Cloud Atlas

Roger Ebert opened his review of Cloud Atlas by saying “Even as I was watching ‘Cloud Atlas’ the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I've seen it the second time, I know I'd like to see it a third time — but I no longer believe repeated viewings will solve anything.” He went on to talk about the mysteries of the movie, how it was tricky and enigmatic. I only kind of agree with him. When I first watched Cloud Atlas I was blown away by the ambition of the thing. While it’s certainly difficult to connect every strand of every story to each other, I am not particularly bothered to do such a thing, and so am not disturbed by unconnected strands. Like Ebert, I knew I was watching greatness the first time I watched this movie. At one point I thought how poetic and beautiful an ending a certain scene would make for the movie, even if it would leave lots of unanswered questions, only to check the time and realize I was almost squarely halfway through the movie’s nearly 3 hour runtime. I then got even more excited, because that told me there was so much more in store for my viewing pleasure.

Cloud Atlas was a book written in 2004 by English author David Mitchell. Even Mitchell said the book was unfilmable. It’s a bit like a Russian doll, a bit like a mosaic. It contains six stories, each of which are experienced by their characters, and read or watched by characters in the other stories; through journals, love letters, movies, and more. How to even structure such a movie? The book doesn’t cross cut between the stories, instead splitting them up into two parts, one told in the first half of the book and the other in the second half. If you think of the stories as being numbers, the book is structured like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You couldn’t structure a movie like that. Even in three hours that would mean the audience is still meeting new characters an hour and a half into the thing. And you wouldn’t want to split them up into a 6 part miniseries, as that would lose the impact of the interconnectivity of the story, the layered themes and repeating metaphors. So what to do?

The movie was written and directed by The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, who rapidly intercut the stories throughout the movie, to the point that it seems they are always in motion of telling each of the six stories. It was a bold choice. It’s hard enough telling one story well, but to try and tell six stories essentially simultaneously seems inviting failure to me. Instead it’s brought off beautifully thanks I’m sure in part to editor Alexander Berner, but I give the most credit to the directors. I’ve not seen much from Tom Tykwer, despite him having made many acclaimed movies. I was not much a fan of The Wachowskis before this. I thought Bound was okay, but I was one of the seemingly few left unimpressed by The Matrix movies, then hated Speed Racer. But here, I am overwhelmed by the filmmaking guts to even try making this movie the way they did, on the budget they did (roughly $130-150 million, though if you’d told me the budget was $400 million I would believe it). This is filmmaking, both on a technical and storytelling level, of the absolute highest possible order.

I’ll attempt some plot description, to give myself a bit of structure here. The first of the stories (chronologically) concerns Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess), an American lawyer in 1849 whom we follow as he meets a Dr. Henry Goose (Tom Hanks) and sets sail on a business deal for his father-in-law (Hugo Weaving).

The next story is that of struggling young composer Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw), as he writes letters to his lover Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy) detailing his working relationship with aging former genius composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent).

The third of the stories concerns journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) as she works to uncover a scandal involving energy companies fighting for the future of energy in 1973 San Francisco. She’s aided by a much older Sixsmith, who works for the energy company, as well as by Isaac Sachs (Tom Hanks again), while being pursued by a hitman hired by the company (Hugo Weaving again).

The fourth is a modern day story, set in 2012 (when the movie came out) London. Book publisher Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent again) makes a lot of money off of a memoir by gangster Dermot Hoggins (Tom Hanks again), but doesn’t pay the Hoggins family their cut of the profits and instead tries to take a loan out from his brother Denholme (Hugh Grant), who tricks Cavendish into committing himself to a high security nursing home run by the evil Nurse Noakes (Hugo Weaving again), in retaliation for Cavendish’s affair with his wife Georgette (Ben Whishaw again).

The fifth story, probably my favorite, takes place in the year 2144 in Neo Seoul. Sonmi-451 (undoubtedly a reference to Fahrenheit 451, one of the great works of dystopian science fiction), played by the tremendously talented Korean actress Doona Bae, is a “fabricant”, a clone used for menial labor as a fast food server. Her friend Yoona-939 (Zhou Xun) disobeys orders one day and is murdered. Sonmi is then approached by Hae-Joo Chang (Jim Sturgess again), who tells her he thinks she can change the world and wants to help.

The final story is that of Zachry (Tom Hanks again), a poor superstitious tribesman living in a valley in the year 2321, “after the fall.” The valley is visited by Meronym (Halle Berry again), a woman who comes using advanced technology left over from before the “old uns” died off. Zachry must fight against a cannibalistic tribe (led by an unrecognizable Hugh Grant, again), as well as the devilish figure that keeps appearing to him that Zachry calls Old Georgie (Hugo Weaving again), who whispers all the dark thoughts into his ear that he may or may not act on.

So you can see that any one of those could’ve made for a fascinating movie on their own. But what ties the stories together are repeated themes of authoritarian power being exerted over people and the revolutionaries who fight back in various ways, slavery, oppression, double crosses, collective memory, dreams, longing for love and connection, the power of love to overcome almost anything, including time and space. And so much more. This is a movie rich with everything you could want in a work of art. I’ve seen it three or four times now and notice new things, feel new things, every time. There is a recurring birthmark on the main character of each story. What does it mean? I’ve always assumed that it marked the same soul, so that although nearly every actor shows up in every story, they’re not playing the same character, or even the same soul. But you could also take the view that it’s a simple visual way of tying things together a bit. If you’re a person who thinks the actors are playing the same characters throughout each story, then that would point to how if we are reincarnated that we may be a villain in this life, a senator another time, a slave in another, a hero in a different story. I think Cloud Atlas works in each of those readings.

