Frank is Frank Langella, and the voice of the robot is Peter Sarsgaard in this comedy-drama about family, friendship, thievery, and Alzheimer’s. Also, it’s set in the near future, when cars can drive themselves, libraries are getting rid of books, and all phones are videophones, which 2001: A Space Odessey said would happen in 2001 and Back to The Future Part II said would happen around now. But a dutiful son (James Marsden) and a flaky daughter (Liv Tyler) are still the same. Dad’s having trouble taking care of himself, so dutiful son brings the latest technology. It looks boxy, not too human, and Sarsgaard sounds like a less-sinister version of 2001’s Hal.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” says the machine. “How do you know?” Frank answers, but like most people eventually adapts to the idea of having a machine do things for him. Things like theft, his old career. The notion of a buddy comedy with a friendly robot suggests the potential of being a little too cute, like that 1980s movie Short Circuit, but this is just the right amount of cute. It made me think about artificial intelligence, but at the same time it’s a mostly fun movie for those who aren’t into sci-fi. The ending is a reminder that, at bottom, all stories told by humans are human stories.
IMDb link
viewed 8/13/12 7:30 pm at World Cafe Live and reviewed 8/24/12 and 8/27/12
Showing posts with label Alzheimer's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alzheimer's. Show all posts
Friday, August 24, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
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.
viewed 1/26/12 7:35 pm at Ritz Five and reviewed 1/30/12
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.
viewed 1/26/12 7:35 pm at Ritz Five and reviewed 1/30/12
Friday, August 5, 2011
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (***1/4)
Until close to the end of this movie, you might be wondering what a small sci-fi film about a scientist (James Franco) and his genetically modified chimp Caesar (Andy Serkis) has to do with the old film series in which an entire world of intelligent chimps rule over humans. But you’ll keep watching anyway.
Like so many films about scientists, this may be deplored by real one because even the relatively kind protagonist played by Franco comes off as a reckless fool. (His boss is also money-grubbing.) (Unlike Contagion, it also sticks with the usual depiction of scientists as lone geniuses rather than collaborators.) It’s also, essentially, the usual Garden of Eden-inspired morality play about scientists meddling in arenas where they don’t belong. And it’s an allegory about human cruelty that’s only slightly less heavy-handed than, say, Avatar, another film in which the humans are, allowing a few grudging exceptions, the villains. (This criticism is purely a dramatic one; the recent documentary Project Nim shows, in fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking fashion, that, for chimps in capitivity, humans really are, allowing a few grudging exceptions, villains.)
But the saving graces are two. First, it doesn’t confer upon apes some kind of spiritual purity. Instead, the film gives us, in Caesar, chimpanzee as warm and cuddly friend (like Spielberg’s E.T.), then (as Spielberg does with his robot in A.I.) yanks the curtain away from that sentimental view, then kind of balances it out, granting the non-human primates their, for lack of a better word, humanity. Second, unlike the the original Planet of the Apes (1968), or the misbegotten film of the same name from 2001, this is more in the vein of a modest thriller than some sort of epic. Somehow, when I don’t feel like the filmmaker is trying to make a grand statement, I am less inclined to quibble that a non-genentically modified orangutan is supposed to be able to have a complex discussion with Caesar simply because he too was once taught sign language. Or that the scientist’s apparently bright girlfriend can’t figure out in five years that Caesar might not be an ordinary ape.
This Rise, then, is a probably fantastic, but still entertaining extrapolation of the idea of what might happen if these creatures who are so similar to us, yet so much more powerful, got smarter. With the help of Serkis (repeating his motion-captured acting from Lord of the Rings), director Rupert Wyatt creates some arresting visuals to accompany the action-oriented second half of the film. The script from the team of Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (An Eye for an Eye, The Relic) apes (pun intended) E.T. and probably any number of other films, but the originality of having a non-human central character mostly compensates.
viewed 9/15/11 at UA Riverview and reviewed 9/16/11
Like so many films about scientists, this may be deplored by real one because even the relatively kind protagonist played by Franco comes off as a reckless fool. (His boss is also money-grubbing.) (Unlike Contagion, it also sticks with the usual depiction of scientists as lone geniuses rather than collaborators.) It’s also, essentially, the usual Garden of Eden-inspired morality play about scientists meddling in arenas where they don’t belong. And it’s an allegory about human cruelty that’s only slightly less heavy-handed than, say, Avatar, another film in which the humans are, allowing a few grudging exceptions, the villains. (This criticism is purely a dramatic one; the recent documentary Project Nim shows, in fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking fashion, that, for chimps in capitivity, humans really are, allowing a few grudging exceptions, villains.)
