Re-View: Capote (2005)

Twenty years ago, in my one-paragraph review of “Capote”, I summarized the conflict of this story in this one sentence: “[Capote] needs two men to die, so he can finish a book about their death.”

Looking back, I think my summary of the movie is also a window into the dubious nature of Truman Capote’s mission in writing his non-fiction bestseller “In Cold Blood.” After all, the movie is about Capote’s struggle in writing and finishing a book. The book itself is about two men who committed an awful quadruple murder and were tried and executed for it. Neither the book nor this movie is about the family that was murdered or the community they were a part of, the town of Holcomb, Kansas. And that reality, I now have realized after twenty years, is an awful thing. The family and community experienced a horrible crime and this dilettante from New York breezed into town to write a scandalous book about it as if the topic was fit for his urbane cocktail parties. I read that book and was struck how after the first few chapters that led up to the murder, the vast majority of it was about the criminals, and in particular Perry Smith, a man that seems to have captivated Capote (played here by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) for various reasons.

Capote’s first remarks to the lead detective Alvin Dewey (played here by Chris Cooper) include the unnecessary revelation that he doesn’t care if the perpetrators are ever caught. Alvin Dewey makes a point to inform Truman that he along with the general community care quite a lot about whether the perpetrators are caught. Truman has a generally hard time with getting people in the neighborhood to talk to him. He needs to use his research assistant Harper Lee (played by Catherine Keener and soon to be of To Kill a Mockingbird fame) to break the ice with people. It isn’t just that Truman has the affectation of a carefree homosexual that puts people off. In general, he doesn’t seem to understand that people may not be as interested in him as he is in himself. There is a good quote that is in every trailer to this movie in which Truman says “Ever since I was a child, folks have had me pegged because of how the way I talk, and they are always wrong.” Put in context of the scene in which is uttered though, this is a faux pas because he happens to be talking to the friend of the murdered teenage girl when he says it and the subject of the conversation was the murdered teenage girl. It simply was not the time to start talking about himself. The friend and Harper Lee look uncomfortable but politely refrain from commenting on his behavior.

There is a lot of disturbing subtext in this movie that I did not quite catch the first time around. There is far more nuance in the performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman then I remember. It really is a great performance. First, it is so against type for Phillip Seymour Hoffman who had made his name before and after playing either far looser or far more authoritative characters. If this was the only movie you had seen of this actor, you would have a dramatically wrong idea of his normal range. Second, the way he plays Truman fits into the ambiguous way the movie itself shows his actions. The movie is directed by Bennett Miller who appears to take stances on Capote’s behavior in dribs and drabs, never really playing his hand as to whether he is sympathetic to him or not. It isn’t all that clear whether or not Capote should be helping the criminals. Or whether or not he is helping the criminals sincerely or to just help the dramatic unfolding of his book. Did he fall in love with Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), or simply identify with him as someone from a similar background, or is he simply using him. He is never directly confronted about his motivations. Ultimately, the men are scheduled for execution and the end (their lives, his book) is finally in sight. There is this extraordinary scene where Truman Capote visits the men immediately before they are hanged and experiences a very tightly wound emotional breakdown. The situation at that point is so complicated that it is impossible to unwind all of the contradictory elements of it. And yet it is emotionally real. All explanations can be found in the choices of the actor. Phillip Seymour Hoffman would go on to win the Oscar for this movie, and as I recall, it wasn’t really a contest. This is arguably the best performance of Hoffman who was arguably the best actor of his time (say 1995-2015). I still miss him.

The Director Bennett Miller is himself a bit of a cypher. Capote was his first feature film and he would go on to direct two others, 2011’s Moneyball and 2014’s Foxcatcher. Then apparently he decided he didn’t want to make movies anymore. It is rare that a person makes three feature films, all of which garner multiple Oscar nominations, and then doesn’t work again. His style doesn’t draw attention to the man behind the camera, instead it focuses on the acting which is allowed to breathe and develop. His movies are notable in that they feature some of the best acting in the careers of the actors in them, Hoffman in Capote, Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt in Moneyball, and Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in Foxcatcher.

When I first saw this movie in 2005, I didn’t quite get the scene near the mid-part of the movie where Alvin Dewey sits across from Truman and takes an understated midwestern umbrage to Truman’s efforts to help the criminals appeal their sentence on the grounds of inadequate counsel. If these men are freed because of his meddling, the Dewey informs Capote, “I’m going to go to Brooklyn and hunt you down.” I think I get it now. 

