Friday, October 1, 2021
Friday, February 1, 2019
Capernaum (***3/4)
The plot here, or more accurately the framework for the story, sounds more high-concept than the actual movie. Zain (Zain Al Rafeea) is a 12-year-old (he thinks; he has no birth certificate) who wants to sue his parents for giving birth to him. But the bulk of Nadine Labaki’s drama is a flashback.
We pretty quickly learn why Zain might have a grudge against his mother and father. They live in a run-down-apartment in Beirut where the several children sleep side-by-side on the floor. The ever-resourceful Zain is working multiple jobs, some illicit, and helping support the family; he helps his slightly younger sister hide her menstrual bleeding so his parents won’t marry her off.
It takes a long time before we find out how a poor kid found a lawyer for his case, about the circumstances under which he committed an assault, and what happens to the sister. It’s worth waiting to find out.
Labaki’s story is often heart-wrenching. She aims to draw attention to the lives of people living in desperate circumstances. The parents are not sympathetic or kind, but they too get their say. Zain’s relentless energy and toughness make him an appealing hero and keep the movie from seeming as bleak as it might be. It reminded me a little of Slumdog Millionaire, except that the prize Zain hopes for isn’t money, but only a chance to grow up.
IMDb link
viewed 2019-02-02 5:20 pm at Movies at Lake Worth
We pretty quickly learn why Zain might have a grudge against his mother and father. They live in a run-down-apartment in Beirut where the several children sleep side-by-side on the floor. The ever-resourceful Zain is working multiple jobs, some illicit, and helping support the family; he helps his slightly younger sister hide her menstrual bleeding so his parents won’t marry her off.
It takes a long time before we find out how a poor kid found a lawyer for his case, about the circumstances under which he committed an assault, and what happens to the sister. It’s worth waiting to find out.
Labaki’s story is often heart-wrenching. She aims to draw attention to the lives of people living in desperate circumstances. The parents are not sympathetic or kind, but they too get their say. Zain’s relentless energy and toughness make him an appealing hero and keep the movie from seeming as bleak as it might be. It reminded me a little of Slumdog Millionaire, except that the prize Zain hopes for isn’t money, but only a chance to grow up.
IMDb link
viewed 2019-02-02 5:20 pm at Movies at Lake Worth
Friday, January 18, 2019
Stan & Ollie (***)
This is a nice movie about apparently nice men doing nice things. Stan and Ollie, better known as Laurel and Hardy, were the premier Hollywood comedy team of the 1930s and early 1940s. (Abbott and Costello followed them.) Steve Coogan plays Stan Laurel, the British half of the team and writer of most of their material. Hardy, the larger and American half of the team, is played by an unrecognizable John C. Reilly with a giant assist from the makeup department. They and he are quite convincing.
The first part of the movie is set in 1937, which helps establish the backstory—a key contract dispute, Ollie’s courtship of his third wife (Shirley Henderson), the kind of movies they made—but the rest is set in 1953. They’ve agreed to a tour of the British Isles, hoping to persuade a London mogul to finance a Robin Hood spoof Laurel is working on. Slow attendance and lesser accommodations await them, but they re-create the old magic for the fans. I heard Reilly say in an interview that only on this trip did the two men really get to know each other. I saw only a mild suggestion that they had not already known each other well. Perhaps this point comes across more in the book on which the film is based. What is clear is the mutual respect and the familiarity of the relationship.
Resentments from the past, Hardy’s declining health, and the uncertain status of the film project provide controversies, but nothing here is apt to agitate the blood. The arrival of the two wives barely stirs the pot, although their contrasting styles is funny. Still, the knowledge that these men were at the end of their career and past the peak of their popularity, while still carrying on more than 25 years into their partnership, provides a feeling of both warmth and melancholy. The old comedy routines, lovingly excerpted by Coogan and Reilly, probably seem less funny 65 years later, but almost everything about the movie is warm and likeable.
IMDB link
viewed 2019-01-19 at Ritz 5 and posted 2019-01-21
The first part of the movie is set in 1937, which helps establish the backstory—a key contract dispute, Ollie’s courtship of his third wife (Shirley Henderson), the kind of movies they made—but the rest is set in 1953. They’ve agreed to a tour of the British Isles, hoping to persuade a London mogul to finance a Robin Hood spoof Laurel is working on. Slow attendance and lesser accommodations await them, but they re-create the old magic for the fans. I heard Reilly say in an interview that only on this trip did the two men really get to know each other. I saw only a mild suggestion that they had not already known each other well. Perhaps this point comes across more in the book on which the film is based. What is clear is the mutual respect and the familiarity of the relationship.
