The Grandmaster

I may be the only person in the world who does not like Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love. I like seeing it. I like being mesmerized by Christopher Doyle's cinematography and by those amazing silk dresses on Maggie Cheung's body, and I dream of eating noodles in that steamy joint on the corner, but all that aesthetic refinement, all that excruciating longing seems too deliberate and artificial, and it bores me.
Feel free to sue me.
The idea that a stylist like Wong Kar Wai can execute a beautiful martial arts film sounds great on paper, and The Grandmaster has some gorgeous scenes, but, even aesthetically, it disappoints. Wong's stylistic choices are puzzling. Martial art movements are like ballet. Fights are choreographed. As in dance, you want to see the whole movement, the entire bodies in motion (think of Fred Astaire: full frame), you want to understand the physical sequence and geography of the fights; but the director chops up most of the action into pretty close ups of sliding feet and chopping hands and he uses a blurry slow motion that muddles the action. The editing is frustrating. When people are not fighting, the camera never sticks around long enough to let us drink in the beauty of the frames. Phillippe Le Sourd's cinematography is at times ravishing and at times tacky. And the storytelling is choppy and stilted. At the beginning, the movie looks like a graphic novel; you can clearly see the storyboards. Then either one gets used to it, or it relaxes, paradoxically, into a slow movie with choppy cuts, both epic and intimate.
As for the story, it is all over the place. The hero is Ip Man (the unflappable Tony Leung, a dead ringer, at times, for Barack Obama), and he is at the center of a contest between the martial arts schools of the south and of the north of China at the time of the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. Ip Man trains to duke it out with his northern rival and this is a pretext to give us all a crash course on the different schools and styles of martial arts, from kung fu to tai chi. Some of this is fascinating, as Chinese martial arts have this wonderfully cryptic philosophical bent. Which -- sidebar -- led me to ponder that our current warmongers could use a bit of the Chinese element of surprise, instead of announcing to the world that they are going to war any minute now. Perhaps Obama and his fellow gung-hoers should watch this film; they might learn something about smart strategy.
Kung fu aside, this being a Wong Kar Wai film, The Grandmaster is really a movie about longing, as are all his films. The longing in question is between Ip Man and the daughter of his northern nemesis, the gorgeously steely Zhang Ziyi, who is a martial arts whiz herself. They have a wonderful fight, falling in love as they try to kill each other, but they can't be together. None of this quite jells, but somehow the movie's stilted rhythms have a mesmerizing effect, a trance-like quality. Some of it is reminiscent of old-fashioned martial art films, with exaggerated, theatrical acting.
Ip Man's story is told like a legend, even though he is a real character of the modern era, which is very cool, a continuation of the legacy of martial arts culture almost to this day, but because Wong is interested more in the idea of longing, The Grandmaster is, like all his films, heroically, even perversely anticlimactic.

Lovelace

Amanda Seyfried acts her heart out in this unconvincing, uninspired movie about Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat, the most successful porn movie ever. Even though the film has a great cast, led by Seyfried and a spectacularly creepy Peter Sarsgaard, this woman remains a blank. And it is not Seyfried's fault. The movie, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and written by Andy Bellin, starts buoyantly enough as Lovelace meets Chuck Traynor, a sleazebag you can spot 10 miles away. She's 21 but lives cloistered with her strict parents, (Sharon Stone, good in a distracting wig, and Robert Patrick, excellent) and seems to be a virginal little angel. At first all is great fun as Traynor seduces her with promises of stardom. Even her parents are impressed with him, although you want to take a shower just from looking in his direction. He teaches her the notorious ropes that gained her instant fame: Deep Throat, for those of you who don't know, is about a woman whose clitoris is in the back of her larynx.
The problem is in the writing. The movie tells us a lot of stuff, but it doesn't show it, so Linda's character remains hermetic. It is hard to understand what she saw in the sleazy Traynor and why she stayed with him through his abuse: she may have the textbook signs of abused women in general, but as a dramatic character she has little agency. Except for her choice to move in with this creep, she does not propel the story; everything happens to her. Hence she remains, despite Seyfried's excellent efforts, an inscrutable blank.
I enjoyed the first part of the movie, a fun sidetrip through roller skating rinks and bonfires on the beach, a great period soundtrack, and flawless period detail. We get to meet the more genial sleazebags that made that porno: who doesn't want to be in the same room with Bobby Cannavale, Hank Azaria, sporting the most outrageous rug ever, the always welcome Debi Mazar and Chris Noth? Everybody seems to be super nice to Linda at the shoot and she becomes an instant sensation. But then we see her years later, looking lost, taking a polygraph test, and the movie goes back to scenes we've already seen and adds what was happening behind the scenes with the abusive Traynor. This is a strange choice, not only because the scene repetitions are awkward, but because there is no tension between her fairy tale success and the brutal reality Lovelace was living at the same time. Not only is it all re-told after the fact, but it gives the movie an unwanted moralistic subtext, as if it was bad karma for Lovelace to become the most famous porn star ever. It starkly divides her good times from the bad, instead of keeping them mixed, which would have made for a more powerful, richer story.
For a far more nuanced, colorful and fascinating take on the subject, the documentary Inside Deep Throat explores what this movie totally wastes, which is the cultural context of the times. Deep Throat was unique in that it had a fabulous hook, and it was conceived by director Gerry Damiano (Hank Azaria) as an artistic endeavor, with humor and actors and creativity, of sorts. Paradoxically, it was both a symbol of sexual freedom and an exploitative prison for her protagonist. Made for $25,000, it went on to gross $600 million dollars, of which neither Lovelace or Damiano ever saw much profit, and most of which went to the mob that financed it. It became a phenomenon the minute the Nixon administration decided to persecute it.
It is unfortunate that Lovelace leaves out all this rich cultural history about the sexual revolution, Watergate, censorship, the rise of the religious right and feminism in favor of the most commonplace and tawdry aspects of the story. It does not know what to make of Linda Lovelace and her confounding willfulness, acquiescence and victimization, and it squanders other great characters, like Damiano, a sweet guy who thought porn movies could one day be classy, and who made the most profitable film of all time.