The utility of the death penalty does not lie in deterrence. Counterintuitively, people do not fear death. Instead they fear suffering. (This is what was learned by the many policy attempts to stop people from smoking. By far, it was more effective to show an alive person dealing with a hole in their throat than showing statistics about deaths from lung cancer.) And suffering, at least the cruel and unusual kind, is unconstitutional. No, the utility of the death penalty lies in its finality. It allows the community to move on and assuages the very natural impulse of human beings towards retribution and revenge. The state takes on that responsibility so the individual does not have to. Here we see Truman Capote suffer because it takes years for the two men's appeals to be exhausted before their execution. Imagine for a moment, how that same stay of execution affected the people who knew the murdered family and mourned their deaths. For that reason, it should remain, but used sparingly only for the commission of shocking crimes and only if there is no doubt at all as to guilt of the perpetrators.

Unfortunately this is not how the death penalty is used. Instead, it is used as leverage for negotiation (i.e. a criminal will escape the penalty if they plead guilty) making its general application only in those cases where the facts are hotly contested (i.e. the suspects plead innocent) and which require a trial. I say, if you need a trial to figure out what happened and who was responsible, then you shouldn’t apply the death penalty regardless of the outcome. And if there is no doubt that these two particular men decided to break into a house and murder a family of four for no particular reason, then they shouldn’t be allowed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Any argument that we shouldn’t have a death penalty because we are too civilized for it seems to me to be an argument from vanity which doesn’t take into account the details of the crime in question nor its effects on the larger community. But I digress. This movie isn’t about the victims.

Here is link to my original review:

https://maxsminimoviemagazine.blogspot.com/2010/10/capote-112005.html

The Incredibles 2 (5/5 Stars)

 A benefit of animation is the ability to stop time. Bart Simpson has been the same age since 1989. Here, the time between original movie and sequel was a full fourteen years. However, thanks to the wonders of technology, The Incredibles 2 starts immediately after the first film ended. Now, you will know exactly what happened when the villain Underminer (looks like a mole) burrowed beneath the city with a big drill to rob several banks. The human actors certainly look older but all they lend here are their voices and those are the same. Actually, there was a casualty. The young boy who voiced Dash in the earlier movie had to be be replaced by a different young boy. Still everyone else is back. Craig T. Nelson voices Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible, Holly Hunter voices Helen Parr/Elastigirl, Samuel L. Jackson voices Lucius Best/Frozone, Sarah Vowell voices Violet Parr (the author Sarah Vowell did not turn the ingenious bit of casting that landed her this part, and her first role in a movie, fourteen years ago into a voice career, The Incredibles 2 is her second role), and the Director Brad Bird again voices Edna Mode that tribute to old Hollywood costume design.

The Incredibles 2 is above all an action film. The superheroes fight villains and do so at regular intervals. At the beginning of the movie, they fight the Underminer together. The collateral damage from this fight has superheroes banned again (the bank after all was insured, so if the Incredibles had done nothing, things would have turned out better). As the government program is terminated, a billionaire philanthropist steps into the void. This man is voiced by the incorrigible excitement of Bob Odenkirk, perfect. The billionaire believes that superheroes have an image problem. He proposes that they wear cameras on their clothes and present their best sides first. By that he means, only Elastigirl and not Mr. Incredible because she wrecks less things while saving them. Mr. Incredible comically fights to hold onto his dignity and Elastigirl goes on to save runaway trains and fight villains every twenty minutes or so in spectacular display.

Meanwhile, Mr. Incredible is relegated to taking care of his family. Never has such a task been presented in such a heroic light. Those who are old enough will remember when American education “changed math” much to the chagrin of old men trying to help their sons with their homework. And can you really help a teenage girl deal with anything? The most pressing problem however is the toddler Jack Jack who is budding with new random and frightening superpowers. The movie’s best moment has to be when Jack Jack fights a raccoon, who starts the fight with way too much confidence and is continually surprised by the toddler’s more and more dangerous capabilities. Jack Jack is taken at one point to Edna Mode who goes crazy with the creative possibilities of a super-suit for such a superbaby.

The Incredibles franchise is notable in its slightly conservative tone. The first movie took swipes at bureaucracy and personal injury attorneys. The Incredibles 2 continues on this thread. This can be seen first in the billionaire’s modern liberal idea to present superheroes in a more favorable light by not highlighting the white man (I say that this discrimination is from a conservative point of view because it presupposes that the movie’s world would find a woman to be more acceptable than the white man. We all tend to see ourselves as the victim). That poor white man, it really hurts to not be wanted. At another point, the villain of the story, the Screenslaver, presents a very compelling reason for why it wants superheroes to remain illegal. Screenslaver posits that when there are superheroes around, normal people become complacent about their place and situation. Why should they try to better themselves or fight back when they can just call on superheroes to save the day? Superheroes, this villain reasons, make people weak. This is essentially an argument against patriarchal, i.e. big, government. The movie is not completely about this point. It is very funny and action-packed, but it is notable that a kid’s movie would so articulately make this point (even if, you know, the villain is ultimately vanquished). Pixar is a company that contains a multitude of voices.

