La Camioneta

A very poignant, surprising documentary by Mark Kendall, this film focuses on a unique journey. Who knew that many used American school buses, most of them in perfect shape, are auctioned relatively cheaply? Enterprising people from Guatemala and some countries in Africa buy them to provide privatized public transportation in their countries. What is promptly discarded in the US after a few years of use in pristine, uneventful roads, is transformed into a crowded haven for people who can't afford to have their own transportation in less fortunate countries.
La Camioneta begins at such an auction in Pennsylvania, and follows the journey of a handsome yellow school bus and his driver through the treacherous Mexican border, where there are always shakedowns by the authorities, to a village in Guatemala. There, the bus is sold quite expensively to an enterprising dreamer, who has always wanted to drive his own bus. The bus is repainted in lovely colors and shapes by a humble and gifted artist, and blessed by a Catholic priest, so it will be safe from extortion and violence from organized crime, which runs rampant in Guatemala, a very poor country with high levels of crime.
The drivers and their families fear for their safety. A TV report mentions that 130 of them have been killed by the mob. But this is what they do and what they love to do, and there are barely other jobs to choose from.
The entrepreneurial spirit is not exclusive to Americans. Trying to eke out a living in a beautiful, albeit impoverished, unsafe, corrupt, uneducated country, is not enough for men of dignity. They don't have most of the advantages of educated, economically stable people, but they have the same drive to succeed. Many leave and come to the US, and others like them stay behind. They all risk their lives to do better.
Through this journey we get a look at the economic and social disparities, and the resulting symbiosis, (which so many Americans are hell-bent on denying) between the US and countries like Guatemala.
By the end of the paint job, which is made by stenciling, using newspaper and masking tape, one roots and fears for the newly colorful bus and the sweet, resilient people that will make it their transport as they work and fight for a better life.

I'm So Excited!

This film is not as great as Pedro Almodóvar's most radical comedies, but it is a fun return to his uninhibited puckish self after some of his more serious, and in my view, unnecessarily pretentious, recent outings.
I'm So Excited! bears Almodóvar's classic looseness and epater l'espagnol signature. He is Spain's most gifted fool (in the Shakespearean sense of the word), making happy mincemeat out of everything that is provincial, strait-laced and hypocritical in Spanish society, this time lashing out at Spain's latest shameful financial scandals, as well.
It's an uneven, raunchy, dirty romp, rough around the edges, but it is buoyantly entertaining, often very funny, and in some sequences, absolutely gorgeous, thanks to the work of master of color, cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, and Almodóvar's production design team. The vibrant color scheme is an inch from the garish, but it never plunges into vulgarity. For a movie that resembles a ramshackle skit comedy, it looks fabulous.
For years, Almodóvar explored the theme of the fluidity of human sexual desire, and expressed his own gay sensibility by telling stories of beleaguered women, but this time it's all flamboyantly, openly gay. So instead of his fabulous women like Carmen Maura and Rossy De Palma, we are treated to three male stewards, all raging queens, led by the great Javier Cámara, who in their loves and lusts are reminiscent of those broads. A big part of what makes Almodóvar's films hilarious is the way his characters speak. He has a prodigious ear for the chatty patois of his countrymen and the kind of obvious, inane, opinionated things his characters say are always a hoot. Although the subtitles in English are for the most part pretty accurate, everything is so much funnier in his brand of Spanish.
I'm So Excited! is a little fable about a society (Spain's, the world's) that hypocritically objects to the pursuit of pleasure and sexual freedoms, while engaging in much more destructive practices. This is embodied by a plane flying from Madrid to Mexico City, with a sparsely populated business class, and a packed like sardines economy class, somehow cheerfully going down in flames. It's a disaster movie a la Almodóvar, which is far more spirited and fun than the humorless, neanderthal-like mayhem produced by Hollywood with gazillions of dollars.
The three stewards are in charge of keeping spirits up in business, and people zonked out in the main cabin. The pilots are family men who like gays on the side; the only passengers awake are the handful that travel on business, and from whom we hear convoluted stories. Their lives may be coming to an end, an opportunity for the filmmaker to unfurl his sense of humor and engage once more in his undying love for campy melodrama (which is where he loses me. I much prefer his impish side).
As playful and loose as he is, Almodóvar is no hack. Some sequences are exquisitely made, and almost breathtaking. The musical number that gives the film its title in English is a spectacularly staged mini-production, a modest extravaganza of craft with three men dancing in the aisles of a plane. And there is a stunning sequence where the director eschews the graphic scenes of impact by cutting to an empty airport, lying in wait, bracing for disaster, without showing an ounce of debris or a drop of blood. Despite Hollywood's efforts to the contrary, he trusts that we can still rely on our imaginations, and it is a contrary kind of showstopper. He even builds a surreptitious suspense and has the gall to stage a plane evacuation as a giddy, dreamlike ending, all afloat in extinguisher foam.