In A World

In a world where you rarely hear female voices intone movie trailers, a female writer, director, actor and producer has created a winning comedy ...about just such a world.
Multitasker Lake Bell plays Carol Solomon, a vocal coach and daughter of a famous trailer voiceover artist (Fred Melamed), who wants to break into the lucrative and forbidding world of movie preview announcers. But she has her work cut out for her because, like many subdivisions in entertainment, this is a boy's club, full of territorial macho men who will not let women in.
The movie is a prickly romantic comedy, and a smart, satirical look at an industry within an industry. All that unseen voice talent is like a mini-Hollywood with its own prestigious awards, celebrities, groupies and backstabbing competitiveness. Surrounded by a good cast of comedy stalwarts like Demetri Martin (super sweet as the romantic interest), Tig Notaro, Ken Marino, Micaela Watkins, Rob Corddry, Nick Offerman and some fun celebrities, big and small, in cameo roles, Bell tells a rambling story that still coalesces satisfyingly in the end. I wish that Bell, who is lovely and funny, if a bit mannered, had squeezed more fun out of the voices and the accents, but I really enjoyed that she took time to plunge into some real pain, as in an affair her sister has with an Irish man and her ensuing despair over it, or the nasty narcissism of her dad. In a world where so many movies are always about the same thing (guys with tights and cape or gun fetishes), it's refreshing to find a comedy with a great premise, a smart female protagonist and a shaggy charm.

The Conjuring

Or how $13 million make everything better. This horror film by James Wan shows a marked improvement of his skills since Insidious ($1.5 million). It has a robust budget, a better cast, it is better directed and better written and it succeeds in having a good amount of chills and scares. It is based on the real-life exploits of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), apparently some very busy demonologists, and a case of a possessed house in the 70s.  
The Conjuring is too frantic when it could benefit from a more sustained, lingering pace; but the first third, when a family moves into a remote house and things start going bump in the night, is effectively scary because we don't see anything. When we start seeing things in horror movies, the ghosts, spirits, and demons always seem cheesy and they break the spell. You know they are actors in makeup and special effects. But if you can't really see what's behind the doors, that is quite unnerving.
The camera work and the editing are very effective, and in some instances beautiful. Wan's problem may be that he has too many ideas, too many ways to spring up the scares. Sometimes the camera pans unbearably slowly, a la Kubrick, sometimes it is deranged and handheld. And the movie entwines two separate plots: the story of the Perron family and their house from hell, and the story of the Warrens and their work cleansing houses of evil spirits. If you can suspend your skepticism that the only way to fight demons is with holy water, wooden crosses and the Vatican's blessing, this movie is bound to scare you. This storyline raised a lot of questions for me. Do demons only attack Catholics? Could you fight Satan with a star of David, a crescent moon or a statue of Buddha? Anywho, I could believe that the house where the Perrons (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor -- so good to have her back) move in with their five daughters is possessed by evil spirits; I'm not so sure about Satan and his distaste for the Catholic faith. 
Still, it is interesting how good actors can raise the level of a horror movie just by showing up. Case in point is Vera Farmiga as Lorraine Warren, whose performance is so grounded and convincing, she roots the movie in reality. As does Lili Taylor, as Mrs. Perron and her excellent five daughters.  I was grateful that at some point someone finally suggests moving out, which is what I would have done the first ten minutes upon arrival and at the first hint of freezing cold and the smell of rotting meat, but here there are good reasons for having to stick it out: 1) apparently, those pesky demons will follow you to the nearest Holiday Inn. 2) and, much better, this working class family has no money. They can't even afford a hotel. They have put everything they have into buying this hellhole. They're screwed. 
The Conjuring has some story problems and it is too action oriented, but I have faith that Mr. Wan, as he matures, will come up with an unbearably scary film, if his good hand at terror continues growing steady. For a typical horror film of today, The Conjuring is a good, scary bet.