Pixar has unfortunately gotten so successful they feel compelled to make sequels for their best films, i.e. most of them. If they were a less successful company, this movie may have been made ten years ago. (Instead it had to first wait for sequels of Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, and Cars (twice) to be made). The Incredibles 2 is notable in that it is better than the first one. It is as funny and action-packed (perhaps more so) but also has a better villain and a better point to it. After fourteen years, and a stupid amount of other super-hero movies produced in the meantime by other studios, this sequel had much more to say about the genre than it had before. Give Pixar another Oscar. I most likely won’t see a better animated movie this year.

p.s. Samuel L. Jackson currently has the record for most box office receipts for movies he has acted in, $5.589 billion dollars to be exact as of now. He just reswiped this record from Harrison Ford, $4.963 billion dollars. How did he do it? Well, apart from being a reliable work-a-holic, he is also a big team player. He added substantially to his record this year with supporting roles, first in Avengers: Infinity War and now as Frozone in Incredibles 2.

Get Out (3/5 Stars)

Perhaps you have heard this horror plot-line before: A group of white settlers/tourists/explorers head into the desert/woods/jungle where they meet indigenous rednecks/savages/headhunters that proceed to torture and kill them. It’s a staid subgenre of horror that has rightly been deemed racist because the indigenous people are represented as one dimensional villains. As far as I know, this sub-genre has always steadily produced movies, but those movies have never been mainstream, at least not in the last fifty years when it is fair to say that mainstream movies started going out of their way to not be racist.

“Get Out” is an installment to this subgenre, the twist being that it is about a black man who travels into the suburbs where he encounters a nefarious group of white liberal elitists. Also unlike the rest of the subgenre this movie is mainstream, written and directed by Jordan Peele, and hitting No. 1 at the box office. That essentially makes it is the most blatantly racist mainstream movie I have ever seen in a movie theater.

Obviously as a person who has seen many old movies, I have seen more racist movies than “Get Out.” The most obvious is “The Birth of a Nation.” That movie is enlightening in the sense that it gets one into the mind of a true racist, D.W. Griffith. You can’t learn anything about black people in that movie. You can however learn quite a bit about the insecurities and fears underpinning the racist ideology of the white people. The same can be said inversely about “Get Out.” You won’t be able to learn anything about white people from this movie. The characterizations are absurd and contradict themselves. You can however get a really good glimpse into the insecurities and fears of writer/director Jordan Peele, and maybe judging by the popularity of the movie (“The Birth of a Nation” too was very popular) the insecurities and fears of the modern black person. Like the insecurities and fears of D.W. Griffith, its a rather pathetic portrait and like “Birth of a Nation”, “Get Out” should go down in history as a pitiful document of its times.

Spoilers abound here: The movie concerns Chris Washington (played by Daniel Kaluuya) who is traveling to the countryside with his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (played by Allison Williams) to meet her parents for the first time. Unbeknownst to Chris, Rose has dated black men before, about ten of them in fact. She chooses them for their physical prowess, seduces them, and takes them into her family’s mansion in the woods where her family brainwashes them and sells them as slaves to the highest bidder. This bidder, a frail physically inept white person, through elaborate brain surgery, comes to inhabit the body of the physically adept black man. The black man stays in the neighborhood but his “blackness” has essentially been removed. He wears slacks and fedoras and speaks in a calm eerily comfortable tone with no slang at all, just like a white person. (This particular character, a disappeared black man from Brooklyn who has been ‘turned white’ by the evil suburb may stand in for such disappeared black men like Ben Carson. I suspect black people may feel that such people are brainwashed tools that aren’t really black anymore.)

There is a lot of psychology to unpack here already but what is most striking about this movie is its caricature of the nefarious white people. They are actually really nice. They vote Obama and go out of their way to be polite to Chris. They are obviously meant to be stand-ins for the polite white people of the real world who are aware of racism and make an effort to be tolerant. We already knew that angry violent racists are bad people, but this movie goes further: All white people are bad and have conspiratorial motives against black people no matter how nice they seem on the surface. I expect Jordan Peele, a mixed-race college graduate with a successful television and movie career, has met a lot of nice white people in his life. Like a total asshole, he is essentially stating here that he does not trust them and holds them in contempt.

It really saddens me when people make the argument that this movie is important because it shows how black people feel. Feeling something does not make it right. Tribalism is a natural thing and may feel correct, but that does not mean that racism is justified. This movie does not make the argument that “racism is bad,” it makes the argument that “white people are bad.” There is a distinction here that is sadly lost on many people who ascribe to the identity politics of our day. In their view, black people can’t be racist because one needs to have a position of power in order to effectuate racism, and black people do not have power. (Obviously, I hold a different view as to what racism entails and whether black people have enough power to be responsible for their actions.) Through that view, this movie can be justified as some little ‘payback’ for all the racism in the past. Enjoy yourself in your revenge, Jordan Peele, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this sort of shit helps solve the problem.  

