.  I used to say my favorite movie was "Les Enfants du Paradise", and I certainly still invoke it in my head for a variety of reasons.  When I'm sitting in the meditation hall waiting for the bell to ring, I see the parade of humanity before me, full of ego and id, posturing and positioning, sadness and joy, the whole gamut.  So that one really knocked my socks off.  "Rebecca" is another I've often mentioned when asked, and it has all the elements:  romance, Laurence Olivier, mystery, a psychotic villain, George Sanders, the hint of naughty sex, and vague ending that allows us suckers to grasp at happiness, while, if you've read the book, and I have a few times, feeling superior because you know their marriage will not end well, and no children, to boot.  Currently, I like Terence Malick's "New World".  And that is despite Colin Ferrell being in it.  Malick is a world unto himself, and his newest film "To the Wonder" has the distinction of being one of the most boring films ever made, though with Ben Affleck, what can you expect?  I know, he can direct, but his acting, really, it can't bear scrutiny. 

But this week, I'd like to explore the films I think should be up for Oscars.  "Fruitvale Station", for instance.  It's tight, emotional, cinema verite, with no editoralizing or romanticizing.  One day in the life of an ordinary urban Black man.  He's not a hero, he's not a villain.  He's real.  His life is real, his death is real, and it's his universality that marks this tragedy.  Michael B Jordan is Oscar Grant.  He inhabits the role.  Olivia Spencer is perfect as his mom.  His girlfriend has this amazing, but real face.  I'd like to think the awards season hasn't forgotten this film.  But they clearly have, since it was a summer movie and their tiny memories are unable to hold anything for longer than thirty days.  This movie does what great movies do:  it shakes you up, makes you think again about a real death, and in a different, more profound way.  And more importantly, it forces us to think of all the other Oscar Grants, invisible, uncared for, brushed off the screen of our thoughts.