The actors are universally phenomenal in their many roles. The makeup, hair, and costuming that helps them transform in each story is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Sometimes it’s obvious who’s under the makeup, and honestly even with that praise I gave, the makeup can be distracting sometimes but I still roll with it. The movie got into a bit of controversy when it came out, namely the use of “yellow face” to have white actor Jim Sturgess play the future Asian man Hae-Joo. I am sensitive to the plights of Asian representation on screen and the dangers of the historic use of yellow face, black face, brown face, and other ways any number of racial groups have been ridiculed, put down, and more. Here though, I think the criticism is completely off base. First of all, the makeup is not used to turn anyone into a hateful stereotype. Yes, Jim Sturgess as well as Hugo Weaving, James D’Arcy, and Keith David play Asian characters. But what about everyone else? Doona Bae plays her normal Asian self, as well as a Mexican woman in one story and a white woman in another. Halle Berry plays a slave, a white Jewish woman, her normal looking self, and a male Asian doctor in Neo Seoul. Ben Whishaw plays a woman in one story. Hugo Weaving plays a white man, a white woman, an Asian man, and a green skinned demon. Zhou Xun plays a fabricant Asian woman, as well as Tom Hanks’s sister in the far future. So many actors play across races and even genders, and with reason, I think. David Mitchell has said that the book is about reincarnation and the universality of human nature, with the title referencing a changing landscape (the clouds) over manifestations of fixed human nature (the atlas). It’s not just a weird fun thing to do to have these actors play all kinds of dress up, it’s for the thematic purpose of the movie. To show how connected we all are, no matter what we look like on the outside. I would hate for anyone to have been offended by this movie, but I feel their outrage might’ve been misguided here.

Another criticism I’ve seen of the movie, more like a ridiculing really, is the dialog in the far future story. It’s stylized pidgin English with a lot of slang. People will sometimes laugh at Hanks and Berry talking about “the true-true”, but I don’t see why. The dialog is stylized in each of the stories, even if it is the most noticeably different in that section. This is supposed to be “after the fall”, these people are not us, they weren’t raised in our society with our language. They would talk differently. It may be distracting, and I would even encourage people to put the subtitles on for the movie, as I found it helped me keep up with the conversations easier, but I don’t see it as laughable. It feels like the true-true to me.

Cloud Atlas was a polarizing movie for both critics and audiences. It didn’t even make back its budget at the box office (where conventional wisdom says you need to double your budget to cover marketing and other costs before you start making money). While it was loved by some critics like Ebert, who gave it 4/4 stars, others like Mark Kermode called it "an extremely honourable failure, but a failure", some were even harsher, as both The Village Voice and Time Magazine named it the worst movie of 2012. In my book Cloud Atlas is not just a great movie, but one of the greatest of all movies. I have previously placed it as my #28 movie, when I sat down to create a top 50 movies of all time list, but I think now that that is far too low. I don’t know where I would place it after staying up until 2 in the morning to watch it again last night, but I’d place it much higher. Other movies should aspire to this level of complexity, humor, acting, heart, and impeccable filmmaking craft. And although it is widely known for a variety of reasons, I felt like I needed to add Cloud Atlas here to my list of Hidden Gems, to maybe give it some more of the endless love it deserves.

Magnolia

Okay, I finally did it. I’ve been telling myself for a good 10-15 years that I was going to go back and do a proper write up on one of my least favorite movies ever made, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Over the years I have had people ask me what I hate about the movie so much and for 10-15 years I've said that I needed to rewatch the movie to give it a proper write up to explain my feelings. This is the movie that I get the most reaction from hating. I guess people can understand my hatred for Southland Tales or Pink Flamingos or Moulin Rouge, but they always express surprise that I hate Magnolia. “It’s a masterpiece!” they insist. Well it recently was made available for streaming on Netflix, so I told myself that now was the time. But I had to go into it while being in the headspace of giving it a fair shot, not going in looking for more things to hate about it. Last night was the night. Here are my thoughts on Magnolia, edited and occasionally expanded from the roughly 1500 words of notes I took while watching the movie, this is more of my watch-along comments than my more standard "review" format, so if you're unfamiliar with the movie, this is unlikely to make sense:

What’s with the opening freneticism? After the prologue about weird deaths (hey, it’s Patton Oswalt, yay!) the camera is zooming and panning and the editing is quick cutting like Michael Bay on a meth bender. PTA is doing a decent job of laying out that this is a big sprawling LA canvas, but unlike the way that (for example) the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer cross cut and layout so many stories at the beginning of Cloud Atlas, which has a control to it that makes me feel like I’m in good hands, this feels like Robert Altman directing the final coked out sequence of Goodfellas on fast forward.

John C. Reilly is really good. It has been so many years of Reilly as Dewey Cox or Cal Naughton that I forgot about the fact that Reilly can also hold the screen with a great mixture of drama and comedy. This early scene of him checking out the crazy lady's apartment and finding the body in the closet isn’t tense like it would be in most movies, but almost comedic, and Reilly carries it well. The scene would be a nice setup for a story about his character, but this storyline is pretty much dropped outside of a very quick scene later on. It’s obviously something Anderson cut down from an earlier version, but it’s cut down to feeling out of place at this point.

What’s with the rapping kid? That was worthless. And he later shows up to find Julianne Moore half dead in her car and raps again. This adds nothing. This is the kind of crap I’m sure PTA was referring to in an interview with Marc Maron when he said he’d “cut the shit” out of the movie if he made it today.

This storyline with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jason Robards is terrific. Both are wonderful and even though the writing is just okay, they have great chemistry and sell the shit out of it. It’s nice to see Hoffman downplay something too. He’s among my top 5 or so favorite actors ever, but this kind of subtle empathy was not always something he looked to play in a character.