Captain Phillips (4/5 Stars)

David v. Goliath except Goliath is the good guy and wins.

“Captain Phillips” the new movie by Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) starts with a conversation between Captain Phillips, played by Tom Hanks, and his wife, played briefly by Catherine Keener, in the car on the way to the airport. They are long married couple with adult children and they have a solemn conversation about how the world is changing fast and how life is not the same for their kids like it was for them. “A man could keep his head down and do his job and he would become a captain in ten years when I started,” says Phillips, “but not anymore.” Life is more complicated and these parents worry about their kids.

In true Greengrass style, this understated conversation that could realistically happen between any married couple with kids foreshadows the incredibly empathetic treatment of the pirating of the Maersk Alabama in 2009 by four Somali pirates. It is a terrifying ordeal for the unarmed American crew that was hijacked by the assault rifle wielding pirates and Greengrass shows in his strict procedural style what was truly suspenseful and dangerous about it. At the same time though, Greengrass does not ignore that the huge container ship was taken over by kids (all the pirates were between 16-18) way way over their heads. The battle of wits between the pirates and Captain Phillips is interlaced at times with a truly paternalistic feel. The kids have picked a fight with Goliath, are supremely unmatched in the long run, and will probably not make it out of the situation alive. Captain Phillips in-between moments of tricking the uncoordinated and untrained pirates with his much larger experience and far better training (along with the training of his crew also well represented in terms of heroism) gives advice to the Somalis, one in particular, a boy named Muse. He tells them several times what the best way to escape alive is almost as if he is giving advice to his own unruly children. Children, that in a far more extreme way than Phillip’s children, are living in a fast changing world (the Somali coast main economy of fishing has been trawled away by richer larger nations) where desperate crazy acts (Muse is commanded to pirate ships by armed warlords) is the difference between a bare-bones type of survival (Muse lives in a small hut with a dirt floor) and, I don’t, maybe starvation and death.  

The unfairness of the fight is demonstrated in particular by the casting of the actors. In a very tense screenplay, the American is played by two-time Oscar Winner Tom Hanks, veteran of such other realistic thrillers like Apollo 13 and Castaway. Muse is played by Barkhad Abdi in his very first movie role. Barkhad is at once frightening and pitiful to behold. Like the pirates who boarded the ship he looks like he is in a daily struggle to eat a decent meal before the day ends. He is rail thin and emaciated. One particular detail the movie contains is that the pirates left on their mission without packing food, something that was apparently routine even though they usually travelled several hundred miles off the coast. What they have instead is khat, a mild narcotic plant that suppresses appetite. Barkhad also has the gaunt eyes of a desperate man. The kind of eyes you really don’t want to see from a person waving a gun at you. Barkhad Abdi though way overmatched on paper meets Tom Hanks scene for scene. And if Tom Hanks does well enough for a Best Actor Oscar nomination (which I believe he does) than Barkhad Abdi does well enough for a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Real life provides a dramatic ending to this story that Greengrass pulls off most thrillingly. Half way through Captain Phillips gets pulled into the lifeboat with the Somali pirates as they make their escape from the ship. It is a fool’s errand because the lifeboat goes really slow and the Somali piloting it doesn’t really know how to steer. They also won’t open up the hatch to allow air to circulate because Phillips suggested it and they don’t want to be tricked again. Captain Phillips and the four increasingly desperate and starved pirates spend so much time getting very slowly that there is enough time for a third of the US Navy and Seal Team Six to show up for the party. The last third of the movie is like a sequel to Zero Dark Thirty. Seal Team Six executes with extreme professionalism an operation in a very risky situation with incredible and effective precision. The Somalis just get absolutely stomped.

“Captain Phillips” is a very American movie. By that I mean that Paul Greengrass handling of the story is an expression of what makes the American movie superior (as opposed to say a Soviet or Chinese movie). The Somali’s may have been far out-matched by American military might, but Greengrass gives them equal treatment as characters in his story. He provides their background and explores their motivations. How easily the pirates could have been just a bunch of dumb bad guys in a piece of “us v. them” propaganda that did nothing more than demonstrate US military superiority. But Greengrass is a true American. He has respect for the underdog, that distinctly American storytelling trait.

