Knight Of Cups

Oh, brother.
You know how they say that people who have everything are deeply unhappy? One, I'm afraid that's a ploy by the rich to elicit our sympathy and prevent us from throwing them all off a cliff. Two, who cares?
I rarely feel a movie is a waste of my time. Even the worst movies have teachable moments. But after the first hour of Emmanuel Lubezki's gorgeous yet Dramamine-requiring images, I started to feel like time was inexorably oozing out of my life with Terrence Malick's phony ode to rich white people's problems.
Now I know that I can happily sit and watch Christian Bale pace wordlessly around Los Angeles for the better part of an hour. But then a thought comes to mind. Why hire one of the greatest actors in the world if you are not going to give him anything to do or say? And why would anyone care about such a character? We know he works in Hollywood because he insists on wearing fancy suits to everything, including the sea, and the two inches of water in the Los Angeles River. This is that kind of movie, in which characters just stand in the middle of that fabled ditch as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
This is a movie in which rich white people show their joie de vivre by jumping fully clothed into swimming pools and/or the sea, as if ruining perfectly expensive clothes and the dry cleaning bill are of no concern to them. The women, all thin and beautiful, when not naked, wear gauzy long skirts to the beaches of L.A. And then they go into the sea with them. Not to die, which at least would be interesting. Just to carouse.
Does Christian Bale play a Hollywood agent? A movie star? An executive? The only reason that I know he plays a screenwriter is because I read it in another review. Do we see him slave away in front of a blank screen? Never.  It looks like he hasn't worked a day in his life. However, his glamorous ex-wife, (Cate Blanchett) seems to have absconded with their beautiful house but then we learn that she is a caring nurse in some godforsaken clinic in the bowels of L.A. Blanchett could be believable as the Great Wall Of China, but seeing her in expensive clothes and then wearing scrubs and touching lepers is a bit of a stretch.
Bale (I don't know the character's name; no one has a name in this movie) has an angry father (Brian Dennehy) and an even angrier brother (Wes Bentley) and he himself is haunted and morose most of the time. One wonders why these people are so aggrieved. They are white, rich, good looking and they live in sunny L.A.
Bale parties hard, fucks all the beautiful women, cruises around L.A. in a magnificent old convertible. What the hell is his problem? His problem is Terrence Malick, who instead of telling a story, paints a tone poem. Alas, there already exists a pretty nifty tone poem about L.A. It's called Mulholland Drive.
Now, there have been some great movies about Hollywood that ooze bile at the industry and what it does to writers, like Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. and the Coens' Barton Fink, or Robert Altman's The Player and David Lynch's aforementioned nightmare. Knight Of Cups is not in this hallowed group.
It is too aimless and generic. Yes, the industry is full of greedy bastards and the glitz of entertainment hides unfathomable depths of depravity. Yes, rampant capitalism is decadent and unfair, but, a) tell us something we don't know and b) if you find it so distasteful, why give it so much taste? Knight of Cups is like the In Style magazine version of a Hollywood apocalypse. People party but there is not a drug in sight, they fuck with their clothes on. Their biggest sin is vapidity.
This is Malick's L.A. movie, and once in a while the camera sweeps into the vast, manicured emptiness, the lights of Sunset Boulevard, or down to skid row, where Bale and his brother go slumming for no apparent reason. L.A. looks great but there have been sharper, better L.A. movies. One look at the L.A. River and one really pines for Chinatown.
To make matters more ridiculous, the narrative structure is based on tarot cards, with each card representing a facet of the life of this guy, a rather sophomoric concept. Kudos go to the three editors who not only did a beautiful job with Chivo's swaying camera moves, but who also managed to weave a more or less coherent narrative. In The Tree Of Life Malick was somehow able to marry his spiritual ideas to a simple story of a beautiful family with an angry, distant dad. But this time the conceit feels shoehorned to the milieu. Judging Hollywood or the entertainment industry calls for articulation, irony, preciseness. This movie has no sense of humor, no wit, it's nothing but pretentious mystical bullshit, like a dead serious version of Entourage -- something no one wants to see.
And it goes on forever.
It most resembles a mystical Lifestyles of The Rich And Famous, or, if you are into interior decorating, a catalog of premium real estate properties in Los Angeles. Either way, it's an utter waste of time. And what's with the Jewish music?

