tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79768351983127782902024-03-05T13:39:44.175-05:00I've Had It With HollywoodGrande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.comBlogger787125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-2055845460473702012018-01-01T13:16:00.002-05:002018-01-01T13:19:39.305-05:00We Are Moving To Medium<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-o8_9ZSZJGdGBG9k5CfSZTWHpNZKdBR9P5yF2wyYT6vVq_GnDzQYI6yY1IXLdl2arp2Yg2mq99-2OiwjGGCY15jH4cKU3JbcH15QNtt0Jdt106xMIPw76SbllTXqVt_ASoMb1-od0hZYi/s1600/05scott600.1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-o8_9ZSZJGdGBG9k5CfSZTWHpNZKdBR9P5yF2wyYT6vVq_GnDzQYI6yY1IXLdl2arp2Yg2mq99-2OiwjGGCY15jH4cKU3JbcH15QNtt0Jdt106xMIPw76SbllTXqVt_ASoMb1-od0hZYi/s400/05scott600.1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Paul Kaye</td></tr>
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<br />
Dear Readers!<br />
Thank you for stopping by and reading. You make my day.<br />
<br />
To start the year with momentous news, I have migrated this blog to Medium.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/ive-had-it-with-hollywood">Here you will find over 700 film reviews </a>since I started <i>I've Had It With Hollywood</i>.<br />
They will also remain at Blogger but I will not be posting new reviews here anymore.<br />
<br />
You can continue enjoying my reviews and other writings to come <a href="https://medium.com/@Grandenchilada">here</a>.<br />
<br />
I wish you a very happy new year full of health and joy and good movies<br />
(do yourself a favor and get <a href="https://www.moviepass.com/">Moviepass</a> if you haven't yet).<br />
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Here's a list of the movies I saw this year (that I remembered to list): </div>
<br />
<i><b>January</b></i><br />
<i>Julieta</i><br />
<i>Train To Busan</i><br />
<i>Hidden Figures</i><br />
<i>I am Not Your Negro</i><br />
<i><b>February</b></i><br />
<i>Demon</i><br />
<i>The Fits</i><br />
<i>The Founder</i><br />
<i><b>March</b></i><br />
<i>Personal Shopper</i><br />
<i>Frantz</i><br />
<i>The Salesman</i><br />
<i>Cloverfield 9</i><br />
<i><u>Get Out</u></i><br />
<i>A Sense of An Ending</i><br />
<i><b>April</b></i><br />
<i>Denial</i><br />
<i>Truman</i><br />
<i>Colossal</i><br />
<i><b>May</b></i><br />
<i>The Lost City of Z</i><br />
<i>The Lovers</i><br />
<i>Slack Bay</i><br />
<i>American Honey</i><br />
<i>The Drowning</i><br />
<i><b>June</b></i><br />
<i>My Cousin Rachel</i><br />
<i>Wonder Woman</i><br />
<i>A Journey Through French Cinema</i><br />
<i><b>July</b></i><br />
<i>The Beguiled</i><br />
<i>Ghost Story</i><br />
<i><b>August</b></i><br />
<i>The Big Sick</i><br />
<i>Logan Lucky</i><br />
<i>Wind River</i><br />
<i>Baby Driver</i><br />
<i><b>September</b></i><br />
<i><u>The Teacher</u></i><br />
<i>Close Encounters </i><br />
<i>mother!</i> <i><br /></i><i>Battle Of The Sexes</i><br />
<i><b>October</b></i><br />
<i><u>The Meyerowitz Stories</u></i><br />
<i>It</i><br />
<i>Wind River</i><br />
<i>The Florida Project</i><br />
<i><b>November </b></i><br />
<i>Suburbicon</i><br />
<i><u>Thelma</u></i><br />
<i>The Square</i><br />
<i><u>Lady Bird</u></i><br />
<i><u>Three Billboards in Ebbing Missouri</u></i><br />
<i>Killing of a Sacred Deer</i><br />
<i><b>December</b></i><br />
<i><u>I, Tonya</u></i><br />
<i><u>The Disaster Artist</u></i><br />
<i>Coco</i><br />
<i>Darkest Hour</i><br />
<i><u>Call Me By Your Name</u></i><br />
<i>Roman J. Israel, Esq. </i><br />
<i>The Post</i><br />
<i>Phantom Thread</i><br />
<i>Downsizing</i><br />
<i>I, Tonya</i><br />
<i>The Shape of Water</i><br />
<i>Faces, Places</i><br />
<i>Blade Runner 2049</i><br />
<i>The Square</i><br />
<i>Molly's Game</i><br />
<i>Happy End</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i>
Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-23843596232870232032017-09-30T10:16:00.001-04:002017-09-30T10:17:40.754-04:00Battle Of The Sexes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFkPh5EbiZepesAQWotzzvHoVCxSN0ehXvH465CHeD9esPD_Yvx5-Neian_W2rl5o_-sAXAEG7oo8iOcAQ3N2FfTrqTsjqGPfBIWz5AVIwUTNVBjSSBgb4XDlz8iUrznsH0z_BiARyy7E/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFkPh5EbiZepesAQWotzzvHoVCxSN0ehXvH465CHeD9esPD_Yvx5-Neian_W2rl5o_-sAXAEG7oo8iOcAQ3N2FfTrqTsjqGPfBIWz5AVIwUTNVBjSSBgb4XDlz8iUrznsH0z_BiARyy7E/s400/download.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I wish there was more battle in this lukewarm, superficial retelling of Billie Jean King's match against Bobby Riggs in 1973, as women's lib was all the rage and King fought for equal pay in the women's tennis circuit. Alas, Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (<i>Little Miss Sunshine</i>) and the script by Simon Beaufoy refuse to be incisive.<br />
Even as one cheers Billie Jean's determination, integrity, and pluck, it is disheartening that for all she changed in the world of sports and beyond, the needle has not moved much to this day. I guess in a country of competitive alpha males, a woman president is still not viable, women still make less than men, and in this day and age, we still have males touting biology as <a href="https://medium.com/@PowerDada/gender-eugenics-are-stupid-541bbe37fbcd">a reason for female intellectual inferiority</a> (and a president whose attitude to women is firmly rooted in the sleazy male chauvinism of the era).<br />
[Aside: I always wonder who these entitled, insecure pricks think gave them life. They would do well to remember who pushed them out into the world.]<br />
If the movie is effective, it's because of the capable work of its cast. At first, sprightly Emma Stone seems too much of a waif to play Billie Jean, but Stone does a good job conveying not only King's sense of fairness but her sharp determination and her competitiveness, as well as her sexual confusion. She's good when she's vulnerable and also when she's tough. The great Andrea Riseborough plays Marilyn Barnett, Billie Jean's first female lover, who upends her private life. Their meeting at a hair salon where Marilyn is giving Billie Jean a trim is beautifully staged and played. Steve Carell is somehow very sympathetic as Bobby Riggs, a tennis has-been who loves gimmicks and gambling. Emasculated at home by his rich wife (so good to see Elisabeth Shue back on screen), he concocts matches against women as a way to earn money and stave off oblivion. Carell is very funny in a scene at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, but he also brings opportunistic cunning and real feeling to his character and makes him not so easy to read.<br />
The movie captures male condescension well, from Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), the president of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association who pays women eight times less to play than men, to the paternalistic commentary of Howard Cosell. It reflects the cultural mores that women endured without complaint in the inevitable compliments to their cuteness, even as they were making a point for themselves. Women are always seen by men as the garnish for the main course, as eye candy, and there are several scenes in which the young women players in the Virginia Slims tournament still react politely when patronized because no one knew any better.<br />
For King, it was doubly difficult to be a standard bearer for women's rights, not only because she was a public figure, but also because, according to this movie, she found out she was gay while she was married (to a very understanding husband, solidly played by Austin Stowell). The movie dutifully reminds us that at the time for a successful woman to come out as gay was simply taboo. King stood to lose endorsements and the public's respect. The film goes out of its way to semaphore its sympathies by featuring the gay designer of the women's tennis dresses (by the way, the costumes by Mary Zophres are fantastic) as -- you will excuse the pun -- a fairy godfather to King. Even though he is played by the charming Alan Cumming, I didn't need the forced, flamboyant comic relief between him and his assistant, nor his treacly speech about gay rights at the end. Watching King in turmoil over not revealing herself to her husband, her parents, and the public is eloquent enough.<br />
It's frustrating when movies about trailblazers choose the most conventional, crowd-pleasing route. This tale could have been a great satire. But the filmmakers use broad strokes and corny dialogue and miss the opportunity to give the topic the acerbic bite it deserves. <i>Battle Of The Sexes</i> is like any other "inspiring" sports movie, with a remarkable heroine instead.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-48751861832497609202017-09-26T10:32:00.002-04:002017-09-26T10:38:24.987-04:00mother!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD5ll3IXXCk0GMapk_TyPv2f4wzDfmBeUv4dku5FwQe1guW8QvQHZtW3kl-ZHQpFfHSCaBg6bL4lnHh8Mqv2vnKbCjAcXAp7PuQF3sPgg1e4G96U62IpKBitBZgCX-ls6mwDVgDwFZY2m7/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="299" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD5ll3IXXCk0GMapk_TyPv2f4wzDfmBeUv4dku5FwQe1guW8QvQHZtW3kl-ZHQpFfHSCaBg6bL4lnHh8Mqv2vnKbCjAcXAp7PuQF3sPgg1e4G96U62IpKBitBZgCX-ls6mwDVgDwFZY2m7/s400/images.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Or, Department of Heavy-Handed Mixed Metaphors.<br />
Watching this trainwreck of a movie, I could not help but think of <i>Rosemary's Baby</i>, from which it borrows many ideas, liberally and clumsily. Here too we have an egotistical creative husband (Javier Bardem, trying his heroic best not to be as absurd as his character). He's married to a blonde sweetheart of a woman, Jennifer Lawrence, in one of the most egregious feats of miscasting mankind has ever known.<br />
As John Cassavetes before him (physically, Bardem and Lawrence are Cassavetes and Mia Farrow on steroids), Bardem is completely self-involved and oblivious to his wife's emotional needs. She is building their nest, a hexagonal house in the middle of a field. There is no driveway.<br />
Nosy people appear, in the welcome shape of Ed Harris, and the spectacularly brittle Michelle Pfeiffer, just like Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer before them. All kinds of strange shenanigans start taking place. Here too a fear/desire of pregnancy emerges, as well as the notion, which in Roman Polanski's gifted hands is a masterpiece of dark humor and dread, that hell is other people.<br />
Unfortunately, all resemblance to Polanski's movie stops there, because to say that writer-director Darren Aronofsky is heavy-handed is understating the issue. Apparently, he has never met a metaphor he didn't like, so the salad of symbolism dooms the movie to camp: the house as a living organism, the sacrifice of the homemaker, fear of pregnancy, male impotence, the destructiveness of ego and celebrity, Cain and Abel, you name it. You confirm you were in trouble when the characters are listed in the end credits as "Mother", "Him", "Man" and "Woman". This movie deserves the Mystery Science 3000 treatment.<br />
Everything is shot by Matthew Libatique to resemble a dreamlike state, and I'd be fine with this if, as in any truly creepy psychological horror film, such as Polanski's <i>Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant, </i>and<i> Repulsion</i>, or Jack Clayton's <i>The Innocents</i>, the disquiet came from our not knowing whether the horror is all in the character's mind. But Aronofsky stacks the deck early on and dispenses with ambiguity. One look at Ed Harris and one knows nothing good can come from him, whereas the Castevet neighbors in <i>Rosemary's Baby</i> really make you wonder whether they mean well or they are direct emissaries of Satan. All the fun and the fear lie in not knowing for sure.<br />
Aronofsky wants to tell an allegory, but it seems to me that, at least in film, allegory is most effective when it is rooted in reality. That's when it messes most with our heads. I'm thinking of allegorical movies that work not only because they are set in reality, but also because they stick to one theme. Movies like Lars Von Trier's <i>Breaking The Waves </i>(love is sacrifice<i>)</i>, <i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/dogtooth.html">Dogtooth</a> </i>(tyranny), by Yorgos Lanthimos, and <i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-teacher.html">The Teacher </a></i>(abuse of power and corruption), by Jan Hrebejk. They are all set in very concrete places, from an oil rig in the North Sea to a modern house in Greece, to a school in communist Czechoslovakia. These movies use realistic detail to bring the psychological aspect into stark relief. By happening in a real context they signal to the audience that this could happen to us.<br />
In contrast, in <i>mother!</i> (or Von Trier's labored allegories like <i>Dogville</i> and <i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/antichrist.html">Antichrist</a></i>) in which everything is dreamlike, it reads as artificial. There is no tension between the outside reality and the reality of the mind. We can't really connect to characters that are symbols. It's just a freak show.<br />
During the first third and best part of the movie, Aronofsky manages a mounting feeling of powerlessness and absurdity as strangers take over Mother's house with the acquiescence of her husband, who loves to be fawned upon. The movie comes alive when Ed Harris and especially Michelle Pfeiffer show up (she's the best thing in the movie, and the only person with a sense of humor). But even their story spins out of control as it becomes clear that they represent the aged marriage, with kids, bitterness and some homicidal silliness about an inheritance.<br />
The problem with heavy-handed symbolism is that the writer thinks the audience is going to feel smart by making the connections but, 1. they are labored, obvious and vulgar, 2. not one iota of believable feeling or attraction transpires between the characters. None of them are real people, except for Michelle Pfeiffer, who should be given an Oscar purely on account of how she delivers the line "have a baby".<br />
I once was almost driven to a nervous breakdown by one such guest who invaded my home and rendered it inhabitable by the sheer force of her malignant personality. I remember opening the fridge and not recognizing anything in there - instead of a warm and generous presence, the food inside seemed a reproach. To this day I cannot describe how this person managed to propel me to the edge of a meltdown, but the feeling is of an alternate reality from which you are shut out, even on your own turf. This is a wonderful feeling to depict in a movie, and Aronofsky sustains it for about half an hour. Unfortunately, he decides to relinquish all self-control, and the movie spirals into cheesy absurdity.<br />