Cyrus (4/5 Stars) July 6, 2010

Comedy on a shoestring budget

Cyrus is the title character of the new comedy by writers/directors Mark and Jay Duplass. It stars John C. Reilly as a man in a post-divorce funk that finally meets the woman, Marissa Tomei, who might just revitalize his life. The only problem is that Tomei has a grown son named Cyrus, played by Jonah Hill, who is, to put it mildly, a bit territorial about his mother’s affections. What results is a sort-of skewed love triangle that starts off in the territory of awkward situations and polite laughs and then veers into the country of outright hostility and comedic threats before settling into a safe conclusion. 

All of it is pretty funny, but the most inspiring and at the same time limiting thing about this movie is the budget. Mark and Jay Duplass seem to have nothing but a camera and some editing equipment to their name. They have no sets, no special effects, no costumes, and no sound effects. The big splurge seems to be the hiring of the cast and the extras for the wedding scene. Other than that the most technically audacious shot is the outside of a car driving down the freeway. In fact, I would venture to bet that the Catherine Keener character, Reilly’s ex-wife, who works as a movie editor is probably using the very computer equipment that the Duplass’s used in post-production of this movie. (I don’t have any evidence. It’s just a hunch. I also think the guy in “Paranormal Activity” used his computer to edit his movie also. Another hunch). The point of all this, of course, is to implore any would be writers and directors with nothing but a camera to go out and watch this movie. There is very little stopping you from doing exactly what the Duplass’s did: Produce a pretty good movie with almost no budget. 

Since the makers of this movie were limited by the ways they could tell the story, they have focused on two very important things that don’t really cost a thing: Writing and Performances. Almost the entire movie is simply people talking, most of the time within one location, Tomei’s and Cyrus’ house. The fact that the movie succeeds on being entertaining the entire time is a testament to both. If you want to see a movie that has everything but Writing and Performances you can watch “Date Night.” That had an enormous budget and utterly failed to be funny. It just goes to show that Comedy is not something that you can throw money at. It is one of the only two genres that are budget irrelevant. (The other is horror, but only because those people have absolutely no standards). 

It’s well known that Oscar nominees John C. Reilly, Marissa Tomei, and Catherine Keener are fine actors, so it isn’t a surprise that they all do a good job in this movie. Only quibble I have is that Tomei is too good-looking to the point where it becomes almost unbelievable that she would fall so hard for a guy with a mug like John C. Reilly. I’m not just being a jerk, Reilly agrees with me. One of his funniest lines is, “Are you flirting with me. I’m like Shrek. What are you doing out here in the forest with Shrek?” It may have been a better idea to cast someone who looked a little more like Reilly but you know I don’t really care all that much. I’m not about to be that hard on an actress because she looks too good. (Now that I think more about it, I feel stupid for even mentioning it.)

The revelation in this movie is that Jonah Hill has some acting chops. He is usually cast as a bombastic blowhard that yells all his lines, but in this movie he takes on much more mature, sensitive, and subversive. The result is a character unlike any he has ever played. Since I enjoy comparing Hill’s career arc with Michael Cera’s as much as I like comparing Matt Damon’s with Ben Affleck’s I will conclude that with this movie, Hill has nudged a lead over his Superbad partner. Whereas Cera is consistently a lead in big movies, he has always played a variation of the same role. Jonah Hill on the other hand has taken on a varied amount of supporting roles and in the meantime seems to have become a more rounded actor. Finally, he has shown a willingness to appear in little movies like this one in order to play roles that should allow him to break his Superbad typecast as an angry loudmouth. The result is his best performance yet. Let’s just see what Cera in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim v. the World has to say about that. 

Where the Wild Things Are (5/5 Stars) October 31, 2009

I’ll Eat You Up!
Yells the nine-year-old Max (newcomer Max Records) to his mother (Catherine Keener) in the feature film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. That book had a measly ten sentences but plenty of good drawings. Director Spike Jonze has faithfully incorporated everything he could and like all great adaptors, has added on an incredible amount of depth, emotion, and cinematic scope. 
Max is a rambunctious little kid with the normal inclinations of a nine year old. By that I mean he’s impulsive, impotent, and often times stupid. (Too harsh? well imagine what you would think of Max's actions if he was forty.) In the first fifteen minutes, he tears up his sister’s room in revenge of a perceived slight; he rudely yells at his mother in the middle of her date, and he runs away from home in a fury. Then, like in the book, Max gets on a boat and sails to a far away island: the Land of the Wild Things. The Wild Things are a godless lot of beasties who have the emotional maturity of nine year olds. Max finds them in a familial crisis and arrogantly suggests that he can fix everything and keep the sadness away in the Wild Thing Kingdom. He even lies about having special powers like a sadness shield. The Wild Things crown Max as their king and Max declares the “wild rumpus to start!”