Carol

Perhaps it is by design that Todd Haynes' movie, based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (well adapted by Phyllis Nagy) feels so airless. After all, lesbians in the 1950s must have felt claustrophobic. Ed Lachman's gorgeously muted cinematography suggests a repressive, lonely world. It feels like being inside an Edward Hopper painting: alone in the crowd.
Carol (Blanchett) is a rich lady with a small child and a marriage on the rocks, and Therese (Mara) is a salesgirl at a department store and budding photographer. They meet as Carol is browsing for Christmas gifts and take a shine to one another. Therese is beguiled by Carol's glamor, and Carol sees something beautiful and dangerous in that deceivingly mousy girl. Their gaydar goes off immediately. In those days, gaydar was a finely tuned instrument, and essential to recognize other kindred spirits who lived in the shadows.
Because Carol and Therese are women, they have to use a language of glances and gestures while they try to pass off as straight in a world that denies them existence. At the same time, because they are not even supposed to happen as a couple, they can meet in public and pretend that whatever is going on is anything but a romance. Not only are they attracted to one another, but there is a difference in age and in social class. The movie illustrates this tension between private desire and outward appearance to perfection. Powerful feelings simmer under the surface until they have to blow up. It is a hard way to live. Even though much has changed in terms of gay rights since then, in the personal realm, this negotiation of sexuality with the world at large is still dramatic for a lot of people. This is what the movie brings to light.
Carol serves as an interesting contrast to our own times. Today, even those who disapprove have to concede that homosexuality exists and gay people have successfully demanded parity and dignity. The story's setting in the 1950s, that decade of American prosperity, puritanism and witch hunts, takes us back to an era in which there was a collective will to smother and penalize homosexuality by placing it under the category of perversion, and in male instances, crime. As long as it wasn't outward, people pretended it didn't exist. If it made a sound, it was swiftly punished. Hence, it comes as a bit of a shock that the men in Carol and Therese's lives are viscerally aware of their rebellious strangeness. They argue against it as if they could change it. But they are not villains. Both Carol's husband (Kyle Chandler) and Therese's boyfriend (Jake Lacy), love these women. It is hard on them too.
It's difficult to live a double life, or a life that seems charmed but is deeply unhappy, as is the case with Carol. If divorce was a scandal in those days, imagine lesbianism: Carol was doomed. But she decides to pursue Therese. They take the car, that most available of American freedoms, and go on a road trip together. Therese has less to lose. She is young and ripe for adventure. For Carol, things are harder. She is richer, wiser, older and she has everything to lose.
If there is anything subversive about Carol is that it is a conventional movie. It's a classic love story. It's also a classic melodrama. The characters have terrible obstacles to overcome, as in any story about forbidden love. It just happens to be between two women. This is the point Carol makes: there is no difference between this love and the one society approves of. But this movie is also about pursuing personal freedom, at a great cost, in the face of an uncomprehending society. It's about rebellion.
Everything about Carol is exquisite and exquisitely controlled. It has class written all over it: Lachman's cinematography, excellent editing by Affonso Gonçalves, costumes by the great Sandy Powell, music by Carter Burwell and an amazing soundtrack of pop music of the period.
As in Far From Heaven, Haynes frames this narrative of personal rebellion in genre, namely, 1950's Sirkian melodrama. Perhaps because of this Carol seems more like a beautiful artifact than a story about messy passions. It is too stylized to breathe fire, and something in its composure mutes its emotional and erotic power.
If it has an impact, it's because Blanchett and Mara bring a fierceness to their roles that struggles against all that composure, both in the story and in the telling. They illustrate perfectly the unbearable tension between who they are and who they are expected to be. They are both excellent. Blanchett is a monster actress, and she does not disappoint. But I'm very impressed with Mara, who doesn't seem to take up much space but radiates a quiet and formidable willpower.