Everyone is playing to the back row. Everyone is over-the-top. Everyone is ACTING. Hoffman is the only one that isn’t, and his performance has been the most intriguing to me so far because of it.

Terrific single take shot through the TV studio as Stanley is arriving.

Tom Cruise is killing it here. Unlike many in the movie, he has an actual character. The way he preaches this misogynistic bullshit, but when the female interviewer takes control, he dutifully obeys her. It’s all show. He is jittery and anxious in his energy and her stillness easily overpowers him. I could watch a whole movie about this character and watch his interactions with people versus his stage persona.

William H. Macy’s character is bizarre. He’s given all of this backstory, all of the character creation points are hit, and Macy is (like Julianne Moore) acting very hard, making sure everyone in the theater sees every little emotion. It’s honestly not very good acting, but I still blame the filmmaker and not the actor here. Macy is really trying, but this character doesn’t elevate to the point of feeling real. I don’t get Henry Gibsons character either. He speaks in riddles and annoys Macy’s character but to what end?

About 80 minutes in and the storytelling feels like Anderson’s ambition is bigger than his talent. He is not balancing these stories very well, I don’t think. The movie feels very choppy.

When we come back to the Cruise interview, it’s obvious that this is the best thing in the movie. Cruise becomes jittery again when she brings up his parents. He tells what feels like obvious lies about his mother and averts his eyes and tries to change the subject around his dad. This is truly top level acting by Cruise. The cat and mouse thing with the interviewer, who’s catching him in so many lies, it’s fascinating. It should’ve been its own movie. Seriously every time we cut back to Cruise is just makes the rest of the movie worse in comparison. THIS is the movie. This is the character that is more than just a sketch, this is the character who is deeper than what we see and hear, this is the character that could sustain its own movie. The rest of these people are nothing. Paper thin ghosts of smoke. I’m halfway through the movie and of all the pieces of it, this is the only one I’m intrigued by. I like Hoffman and what he’s doing, and his piece is deepened by Cruise, but Cruise is the show here.

Julianne Moore is giving a satire of a “hysterical woman falling apart” performance. This doesn’t even seem grounded in any reality. It’s…surreal. Immediately the scene after, Phil Hoffman says what’s happening is like a scene in a movie but maybe those scenes happen because they’re real. This is starting to feel like a parody.

The fucking insistent music in the background, it’s obnoxious and becomes like white noise eventually. It’s not there to serve any purpose, it almost feels like it’s there to cover for the thinness of the characters, but it doesn’t.

Julianne Moore’s performance is absolutely comical and she’s an actress I normally love. I recently rewatched Hot Rod, and much of Moore’s performance feels like the kind of thing Will Arnett is parodying in his “no babe, babe no, babe!” scene.

Reilly: what is the deal with his character? He seems to have things together when this all started, bit awkward and obviously lonely, but then all of the sudden he’s struck by a pretty girl and doesn’t notice that she’s sweating profusely? That she’s obviously on drugs? That the coffee she gave him is awful because it’s probably sat out for weeks? I don’t get it. It doesn’t ring true to me, even though Reilly is selling it. This is another instance where I give the actor a pass but not the writer.

What’s with Stanley wanting to stay in the game after he pees his pants but then refusing to play the game? Doesn’t make sense. And then giving some big speech about how oppressing being the smart kid is? The whole kid's thing doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work at all.

And now Reilly is getting shot at? And loses his gun? The movie is 190 minutes, but we don’t even see him lose his gun? We can’t have a 2 second little insert shot of Reilly losing the gun, it’s just all of the sudden he doesn’t have it? What is this? This doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make sense. It’s sloppy as hell.

Phil Hoffman was brilliant. While Julianne Moore is overacting all over the place, he’s centered and grounded and real. It’s terrific work from him. If it wasn’t for Cruise, I would say he’s the one doing anything to save this movie.

So, we have two stories of dying old men and their estranged kids. Do these stories inform each other? Do they contrast each other? Why do we have "two old men dying with estranged kids" stories here? Is either one saying something that the other couldn’t? I think if you’re going to have two storylines where characters are going through the same thing, there should be a reason. Contrast or parallel storytelling makes sense, but I can’t help but feel like one of these is superfluous thematically.

The “Wise Up” sequence can only be made by someone of immense talent and gigantic artistic balls. I admire the hell out of the gall to create this sequence. The earnestness of it, it’s a sight to behold. But it doesn’t work. It’s laughable and somehow feels sophomoric, despite knowing the risk it is to make it.

Reilly and Walters’s date, I find myself caring just from the inherent structure of it. It’s like how rom-coms just work without earning it. Even as I watch Walters hyperventilating and sweating and seemingly always on the verge of tears, I root for these two. Reilly and Walters are both terrific in the scene.

Every time it cuts away from Cruise, I hate the story it’s cutting to just a little bit more.

And now the fucking frogs. PTA has the nerve to zoom in to the words “but it did happen” as its fucking raining fucking frogs. Out loud, when that happened, I said “fuck you” to the movie.

“This is something that happens” uh no it’s fucking not. Yes, I know that technically similar things have happened, but I question anyone in this movie treating it as though it’s something that happens. None of the stories from the prologue would you look at while they’re happening and say “this is something that happens.” Fuck you with every fiber of my being. Only Hoffman’s character says incredulously “there’s frogs raining from the sky”. That’s close to a believable reaction.

And this all happens during a scene of Cruise’s character's culmination where he lets his vulnerability out, his anger, his rage, his grief of losing his father and mother at the same time but only being able to say goodbye to his mother, everything. It’s tremendous. And Robards has a moment of clarity and he and Cruise look into each other’s eyes, Robards tries to speak but nothing comes out and he dies. It’s an absolutely extraordinary moment in the middle of the “fuck you” of an ending. What a movie this would’ve been had it just been Cruise’s movie and the story of Hoffman trying to contact the dying man’s estranged son. But sadly, that’s not the movie we got.

