The Be All and End All

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(UK 2009)

‘Beautiful’ is not a word that comes to mind when describing male relationships, especially one between two working class teenagers in Liverpool. The Be All and End All, though, is just that: a beautiful story about friendship.

15-year-old Robbie (Josh Bolt) is stuck in the children’s ward of a hospital. No one will tell him what’s wrong with him. He complains to best mate Ziggy (Eugene Byrne) during one of his daily visits. Ziggy sneaks a peek at Robbie’s chart and finds out he has cardiomyopathy, something he can barely pronounce. He researches it online and learns it’s a fatal heart condition. As any good friend would do, he tells Robbie, who has a wish: he doesn’t want to die a virgin. As any good friend would do, Ziggy hatches a plan to get Robbie laid—a few plans, actually. Robbie can’t leave the hospital, which proves to be a challenge. But that’s what friends are for.

The Be All and End All occasionally dips into Afterschool Special mode and has a few underdeveloped story lines, but director and producer Bruce Webb keeps it real. He composes a surprisingly honest and emotional work out of a simplistic script using mostly inexperienced actors. Webb strikes the perfect balance between humor—bawdy and otherwise—and serious drama without getting ribald, morose, or sappy (that rather maudlin soundtrack is another story). It’s a real feat considering the subject matter; this is a film that easily could have been a disaster without just the right touch. Bolt and Byrne are brilliant; their characters and the friendship between them are authentic. I felt everything they went through—even when their thick brogues were hard on my American ear. Liza Tarbuck is great as Tina, the stern but compassionate nurse watching over Robbie.

I first caught The Be All and End All when it screened at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2009, and I loved it. I watched it again to see if it still works—it does. It’s a finely executed story that’s funny and serious, and it tugs at the heartstrings in all the right ways.

100 minutes
Not rated

(Home via Amazon) B+

Here and There [Tamo i ovde]

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(USA/Serbia 2010)

I really liked Darko Lungulov’s Monument to Michael Jackson; it’s strange, sublime, melancholy, and witty. Its predecessor, Here and There, is a bit rougher, quieter, and sparser. While not as compelling, it still has enough of what I found intriguing about Monument to Michael Jackson.

Robert (David Thornton) is a broke, floundering, and depressed middle-aged sax player who just got evicted from his apartment in Queens. He hires a mover—how he affords it isn’t clear—who turns out to be Branko (Branislav Trifunovic), a young immigrant from Serbia who wants to get his girlfriend, Ivana (Jelena Mrdja), to the States. Branko proposes a deal. Robert, having no other prospects on the horizon, accepts: he agrees to go to Belgrade, marry Ivana, and bring her back—for a fee.

In Belgrade, Robert meets a few interesting characters—Ivana’s angry brother, Mirko (Goran Radakovic); a neighbor, Tosha (Fedja Stojanovic), who helps Robert score beer and find his way around; and Branko’s mother, Olga (Mirjana Karanovic), who puts him up in Branko’s bedroom at her apartment. She doesn’t know the reason why Robert is there. The plan doesn’t go as intended, and Robert is stuck in Belgrade as Branko is up a creek without a van in New York. Robert undergoes an awakening as he and Olga hit it off after a rocky start. Will his deal with Branko ruin everything?

Here and There is a tale of two cities, of sorts: set between New York City and Belgrade, it shows that urban life isn’t all that different from place to place—we all need to hustle to survive. Each character stands out in large part because the actors give them such complexity. Antone Pagan as savvy mechanic Jose Escobar is particularly memorable. Cyndi Lauper, who wrote and performed the film’s fine title song, makes a cameo as essentially herself. Lungulov works in some nice flashes of comedy to offset the bleakness in his characters’ lives. Here and There shows a talented filmmaker in development.

85 minutes
Not rated

(Home via iTunes) B-

http://www.hereandtherethemovie.com

Multiple Maniacs

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1970)

“I can only take so much of this kind of talk, especially from common lesbians.”

