Pride (2014) ***1/4

In theory, a good story is a good story, and whether it really happened shouldn’t affect whether it’s a good movie. But if you’d thought first-time screenwriter Stephen Beresford had simply invented a tale about a group of gay-rights activists who, all on their own, decided to raise money for striking rural miners, it’d have seemed rather unlikely and strange. The 1984 National Union of Mineworkers strike is well-remembered in Britain and were a marker of the changes that came to the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  But this Pride, which shares its title with a 2007 film about a Philadelphia swim team, is more likely to remind you of working-class underdog stories like The Full Monty and Billy Elliot than of a more overtly political film.

Beresford and director Matthew Warchus stick to the personal, showing the unlikely path by which a small group of London-based activists wound up in an out-of-the-way town in Wales. At first, it seems like the main character might be young, closeted Joe (George MacKay), but the other characters, especially loud-and-proud Mark (Ben Schnetzer), and spiky-haired Steph, the sole lesbian (Faye Marsay), get about equal attention. Despite plenty of humorous moments, the accent is on the personalities, not fish-out-of-water stereotypes. The men and women of the town exhibit the range of reactions you might expect, from deep hostility to unmitigated gratitude toward their unexpected benefactors. The ubiquitous Bill Nighy stands out as a man who seems deeply uncomfortable with all of this, yet remains unfailingly polite.

IMDB link

viewed 8/29/14 10 am at Ritz 5; posted 10/9/14

Labor Day (**3/4)

Some movies stand out for their plots, and some for their characters. This drama has a plot —a mother and son taken hostage by an escaped convict — that would tend to stand out, but what in fact makes the strongest impression is the character of Adele, played by Kate Winslet. Winslet has rarely played this kind of character. Adele is a fragile woman, certainly not the kind of woman who would cry out when a quietly insistent man (Josh Brolin) with a wound in his side coerces her into giving him a lift in a department store. This occurs in a small New England town in the year 1987, but a 1987 that seems very long ago, at least the way that director Jason Reitman has filmed it.

The story is not told from Adele’s viewpoint, though. Rather, adopting the approach of the Joyce Maynard novel, it is told as a coming-of-age story for her 13-year-old son Henry. Henry (Gattlin Griffith) is the sensitive, but mostly average, child, of a mother who, according to the narration of the adult Henry (Tobey McGuire), is not so much devastated by the absence of a husband as by the absence of love. Her ex-husband, not a man who knows how to deal with a fragile woman, or a sensitive son, lives nearby with his new wife. And so, as if ordered up for the purpose, the convict shows up to provide a life lesson for the boy and inspiration for the mother. Yes, the man ties them up, but then he cooks for them and cleans up. Of his incarceration, he says, there is more to the story. We learn the truth in a clever way, but if Adele ever asks, we do not see it. The story is told like poetry, prettily, but my non-poetic self asks, Why does she not ask? Why does a man who’s served most of his sentence break out of jail?

I’m of two minds about the use of the present-day narrator. On the one hand, the device provides adult perspective to the confusion of childhood and a voice to an inarticulate character. On the other, as a literary, rather than a cinematic, device, the interruption of the disembodied voice can rob a story of a certain immediacy, and allow us to forget that the present we experience was conditional, not pre-ordained. And it’s a slight-of-hand, placing events decades apart together, pushing the past and present together when in real life memories fade and people continue to chance. The poetic ending of this movie, along with the tough-to-believe plot, pushes it slightly too far into Nicholas Sparks territory. Of course, many people like Nicholas Sparks, the author of Dear John, The Notebook, etc., and if you’re one of them, you’ll probably like this movie also.

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viewed 10/25/13 8:00 pm at Prince Music Theater; scheduled to post 11/8/13; posted 1/31/14

The Wolf of Wall Street (**1/2)

Martin Scorsese would seem to be the ideal person to tell the story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo de Caprio). In movies like Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Aviator, he’s told stories of morally compromised men clawing their way to the top, often to be brought down by their enemies, or by their own flaws. Belfort, whose memoir was a basis for the film, was a New York stockbroker. Right in the opening voiceover, Belfort tells us about the drugs he takes, the prostitutes he sleeps with (five a week!), and the laws he breaks. Then we flash back to 1987, where, on his very first day of work, the younger version of Belfort (who looks the same as the older version) is taken out to lunch by his boss (Matthew McConaughey). The boss tells him two things: first, the goal is not to help clients, but to earn commissions; second, Jordan should masturbate more. Virtually every character in this movie is like this. No one pretends to have ethics, or inhibitions. Everyone curses, to the point where it seems unnatural. But the market is about to crash, and soon Belfort is out of a job.

So he settles for selling penny stocks out of an office on Long Island. An early scene has him, overdressed in a slick suit, delivering a silver-tongued stream of bullshit that leaves his motley coworkers slack-jawed, his target begging to invest, and, I think, the moviegoer quite entertained. Already, however, the rest of the story — the formation of his own brokerage, the wealth that quickly follows, the big house, the expensive car, the cheating (in every sense) — can be anticipated. As a character, Belfort is nearly fully formed. Unlike, say, Goodfellas, the plot moves quickly from struggle to excess. With a dorky-looking Jonah Hill as his equally amoral second-in-command, he trains a small army of white males to deliver similar spiels to the wealthy. Cue montages of vulgarity-laden speeches, strippers in the office, etc. Only vague threats of an FBI investigation and, one presumes, STDs, threaten conflict. The movie is also different from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, still probably the most famous movie about the financial industry, although at one point another character compares Belfort to Wall Street’s anti-hero, Gordon Gekko. Gekko, of course, is famous for the line, “Greed is good.” One gets the feeling here than Belfort has not even thought about the question. In his cinematic incarnation, he is a man of drive and desire, and nothing more.

