Tag: review

Movie review: Hail, Caesar!

What is it about kidnapping that the Coens embrace so readily?

hail-caesarI went with a couple of friends to the Spectrum Theatre on a Sunday afternoon to see the new Coen brothers movie Hail, Caesar!.

It “follows a day in the life of Eddie Mannix [Josh Brolin], a Hollywood fixer for Capitol Pictures in the 1950s, who cleans up and solves problems for big names and stars in the industry. But when studio star Baird Whitlock [George Clooney] disappears, Mannix has to deal with more than just the fix.”

When it was over, I smiled knowingly. I laughed a lot and thought it was a smart picture with nifty references to a Hollywood of a different era. But my two companions were confused! One said, “What did it MEAN?” And judging by the amazingly bad audience reaction on Rotten Tomatoes – only 45% positive, though 82% of the critics liked it – they were not alone.

A lot of the complaints I’ve read were that other films touched on the specifics of movie making better than Hail, Caesar! That may be true, but I enjoyed this particular iteration. As the review from NPR noted:

“Some of the best scenes hail from the films within the film. The best of these is No Dames!, a sailors-on-shore-leave musical starring Bert Gurney (Channing Tatum, who is really a pretty good dancer. Who knew?). This long segment is… [one of] the most delightful production number in a major motion picture… It’ll also make you miss the days long before the Age of Ultron, when movie titles had exclamation points instead of colons.

“Hail, Caesar!’s… pleasures are piecemeal and peculiar, like the way Sir Michael Gambon, the film’s narrator, elongates the phrase “in Westerly Malibu.” Or the way Tilda Swinton plays a pair of identical — and fiercely competitive — twin gossip columnists. Or the way that a workprint of Hail, Caesar! includes a title card reading DIVINE PRESENCE TO BE SHOT.”

Also great was Alden Ehrenreich, previously unknown to me, as Hobie Doyle, a western film star out of his element in a different genre film; Ralph Fiennes as movie director Laurence Laurentz; and Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams-type aquatic performer. Frances McDormand and Jonah Hill had small roles as a film editor and a “person.”

Two questions:

What is it about a kidnapping that the Coens embrace so readily, in Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, and Fargo?

Does one need to be a cinephile to enjoy Hail, Caesar!? I would not think so, but I could be wrong.

Movie reviews: 45 Years; Anomalisa

I recommended Anomalisa to a therapist friend of mine, but it surely is not for everyone.

45yearsWith the Daughter away on a ski trip, even though she doesn’t ski, it was an opportunity to see not one but TWO movies at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, pretty much back to back: 45 Years and Anomalisa.

While they are quite different films, they have a few things in common. They were both nominated for Academy Awards, they’re both about male/female romantic relationships which involve sex scenes, and neither would be categorized as a feel-good movie.

45 Years

A couple has been married for four score and nearly five. They were going to have a big party a half-decade earlier, but Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay) had undergone heart bypass surgery. So they, mostly his wife Kate (Charlotte Rampling), are planning the gala when Geoff gets a letter about someone in his distant past.

At first, she takes in the news and tries to be supportive. But as he shares new revelations, and she digs for even more, she starts doubting the very foundation of their relationship.

Both lead performers in 45 Years are strong. Charlotte Rampling has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and I’m a bit surprised, because it’s a very internal role in a restrained movie.

If I was a little impatient with it – the most significant reveal comes 2/3s of the way through – it’s probably because it was based on a short story, and that at 95 minutes, it still felt too long. I wouldn’t say it was boring, but certainly, it is slow and subtle.

Still, it generated an interesting conversation with my wife about how much of one’s past one tells a new lover, and when.
ANOMALISA

Anomalisa

There were two reasons I wanted to see the stop-motion animated film Anomalisa:
1)It was put together by Charlie Kauffman, who has made films I liked, such as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
2) It was nominated for Best Animated Film

One has to get used to both the animation style and the voice choices of Anomalisa, which eventually made sense to me. By happenstance, we ran into a friend of ours, who saw the film at the same time. She asked afterward, “I don’t know what that movie was about.”

On the surface, it tracked successful writer, Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), in Cincinnati to talk about customer service. Yet he has a difficult time relating to other people, even those he meets who are undoubtedly using his techniques.

He looks up his old girlfriend, whose hate-filled letter from over a decade ago he still holds onto. He obligatorily calls the wife and kid back in Los Angeles.

Then he meets someone he finds extraordinary, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), though no one else, certainly not herself, would agree with this assessment.

The couple sitting behind us walked out in the middle of the film, because Michael is not a likable guy, or maybe because of the sex scene.

I’ve subsequently have become convinced that he has a mental illness, tipped by the name of the hotel, the Fregoli. I recommended this film to a therapist friend of mine, but it surely is not for everyone. My wife disliked it intensely.

Movie review: Carol

The movie Carol is adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel “The Price of Salt”,

carol-rooney-mara-cate-blanchettI hated reading the audience reviews of the movie Carol before seeing it. My wife went to see it one day before I did at The Spectrum Theatre in Albany, and she told me how this older couple at the cinema complained how s-l-o-w the film was.

