drama

We Won’t Grow Old Together [Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble]

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(France 1972)

Maurice Pialat’s semiautobiographical second film, We Won’t Grow Old Together, is a dark love story marked by contempt and emotional cruelty. Jean (Jean Yanne) is an established middle-aged filmmaker carrying on an extramarital liaison with his much younger mistress, Catherine (Marlène Jobert). It isn’t clear how they met, how much time they spend with each other, or why they’re together. What’s clear is that their relationship is quickly coming to an end. Oh, but it’s sad when a love affair dies.

The relationship—an entanglement, really—is dysfunctional, to say the least. The two always seem to meet on the go (even though Jean’s wife and Catherine’s parents know about the affair). Their affection surfaces here and there, like when they go to the beach or take a dip in the Mediterranean. It never lasts long; whatever good time they have soon sours. Jean is arrogant, condescending, and mean. He tells Catherine she’s ugly, he shoves her away from him and publicly berates her for not holding a mic correctly while he’s filming a street scene, and he literally throws (OK, pushes) her and her things out of their motel room. He makes no attempt to hide the fact that Catherine’s visiting parents are an inconvenience. He’s a prick. The following is my favorite quote from the film, and it shows how mean Jean is to Catherine:

“You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will. And do you know why? Because you are vulgar; irremediably vulgar. And not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.”

Catherine is absolutely beautiful with a fabulous early ’70’s flair. However, she’s unambitious, ambivalent, and kind of crazy. She’s flighty. Jean seems to be the only thing she can see through to the end. Their personalities—indeed, their very identities—bring out the worst in each other.

Even though it was a hit in France during its original run, We Won’t Grow Old Together is not a film I imagine many people appreciating. It’s probably too blunt and ugly for mainstream tastes, especially today. Neither character has any redeeming qualities. In the French New Wave tradition, there isn’t much of a narrative here; the “story” is told through a collection scenes strung together that build a sense of doom. The action is repetitive: Catherine arrives, Jean eventually gets pissed and flies off the handle, they sort of reconcile, and Catherine takes off. Pialat is more interested in getting at a feeling or an experience than telling a story. He succeeds at cutting to the emotional core of an ugly breakup; his depiction is vivid and realistic even if it is extreme, and you feel Jean’s ultimate devastation. The final shot of Jean’s idealized memory of Catherine—beautiful, happy, and peacefully frolicking in the water—is a nice touch.

We Won’t Grow Old Together is hard to watch because it’s frankly brutal; but it’s precisely Pialat’s frank brutality that makes it brilliant.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) A-

Dead End

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(USA 1937)

I never heard of the Dead End Kids until I saw this film. Long before West Side Story and The Outsiders, the Dead End Kids served as a Depression Era vehicle for social commentary on American urban life. Living in tenements along the East River as the moneyed started to convert Manhattan’s slums into upscale properties, the Dead End Kids demonstrated some of the pains of change and the kinds of decisions necessary to avoid going down a road to ruin (i.e., a life of crime). The ensemble held on in different incarnations well past its shelf life until the late 1950s, when the actors were in their mid-30s and had become more of a comedy act.

Adapted from Sidney Kingsley’s successful 1935 play, Dead End is the one that started it all. It goes through a day in the life of a street “gang” led by Tommy Gordon (Billy Halop). The kids are rough around the edges and have names like Dippy (Huntz Hall), Spit (Leo Gorcey), and T.B. (Gabriel Dell). They openly mock their rich neighbors across the street in the co-op that abuts the slum (the windowless door to the co-op clearly states “service entrance”), steal, fight, play cards, shine shoes, and spend a lot of time swiming in the river at the end of the block. A slick neighborhood expat gangster, “Baby Face” Martin (a young Humphrey Bogart), who apparently made it as a hit man elsewhere, returns with his thug, Hunk (Allen Jenkins). No one, not even his low-talking mother (Minor Watson), wants him around. Meanwhile, Tommy’s sister, Drina (Sylvia Sidney), a mother figure who’s off work striking for better wages, is trying her best to keep Tommy on the right path. She mentions a few times that the extra $3.50 a week (!) she’s fighting for would get them to a better place. She’s all into Dave (Joel McCrea), an unemployed architect with his eye on a rich girl (Wendy Barrie) who lives in the co-op.