—Bonnie

‘Cheap,’ ‘campy,’ and ‘scandalous’ are all words that accurately describe the work of John Waters—his early stuff, anyway. No one makes depravity as fun or funny as he does. Multiple Maniacs, his second feature-length film, is unmistakable Waters: it’s a twisted and revolting mess of antipathy, vitriol, sacrilege, and sleaze. Holy shit, Sugar Scrub—and I mean that literally!

Multiple Maniacs depicts the mental breakdown of Lady Divine (Divine), the proprietor and star of a traveling freak show called “The Cavalcade of Perversion.” The show’s “performers” literally drag people off the streets and under a tent, where they eat puke, take drugs, lick armpits, and perform other acts of deviance in front of them. For the grand finale, Lady Divine robs everyone in the audience at gunpoint. One day, she decides out of sheer boredom to murder them instead—much to the dismay of her lover, Mr. David (David Lochary). Lady Divine flees the scene of the crimes to hide out at the home of her hooker daughter, Cookie (Cookie Mueller), whose horny new boyfriend, Steve (Paul Swift), is crashing there. Mr. David takes off with his lover, Bonnie (Mary Vivian Pearce), who wants nothing more than to “perform acts” with him. A phone call from a bar owner (Edith Massey) takes Lady Divine down a debaucherous path of rape, lesbianism, blasphemy, betrayal, and more murder.

Like many members of my generation, demographic, and cultural persuasion, I discovered John Waters when I was a teenager. Everything wrong with his films—silly plots, over-the-top trashy cartoonish characters, amateur “acting,” low-rent production, and his general misanthropic outlook and total irreverence—is precisely what drew me to him. He was punk before punk rock. It’s all so wonderfully awful, like Ed Wood with an intentionally nasty, edgy bite—not an unsophisticated innocence that happened by accident.

Multiple Maniacs is typical John Waters, but it’s noteworthy for two reasons. One, it’s loaded with ideas that show up in later films—as far down the line as Serial Mom and Peckerhead. This definitely will appeal to fans, especially when it becomes apparent that Multiple Maniacs is a rough (if you can imagine) blueprint for Pink Flamingos. If nothing else, this film is interesting from a developmental perspective. Two, the shock value is extreme even considering the source. Eating dog shit is tame compared to shooting up in church, cannibalism, a rosary up Divine’s ass (as she recites the Stations of the Cross), and a rape scene involving a giant lobster straight from a Godzilla flick. Jammed with references to Catholicism—including Jesus (George Figgs), Mary (Massey), and the Infant of Prague (Michael Renner, Jr.)—and Charles Manson, Waters creates a number of shall we say “colorful” moments you won’t see anywhere else, ever again.

Oh, Sugar Scrub, can we watch a Disney movie now?

Side note: I started to write this entry as a letter to my friend John (a.k.a. Sugar Scrub), who saw Multiple Maniacs with us. The idea didn’t work. Sorry, John!

91 fucked up minutes
Rated X (NC-17 today)

(Music Box) B

http://www.janusfilms.com/films/1817

Any Number Can Win [Melodie en Sous-Sol]

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(France 1963)

I approach “heist” movies with hesitation—they tend to be silly, formulaic affairs. As a fan of midcentury Italian and French film, though, Any Number Can Win caught my eye. The promotional blurb I read persuaded me to give it a shot. I’m glad I did.

Charles (Jean Cabin) is a gruff career criminal who just got out of the joint. His wife (Viviane Romance) wants to retire and play it straight, but he insists on one last job: knocking off a casino in Cannes. He recruits Francis (Alain Delon), a petty thief he met in prison, and Francis’s brother-in-law, Louis (Maurice Biraud), a simple mechanic who really has no business participating in a scheme like this. The plan calls for Francis, posing as a high-rolling playboy, to stay at the casino for a week; his job is to scope out an entrance to the elevator shaft backstage that leads to the vault where the money is kept.