Now, what can be more irrelevant, unbelievable and absurd in a movie than a poet? Why, a poet that has crippling writer's block (pathetic echoes of <i>The Shining</i>) and attempts to scribble pearls of wisdom in what looks like parchment paper. At the height of ridiculousness, he gets a flash of inspiration and clamors for a pen (while naked)! He apparently drives people to a frenzy with his words, which I assume to be a cross between Paulo Coelho and a Hallmark card, but which we are left to imagine since Aronofsky pulls the laziest trick in the book, which is that he knows full well that no one could write anything that could unleash such orgiastic chaos, so we'll never know if he's better than Shakespeare or is writing Jonathan Livingston Seagull II. We are left to trust that Bardem is a poet who changes people's lives because he pontificates new age mumbo jumbo at them.<br />
I could believe the frenzy he provokes had he been a rock star, a musician, an actor, a sports hero, a Kardashian, or some Silicon Valley ghoul. But a poet? Give me a break! This is the kind of putrid stereotype about writers that makes people fear and distrust writing and writers. In fact, this is the kind of movie that makes people fear and distrust art.<br />
Bardem's poet offended me almost as much as the casting of the usually wondrous Jennifer Lawrence as his cipher of a wife. Lawrence is an actress of spunk and gumption, so it is impossible for her to be without a spark, hard as Aronofsky tries. The movie consists mostly of her in close-up, and she's good and honest enough an actress to withstand the scrutiny, but Aronofsky gives her nothing to do but be afraid, cry, recede and ask stupid questions. No one is less interesting than a martyr.<br />
One keeps praying that she will find the balls to confront her husband and all the unwanted guests, and that Lawrence will finally unleash her witty, fresh audacity, but her character represents the other tired trope of male fantasy: the understanding muse, the woman who blends into the walls so that the male genius might thrive. She is the homemaker, the female womb. She doesn't have a job: she lives for him, to save him, to inspire him and to cook and clean and decorate. For a role like this, you do not get Jennifer Lawrence. Also, fuck this movie.<br />
More offensive than the outrageous grand Guignol that follows, which sadly includes a baby, is the fact that after two hours of following her point of view, her abandonment, her disorientation, her feelings of being nothing, it turns out that everything is about HIM. Had this been orchestrated with some irony, it could have been a devastating satire on male self-importance. But I'm afraid that Aronofsky is dead serious.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-75464255024632740372017-09-06T11:49:00.000-04:002017-09-06T11:49:28.087-04:00The Teacher<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A suspenseful, maddening exploration of the effects corruption and abuse of power have on society, this mordant, uncannily relevant fable directed by Jan Hrebejk and superbly written by Peter Jarchovsky is about a school teacher (the fantastic Zuzana Maurery) in communist Czechoslovakia and how she uses her position as head of the communist party at school to demand favors from her pupils' parents. It is a detailed and accurately observed psychological portrait of a corrupt, petty functionary with a little power and how she grows it into a cancer from which no one is immune.<br />
You know something is not right when she arrives the first day of class and asks the children to introduce themselves and tell her what their parents do for a living. She writes all the info in a little notebook.<br />
Soon she is getting free haircuts from a mother in exchange for letting her daughter know the answers for exams in advance, demanding that parents do illegal things for her, and generally treating the children like her own personal serfs. It starts with little favors (smuggling cake into the Soviet Union, for instance) and ends with not so veiled threats and actual psychological harm to the children. One plump person representing a small franchise of state power is capable of fraying the fabric of society.<br />
I couldn't help but think of Trump, who exhibits similar traits to the teacher (although she is much more adroit): both are desperately needy of universal attention, both are phonies, ruthless and completely immoral, only serving their own interests; both are cruel, petty, vindictive, needy, and pathetic. The movie demonstrates how the bad example of someone in a position of authority is enough to empower the worst in people. The teacher mercilessly mocks one of the students (whose parents won't give in to her demands) and next thing we know her classmates start bullying her, just like Trump with his alt-right groupies.<br />
Watching this teacher whine incessantly about how hard and lonely it is to be a widow, I had a realization that sentimentality is evil. Tyrants use sentimentality to manipulate people into abdicating their integrity. All totalitarians are great sentimentalists: they destroy by humiliation and perform their phony pieties with great drama. Kitschy displays of patriotism, such as national prayer days, are examples of insidious sentiment. Just look at Trump, a sadist who whines about unfairness and demonizes those who "persecute" him, like the media.<br />
Maurery plays the teacher with a combination of patronizing sweetness and ruthless cunning. She acts like everyone's idea of a teacher, warm, caring and inexhaustibly didactic. However, she doesn't really teach squat. Propaganda, in the form of a hilariously inappropriate bodice ripping fantasy about a soldier, is what comes out of her mouth in class.<br />
The movie goes back and forth between the situation in the classroom to an extraordinary meeting between the parents and the director of the school (who looks like a deer caught in the headlights, scared of her own authority). That's where we see who is made of what: the collaborationists, the apologists, those who don't want to rock the boat, the privileged judge who tries to intimidate the handful of outraged parents to drop the investigation. In the end, all parents want what's best for their children, and in the case of this communist society, having good grades means being catapulted to a better position in life (just as having a wife who defects to the West gets you demoted from scientist to window cleaner). <br />
The movie feeds our outrage slowly but sharply, with many bitter, ironic twists and a faux happy ending. People can win small victories against corruption at great personal cost, but abuse of power is indestructible.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-80598854653916603922017-07-02T16:51:00.001-04:002017-07-02T16:51:44.240-04:00The Beguiled<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I saw the original Don Siegel movie with Clint Eastwood when I was in my teens and I was deeply disturbed by Geraldine Page's Miss Martha, headmistress of a boarding school for girls during the American Civil War. I'm pretty sure I didn't understand squat, but I could still sense that beneath her steely demeanor there was something very perverse going on. I have yet to see it again, but in the meantime, I cannot fathom why Sofia Coppola was given the best director prize at Cannes for her remake this year, unless for shameless tokenism.<br />
I guess that Coppola wanted to retell this bizarre sexual cat and mice tale through the female gaze, an idea with enormous potential. I can imagine what a gritty, ruthless filmmaker like Lucrecia Martel (<i>La Ciénaga</i>) could do with this material.<br />
Alas, Coppola's effete version is neither atmospheric, nor claustrophobic, nor creepy, nor disturbing, nor suspenseful, nor horrific, nor particularly interesting. It takes a lot of pointless effort to strip a Southern Gothic of camp and charisma, but that's what happens. Her actresses went to great lengths to perfect their genteel Southern accents, but none of them seem to have any concept of what it felt like to be from the South, and what that war meant to their world of cotillions and slaves. There is no real sense of loss, or humiliation, not even after Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman, miscast and misdirected) explains that her school once used to be a grand old antebellum mansion. No effort is made to impress on the audience what it meant for a woman alone to take on that job: much-diminished circumstances. There is no hunger for the world, no desperation. Instead, it all looks and feels like a Laura Ashley catalog. Coppola is not invested in psychological motivation, or in ambiguity. Hence, the reaction of the women at the arrival of a handsome wounded Yankee soldier is completely superficial. It's desire lite.<br />
Now, if a wounded enemy soldier (the vulnerable, wounded male, an object of female fantasies since time immemorial) shows up at a secluded boarding school for girls in bloom and this soldier happens to be Clint Eastwood, people of all genders will understand how this could wreak havoc in all those straitlaced young bosoms. Had it been Michael Fassbender, that school would have exploded in a ball of fire the moment he crawled through the door. But Coppola makes the mistake of giving the honors to Colin Farrell, who is simply not worth the trouble. To be fair to him and to the rest of the good actors in this movie, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst (excellent), Elle Fanning and a gaggle of solid young actresses, it's not their fault. They have only been instructed to play the top note, and this story is all about the murky notes at the bottom, what oozes beneath those stuffy crinolines, what really flutters in the women's wildest hearts. Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-34907217938967610932017-07-02T15:24:00.002-04:002017-07-02T15:29:22.851-04:00Wonder Woman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Deftly directed by Patty Jenkins, this DC Comics installment could use at least half an hour less of fights and a little more feminism. Having said this, and considering it's a superhero franchise, it's quite enjoyable. It is the rare movie with a good second act, and that is because we get to see Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman (the wondrous Gal Gadot) swoon over pilot Steve Trevor (the very game Chris Pine) and be flummoxed by the ways of humans at the turn of the 20th century.<br />
All I could think was that if Gadot and Pine were to have a child, it would be the most beautiful baby in the world. I also wanted to see them make that baby right then and there. No such luck. All we get is a hasty kiss, but there is plenty of witty flirty repartee, like in the classic Hollywood films of yore, and it works.<br />
This movie, the first female-led superhero film in more than a decade, and the first one ever directed by a woman, was still written by three guys, and it makes charming, yet not enough fun of old-fashioned (read Edwardian) male attitudes about women, which haven't changed all that much. The joke is that Diana, who is an Amazon and grew up with fierce women warriors, is innocent of the ways of men, but so much less constrained and prudish than her human counterparts. But the script misses many opportunities to explore our gender issues. Perhaps the guys were afraid of focusing on what guys would focus, which is that she is physically spectacular (believe me, girls focus just as much - that's what superheroes in tight costumes are for). An invading army of Germans suddenly confronts a bunch of flying women in gladiator-wear and none of them even blink. They just keep shooting. Diana flies over enemy territory and the enemy treats her like another piece of ordnance. This makes no sense.<br />
Gadot is very good in her quiet moments, when she doesn't understand why women wear corsets that are not armor, or why generals send millions to their deaths from the comfort of their chairs instead of going to battle. She is less convincing in more dramatic scenes, but she and Pine have great chemistry, without which this movie would be a total waste.<br />
Her mother, played by Connie Nielsen, and aunt, played by Robin Wright, have accents as if they just got off the boat from a shtetl somewhere, and I assume that this was done perhaps to blend in with Gadot's negligible Israeli accent. Or perhaps the screenwriters decided that the Amazons were Ashkenazi Jews, which is perfectly fine by me. Who better to give the Germans grief?<br />
At this point, it's clear that barring Steven Spielberg or John Woo, no one can stage coherent, let alone thrilling, action sequences anymore. There are so many digital effects that one cannot find one's bearings in the frame. Add to that an epically horrid music score (by Rupert Gregson-Williams, but could be anyone else) and super loud sound effects, and by the end, you feel you've been run over by a train. Jenkins fares well with one sequence where Diana braves the trenches in WWI. But all this over the top mayhem made me pine for truly riveting action such as the chases in <i>The French Connection</i>, with two cars in Queens and two guys in the subway.<br />
Still, it's fun to see the Amazons leaping on air and kicking ass, and I loved that Diana uses her lasso and her chunky bracelets as weapons. Men being men, they use ammo.<br />
I also loved seeing a woman with superhuman strength. I was thrilled when she picked up a tank and hurled it as if it were yesterday's undies into the hamper. One of my chief complaints about comic book movies that have female protagonists is that the women basically behave like men. At least here, Diana is a woman. She thinks and fights like a woman (that is, if we had wonder bracelets and iridescent lassos and krav maga experts for our relatives). She loves babies, cares for people and, in one of the best scenes, swoons over ice cream.<br />
However, if someone steals the show, it's the wonderful Lucy Davis, as Etta, Steve's secretary. She nails the comic relief with great charm. I was also happy to see Danny Huston and David Thewlis not phone it in, like many great thespians could be tempted to do when acting against a green screen. Huston rather hams it up. Thewlis just brings it.<br />
I was bored to death by the parts designed to please the guys, and very happy with the love story, the banter, the jokes and the quiet moments. Does this make me a chick?<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-24686059324366213142017-03-31T14:15:00.002-04:002017-03-31T14:15:41.795-04:00Get Out<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Or now you know how black people really feel about white people. This very funny and quite scary movie written and directed by comedian Jordan Peele is a feat of tonality. It can't be easy to make a scary movie funny, and a funny movie scary, but Peele achieves both. Even more admirable than funny and scary is how disturbing and polemical the movie aims to be.<br />
The plot, which has no holes -- rare for a horror movie -- is simple: Rose, a white girl (the very game Allison Williams) takes her black boyfriend Chris (the excellent Daniel Kaluuya) to meet her parents (the great Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford), somewhere deep in leafy, tranquil suburbia. Peele's hypothesis, which is shared by Chris's trepidation but not by Rose's enthusiasm, is that nothing good can come of that.<br />
