Through the magic of Netflix Watch Instantly – which seems to be delivering much better quality image than it used to – tonight I saw one of the films I had been eager to catch last year but missed due to unhelpful film distribution patterns/other commitments/laziness.  ‘Elegy’, a film based on a Philip Roth story, with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz as lovers, Dennis Hopper as Kingsley’s best friend, Deborah Harry as Hopper’s wife, Patricia Clarkson as Kingsley’s long term girlfriend, and Peter Sarsgaard as Kingsley’s son proclaims itself a desirable prospect from its casting alone.  Its director, Isabel Coixet, made two of the best interior dramas of the past few years in ‘The Secret Life of Words’ and ‘My Life Without Me’.

It’s a gorgeous film, thoughtful and ruminative about life and love, ageing and death; a film in which the New York of Woody Allen’s serious side is a character (even though the movie was shot mostly in Vancouver).  It’s about what happens when a person prefers their career over being with other people; when one allows even a little celebrity to take over the priorities of human relationships; when a person believes their own propaganda.

It’s also about cities and how they can affect people – in this movie they look at each other through windows, across courtyards, in nightclubs and taxis, and they’re scared to say what they think or even to really know what they want.  But maybe not always.

Of course, Philip Roth is known for being a serious man – too serious, according to his ex-wife Claire Bloom’s extremely sad memoir – and this is a film based on a novel called ‘The Dying Animal’, so don’t expect an adrenaline-fuelled thrill ride.   Actually, maybe that’s not a bad description, for ‘Elegy’ is an exhilirating piece of work, utterly gripping, full of life despite, being its emotional context, which is in the shade, to say the least.  And, to explain the title of this post, all the performances are excellent – these people feel real.  Penelope Cruz in particular re-asserts the vulnerability she showed in ‘Abre los Ojos’ and its remake ‘Vanilla Sky’.  My genial co-host and I were mightily disappointed by ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’, for which Cruz won an Oscar.  Not that I begrudge people winning prizes, but she stole that one from herself.

The Great Buck Howard / Featuring John Malkovich – Colin Hanks – Emily Blunt / Written and Directed by Sean McGinly

Look at John Malkovich. You can’t take your eyes off him.  He’s got it.

Malkovich is a compelling, magnetic performer.  He’s the reason to see ‘The Great Buck Howard’.  Unfortunately he’s not the focus of the story – the young man below is.

And that’s the right choice for this movie.

It wasn’t the story I wanted to see – I wanted to see the story of washed up, down and out mentalist Buck Howard as he toured the back water venues of forgotten fly-over America.

But ‘The Great Buck Howard’ is about something different – the journey of the young man, played appropriately by the son of a movie star, who’s really not that special, and spends some formative time, (we don’t know how long – the film is kinda wishy-washy that way), learning who he is and what he wants.

‘The Great Buck Howard’ Synopsis

It’s not a great movie, perhaps not even a good one in the traditional sense, (the story is tired and without real bite – imagine what Altman would have done with it!), but I think it’s the film the makers wanted to do – and in that sense it succeeds.  It’s light, a trifle and forgettable – an amiable way to pass the time.

And if you’re in the mood for Malkovich – it’s just the ticket for you.

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‘The Great Buck Howard’ will be at the Belcourt Cinema in Nashville from Friday, March 27th

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If you want something in a similar vein, but with more vim and vigor, I recommend ‘My Favorite Year’ – another story of a young man tasked with looking over a prickly, tart male prima donna, (memorable played by Peter O’Toole who recieved an Acadamy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his efforts).  It’s available right now on Netflix’s Watch Instantly.

Two Lovers / Featuring Joaquin Phoenix – Vinessa Shaw – Gwyenth Paltrow –
Isabella Rossellini – Moni Moshonov / Directed by James Gray (warning: possible spoilers)

What a wonderful movie.

Computerised recommendation systems, (such as those employed by Netflix), encounter difficulty with using people’s ‘star ratings’ as accurate data due to humans tendency to reward something good with higher praise after experiencing something bad – so after seeing a stinker like Pearl Harbor you’d lean towards giving that Woody Allen film you saw right afterward an extra star, (even if it’s ‘The Curse of the Jade Scorpion’).