Arrivederci, Tony.

I was taken aback by the intensity of my grief.  I don’t have cable, so I watched The Sopranos in fits and starts, and only started following it on Netflix when it was already over.  I devoured season after season in sessions of two or three episodes a night. I needed to spend time with these people. And like many others, I fell in love -- disturbingly, inevitably -- with Tony Soprano.  Perhaps it was the shock of learning James Gandolfini was only a year older than me. But perhaps it was that the character of Tony is one of the greatest artistic achievements in the history of modern drama; one whose most intimate moments we were privy to. His relationship with his wife Carmela (the equally towering Edie Falco), his sessions with Dr. Malfi, his adventures in other bedrooms, his family life as a child, his horrifying violence. Have we ever gotten to know a fictional character so well? I once saw Gandolfini on the street in New York. I realized he was there because I saw a bunch of people all transfixed in one direction, like at the scene of an accident. I thought, “There’s Tony”.  There’s Tony: the guy from Jersey I know better than my neighbors, better than some of my closest friends.  He walks among us.

But Tony Soprano started as words on a page. For an actor, the gift of such magnificent writing must be nothing short of a miracle, yet it also poses a heroic challenge, because he has to deliver the goods. And Gandolfini did that in spades, with enormous artistic integrity, bravery and generosity, baring layer after layer of a man’s humanity in all its twisted glory. We fell in love with him because he was full of life, and full of love. He was not ashamed of himself, but he wanted to change. When he did terrible things, ruthlessly, he did not endear himself to us by wallowing in guilt. He dealt with his demons head on, by going to a female shrink, which in his world is tantamount to genetic-grade treason.  He was a true hero because he was proud, but not altogether satisfied with who he was. He was a product of his culture, but slightly off-center, trying to be both a respectable American, and a respected goombah; trying to make good on all the trappings of the pursuit of happiness mandated by his country, in the way his particular hand was dealt. Even in his most brutal moments, he walked that tightrope with impressive grace.

As an actor, it must have been difficult to sever himself from the character he created. A giant among men in our living rooms, on the big screen he never got top billing. He was, ultimately, a character actor. American movies today have no use for the likes of him as a leading man. Still, the way he portrayed Tony Soprano, man full of love, showed that he could certainly be one. Instead, he got offered many modest roles, which he took and played with the same fierce commitment he brought to his greatest creation. It was always a thrill, and a bit of a fear in the pit of one’s gut, to see if he would be able to be someone other than Tony. He was, and he always nailed it, like all great character actors do. I remember him in a small movie where he played an alcoholic hit man. I have never seen emotional exhaustion portrayed so devastatingly onscreen. I am sure Gandolfini brought to bear the enormous weight of being Tony Soprano, year after year, forever and ever; yet the character was nothing like Tony.  It was as if he was saying, I am tired of playing these kinds of guys, but “no disrespect”: I’m still gonna give it all I got. 

As Tony Soprano, Gandolfini contained multitudes. Like we all do in life, he played many roles.  He was a son, a brother, a husband, a lover, a father, a friend, a boss, a patient, an enemy, a citizen.  Like us, he was ever different depending on the context, and yet quintessentially the same.  In the end, tragically, James Gandolfini gave Tony Soprano the finality that David Chase cruelly refused us in that shockingly truncated final scene.  We are grieving double: for the untimely loss of an immensely talented artist, and much more deeply for our impressive, fearsome friend, Tony Soprano. May they both rest in peace.