If you happen to be black, merely walking through the most bucolic white suburb can be fraught with menace. Rose talks back to a police officer in a way that could get her boyfriend tasered, beaten to a pulp, shot, or all of the above, and the officer just lets her go. This sets the tone for the rest of the film.<br />
And then you have the well-meaning white people. They, and this is one of the movie's sharpest jabs, are the ones to worry about. Because Black people know where you stand if you are a wearer of white sheets. But if you are a hippyish wealthy liberal who insists on hugging you and saying "my man" every three words, they may not be so sure.<br />
I once went to a Christmas brunch in a wealthy town in upstate New York and the white people there made the party guests in <i>Get </i><i>Out</i> seem like a bunch of hippies. I have never felt more out of place anywhere, but that's another story. Peele gets it right, from their terrible Talbots outfits to their clueless, condescending bonhomie which includes an unhealthy obsession about Black male athletic and sexual prowess. Worse, the two Black people employed by Rose's parents (Betty Gabriel and Marcus Henderson, both great) are docile, polite servants, incapable of opinion or volition, let alone rebellion. There is something weird about them. It is later on that we realize with horror what that is.<br />
Peele brilliantly translates racial issues into the tropes of a horror film. Horror films are about our deepest subconscious fears. This begs the question as to why nobody has explored the subject of American racism through horror before. Does it hit too close to home? <i>Get Out </i>certainly does, and that's what makes it so successful. Its multiple layers of satire work in parallel with the racial terror.<br />
If the first part of the movie is about the frisson of social racial discomfort, the second part leaps into the horror scenario. This is symbolic, psychological territory that posits that Black lives may not matter to white people who continue to see black people as expendable property, regardless of how liberal they pretend to be. It's inflammatory, and I would say, timely and necessary stuff, which Peele leavens with a hilarious subplot involving a T.S.A. agent (the magnificent LilRel Howery).<br />
To Peele's credit, the plot has no groaners. A big chunk of exposition explains why bad things happen to Chris, and there's a convenient coincidence, but everything is deftly handled through humor and solid plotting, and it works dramatically. Everything that is set up at the beginning is paid off neatly at the end. And you do not see the twists coming.<br />
But what stays with you is the feeling of something deeply awry, of being all alone and out of place, of not really connecting with anybody, of having to decode and let pass all the crazy, uncomfortable stuff people say to you. Have you ever been in a house in the middle of nowhere in which you cannot connect, nor have anything in common with the people in it? That in itself is a horror. Is this a metaphor for how it feels like to live in America when you're Black? This movie is full of such potent, accurate metaphors.<br />
There have been complaints that the movie is anti-white, but people need to get a hold of themselves. It's a broad satire that doesn't pull any punches. <i>Get Out</i> is a funny but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/opinion/the-movie-get-out-is-a-strong-antidote-to-the-myth-of-postracial-america.html">seriously provocative polemic about race</a> relations in America, cleverly disguised as entertainment.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-69297689728790894592017-02-03T17:31:00.001-05:002017-05-06T21:16:51.056-04:00The Salesman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The new movie by the extraordinary Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi is nominated for a Foreign Film Oscar and won the Best Screenplay and Best Actor prizes at Cannes.<br />
Farhadi's movies are about middle-class Iranians and how they go about navigating their lives in a country that seems to be stifled by state-imposed traditional values. In <i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/nyff-2011-separation.html">A Separation</a></i>, a couples' divorce drama unleashes a ripple effect that seems to destabilize everyone around them.<br />
In the masterful <i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/about-elly.html">About Elly</a></i>, a woman tells a little white lie that leads to tragedy. In <i>The Salesman</i>, something more violent is at work, but Farhadi's preoccupation is the same: how an oppressed society handles the pressure. Somehow he manages to get past the censors; except for a judge in <i>A Separation</i>, he never shows the authorities. He doesn't need to. He shows what happens when people have to live by their rules. People exercise self-censorship, talk in euphemisms, lie and omit things constantly. It's the only way to steer clear of absolute judgment.<br />
Farhadi is a great writer of suspense, but his movies are not about criminals and detectives. They are about family and society. Going into his stories is like unraveling a thread in a very complicated maze. We become detectives. Like the characters, we find out things because of telling details, off-hand remarks, neighbors' gossip. That's because anyone rarely says anything directly.<br />
Emad (Shahab Hosseini, excellent) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti, who should have won Best Actress), are married actors who are starring in a modest production of Arthur Miller's "Death of A Salesman". That is, they are sophisticated and cultured. One day, Rana is attacked in her own home. She refuses to go to the police. In this, she may be no different from any victim of sexual assault in this country who fears that she will be treated like the instigator. But the sense of shame pervades everything and everyone. Even her own husband, who is a beloved teacher and who loves her, lords patriarchally over her, is so ashamed himself, that he can't even bear to ask her directly, as she can't bear to answer. The words "rape", or "assault", are never uttered. The fact that she left her door open -- an innocent, terrible mistake, can be misconstrued not only by the police and the courts but by family and friends as some sort of personal depravity on her part. So Emad takes things into his own hands and for the most part of the movie we watch as this couple cannot bring themselves to confront what happened head on. He's full of controlled rage, she is traumatized, and their inability to come together in truth threatens to dissolve their marriage.<br />
Farhadi posits that in such a culture everything is a mystery, and since people go to great lengths to avoid the law (not because they did something wrong but because they fear its intransigence) they get into terrible moral dilemmas. They are on their own. What the state seems to demand from citizens, unattainable personal virtue, becomes a show, an intricate performance rife with euphemistic codes of conduct that people must interpret constantly. And we're talking about perfectly decent people. In order to appear virtuous, mainstream citizens have to lie. Because human relationships are messy and human beings are fallible, everyone is somehow suspect.<br />
The opening scene takes place in an apartment building that is being evacuated. It is on the brink of collapse. Are we at war? Has there been an earthquake? Farhadi pans almost demurely to a bulldozer next door, ripping the earth out from under the escaping citizens. If that is not a concentrated metaphor for man-made hubris, I don't know what is.<br />
Then for the next two hours, as Emad and Rana find a new apartment through the benefaction of an actor friend (beware of people who volunteer favors), we are immersed in a moral whodunnit of which the revelation is a complete shocker. Once we get past the shock, there is more in store for us; two or three astounding moral twists that make us question our own capacity for judgment, mercy and retribution. They are truly shocking, for they are truly human.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-54716371408323196112017-01-24T17:14:00.001-05:002017-01-24T17:22:56.658-05:00Academy Awards: The Annual Kvetch Fest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's that time of year again where we parse the nominations. As you can see below, this was not a great year for American movies. The best picture nominees are a mixed bag, with some movies that don't belong in there by any stretch of the imagination (<i>Arrival</i>, I'm talking to you).<br />
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As usual, better independent movies are ignored in favor of big, corny spectacles.<br />
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I am not doing the technical categories or shorts because in many cases I have not seen the films.<br />
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Below, my rants and raves. <span style="color: red;">Predicted winners in red</span>. <span style="color: blue;">Who I think should win, in blue</span>.<br />
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<b>BEST PICTURE</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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I seem to be the only person in the world who absolutely adored <i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/jackie.html">Jackie</a></i>. In my view, it is better than any of the films below. <i>La La Land</i>, the probable winner, is very polarizing, but I think that even though it strikes people as conventional, it is the most audacious movie of the bunch. In contrast, <i>Moonlight</i>, which has been hailed as audacious because of its subject matter, seemed to me utterly trite. The fight is between those two.<br />
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<a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/arrival.html">ARRIVAL</a> - The most boring movie about aliens ever made.<br />
FENCES - Good, but it's a stiffly filmed stage play, not Best Picture material.<br />
HACKSAW RIDGE - I have trouble seeing movies by antisemites.<br />
HELL OR HIGH WATER - Preposterous but entertaining modern Western.<br />
HIDDEN FIGURES - Conventional but effective and winning.<br />
<a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/la-la-land.html">LA LA LAND</a> - <span style="color: blue;">For sheer moxie and audaciousness. </span><span style="color: red;">A love letter to long-suffering artists. </span><br />
LION - I hear it's a five-hankie weepie. I just can't stand Dev Patel.<br />
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA - There is nothing wrong with this movie, but it leaves me cold.<br />
<a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/moonlight.html">MOONLIGHT</a> - Vastly overrated. </div>
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SNUBBED: <i>Jackie, Loving, Elle, Captain Fantastic, Hail, Caesar! Indignation.</i></div>
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<b>ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE</b><br />
<span style="color: red;">CASEY AFFLECK.</span> An effective one-note performance.<br />
<i>Manchester by the Sea</i><br />
ANDREW GARFIELD. Haven't seen it. But I've never understood why directors like him.<br />
<i>Hacksaw Ridge</i><br />
<span style="color: blue;">RYAN GOSLING. </span>He is wonderful.<br />
<i>La La Land</i><br />
<span style="color: blue;">VIGGO MORTENSEN</span> So glad he's here. A subtle and committed performance.<br />
<i>Captain Fantastic</i><br />
DENZEL WASHINGTON. He's great.<br />
<i>Fences</i><br />
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<b>ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE</b><br />
<span style="color: red;">MAHERSHALA ALI.</span> I love him in everything, but I don't get why he is here.<br />
<i>Moonlight</i><br />
JEFF BRIDGES. He's fantastic.<br />
<i>Hell or High Water</i><br />
LUCAS HEDGES. I hated him, but maybe that was his job.<br />
<i>Manchester by the Sea</i><br />
DEV PATEL<br />
<i>Lion</i><br />
<span style="color: blue;">MICHAEL SHANNON.</span> Absolutely righteous nomination. The best of the bunch.<br />
<i>Nocturnal Animals</i></div>
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SNUBBED: </div>
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Tracy Letts in <i>Indignation</i></div>
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Ralph Fiennes in <i>Hail, Caesar!</i> or <i>A Bigger Splash. </i></div>
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Simon Helberg and Hugh Grant<i> in Florence Foster Jenkins. </i><br />
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<b>ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE</b><br />
ISABELLE HUPPERT. Killer, as usual.<br />
<a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/elle.html"><i>Elle</i></a><br />
RUTH NEGGA. Wonderful.<br />
<i>Loving</i><br />
<span style="color: blue;">NATALIE PORTMAN. </span>Frighteningly good.<br />
<i>Jackie</i><br />
<span style="color: red;">EMMA STONE.</span> Excellent.<br />
<i>La La Land</i><br />
MERYL STREEP. Sure, but enough already!<br />
<i>Florence Foster Jenkins</i></div>
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SNUBBED: Annette Bening (<i>20th Century Women</i>), Amy Adams (<i>Arrival</i>)<br />
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<b>ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE </b>A lackluster category this year.<br />
VIOLA DAVIS. She's fine. I have an issue with the snot.<br />
<i>Fences</i><br />
<span style="color: red;">NAOMIE HARRIS. </span>She was fine, considering the cliched role.<br />
<i>Moonlight</i><br />
NICOLE KIDMAN. Didn't see it.<br />
<i>Lion</i><br />
OCTAVIA SPENCER. She was good, but no better than her colleagues.<br />
<i>Hidden Figures</i><br />
<span style="color: blue;">MICHELLE WILLIAMS. Fine. </span><br />
<i>Manchester by the Sea</i></div>
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SNUBBED: Taraji P. Henson (<i>Hidden Figures</i>), Linda Emond, <i>Indignation.</i><br />
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<b>ANIMATED FEATURE FILM</b> - I haven't seen any of these films but I'm judging from the trailers.<br />
KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS<br />
MOANA<br />
<span style="color: blue;">MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">THE RED TURTLE</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">ZOOTOPIA</span><br />
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<b>CINEMATOGRAPHY</b><br />
ARRIVAL<br />
Bradford Young<br />
LA LA LAND<br />
Linus Sandgren<br />
LION<br />
Greig Fraser<br />
<span style="color: red;">MOONLIGHT<br />James Laxton</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">SILENCE<br />Rodrigo Prieto</span></div>
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SNUBBED: JACKIE, Stephane Fontaine</div>
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HAIL CAESAR!, Roger Deakins</div>
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THE HANDMAIDEN Chung-hoon Chung<br />
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<b>COSTUME DESIGN</b><br />
ALLIED<br />
Joanna Johnston<br />
