Tag: movies

Movie review: The Spectacular Now

But then a road trip really crystalized the narrative for me, making what has come before much more significant.

Last Friday, the Daughter was still with the neighbor, the Wife and I were back in Albany, and it’s HOT out. Let’s go to the movies at the Spectrum in Albany to see the 1 pm showing of The Spectacular Now. We’d recently seen the previews, and I knew it had reviewed well. It was directed by James Ponsoldt, and written by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, based on some young adult novel by Tim Tharp I had never heard of.

Sutter (Miles Teller) and Cassidy (Brie Larson) are that popular couple in high school, a fun, hard-partying duo. She breaks up with him, though, for reasons he doesn’t initially understand. He crashes into the orbit of Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a nice girl, who he befriends, somewhat out of pity, and ends up in a rebound romance with her.

Sutter believes in the spectacular now, that growing up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. His mom won’t even tell him where his dad is, and he thinks that geometry stuff that Aimee is trying to tutor him in is useless anyway. Yet he has an interesting streak of honesty and integrity that disarms people around him.

Telling more would probably give away too much. The coming of age movie went along, interesting and pleasant enough. But then a road trip really crystalized the narrative for me, making what has come before much more significant.

The performances are great. Miles Teller I had never heard of, but Shailene Woodley was wonderful in The Descendants. Also strong were Jennifer Jason Leigh as Sutter’s mother (a long way from Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Kyle Chandler. Halfway through, I didn’t think the movie was spectacular, but by the end, I thought it was at least very good.

MOVIE REVIEW: Blue Jasmine

How much of the past can we shed, and how so, before we cross that line between lying and just moving on?

It’s true: after over 30 years of watching Woody Allen movies, I have had to limit myself to those that review well. That’s because bad Woody Allen films are perhaps more painful to me than the bad films of other writers and/or directors.

I watched Midnight in Paris, which I liked. I avoided To Rome with Love, because it was critically savaged. Perhaps if I were seeing as many movies as I did 15 or 16 years ago, I would be more willing to take cinematic risks. Blue Jasmine got mostly great reviews, and understandably so.

But the title Jasmine is a bit difficult to like. She’s this odd mixture of two characters, one real, one fictional. She’s part Ruth Madoff, the wife of Bernie, the Ponzi scheme king, who claims that she was oblivious to his financial shenanigans that ruined other people’s lives. She’s also part Blanche DuBois of Tennesse Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, with her suddenly needing the kindness, if not of strangers, then of her estranged, lower class, sister Ginger living a continent away.

Is it just a coincidence that the BLANCHE character is played, and brilliantly so, by Cate BLANCHETT? She will likely get some nominations, come awards season. Ginger is played by Sally Hawkins, who I enjoyed in 2010’s Made in Dagenham. She’s also fine here as a character trying to negotiate between her beau, Chili (Bobby Cannavale), and her sister.

Necessarily to the plot, the storyline goes from present to past, no more effectively when Jasmine is in a second-hand guitar shop and discovers the reason for yet another estrangement.

Also very good in their roles are Alec Baldwin (who looks a little too much like that guy from 30 Rock), Peter Sarsgaard, and a great revelation to me, Andrew Dice Clay, a comedian I could not stand in his heyday, whose character may be the moral center of the whole story.

I should say that, at the end of the film, I am sympathetic to Jasmine, just a bit. And worried.

The movie got me thinking about the process of reinventing oneself. How much of the past can we shed, and how so, before we cross that line between lying and just moving on? Movie stars used to do it all the time; Marion Morrison became JOHN WAYNE, and Norma Jean Baker, MARILYN MONROE, for good or ill. I do have some examples in mind from my circle of acquaintances, but it’s not for me to say.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Way, Way Back

The Daughter is visiting the grandparents for the week, so it’s almost mandatory that The Wife and I go to the movies. But what to see? When one’s seen only a handful of films this year, so there were a half dozen contenders. The Wife chose The Way, Way Back, which we saw Wednesday at the Spectrum in Albany.

I was surprised. I expected, based on the trailer, to be some summer coming-of-age flick that I’ve seen once too often. And while there are elements of the formula, I found the movie surprising affecting.

The premise is that a divorced mom, Pam (Toni Collette) has a new beau, Trent (Steve Carell), who’s taking them, his teenage daughter Steph (Zoe Levin), and her 14-year-old son Duncan (Liam James) from their home in Albany, NY [;-)] to Trent’s summer New England seaside getaway.