Jonze never expressly says anything but the Wild Things can be metaphorical on many levels. I took their current problem (One member has been spending more time with other things on the island) to mean any kind of familial strife. In this story it could pertain to Max’s sister abandoning him to play by himself, or it could refer to the divorce in Max’s family (He gets mad at his mother in the beginning because she has brought home Mark Ruffalo, a man who isn’t Max’s father). When the Wild Things entrust Max with the job of fixing everything, it is sort of like parents entrusting their own kid to fix their marriage. This is a job Max zealously accepts because he feels he knows best anyway. What makes this movie special is that the Wild Things take Max’s ideas seriously, carry them out, and expect them to work. And unlike any children’s movies I’ve ever seen, Max’s ideas are those a nine year old would come up with. What makes this movie especially sad is that they have the exact results they should have. 

For example, Max’s first idea is to build an awesome fort. The Wild Things eagerly start working on it. They build the best fort ever, just the sight of it is something to behold. But it doesn’t work in uniting the Wild Things family. All the same problems continue. Next Max comes up with the idea of having a giant dirt clod fight. It’s a great fight, but as what happens with all fights, people get hurt and the same problems become even worse. Eventually the Wild Things become disillusioned and angry with Max. They blame all their problems on him. There is an especially sad scene where they ask Max if he has any powers at all. Max gets up and does a robot dance (this dance was seen earlier when he tried to cheer up his mom after she had gotten bad news at work). It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. None of the Wild Things are impressed. This is the closest I’ve seen a movie get to portraying the helplessness a child must feel when their family is breaking up. Max knows something is wrong but can’t do anything about it because he’s only nine and all he is good at is building forts. 

The movie takes a dark turn near the end when the Wild Things, who are known to eat things up, turn on Max. This is probably the few scenes that left the children in the test audiences screaming and gave the producers enormous fits. Is it scary? You bet. Is this movie okay for children to watch? Let's just say I would take my kid to see it the day he turned nine. A movie isn’t great that doesn’t provoke its audience. What makes some movies better than others is how it does so. There are scary beasties in this movie, but they are handled responsibly. I doubt many kids will get nightmares. More likely they will get ideas for Halloween. 

This movie has guts. It is perhaps the only kid’s movie I’ve ever seen that deals with childhood guilt. Most other movies won’t even dare of suggesting that a kid could be culpable of something. But in this one, Max wrongs people. It is true that kids can be cruel, but often times they are cruel on accident. They don’t know any better. When a child does something bad impulsively and then learns the evil in the actions the emotional consequences may cover a vast arc from fear, injustice, anger, doubt, realization, guilt, sadness, fear of reprimand, and finally fear of loss of love. The depth of this movie is very rare indeed. 

This is not just a story about a kid tromping around in fantasy land realizing cliche life lessons. The problems in this movie can't be solved by a bake sale or science fair experiment prize money. Like problems in real life, they can't be solved at all by a nine year old. That's precisely what every other kid's movie gets completely wrong. They all sidestep the fact that being a kid is a helpless, impotent existence. This movie understands that perfectly. And although it is a complete fantasy it still feels more real than any other movie that has ever been concerned with the nature of being a stupid little kid. The movie ends after Max exhausts all of his rebelliousness on the island with a version of the book’s classic scene of atonement. Max returns home and is greeted by his worried mom with a hug, forgiveness, and his dinner still hot. Perfect.

There are some reviews I’ve read that call this movie dull in parts. I can understand that, but one should also keep in mind this: Max is just a kid. What may seem trivial to adults can mean a whole lot to a nine year old. Since this movie refuses to cater to an adult viewpoint and keeps everything at a child’s level, enjoying it is sometimes a test of empathy. Surely most adults have grown up past the age where forts are exciting, but imagine Max’s wonder as he explores his. Or imagine a kid’s comfort and security of sleeping in a big pile of Wild Things. Or simply the coolness of being able to play dirt clods with big people on an equal level at that age. I got a great kick out of all of it.

This is Max Records first movie. This is an incredible performance that is sort of akin to Tom Hanks’ performance in Castaway. Max is in every frame of the movie and he spent most of the time on the set acting with inanimate objects. Keep in mind the facial expressions and voices of the Wild Things were added in later. He carries the entire film. Max, the actor, is especially good at communicating subtle emotion through facial expressions. (Think the opposite of Macauley Culkin) Just consider his expression when a teacher tells him the sun is going to die someday or the look on his face when he sees his mother with Mark Ruffalo. This is the best child performance since Haley Joel Osment’s in “The Sixth Sense.” Like Haley, Max Records deserves a nomination for Best Actor. 