What makes Gekko into an archetype is not simply saying it, but meaning it. We see how he justifies what others see as villainy. I think every powerful person needs such an internal justification. Without that element, this story feels empty. Certainly, Scorsese tells it with panache, and he and screenwriter Terence Winter, whose credits include numerous episodes of Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos, give the movie a lighter, more comedic tone than I’d expected. I would almost call the movie a comedy, except that it’s three hours, and it’s not funny for three hours. (The comedic centerpiece, in which Belfort battles some vintage Quaaludes, is a ten-minute sequence that’s funny for five.) When Belfort has a worthy adversary, like the FBI agent played by Kyle Chandler, or, in a couple of scenes, his wife (Margot Robbie), it’s at its best. But, as for the rest, even if there’s no one better at depicting vulgar, misogynistic excess than Scorsese, the excess is…excessive.

IMDb link

viewed 1/2/14 6:30 pm and posted 1/7/14

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (**1/2)

This everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sequel comes nine years after its predecessor, so the most impressive thing about it might be that it got made with the cast members (and director Adam McKay) intact. It’s the tail end of the disco era, and the dawn of the 24-news era. Thus, rather than parodying local news and the introduction of women into the newsroom, it features Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy working for an upstart operation called GNN (Global News Network). Ron thinks 24-hour news is “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” but a paycheck’s a paycheck. Also on board are his pals: the playboy Brian (Paul Rudd), the racist/sexist Champ (David Koechner), and the simple-minded Brick (Steve Carrell). Ron’s nemesis turned spouse (Christina Applegate) is not on board, but is in the movie. They have a son.

McKay and Ferrell’s schtick is to let the jokes fly and see what sticks, with the force of the delivery sometimes compensating for half-funny lines, sometimes merely emphasizing the lame ones. “Who the hell is Julius Caesar?…I don’t follow the NBA,” is the kind of exchange that half the audience will be amused at, and half will groan at. I’m sure the people who like the movie will disagree about which lines worked and which fell flat. One thing I found incredibly tedious was an entire subplot involving Ron’s new boss, who is, somewhat implausibly, a 30ish black woman (Meagan Good). Besides creating another female role, the character seems mostly to exist to provide an excuse for lame jokes about race. Time was when plain old racist jokes were acceptable; the modern substitute is to make jokes about racists. This itself became tiresome years ago. Maybe because the movie takes place in the early 1980s (the hits-laden soundtrack keeps reminding us) it seemed somehow fresh to have a scene with Burgundy, invited by the boss to dinner, trotting out “jive talk” in an effort to seem “hip” and “down with it,” but in fact it was as painful to look at as all the quoted phrases I just used.

The original Anchorman lacked a real satirical bite but was pretty funny. This sequel, with a better satirical target, since the 24-hour news culture is still very much with us, still mostly lacks satirical bite. Burgundy is the Inspector Clouseau of the news world, spontaneously or accidentally coming up with most of the dubious innovations of the post-cable TV news world — traffic chases on camera, Fox-News-style superpatriotism, focus on celebrities, etc. But beyond that the movie doesn’t have anything to say about those developments. It is simply a silly movie.

Now, being silly is okay. Interrupting the story with the odd fantasy sequence can be fun. And if the main characters are caricatures of womanizers, jerks, and idiots, I’m okay with that, too. But then, don’t show me that for 90 minutes and then follow up with a soppy, sentimental conclusion that asks me to have a big soft spot for these people, one that has them suddenly, and unconvincingly, developing a conscience (and/or a brain). And don’t have a big climax, an overblown successor to the West-Side Story style gang fight in the original, that is much more impressive for its guest-star roster than its humor quotient.

McKay and Ferrell are not going through the motions here. Instead, it seems like they may have tried too hard. If you’re into the kind of humor in the first Anchorman, you’ll probably laugh at something or other here. I’d bet there are more punch lines per minute than in almost any other comedy in recent memory (except maybe toward the end). But I’d also bet that, for most people, a lower percentage of them land.

IMDB link

viewed 12/4/13 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and posted 12/18/13 (revised 12/26/13)

Let the Fire Burn (***3/4)

Anyone who lived in the Philadelphia area in the mid-1980s will remember the police confrontation with the radical group MOVE on May 13, 1985, that resulted in the deaths of eleven group members, including children, and an out-of-control fire that destroyed multiple city blocks in the West Philly neighborhood. Those who don’t remember may find even more bewildering the sequence of events that resulted in such a calamity. This documentary tells the story extremely well using, exclusively, period footage, primarily local news coverage, film of the hearings held by the city in the months after the confrontation, and the videotaped deposition of thirteen-year-old Michael Moses Ward, who had been living in MOVE house with his mother and survived the conflagration.

Told sequentially, the film provides some of the history of MOVE (not an acronym), which formed in the early 1970s. Under the guidance of spiritual leader John Africa (whose followers adopted the same last name), the group espoused an anti-authority, pro-self sufficiency philosophy and rejected most modern technology, though not autos. To many people, they just seemed dirty and odd. To their neighbors, they were a nuisance. To the police, they represented a threat, and a 1978 confrontation with the group left one officer dead, one MOVE member beaten on camera, and the MOVE “compound” destroyed.