I tried to keep that in mind while watching ‘Two Lovers’.  After being inundated on The Tubes by ‘Watchmen’ News I was craving something adult – you know, grounded in the real.  So I was in the right mood for this film.

It’s brilliant.

The story of a lost, desperate young man, ‘Two Lovers’, like ‘Taken’, tells one of our oldest narratives.  Should one be part of society, of a community, or an outcast?  One can imagine this story arising out of our pre-agricultural past – as humans began to settle down in settlements, there would be those that preferred the nomadic life; and social-cohesion dynamics being what they are it’s easy enough to be ‘selected’/pushed towards being the outsider.

‘Two Lovers’ tells this old story not only as drama, but as thriller.  The hero is confronted by the choice – suddenly it seems – between two women.  One, amply thesped by Gwyneth Paltrow, seemingly like him a walking disaster, holds the promise of someone to care for, and a life away from the constraints of community and social obligations.  The other, sketched beautifully by Vinessa Shaw, wants to care for him.  I watched the film on the edge of my seat – which way will our hero go?  ‘Two Lovers’ is an essay in suspense, far more thrilling than contemporary action films that use fast cuts and violence in place of the genuine anxiety that comes with our life of choices.

So the film works.

More than that, it works well.  Has their been a recent film with such pitch-perfect performances?  Not only is Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of a troubled young man beyond reproach, (and no talk of recent sightings on talk shows please – vultures begone), in ‘Two Lovers’ everyone is good.

See the film and observe Gwyneth Paltrow on the train – look at how she frowns, wrinkles her forehead when talking to our hero – this is beautifully observed naturalism.

Vinessa Shaw – never for a moment do you doubt her feelings for Phoenix’s character – the excitement in her eyes; her whole body carries a secret.  She’s in love.

Elias Koteas does more in one scene than most actors do with a franchise, (in my alternative world o’movies Elias would be Star).

I could go on – but am gushing enough – it’s worth seeing if only for Isabella Rossellini and Moni Moshonov as our hero’s parents – how rare it seems to see genuine parental love on film.

So which way does our hero jump?  I won’t say here.  The film does offer the possibility that one can be within an community, and an artist, (a wonderful thematic thread in the film is our hero’s photography – he’s encouraged by society around him to take photographs of people, not just buildings in decay), to find love and still be free.

In the end the choice is made for him.  Will he be happy in his life?  I don’t know.  But I suspect that, like the woman in white on the ferry, not a month will go by without my wondering if this hero, Leonard Kraditor, has settled, contentedly, into his life.

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‘Two Lovers’ will be the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville till the 5th of March – You should go see it.

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(Photos in this post adapted from ‘Two Lovers’ promotional material)

So, there’s the movie called ‘Crossing Over’ that, according to the imdb is being released this Friday.  It’s directed by Wayne Kramer, the came-out-of-nowhere director of the wonderful smart, sexy and funny Vegas drama ‘The Cooler’; it stars Sean Penn and Harrison Ford and Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta.  Its pedigree would lead you to believe that there’s at least something to celebrate about this movie.

So why, then, have I heard nothing about it, seen no trailer, and do I have the creeping suspicion that it won’t make it to a theatre anywhere near me?  If a film with this cast (popular and good in most of what they do), director (known for a film that was widely loved), and theme (serious enough to evoke the possibility of being thoughtful, accessible enough to be seen by a decent-sized audience, timely enough to spark a public debate), has to be sneaked into cinemas, while the 3-D Jonas Brothers film competes for multiplex space with ‘He’s Just not that Into the Pink Panther Shopaholic Lycan Mall Cop’, are we really seeing, as Jett often prophesies, the end of cinema as we know it?

There are about three hundred screens within 30 minutes of where I live – and I have no confidence that there will be anything on this weekend that I want to see.  Do I have to look forward to only being able to see a film I want on the big screen when it has the advertising budget of ‘Watchmen’ or a 3-D trick to ‘justify’ charging an extra five bucks for the ticket?  Is this the end, or are we just going through a phase?

Films Reviewed This Week: Jett and Gareth’s Live Commentary from the Belcourt Theatre Oscar Night America Benefit

Plus we continue our DVD Commentary Competition

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(Photo above from Gareth Higgins blogging at the Belcourt before the start of the Oscar Benefit)

Taken / Featuring Liam Neeson / Directed by Pierre Morel / Produced By Luc Besson (warning, this review contains spoilers for ‘Taken’ and ‘Atanarjuat’)

Look at the man above.  He is alone and miserable.