Once Francis arrives, he’s immediately smitten with Cannes: hanging out at the pool, driving a cool car, chatting up beautiful girls over cocktails, hitting night clubs, ordering room service. He hooks up with a dancer, Brigitte (Carla Marlier), as a means to an end—but he gets caught up in the melodrama of their fling and the glamorous life he’s gotten himself into. His dalliance threatens to derail the entire operation.

Any Number Can Win gets off to a shaky start—it’s so slow that I began to doze off. Director Henri Vernuil picks up the pace once Francis gets to Cannes and steadily builds momentum and suspense as the story progresses. I got more and more anxious watching the plan come to fruition, excited to see what happens next. A great jazz score orchestrated by Jean Gitton punctuates the action nicely. The early Sixties French Riviera setting—palm trees, lights, and nouveau-meets-modern architecture—is dazzling in black and white. Delon fits perfectly with his smoldering, polished looks. The ending is one of the most memorable I’ve ever seen: floating cash, that’s all I’ll say.

118 minutes
Not rated

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B

Private Property

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1960)

Private Property, a weird and fascinating psychological thriller written and directed by Leslie Stevens and shot over the course of five days in 1959, is the best film I never heard of. Believed “lost” for decades, a print was recently discovered in the UCLA film archives, restored, and shown for the first time in more than half a century just this past May at the TCM Classic Film Festival (https://hqofk.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/2016-tcm-classic-film-festival-private-property-1960/)(http://filmfestival.tcm.com/programs/films/private-property/). It is, in a word, a treat.

Duke (Corey Allen) and Boots (Warren Oates) are two shady Southern California vagabonds who subsist by stealing, usually intimidating their victims into giving them what they want—orange soda, cigarettes, a lift to Beverly Hills. All it takes is Duke’s thinly veiled threats delivered in his cold, menacing manner and a flash of their knives. The boys are sitting on the sidewalk outside the gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway where they just scored some loot when Ann Carlyle (Kate Manx), a beautiful kept housewife in a Corvette, pulls in to ask the attendant for directions. Duke is clearly intrigued by Ann, and he immediately hatches a demented plan to follow her and get Boots, a virgin, laid for the first time.

Ann unwittingly leads them to the Hollywood Hills, where she lives a seemingly idyllic life in a gorgeous home with her husband, Roger (Robert Ward), an insurance executive. Duke and Boots scope out the area and find an empty house for sale right next door to Ann. They squat there and spy on her from an upstairs window as she sunbathes, swims, gardens, eats, and comes and goes throughout the day.

In the privacy of their home, it becomes plain that Roger is more interested in work than in Ann, who not so subtly throws herself at him—splayed out on the living floor with her legs spread in one scene, and all dolled up in a negligee (no doubt from Frederick’s) in another—but can’t seem to get him to take a bite of her apple, so to speak. She stands in front of their bed and cries when she emerges from her dressing room ready for love one night, only to find him sound asleep.

Duke, who deduces that she’s unfulfilled, devises an introduction with Ann: he knocks on her door after Roger leaves for work and poses as a day worker looking for someone else’s house—the Hitchcock residence, of all places. He makes small talk about landscaping and offers to do some gardening work. The exchange sets off an unsettling connection that culminates in a bizarre lunch date in the back yard when Roger flies to San Francisco for the day.

Even with its flaws, I absolutely loved this film—it completely lured me with all it’s got going on. Simmering with sexual tension, ambiguity, and mystery, Stevens lets the plot unfold slowly, step by eerie step—very much like Hitchcock or, much later, David Lynch. It works: Duke is a psychopath, and watching him plot his next move made my skin crawl as much as it kept me glued to the screen. Boots is gay. His relationship with Duke is strange and undefined: it’s not clear whether they’re lovers, but Boots is definitely the submissive one. Roger is asexual. Manx, who has a sweet Barbara Eden thing about her and who was married to Stevens when Private Property was shot (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-leslie-stevens-1159807.html), brilliantly depicts the gamut of feelings Ann goes through: frustration, confusion, longing, hope, and loneliness. She’s a vulnerable character, and it hurts to watch her at times. Side note: knowing that Manx committed suicide a few years later makes her performance here all the more tragic (http://mobile.nytimes.com/1964/11/17/kate-manxactress-is-suicide.html). Ted McCord’s shimmering black and white cinematography and camera work add a ton of character to an already stylish and unusual film.

