Category: Philip Seymour Hoffman

MOVIE REVIEW: Doubt


For the second weekend in a row, I saw a movie at the Spectrum Theatre, this time alone. The wife and I developed a system whereby one of us goes to the movies on Saturday and the other on Sunday. I went Saturday; unfortunately, Carol fell ill on Sunday, so she won’t see it until Super Bowl Sunday.

Doubt is set in New York City in 1964, the year after JFK. Just the visage of the Catholic school’s old-line principal, Sister Beauvier (Meryl Streep), will bring fear into the hearts of some of the lapsed Catholics of a certain age that I know. She seems to have developed some suspicions about the trying-to-be-modern parish priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and she ends up in a power struggle with him.

This a very well-acted movie, as one would expect with actors of this caliber. This movie represents Streep’s 15th Oscar nomination, though she hasn’t won since 1982. Hoffman was nominated twice before, winning once. This is Amy Adams’ second nomination and Viola Davis’ first. Adams in particular is the sweetest nun since Sally Field played Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun.

As it is based on award-winning stage play, there is some great dialogue. I particularly liked the sermons offered as not so subtle messages.

And yet…there was something about it that is at arm’s length. Perhaps it was too stagy, that the adaptation did not fully take in the differences that cinema requires. Though I never saw the play, I can imagine this same scene-chewing dialogue produced on stage, quite possibly to greater effect. There were powerful themes and yet I never quite got caught up in them. It’s not unlike abstract art or avant-garde jazz you believe has been well crafted but just does not engage you.

I do recommend Doubt. Maybe it will take you away in a manner that I did not experience.
ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Synecdoche, New York


On Christmas Day, the wife and I left the daughter in the capable hands of the parents-in-law and traversed to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see Synecdoche, New York.

There were four basic reasons I wanted to see this film:
4) Roger Ebert gave it a four-star review.
3) I have liked some of the movies Charlie Kauffman has written, such as “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”; “Adaptation”, not so much. This was Kauffman’s directoral debut.
2) It has a stellar cast, with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, and Hope Davis.
1) The movie’s first setting is in Schenectady, New York, where I lived for 20 months before moving to nearby Albany. (An interesting piece on Schenectady and the title word here.)

Early on, I’m loving this film. It’s a dark comedy that pegs Schenectady in the first song, in the architecture. I found a particular imagery of a house on fire hysterically funny. I laughed out loud more than once. It is wonderfully performed. Yet somewhere in the theatrical remaking of the life of Caden (Hoffman), it just unraveled for me, as too long, too unfocused.

Here’s a cheat: I’m going to quote from various Rotten Tomatoes reviews, both positive (63%) and negative, that reflect as well as anything how I was feeling.

POSITIVE
Charlie Kaufman’s latest example of screenplay extrapolation begins with an obscure definitional allusion…and ends in some sort of self-referential apocalypse. – Bill Gibron

It is a portrait of disappointment and melancholy, tickled by bits of wit, that defies logic and resists description. – Duane Dudek

For about two-thirds of its length, this is an extremely funny if extraordinarily dark comedy… But we begin to measure out the time in teaspoons, and the movie becomes banal and morose. – John Beifuss

You could quite possibly be enthralled — or not. – Pete Hammond

NEGATIVE
This makes the film interesting in concept but disappointing in execution. And surreal touches added throughout that just do not add up to anything but a film more challenging than rewarding. – Mark R. Leeper

It’s all crazy enough to work for a while, but the 124 long minutes don’t pass soon enough. – Jeffrey M. Anderson

…a picture that is (a) brilliant, in scattered parts, but also (b) a reminder that virtually every writer needs an editor. – Kurt Loder

For a film that desperately wants us to empathize with its main character’s plight, Kaufman’s inability to reconcile his overambitious gimmickry with the story’s emotional demands is a fatal flaw. – Jurgen Fauth

Watching the film is also wearying, like assembling a puzzle from a box into which a sadist continually pours new pieces. – Lawrence Toppman

More than one critic compared it, unfavorably, to Fellini’s “8 1/2”.

Ultimately, the line that described it best for me is this technically positive review by Philip Martin: “An impossible, bewildering and brave failure of a movie …”

I would not say, “Don’t see it.” You may enjoy it, “get” it more than I did. Or not.

ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Charlie Wilson’s War


Back on ML King Day, Carol and I went to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. One must always take advantage of those times when the child is in day care and the parents both have the day off.
The goal in Roger’s Oscar roulette is to see as many Oscar-nominated films before the actual awards (this year: February 24), whether it’s a gala affair or Golden Globes press conference, part 2.

Charlie Wilson’s War is a Hollywood movie. I mean that in all the good and bad sense of that term. To the good, the production values are more than adequate; to the bad, it’s rather bland.

An early scene involves a number of naked women. Is this titillating? It is not. It was, surprisingly flat and boring. In fact, the film felt that way pretty much until Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character shows up. It’s comedic and has a certain energy; his Oscar nomination is deserved, for this and other roles this past year.

Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks. I don’t know what else to say.

Julia Roberts has taken a lot of heat, not just for this role, but somehow for her whole acting career. I thought she was fine in Erin Brockovich, playing a real person, (though Ellen Burstyn should have won for Requiem for a Dream that year, rather than Julia). And her hair looks A LOT like the real woman she is portraying. But here, her performance is rather flat, and I don’t know why.

If you don’t know, this movie is based on a real Texas congressman who found a way to fund the Afghans fighting the Russians. Much has been made of the ending, with some suggesting a more specific conclusion, telling the audience that the money shelled out for Charlie’s war helped in the development of the Taliban. I tend to disagree; the oblique dialogue between Charlie and the CIA man Gust (Hoffman) is enough, without it either 1) being preachy and/or 2) having to resort to that clumsy overlay technique of text at the end of the film telling you what happens next, used in films based on fiction as well as reality.

The story was written by the late CBS News producer George Crile, and the real Charlie Wilson appeared on 60 Minutes seven years ago. The average grade in Entertainment Weekly for this movie is a B. That’s just about right. It was by no means a terrible movie-going experience, but it wasn’t extraordinary, either. Maybe its lack of honesty and bite (except for Hoffman’s character) hurts it as a film as well.
ROG

ROG
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