<span style="color: red;">FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM<br />Colleen Atwood</span></div>
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FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS<br />
Consolata Boyle<br />
<span style="color: blue;">JACKIE<br />Madeline Fontaine</span><br />
LA LA LAND<br />
Mary Zophres</div>
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SNUBBED: Zophres for <i>Hail, Caesar! </i><br />
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<b>DIRECTING</b><br />
ARRIVAL - Humorless, leaden: no.<br />
Denis Villeneuve<br />
HACKSAW RIDGE<br />
Mel Gibson<br />
<span style="color: red;">LA LA LAND </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Damien Chazelle</span><br />
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA - Good job.<br />
Kenneth Lonergan<br />
MOONLIGHT - Fine.<br />
Barry Jenkins</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
SNUBBED: Paul Verhoeven, <i>Elle. </i>Pablo Larrain,<i> Jackie. </i><br />
<br />
<b>DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)</b><br />
FIRE AT SEA - Haven't seen it.<br />
Gianfranco Rosi and Donatella Palermo<br />
<span style="color: blue;">I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO - So glad this is here. Excellent. </span><br />
Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety and Hébert Peck<br />
LIFE, ANIMATED - Haven't seen it.<br />
Roger Ross Williams and Julie Goldman<br />
<span style="color: red;"><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/oj-made-in-america.html">O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA</a> - One of the best movies of the year. Period. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow</span><br />
13TH - Excellent.<br />
Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick and Howard Barish<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM</b><br />
LAND OF MINE<br />
Denmark<br />
A MAN CALLED OVE<br />
Sweden<br />
<span style="color: blue;">THE SALESMAN</span> - Farhadi is one of the best filmmakers in the world today so I root for him.<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Iran</span><br />
TANNA<br />
Australia<br />
<span style="color: red;"><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/toni-erdmann.html"><span style="color: red;">TONI ERDMANN</span></a> </span>- Super overrated.<br />
<span style="color: red;">Germany</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
SNUBBED: THE HANDMAIDEN. One of the best movies of the year in any language. </div>
<div>
THE CLUB by Pablo Larrain, Chile. </div>
<div>
<br />
<b>MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)</b><br />
<span style="color: blue;">JACKIE </span>- If this hadn't been nominated I would have thrown a symphonic tantrum. Spectacular.<br />
Mica Levi<br />
<span style="color: red;">LA LA LAND - </span>Not memorable music, but a lot of it.<br />
Justin Hurwitz<br />
LION<br />
Dustin O'Halloran and Hauschka<br />
MOONLIGHT - Distracting and pretentious.<br />
Nicholas Britell<br />
PASSENGERS<br />
Thomas Newman</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
SNUBBED: <i>Nocturnal Animals. </i><br />
<br />
<b>MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)</b><br />
AUDITION (THE FOOLS WHO DREAM)<br />
from La La Land; Music by Justin Hurwitz; Lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul<br />
CAN'T STOP THE FEELING<br />
from Trolls; Music and Lyric by Justin Timberlake, Max Martin and Karl Johan Schuster<br />
<span style="color: red;">CITY OF STARS</span><br />
from La La Land; Music by Justin Hurwitz; Lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul<br />
THE EMPTY CHAIR<br />
from Jim: The James Foley Story; Music and Lyric by J. Ralph and Sting<br />
HOW FAR I'LL GO<br />
from Moana; Music and Lyric by Lin-Manuel Miranda</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="color: blue;">SNUBBED: Pharrell Williams' excellent songs for <i>Hidden Figures.</i> </span></div>
<div>
<br />
<b>PRODUCTION DESIGN</b><br />
ARRIVAL - The only good thing in this film, plus Amy Adams.<br />
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM<br />
<span style="color: blue;">HAIL, CAESAR! Love, love, love. </span><br />
LA LA LAND - Technicolor without the style.<br />
<span style="color: red;">PASSENGERS</span><br />
<br />
<b>WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)</b><br />
ARRIVAL<br />
Eric Heisserer<br />
FENCES<br />
August Wilson<br />
<span style="color: blue;">HIDDEN FIGURES</span><br />
Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi<br />
LION<br />
Luke Davies<br />
<span style="color: red;">MOONLIGHT</span><br />
Screenplay by Barry Jenkins; Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
SNUBBED: <i>Elle</i> by Philippe Djian. <i>Indignation</i> by James Schamus.<br />
<br />
<b>WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)</b><br />
HELL OR HIGH WATER - Entertaining but I didn't buy it.<br />
Taylor Sheridan<br />
<span style="color: blue;">LA LA LAND - Bittersweet and smart. </span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Damien Chazelle</span><br />
<a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-lobster.html">THE LOBSTER </a> Their weakest script yet.<br />
Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou<br />
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA - Very good writing.<br />
Kenneth Lonergan<br />
20TH CENTURY WOMEN - Good.<br />
Mike Mills</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
SNUBBED: Noah Oppenheim, <i>Jackie. </i></div>
</div>
Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-46665492159231627602016-12-29T11:58:00.001-05:002016-12-29T12:01:24.767-05:00O.J: Made In America<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcsQkIMmsFbaNFfbzFTYX2GEdGhmbJpo7PL6UR6OBORTMMFQB_HRFM7dhyQ-5tIKxpZHqj293PjljGfKDh2IZ01Ks6aZCTzu1TB10_K12JIXLZMkj3ja1Sc8Vr2ahv5muLdLT6RNjJc4Vy/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-12-29+at+11.53.05+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcsQkIMmsFbaNFfbzFTYX2GEdGhmbJpo7PL6UR6OBORTMMFQB_HRFM7dhyQ-5tIKxpZHqj293PjljGfKDh2IZ01Ks6aZCTzu1TB10_K12JIXLZMkj3ja1Sc8Vr2ahv5muLdLT6RNjJc4Vy/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-12-29+at+11.53.05+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I saw this <a href="http://www.espn.com/30for30/ojsimpsonmadeinamerica/">epic documentary</a> by Ezra Edelman on a big screen at one seating, 11 am to 7 pm, and it took my breath away. It has the scope of a Shakespearean tragedy and the feel of a spiraling, prismatic nightmare. It is crammed with information and raises a thousand questions for every answer it seeks to shed light on. It has a colorful, entertaining and deeply revelatory cast of characters, from best friends, managers, former attorneys, jury members, prosecutors, police officers, and a particularly fabulous helicopter pilot. Some of them, like Marcia Clark, O.J.'s manager, and Mark Fuhrman leave you wanting answers. It is an absolutely riveting and thoroughly depressing film: eight hours of much that is wrong with this country through the rise and fall of Orenthal James Simpson.<br />
<br />
You may remember the murders, the white Bronco and the trial and the surreal circus we witnessed for 8 months in the mid-nineties. This movie puts it all into context. From Simpson's street smart childhood in the San Francisco projects to his astounding feats as a college football hero and adored celebrity, to his ignominious fall, the portrait that emerges is the exact opposite of a hero.<br />
This country has an unhealthy obsession with heroes and it slaps the term on all kinds of undeserving people quite lightly. This tends to happen particularly in sports. I have never fathomed why people think that someone as evidently rank as Michael Phelps is a hero. Look what happened to Lance Armstrong, who abused the privilege. And then there is O.J. Simpson, who took his own glorification to new highs and lows.<br />
He was extremely good looking, a gifted athlete, and according to many people in the film, an irresistible charmer. He had an amazing rags-to-riches story and all the talent, fame, money and public adoration someone could possibly wish for. But soon a jarring note is introduced. The young college football player refused to participate in the Civil Rights movement when Mohammed Ali was gathering the biggest black athletes in America to join in the protest, a decision that cost many of them dearly. We learn through the course of the film that Simpson's indifference, which you could ascribe to youthful ambition was only one manifestation of a deeply narcissistic, manipulative personality. The personality that emerges is that of a coward and an egomaniac with deep reserves of unfathomable anger: driven, controlling, manipulative, paranoid and deeply self-hating, to the point that he did not consider himself Black. His tragedy is that his undeniable talent and consequent celebrity amplified an already damaged ego.<br />
Hand in hand with the exploration into Simpson's personality, Edelman weaves a compelling look into the country he was born into; a country that still refuses to fully acknowledge and heal the disastrous and ongoing ramifications of slavery and racism.<br />
The Los Angeles where O.J. moved after he retired from playing for Buffalo was a sunny haven for people with money but a hell of a segregated town with a police department that was notoriously abusive of the Black community. By the time his saga happened, L.A. had witnessed the Rodney King beating and story after story of police brutality against African-Americans.<br />
Hindsight is truly 20-20. At the time of the trial, I made a $100 bet that O.J. would be found guilty. The evidence, after all, was overwhelming. Perhaps I was too new to the U.S. and was unaware of the enormous gulf between blacks and whites and the racial tensions bubbling under the surface. After watching this film, the competing black and white perspectives are clearly laid bare. The insurmountable differences in the perception of Simpson: to white people, a cold-blooded liar and murderer; to the black community, just another black man framed by racist police, dramatically divided the country thanks to years of mutual distrust and prejudice and to blatant manipulation by the defense and the prosecution alike. Any white person who does not understand how the not-guilty verdict was arrived at will have a much clearer understanding.<br />
<br />
This movie covers many layers of the American experience. The first one, which I had forgotten about and which shocked me, and perhaps the only one which is truly universal, is domestic violence. Nicole Brown would routinely call 911 from the couple's home in Brentwood fearing for her life. Quite simply, she was a battered wife. Celebrity or not, her case is yet another statistic of spousal abuse that ends in murder, when victims don't leave and abusers are not arrested and locked up. Poor Ronald Goldman, a waiter who came by to deliver a pair of glasses, was caught in the maniacal rage of a wife beater. The documentary shows the gruesome pictures of the crime scene that were left out of the newscasts and the newspapers at the time. They are so extreme, they were not fit to be seen by the public at large.<br />
<br />
The heady, highly toxic and very American cocktail of money and celebrity allows people to get away with murder; in this case, literally. Because Simpson was a celebrity (which turned him virtually into a demigod) and lived in a tony white neighborhood, a policeman shows up after one of Nicole's frightened calls and finds her hiding in the bushes, bruised and scared out of her wits, but instead of cuffing O.J. and putting him in the car, he lets him get dressed, and next thing he knows, O.J. is escaping in his Bentley. Then, as she did time and again, she declines to press charges. It could be out of love, codependency, fear, the fact that he was a meal ticket for her entire family, or possibly all of the above. Certainly his money and status played a part.<br />
The two almost comically incompetent detectives that arrested Simpson after the chase make every effort to allow him to acquit himself in their interrogation. Hell, consider that surreal chase in which a squad of patrol cars basically accompanies him as if at a procession. Edelman shows aerial footage of what happens to any regular idiot who uses his car to flee the long arm of the LAPD. They don't get a parade like O.J. They get totaled.<br />
I don't have to tell you about the distortion of reality that this insane American cult of cash and celebrity brings: we are about to inaugurate a demented orange baboon as President of the United States because of money and fame. In fact, the parallels with Trump are inevitable. In both cases, there are reams of incontrovertible evidence as to the toxicity of both celebrities' characters. They are both pathologically narcissistic.<br />
<br />
When it comes to the trial itself, and the justice system that allowed such an unseemly spectacle is where you tear out your hair in despair. Justice for all... that $50,000 a day in lawyer fees can buy. An incompetent and self-serving District Attorney and a beleaguered prosecution team which in hindsight made terrible, but almost inevitable, tactical mistakes, all due to the racial makeup of the story, including the location of the jury trial, the jury selection and the choice of judge, among many others. As the trial laid bare at the time, the American justice system is designed to work only for those who can afford it.<br />
<br />
Which brings us back to the "race card". It is a disgrace, but a fact and at the core of this story, that this is how Simpson's legal fate was going to be played out. The most exquisite and painful irony is that, until he became a murderer, O.J. Simpson wanted nothing to do with black people. Except for his childhood friends, all his friends were white. He had always been out for himself; never had a shred of conscience, racial or otherwise. But the minute it was time to elicit sympathy, he suddenly found his roots. He had people like Johnny Cochran fashion a racial narrative for him, complete with a racist cop supposedly planting evidence. Yet Simpson and his Dream Team were not alone in making it about race. The prosecution made it about race when it changed the location of the trial, when it introduced Christopher Darden, and when it chose eight black women as jurors. According to Marcia Clark, it turned out that they had no sympathy for Nicole Brown: the white interloper wife of a Black man.<br />
Race is the poison that feeds this terrible story from inception, and Edelman is not shy to explore its worst aspects - Simpson as the unthreatening negro, the Uncle Tom-ish Hertz spokesman, the guy who had to get the white woman, who wondered what were "all those niggers" doing in his neighborhood, welcoming him home after the chase. Charitably, his loyal friends insist that all he wanted was to transcend race. He had a point, to a point. He wanted to be equal, in his own selfish way. However, his behavior was far from an appeal to equality and brotherly love. He was indifferent to his community and became a sad minstrel sideshow for the mainstream media. He lacked what true heroes have: dignity. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-37226905703226532752016-12-28T20:26:00.003-05:002017-01-14T13:49:59.615-05:002016: The Year In Movies. Best, Worst and Everything in Between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Perhaps not as horribilis as it was in real life, but 2016 was a crap year in movies, for the most part.<br />