After that, the group relocated to a row house where the 1985 confrontation took place. The last two thirds of the film recount that fateful event, interspersing the news footage with the later testimony in a way that seems as clear as possible and fair to all sides. Today, the MOVE fiasco is a symbol of a decade when the city had reached a low point. It’s still possible to argue about the extent MOVE was to blame and how the city should have handled the group and the plan to evict it from the West Philly row house. It’s unclear what lessons are to be drawn from it. Still, watching it occur is like watching a suspense thriller, albeit a depressing one.

A sad footnote that occurred after the film was complete was the death of Ward, also known as Birdie Africa, in September 2013.

IMDb link

viewed 11/7/13 7:30 pm at Ritz Bourse and posted 11/7/13

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (***)

The Butler is “inspired by” the true story of Gene Allen, whose story was briefly told in a Washington Post article written just after the 2008 election won by Barack Obama. Forest Whitaker plays a character called Cecil Gaines, who, like Allen, labors for decades in the White House, where the serving staff, in contrast to everyone else, have traditionally been black. Rather than chronicling the behind-the-scenes challenges of preparing for state dinners and such, Daniels uses this melodrama as a vehicle for exploring the history of the civil rights movement.

Screenwriter Danny Strong penned the contemporary political dramas Recount and Game Change, which managed to create an air of uncertainty about outcomes that, presumably, were known by the audience. In contrast, this movie has the feel of a “great moments in history” docudrama, something to show young folks who might not know much about the Gandhi-inspired nonviolent protests of the early Civil Rights era, or the formation of the Black Panther Party years later. Starting with President Eisenhower (Robin Williams) and proceeding through the next several administrations, Gaines is shown overhearing one meaningful civil-rights related conversation and having one meaningful interaction with several of the Oval Office occupants, all played by name actors who look more like themselves than the leaders they’re playing, except maybe Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan. It is history as inevitable march of progress, though the re-creation of a Woolworth lunch counter sit-in is powerful and upsetting.

In the movie’s telling, the occupation of the title character is not so much a window into an unseen world as a representation of one side of the black experience. For Gaines, it represents the highest position a black man could reasonably hope to obtain and a source of dignity and unalloyed pride; although he recognizes the injustice of the glass ceiling that holds back men of his color, he sees nothing to be gained by the dangerous tactics employed by the Freedom Riders and other activists. The fictional character of his oldest son (David Oyelowo), who becomes one of those activists, is meant to embody the other side of the coin. For the son, a well-paid butler who talks to presidents is still just a modern version of the house slave. Daniels shows this conflict without imposing a strong viewpoint.

Daniels and Strong mix the history with family drama. Oprah Winfrey, in her first major acting role in 15 years, manages to make you forget she’s Oprah in playing Gaines’s wife. It’s a subplot, but the marital scenes are less programmatic than the historical ones. There’s something sad about a life story, because the subject always winds up dead or very old in the end. But, despite that and the discrimination portrayed, the movie is more uplifting than depressing, and, rather than a instructional video, it comes off like a pretty good yarn.

IMDb link

viewed 10/6/13 1:05 pm at Riverview and posted 10/7/13

Inequality for All (***1/4)

What An Inconvenient Truth was for Al Gore and global warming, this documentary by Jacob Kornbluth is for Robert Reich, labor secretary under Bill Clinton, and US income inequality. It’s similarly built around a lecture series, given by Reich to his students at University of California, Berkeley. (The movie also credits Reich’s book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, as a source.) Additional interview segments supplement the lecture, some with Reich, others with winners and losers in the new economy. And there is a little of Reich’s own story, from his early friendship with fellow Rhodes scholar Clinton to his childhood experiences being bullied because of his lack of height. Reich has incorporated his lack of stature into his act. When accepting his cabinet position, he said he had already known he was on Clinton’s “short list.”


Reich uses a plethora of statistics to show how wealth concentration has changed over time in the United States, frequently employing a suspension bridge to symbolize the changes. The peaks of the bridge represent the years 1928 and 2007, years preceding economic collapse — in each case, wealth disparities had reached new heights. He uses the statistics to correlate the current rich-get-richer trend to declines in union participation, the growth of the banking industry, and rising college tuition rates. Thus, although in his lecture he promises to challenge the assumptions of conservatives and liberals, most of his argument falls comfortably along liberal lines. Clips of Jon Stewart humorously making Reich’s points also reinforce that image.

Here the comparison with global warming is instructive. The worst effects of climate change are yet to come, so it is relatively easy to deny. But increasing income disparity over the last 30 years is nearly undeniable. Thus the argument becomes whether we should care. There is are fairness arguments in either direction, but primarily Reich is saying that income inequality is not merely unfair, but that it weakens the economy by making it more difficult for the middle class to thrive; since consumer spending is 70% of the economy, a middle class with no money to spend cannot buy the goods and services it generates. Besides Reich, the best spokesperson for this point of view is the Nick Hanauer, owner of a pillow company. Hanauer all but states that his eight-figure income is more than he deserves; he has so much that he doesn’t know what to do with it. Most of it is not use to create jobs, but invested in funds that he knows little about. Of course, those resistant to Reich’s argument might still claim that these funds create jobs indirectly, and while Reich may be correct in the long term about inequality hurting the economy — I think he is — in the short and medium term it is possible for the overall economy to grow even though those with below-median incomes get poorer. This I think the fairness argument needs to be made, too. Arguably, this is done indirectly. Hanauer and Warren Buffett, who appears briefly, are contrasted with other interviewees who are struggling to make ends meet in the new economy. Many of them work in the same kinds of jobs that were around in the 1970s, but the jobs now pay less in real dollars.