Loaded with subplots, the story is okay even with its old school melodrama. Some of the performances—specifically Bogart, Sidney, McCrea, and Watson—are decent. The surreptitious way syphilis is slipped into the story is interesting. Otherwise, Dead End has issues. It may have been edgy in the ’30s, but in comtemporary eyes it reads as silly, even campy. The set is too tidy and ordered to be a real street. The kids’ exaggerated fake Archie Bunker accents get annoying after awhile—I expected to hear the word “murdalize” at many points (I didn’t). The story is moralistic in an unsophisticated way that even the ABC Afterschool Special never was. Still, Dead End depicts a world without a middle class and criticizes gentrification, points that ring familiar today. I didn’t hate Dead End, but it’s completely forgettable.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) C-

Brooklyn

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(USA 2015)

I admit, I approached Brooklyn with a certain sense of dread: a screenplay by Nick Hornby usually means a sappy chick flick. Thankfully, my expectations were not met. Sure, elements fall into the “romantic” category—it’s a period piece that involves a love story—but the material is hardly fluffy, sentimental, or unrealistic. To the contrary, Brooklyn is sharp, eloquent, and quietly observant; it gets at some simple truths in a beautifully understated yet polished way.

It’s the early 1950s, and Enniscorthy, Ireland, has nothing to offer sensible Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), who bides her time housekeeping for her mother and working one day a week at a bakery for cunty town nib nose Ms. Kelly (Brid Brennan). Eilis’s more successful sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott), arranges a sponsorship for her in Brooklyn, New York, where a priest (Jim Broadbent) sets her up with a job, a boarding house, and night school. Brooklyn is not what Eilis expects, and it looks as though she can’t hack it. But she soldiers on, things fall into place, and something clicks: she starts to like the life she creates for herself. She meets Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen), a second generation Italian plumber who loves the Dodgers—something Eilis can’t begin to relate to—and her life suddenly seems complete (once she learns how to eat spaghetti, of course). Her place in the world—wherever it is—is called into question when tragedy strikes at home and she returns for what’s supposed to be a short trip.

Adapted from Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel, Brooklyn easily could have been an insipid film, but it’s not for a few reasons. It’s a good story. The acting is terrific all around—I can’t think of a single bad performance here. Ronan is beautiful and engaging even if Eilis initially comes off as a cold Gaelic hayseed. In the tradition of the best Irish literature, Brooklyn is crammed with excellent supporting characters. For example, Mrs. Keogh (Julie Walters), the sharp-tongued Jesus-loving matriarch of the boarding house where Eilis stays, is a one-of-a-kind lady I’d kill to spend a day with—in fact, the funniest scenes take place with her holding court at the dinner table. I wouldn’t be bored with her for a second. Ditto for ship bunkmate Georgina (Eva Birthistle), who teaches Eilis how to carry herself in the New World. Jessica Paré, recognizable from Mad Men, is great as a bitchy department store supervisor. James DiGiacomo is hilarious as Tony’s little brother, especially when he talks with his hands. Jenn Murray, who looks like a low-rent Alannah Currie from the Thompson Twins, steals the few scenes she has as a “horrible” housemate. Yves Bélanger’s cinematography provides a perfectly dreamy watercolor quality that resembles a memory.

Most important, Brooklyn takes on quite a few subjects—independence, survival, assimilation, the immigrant experience, love, and yes, the American Dream. While it has a boatload to say about each, at its heart Brooklyn is about identity: home has nothing to do with where you were born or where you grew up, but everything to do with where you can be who you are. This theme, intricately woven throughout the film, is what ultimately makes Brooklyn stand out. Do I think it will win Best Picture? Hell no. But it’s a film I can see a second time—maybe even a third.