Still:<br />
<br />
<b>Excellent</b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-handmaiden.html">The Handmaiden</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/oj-made-in-america.html">O.J. Made In America</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/jackie.html">Jackie</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-club.html">The Club</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/elle.html">Elle</a></i><br />
<div>
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/hail-caesar.html">Hail Caesar!</a></i><br />
<i>I Am Not Your Negro</i><br />
<i>13th</i><br />
<i>The Wailing</i><br />
<br />
<b>Very Good</b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-witch.html">The Witch</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-bigger-splash.html">A Bigger Splash</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-clan.html">The Clan</a></i><br />
<i><a class="" href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/movie-bites.html">Krisha</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/indignation.html">Indignation</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/southwest-of-salem.html">Southwest of Salem</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/la-la-land.html">La La Land</a></i><br />
<i>Neruda</i><br />
<i>Mustang</i><br />
<i>The Witness: Kitty Genovese</i><br />
<i>Aquarius</i><br />
<i>The Mermaid</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>Good</b><br />
<i>Manchester By The Sea</i><br />
<i>20th Century Women</i><br />
<i>Hidden Figures</i><br />
<i>In The Heart Of The Sea</i><br />
<i>Dheepan</i><br />
<i>Julieta</i><br />
<i>Captain Fantastic</i><br />
<i>Love and Friendship</i><br />
<i>The Conjuring 2</i><br />
<i>Christine</i><br />
<i>Fences</i><br />
<i>Equity</i><br />
<i>Loving</i><br />
<i>Things To Come</i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<b>Absolutely Bizarre</b><br />
<i>Evolution</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>Okay</b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/cafe-society.html">Café Society</a></i><br />
<i>Maggie's Plan </i><br />
<i>Don't Think Twice</i><br />
<i>Weiner</i><br />
<i>Live By Night</i><br />
<i><br /></i><b>Interesting But Flawed</b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/movie-bites.html">Miles Ahead</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/movie-bites.html">The Invitation</a></i><br />
<i>Miss Sloane</i><br />
<i>The Fits</i><br />
<br />
<b>Overrated</b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/moonlight.html">Moonlight</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/toni-erdmann.html">Toni Erdmann</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/arrival.html">Arrival</a></i><br />
<i>Hell or High Water</i><br />
<br />
<b>Meh</b><br />
<i>Florence Foster Jenkins</i><br />
<i>The Family Fang</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>Disappointing</b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/nocturnal-animals.html">Nocturnal Animals</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/movie-bites.html">Green Room</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-lobster.html">The Lobster</a></i><br />
<i>Creepy</i><br />
<i>Don't Breathe</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>Bad</b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/american-pastoral.html">American Pastoral</a></i><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-tale-of-love-and-darkness.html">A Tale Of Love And Darkness</a></i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>Pretentious and Bad </b><br />
<i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/knight-of-cups.html">Knight of Cups</a></i><br />
<i>The Neon Demon</i><br />
<i>Heart of a Dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>Horrid</b><br />
<i>Silence</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>Haven't Seen Yet:</b><br />
<i>I, Daniel Blake</i><br />
<i>Paterson</i><br />
<i>Sully</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <b>You'd Have To Pay Me To See:</b><br />
<i>Rogue One</i><br />
<i>Allied</i><br />
<i>Hacksaw Ridge</i><br />
<i>Collateral Beauty</i><br />
<i>Lion</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i> <i><br /></i>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-78190067746659771852016-12-27T18:05:00.003-05:002016-12-27T18:27:37.274-05:00Toni Erdmann<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
A curious and original story from Maren Ade, <i>Toni Erdmann</i> is a well-rounded comedy of opposites. A creative, jocular father and his square, corporate daughter face off in a battle of wills that escalates at absurdum.<br />
The movie is anchored by a truthful and phenomenal performance by Sandra Hüller, in the role of Ines, a young German consultant working in Bucharest, who is driven in her pursuit of business deals. She is very good at what she does and has to deal with the soul-crushing, generic corporate culture, which includes casual if aggressive sexism, tiresome, absurdist groupthink and futile passive-aggressive power plays between international employees. The Germans hire an American or English consultancy to work with the Rumanians, which as the movie points out, boast of the biggest mall in Europe where no one has any money to buy anything.<br />
Ade skewers this world perfectly, capturing precisely the genericness of the people, their business lingo peppered with Orwellian English phrases like "team-building", their blind obedience to corporate culture. It deserves her thorough thrashing.<br />
Ines' father, Winfried, aka Toni, (Peter Simonischek), a music teacher in an elementary school, is sadly and suddenly in possession of time off, so he decides to show up unannounced in Bucharest. The family dynamics are strained. Just like children of authoritarians may become hippies and anarchists, sometimes children of free spirits are the squarest people, because the apples need to fall as far from the tree as possible. Through her difficulty at connecting with her dad, one can imagine what it must have been like for Ines to grow up with a prankster father, an unambitious dreamer.<br />
Her mother has remarried and seems to be happy with a whole new, normal family. Perhaps it's droll having a clown for a dad the first few years and then it gets tiresome. <br />
The plot of this movie hinges upon Winfried articulating an apparently innocuous question that Ines finds deeply offensive: "Are you happy?"<br />
He likes to gently prank people with the aid of fake teeth and a terrible wig. Ines tries to take it in stride and with dignity, but he keeps surprising her and embarrassing her in public, bent on making her lose her steely composure. And here is where, even if there are a couple of strong, great twists, I parted company with the movie. The guy is just not that funny. His humor is leaden. He is like a giant baby, too dim to understand the rules of his daughter's world. Perhaps this is on purpose, but at over two hours and a half, my patience with his daughter's patience wore thin. Ade strains to find situations in which Winfried has to be involved, for instance, at a visit to an oil field, where Ines could have easily commanded him to stay in the car. There's a lot of forced slapstick, which is a peculiar brand of awkward humor. Some people at my screening were laughing hysterically. Out of me, this movie got plenty of wry smiles but only a few laughs.<br />
But then, as I was losing faith in the movie, Ade escalates it to a daring level of absurdity. Emotionally, it makes sense: Ines is perhaps made of the same cloth as Winfried, as much as she resists accepting it, and being fiercely competitive, even with herself, she truly ups the ante, playing a major prank on her colleagues, literally revealing them in all their corporate absurdity. In the end, for all her resistance, Winfried/Toni has made a dent on Ines. A lovely, moving scene of reconciliation is touchingly poetic.<br />
The movie is funniest when Ines tries to keep everything under control. In the best scene in the movie, she sings a very apropos Whitney Houston song in front of a roomful of strangers. She is nothing if not bent on performing stellarly. Hüller is truly the reason this movie works. And the well-observed details about the travails of working people in a globalized world make it more than just a light comedy. If only the humor were not so heavy-handed.Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-31195730629543596192016-12-19T12:02:00.002-05:002016-12-19T12:02:47.287-05:00La La Land<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is going to sound completely vacuous, but watching Ryan Gosling hoof and sing and fall in love and play the ivories with passion made me forget about all the problems in the world. In fact, it made me think: Aleppo and Trump are happening, but here is Ryan Gosling giving my tired old heart sheer undiluted joy. Isn't this what movies and movie stars are for?<br />
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Director Damian Chazelle (<i>Whiplash</i>) is a clever filmmaker, and he seems to have opted for deliberate artificiality in order to make <i>La La Land</i>, a musical movie, work. And work it does, emotionally. The story is about two creative people, Mia, an aspiring actress and Sebastian, an anachronistic jazz pianist, who struggle to hang on to their dignity in L.A., a sunny but brutal town when it comes to making dreams come true.<br />
But<i> La La Land</i> works mainly because Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are wonderful and delightful. They have a lovely chemistry together and are excellent apart. They are not belters or showbiz kind of performers so their naturality as they sing and dance is very affecting. They portray their characters with grit, wit and charm.<br />
Chazelle is good with perky dialogue as well as with visual gags. The opening scene is a nod to the famous traffic jam that opens Fellini's <i>81/2</i>, but also a sweet joke on the legendary gridlock of Los Angeles. The different music coming out of people's cars sets up the stage for the musical we're about to watch. Being as they are, stuck in traffic, Mia and Sebastian do not meet cute; they meet with road rage. The spirit of this film is at once romantic and nostalgic for the effortless romance of the past, and also a little bit jaded and realistic about life. Billy Wilder would be proud.<br />
<i>La La Land </i>made me think of the Great Depression and how those Busby Berkeley musicals and other light fare spirited people away from their misery (if they could afford a movie ticket). This charming film does that. It sucks you into the story of the artistic and romantic struggles of two winning losers, with pep and whimsy but without sentimentality, indeed with a clear-eyed realistic assessment of love, and a ballsy dream sequence that goes for the bittersweet because life isn't perfect.<br />
The music by Justin Hurwitz is nice and serviceable, but not particularly memorable (the uninteresting leit motif repeated over and over is borderline annoying). Chazelle uses normal singing voices, instead of Ethel Merman-like singers, and the effect is a little shaggy, but heartfelt. Stone and Gosling are refreshingly natural singers and dancers, a much-needed antidote to the horrifying belting currently in vogue in films like <i>Frozen</i>. They have class.<br />
Although the color scheme aims to evoke the technicolor musicals of yore I thought the film could look better. However, coming up with an original musical film in this day and age is a radical notion, and this fresh take on love and creative struggle is a lovely and timely gift from a talented filmmaker.<br />
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Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-39363794393445387162016-12-10T11:27:00.000-05:002016-12-10T11:27:04.817-05:00Arrival<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was bored from minute one. Is this a movie about language and communication, or is this a movie about predicting the future, or is this a movie about China and Russia being mean?<br />
<i>Arrival</i> has some interesting stuff going for it. I liked the alien heptapods, which also look like hands and have elephant skin. Their language blooms like ink on water. They sound like basso profundo whales, slightly sad. I liked the thick, gel-like texture of their atmosphere and I liked Amy Adams, who does way too much with way too little. But the movie made no sense to me.<br />
In science fiction movies the science better be buttoned up and understandable. You can't have characters espousing theories about language and half a second later you are communicating with the aliens without really explaining how. Showing a bunch of complicated graphics doesn't do the trick, and particularly not with language, since as opposed to applied mathematics, musical notation or nuclear physics, plain old language is something we all use.<br />
It makes no sense to me that a linguist would try to communicate through written language with beings who grunt in stereo. First option would be sound, no? Music! Echoing their sounds. And the second would be images. A smiley face? Because that's how we started communicating back in the caves. Written language came much later.<br />
<i>Arrival</i>, like other current pretentious sci-fi movies like <i>Interstellar</i>, suffers from ambitious metaphysics and phony, half-baked science that it cannot explain. It's a problem with the writing. People who write movies like this trust that the audience will not be too demanding and so they futz it up and think no one will care. Now, let me clarify. The science could be completely made up. Bugs Bunny could invent the science. As long as it is clearly established, we buy it, because those are the ground rules. But I never understood how we went to being baffled by the aliens' beautiful inky circles, to the word "weapon". How did that happen? And why that word? Showing people trying to solve problems in their head does not do the trick.<br />
Worse, however, are the ultra-conventional, comic book clichés of the world being hostile and aggressive to these things (reminiscent of <i>A War of The Worlds</i>). Sure their spacecraft is scary, and sure the military should be involved, but I would think that NASA and the scientific community would be more important than some meanie from the CIA, of all places. There is a bad Chinese general and the Russians are dicks, and the Americans are not likable either (perhaps the one realistic touch). So poor Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are the only two scientists on Earth who can talk to these guys.<br />