Promoted as “the boldest story of a planned seduction ever to scald the screen,” Private Property had to be scandalous in its day. It promises the kind of smut in a pulp paperback. It’s simultaneously groundbreaking—for its time, anyway—with its subject matter, yet surprisingly inoffensive. Sex is not shown—it’s all implied. Ann never says she’s horny—she shows it, for example, by rubbing along her neck the big phallic stopper of a huge perfume bottle and lying in bed with Duke’s belt under a towel next to her (oddly, she also puts his belt around her neck at one point). Profanity is whitewashed—in one of the film’s most ludicrous moments, an exasperated Duke utters, “What the flop?” He doesn’t call Boots “gay” or even “homosexual”—the closest he gets is something about finding a daddy.

The ending is disappointingly predictable, but it’s not so bad that it ruins the wonderfully suspenseful ride that brought us to it. From a historical perspective, Private Property stands as a seething criticism of post-War American values. It’s also got great exteriors of a long gone Los Angeles. I won’t forget this one.

79 minutes
Not rated

(Facets) A-

Private Property

Don’t Think Twice

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(USA 2016)

I heard a lot of good things about Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice, and the previews intrigued me. I expected a riotous, vicious comedy about fame and its effect on those who want it—and those who watch their colleagues achieve it while it somehow eludes them. Sounds interesting, but it doesn’t quite play out so.

Miles (Birbiglia), Jack (Keegan-Michael Key), Samantha (Gillian Jacobs), Bill (Chris Gethard), Allison (Kate Micucci), and Lindsay (Tami Sagher) are members of the Commune, an underground improv group in New York City. They schlep through menial jobs by day but excel in their own world by night. When casting agents for iconic latenight staple Weekend Live (an alternate universe SNL) attend a show and express interest in some members, it threatens the future of the group.

Co-produced by Ira Glass, Don’t Think Twice is a coming-of-age drama about comedians. Each character is forced to sink or swim as he or she faces personal change. The charatcters are all likable, and the cast works well as an ensemble. Ben Stiller makes an entertaing cameo. There are some really funny and poignant moments, especially between Jack and Samantha. In the end, though, I’ve seen this before. Too sentimental for my taste, it would have benefitted from a little bite. As it is, Don’t Think Twice is okay but not something that will cross my mind again.

92 minutes
Rated R

(Music Box) C

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Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You

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(USA 2016)

“Do you know how hard it is to make people laugh, to tackle big issues and get big ratings? It’s so hard that people don’t do it anymore.”

—Amy Poehler introducing Norman Lear at the PEN American Center Lifetime Achievement Awards

One commentator asserts that American television consists of two periods: before Norman Lear, and after. He’s got a point. It’s easy to spot Lear’s impact: simply go to All in the Family at the dawn of the ’70s, and look backward then forward. A marked shift to socioeconomic realism is undeniable. It isn’t fair to credit him alone with that pivotal movement—James L. Brooks and Allen Burns hit the air with The Mary Tyler Moore Show four months before All in the Family—but Lear definitely ran with the idea and pushed it farther than anyone else. As the creative force behind shows like the aforementioned All in the Family, Maude, Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, even One Day at a Time and the controversial subjects they tackled, he was prime time’s Martin Scorsese to, say, Gary Marshall’s Steven Spielberg. That’s a huge accomplishment when you stop to consider that the only TV show ever to deal with abortion head-on was one of Lear’s sitcoms, and that was more than 40 years ago.

With Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady assemble a captivating picture of the man behind the curtain through clips, behind-the-scenes footage, his own readings of excerpts from his memoir Even This I Get to Experience, and an interview just for this film. Lear, who recently turned 94, is fascinatingly open and candid about the highs and lows of his personal life, his career, and what inspired him. In the film’s most touching moments, he discusses his father, what it felt like to hear an anti-Semitic speech on the radio when he was a kid, his admiration for Carroll O’Connor, and a sad incident involving his strong-willed wife. He also sings a ditty with buddies Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, which is priceless. In its most interesting moment, Good Times star Esther Rolle confronts him about his depiction of black Americans. It is, to say the least, dy-no-mite.