 

One thing Reich doesn’t tackle is the political movements behind these changes or the cultural landscape that may have lent public support to policies he deplores. About his onetime boss, Clinton, his take is basically, we did a lot, but not enough to reverse the long-term trends. By his own account, he was something like a broken record in bringing up the issue of inequality at every opportunity. Politics may explain why, in
that in the aftermath of the economic downturn little has been done to reverse inequality (the Affordable Care Act conceivably could help). No doubt this disappoints Reich, but his ideas have found some expression in the Occupy movement of 2011 and have at least received broader dissemination. the last third of the movie depicts the Occupy protesters and generally exhorts its audience to go forth and change things. It’s more general and less compelling than the first half of the film. But for someone who wants the facts about inequality, and Reich’s argument, in distilled form, this movie presents it clearly, and Reich is an engaging personality.

 

 

IMDb link

viewed 10/16/13 7:10 at Ritz 5 and posted 10/17; revised 10/19

Jobs (***)

The late Steve Jobs was a classic rags-to-riches success story, an avatar of the tech revolution, and a peculiar, particular individual. This helped make Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography a fascinating read and a runaway bestseller, and it makes him a good film character. This biopic begins with a graying Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) introducing the product, the iPod, that assured that Apple Computer would remain an important company in the new century. However, the rest of the film is set earlier, with Jobs as the scrappy underdog. Director Joshua Michael Stern skips over his childhood and how Jobs’s father’s inspired his interest in technology (and the epiphany he had at age 12 when he realized he was smarter than his old man), or how he met Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. Instead, it begins in 1974. The 1960s were over, but Jobs turned on, tuned in (to Dylan, especially), and dropped out of Reed College while continuing to audit courses he liked, such as one in typography that helped inspired his love of good design.

In nearly every respect, Jobs is a biopic that Jobs would find quite flattering. Even his tantrums seem in service of creating a better product, and ditto his early attempts to deny the paternity of his out-of-wedlock daughter. You can almost hear him saying How can I change the future of personal computing if I have to deal with a kid? And you’ll sort of agree. Likewise, it’s impossible to see Jobs’s foes at Apple — primarily Board Chairman Arthur Rock (J. K. Simmons) and 1980s CEO John Scully (Mathew Modine) — as anything but folks who just don’t get it. Jobs’s later success makes it difficult not to agree with that view, but Isaacson suggests that Jobs’s immaturity had some role in his eventual fallout with the board and makes it at least possible to question his choices. The financial success of Microsoft makes it clear that, as a business model, there was another path rather than the high-control, perfectionist model Jobs espoused. However, the film does bring across that financial success, while important, was not what drove him.

As a longtime Mac user, I may be biased, but despite the somewhat two-dimensional portrait of its subject, the Apple story is a good story. (Other aspects of Job’s life, like his role in starting Pixar Animation Studios, are not mentioned, or de-emphasized.) The film has the chronology about right, Kutcher is made to look uncannily like Jobs and, though I have not seen Jobs on film that much, he seemed to have his mannerisms down pat. (Josh Gad seemed well case as Wozniak.) Kutcher has a cockiness about him that works in the part. Aaron Sorkin is reportedly working on a film adaptation of Isaacson’s book, and there’s an obvious parallel between the forceful personalities of Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, subject of the Sorkin-penned The Social Network. I expect Sorkin’s version of the story to better highlight Job’s difficult side, or present his story with more complexity. I expect it to have quicker pacing and more snappy dialogue; this one’s most memorable line for me came when Jobs threatens Bill Gates on the phone after learning that Microsoft planned to release an operating system — Windows — that imitated many features of the Mac interface. Like the products Jobs created, Jobs has most of the rough edges smoothed out, but is handsome to look at.

IMDb link

viewed 8/14/13 at AMC Cherry Hill [PFS screening] and posted 8/17/13

Computer Chess (**1/2)

I like low-budget films that make a virtue of necessity, and this one does that. Setting his story almost entirely in a middle-budget hotel, Andrew Bujalski follows a group of computer programmers pitting their skills against each other in a machine-on-machine tournament. Also, it’s 1982, 15 years before IBM’s Deep Blue would defeat champion Garry Kasparov in a match, and around the same length of time before geek was used as a compliment. The lone female programmer is a novelty.

Bujalski used old video equipment to make the film in black and white and even includes what look like technical glitches. It somewhat resembles an old shot-on-video documentary, though without actual interview segments and with brief flashbacks and other things a documentary wouldn’t have. So, it’s a pretty clever film that vividly recalls the pre-Internet era of technology. Ostensibly, it’s a comedy, but it wasn’t funny enough that I heard laughter in the audience I saw it with. About the most chuckle-producing incident is a college kid’s awkward encounter with a middle-aged couple attending some kind of New Age-y spiritual retreat being held simultaneously with the tournament. When the wife says that the 64 squares on a chess board is so limiting, he points out that, actually, the number of possible plays it allows is more than 10 to the 120th power.