Look at him below.  Two Chinese take-out cartons.  You only see this in movies.  This film does not waste time straining for realism.  It’s doing something else.

‘Taken’ is a story.  Maybe the first one.  Watching it you realise that the characters involved aren’t two-dimensional or cardboard, they are without dimension, or more accurately, without psychology.

For this film tells a story that seems to originate from prehistory, from a time before psychology, when there was only action.

In the film, Liam Neeson’s daughter has been taken by swarthy Easterners to be sold to dusky Arabs as a sexual plaything.  He is told he has 96 hours to find her or else the trail will run cold.  That’s what the script says, but it’s not what’s really going on.  It’s established early on that she is a virgin – Neeson has 96 hours before her virginity is taken – it’s the virginity ticking clock.

For he fights not just to save her from harm but to protect an investment – if this story is from prehistory then the virgin daughter is property – her value would drop dramatically if she were no longer pure.

See the daughter above in a scene at the beginning of the pic, before she is taken.  The script says she is seventeen years old.  But in the mind of Liam Neeson his daughter is already lost to him, (she is living with her mother and a new daddy, a wealthy man, a billionaire), hence she’s played by an adult actress – possibly someone in her late twenties.

See the man below.  The wealthy man.  The King.  He has stolen our hero’s mate, and now his offspring.  The king is played by Xander Berkeley, playing the Xander Berkley role.  No more needs to be said.

Our hero, betrayed by his mate, with his King against him and his offspring stolen travels to a far-off land.  There he uses a magic machine to find who has taken his blood.*

He finds an old friend who helps him, but in the end the friend betrays him as well.**

Now I apologise for the portentous path this review has taken so far.  But portentousness is what ‘Taken’ stirs in me.  Watching it I couldn’t stop thinking of that magnificent film Atanarjuat.

A re-telling of an ancient tribal myth of the Inuit, Atanarjuat is also from prehistory and has the same feel as ‘Taken’, though with one important difference.

Ancient stories seem to be not just bloodthirsty but feature heroes that are, by virtue of being ancient, without Christian charity.  There’s not much forgiveness going ’round.  In the ‘spoken tale Atanarjuat’ our Hero kills the villains. But when it was rendered as a film the people involved in the production made a startling choice – they brought the story closer to our time, with its expanding circle of empathy, and the hero lets the villains go, to live in exile.

Not in ‘Taken’.  In fact, not only does the hero kill everyone in site who may tangentially have any relationship to the kidnappers, he tortures them.

He engages in behavior that historically, Hollywood reserved for it’s worst psychopathic killers.  This is our good guy.

And this is what the film tells us at the end.  That U.S. civilisation has declined to such an extent that it has collapsed into a state of prehistory – of savagery.  As Liam Neeson’s character Bryan Miller says to someone he is torturing, and will ultimately kill, “We used to outsource these things”.

Not anymore.

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Ok, that ends the heavy part of my review.  On to some other aspects.  Should you see it?  Yes, if you love proper B-Movies, with fast moving action and an underdog hero.  Poor Liam Neeson is surround by horrible people in this pic, (was there ever a more bitchy wife in cinema then Famke Janssen here?), he’s a put-upon man – the Melon Farmer.  So there’s catharsis, (if you’re into violence as catharsis), to be found here.  This is why Neeson is perfect – he’s playing the small man, the put-upon man – yet we see the ideal – the fantasy projection of the small man, the powerless man – the wishful fantasy of the small man who dreams of being 6-foot-huge as Neeson is.

If you’re looking for a similar pic – where a put upon man, wracked by personal tragedy seeks revenge, but, like me, are disturbed by seeing torture on screen, then I’d highly recommend this Fritz Lang pic:

The Big Heat

Our hero doesn’t need to be a psychopath in The Big Heat.  Instead of being one, he dispatches them, and not to exile.

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* The scene where Neeson examines in close-up an image from an SD card in some sort of ‘Photoshop kiosk’ is fascinating because we don’t really see it as anything special, or ‘sci-fi’, yet what we’re seeing here of course is the famous scene in Bladerunner, (pan right…center and stop, etc.), shown as part of every day life in 2008.  We’re in the world of the future now.