(AMC River East) B

http://www.brooklyn-themovie.com

Mr. Holmes

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(USA/UK 2015)

In Bill Condon’s adaptation of Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, Sir Ian McKellen plays an elderly Sherlock Holmes, who traded in his magnifying glass for relative seclusion in an English seaside town 35 years ago after the only case he ever “lost.” When not tending to his bees, Holmes is literally writing his final chapter, struggling to remember why he gave up detective work. With some cajoling from idolizing Roger (Milo Parker), the young son of his housekeeper (Laura Linney), Holmes’ memory returns to him in dribs and drabs that he must piece together to solve this last remaining mystery.

I’d like to say I enjoyed Mr. Holmes, but I didn’t. The concept is interesting, but the story lacks momentum. The tone is wistful, mournful, and sleepy. The pace is slower than Holmes hobbling around on his cane. None of the plot twists or big reveals are all that surprising. McKellen’s performance is fine, but his iconic character—physically ailing and mentally fading—is downright depressing. Flickers of humor and a few engaging moments emerge, but I still found the whole thing boring. Mr. Holmes is not my cup of tea.

(Home via iTunes) D+

http://www.mrholmesfilm.com

Samba

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(France 2014)

I missed Samba when it played in Chicago last summer—for literally one week in a single theater—before it disappeared. Fortunately, it’s readily available to rent online. Samba was worth the wait even if it isn’t quite what I expected.

Samba (Omar Sy) is an undocumented alien from Senegal who has been living with his uncle and working illegally in Paris for a decade. He washes dishes at a swanky restaurant; the opening scene that leads us through the posh white crowd at the front of the house through the working class staff in the hectic kitchen to the three African dishwashers pushed far to the back in a tiny room says all we need to know before the story even starts. When authorities discover that Samba’s paperwork has expired, he’s held in a detention center for illegal immigrants, where he meets his case worker, Alice (Charlotte Gainesbourg), a sheepish, inept, and we later learn angry woman with a purse full of sleeping pills and a chip on her shoulder. A spark develops into something a little more as the two work on Samba’s case.

Generally speaking, French films tend be more cerebral than action-packed; Samba is no exception. While certainly not an emotional film, it still has a warmth that saves it from getting dull. Samba is an affable though imperfect guy working toward fulfilling his dream to be a chef—he’s just doing it in a country he illegally inhabits. He tracks down a fellow detainee’s woman (Liya Kebede) to relay a message and ends up in bed with her. He gets into a fight or two. He screws up day jobs—my favorite scenes are the ones in which he works with a Brazilian immigrant named Wilson (Tahar Rahim), in particular a reenactment of an old Coke commercial on a scaffold washing windows. Don’t be misled by the trailer: the relationship with Alice is more clumsy than hot and heavy or sexy. Through it all, Samba resorts to humor to get past the many rough spots he encounters.

Samba is a strange romantic comedy/adventure film with an underlying statement that the immigration process—chaotic, pedantic, inefficient, dehumanizing—is absurd. What struck me was that the story has nothing to do with the States, yet its point applies all the same to the American system. Samba also shows that immigration issues are not confined to any one country. The story itself is pretty ordinary, but Sy and Rahim’s performances elevate it to something interesting. 

(Home via iTunes) B-

http://www.sambamovie.com

The Mask [Eyes of Hell]

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(Canada 1961)

Terrible doesn’t even begin to describe The Mask: the acting, the dialogue, the plot, the sets, the “special” effects—they’re all so wonderfully cheap and dippy in a way that screams “atomic age.” A pervading sense of overblown naive paranoia and a subtext of sexual transgression and drug abuse add to the fun. I loved The Mask for what it is—cinematic junk food.

Mild-mannered Dr. Alan Barnes (Paul Stevens), a psychiatrist, experiments with an ancient tribal mask that a patient (Martin Lavut) warned him about. Barnes quickly falls under the spell of the mask—which looks a lot like a mosaic disco ball version of C-3PO—and morphs into a monster as he sinks into a subconscious world of horror, much to the dismay of his fiancé, Pamela (Claudette Nevins), and his mentor, Professor Quincy (Norman Ettinger). Lieutenant Martin (Bill Walker), hot on the trail of a homicide, has a hunch that the mask is a big clue to the mystery. Can anyone save Barnes before it’s too late?