The East

This movie by Zal Batmanglij, co-written by his frequent collaborator and star Brit Marling, is completely preposterous but it has a great premise. A group of disaffected  rich kids decide to give evil corporations a taste of their own medicine, by using their poisonous drugs and chemicals on them. A fabulous revenge fantasy, ain't it?
Except that revenge is never as clean.
Sarah (Marling), works for a corporate spying law firm, headed by the awesome Patricia Clarkson, and is sent to infiltrate an anarchist group, which threatens some of her firm's clients. Though she is loyal to her work, dutifully ratting out the group, she can't help but be affected by their insular hippy-dippy lifestyle, by the injustices the group tries to right and by the charms of the über-cute group leader, Alexander Skarsgård, who even with a horrifying head of hippie hair, is irresistible to the female eye. If all revolutionaries were this hot, we would live in a different world. Skarsgård is a subtle, resourceful actor, but he lacks the manic charisma that tends to be typical of revolutionary leaders. He is the nicest anarchist ever.
Marling is really good at playing steely dames, and she is very compelling here. This is a thriller starring a woman, who has a fearsome female boss, and neither of them make you miss the guys who usually star in these types of movies. Meaning: it is possible. It's great to have a female spy hero for a change. It is great to see women in powerful roles, including a very good Julia Ormond as a corporate P.R. person.
As they showed in their previous outing, Sound of My Voice, Marling and Batmanglij are interested in exploring underground movements. Last time around it was a creepy cult, now it's a revolutionary cooperative, for which they have more sympathy (therefore making the movie less creepy).
How can you deal with state-sanctioned evil? Revenge seems to unleash more evil, but sometimes the available legal options are not sufficient, particularly when the laws are there to protect corporate villains. Credit is due to the writers for not over-simplifying the thorny issue. Revenge on the corporations sounds good until it becomes a childish, unhinged prank. I had issues with the story lines of rich kids feeling shame for their parents' sins. Yes, the personal is political, but it would also be nice if the characters were just outraged, as we all are, at corporate malfeasance without a personal trauma to boost them to action. At times, the device of making everything personal risks making it borderline ridiculous.
Batmanglij is an economical, effective director and he delivers a taut, suspenseful thriller, if you overlook its hanging threads and strained plot points. But since siding 100% with the revolutionaries is not really possible for a commercial film backed by a corporation like Fox, the movie hedges its bets. The welcome ambivalence it portrays in the ideological allegiances of the characters, in whether what they are doing is righteous or infantile, leads to an equally ambivalent, unconvincing ending that robs the movie of power. Still, Batmanglij and Marling are making small, contrary movies that are well worth following.

20 Feet From Stardom

This documentary by Morgan Neville is a very enjoyable, but bittersweet, heartbreaking film about the talented singers who do backup for more famous artists. It features a lot of fantastic music and showcases the powerhouse voices of artists like Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, The Waters, Claudia Lennear, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, and Tata Vega, who have sung behind the big names in music, mostly in obscurity, bringing power and feeling to recordings and live concerts. The film is a good pop music history lesson, as well as a poignant exploration of what separates talent from fame. As is enormously clear today, in the age of auto tune and televised talent contests, it is not necessary to be talented to be famous; and to judge from the otherworldly gifts of some of these singers, sheer talent is, sadly, not always enough.
What is needed remains daunting and ineffable: a combination of drive, ambition, connections, circumstances, luck, looks, business acumen, and taste. Singers may have incredible voices, but if they don't have access to hit songs, or canny, decent producers (not sleazebags like Phil Spector), their voices won't take them as far as they deserve. There are also those who prefer not to be in the spotlight, but the majority need to express themselves and share their gifts with the world at the front of the stage, and that is where disappointment comes in.
At the dawn of American pop music, back up singers were all white and perky, quite harmonious, but rather soulless. Then The Blossoms, the first trio of black backup singers, appeared, commandeered by Darlene Love, and everything changed. Think of Perry Como and his three insipid blondes, and then think of Ray Charles and the Raelettes, or Ike and Tina Turner's miniskirt-wielding backup singers, and you'll get the idea. Love, who was born to be a lead singer, was outrageously indentured to Phil Spector. He used her and her colleagues' vocals to give them to other groups to lip-synch. That Love was belatedly inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 barely rights those terrible wrongs. At some point she was cleaning houses. This is how bitter, unfair and ungrateful the music business can be.
There is a connection between gospel singing and the careers of backup artists. Most of them were the children of pastors and they sang, heavenly, in church. And what are backup singers if not a righteous choir of call and response?
Apparently, Rock and Roll saved the day by finding use for these talents, and artists like the Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker, U2, Sting, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, all brought these ladies in to add some sexiness and power to their shows. And boy, did they ever. Just to hear Lisa Fischer's soaring solo at a Sting concert is worth the price of admission. The night I saw the movie, the audience burst into applause. The sound of these voices lifts the spirit, but their tales of struggle are very sad.