Cinderella

It's a good story. And it is well told in this Disney film by Kenneth Branagh with a very good script by Chris Weitz. They understand that this is too good a story, too iconic, too archetypal, to mess with. It's the number one movie in the world and, beyond Disney's enormous muscle, it's because it is a powerful story about the loss of innocence and coming of age.
The younger kids in the theater were bored out of their wits, but then again this story of love and sexual awakening, originally by Charles Perrault, is better suited to older kids and adults. As innocently as it might be rendered by Walt Disney, the image of a crystal slipper (in this case, a Kardashian-like high-heeled pump) fitting the right woman in a shorthand for intercourse between foot and shoe is quite evocative, if not downright fetishistic. All fairy tales are full of sexual metaphors (the Prince's secret garden, anyone?). They are also very dark. In the original tale, the step-sisters are so greedy for the Prince they cut off their toes and a heel to make the shoe fit. Sadly, here there are no such extremes.
At the beginning, we are introduced to little Ella's perfect family, a world of bliss that, we dread, will soon come to an end.  Ella's mother dies, as is usual in tales, leaving her dad (Ben Chaplin) to screw things up royally by remarrying a worldly woman, Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett, iconic) who comes with two grotesquely vapid daughters, Drisella and Anastasia (Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger). Ella's stepsisters are mean, vulgar and materialistic, but they are not physically hideous, which is a nice touch. They are ugly from within.
The voice-over narration, beautifully provided by Helena Bonham-Carter, who does double duty as the Fairy Godmother, works. She has savvy, wise opinions. Weitz modernizes the story without making it anachronistic to its own time, as so many of the current animated features do with fairy tales. He also plumps up the thin plot of the fairy tale with realistic character motivations. This makes the story more meaningful and makes us understand why it is a classic. While movies like Shrek, Frozen or Maleficent, almost abandon their powerful source material for the sake of pop culture gags or artificially darkened retellings, this Cinderella tells it straight, and makes it surprisingly moving.
Marriage is still the prize, women are still dependent on the finances of men, and the rich guy still gets the poor girl, but the characters are dimensional. Cinderella (the perfect Lily James) is sweet and way too kind for my taste, but she is also smart and sensible. At first, Prince Charming (Richard Madden) looks too much like a generic teenage heartthrob, but he is given backbone. He's a good guy with a democratic spirit, who wants "the people" to come to the ball, so he can find that awesome country girl he met in the forest. He holds his own against the wishes of his father (Derek Jacobi) because he is confident he can marry for love and not rely on monarchic alliances to rule the kingdom. He's a true liberal. The one aspect of this story that is truly a fairy tale is that anyone from the one percent can be remotely interested, let alone cross paths, with the rest of us.
Cinderella does seem to allow too much abuse from her stepmother, but then she fights back, a little. A revolutionary she ain't, but she takes to heart her mother's last words, good advice it would do us all well to heed: "be kind and have courage".  She confronts that awful woman. She asks plainly of Lady Tremaine: "why are you so cruel?"
As evil stepmothers go, Cate Blanchett is the most glamorous of them all, channeling Joan Crawford with blazing red hair and fabulous red lipstick. Costume designer Sandy Powell dresses everybody in the 18th century, but Blanchett looks like a femme fatale from the 1940s. She wears (and wears them well) spectacular gowns in the most gorgeous shades of green, the color of envy. For envy is her thing. She envies youth, she envies beauty, she also envies, it seems, Cinderella's innocence, her goodness, that which she cannot muster. She's been around the block, she lost a husband, slid down in social status, and is bitter for it. Weitz gives her a redeeming feature; after all, she is fighting for her "stupid", as she calls them, daughters. She's the original stage mother. I like my villains villainous, without added justification, but Lady Tremaine's backstory works. She is a vain and scheming woman, but she is trying to survive. And envy is something we all can relate to. I want her gowns.
Passionate discussions were had with my discerning companions about the production design, the color scheme and Cinderella's dress. We all hated the blue of the dress, but I ascribe it to Disney sticking to its own iconography and to its ancillary merchandising. That girl's dress has always been blue, even if a hideous shade. However, this is one spectacular dress. When Cinderella waltzes with the Prince, its undulating flounces reminded me of Ginger Rogers' gowns, which moved to her swaying. Powell has chosen a rich jewel-toned palette for the ball gowns, and everything clashes a bit in Dante Ferretti's production design, which is meant to evoke an old, baroque Europe. It all smacks of a garish old masters' painting, but somehow it works; as if to say, yes, this is an old-fashioned tale, but it still has power. By the way, there should be a retrospective of the work of Sandy Powell. Her costumes are always breathtaking.
As I don't think this is a spoiler for anyone in the Western world, at the happy end, the now young king and his queen seem poised to rule benignly and wisely together, as a team. A nice modern touch, yet still a fairy tale in this day and age... What can I say? I was moved by this film.