The mask world, you see, is in 3D. When Barnes submits to his jones for the mask, a commanding offscreen voice bellows, “PUT THE MASK ON NOW!” This little device serves two purposes: it demonstrates the powerlessness of Barnes over the mask, but it also prompts viewers to put on 3D glasses—which were provided:

TheMask3D

With the 3D glasses, we get to see what Barnes sees—oooh! The mask world manages to cram every single horror movie dream sequence cliché into each scene—fog, eyeballs, skulls, snakes, fire, spiders, pyres, hands reaching out of the screen, it’s all there. Despite the potential for eyerolling—and there’s a ton—the mask world is trippy and cool even with its pedestrian take on horror. The restored version I saw had a sharp, crisp look. The 3D effect worked surprisingly well. Ed Wood might have envied this one.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) C-

 

TheMask2

Horse Money [Cavalo Dinheiro]

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(Portugal 2014)

I have mixed feelings about Pedro Costa’s Horse Money. From a visual perspective, it’s amazing: Costa and cinematographer Leonardo Simões command light and shadow to create stunningly beautiful scenes in hospitals, industrial spaces, abandoned streets, even on a hill at night. It’s simple but gorgeous. Fucking gorgeous! The visual aspect made Horse Money worth sitting through to the bitter end.

The plot, on the other hand, is another story. Vague, confusing, and very esoteric, I’m not sure what it’s all about. I think—but I’m not sure—Ventura, a revolutionary who sold out for a normal life, is about to die. The film takes us along with him (and his shaky hands) as his life flashes before his eyes—kind of like Jacob’s Ladder. He meets characters from his past and literal demons that haunt him. He must come to terms with the choices he made that brought him to the present before he can let go. The whole thing is dreamlike and stream-of-consciousness. It’s moody, pretty, and unsettling; but it’s often maddeningly difficult to follow. The scene in the elevator—probably the most important in the film—is way too long. It actually made me claustrophobic. I couldn’t wait to get out of the theater.

Maybe Friday evening wasn’t the best time to see something like this—it requires a lot of attention. When I depart this mortal coil, I hope it’s much quicker and less tortuous (and less torturous) than this. Fuck me.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) C-

http://horsemoney.co.uk

The Big Short

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

I’m no economist, and, well…math is hard. I get that lax lending practices led to the housing market collapse in 2008, but I sure as hell don’t have a firm grasp on what else contributed to the financial meltdown. With The Big Short, writer and director Adam McKay takes on the courageous and potentially suicidal task of explaining it all, Schoolhouse Rock style—only hopped up on Adderall.

Based on the nonfiction exposé The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, The Big Short follows the intertwined stories of Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a socially inept Metallica-blaring doctor-turned-hedge fund-manager with Asperger’s, a glass eye, and a cyst on his face that bummed me out every time I saw him; douchebag Wall Street trader Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), who doubles as narrator; cynical, boorish, and fictitious Chicken Little hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and his team; newbie investors Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock); and retired banker Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), who’s got no love for the business. In one way or another, they all aim to profit from mass calamity—and they succeed. The standouts here easily are Gosling and Carell, who have a natural chemistry and seem to have fun with their parts. Pitt, who plays psychos and goofballs better than anyone (e.g., True Romance, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, Snatch—need I say more?), has a secondary role, but he’s awesome; I didn’t recognize him right away. Bale, on the other hand, is a bit much—to the point of being a downer.

The story involves dry, technical, and boring financial concepts, usually abbreviations: credit default swaps (CDS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), NINJA loans—not the stuff that typically generates emotion or drama. McKay uses a number of offbeat but smart gimmicks to explain the basics: celebrity cameos (Selena Gomez and Anthony Bourdain, to name two), demonstrations (a la Jenga), breaking character, songs and graphics. His approach does the trick, and it’s entertaining. Very much so. However, it’s not perfect: the pacing, though not as frenetic as Wolves of Wall Street, still wore me out by the end. Some questions remain in my mind—like how you can bet against something like the economy. It’s also still unclear how it all happened. To quote the movie, though, “[t]he truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry;” I think that’s the essence. One thing is certain: McKay is outraged; by showing us that the nonsense continues, he wants us to be, too.