The college kid is perhaps the most prominent character, along with an older programmer who hasn’t reserved a room and spends his evenings trying to find somewhere to sleep. However, no character is on screen more than 25 minutes or so. (It’s doubtful you’ll recognize any of the actors either, which further helps this seem like an old film that someone found.) The movie is so faithful to its premise that in fact it seems only about as interesting as it would have been were it truly a 30-year-old documentary from an old convention. It’s of little consequence who wins the tournament and there are no other major storylines. So, while the movie was original, it left me wanting a little more.

IMDb link

viewed 7/31/13 7:15 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 7/31/13

Twenty Feet from Stardom (***)

Something like a companion piece to Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary about the unheralded musicians who backed up 1960s hits by the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Miracles, the Temptations, and other stars, this shines a spotlight on the backup singers of American popular music, mostly the rock and R&B of the 1960s–'80s. With DIY home-recording equipment, Auto-Tune, and cash-strapped record companies, these are tougher times for backups, but some can still make careers of it.

Movies like this can sometimes be on the dull side because they don’t get beyond testimonies to the wonderfulness of their subjects. The first half has some of that, with Bruce Springsteen (who married his back-up singer), Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, and Sheryl Crow (a former back-up singer) among those testifying. Sting does too, but we actually get to see him working in the studio with Lisa Fischer, too. Fischer is one of the stars of the second half of the film, which is built around featurettes about a few of the women, but particularly in terms of their efforts at building solo careers. Among the most successful has been Darlene Love, still singing into her 70s and inducted, as a solo artist, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then there is Merry Clayton, the powerhouse female voice in the Rolling Stones hit “Gimme Shelter,” whose solo efforts in the 1970s met with only modest success. There is the relatively young Judith Hill, a songwriter who worries that too many backup gigs will derail her efforts to be seen as a solo artist. And there is Fischer, who had a moment of Grammy-winning stardom in the 1980s but professes to be happier as, most prominently, the Rolling Stones’ favorite backup singer on tour.

The film is not as revelatory as Standing in the Shadows; a couple of the women (and, with a few exceptions, the subjects are women) speak of their discomfort at being seen, on stage, as sex objects more than performers, but not that much behind-the-scenes dirt gets dished. (That Ike Turner saw himself as a pimp and his backup dancers as “hos” hardly counts as dirt at this late date.) Nor is there a ton of technical information about how back-ups are utilized in the recording process. But, for those with an interest in pop music, especially pre-1990 rock, the movie should be entertaining. I was especially taken with old clips of an impossibly young David Bowie, of George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh, and of Ray Charles exuberantly singing on television with the Raylettes, who included Clayton.

IMDb link

viewed 7/3/13 7:25 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/3/13

No (***)

Did Ronald Reagan’s economic policies win him a landslide reelection in 1984, or was it his “Morning in America” ad campaign? Did Barack Obama win in 2008 because of his plans to reform health care or because of all those indelible “Hope” posters and message of “change”? Probably the answer to these questions is, some of each, but it’s accepted wisdom that even the best ideas need to be sold, even if the idea is overturning a dictator. This movie stars Gael Garcia Bernal as a hotshot young ad exec tapped to encourage his fellow Chileans to turn out Augusto Pinochet in a referendum held in October 1988. Pinochet had deposed the democratically elected Salvador Allende in a 1973 coup but retained support among much of the middle class.


By 1988, international pressure had led the government to follow through on plans for a plebiscite that would say “yes” or “no” to eight more years of Pinochet. Each side would, for one month, present a series of 15-minute ads on television. This movie follows Bernal’s character as he pushes for an upbeat campaign modeled after the ones he’d done for soft drinks and other products, one that focuses less on the atrocities committed by the dictatorship and more on the idea of a happy future for all.

While the pithy title might suggest a breezy comedy, and there are a few funny moments, the approach is somewhat like a docudrama. The virtual absence of a music score contributes to this. I liked the lack of glibness. The movie shows the debates over strategy in what seems to be a realistic way. Though the campaign is upbeat, discussions of the “disappeared” also make their way onto the air. The characters are on the flat side. The adman’s relationships with his son and ex(or estranged?)-wife are without emotional weight. (I thought the wife was his sister until halfway through the movie, and the boy barely has any lines.) Somewhat better is his relationship with his boss, who favors the Pinochet side. Another thing I liked was that the film does not entirely demonize Pinochet, showing the government’s repressive side while showing that many Chileans welcomed the stability Pinochet had brought. This is not the first place to look for an understanding of Chile or the legacy of Pinochet, but it’s decent on its own terms.

IMDb link

viewed 3/27/13 7:10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 3/27/13

Barbara (***1/2)

Say “East Germany” to someone and it sounds nearly quaint, like other terms —Y2k, say — that seem in retrospect to have been obviously ephemeral. Other films I’ve seen set in the former German Democratic Republic — Goodbye Lenin,  The Lives of Others, and Beloved Berlin Wall — seem to reinforce that by taking place on the cusp of change, in Berlin. They rely on the fall of the Berlin Wall to provide a happy ending and a dramatic plot point. But, of course, the astonishing events of 1989 would not have been obvious until close to when they happened. This suspenseful drama is set in a rural area and takes place much earlier, in 1982. Its title character (Nina Hoss) is a doctor whose arrival in a remote town stirs the curiosity of her male colleague (Ronald Zehrfeld).