Meanwhile, I spent the entire movie thinking that it really works like a very benign metaphor for Donald Trump. If there is a scary alien that threatens to pulverize the world tweet by toxic tweet, he is it. The anxiety this movie creates about our inability to communicate echoes what is happening in the world right now. Sadly, it doesn't focus enough on the miracle of communication, which is what I thought it was about. At some point, it turns out that it is also about the ability to predict the future, and these two ideas are never explained or tied coherently. It feels like watching two different movies.<br />
But my biggest disappointment is that I felt no sense of either suspense, wonder or awe, even if the aliens are conceptually interesting and there are a couple of mildly thrilling moments (one involving Amy Adams' hair). This movie made me pine for Steven Spielberg, who as shlocky as he can be, is truly a master at unleashing a sense of curiosity and wonder. And fun, for crying out loud! This movie is humorless.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-49463202532537770882016-12-04T10:36:00.000-05:002016-12-04T10:36:05.772-05:00Jackie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A jewel box of private and public pain, this film by Pablo Larraín is a layered study of the tension between private grief and public performance. It is an intimate portrait of grief, a film about personal devastation from the point of view of a woman who was in close proximity to absolute power, lived at the seat of power, but had only the very limited power she could wield as the wife of the slain president of the United States.<br />
The movie starts with Jackie (Natalie Portman, formidable) talking to a journalist (Billy Crudup) and then jumps back and forth, from when Mrs. Kennedy gave a tour of the White House for the first time on TV, to the assassination of her husband, and its immediate aftermath in her life. The excellent script by Noah Oppenheim never leaves the focus on Jackie. It never moves out to depict the shock and grief that gripped the nation and the world; a wonderful choice, because it is far more powerful as an intimate portrait of a woman in a time of crisis than as a conventional account of historical events.<br />
At the center of the maelstrom, Jackie Kennedy remains an enigma. She is stylish, perhaps frivolous and interested in throwing grand soireés; she is cultured and well-read and obsessed with history in a fetishistic way; she is petite, demurring and gracious but also steely and single-minded in her pursuit of dignity -- a style icon, but a shy one. She is fiercely loyal to the memory of a husband who she knew was disloyal to her. She is poised and controlled in public, and unhinged by grief in private. Natalie Portman pulls out all the stops, including nailing Jackie's breathy voice and her insane accent, which is no small feat. She is fantastic in this movie, capturing moment by moment the tension of living such profound devastation as a public performance. Jackie is a woman trying to rein in and give meaning to a world that is spinning out of control.<br />
Larraín shoots Portman mostly in close-ups, leaving the grand personalities of history, including her husband, on the margins. It's a masterfully realized character study. The scene on Air Force One where Lyndon Johnson (John Carroll Lynch) takes the oath of office while Jackie is visibly reeling from the shock is all you need to know about how it feels to have the earth pulled right from under your feet.<br />
Larraín is one of the most skillful directors working today. The movie feels like we have entered a snow globe hermetically sealed from inside to witness events almost from the very skin of the woman at the center of the story. Although <i>Jackie</i> is an American story, conceptually it is not a typical American film. It steadfastly avoids clichéd heroics or epic sentiment. Larraín was an inspired choice to direct because his movies are always concerned with understanding and revealing power (mostly in all its ugliness). He is allergic to sentimentality but capable of profound empathy.<br />
The only elements that feel shoehorned are the inclusion of two fictional characters, the journalist (Crudup), and a priest (the great John Hurt) to whom Jackie tells her story. I get the symbolism. After the events, Jackie talks to the press, understanding and fiercely insisting that power lies in controlling the narrative, and with the priest, she lets rip with the awful, unvarnished truth that pours out of her in her grief, which in both cases is tinted with anger. As good as they are, these conversations tend to slow the movie down. Still, Larraín knows exactly what to reveal when, and the script mirrors the experience of shock and loss remembered, in bits and pieces, so the assassination itself blossoms at precisely the right moment, not when the audience expects it, and it feels like a punch in the gut.<br />
The extraordinary music score by Mica Levi echoes the revulsion, the shock, the unmoored feeling of the cataclysmic event. The meticulous art direction, attention to fashion, and every single prop mirror Jackie's own obsession with image, and with history and its artifacts. The perfect harmony of subject matter and flawless execution make<i> Jackie</i> a strangely hypnotic, fetishistic film. Jackie is obsessed with preserving history, showing the truth, and punishing chaos with dignity. Thus, <i>Jackie</i> comes at a very timely juncture, in which we are left to ponder what's in a presidency. As Jackie Kennedy makes clear in this movie, the presidency is as much about policy as it is about powerful symbolism and clear leadership. The first family mirrors the country it leads.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-47343939294270844682016-11-28T17:34:00.000-05:002016-11-28T17:48:06.956-05:00Nocturnal Animals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A stylish mess. Amy Adams is wasted in a rudderless role in this modern noir by Tom Ford about a wealthy woman who has everything and is deeply unhappy. She lives in a modernist box in the Hollywood Hills, has a penchant for terrible performance art, has a handsome, unconcerned husband (Armie Hammer) and gets a manuscript in the mail from her ex (Jake Gyllenhaal, playing a poor sap) in which he has novelized what she did to him before she married the millionaire.<br />
As she reads the book, we go back and forth from her slick, empty existence to a garish American Gothic tale of violence. The elements of the plot of this film have far more promise than Ford knows what to do with and what could be a satisfying blackhearted noir about revenge with a strong femme fatale is a clumsy study in empty artificiality. Perhaps the structure is what dooms the film. If everything important happens either in the past or in a book, there's no momentum and no suspense. A femme fatale who mopes and reads is not necessarily the most compelling plot device. Compounding the problem, the pulpy novel doesn't seem to be very good. Its opening scenes are patently absurd, but it gets better as it goes along. In fact, it gets immeasurably better the moment Michael Shannon shows up as the sheriff of a sleepy dump in Texas where Edward, the protagonist of the novel (also Gyllenhaal) and his family get singled out for abuse by evil local yokels that look like runway models in a Tom Ford fashion show. The main meanie is played by a dramatically miscast Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who despite his best mugging is completely unconvincing as evil in cowboy boots.<br />
Shannon is by far the best thing this film has going for it. The movie feels like a mannequin challenge that comes alive only when Shannon is in the frame. He inhabits his character as cozily as someone wears a pair of faded jeans. He also looks like the only one who's having fun. Everything else is stiff and ersatz and more than mildly ridiculous.<br />
The second best thing is the cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, which makes Los Angeles dark and brackish and lights the flats of Texas with its own dramatic sunlight. You can enjoy this film for the way it looks and sounds (fabulous fashions, a lush noirish score by Abel Korzeniowsky), but it desperately needs more.<br />
It's hard to waste and misdirect an actress of Adams's caliber, but Ford doesn't give her character dimension, so Adams flounders, still finding some good moments, but unable to bring into focus the person she plays. Poor Jake Gyllenhaal is saddled with the thankless role of playing someone who doesn't fight back. His moment of glory comes offscreen. The ending is also about the best part of the movie and saves it from being completely absurd.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-45778896004058127802016-11-17T11:32:00.002-05:002016-11-17T11:32:32.656-05:00Elle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm curious about the response this provocative film on rape by Paul Verhoeven could generate on American university campuses. Would it be studied or banned? No trigger warning or safe space may be enough to handle this movie, which unlike other movies about rape, resists the pull of moralizing, educating, or representing victimization with well-worn tropes.<br />
<i>Elle</i> is a curious, well-made psychological thriller that aims to provoke discussion by teasing out the twisted psychology of its characters. It's a rape revenge fantasy only in the most literal sense of the word; it also happens to be a rape fantasy of sorts. It<i>'</i>s a movie about trauma and its consequences, which has at its center a most unlikely anti-heroine.<br />
In this story, which takes place among the well-heeled in Paris, rape is a trauma that becomes some sort of a game. After all, trauma and games both involve degrees of ritualistic repetition. Michele, (Isabelle Huppert) a rich, successful woman, has some gnarly psychological issues related to parental abuse when she was young. She is a victim that has empowered herself to survive and triumph in a terrible world, which in a way it's its own revenge. We discover through her contradictory behavior that she may still be reenacting her traumas. Michele has survived a horrific past and when violence returns to her life, she falls into its spell once again.<br />
It stands to reason that if a character is played by Isabelle Huppert, no one should expect a fragile wallflower. She is an expert on women who piss ice water. It's not a coincidence that Michele happens to own a video game company where young men create violent, misogynistic videos. She is harsh to her mother, to her son, to her employees, even to her best friend and business partner (Anne Consigny). She exerts control by keeping everyone at bay, but she is also curiously compliant - she balances such behavioral extremes with ovaries of steel.<br />
Somehow, La Huppert manages to make Michele sympathetic, not only because we see her survive a violent attack and, as the story unspools, we are made aware of her past, but because she makes bold choices and her unflinching honesty is both chilling and funny. She is an alluring enigma, wielding power while oozing contempt in some situations, and acting like a docile child in others. Her idea of love is writing checks to family members as she berates them with snark, being irrationally jealous of her ex-husband's younger girlfriend, and punishing her lover by acquiescing to bad sex. Michele has a dark sense of humor and takes to her own recovery from old and new traumas with methodical, steely resolve. She refuses to be a victim. She is in fact, what some males call a strong, powerful woman: the personification of the C-word. Her contradictions make her a fascinating anti-hero.<br />
I can't think of any other movie where a female rape victim is not a conventional heroine or a martyr. <i>Elle</i> presents an alternative narrative to our culture's discourse around rape. It brings out in the open perverse stuff that probably only gets discussed in the sanctity of the therapist's office. Getting off on rape is not the response we are conditioned to expect from victims. It is a huge taboo.<br />
Some people may find this movie objectionable, but I would counsel them to keep an open mind. Michele's story is unique to her and her behavior is as singular as her fingerprints (although she is probably not the only person in the world with these issues). <i>Elle</i> is based on a novel by Phillipe Djiann, and it presents the many compartments of Michele's world: her home life, work, French society, the media, the internet. The Catholic Church lurks heavily in the sidelines, its hypocrisy shrouding and abetting some tortured souls. We even get to imagine the motivations of her rapist. A peek into Michele's predicament is like falling down the rabbit-hole of respectability and finding a bottomless pit where human pain and desire swirl in a repetitive cycle of violence.<br />
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Watching the staccato pacing, the well-crafted editing, the spryness, scope and deftly handled development of the story (from an excellent screenplay by David Birke), I was reminded that Verhoeven was once a talented, competent director who made the original <i>Robocop</i> (a good movie) and <i>Total Recall</i> (not bad), but then went on to make trashy movies like <i>Basic Instinct </i>and legendary clunkers like <i>Showgirls</i> and <i>Starship Troopers</i>. That this is his most mature film is an understatement. Though he still gets off on violence, and stages it well, he seems to be better at orchestrating complex chamber pieces with many moving parts, like this one, than bombastic, digitally enhanced spectacles. <i>Elle</i> is an extremely engaging, even entertaining film that grapples with a thorny sexual theme without giving the audience any definite, let alone comforting, answers.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-43021702176655453892016-11-07T13:48:00.002-05:002016-11-07T21:06:07.350-05:00Moonlight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Watching the first scene of this movie by Barry Jenkins, where Chiron, a scrawny black kid, runs from a bunch of bullies and hides in an abandoned property, panting in despair, I realized that there are no movies that feature black children as protagonists (except for the last version of <i>Annie</i>). This means that black kids never see themselves on the big screen, and not all that much on TV either.<br />
If you are not white, you may grow up without ever seeing yourself onscreen. A gay black friend told me that this is the first time he saw himself represented. No movie until now had ever reflected his reality. This is tragic.<br />
In this respect, <i>Moonlight</i> is important and remarkable, as it tells the story of the painful blossoming of Chiron, also nicknamed "Little", into a young gay black man, in three chapters: as a child, as a teenager, and as a young man. The critical and popular success of this movie will hopefully open doors for similar untold stories.<br />