And then there’s Robards’s dead dog? Did it die from the pills Hoffman dropped earlier? Did it get hit in the head by a goddamn frog? We don’t get to see. Again, there’s all this time wasted on shit that doesn’t matter like the rapping kid or the lady who killed the guy in the closet, but we can’t get a connecting couple of seconds to let us know why there’s a dog being taken out by hospice workers? Pretty sure hospice would tell you to fuck off and take care of your own dead dog anyway.

Stanley saying “You have to be nicer to me dad.” Fuck off kid. This isn’t even motivated, you all of the sudden standing up for yourself. So much of the denouement for these characters is just totally unearned and feels false.

Everyone acting like the frogs were a fucking answer. Fuck you. Fuck this movie. Nobody is saying “did motherfucking frogs just rain from the goddamn sky?” Everyone is just like “ya know, it makes you think and reflect on your life.” No one even addresses like “holy shit what is happening? Is this the fucking rapture or some shit?” And then Reilly’s gun falls out of the sky 20 feet in front of him? Fuck off movie. Fuck you. Get fucked.

So even going into this thing with an open mind, even with how much I loved Cruise and Hoffman and wish that that was its own movie, I hate this movie. I have never felt offended by a movie the way I did this one. I may hate other movies but only the condescension of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games has offended me, and that pales in comparison to what this movie does. I was physically shaking I was so angry at this movie. I will be sticking with my 1/10 rating, angry that Cruise and Hoffman were wasted, angry that PTA expected me to accept raining frogs as an answer to anything, but I’m not angry that I wasted 3+ hours of my time on this garbage because at least I came out of it with this write up. I apologize for the messiness, length, and disjointed nature of the write up, but it feels fitting for this movie.

The Irishman

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is a movie that I wasn’t looking forward to. Despite Scorsese being my favorite living filmmaker, and his previous movie (2016’s Silence) being one of his best, the lead up press going into the production of this movie did not get me excited. There was much made about who was going to be in it: Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci coming back to collaborate with Scorsese for the first time since 1995’s Casino, Harvey Keitel coming back to Scorsese for their sixth movie together and the first since Last Temptation of Christ in 1988, Al Pacino working with Scorsese for the first time, Scorsese’s Gangs of New York co-writer Steve Zaillian writing the script from the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. And a lot of talk of how this was Scorsese back with another mob movie, the genre he’s most associated with despite it only being about 5 out of 40 movies he’s made. It all had a feeling of “let’s get the band back together before we all die (De Niro is the youngest of the group, having just turned 76) despite us not being able to make great music anymore.” Scorsese has been doing great work his whole career but when was the last time De Niro was great? Jackie Brown, I guess? That was 1997. Pacino? He’s been all over the place the last couple decades and even when he’s been great the movies usually aren’t as good as him. And he’s been terrible in terrible movies as well. Pesci has been retired. I didn’t realize that Keitel wasn’t, I just haven’t seen him in a while. There were reports that the budget of the movie ballooned due to the de-aging technology Scorsese was employing to make the actors look younger (makeup wasn’t gonna cut it). The announced runtime was three and a half hours. The movie just had a cloud of “potential disaster” hanging over it to me. It was a weird feeling that everyone seemed to be excited about this project except for me, the big Scorsese fan. I just had a bad feeling about it.

I’m happy to say I was shown pretty quickly that I needn’t have worried. The 3.5 hours flies by in a really delightfully wonderful way. Scorsese, the one of the group with the best track record, was the one in charge here and he’s still at the top of his game even at the age of 77. The Irishman follows the career and life of Frank Sheeran (De Niro) as he gets involved with mobsters like Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and eventually with legendary Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). Sheeran becomes a confidant, driver, muscle, and hit man for both men. He also sometimes has to play peacemaker between the hot headed Hoffa, and the quieter, more controlled and diplomatic Russell. And although a lot happens plot wise, most of the movie hinges on those three actors acting those parts.

Pacino is right at home in the role of the loud mouthed Hoffa. Hoffa loved hamming it up and being the person everyone in the room had their eyes on. But even though Pacino has become known for his big outbursts and over the top performances, he’s always been more interesting in his quieter moments. He’s got both here. Hoffa lets down his guard around Frank, we see the firebrand out in public and the loving husband and father he was at home, and Pacino is infinitely watchable in all of his moments. It’s a terrific performance and definitely one of Pacino’s late career highlights.

Pesci was typically the one to take on the “wild card” role, whether it was Tommy in Goodfellas or Nicky in Casino, or even in non-Scorsese roles like My Cousin Vinny or Home Alone. He was the one with the twinkle in his eye that you didn’t know what he was gonna do and you couldn’t take your eyes off of him. Pesci’s role here is much more subdued but no less watchable. Pesci is magnetic and you can feel Russell’s power just from the looks he is giving and the carefully chosen words he says. It’s not the Pesci I expected to see and I’m very happy about that because he’s extraordinary here. His final scenes, where you can see the ravages of old age tearing down this powerful man, are heartbreaking and never because Pesci is pushing for that, he just embodies it and let’s us see. It’s my favorite of the performances in the movie.