Blue Jasmine

I am ambivalent about Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen's loose adaptation, or rather re-purposing, of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire to current day San Francisco and New York. The good news is we are not getting Allen's by now customary two-hour European travelogue. He is back stateside. His cinematographer, Javier Aguirresarrobe likes warm, golden tones (a bit too much for my taste), and as is the case in every Woody Allen movie, even the title character's sister; a cashier in a supermarket, has an apartment that many upwardly mobile professionals would kill for, full of well-curated tchotchkes (production design is by the great Santo Loquasto).
Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, a modern-day version of Blanche Dubois, in full mental breakdown mode. She is astonishing, but I was surprised by the unrelenting ferocity of her collapse. This ain't the precious Southern wallflower with delusions of grandeur, who teeters perilously between gentility and the brink of madness, as I understand Blanche. This is a woman who is already completely out of control, and if it wasn't for the fact that Allen has made a career of depicting such women in different levels of hysteria, I would probably be less bothered by her. My question is, does Allen feel empathy for Jasmine? Is she a character that we can empathize with or is she designed to rile us against the haughty indifference of the rich? She certainly seems to feel empathy for no one but herself.
For Allen introduces a welcome twist: Jasmine is married to a Wall Street crook a la Bernie Madoff (Alec Baldwin). They live in splendor until they don't, and she has to come and live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in some shabby chic hood in San Francisco. Allen is incapable of having an ugly city in his films, but let's face it, you can do much worse than Frisco for a fall from grace.
Still, Jasmine's face as she walks into Ginger's apartment is one of the most priceless looks of withering contempt ever committed to film. Blanchett has some great moments, and because she is a spectacular actress, who can be utterly over the top and still be mesmerizing, I am sorry to say there is little nuance to the character. She is an alcoholic, pill-popping wreck, and although it is, at times, horrifying fun to watch her protean self-involvement, she never really tries to change. Blanchett plays her straight, so she is funny in a brittle, tragic way. To her credit, she refuses to do comedic shtick and sticks to the pathos. It's a bravura performance.
Whereas Blanche Dubois uses her delusion as a tool to survive her downfall, Jasmine is not delusional (except in that she talks to herself); she is a nervous wreck, which is less interesting. And then there are the little issues with verisimilitude. I can buy that Sally Hawkins and Cate Blanchett are adopted sisters, but I never understood where they came from. In a movie about class, this is important. Did Jasmine marry up and become a snotty dame? Is her hauteur adopted or naturally regal? I would have liked to know.
Still, even though the movie rambles a bit, there are a couple of great scenes, particularly one where Jasmine babysits her chubby nephews, and a very funny scene that thwarts the awaited ring of a suitor. All you need to know about the class abyss in America is in every scene where Baldwin and Blanchett have to share the frame with their poor relatives. The stiff, falsely courteous body language of the rich, their unfailingly polite but unspoken distaste and embarrassment are blatant and painful. And watching Blanchett is like going on a demented rollercoaster of pain. She keeps the movie from its own flabbiness, and, somehow, her character a beat away from caricature.
There are many little pleasures in the film, best one of which is Andrew Dice Clay's perfect turn as the sister's ex-husband. One is equally happy in the lovely company of Louis C.K. as a schlubby Don Juan; a very funny, sweet Bobby Cannavale as Chili, despite the lame name, a much nicer version of Stanley Kowalski; Michael Stuhlbarg, pitch perfect as a creepy dentist; and the suave Peter Sarsgaard. The males are more grounded than the females. As stereotypical as they are, they all bring a measure of reality that the female characters lack. Yes, as far as late Woody Allen movies go, this one is a tad richer, a tad less of a trifle. It is an astringently bittersweet comedy, and not much of a comedy for poor Jasmine, down and out, and adrift in the world for looking the other way.