Comments from a number of celebrities like Jon Stewart, George Clooney, Rob Reiner, and John Amos add depth and demonstrate the reach of Lear’s work. The highlights, however, come from Lear himself. It would have been nice if the directors pushed things a little farther and did away with the dramatization of Lear as a young boy, but I can only hope I live to see the future like he does: clearly, these are the days.

91 minutes
Not rated

(Music Box) B

http://www.musicboxfilms.com/norman-lear–just-another-version-of-you-movies-137.php

http://www.normanlear.com

Boyz N the Hood

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

I’ve seen Boyz N the Hood a few times, but the last time had to be at least 15 years ago. I was curious to see it again when I noticed it playing on cable recently. It definitely shows its age, but it’s retained its impact and remains required viewing.

The boyz are three teens, Trey “Tre” Styles (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and twin brothers Ricky (Morris Chestnut) and Darrin “Doughboy” Baker (Ice Cube). The hood is the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central L.A. The boyz met when they were 10 and Tre moved in with his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne), after his mother (Angela Bassett) decided it was time for a man to raise him. Now, Tre is getting ready to go to college, football recruiters are courting Ricky, and Doughboy is in a gang and making a half-assed attempt not to end up in jail again. It’s apparent that their choices have put them on different paths that already are removing them from each other. Furious is okay with that—especially when a senseless shooting rocks Tre’s world.

In his debut, writer/director John Singleton takes a powerful and realistic look at the problems that still plague American cities: racism (internalized racism, too), segregation, economics, education, parenting, violence, addiction. To his credit, he doesn’t glorify any of it. His characters are multidimensional, into the same things that all teenage boys are: sharp clothes (and, yes, they’re awful), chasing girls, playing games, driving cool cars. Even the not-so-good kids have dignity. When shit happens, Singleton pulls us into it along with his characters. For example, we feel the sting when the Baker boys’ mother (Tyra Ferrell) unleashes her attitude on Doughboy. We also experience a shot of adrenaline when an ominous car chases Tre and Ricky up and down back alleys. It helps that the cast is fantastic.

Nominated for an Academy Award for both Best Director and Best Original Screenplay in 1992 (https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1992), Boyz N the Hood still resonates despite its tendency to lapse into short spells of preachiness. Perhaps it’s because things haven’t changed as much in 25 years as we’d like to believe.

In 2002, the United States Library of Congress deemed Boyz N the Hood “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

112 minutes
Rated R

(MoviePlex) A-

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/boyznthehood/

Café Society

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(USA 2016)

“First a murderer, then he becomes a Christian! What did I do to deserve this?”

—Rose Dorfman

Those who aren’t fans of late-period Woody Allen are unlikely to change their mind with Café Society, a stylish period piece set in Depression Era Hollywood. It lacks the bite of his best work; in fact, it shows him in a far more nostalgic state of mind than ever. As a summer release, though, Café Society is a competent, engaging comedy with a lot of charm.

Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) is a bright, affable, ambitious, and angsty young New Yorker. The problem is, he hasn’t got a plan—which is probably the source of his angst. With little more than good manners, a strong work ethic, and hope, he leaves Brooklyn for ostensibly greener pastures in Los Angeles, where his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell) is a big time agent to the stars. Bobby tracks down his uncle, who dodges him for a week before hiring him as his personal assistant.

Uncle Phil shows Bobby the ropes around Hollywood, promoting him to different, better positions in a short time. They kind of bond. While this is going on, Bobby gets friendly with his uncle’s secretary, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart). They hang out. A lot. She has a beau, she tells Bobby, and they’re on the D.L. because he’s married. Bobby falls for her, anyway, but she keeps him at bay. Vonnie tells Bobby only that her beau works as a reporter, and is older than she is. She also mentions the gift she gives him for their first anniversary: a picture of Rudolph Valentino.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!