De Niro shows that he simply hasn’t worked with the right people in the last 20+ years. He’s not had roles that were worthy of him and he’s seemed okay with that. Even with his collaborations with David O. Russell, I didn’t care for the performances that much. They weren’t bad, but De Niro’s Oscar nomination for Silver Linings Playbook felt more like a “congratulations on trying again, Bob” nod. But with Scorsese, working together for the ninth time, De Niro has a filmmaker who is not only worthy of him but pushes him into higher levels of genius. De Niro is one of the greatest actors we’ve ever been given, and although his work here isn’t up there with Godfather part 2, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, or maybe even Goodfellas, it’s still great work. It’s just at a “one of the best of the year” levels of performance instead of his past “one of the best of all time” level. De Niro makes us believe the journey, even when some of the CGI de-aging looks a little weird. His ability to play the ruthless mob killer as well as the conflicted protector of two guys with two different ideologies as well as the broken old man just wanting to apologize to his daughters for being a shitty dad is really astounding when you think about it. And Scorsese lets the camera linger a lot on De Niro’s face, which tells so much of Frank’s inner journey that goes unsaid with dialog. Scorsese trusts De Niro and trusts that the audience understands and cares about this guy.

The rest of the supporting cast is littered with terrific actors, characters, and performances as well. Ray Romano as Russell’s lawyer, Jesse Plemons as Hoffa’s son, Keitel as a mob boss (though he’s hardly in the movie, which surprised me given his history with Scorsese, he’s only got a couple of lines), Stephen Graham as a rival mob boss named Tony Pro, and others. My favorite of the bunch might’ve actually been Anna Paquin as Sheeran’s daughter who seems to always be watching him. Paquin has only maybe 3 lines of dialog in the movie, and is played by a different actress as a child, but that character is always looking at Frank, suspicious, almost like an angel watching as her dad digs his moral grave. She’s a felt presence more than a character who engages in the action.

But this begs a question that comes up in me from time to time: Why do we care about the things bad people do in movies? Scorsese has made a career of exploring the high and low in humanity, the desperate reach up towards God, the struggle of faith, the search for love and inner peace, and also made movies about the dark thoughts inside our minds, the self destructive behaviors we may or may not be aware of. Scorsese has also made, even as he and I both bristle at him being called a “mob movie director”, movies about terribly angry gangsters whose lives are filled with the constant threat of violence, almost as a specter always following them around waiting to explode at a moments notice. Scorsese, especially alongside his legendary collaborator in editor Thelma Schoonmaker, makes these violent excursions into propulsive entertainment in a really crowd pleasing way and I’m honestly not sure why we’re compelled by it. I am compelled, but I’m not sure why.

This is all pretty well trodden ground in movies, and by Scorsese in particular. What is here that wasn’t already in Casino or Goodfellas as far as theme, character, and even plot? Sure Scorsese hasn’t ever made a movie about Jimmy Hoffa, but the structure and the characters are all mob archetypes and Hoffa is no different.

What does this movie say? Scorsese got in a lot of hot water recently for disparaging Marvel and superhero movies as being closer to theme park rides and “not cinema.” There has been a whole debate about this issue, and I don’t care to rehash it here too much other than to say that Scorsese said those movies don’t really surprise us. They don’t have any revelations for us, or teach us anything, and are essentially remakes of each other. Obviously he’s wrong about all of that, superhero movies are no different than the mythological stories that have captivated humans as long as humans have told stories. But if you’re going to say that about other people’s movies, you’re going to bring that scrutiny down onto your own movie and so I’ve gotta ask what revelations The Irishman has for us. Does it teach us anything? Is it assembled from elements of stories we’ve seen over and over again? No matter that I love Scorsese as a filmmaker, I come down on the side that it doesn’t really have anything to say. It doesn’t teach us anything and is mostly recycled from pieces of other movies. It’s different that we see these guys as old men grappling with the decisions they’ve made in life, struggling against old age and the changing of generations, but even that isn’t surprising or revelatory exactly. However, it’s a testament to Scorsese that he can make the movie extremely enjoyable while not surprising us.

The Spectacular Now

The coming of age movie is a favorite genre of mine. I enjoy watching characters at pivotal times in their lives try to learn how to grow, watch how they change and hopefully develop into better people. Sometimes truly great examples of the genre come along, and some of them I’ve covered here in this space before, like Adventureland or Sing Street. Those movies are shining examples of coming of age movies, and I’m adding another to the list now, with James Ponsoldt’s great 2013 movie The Spectacular Now. It contains two of the best characters and performances I’ve seen recently, and is the type of movie I ache to watch again and again.

Sutter (Miles Teller) is the happy go lucky party boy of his high school, and we open as he informs us about his breakup with Cassidy (Brie Larson). They were always the life of the party, but they’re seniors now and she obviously doesn’t see any future with the party boy, leaving him for the star athlete and class president. Sutter is heartbroken and is one morning awakened by Aimee (Shailene Woodley), who has found Sutter passed out in someone’s front lawn after an all nighter of drinking and driving. Aimee is out early delivering newspapers, and she and Sutter have an instant report with one another. They go to the same school but don’t run in the same circles. She’s a smart, bookish kid, beautiful in a more plain, real world way than the more glamorous Cassidy, but Aimee doesn’t know she’s beautiful and she’s too quiet to be noticed too much. Sutter uses his outgoing charm to shield himself from the pain he feels at his dad having left the family, which he also masks with over indulging in alcohol. Aimee helps tutor Sutter in geometry, and the sparks start to fly immediately. Aimee is not his usual type, and he likes that. Sutter tells his best friend Ricky (Masam Holden) that he’s just trying to help this girl, but Ricky is afraid both that Sutter will hurt this nice girl, and also that he’ll get hurt by her leaving him when she realizes she’s too good for him.

I’m a sucker for a good romance, and the chemistry that Teller and Woodley have with one another is really terrific. And each really elevates their characters in different ways. Teller plays Sutter as the type of guy who is so aggressively charming it’s obvious he’s hiding loneliness beneath it. Obvious to everyone but himself. But he is also so genuinely charming that people go with it. Woodley plays Aimee as a girl not yet comfortable in her body. There’s an extraordinarily beautiful piece of acting during their sex scene, as each nervously disrobes in front of the other. Woodley subtly leaves her arms covering her torso, so as to hide from the attention she’s not used to receiving. And Teller lovingly grabs her hands and pulls them away, letting her know she’s safe and loved. It’s a gorgeous scene, perfect in every way, but the actors are what truly make it shine.