Oscars Postmortem 2014

Plus ça change. Funny how the Oscars always manage to be long, boring and predictable, even when one hopes against all reason that something alive and interesting could potentially happen in those four hours of tedium.
The long could be solved with more ruthless discipline and less stupid montages. The boring, ditto. The predictable is more complicated because in order to fix this, the Oscars would have to be the first awards of the season. By the time they roll around, in what is now the most exhausting foreplay in history, all the major contenders have already won all the other awards and are thus positioned to win this one as well. This is the major anti-climax of this show. That it has mushroomed out of control in terms of media coverage does not help it. It makes everything a foregone conclusion.
Ellen started out in good form, but as time seemed to get all Proustian on her, the jokes lost focus. The selfie thing was inspired (and so were the memes right after), but the pizza was not. And the getting money from the audience was icky.
If the idea of Ellen's humor was to make the audience believe that movie stars are regular people, the selfie was the only instance in which it worked. Even Angelina Jolie looked like she was having fun. The rest was a bit strained.
The people who write this show have a really antiquated notion of show business (and this is coming from someone who thinks they don't make anything like they used to).
It is not aging well and it is not glamorous. A perfect example of this desperately wanting to be young and hip and not knowing how to do so is bringing Pink to sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Even worse is the decision to bring out the now tragically ghoulish Kim Novak to give an award for animation. What are these people thinking? The sadness of the plastic surgery nightmares (an almost unrecognizable Goldie Hawn) made me wonder how much better Kim Novak would look with her natural wrinkles. She would probably be still beautiful and alluring, not a freak from planet Hell. Apparently, and note to self, plastic surgery only looks good on the young.
But I digress. Poor Ellen, or anybody else who tries to host this schizophrenic old/young thing is caught between a rock and a hard place. Someone like Jimmy Fallon has a better idea of what is entertaining to people living in the current century, but I think he is indentured to NBC and they won't loan him. :(
Actors tend to be notoriously bad speech givers. Jared Leto mentioned almost every calamity on Earth and his lovely Mom, and learned the lesson of not just talking about his waxing problems, but methinks that trying to become Albert Schweitzer while picking up an acting prize is a tall order.
I love me Matthew McConaughey as an actor and as a Texan accent, and thus was quite disappointed by his enthusiasm for God. If you noticed, very few winners mentioned the Guy, opting to gush on their real creators, their Moms.
Progress -1, Religion - 0.
My favorite part of Cate Blanchett's extended maelstrom of self-absorption masquerading as inclusiveness was when she mentioned each fellow nominee.
About Meryl Streep's atrocious performance she could only muster: "What can I say?". Indeed. She sounded genuine about liking Amy Adams' work; the rest was just hot air. And by the way, Dame Judi Dench does not just have a career. She is God. God doesn't have careers.
I did like Blanchett's dressing down of Hollywood's refusal to make movies with and about women. She was also right, and had no choice but to thank "Woody", (awkward moment!), but I thought her shilling her own theater company was a bit crass. I didn't hear her thanking any agents. This year either everybody seemed to have gotten the memo or I was drinking too heavily to notice, but that was an improvement.
Lupita Nyong'o's speech was the most lovely, spontaneous, graceful, intelligent and moving of the entire night. This girl is a real, bona fide star.  Period.
I am extremely happy and relieved that cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki very deservedly and finally won on his sixth nomination. Next year, it's Roger Deakins or bust! (12 noms, no wins and he is the master of masters).
I'm also very happy for Alfonso Cuarón, who did do a better job than Steve McQueen, in my h. opinion. Payne, Russell and Scorsese were also very deserving, but Cuarón shepherded a seemingly quixotic project, and the movie is visually stunning.