Resentments from the past, Hardy’s declining health, and the uncertain status of the film project provide controversies, but nothing here is apt to agitate the blood. The arrival of the two wives barely stirs the pot, although their contrasting styles is funny. Still, the knowledge that these men were at the end of their career and past the peak of their popularity, while still carrying on more than 25 years into their partnership, provides a feeling of both warmth and melancholy. The old comedy routines, lovingly excerpted by Coogan and Reilly, probably seem less funny 65 years later, but almost everything about the movie is warm and likeable.
IMDB link
viewed 2019-01-19 at Ritz 5 and posted 2019-01-21
Cold War (***)
The Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski has followed up Ida, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, with another black-and-white film set in the early communist period. It begins in 1949. Zula (Joanna Kulig, who played a singer in Ida) is a singer; Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) singles her out during an audition at the music school that employs him.
The brisk (1:29) film wastes little time in advancing the plot, and when it skips ahead two years, they are lovers, and she is a standout in the school’s choir. In an early scene, government officials lean on the heads of the school to add some patriotism to the folk-oriented repertoire. We next hear what might be the most beautiful Polish-language choral work about Stalin. So it seems like the rest of the movie might become a somewhat familiar story about artistic freedom, or secret resistance, or at least operating in the confines of a totalitarian ideology. But it is a love story.
It’s better not to give away the story, except to say that jazz, not choral music predominates in the second half of the movie, and that parts of it take place outside of Poland. Politics propels the plot and deeply affects the lives of the characters, but is only indirectly the subject of the film. Perhaps it is about how changing the political and cultural environment can change who we are. It seems to change the relationship of Zula and Wiktor in an unpredictable, uncertain way.
Despite skipping ahead nearly two decades, the story isn’t difficult to follow, but I didn’t feel I entirely understood the characters, or at least Zula. At one point, she becomes annoyed when she learns that Wiktor has embellished details of her past. I would have been no more or less surprised had she been amused by the same thing. While I like ambiguity, to me, Pawlikowski has allowed the viewer to fill in a little too much. Besides earning another Foreign Language Film nomination, this film has also been nominated for its direction and cinematography. Pawlikowski creates memorable images without seeming showy. I liked the music, too. However, while I can speculate about why Zula feels the way she does, or the explanation for the definitive ending, I think many viewers will have wanted just a little more information to work with.
IMDB link
viewed 1/26/19 5:10 pm at Ritz East; posted 1/27/19
The brisk (1:29) film wastes little time in advancing the plot, and when it skips ahead two years, they are lovers, and she is a standout in the school’s choir. In an early scene, government officials lean on the heads of the school to add some patriotism to the folk-oriented repertoire. We next hear what might be the most beautiful Polish-language choral work about Stalin. So it seems like the rest of the movie might become a somewhat familiar story about artistic freedom, or secret resistance, or at least operating in the confines of a totalitarian ideology. But it is a love story.
It’s better not to give away the story, except to say that jazz, not choral music predominates in the second half of the movie, and that parts of it take place outside of Poland. Politics propels the plot and deeply affects the lives of the characters, but is only indirectly the subject of the film. Perhaps it is about how changing the political and cultural environment can change who we are. It seems to change the relationship of Zula and Wiktor in an unpredictable, uncertain way.
Despite skipping ahead nearly two decades, the story isn’t difficult to follow, but I didn’t feel I entirely understood the characters, or at least Zula. At one point, she becomes annoyed when she learns that Wiktor has embellished details of her past. I would have been no more or less surprised had she been amused by the same thing. While I like ambiguity, to me, Pawlikowski has allowed the viewer to fill in a little too much. Besides earning another Foreign Language Film nomination, this film has also been nominated for its direction and cinematography. Pawlikowski creates memorable images without seeming showy. I liked the music, too. However, while I can speculate about why Zula feels the way she does, or the explanation for the definitive ending, I think many viewers will have wanted just a little more information to work with.
IMDB link
viewed 1/26/19 5:10 pm at Ritz East; posted 1/27/19
Friday, January 22, 2016
45 Years (**3/4)
The famous William Faulker quote goes, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” In Andrew Haigh’s (Weekend) adaptation of a David Constantine short story, which takes place over the course of a week, two events bring the past forward with suddenness. One is the impending anniversary party of Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay); the other is news that the body of Geoff’s old girlfriend has been discovered, having been buried under snow for 50 years. This is a movie that starts out quietly (really—I missed some dialogue) and builds slowly, but even then to an understated, or even slight, conclusion.