We’re not really sure where director James Ponsoldt and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber are going to take us with the plot, whether it will be the standard “they get together, love each other, break up because of bullshit, and get together again as the music swells and we cut to the credits” take or not. While the movie does trod some familiar ground, it always does so with characters front and center, so that it feels like things happening to these people we care about and not just machinations of the plot.

But going back to Teller and Woodley for a moment, they are real people here. They create characters that live in our minds for much longer than just the length of the runtime (a brisk 95 minutes, by the way). Teller has a scene where Sutter goes to meet his father Tommy (Kyle Chandler) for the first time since he was a little kid, and as Sutter starts to see that his dad is a hard drinking loser of a guy you can see in Teller’s face the little kid just wanting to look up to his dad as a hero and instead being let down by the damaged man-child in front of him. You can also see that Sutter sees all the ways he’s similar to his dad and hates himself for it.

Woodley, through all of this, is there with support and an open heart and warm smile. She is so good for Sutter, if he would let her help him grow. But she’s not pushy. She truly does love him for who he is, not just who he could be. But she loves him while he doesn’t love himself. It’s not a healthy dynamic and one or both of them will eventually pay for it unless things change. But Tommy isn’t all that Sutter has, he has multiple great male role models in his life, like his geometry teacher Mr. Aster (Andre Royo, so good in his few scenes that you want more) and his boss Dan (the great Bob Odenkirk, also so good in a tiny amount of screen time), both of whom would’ve been terrific role models if they’d come along earlier. But Sutter is too set in his hard drinking fuck up ways to let anyone change him. But maybe Aimee could be the one. She’s not going to beg him, she’s going to let him be himself and she’ll be there by his side no matter what. She’s so much more complex and interesting than the type of manic pixie dream girl that too many romantic movies have. Aimee is a fully realized person. Even in that scene in the bar with Sutter’s dad, look at the loving way she touches Sutter’s neck and back, never insisting on her own presence or trying to make him feel or say anything, just always being there for support.

We expect them to break up, but again how it happens is organic because of the characters. We know why Sutter is insulting Aimee, in that moment he hates her for loving him when he doesn’t understand why or how, but we wish he would stop. Maybe he’s bad for her, she didn’t drink before he came along and now she’s got her own monogrammed flask like he does, but what about if she’s good for him? Sutter hasn’t quite figured that out yet. This movie is so affecting because we watch these real people going through these things. It’s easy to fall back into cliché and the usual tropes in this genre, and this movie certainly does it, but in mechanics only. Just watch these actors giving brilliant performances (I didn’t even get to Jennifer Jason Leigh perfectly playing Sutter’s mom, deeply loving but overwhelmed and overworked) and taking us through these characters lives in as beautiful a way as the coming of age genre has ever had. Catch up to this Hidden Gem if you haven’t already.

Cinema Spotlight: Michael Keaton in "Multiplicity"

Michael Keaton has been having a bit of a renaissance the last few years, with acclaimed work in Birdman, Spotlight, and Spiderman: Homecoming, but he has always been one of our best actors. Never is that more obvious than in his multiple performances in the Harold Ramis comedy Multiplicity. In it, Keaton stars as Doug, an overworked construction foreman who just wants to spend more time with his wife and kids. One day he's working on a laboratory remodel project and the lead scientist pulls him aside to say that he could clone Doug, that clone could take over the work stuff and leave Doug with more time to his family. Of course, Doug obliges and the results come out wonderfully.

Later, Doug finds himself overrun with things to do at home, having no time for himself, and clones himself again so that that Doug (#3) can take care of the home stuff and Doug #1 can have some time to himself for once. It isn't long before the clones decide they want some freedom of their own, and while Doug is away they clone #2, to make Doug #4. The three clones live in the abandoned apartment above Doug's garage and naturally hijinks ensue. Keaton gradually increases the amount of over-the-top he's willing to go to for each character, 2 more than 1, 3 more than 2, and finally the wonderful buffoonery of #4, which is the best thing in the movie. I still sometimes think "I like pizza, I LIKE it!" or "She touched my peppy, Steve." even though it had been many years since I'd seen the movie until recently.

Keaton is brilliant in different ways with each Doug. #1 is just a great smart everyman, something that Keaton is usually too manic to play, but holds the center of this movie so well with this performance. #2 accentuates Doug's masculine side, and so takes to the construction work easily and happily. However, he also becomes lonely, which isn't quite solved by #3 who is an exaggeration of Doug's feminine side, happy to do crafty projects around the house, as well as cooking and cleaning. #4, the most fun of the bunch, is described as like how if you make a copy of a copy of a piece of paper, it isn't quite right. #4 refers to Doug as Steve, and has to have his razors taken away for fear of accidentally hurting himself ("yeah, me and 2 just shave him while he sleeps" 3 says).

The movie isn't as good as Keaton is, the pace is too slow, the hijinks maybe not wacky enough, it doesn't capture the philosophical weight of the situation that it could comment on. The special effects multiplying Keaton are generally very obvious, and honestly the movie is just too long and doesn't seem to have enough on its mind for it to keep our interest. It's no Groundhog Day, I should say, Ramis's high point as a filmmaker, that's for sure. But it's really a great bunch of work from Keaton. It's up there with Beetlejuice as his best work as an actor.