If I am being honest I will have to admit that this movie moved me to the point where my eyes watered. Yes technically I cried during this movie. It doesn’t happen often. (The last time was while watching “The Sixth Sense.”) But when it does it is imperative to admit it and reflect upon it because it suggests that the movie (though obviously fictitious and in this case not even attempting to be in the realms of reality) struck a nerve by portraying something I felt was not only emotionally raw and enormously empathetic, but above all, true. In this movie there is truth. It deserves nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and especially best Costumes or Makeup depending on whatever the Wild Things qualify as. I don’t believe that Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It is the best movie I’ve seen this year. and I believe it is a movie that will last for years to come much like the book it was adapted from.

The Soloist (3/5 Stars) April 30, 2009

The Soloist may be a tad too realistic for comfort. It tells the true story of Los Angelos Times reporter Steve Lopez, played by Robert Downey Jr., and his unconventional friendship with a homeless street musician named Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, played by Jamie Foxx. 
Story goes, Steve Lopez, caught in a mid-life funk and following a bike accident that left his face scarred was out wandering around the LA times building when he heard the sound of a violin. Searching out the sound he found a homeless man playing a violin with only two strings underneath a statue of Beethoven. The man is hard to have a conversation with, as he talks toward the wind in hurried sentences. Still after gleaning that this man had once attended Julliard, Lopez decides that this just might be a story. 
It could have ended there, but a grandmother with arthritis sends Lopez a cello and tells him to give it to Ayers. So Lopez does so, but he won’t simply give it to Ayers. He looks up a homeless shelter and tells Ayers that they are going to hold it for him, and if he wants to use it he has to go play it there. Lopez doesn’t know why, but Ayers doesn’t want to go anywhere near this place (called LAMP in the movie). And so Lopez, and we vicariously through him, are soon introduced to a very ugly world, the several streets in Los Angelos that we all drive by and never actually see. Where all of the failures and decay of human society coalesce and hang around each other like such festering rot, growing like a cancer in the heart of the city. It is a humbling experience to witness such a place for the first time. I lived near Los Angelos for most of my life and never knew it existed. It is embarrassing that we as a society allow such places to exist. Director Joe Wright structures this movie around this place as if it is the third main character in the movie. And how he does this, combined with Robert Downey Jr.’s eerily unromantic performance, is what makes a story that would ordinarily be uplifting in other hands, uneven and only mildly enjoyable. Director Joe Wright isn’t sugarcoating homelessness or mental illness. Like Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” Nathaniel Ayers is not ever going to get better. And Steve Lopez understandably doesn’t want complete responsibility over an unstable homeless man, no matter how talented. He’s no hero and this movie contains no miracles. 
The only thing that could have made this a great movie was great choice in music. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. I’m no huge connoisseur in classical music, but I know a heck of a lot more than most people, and the only song I recognized was Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. That also happened to be the best song in the bunch. The rest of the pieces sound very much like ordinary classical music where the theme goes in circles and never gets anywhere. I know there are better songs out there. They could have at least played some Mozart. I also will say this; classical music does not go well with concrete. It doesn’t particularly work when a cello plays and we are treated to a view of a massive parking lot. I believe the point of Ayers playing was to get away from the city. It doesn’t work to actually show the ugliness that is LA when he’s playing his music.
Of course, whether this movie is enjoyable or not doesn’t deter its inherent nobility. This is one of those movies that you should like strictly on principle. It’s about growing up and taking responsibility. Which is all very good, but not usually what people are looking for when they go and see a movie.