Barbara’s past, and the reason she has left Berlin, are mysterious. Barbara is a reserved person, by nature as much as by necessity, one senses. It would be difficult to make a film about a place like East Germany that does not reflect the near total control of the state over the everyday lives of its citizens. But the film reflects not only the most dramatic aspects of state oppression, but the efforts of decent people to live their lives in ordinary ways. A major subplot concerns a young woman forced into a work camp, but in some ways a scene in which Barbara’s apartment is searched is more unsettling. As government functionaries calmly search the meager space for contraband, Barbara seems almost equally calm (though she is hiding something, and so likely not); their visit is no surprise at all.

Revelations of both character and story unfold in ways that make the quiet film more absorbing as it goes along. Difficult choices lie at the heart of the drama. I wanted someone to be able to tell these people that if they could just hang on for a few years, they’d be fine. But this movie is a reminder that the future is neither assured nor predictable.

IMDb link

viewed 10/24/12 7:10 pm [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and reviewed 10/25/12–3/7/13

Rock of Ages (**)

Somewhere there must be rock music fans, folks who likely came of age in the era of Reagan, who do not cherish the age of “classic rock,” or the 1990s grunge-rock explosion, but to that in-between era swept aside by grunge and its cousins. Sure, in this time, the 1980s, there were green shoots of “alternative” rock — R.E.M., the Replacements, even early U2 —but mainstream rock fans, and the characters in this movie —were hearing other sounds. I speak of Journey, and Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi, of course, but also second-tier acts such as Extreme (“More Than Words”), Poison (“Every Rose Has Its Thorn”), and Night Ranger (“Sister Christian”). It was rock at its most theatrical, thus, in that sense, perfect for a    musical. Playwright Chris D’Arienzo gets a screenplay credit in Hollywood’s version of his Broadway hit.

The plot is typical: midwestern girl (Julianne Hough) comes to Los Angeles to make it as a singer, meets like-minded boy, settles for being a club waitress. Yep, same plot as Burlesque, with different tunes. Oh, it’s fun to see Alec Baldwin as the hippie-era refugee running the club, with Russell Brand as his equally hairy sidekick. And Tom Cruise certainly embodies the stereotypically decadent rock star, Stacee Jaxx, he plays. Catherine Zeta-Jones is the mayor’s (Bryan Cranston) wife, a Tipper Gore caricature crusading against heavy metal. Malin Åkerman is a big-haired Rolling Stone reporter. Mary J. Blige, who covers Pat Benatar, is a strip-club owner. They all sing these bombastic songs (“Wanted Dead or Alive,” “I Want to Know What Love Is,” even, egads, “We Built This City”), sometimes as Glee-style medleys, usually trading off vocals. “Sister Christian” is a spontaneous sing-off among bus passengers. It’s mind-bogglingly earnest. But my favorite part might have been when the boy shyly plays the girl the song he supposedly just wrote, and it turns out to be Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” after which the girl says, “I can’t believe you wrote that!” Indeed.

Hairspray’s Adam Shankman directs with a similar flair, making 1980s L.A., like his 1960s Baltimore, a little shinier and smoother than the real thing. The pacing is also fine, but other than the idea of employing famous actors to sing straightforward versions of 1980s rock (no pop or R&B), there is nothing original here. (Reprising the stage version’s incorporation of characters addressing the audience might have been a novelty.) The first half is cheesy and rarely witty, although Brand has a good line or two, like one about “hibernating in Margaret Thatcher’s bumhole.” The second half remains cheesy, but at this point seems to be self-consciously so, as if it’s become aware of how dumb it is. I heard the guy behind me describe it after as “so bad it’s good.” My guess is that if you are fond of the songs, you’ll feel the same. If not, this will seem pretty tedious.

IMDb link

viewed 5/30/12 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 5/31–7/3/12

The Iron Lady (***)

This is perhaps two thirds of a very good biopic about the life of Margaret Thatcher, British counterpart to Ronald Reagan, yet his temperamental opposite. Unfortunately, the employment of a mostly useless framing device — Thatcher (Meryl Streep) spends half a dozen segments in the near-present day as she struggles with dementia and has conversations with her late husband (Jim Broadbent)—mars it. Not only does it rob the narrative of some momentum with a storyline that emphasizes the artificial nature of the medium—how could screenwriter Abi Morgan (Shame), or anyone, know that Ms. Thatcher is turning on her radio and other noisy appliances to drown out the sound of the imagined husband she’s bickering with?—but it also uses up time that would have better spent, say, showing us how a grocer’s daughter came to such firm conservative beliefs that, even today, she is a controversial figure in her hometown in the English Midlands. Or how young Margaret Roberts became so determined to break into the nearly uniformly male field of electoral politics in the 1950s. (Director Phyllida Lloyd depicts some of the sexism that greeted her efforts, but wisely doesn’t make it the main focus; the visual statement of the pearl-necklace-wearing Thatcher among a sea of grey suits makes its own statement.)

Other than Thatcher’s landmark achievements as 1980s prime minister—the taming of the trade unions and the victory in the Falklands War—the film elides over her specific political policies, not to mention her four years as opposition leader, in favor of emphasizing her forcefulness and disinclination to yield. (The vehement opposition to her is also depicted without the film seeming to take any position on whether it was justified.) Indeed, American Tea Party sympathizers will find her an appealing heroine, and even firm liberals may fantasize about a President Obama who’s as unwilling to compromise.