Quick thoughts on Men in Black: International

 
It was good. Not great, not very good, just good. Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, reteaming after Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame, are terrific together, even if the script and direction kind of waste their chemistry (not many two shots just letting them act together and off of each other, the script is very generic and not something worthy of these two together). Hemsworth is breezy, charming, and fun. Thompson believable and winning as the more straight (wo)man kind of role, while not being a stick in the mud or just plugging her into a Tommy Lee Jones kind of role. Good supporting cast, especially Kumail Nanjiani is fun (always been a big fan), Rafe Spall, Liam Neeson, Rebecca Ferguson, and I always want more Emma Thompson. There's not enough Emma Thompson in the world.

It misses previous series director Barry Sonnenfeld much more than it misses previous stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, surprisingly. I think some directorial flair would've livened the thing up a lot. Thompson, Hemsworth, and Nanjiani are all doing as much as can be done. The humor? There’s some decent humor, and good fun chemistry between the leads that the movie doesn’t take advantage of. I don’t really remember anything that falls flat, humor wise, but nothing that really makes you belly laugh either.

So, great actors doing good work, but generic script and direction. It also just doesn't have the goofy fun of the other movies, especially the first one. It has action and aliens and whatnot, but not given that little tweak that has made the series fun in the past. It also doesn't have the heart that the third movie had. But still, overall I enjoyed myself enough. It's a big Hollywood blockbuster action movie with everything you expect from that. I hope they make another one, because Hemsworth and Thompson deserve a movie worthy of them in this franchise.

It’s more like a pleasant time at the movies. If you just go in expecting to be entertained you’ll be okay, but if you expect something great you’ll be let down.

A Little Princess

You might’ve heard Alfonso Cuaron’s name a lot this year, as he won an obscene amount of awards, including his second Best Director Oscar, for his autobiographical Netflix film Roma. But he’s been famous in movie lovers hearts for many years, with 2013’s Gravity (when he became the first Mexican to win a Best Director Oscar), before that his 2006 sci-fi masterpiece Children of Men (my vote as the best movie of the 2000’s), his entry into the Harry Potter canon with Prisoner of Azkaban (often pointed to as the pinnacle of the series), and his multi-Oscar nominated 2001 sex-comedy/road trip-drama Y tu Mama Tambien. But before all of those, in his English language debut in 1995, Cuaron gifted us with one of the great family movies of all time, his adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess.

10 year old Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews) lives happily in India with her father, a wealthy British aristocrat (Liam Cunningham, almost unrecognizable so many years before he became Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones). She loves telling stories to her friends based on Hindu mythology, playing and carefree and happy. But Sara’s exciting life is upended by the outbreak of World War I, and her father volunteering to serve in the military. Before he leaves, Captain Crewe sets Sara up in a girl’s boarding school in New York City. It quickly becomes obvious how much money the Crewe’s have when Sara is put in the schools largest room and given all the accommodations she needs. This wealth ingratiates Sara immediately to the school’s severe headmistress, Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron). Ms. Minchin doesn’t like Sara, who even at 10 years old corrects Minchin’s lazy French and is lauded by the schools French teacher as a natural. But Sara comes with a lot of money, and Minchin likes money, so she mostly swallows her dislike of Sara.

Sara is an instant hit with the other girls in the school, with her exotic stories, imagination, advanced education, and relentless kindness. All of the girls, save for the school bully Lavinia (Taylor Fry), look to Sarah immediately as a leader. The girls even learn to start treating the school’s scullery maid Becky (Vanessa Lee Chester) differently. Becky is not only a maid, she’s also an orphan who lives in the building’s attic when she’s not cleaning, and she’s black. The girls don’t know what that means or why it means something, but it does mean something, right Sara? Sara doesn’t treat Becky any differently, and the other girls then follow suit. This makes the turn of the plot both more interesting, and more powerful, as Sara’s kindness is put to the test when her father is reported killed in action, and all of his financial assets frozen until a will can be sorted out. In Miss Minchin’s infinite kindness, she doesn’t kick Sara out of the house, but instead moves her upstairs with Becky into the rat infested attic where she’ll work as a maid as well.

A Little Princess is ultimately a movie about the power of empathy and kindness. Sara doesn’t let herself be dragged down when she loses everything. Her perspective changes, and she sees how life can be difficult for those without money, but she doesn’t lose her innate decency as a person. In fact, the girls still in school rally to her side whenever possible, as they begin all manner of shenanigans against the tyrannical Ms. Minchin, emboldened by Sara’s influence upon them. Even the neighbors, chimney sweepers, and others in the neighborhood take notice of this charismatic girl and her winning smile that can't be taken away. It’s not always so easy to smile and be happy when you’ve got nothing, but Sara keeps her head up and her heart open. It’s such a great moral lesson as a family movie, the powerful simplicity of inner strength.

The movie is absolutely beautiful to look at, as shot by legendary cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who has shot all of Cuaron’s movies save for Harry Potter and Roma (which Cuarón shot himself, and won an Oscar for). It was Lubezki’s first Oscar nomination and it was well deserved. The production design (by the great Bo Welch, most famous for his work with Tim Burton) deserves attention as well, with the school/house acting almost as a character unto itself. The movie has a feeling of magical realism in the way Lubezki shoots it and Welch designed it, almost storybook like. We sometimes feel like maybe we’re inside of the fantastical stories that Sara loves to tell. This combined with Cuaron’s storytelling genius really makes for a truly magical experience. The movie feels like reading a book in childhood, a fairy tale set in early 20th century New York City, or remembering your favorite stories from your youth.