L.A. is sunny, but not really Bobby’s thing. He longs for New York, and decides to go back. Meanwhile, we learn that Phil is having an affair—with Vonnie. Phil vascilates about leaving his wife, decides he can’t do it, and dumps Vonnie on their first anniversary. Vonnie quits her job and dates Bobby, seriously. They plan to move to Greenwich Village and get married. Phil changes his mind, and decides he can’t live without Vonnie. He wants her back. A turn of events reveals the triangle to Bobby, and the real story begins.

Café Society deals with fame, fortune, and fidelity. The plot is nicely layered: interesting but not overly complicated. It doesn’t even take long for the “Big Reveal.” Every character is likable but hardly innocent. The sets are gorgeous. Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography is crisp and glitzy—at times, the color palette and grade resemble Lawrence of Arabia. Odd, but cool.

The cast is excellent, which for a Woody Allen film is par for the course: Jeannie Berlin, Ken Stott, Sari Lennick, Stephen Kunken, Blake Lively, Paul Schneider, even Parker Posey. Eisenberg channels Allen really well—the way he speaks, his body language and hand gestures, even his facial ticks. A hilarious exchange between Bobby and a girl-for-hire named Candy (Anna Camp) who shows up late at his apartment is nothing short of genius. As good as Eisenberg is, though, Stewart is the star, and she steals every scene she’s in: she’s cool, mean, flip, vulnerable, and ultimately a sellout. She’s also beautiful. Berlin is another scene-stealer as Bobby’s Jewish mother, Rose.

Surprisingly, Steve Carell is the weak link. I don’t buy him as an agent, a ball-busting businessman, or even a Jew. Not for a second. He’s too soft. Harmless. Cuddly, even. He comes off as Michael Scott from The Office more than anything. I’ve liked him in every role I’ve seen him in, even The 40-Year-Old Virgin. This one, however, doesn’t work.

96 minutes
Rated PG-13

(AMC River East) B

http://www.cafesocietymovie.com

The Infiltrator

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(USA 2016)

Bryan Cranston has come a long way from his stint as Tim Whatley, Jerry Seinfeld’s dentist. He’s an excellent choice to play Robert “Bob” Mazur, a U.S. Customs agent who in 1985 went undercover as fictitious New Jersey money launderer Bob Musella to work his way into the trafficking network of Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar. With the assistance of fellow agents Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo) and Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), Mazur—to use his words—“followed the money” instead of the drugs. It led to one of the biggest drug busts in American history.

Based on Mazur’s memoir The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, director Brad Furman—whose mother, Ellen Brown Furman, wrote the script—lets Cranston go absolutely apeshit with his character. It’s impossible not to draw parallels between Mazur and Breaking Bad’s Walter White; it’s glaringly obvious that both characters are essentially family guys who choose a dangerous double life that consumes them to the point of losing who they are—not to mention their lives. This plays out exquisitely in a scene where a cartel member (Simón Andreu) who knows Musella spots Mazur and his wife, Evelyn (Juliet Aubrey), having a quiet anniversary dinner at a restaurant.

The Infiltrator is a good movie. Despite occasionally feeling like an episode of Miami Vice, it nonetheless has an intensity that slowly comes to a boil, and when it finally does: BOOM! The moral dilemma of betraying the people not only who come to trust Musella but also welcome him into their lives adds a dramatic slant that movies like this tend to lack. I was riveted. Considering its subject matter, though, The Infiltrator doesn’t exactly move fast. It’s more of a low key character study fueled by what’s going on in Mazur’s head. Benjamin Bratt, Yul Vazquez, and even Olympia Dukakis turn in great performances. There are some dark, funny moments along with some really unsettling scenes—like a weird voodoo ritual, an out-of-nowhere drive-by, and murder on the dance floor. It remains to be seen how memorable The Infiltrator proves to be, though.

127 minutes
Rated R

(AMC River East) B

http://www.theinfiltrator.com

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