But the saving graces are two. First, it doesn’t confer upon apes some kind of spiritual purity. Instead, the film gives us, in Caesar, chimpanzee as warm and cuddly friend (like Spielberg’s E.T.), then (as Spielberg does with his robot in A.I.) yanks the curtain away from that sentimental view, then kind of balances it out, granting the non-human primates their, for lack of a better word, humanity. Second, unlike the the original Planet of the Apes (1968), or the misbegotten film of the same name from 2001, this is more in the vein of a modest thriller than some sort of epic. Somehow, when I don’t feel like the filmmaker is trying to make a grand statement, I am less inclined to quibble that a non-genentically modified orangutan is supposed to be able to have a complex discussion with Caesar simply because he too was once taught sign language. Or that the scientist’s apparently bright girlfriend can’t figure out in five years that Caesar might not be an ordinary ape.
This Rise, then, is a probably fantastic, but still entertaining extrapolation of the idea of what might happen if these creatures who are so similar to us, yet so much more powerful, got smarter. With the help of Serkis (repeating his motion-captured acting from Lord of the Rings), director Rupert Wyatt creates some arresting visuals to accompany the action-oriented second half of the film. The script from the team of Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (An Eye for an Eye, The Relic) apes (pun intended) E.T. and probably any number of other films, but the originality of having a non-human central character mostly compensates.
viewed 9/15/11 at UA Riverview and reviewed 9/16/11
Friday, April 1, 2011
Win Win (***1/2)
Thomas McCarthy’s thing seems to be scooping together unlikely strangers. In The Station Agent it was the loner title character, a gregarious hot dog vendor, and a depressed artist. In The Visitor, it was a depressed professor and a pair of illegal immigrants. Here, it’s Paul Giamatti and a runaway teenager. Giamatti’s character here is not depressed. He’s just been getting panic attacks lately, due no doubt to a struggling legal practice. He specializes in poor elderly clients. He and his wife (Amy Ryan) have a family to support.
And it’s these circumstances that lead him into some shaky ethical territory as well as into the path of the young man who might also be able to help out with the inept high school wrestling team he also coaches. (Jeffrey Tambor plays his assistant.) In his other two films, McCarthy carves paths of connection for his lonely male main characters. This one, on the other hand, plays out the main character’s internal struggles, not only about his treatment of a client with mild dementia (Burt Young) but also about how to deal with the unexpected arrival of the man’s grandson.
McCarthy handles this with a lot of humor, deft plotting, and a minimum of preachiness. Anyone who liked his other movies should like this one too, but the pacing is probably a little faster. It has strong characters and good acting—wrestler-turned-actor (Alex Shaffer) gives off a nice laid-back vibe as the young man who quietly seethes with anger toward the mother he ran away from. Bobby Cannavale, The Station Agent’s extroverted snack-cart vendor, plays a more suburbanized version of the same character. The men get most of the screen time, but Melanie Lynskey’s fairly brief role as the mother allows her a lot of range. Yet the film is not as self-conscious a character study as The Station Agent or The Visitor, and so might appeal to a wider audience.
IMDB link
viewed 4/27/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/3/11
And it’s these circumstances that lead him into some shaky ethical territory as well as into the path of the young man who might also be able to help out with the inept high school wrestling team he also coaches. (Jeffrey Tambor plays his assistant.) In his other two films, McCarthy carves paths of connection for his lonely male main characters. This one, on the other hand, plays out the main character’s internal struggles, not only about his treatment of a client with mild dementia (Burt Young) but also about how to deal with the unexpected arrival of the man’s grandson.