As is true of other movies with homosexual themes aimed at mainstream audiences, like <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/i-survived-xmas-and-gay-cowboy-movie.html"><i>Brokeback Mountain</i> </a>or <i><a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/carol.html">Carol</a></i>, <i>Moonlight</i> portrays Chiron's sexual awakening tastefully and tenderly. Jenkins has a fine cast, including Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris and André Holland, who are all excellent, and displays a sensitive, empathetic touch.<br />
However, his self-conscious style gets in the way. He tries to elevate material that doesn't need elevating by using too many long and pregnant pauses every time characters speak, and camera work that calls attention to itself instead of deepening our understanding of the characters and their world. The script is rather thin and the characters are not detailed enough. The pacing is slow (not in a good way) and the film lacks detail and texture.<br />
In "Little", the best part of the movie, Chiron gets rescued by Juan (Mahershala Ali) and the boy refuses to go back home, adopting Juan as his father figure. So it is a surprise when we see that his home situation is not as hellish as what we imagined (aided no doubt by a cinematic diet of nightmarish inner city tropes). Chiron's mom (Naomie Harris) seems to keep it together at first, but then at some point she loses her way, and it is never clear exactly why. We can surmise that it's because her life is hard, but a lot of black women go through similarly hard lives and they don't all fall through the cracks. What happened to her in particular? Why is Juan such a wise and tolerant drug dealer? Since the characters are drawn in very broad strokes, these choices feel arbitrary.<br />
At the center of this film is a shy and withdrawn character and, except when played as a child by the intense Alex R. Hibbert, Jenkins does not know how to make him compelling, besides the fact that poor Chiron is having a hard time being who he is. Except for a couple of strong moments where Chiron shows quiet, determined agency as a boy and as a teen, his character feels like a big void in the middle of the movie.<br />
Spike Lee has made highly stylized movies that actually bring the world he portrays to life. Jenkins' self-conscious aesthetic approach feels forced and a tad self-indulgent.<br />
How can a filmmaker portray the real lives of African-Americans in tough neighborhoods without it feeling like we've seen it a million times before? The drug dealers in the corner, the ravaged crackheads, they may all be true to life, but they have also become clichés. The only way to make them authentic is by filling in the context with specificity of character.<br />
Am I the only person that feels that the erotic element could have been stronger? Jenkins handled the sex scene extremely well because it is moving, almost heartbreaking, and erotic how repressed these young men are. But then the thought crossed my mind that since black male sexuality is such a charged topic in American culture, and gay sex is off the charts, let alone black gay sex, he could have made more daring choices. This is how <i>Moonlight</i> reminds me of films like <i>Carol</i> and <i>Brokeback Mountain</i>, which opt for exquisite tastefulness in their quest to find and reassure as wide an audience as possible. Nothing wrong with this, and I don't blame Jenkins, as sex in general is literally absent from American movies, but it's food for thought.<br />
Is <i>Moonlight</i> the year's best movie, as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/movies/moonlight-review.html">A.O Scott asks in his review</a>? Not in my view. It is an uneven film that bounces from superficial, clichéd tropes to truly memorable and powerful moments in an underdeveloped screenplay.<br />
Is it an important and necessary film that may open the doors to the stories of people who have been ignored by American movies for far too long? Absolutely.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-4998074497651801802016-10-26T10:47:00.003-04:002016-10-26T10:47:31.427-04:00American Pastoral<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I find Ewan McGregor utterly charming and I was rooting for his first directing foray, of <i>American Pastoral</i>, based on the novel by Philip Roth. Alas, pretty much everything goes awry: bad casting, a stiff script, and an equally stiff directorial job.<br />
McGregor plays Seymour "The Swede" Levov, a Jewish Wunderman: a legendary athlete, blond, and blue-eyed all-American Jew in the fifties. He marries a non-Jewish beauty queen (Jennifer Connelly) and seems to have an idyllic life. His daughter Merry (a very good Dakota Fanning) has a stutter and soon reveals a subversive streak. As her therapist intimates in the movie, being the spawn of perfection (athlete + beauty queen) must be hard. She is a teenager in the late 60s, outraged by the war in Vietnam and seduced by revolutionaries. She bombs a post office and destroys her parents' lives.<br />
It's a great story, but in the translation to film much has been lost, mainly sharpness of observation, and other details that make the characters complicated. Philip Roth revels in human contradiction, to say the least, but this movie is too prim.<br />
As with <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-tale-of-love-and-darkness.html">Natalie Portman's directorial debut</a> and other movies by actors, being a good actor has nothing to do with being a good director. Directors bring scripts to life and make them look real and authentic. This is very hard to do. The scenes in <i>American Pastoral</i> feel lifeless, even though the actors are all doing their utmost. The pace is not glacial; there's no pace. It's dispiriting since it is obviously a serious effort.<br />
People of color complain of whitewashing in movies. I think Jews can be added to the mix. You don't necessarily have to be Jewish to play a Jew, but it adds authenticity. McGregor is a good actor but he ain't Jewish or from Newark, no matter how blond his hair or blue his eyes. Liev Schreiber could be a better fit for the role. David Strathairn is too virtuous for the role of Nathan Zuckerman, narrator and Roth's alter ego. Except for the great Peter Riegert as The Swede's dad, the whole thing feels ersatz. Stories where people age dramatically are tricky, and the makeup job here is unconvincing. There's a scene at the beginning of the movie between Strathairn and an actor who is obviously a much younger man caked with old man makeup. It's hard to get invested in the story with such distractions.<br />
However, one scene packs a punch. A young, arrogant revolutionary brat called Rita Cohen (Valorie Curry) tells Levov that she knows where Merry is hiding. Rita screams at Seymour all the terrible things she assumes he is: a bourgeois pig, an all-star bully, his wife a vapid beauty queen; his family of glove makers, exploiters of the workers. None of it is remotely true. The ease with which ideology paints people with a wide brush comes alive in this exchange. It's good shorthand for the awful combination of youthful arrogance and dogmatism, for the simplistic zeal of revolutionaries, and for a chasm of incomprehension between generations that has not been as keenly felt at any other time in American history as it was in that turbulent period.<br />
<i>American Pastoral</i>, is, among other things, about the tension between the desire to be generic (Jews who yearned to assimilate seamlessly into the American dream when that dream erupted in flames) and their impossibility to be generic. This film version is a generic movie that defeats its own purpose.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-68017987526897725352016-10-24T16:41:00.000-04:002016-10-26T15:47:48.183-04:00The Handmaiden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sumptuous, perverse and exquisite, <i>The Handmaiden,</i> by Korean auteur Chan-wook Park (<i>Oldboy, Lady Vengeance</i>), is one of my favorite movies this year -- a big, bold tale, the story of an epic swindle, a Chinese box of plot twists and a refreshingly compelling erotic story with a feminist streak. </div>
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Holding such disparate strands together is an heroic if not an impossible task, but director Park tells the intricate story with humor, suspense, feeling, and finesse. </div>
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The excellent screenplay is by Park and Seo-Kyung Chung, based on a novel by Sarah Waters, which has been transposed from Victorian England to Japan-occupied Korea. </div>
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In 1930's Korea, a con man pretends to be a Japanese count in order to woo a beautiful, rich Japanese woman into marriage and then abscond with her money. For that purpose, he plants a young swindler to be the lady's servant and convince her fall for him. That nothing goes as planned is an understatement. As the story unspools amid ravishing beauty, we learn that nothing is what it seems. </div>
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This is the story of a major con, told in three parts, from the point of view of each of the main characters. The second chapter is a retelling of the first but from the point of view of a different character. Watching the same scenes from a different point of view adds enormous richness and amusement to our understanding of the story.</div>
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But it is also the story of strong women controlled by a male-dominated system. Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) is the niece of a cruel and perverse man who is obsessed with books (it turns out that his obsession is not as healthy as it seems), and her handmaiden Tamako is also controlled by a crook. The women seem to be pawns in the designs of these men, but they are strong and willful and they can see which way the wind blows. They are the main characters and they imagine a different narrative for their destinies. </div>
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What makes the movie delicious are the revelations that Park keeps coming at the audience, which for the most part, are truly surprising. At almost two hours and a half, the film is enormously entertaining and holds you in its spell. The entire movie is an elaborate tease. I usually have no patience for movies that tease the audience, but <i>The Handmaiden</i> is as much about keeping the audience on our toes as it is about revealing deeper insights. What is more precious than money? What is true knowledge? Can you really control someone else? Best laid plans can be crushed by the unpredictable forces of love and desire. At the same time, I am grateful for a film that does not have a moral agenda or an important message to impart, but for the satisfying delight of a good yarn, well told. </div>
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Nowadays, it's rare to find a decent film that has a powerful erotic element. But in <i>The Handmaiden </i>the sex works. In contrast to a movie like <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/blue-is-warmest-color.html"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><i>Blue Is The Warmest Color</i></span></a>, where the sex scenes became porno tableaus disembodied from the rest of the story, here the lovers bring their characters to the erotic action. What we know about them helps make the scenes a necessary part of the story, casting light or shadows on the characters, depending on whose point of view we are looking at. </div>
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Park is known for his notoriously violent movies like <i>Oldboy</i>, and he can't restrain himself from showing a bit of grisly torture towards the end. However, he has a prodigious visual imagination and the movie is not only gorgeous in its cinematography and production design, but in how confidently Park tells the story with images. </div>
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Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-74352017559226624342016-09-19T11:28:00.000-04:002016-09-19T11:28:38.103-04:00Southwest Of Salem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://fusion.net/story/346555/new-film-tells-story-of-4-lesbian-latinas-long-fight-for-justice-in-texas/">Here's an article I wrote for Fusion.net</a> on this excellent documentary about four Latinas from San Antonio, Texas who were falsely accused of sexually abusing children. The film is playing at Cinema Village in New York.Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-56659985246200147702016-08-19T15:15:00.000-04:002016-08-19T15:15:13.638-04:00A Tale Of Love And Darkness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Actress Natalie Portman has adapted and directed Amos Oz's beautifully written memoir of the same name for the screen. Bravely, she shot the movie in Hebrew, which is her native tongue, to honor Oz's gorgeous language, which is apparent even in the English subtitles. The novel is remarkable because it is not only the story of a childhood spent as the State of Israel came into being, but as the "tale" in its title implies, it is also a book about how our lives are filled with stories, and how these stories heard at home, gleaned around the neighborhood, experienced or caught on the fly, inspire some people to become writers like Amos Oz. <br />
The screenplay employs a voiceover narration (by the wonderful Moni Moshonov) that effectively conveys Oz's voice. But it is noticeably the work of an inexperienced screenwriter. Portman gets the emotional tenor of embattled immigrants arriving in a desertic, embattled land well, but her script ignores the basic rules of cinematic storytelling. Scenes start late and end too soon, or start too early and continue way past their ending; characters start actions that are never resolved, so there is no sense of forward momentum to the story. The plot has been rendered in impressionistic vignettes, presumably to evoke the texture of memory. However, Oz's reminiscences are immediate and concrete. He brings the past to life in extraordinarily detailed dimension. The earthy source material, full of rich anecdote and observation, is the opposite of a tone poem. <br />
Adapting this impressive book is an ambitious effort, but this is a good example of how a bad script and rookie direction can ruin a film even if the source material is brilliant.<br />
Portman plays Fania, Oz's mother, a recent immigrant to Jerusalem fresh from pre-war Europe, who has trouble integrating to this new country, also menaced by war. Portman is fine, as she tends to be good at portraying emotionally intense women, and she plays a strong-willed, yet fragile woman who is most alive when she escapes into her imagination and tells young Amos fantastic stories, but ends up withdrawn, a silent bundle of depression.<br />