Streep, of course, is entirely convincing; another actress, Alexandra Roach, plays Roberts/Thatcher as a college student, newlywed, and 1950s candidate for a seat in parliament. At least the makeup artistry that makes Streep look 80 can be admired. Broadbent is a fine actor, but not one who can be made to look young. So we see Denis Thatcher in the earliest scenes played by another actor; then he seems to age about 40 years to Thatcher’s 20. Oddly, Broadbent appears more as a ghost than in the scenes when Denis is alive. Although Denis was ten years the senior of Margaret and an archconservative, his possible role in shaping her political views is not explored.

For some reason, too many biographies of current or recent figures (e.g., J. Edgar) seem to insist on some sort of flashback structure so that the story is told from a present-day perspective. Yet less frequently is this done for those who died long ago. A Dangerous Method, for example, is perfectly content to dispense with the last 40 years of Carl Jung’s life in a brief epilogue. This would have done just fine to sum up the post-office life of Lady Thatcher. As it is, depicting the Iron Lady in her doddering dotage, possibly lamenting neglecting her husband and children, and the grandchildren off in South Africa, would seem to sentimentalize a woman for whom sentimentality would seem wholly inappropriate.

IMDb link

viewed 1/26/12 7:35 pm at Ritz Five and reviewed 1/30/12

Beloved Berlin Wall (***1/4)

Sure East Germany was a ruthless police state, but there were things there to be nostalgic about, like the way a West German woman living near a checkpoint could cross into East Berlin and get some very fairly priced groceries. So it is that the perky heroine (Felicitas Woll) of this unusual romantic comedy winds up spilling her packages in view of one of the East German guards (Maxim Mehmet), who quickly descends his tower and comes to her aid.

Unlike an ordinary courtship, theirs is one of carefully arranged meetings and the frisson of danger. A single woman frequenting East Berlin could be a spy, could she not? It is 1989, and the democratic contagion in Poland and Hungary would soon spread west, but meanwhile the Stasi still went about its business. This is all explored with a good deal of cuteness, not entirely different from that in Goodbye, Lenin, the popular film that also displayed a certain kind of nostalgia about the communist era. But when someone does discover the whole affair, there is a stronger reminder of the truly nefarious nature of a totalitarian state. Yet the tone manages to stay light, and the last third of the film becomes a nearly farcical comedy of mistaken identities, questioned loyalties, and bureaucratic bumbling. Bordering on the contrived, it’s kind of clever and charming too.

IMDB link

viewed 4/12/11 at Ritz East [Cinefest 2011 screening] and reviewed 4/12/11

Waking Sleeping Beauty (***)

The young adults who grew up on Disney films like The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Toy Story may not realize that there was a time when it looked like the animation studio founded by the late Walt was threatening to fade into irrelevance. Movies like The Fox and the Hound (1981) scarcely seemed on par with classics like Snow White and held little appeal outside the youngest viewers. An attempt at something darker, The Black Cauldron (1985), alienated that same demographic and lost money. This documentary unearths vintage footage from the period after that to tell the story of the Disney Animation Studio’s renaissance. In this period, the studio expanded its output, moved into the computer animation that now dominates, and released several of the most successful animated films of all time.

IMDB link

viewed 3/31/10 at Prince Music Theater [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/30/10

Hot Tub Time Machine (**1/2)

It’s back to the year after Back to the Future came out (1986) in this should-be winner of a truth-in-titling award. No awards for originality, though. It superficially reproduces the foursome in The Hangover: the regular guy (John Cusack), who’s been dumped by his girlfriend; the wild-and-crazy one (Rob Corddry), who’s also a possibly suicidal alcoholic; the pussy-whipped husband (Craig Robinson), who we know is pussy-whipped solely because—horrors!—he’s taken his wife’s last name; and the socially inept one, who’s also the regular guy’s young nephew. The vibe the movie has is more like that of Wild Hogs, though—middle-aged dudes trying to recapture their fading youth as a bunch of crazy shit happens. The nephew character maybe helps with the teen demographic.

But obviously the movie that this most directly lifts from is Back to the Future, even to the point of having that film’s dad, Crispin Glover, play a surly bellhop whose loss of an arm becomes the subject of a running gag. (The setting is a ski lodge.) And there’s a bit where one character is sarcastically called “McFly.” So let us compare. First things is, BTtF uses a crazy inventor’s machine to transport Marty McFly back to a particular day in 1955, and precisely follows its own logic in getting him back to 1985. The time-travel premise here’s more sloppily executed. The three grown men turn into their younger selves (but we see the same actors, except when they look in mirrors), so it makes no sense that the nephew looks the same. Presumably they have thus already altered the future, so their efforts to reenact the night as it originally happened (so as not to do so) are doomed. And neither the faulty hot tub, the beverage that spills on it, nor the nonsensical Chevy Chase cameo in any way explain why they go back in time, or why to that day, except that the plot requires it.

Look, I know it’s a comedy, not a sci-fi film, and a certain amount of suspension-of-disbelief is warranted. But still, one suspects the title predated the entire script, and that little time was spent on how the hot tub would actually be a time machine. And a comedy should be allowed to violate the rules of physics, but BttF is brilliant because it doesn’t violate the rules it sets up for itself. As with the nephew staying the same age, this movie does it several times. Internal logic makes every thing else about BttF seem cleverer.