(AMC River East) B-

http://www.thebigshortmovie.com/

 

The Danish Girl

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(USA/UK 2015)

On paper, The Danish Girl has everything going for it: a sensationalist plot with real-life characters, weighty and timely subject matter, pretty scenery, nifty period clothes, a love story, and a nice dose of tragedy. Visually, it’s a beautiful film: cinematographer Danny Cohen gives it the soft, muted look of an impressionist painting; the interiors are as alluring as the exterior shots. The setting—the early 20th Century art scene in Copenhagen and Paris—evokes a sense of glamor and romance. The acting is okay for the most part, but Alicia Vikander is outstanding. Still, the sum here is no greater than its parts.

Based on David Ebershoff’s novel based on the life of Dutch artist Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), the first known person to undergo sex reassignment surgery, and his wife, Gerda Gottlieb (Vikander), The Danish Girl is a good story even if it isn’t historically accurate. One day, Gottlieb asks Wegener to stand in for her model so she can finish a painting; she gives him a pair of panty hose, and he is immediately cozy in them. Thus begins Wegener’s road to becoming “Lili,” as christened by the couple’s friend, Ulla (Amber Heard). Lili becomes Gottlieb’s muse, showing up in her paintings. They sell. Lili accompanies Gottlieb to a ball as Wegener’s “cousin,” and everyone is fooled. Wasn’t that easy, isn’t she pretty in pink?

The Danish Girl is fictionalized, and as a result liberties are taken for time constraints, continuity, and drama. I get that. Nonetheless, this film doesn’t come off as genuine because it oversimplifies and sanitizes the issues it seems to want to bring to light and then gives them superficial treatment. Lili’s transition is too quick, and her adjustment—touched on but not explored—is seamless for today let alone 1926. Redmayne’s portrayal of Lili is silly: he bats his eyelashes and caresses his frocks with all the campy drama Johnny Depp mustered up wearing an angora sweater in Ed Wood. Lili looks like Molly Ringwald, right down to her stylish scarves—the real Lili looked like Oscar Wilde in a dress. Wegener and Gottlieb were more complicated and had a more complex and unconventional relationship. The truth here is so condensed and whitewashed that this might as well be a fairy tale.

The Danish Girl might make you cry, but it’s just not convincing even within the confines of a two-hour film. Too bad, because it could’ve been much more.

(ArcLight) C-

http://www.focusfeatures.com/the_danish_girl

Christmas, Again

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

Nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit like a gloomy holiday story. Noel (Kentucker Audley) sells Christmas trees on a makeshift lot on a sidewalk in Brooklyn. He works an all-night 12-hour shift. He constantly has to ride his worker, Nick (Jason Shelton), and Nick’s girlfriend (Oona Roche) to get anything done. He fields petty questions and solves petty holiday problems for petty, self-absorbed customers. He sleeps and eats—I wouldn’t call it living—in a trailer on the street, where he survives on a diet of energy pills and antidepressants stashed in an Advent calendar. He buys scratch-off lottery tickets for fun. Oh yeah, he broke up with his girlfriend sometime in the last year. Noel seems lonely. Or is he just someone who doesn’t need the company of others?

One night while working, Noel comes across a woman, Lydia (Hannah Gross), passed out on a bench in a park. Their paths—and her jittery boyfriend’s—cross a few times, and that’s it. 

Christmas, Again probably is not going to end up being anyone’s favorite Christmas movie anytime soon, but it works on quite a few levels. More a string of quiet events than a full story, its real achievement is the mood it sets. Dolorous and blue, the camera moves slowly and blurs the background leaving only hints of cold colors. The cinematography (Sean Price Williams) is beautiful, making the shots literally an opaque blue. I loved the old distorted Christmas music that sounds like it’s playing from an AM radio, the Christmas lights permanently out of focus in the background, and the uneasy, unnatural, and sometimes suspenseful interactions between Noel and Lydia, both of whom are easy on the eyes. There’s a palpable sense of despondency that comes through here.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B

http://www.xmasagain.com