The rest of the cast is underwhelming. In <i>Room</i>, young Jacob Tremblay carried the movie and made the story believable with his poise and alertness, but Amir Kessler, who plays young Amos, seems to recede into the background. Except for Moshonov's gorgeous narration, none of the character actors make any impression. Cinematographer Slawomir Idziak does his best to make the movie look good, and the editors piece the story together as best they can. <i>A Tale Of Love And Darkness </i>is reduced to a sketch in this film version.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-16467465449625854482016-08-02T17:09:00.002-04:002016-08-02T17:09:50.350-04:00Indignation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Adapting Philip Roth novels to the movies is a Sisyphean task and one that has encountered failure almost every time it has been attempted. I can understand why writers welcome the challenge. They are seduced by Roth's plots and incident, historical context, and indelible characters with clearly dramatic arcs, and by the devastating precision of his writing. But when it comes to bringing Roth's brilliant incisiveness to the screen, all that remains is incident, devoid of the lucid sharpness of the author's voice. The movies are either leaden, humorless, miscast, or dead in the water. I'm thinking of <i>The Human Stain</i>, with Anthony Hopkins as a light-skinned Black man, the forgettable <i>Elegy</i>, and the sharp but sloppy <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/never-grow-old-humbling-and-still-alice.html">The Humbling</a>, which at least has Al Pacino and the comic touch of Barry Levinson.<br />
James Schamus' adaptation of <i>Indignation</i> is the best one so far because, at the risk of a stately pace, Schamus gives a starring role to language. This movie is not so much about acting, but about thinking, and arguing, and there are a lot of wonderful sentences in it. The story is drawn out and depressing, a dark coming of age tale, but the movie is riveting.<br />
Logan Lerman plays Marcus Messner, a young Jewish man from Newark who transfers to a Christian college in Ohio in order to avoid getting drafted into the Korean war. His father (Danny Burstein) is a kosher butcher, and the great Linda Emond plays his mother, Esther. Marcus is an only child of prodigious intelligence, and he is swathed in youthful arrogance. He is impatient with his dad's small town mores and his overwhelming anxiety about letting Marcus blossom into a man. As in many a Rothian tale, <i>Indignation</i> is about the tension between the old world and the new. Too many of his son's classmates are finding death in Korea, but if it's not Korea, it's Ohio, and if it's not Ohio, it's Marcus going out with friends in Newark. When we first encounter him, Marcus is coming home late at night as his mother waits for him stoically in the living room. His father is frantically looking for him all over town. America and its promise beckon, and Marcus does not want to remain in the mental shtetl his father still lives in.<br />
On a personal note, I was blown away by Roth when I read <i>Portnoy's Complaint</i> as a freshman in college. I swore he must have met my mother, whose need to investigate my bowel movements inspired him to create Portnoy's mom; Jewish mothers being to deciphering their children's turds as Holmes and Watson are to solving crimes. Furthermore, my dad used to make my mother wait for me when I went out, just like Mr. Messner. I have since decided that <u>Philip Roth knows everything</u>, and I love him for laying bare (and how!) the deepest and most anxious reaches of Jewish identity.<br />
Marcus arrives in Winesburg College, a genteel school that puts him in a dorm room with two other Jews, and makes them all attend chapel services with the polite but firm prejudice of America in the fifties.<br />
An overly serious law student, Marcus gets derailed by a beautiful blonde Wasp, Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), who is also different from all the squares. For such a young girl, she has already been through terrible emotional turmoil. The two outsiders hit it off. This is enough to spark a quiet yet combustible chain of actions that lead to tragedy.<br />
The centerpiece of the movie is a 16-minute conversation between Marcus and the dean of the school, a condescending but avuncular midwesterner played with extraordinary acuity by Tracy Letts, who deserves every best supporting actor award in perpetuity for his performance.<br />
It's a beautifully written piece of dramatic writing. The dean summons Marcus to inquire as to why he moved to another room (a crummy attic all to himself). He pretends to want to help while he gleefully unnerves the young man. He gets a rise out of Marcus, singling out his Jewishness and questioning whether Marcus is ashamed of it (he denies it, but I think Marcus walks a private tightrope between pride and shame, as many do). The indignant Marcus pushes the Dean's buttons by affirming his atheism and his intellectual superiority. But as the discussion heats up and the unflappable dean pries into Marcus' private life, Marcus hyperventilates to the point of nausea.<br />
He lands in the hospital. His mother comes to see him. She takes one look at sweet, fragile Olivia, and confirms she's the worst kind of trouble. Not because she's not Jewish, which is what everyone expects her to say, but because with people like Olivia "their weakness is their strength", one of the smartest things I've ever heard said about damaged people.<br />
Emond also deserves every award in the land. It turns out that Esther, as frumpy as she looks, is much more ahead of the times than both her husband and her son, but as a woman in the fifties she is their subordinate, which is probably the reason why she has a freer mind. When you are an afterthought, you have more room to think.<br />
This is a world of men who fight wars and call all the shots, whether they're the dean, or the son of a butcher, or the rich father of a lost soul. In this world, women are peripheral. They use their brains and their hearts as best they can to make a dent.<br />
<i>Indignation</i> is a movie in which complicated things happen. People are not stock characters, they have unpredictable dimensions. The ironies they suffer are thick and bitter. Marcus' ire is ultimately useless, and few things are more tragic than futile indignation. <br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-5748123210879607232016-08-01T18:17:00.002-04:002016-08-01T18:17:30.486-04:00Café Society<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkaEq1edC7L6oP2vX0mX7Ya5rWVwenMyzpM2qJghZmRrxsuczxpnbabphj9xxVmmknKzSY33hPO8rJs_6buBBvodyjYsYYH4CQVWo_xppKD4eMY3S8DadPHdtrrwyqoR3jXdFl9kLVzhAE/s1600/CafeSociety_Trailer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkaEq1edC7L6oP2vX0mX7Ya5rWVwenMyzpM2qJghZmRrxsuczxpnbabphj9xxVmmknKzSY33hPO8rJs_6buBBvodyjYsYYH4CQVWo_xppKD4eMY3S8DadPHdtrrwyqoR3jXdFl9kLVzhAE/s400/CafeSociety_Trailer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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To be honest, the only reason that compelled me to see the latest Woody Allen film is that the cinematographer is Vittorio Storaro. His masterly touch certainly takes it to a higher level. His images are <u>creamy</u>. Some are breathtaking, like a shot of two lovers on the beach. He is beautifully abetted by the production design of the great Santo Loquasto, a longtime Allen collaborator.<br />
So what about the movie, you might ask. Well, it's classic late-period Allen, skimpy on characters and plot, and dusted lightly with ancient jokes. Still, <i>Café Society</i> is not as slapdash as some of his recent outings. It is imbued with a feeling of nostalgia for the 1930's, a time when women were glamorous, nightclubs were swanky and popular music was masterful (as usual, the old standards soundtrack is delightful). <i>Café Society</i> is about the loss of first love; a bittersweet look at the impossibility of everlasting romance.<br />
It is also a movie about different kinds of Jews. There are working class Jews, communist Jews, Hollywood Jews, and gangster Jews, all in one family. Allen has genuine warmth for this neurotic clan. This loving nostalgia and a good cast make this movie enjoyable.<br />
Jesse Eisenberg plays Bobby Dorfman, a young man from the Bronx who moves to Los Angeles in search of a job. Unlike many actors who have tried and failed, Eisenberg refuses to imitate Allen's nerdy shtick. He is a canny actor, but it would be nice if he toned down that neurotic energy and cerebral edge of his. Still, he is effective as the fish out of water in glamorous Hollywood who gets a job at his uncle Phil's agency. Phil Stone (Steve Carell) is flashy, rich, and as a powerful agent, namedrops stars with panache. After much pleading, Bobby starts running errands for him and falls in love with his secretary, Vonnie, played with melancholy poise by Kristen Stewart. I didn't take Stewart seriously when she was younger and eternally pouty, but she has found her stride and here she is mesmerizing. Allen himself provides a narration that is unessential, but which aids in the feeling of longing for the past. The rest of the characters seem to have been imported from <i>Annie Hall</i>. The fabulous Jeannie Berlin plays Bobby's mom, and Corey Stoll plays his gangster brother, wasted without a part and saddled with an unnecessary wig (but I'll take him whenever and however I can get him). Blake Lively plays another Veronica, the other "shiksa" goddess for whom Bobby ends up falling. I wonder if the multiple Veronicas are Allen's homage to Kristof Kieslowski's <i>The Double Life Of Veronique</i>.<br />
The plot is at once simplistic and convoluted and it surprises no one, but the palpable feeling of ruefulness, of losing your love to lesser but richer prospects, of the useless yearning for what could have been, is moving. This movie has more feeling than most of Allen's recent films. He has an opportunity to dwell on the uneasy combination of Hollywood glamour and bickering striving Jews, of Jews straddling between their family traditions and making it in the world, but Allen is too lazy to stitch these strands together insightfully. For a far more profound and devastating look at this topic, I heartily recommend <i>Indignation</i>, based on the novel by Phillip Roth, also playing.<br />
Storaro's magic and that lovely sense of loss are about the only thing that works for <i>Café Society</i>. The jokes feel ancient, and some of the attitudes, like a cruel, uncomfortable scene between Bobby and a hooker are way past their expiration date. I am also nostalgic for legendary swanky nightclubs that I never knew, wonderful popular music, and people dressing up to go out, but not for the kind of casual, rancid misogyny that is ever present in Allen's films. He is not one with the times.Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7976835198312778290.post-87709599517935223132016-05-12T10:00:00.000-04:002016-05-12T10:00:13.836-04:00A Bigger Splash<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_VDXViiK5mm6uAmGuPhwTIjXLfwgdZcgI4B4Is_issHg8QhtZD4YBzWa-ZbbFlb5Xg1-JROOxjazBuGdUZsuabhJDSHADALxzGWzHLATSRuiOj2IhPEPdUq5ZBCN0dkm5eBlI2KiNtqX6/s1600/Explore_the_stunning_Italian_island_in_A_Bigger_Splash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_VDXViiK5mm6uAmGuPhwTIjXLfwgdZcgI4B4Is_issHg8QhtZD4YBzWa-ZbbFlb5Xg1-JROOxjazBuGdUZsuabhJDSHADALxzGWzHLATSRuiOj2IhPEPdUq5ZBCN0dkm5eBlI2KiNtqX6/s400/Explore_the_stunning_Italian_island_in_A_Bigger_Splash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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A bigger cast could not have made me happier: Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson and Ralph Fiennes, stuck in an arid and steamy Italian island having rich white famous people problems. Apparently, fame is a bitch, so they are morose, ex-suicidal, bored out of their wits, or manically orchestrating fun.<br />
I was not a fan of director Luca Guadagnino's stylish melodrama <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-am-love.html">I Am Love</a>, also with La Swinton, but this one I found more delectable, in the way that sea urchin is delectable: salty, sweaty, messy, sexy, with the longueur of an interminable hot summer afternoon in crumbling Europe. Decadence is so much fun, yet it is rarely found on movie screens nowadays. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, mostly for this reason, and because the four stars are such pros, it's a joy to watch them bask like lizards in the sun, all rotting inside, each one in their own way.<br />
Tilda Swinton plays a rock star called Marianne, who is recovering from her lost voice with Paul, her beau and minder (Matthias Schoenaerts, the man who makes my knees, my heart and my soul quiver). They make love, he takes care of her. It's Edenic, except that it is also sexy. All is good until her old flame shows up in the shape of Ralph Fiennes as Harry Hawkes, a devilish music producer, a manic louche with energy long past his impending expiration date, and his stunner of a newfound daughter Penelope, the sexy Dakota Johnson (who saved <a href="http://www.manero.com/article/fifty-shades-what-women-want/">Fifty Shades Of Gray </a>with her sense of humor).<br />
Guadagnino is really good with atmosphere, and in particular, with the texture of the lives of spoiled people. You can tell his actors know this feeling in their bones. They lounge and laze about, colonizing the traditional island with their obnoxious fabulosity, Marianne wearing elegant nun-like clothes by Dior, Harry commandeering a little bar with karaoke, all of them appropriating the space around them with their extraordinary privilege.<br />
I have seen most of Ralph Fiennes's movies, except for the ghastly Harry Potter series. He has never played a character like this before. He may not have been the first candidate to come to mind (I'm thinking Gary Oldman, less elegant; more rock & roll), but he makes up for it with an unsettling combination of desperate mischief and an equally desperate darkness that blossoms in Harry's rare moments of stillness. He is a middle-aged imp and the nonchalant way in which he disrupts people is careless, needy, and selfish. Yet, in the few moments where he settles down, he looks lost and devastated. He is utterly superficial, but he causes deep trouble. He is also not as bad as he could be. Penelope is worse. A quiet, lethal monster of self-involvement.<br />
The whole thing is an unsavory menage a quatre, made particularly icky by Harry's inappropriate ways around Penelope. A backstory about how Harry basically ceded Marianne to Paul as if she were property to inherit compounds the incestuousness of it all.<br />
At first, we think the movie is about Marianne, then we think it is about Harry. The four get a flimsy chance to show whatever ails them, but the movie is really about the obliviousness, the clubbiness and the sharp instinct for self-preservation of those who have it all.<br />
Guadagnino spends three-fourths of the movie leisurely setting up the characters and their relationships, and one just sits there in the blazing sun waiting for things to disintegrate, which I found delightful. He subtly involves Italy around the edges with tales of immigrants dying to arrive at its shores; old-school, sleepy, provincial, Catholic Italy dealing with a harsh world by digging in its heels by tradition and exclusion. At the very end, bad things happen, not always credibly, but somehow powerfully. Dark fun in the sun.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0