The neighbor is Betty (Allison Janney, who drives the bulk of the early humor), and her two kids, bored Susanna (Annasophia Robb) and “different” Peter (River Alexander). Trent’s friends Joan and Kip (Amanda Peet, Rod Corddry) have a boat they all can ride on.

Ever been to a party, or another event, where everyone seems to be having a good time except you? I know I have, and that epitomizes Duncan in the early part of this movie.

Fortunately, Duncan has a chance encounter with Owen (Sam Rockwell), who is manager, pretty much in name only, of an amusement park; Caitlyn (Maya Rudolph) really runs the show, while Owen does … whatever Owen does, in a way that nearly steals the film.

The movie is written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who also have small parts in the film itself. This could have been a by-the-numbers pic, but Faxon and Rash managed to have believable characters; I spent the ride home with The Wife comparing several of them to people I have known. Throw in some clever 1980s pop references, and I understand why it reviewed so well.

Robert De Niro is 70

Meet the Parents (2000) – the first of these ‘Ben Stiller as a Focker’ movies,

Robert De Niro is one of the greatest movie actors ever. Yet, I have missed almost all of his signature roles. I have never seen: Godfather II, Taxi Driver, and The Deer Hunter. I always meant to watch Bang The Drum Slowly, Stanley and Iris, and This Boy’s Life, among others, but never did. Goodfellas I’ve seen only in bits and pieces

What HAVE I seen?

Raging Bull (1980) – this I saw on video, in the past few years. I remain convinced that if I had seen it in the theater, I would have liked it better. As it was, it took me a while to warm to it.
The King of Comedy (1982) – possibly his best role that I’ve seen, as a comedian obsessed with a talk show host, played by Jerry Lewis.
Awakenings (1990) – it borders on treacle but doesn’t quite make it there. With Robin Williams as a feel-good doc.
Cape Fear (1991) – I was sufficiently scared during this movie. Never saw the original with Robert Mitchum
Wag the Dog (1997) – my favorite of these movies; about faking a war. Its biggest drawback is that it was plausibly true.
Jackie Brown (1997) – I actually enjoyed this Tarantino film, which is the last one I saw
Analyze This (1999) – trading on his tough-guy image, it stars Billy Crystal as his shrink
Meet the Parents (2000) – the first of these ‘Ben Stiller as a Focker’ movies, and while I mostly enjoyed it, it was the only one I needed to see
New Year’s Eve (2011) – watched this on New Years’ Eve 2012 with my wife on a hotel TV. The overpacked storyline, directed by Garry Marshall.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012) – yes, I liked it well enough, but not as much as some other Oscar-nominated films.

What are YOUR favorite De Niro roles?

MOVIE REVIEW: Stories We Tell

It shall have to suffice to say that the narrative structure was extremely clever, very much like the layers of an onion being peeled away.

This hasn’t happened in a very long time: the Wife arranged for a babysitter, and we went to a movie about which I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. When we got to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany on Monday night, I noticed on the movie poster that the director of Stories We Tell was Sarah Polley, who starred in the very good, but kind of depressing The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and directed the very good, but kind of depressing Away From Her (2006).

This movie was a documentary about the family of Sarah Polley. There’s a lot of chatter early on with several players you can’t possibly keep track of- but you will soon enough. The conceit of the title is that we can all tell a story, but it may not be the same one, even regarding the same person and the same events.

I could spend two or three paragraphs explaining how the narrative weaves from Sarah recording her father Michael’s recollection of Sarah’s late mother Diane to others remembering her, not always the same way. But it shall have to suffice to say that the narrative structure was extremely clever, very much like the layers of an onion being peeled away.

In the exploration of the story, which involves incredibly personal revelations, it seems that most of the players were in a better place as a result of the journey that the film captured, reconstructing the truth of their collective and individual lives. Sometimes the participants reacted to Sarah as director, whereas other times as daughter or sister, as they muse on family history.

It’s interesting to me that the critics liked it more on Rotten Tomatoes (95%, at this writing) than the movie-going audience (82%). The Wife and I, and especially the guy sitting in front of us, who had a hearty laugh, really liked the film. Yet I noticed that three or four people of the 14-16 people in the room left the film with about 15 minutes to go, when a film technique was revealed; did they think it was a cheat in a documentary? (I thought it was, if not obvious, then a likely tool.)

I don’t really want to say more, except that I think you’ll find it quite worthwhile. If you see it on DVD, try to see it in one sitting to glean the maximum effect.

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