Interesting that the audience reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, which often find the film too understated, are quite a bit less favorable than the critics. But we agree with the bulk of the critics, who thought this was a fine, subtle, sensitive film by director Todd Haynes.

When the situation is boy-meets-girl, there’s a broad tableau of reactions that are possible. But when it’s girl-meets-girl, in the 1950s, even in New York City, there’s a lot more at stake, with more nuanced responses required. The alluring Carol Auld (Cate Blanchett) wants to buy a present for her little girl when she meets the young sales clerk, and aspiring photographer, Therese, “not Theresa?” (Rooney Mara) at a department store.

The relationship between Carol and Therese is all quite chaste, though Carol’s friend Abby (Sarah Paulson, who I didn’t recognize right away) sees the potential for more. The relationship between the two woman is confounding to Therese’s boyfriend. Meanwhile, Carol and her estranged husband Harge (Kyle Chandler) have their own tussles, trapped in a loveless, convenient marriage.

Some have predicted an Oscar for Mara. I wonder, though, because it’s not a flashy role, but rather quite controlled, like much of the film, which is the antithesis of an action flick.

The movie is adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel “The Price of Salt,” and I know not how close the film is aligned with the book. I do know that the film look of elegance has garnered it several Oscar nominations in the technical categories.

Movie Review: Room

I heard people sobbing for joy halfway through the movie Room.

room_movieThe Wife and I saw the movie Room more than a week ago at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. Yet I have had a difficult time writing about it.

One reason is that the less one knows, going in, the better the story. What I will say is that the film is based on the 2010 novel by Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue, though it does not adhere entirely to the source material.

I had thought, incorrectly, the story was derived from the Cleveland captivity story that came to light in 2013. I believed that in particular because Room, the movie, takes place in Akron, and I recognized those Ohio license plates.

While I’ve seen only three of the five nominees for Best Actress, I’m willing to cede the Oscar to Brie Larson, who was excellent as Joy, kidnapped for seven years. Just as good, though, is young Jacob Tremblay as Jack. The movie falls apart if one doesn’t believe that the boy was born in captivity, living in Room that his mother tries to make as “normal” as possible.

Room has been nominated as Best Picture, and rightly so. It has understandably reviewed extremely well.

I’m glad I saw the movie in the theater. While the subject matter was tough, it never felt exploitative. I thought the way the film compared the impact of the captivity on the captives, versus how it affected Joy’s parents (Joan Allen, William H. Macy). The black woman cop, played by Amanda Brugel, was great.

I came out of the film feeling exhilarated that someone could put together two disparate sides of a coin and make it work so well. I heard people sobbing for joy halfway through the movie. The Wife, conversely, thought it was too intense for her taste, though she thought it was very well made.

My feeling is to see Room, preferably in one sitting, optimally on the big screen, for I believe watching it in pieces will alter its impact negatively.

Movie review: The Danish Girl

Eddie Redmayne got his second Academy Awards nomination in a row,

danishgirlThe Danish Girl has nothing to do with a young woman selling pastry. It’s about a “fictitious love story loosely inspired by the lives of Danish artists.” Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) is a successful painter, but his wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) less so. Still, they seem a happy couple, though trying unsuccessfully to have a baby.

Then they are required to go to a potential party. In order to make it more interesting, Einar dressed as a woman, with the aid and encouragement of Gerda. The woman, dubbed Lili Elbe, Einar’s “cousin”, was having a great deal of fun.

Moreover, Gerda’s pictures of Lili start selling like none of her previous paintings did. So the couple’s relationship gets tested and transformed.
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Do you know how it takes a while for you to get into the storyline of the movie? This was certainly true of me watching The Danish Girl. The acting is quite fine, especially the leads. Vikander, in some ways, had the more difficult role, reacting to the changing relationship, and deserves her Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. (She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Ex Machina this season.)

Redmayne, getting his second Academy Awards nomination in a row, was perhaps not as compelling as he was in last year’s The Theory of Everything, for which he won playing Stephen Hawking. Partly, I didn’t quite buy that he convinced other people into thinking he was a woman.

Also very good were art-dealer Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), and friend Ulna (Amber Heard).

The Danish Girl deals with a real, important issue. It’s Lili, trapped in the wrong body, in a period, the 1920s, when gender misassignment was even less understood than it is now. The Wife and I saw this at the Spectrum on the Martin Luther King holiday, and somehow, thinking back, that was appropriate.

I did enjoy the film and was glad that I saw it. Yet there was a certain arms-length quality to it. Perhaps the story was a tad overlong and unfocused and stagy, and the music was overmuch. But it felt just a little as though I were watching something that is supposed to be something Oscar-worthy.

Still, I got a little weepy in the last scene, so there’s that. And I wasn’t really all that aware of most of the film’s flaws while I was watching it, only in retrospect.

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