The pleasures of the movie are in observing the couple, whose everyday dialogue reveals an intimacy that can only grow over a long period. The movie is essentially from her point of view, wondering if, after decades together, she really knows all there is to know about her husband, or whether that’s possible. And Rampling is always a welcome screen presence. But Courtenay is extremely affecting as the husband, just a few years older, but certainly, in multiple ways, more fragile.
IMDb link
viewed 1/18/16 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 1/18/16
The pleasures of the movie are in observing the couple, whose everyday dialogue reveals an intimacy that can only grow over a long period. The movie is essentially from her point of view, wondering if, after decades together, she really knows all there is to know about her husband, or whether that’s possible. And Rampling is always a welcome screen presence. But Courtenay is extremely affecting as the husband, just a few years older, but certainly, in multiple ways, more fragile.
IMDb link
viewed 1/18/16 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 1/18/16
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
The Big Short (***1/4)
This unusual adaptation of Michael Lewis’s nonfiction bestseller is about the financial industry, but really it can be thought of as a modern version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Except, imagine that instead of everyone being unwilling to say what everyone knows, everyone has been hearing the same thing so long that almost everyone actually believes it. “It” is, in this case, that housing prices never go down, only up. Even Michael Burry (Christian Bale), the Asperger-y hedge fund manager who seems most certain that the conventional wisdom is wrong, has a slight moment of doubt. The great thing about the film is not the way it explains things like collateralized debt obligations, or shorting, using such techniques as having Margot Robbie in a bathtub explaining them. No, the great thing is the way it portrays the behavior of complex societies.
Even as you know the financial collapse of 2008 is going to happen, you can see Burry and his fellow short-sellers — traders Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), Mark Baum (Steve Carrell), Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) — having to convince themselves that everyone can be that wrong, and facing enormous pressure to follow the crowd. The film is unusual, for one thing, in that none of these characters is the star. It’s an ensemble cast in an adaptation of a book that is actually telling three separate stories that are mostly unrelated, except for the common thread that these men —and this is a very male-dominated world — are making the same bet. Vennett is the seller of the bonds Carrell wants his New York investment group to buy, but both of them stand to make a fortune from calamity, and both are having to fight their own employers — big investment banks like Morgan Stanley — in order to do it. Geller and Shipley are do-it-yourself investors from Colorado who use an ex-trader friend (Brad Pitt) to do the same thing. These are all great characters, but Carrell and Bale stand out, possibly because their characters have the strangest, strongest personalities.
The other thing about this movie is the way it reminds you of its own artificiality, as if its telling you not make the mistake most financial people did during the early 2000s, failing to think critically. The bathtub scene is just one way director Adam McKay keeps telling you that this is just a movie. In another scene, Geller and Shipley find a brochure that seems to give them the idea to bet against the housing market, only to have Vennett, who is also the narrator, tell us that it actually happened a completely different way. The point is, exactly how it happened doesn’t matter. What happened matters. I think people who don’t have a familiarity with the subject may still miss some of the finer points. They can comfort themselves with the idea that a lot of the financial experts didn’t understand it well either, which is part of why it happened. Greed is the other part, and in the debate as to which factor explains more, McKay lets the viewer decide.
IMDb link
viewed 1/24/16 1:30 pm at Roxy and posted 1/25/16
Even as you know the financial collapse of 2008 is going to happen, you can see Burry and his fellow short-sellers — traders Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), Mark Baum (Steve Carrell), Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) — having to convince themselves that everyone can be that wrong, and facing enormous pressure to follow the crowd. The film is unusual, for one thing, in that none of these characters is the star. It’s an ensemble cast in an adaptation of a book that is actually telling three separate stories that are mostly unrelated, except for the common thread that these men —and this is a very male-dominated world — are making the same bet. Vennett is the seller of the bonds Carrell wants his New York investment group to buy, but both of them stand to make a fortune from calamity, and both are having to fight their own employers — big investment banks like Morgan Stanley — in order to do it. Geller and Shipley are do-it-yourself investors from Colorado who use an ex-trader friend (Brad Pitt) to do the same thing. These are all great characters, but Carrell and Bale stand out, possibly because their characters have the strangest, strongest personalities.