McCarthy handles this with a lot of humor, deft plotting, and a minimum of preachiness. Anyone who liked his other movies should like this one too, but the pacing is probably a little faster. It has strong characters and good acting—wrestler-turned-actor (Alex Shaffer) gives off a nice laid-back vibe as the young man who quietly seethes with anger toward the mother he ran away from. Bobby Cannavale, The Station Agent’s extroverted snack-cart vendor, plays a more suburbanized version of the same character. The men get most of the screen time, but Melanie Lynskey’s fairly brief role as the mother allows her a lot of range. Yet the film is not as self-conscious a character study as The Station Agent or The Visitor, and so might appeal to a wider audience.
IMDB link
viewed 4/27/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/3/11
Friday, March 4, 2011
Poetry (***1/4)
Fifteen minutes into this South Korean drama, Mija (Jeong-hie Yu), a well-manicured widow of 66, has been told to get tested for Alzheimer’s, observed the distraught mother of a teen suicide, decided to enroll in a poetry class, bathed the elderly gentleman for whom she keeps house, and cooked for the sullen teen grandson she’s raising. I’d have expected it to be a predictably touching, poignant, maybe dull drama had I not seen Secret Sunshine, writer-director Chang-dong Lee’s previous film. That one throws a startling plot twist into the second half hour that the rest of the film a lot different. Sure enough, there’s more to the story here, a moral dilemma that relates to the girl’s suicide.
Lee takes a lot of time to portray his main character, whose calm exterior masks careful deliberation, not impassivity. I mostly didn’t find the movie slow, but some will. However, Yu, a lovely actress coaxed out of retirement by Lee, held my attention during the quiet passages. (Lee’s camera work does too.) And right up to the end, I wasn’t quite sure how Lee would end things, or relate the different plot elements. (Mija’s early-stage Alzheimer’s is a surprisingly subtle element.) It’s not as unsettling as Secret Sunshine, whose main character lacked Mija’s even temper. It is a touching, poignant drama. But not predictable.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 3/24/11
Lee takes a lot of time to portray his main character, whose calm exterior masks careful deliberation, not impassivity. I mostly didn’t find the movie slow, but some will. However, Yu, a lovely actress coaxed out of retirement by Lee, held my attention during the quiet passages. (Lee’s camera work does too.) And right up to the end, I wasn’t quite sure how Lee would end things, or relate the different plot elements. (Mija’s early-stage Alzheimer’s is a surprisingly subtle element.) It’s not as unsettling as Secret Sunshine, whose main character lacked Mija’s even temper. It is a touching, poignant drama. But not predictable.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 3/24/11
Friday, February 4, 2011
Barney’s Version (***1/2)
The novel pedigree shows, I think, in that the narrative structure seems slightly off somehow. The scene in the bar from which the flashbacks begin seems like it will be a chronological anchor, but when the past finally catches up to that present, it turns out to be only a stopping point, and the story goes in a surprising, though poignant, direction.
IMDB link
viewed 2/23/11 at Ritz 5
IMDB link
viewed 2/23/11 at Ritz 5
Friday, October 8, 2010
Secretariat (***)
Even with a great pedigree, no one can predict with certainly that a horse will be great, and so Secretariat’s owner got him after losing a coin toss. (The winner took another horse that seemed more promising.) Still, he was not a true underdog, like Seabiscuit. He did not meet a mysterious and tragic end, like the title character in Phar Lap, another great drama about a racehorse. So some obvious dramatic angles are missing here. Instead, this is is a straight inspirational drama with a mild but definite feminist angle. The horse’s owner, Penny Tweedy (née Chenery) (Diane Lane), was a housewife and mother of four who learned the business in her 40s, made some smart decisions, and got a bit lucky. Taking over her father’s Virginia horse farm in the late 1960s, she defied her husband’s preference that she stop spending so much time away from their home in Denver. Pointedly, the film does not apologize for her having done so.