** The French Kevin Spacey?

Audrey Hepburn winning an Oscar® for “Roman Holiday”

While I appreciate the youthful elegance of Audrey Hepburn in the clip, what interests me more is the ‘remote’ segment with Gary Cooper somewhere in ‘old-time-hollwoody-mehico’. As talked about in this post:

What the Oscars are Planning – Make it Like the Superbowl

the Academy is planning something different this year in an attempt to regain commercial and cultural relevance. I think they should take a page out of Cooper’s book and whisk us via the magic of Satellite to Stars on various locations – adds some glamour and makes us, the rubes at home here in the ‘Depression with Wi-fi’, feel like we’ve genuinely gone behind the scenes of an upcoming production.

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More Oscar posts on ‘TFT’

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P.S. I love the ® that the AMPAS slaps on everything = gotta guard that IP, plus, how nice to see Donald O’Connor in the above clip as well. Make ‘em laugh Donald.

Nate Silver, the sports and politics statistics genius behind FiveThirtyEight has gone all Oscar on us:

Oscar Predictions You Can Bet On!

I think he’s spot on, except for the Best Supporting Actress Award.  I just can’t believe that the Academy is going to award that little man to Benjamin Button’s Taraji P. Henson, (who was far better in that far better film Hustle and Flow), instead of the magnificent Viola Davis.

We shall see.

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More Oscar posts on ‘TFT’

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(Photo of Angelina Jolie behind father Jon Voight adapted from an original by Alan Light)

TFT will be podcasting this February 22nd at the official Oscar Night America benefit at the Belcourt Theatre!

The Belcourt’s Biggest Party and Fundraiser of the Year!

Gareth and I will be recording a ‘play-by-play’ account of the ceremony while we watch it live on the local ABC affiliate, WKRN; interviewing local celebs attending and giving you the all-around flavor of the glamorous atmosphere of the Party, (open bar till 9pm my friends).

We fully expect to be dashing off pithy comments about the Award Winners and dishing gossip about the Award Losers whenever possible as well as Twittering and taking photos throughout the evening.

It costs to attend, and I know these are tough times – but all proceeds go to the non-profit Belcourt – which is doing the noble work of keeping the tradition of actually attending the movies instead of, you know, hanging out at home, alive.  If you’re in Nashville and can scrape together a few bucks to attend you’d be doing the right thing; hope to see ya there!

The Oscar Special episode will be available for download here on the site on Friday, February 27th.

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(Photo cropped from an original by Alan Light, Unknown Oscar Winner)

I watched  ‘Midnight Run’ last night – for the umpteenth time.  I remembered it as one of the funniest US comedies of the 80s – a decade in which Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy competed with Steve Guttenburg for a crown that seems to belong to Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler these days.  ‘Midnight Run’ – you know, the one about the bounty hunter (De Niro) and the white collar thief (Charles Grodin), the Vegas gangsters (Dennis Farina and Philip Baker Hall), the dodgy bail bonds guy (Joe Pantoliano), the bounty hunter competition (John Ashton) and the grumpy cop (Yaphet Kotto).  Isn’t that enough to recommend it?

It still makes me laugh – and the pleasure was reinforced by watching it with someone who was new to its charms. (In a weird The Film Talk coincidence my genial co-host was, unbeknownst to me, also watching a De Niro film with a new viewer at the very same time…the wheels of TFT spin in ever-increasing metaphysical directions…Not sure what the film was, but I believe it had something to do with marinara sauce and a plane heist.)  Re-watching ‘Midnight Run’ raised the question again that we’ve tried to work with on TFT – what makes a good comedy?

That question will, of course, only be answered when you see one – in this case, it seems to be something to do with characters who grow and change over the course of the story, small roles that seem as well defined as the protagonists, an emotional journey to accompany the physical one, and something more than mere ‘jokes’ to elicit laughter.  ‘Midnight Run’ also does something very rare – it makes profanity sound poetic.  Martin Brest didn’t put a foot wrong in shaping George Gallo’s script, an all-too rare coming together of the right director for the right script.  My jury’s still out, however, on whether or not the infamous censored-for-TV edit made more sense than the original.  (Those of you who read Empire magazine in its early days know what I’m talking about.)