Let me now unleash my fury at last night's montages. Someone with nary a creative thought in their brain decided that this was the year to celebrate heroes. As if Hollywood doesn't foist us with heroes up the wazoo enough. They had not one, but two montages about heroes. So out come the parades of mostly guys, as usual,  trying to impress their dads and save the world from "evil". This makes me extremely tired. Nikki Finke tweeted that this was the only way in which they could include the tentpole spectacles about men in tights that keep the billions of dollars rolling in. Maybe. I think it's sadder than that. Americans really believe in heroes. They genuinely think that's the way the world works. In foreign films, heroes are people who deal with enormous issues in their apartments, without a cape or an explosion in sight (cf. Amour). America likes their heroes supersized. Hence, most big Hollywood movies tell the same story. I don't understand how people don't get tired.
Notice, however, that in most of the best picture nominees this year (except for Captain Phillips, Philomena and Gravity) the protagonists are anti-heroes. This is what makes these movies exciting.
Anywho. I'm trying to figure out if there is a structural, revolutionary way to make the Oscars less tedious and less of an utterly meaningless timesuck. I'll let you know.
Until next year...

Oscar Pool Confidential

Due to popular demand (two people), and despite the fact that you must already be fed up, exhausted and the damn thing has not even begun yet, here are my predictions to aid you in your Oscar office pool.
This year there are several worthy and justly heralded contenders in all the main categories, so it may be a bit more nail-biting fun than usual (don't quote me on this).
For Best Picture, I believe it is a toss up between Gravity and 12 Years A Slave. Gravity is a classic Hollywood entertainment with two of the biggest stars on Earth, it has made a shitload of money and it is not at all challenging or controversial, which the Academy loves. But 12 Years A Slave is The Important Message Movie that makes Hollywood feel good about itself, so there. In my view, neither one deserves the prize. My favorite is Nebraska. I also loved American Hustle and much enjoyed The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Here then, are my predictions/favorites. For Oscar Pool, vote with your cynical head, not with your heart. Don't blame me if you lose.

Picture
Will Win: Toss up between 12 Years A Slave and Gravity. They should declare a tie.
Inching towards Gravity. 12 Years a Slave is too grim, which rarely wins Oscars.
Should Win: Nebraska

Director
Will Win: Alfonso Cuarón
Should Win: David O. Russell, Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese and Cuarón

Actor
Will Win: Matthew McConaughey
Should Win: McConaughey, Bruce Dern

Actress
Will Win: Cate Blanchett
Should Win: Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock

Supporting Actor
Will Win: Jared Leto
Should Win: Michael Fassbender

Supporting Actress
Will Win: Lupita Nyong'o
Should Win: Jennifer Lawrence

Original Screenplay
Will Win: Her
Should Win: Nebraska

Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: 12 Years A Slave
Should Win: The Wolf Of Wall Street 

Cinematography
Will Win: Emmanuel Lubezki
Should Win: Emmanuel Lubezki

Foreign Language
Will Win: The Great Beauty
Should Win: The Great Beauty, The Hunt

Editing
Will Win: Gravity
Should Win: American Hustle

Production Design
Will Win: Gravity
Should Win: Gravity

Costume Design
Will Win: 12 Years A Slave

Should Win: The Great Gatsby, American Hustle

Makeup and Styling
Will Win: Dallas Buyers Club
Should Win: Dallas Buyers Club

Visual Effects
Will Win: Gravity
Should Win: Gravity

Sound Mixing
Will Win: Gravity
Should Win: Gravity, Inside Lllewyn Davis

Sound Editing
Will Win: Gravity
Should Win: Gravity, All Is Lost

Original Score
Will Win: Gravity
Should Win: Nebraska, which is not on the list.  

Original Song:
Will Win: Happy
Should Win: No one 

Animated Feature (I haven't seen most of them. Winging it here)
Will Win: Frozen
Should Win: The Wind Rises. Stands a chance, it's Miyazaki's last film.   

Animated Short (winging it). Like betting on horses, I go by the name.
Will Win: Mr. Hublot 

Documentary
Will Win: 20 Feet From Stardom
Should Win: 20 Feet From Stardom 

Documentary Short (winging it)
Will Win: The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life 

Live Action Short (winging it)
Will Win: Helium

May justice prevail. 



 








 

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.