The screenplay is by Mike Rich, who has penned other inspirational sports films, notably The Rookie. Rich plays up Chenery’s feistiness and simplifies or sentimentalizes some events, but sticks to the facts when it comes to the horse racing. (The corniest moment is probably when her father’s assistant brings Penny coffee. Asked how she knew Penny wanted two sugars and cream, she replies, “That’s how your Daddy liked it.”) Director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) does a fine job filming the races. Seen close up, with dust kicking in the air, it seems almost a violent sport, in contrast to how elegant it looks from afar. And even if you know the outcome, Secretariat’s performance in the 1973 Belmont Stakes is still pretty astonishing. A nice one to watch with the kids.
IMDB link
viewed 9/2/10 at Rave UPenn [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/2–10/7/10
The screenplay is by Mike Rich, who has penned other inspirational sports films, notably The Rookie. Rich plays up Chenery’s feistiness and simplifies or sentimentalizes some events, but sticks to the facts when it comes to the horse racing. (The corniest moment is probably when her father’s assistant brings Penny coffee. Asked how she knew Penny wanted two sugars and cream, she replies, “That’s how your Daddy liked it.”) Director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) does a fine job filming the races. Seen close up, with dust kicking in the air, it seems almost a violent sport, in contrast to how elegant it looks from afar. And even if you know the outcome, Secretariat’s performance in the 1973 Belmont Stakes is still pretty astonishing. A nice one to watch with the kids.
IMDB link
viewed 9/2/10 at Rave UPenn [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/2–10/7/10
Friday, May 11, 2007
Away from Her (***3/4)
? A retired professor (Gordon Pinsent) struggles with the decision to institutionalize his wife (Julie Christie), who’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. The Canadian drama is the feature directorial debut for actress Sarah Polley, who adapted Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came over the Mountain.”
+ This might be seen as non-Hallmark card version of The Notebook, an idyllic sap-fest in which Alzheimer’s seems like an inconvenience that love can overcome. The marriage here is a good one, but not idyllic, and the husband eventually realizes that his love cannot overcome the disease’s progression, and that his attentiveness to his mate is really about his own needs and not hers. The way in which he adapts to this realization lies at the center of the story, which Polley arrives at by cleverly interspersing flash-forward sequences in which the husband arrives unbidden at the door of another woman (Olympia Dukakis) he doesn’t know for a purpose that only becomes clear later in the movie. The movie is touching in ways you expect and ways you don’t, as when a caring nursing-home worker gives the husband an unexpected reality check. It’s also nice to see the still-striking Christie in such a good role.
- I could quibble with small things, but almost everything about this movie is just right. I wanted it to go on a little longer.
= ***1/2 Although Sarah Polley has appeared in a couple of American movies (Go, Dawn of the Dead), she’s eschewed greater fame by mostly appearing in character-driven Canadian films like Guinevere and My Life Without Me. She’s made the same kind of movie as writer-director, and done so brilliantly.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/
+ This might be seen as non-Hallmark card version of The Notebook, an idyllic sap-fest in which Alzheimer’s seems like an inconvenience that love can overcome. The marriage here is a good one, but not idyllic, and the husband eventually realizes that his love cannot overcome the disease’s progression, and that his attentiveness to his mate is really about his own needs and not hers. The way in which he adapts to this realization lies at the center of the story, which Polley arrives at by cleverly interspersing flash-forward sequences in which the husband arrives unbidden at the door of another woman (Olympia Dukakis) he doesn’t know for a purpose that only becomes clear later in the movie. The movie is touching in ways you expect and ways you don’t, as when a caring nursing-home worker gives the husband an unexpected reality check. It’s also nice to see the still-striking Christie in such a good role.
- I could quibble with small things, but almost everything about this movie is just right. I wanted it to go on a little longer.
= ***1/2 Although Sarah Polley has appeared in a couple of American movies (Go, Dawn of the Dead), she’s eschewed greater fame by mostly appearing in character-driven Canadian films like Guinevere and My Life Without Me. She’s made the same kind of movie as writer-director, and done so brilliantly.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/
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