The other thing about this movie is the way it reminds you of its own artificiality, as if its telling you not make the mistake most financial people did during the early 2000s, failing to think critically. The bathtub scene is just one way director Adam McKay keeps telling you that this is just a movie. In another scene, Geller and Shipley find a brochure that seems to give them the idea to bet against the housing market, only to have Vennett, who is also the narrator, tell us that it actually happened a completely different way. The point is, exactly how it happened doesn’t matter. What happened matters. I think people who don’t have a familiarity with the subject may still miss some of the finer points. They can comfort themselves with the idea that a lot of the financial experts didn’t understand it well either, which is part of why it happened. Greed is the other part, and in the debate as to which factor explains more, McKay lets the viewer decide.
IMDb link
viewed 1/24/16 1:30 pm at Roxy and posted 1/25/16
Friday, August 14, 2015
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (***1/4)
One wonders about the impetus for adapting a TV show whose last episode aired more than 45 years earlier (though the film rights were sold in 1993). Will the name mean anything to audiences not born when the spy series aired (19964–1968)? I suspect most people will be more reminded of an American James Bond film when they see this, and in fact Bond creator Ian Fleming had a hand in creating the character of Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn originally and Henry Cavill here. They may also be reminded of other films by director Guy Ritchie, whose work includes Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and two Sherlock Homes movies. Notably, the Cold War-era setting is retained from the TV series, which makes sense given that the other main character is Solo’s Russian counterpart, Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer).
The series (like the Bond films) wildly varied in tone; Richie’s version is less serious than the early episodes while avoiding the camp of the later ones. It’s slickly edited with snappy dialogue and has plenty of action, and some violence, but with a modest body count. In other words, it’s like other Guy Ritchie films, and I liked it. Cavill plays Solo using a voice that sounds like it should be coming out of a 1970s margarine advertisement, and the presence of some familiar tropes — Nazi villains, a nuclear bomb plot, the womanizing spy, the femme fatale, and so on—makes it almost, but not quite, a parody. But it is intentionally funny at times. The plotting is complicated enough that I couldn’t have repeated it back to you right after I saw the movie but coherent enough that I could pretty much follow it while I was watching.
Unlike the TV show pilot, the film provides an origin story for both U.N.C.L.E. (the organization) and the Solo-Kuryakin pairing, including an exciting opening sequence in which Solo recruits an East German auto mechanic (Alicia Vikander) to help uncover a plot involving her estranged father and Kuryakin chases after them. The civilian recruit was also a common element of the series, but, even though the setting is 1963, the female characters get an update. Vikander’s character not only has to pretend to be Kuryakin’s fiancée but also gets to use her mechanic skills. And Elizabeth Debicki plays a wealthy woman who wants to bed the two agents, or kill them, or both.
Probably the first half of the movie is better, because it’s a little more original, but it’s entertaining to the end.
IMDb link
viewed 8/10/15 7;30 at Ritz 5; posted 8/22/15
The series (like the Bond films) wildly varied in tone; Richie’s version is less serious than the early episodes while avoiding the camp of the later ones. It’s slickly edited with snappy dialogue and has plenty of action, and some violence, but with a modest body count. In other words, it’s like other Guy Ritchie films, and I liked it. Cavill plays Solo using a voice that sounds like it should be coming out of a 1970s margarine advertisement, and the presence of some familiar tropes — Nazi villains, a nuclear bomb plot, the womanizing spy, the femme fatale, and so on—makes it almost, but not quite, a parody. But it is intentionally funny at times. The plotting is complicated enough that I couldn’t have repeated it back to you right after I saw the movie but coherent enough that I could pretty much follow it while I was watching.
Unlike the TV show pilot, the film provides an origin story for both U.N.C.L.E. (the organization) and the Solo-Kuryakin pairing, including an exciting opening sequence in which Solo recruits an East German auto mechanic (Alicia Vikander) to help uncover a plot involving her estranged father and Kuryakin chases after them. The civilian recruit was also a common element of the series, but, even though the setting is 1963, the female characters get an update. Vikander’s character not only has to pretend to be Kuryakin’s fiancée but also gets to use her mechanic skills. And Elizabeth Debicki plays a wealthy woman who wants to bed the two agents, or kill them, or both.
Probably the first half of the movie is better, because it’s a little more original, but it’s entertaining to the end.
IMDb link
viewed 8/10/15 7;30 at Ritz 5; posted 8/22/15
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