Though sometimes funny, this isn’t so clever and has too many jokes about (and sights of) bodily fluids and homosexual panic (the modern substitute for jokes about actual homosexuals). A little better are the inevitable ones about being able to predict the future, themselves predictable but fun. And when, just like Marty McFly, the nephew gets to meet his own parents, his discovery that his mom was a woman of…easy virtue is nearly inspired. Also just like Marty, the husband plays in a band and introduces folks to the sounds of the future—more successfully, but less humorously.

If you're the right age, the sights and sounds of overproduced music and questionable fashion choices should bring a tinge of nostalgia. Otherwise, this would suffice as a lightweight time-waster should it happen to appear on cable one day.

IMDB link

viewed 3/2/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/26/10

Art & Copy (***)

It’s no coincidence that American advertisers started rewarding themselves in 1959, when the first Clios were presented. The year approximately represents the dawn of the new era of advertising this documentary chronicles. Two years earlier, Vance Packard had published his exposé The Hidden Persuaders, and one year earlier the United States Congress had banned subliminal advertising amid public hysteria. The next year Volkswagen and its agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, would introduce the successful and influential “Think Small” campaign.

Similarly highlighted in the TV show Mad Men, this was an era in which creative copywriters would become almost as celebrated as CEOs, and in which an ad could shape the product as well as the other way around. (An ad agency first suggested putting a logo on Braniff jet planes.) It was an era in which products, and not just fashions, became increasingly seen as lifestyle choices rather than practical ones, and campaigns focuses as much on creating an image as touting practical virtues of products. Thus, Apple’s famous “1984” ad, rather than touting the Macintosh computer’s ease of use, implied that buying one was tantamount to striking a blow against totalitarianism. Even Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign’s centerpiece was not lower taxes or a robust foreign policy but rather the vague but effective slogan “Morning in America,” though the other things got mentioned.

Whether this mode of advertising represented a true advance for consumers over traditional, dull snake-oil peddling is a question hinted at, but not really touched on, in this mostly celebratory film. Instead, director Doug Pray highlights and interviews the men and women who were the creative forces behind some of the landmark ad campaigns of the last 40-something years, including the self-aggrandizing George Lois, who coined the “I Want My MTV campaign,” Mary Wells, who put paint on jets, and Lee Clow, who helped birth the Apple ads and the Energizer bunny. While most advertising is dull and uninspiring, the work of these masters is, Pray tells us, worth celebrating. Whether or not this is true, this will be of worth to those interested in the creative process and its practitioners.

IMDB link

reviewed 11/10/09

Adventureland (***1/2)

There’s seemingly so little to this that I almost have difficulty justifying my high rating. It’s basically boy meets girl while working at an aging amusement park (Pittsburgh’s Kennywood was both the real-life inspiration and where filming took place). If you’ve ever had a summer job that, for a time, provided much of the drama and friendships in your life, much of this mildly comic, altogether heartfelt story should seem familiar. About a third of the plot simply revolves around the various personalities surrounding young James (Jesse Eisenberg), who is hoping to head off to graduate school at Columbia in the fall of 1987.

The other two-thirds of the movie is about James’s relationship with Emily (Kristen Stewart), the cool (yet hot) girl who shares his taste for college rock favorites like the Replacements, Lou Reed, and Big Star (even as the park’s sound system blares Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” ad nauseum). The romantic overtures include weed, the once-ubiquitous mix tape, and the semi-reluctant confession—he is a virgin. She’s not, but the details remain an undisclosed secret that hangs over their blossoming friendship.

There’s nothing remarkably perceptive or novel about the way writer-director Greg Mottola portrays their connection, but it seems so accurately to convey the palpable crush of James’s desire (less so Em’s, although Stewart’s and the other “hot chick” role are more than simply props for the male characters). With this and The Squid and the Whale, Eisenberg carves a niche as the awkward-but-not-nerdy college boy, in each case a younger version of the director (or so I imagine here).

IMDB link

viewed 4/21/09 at Riverview

Waltz with Bashir (**3/4)

This movie that its creator, Ari Folman, calls an animated documentary, is nominated for an Academy Award, but not in the animation or documentary categories, but as foreign-language film. Folman is an Israeli who, spurred by a conversation with a friend, realizes that he’s almost completely forgotten the details of his service in the military during the country’s 1982 war with Lebanon. Interviews with men he knew on the battlefield are the basis for the film.

Animation frees Folman to use “footage” and “camera angles” that would not otherwise be available. (The animation, partly based on live footage, utilizes a realistic, but simplified, style). Flashbacks, dream sequences, and the creative use of music, too, make this seem more like a narrative film, although it’s organized around interview segments (mostly using the actual voices of Folman’s old comrades). Folman provides few details about his life before or after the war, and no geopolitical details about the war. It is possible to see the movie as anti-Israel, I suppose, in that Israelis are shown killing civilians. However, the clear point is that such atrocities are the natural by-product of war and the fear and confusion that it produces. The director is Everyman.

Even while realizing that Folman’s choices were deliberate, for me they made the film a little too abstract. Some sequences are quite striking, like the one in which a solider is separated from his unit and has to swim to avoid running into his enemy. But it if a movie is not going to provide a storyline in terms of why the war was being fought, then it should have given a more significant one in terms of its central character.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/1/09