The movie isn’t perfect, as some of the acting from the young girls is as stilted as you expect even from the best child actors, but it always still works. This is a fantasy and we don’t require intense realism in order for the movie to succeed. Many of the supporting performances are just this side of caricature, but again it works, mainly because Cuaron finds the right tone in which to encase their arch-ness and still be effective to the story. Eleanor Bron, most widely known as the female lead in The Beatles’ movie Help!, is the best of the bunch as the heartless Miss Minchin. She’s cold and callous and hates Sara immediately, though we see in her eyes that she loves the money young Sara brings in. The turn in her eyes when she gets to treat the now penniless Sara like garbage is really chilling sometimes. But young Liesel Matthews, as Sara, really carries the movie well. Her 1,000 watt smile, piercing eyes, and compassion overcome any drawbacks the acting might present.

It might sound like a bit of a downer if you just read the plot description, but really it’s a childhood fantasy adventure story, and those rarely come and go without a happy ending. A Little Princess is a movie that respects its audience, doesn’t talk down to it, and doesn’t feel the need to pack a bunch of action in to try and keep your attention. Cuaron knows that we are empathetic creatures, and we innately want young Sara to succeed. “Beating the bad guys” just looks different in some stories than in others. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s other most famous story, The Secret Garden, was also made into a terrific family movie two years prior to this movie that would make for an amazing double feature if you wanted a terrific Hidden Gem night home with the family.

First Reformed

First Reformed nabbed Paul Schrader his first Academy Award nomination this year, for Best Original Screenplay. It was joyous and long overdue recognition for us film fans, and astounding to think that his scripts for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Affliction, and Bringing Out the Dead weren’t deemed worthy by the Academy. Now all of those but Affliction were from his long and fruitful relationship with Martin Scorsese, but Schrader is and has been an accomplished director in his own right as well. First Reformed deserves mention alongside his very best work as a director.

Schrader doesn’t make easy to digest movies. He makes movies that challenge and confront us. His movies have deep themes running through them, often tying in some way back to his strict religious upbringing and his struggle with spirituality once he reached adulthood. He’s also had a career long obsession with, uh, well, obsession. His newest main character, the Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) has lost his way. Not obsessed in the beginning of the film, but those that have lost their way often find it again once they find something to be passionate about. A former military chaplain, Toller convinced his son to sign up for the military as well, and within 6 months his son was dead in Iraq. He and his wife both blamed him for what happened, and divorced. He now spends his nights alone, drinking various liquors while he ignores the pain in his stomach and the fact that he’s peeing blood. During the day he gives tours of his upstate New York church, whose 250th anniversary is coming up soon. On Sundays he delivers his sermons to literally a handful of people.

Among those in the crowd are the pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) and her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). Mary one day asks Rev. Toller if he will counsel Michael, an environmental activist who wants Mary to abort their baby because he morally opposes bringing life into this world ravaged by chemical dumping and climate change. Michael arouses in Toller the kind of spiritual purpose he had previously lost. Toller becomes obsessed with the Christian notion of stewardship, the belief that God gave us dominion over the world and made it our responsibility to take care of it, something that we are desperately failing at and for which we will surely be punished by Him.

Toller has to also contend with the local megachurch, which subsidizes his own church. The megachurch is run by Rev. Joel Jeffers (Cedric Kyles, aka Cedric the Entertainer), whom Toller goes to see frequently and who acts as a sounding board for Toller, but who isn’t with him on his newfound passion. Jeffers would rather placate the big donors like local chemical company CEO’s, or the mayor/governor, or whomever. Schrader does something interesting here showing two good men both acting on their faith, but one being more flexible to the times, and the other acting on his newfound fundamentalism. Neither is shown to be right or wrong. I mean, we obviously don’t care for Jeffers and are on Toller’s side, but not in a good/bad way, Jeffers is a good man, it’s just that this is Toller’s story.
 
We go through much of the action while hearing Toller’s narration from a journal he’s decided to keep. Schrader uses the conceit of the journal just like he did in Taxi Driver, letting us in to the inner monologue of our protagonist, adding weight and interest to scenes that may not have had it otherwise. We know the Reverend’s thoughts and feelings, so we know and care why he’s acting the way he is. It’s a brilliant use of narration, something too many writers use as a crutch to cover up for bad storytelling but Schrader uses to deepen his characters.
 
Visually Schrader has said he drew much inspiration from formalists like Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Robert Bresson. This ties back to a book Schrader wrote when he was still a film critic, 1972’s Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, which was reissued around the release of First Reformed. Schrader has said those filmmaker’s sparse, contemplative visuals and storytelling were revelations to him. He’s said that those masters influenced him because “I sensed a bridge between the spirituality I was raised with and the ‘profane’ cinema I loved. And it was a bridge of STYLE not content. Church people had been using movies since they first moved to illustrate religious beliefs, but this was something different. The convergence of spirituality and cinema would occur in style not content. In the How, not the What.”
 
Schrader tries his best to reach moments of transcendence and while it won’t work for everyone, it did for me. I’ll admit that it took me a second viewing because the ending of the movie is unexpected, beautiful, and not immediately satisfying. Why does Toller do the things he does? Does he even do them? Is Toller alive at the end of the movie? The movie ends on a couple of notes of wordless transcendence and sometimes you have to be in the right head space for such an unconventionally bold choice from a filmmaker.

Paul Schrader has always been an interesting filmmaker. His terrific gritty first film, Blue Collar, had great central work from stars Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor in a story of a group of blue collar workers planning to rob their employer. He followed it up with Hardcore, about George C. Scott playing detective and looking for the daughter who went missing, only to turn up in a porno. Then there was American Gigolo, with Richard Gere’s star making turn. Then he made his masterpiece, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. One of the most gorgeous movies ever made and a bold narrative that mixes biography of Japanese author Yukio Mishima with adaptation of some of his writing to further highlight aspects of his personality. Mishima is still Schrader’s magnum opus if you ask me, but First Reformed deserves mention alongside it. From the controlled visuals to the best work of Ethan Hawke’s great career, this Hidden Gem deserves to be revisited and studied just like the films of the masters Schrader feels himself indebted to.