Synecdoche, New York 10/26/08

It struck me as odd that I walked out of this movie wondering whether it was just good or one of the best movies ever made. The problem, like all of Charlie Kaufman's stories, is that there is nothing to compare it to. So I can't say that it is like this movie or that one. I can't say if you liked this movie, than you're bound to like Synecdoche, or if you disliked such and such then you will really hate it. Reviews are at their best comparative. I watch a film and decide whether it fits, shorthands, or supersedes its genres and rules. I pass on that knowledge to help others decide whether they want to spend $12 and two hours of their time watching it. But what can I do when a movie stands alone? I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it. That even Kaufman's previous incredibly original works (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) are only vaguely similar, and still only in matters that are coincidental. (i.e. They all take place in New York). I can say this, I cannot imagine the movie being any better. I cannot conceive of any wrong choices. Each scene was something I had never seen before. I can describe what I felt. I laughed at many parts. I wore a grin through many supposedly depressing scenes. I felt a terrible sadness at certain points. And during the final scenes my mouth was held open by awe at what I was witnessing. I have no idea how long the movie was. I completely lost track of time. 
I suppose now I should try to explain it, although I fear the entire point of the movie was to present something beyond explaining. Synecdoche is defined as "a part representing the whole or the whole representing a part." The movie is about the ambitious folly of a play director named Caden, played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Caden deals with synecdoche's as a career. A stage is a synecdoche of a life just like a movie based on actual events is a synecdoche of those events. Caden may be a synecdoche of Kaufman. The women in this movie may be synecdoche's of women in Kaufman's life. This review is a synecdoche of the movie. It may be argued that no matter how hard I try I will not be able to capture the true essence of the movie in this review. Much like how Caden will not be able to capture the true essence of life in his plays. Even if, like in this movie, he built a life-size version of New York inside a warehouse, had tens of thousands of extras, and a budget that apparently has no bounds. 
At the same time, Caden is dying. He doesn't know how but he is. Organs fail on him mysteriously. He suffers a seizure. His body revolts in humiliating and painful ways. He wants to do something of significance. Something that is true and right before he leaves this world.
Moreover, Caden has trouble with his 1st marriage (Catherine Keener). He has trouble with his second marriage (Michelle Williams). He has an unrequited love affair with a third woman (Samantha Morton). And he loses his daughter, who he forever remembers as a four year old, to devious people in a faraway land. Everything is slowly slipping away. He's waging several losing wars on several different fronts. The film is mired in depression and there is much talk about death. We witness no less than four or five funeral scenes. Years evaporate between scenes. Slowly everybody Caden knows dies. 
The film starts off in reality but somewhere near the middle the line starts getting blurry. About two thirds of the way through we can no longer tell what's going on. Scenes repeat themselves once, then get played again in the warehouse. They never seem exactly right. Caden throws great effort around. He has an endless sea of post-it notes. At one point he muses 'I don't know why I make it so complicated.' In the end he no longer has the ability to keep the play alive on his own. He casts somebody to be him and then goes off and takes the role of an extra. A war somehow breaks out on the set. Caden walks down the New York streets he built. Bodies are strewn everywhere. All the extras have died. My God what have I done?
Why on earth would anyone like a film described like this? Because every scene, every exchange, every line of dialogue, every performance belies the somber mood and depressing atmosphere. Caden can't seem to make a perfect play, but Charlie Kaufman can make a perfect movie. I have never seen a more ambitious, epic, or original film about failure. It is hard to tell how people will take this movie. I picture everyone exiting the theater stunned, not knowing what they have just witnessed. Maybe they will nitpick about certain degrading elements that are true to every life. Maybe they will give up and say 'that can't happen. What am I watching?' These are good questions and totally defensible arguments. I myself am at a loss of what to think at times. Even Charlie Kaufman has refused to discuss what the movie 'means.' 
This movie should get nods for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Take your pick from Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, etc.) Best Production Design, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, etc. Having said that, I would not be surprised, and I wouldn't blame anyone, if it received no nominations at all. I can only assume it is going to take ten to fifteen years for this movie to sink into mass consciousness. Somebody out there is going to have to write a synecdoche that describes concisely what the movie means and put forth an argument that allows it to gain mass appeal. That might take awhile. It might never happen.

Hamlet 2 09/02/08

“Oh!! my life is a parody of a tragedy!” wails Marshzt, a down and out drama teacher in godforsaken Tucson, Arizona (described in this movie as the place where ‘dreams go to die.’) His life is full of pain. His father abused him, his acting career has gone nowhere, he’s a recovering alcoholic, he can’t get his wife pregnant, he doesn’t own a car. He doesn’t even own a bike, he uses roller skates, and not rollerblades mind you, roller skates. And he doesn’t even use them well. He skates down the street uncoordinated, heckled by the incredibly anti-pedestrian streets of Tucson. His job is worse than his life. He works as a drama teacher in a school that has just cut drama because of its budget. This is insult to injury since it appears that the theater budget was nothing to begin with. They use the cafeteria for a classroom and after they are thrown out of there they have to use the gym during Volleyball practice. The principal breaks the news to Marshzt in front of a wall long trophy case, thereby making clear the point. They certainly have enough money for sports programs to have winning teams every year. They simply don’t give a shit about theatre, or Marshzt for that matter. Even the school critic, a fifth grader completely bags on every play Marshzt puts out. To his credit the plays are pretty bad and the critic is actually quite wise. He gives Marshzt the idea to put on an original play that would be so great it would save theater and perhaps Marshzt failing life. 
Marshzt’s idea for the play is a sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, aptly named Hamlet 2. His wife takes one look at the script and says “A sequel to Hamlet, doesn’t everybody die at the end of the first one?” True everyone does, which is probably why Shakespeare didn’t write a sequel. The idea is very appropriate though. Marshzt wants to do the impossible: write a happy ending onto the Hamlet story. If he can do this then maybe he wring out a happy ending to another tragic tale: the story of his life. Both are equally impossible and as Act III is aptly titled: Hope is a Demon Bitch. 
On top of all this, the writer/director of this movie, Andrew Fleming (I’ve never heard of him), wants to make it funny. My God this movie will need some sort of a miracle. And they get it in the form of Jesus’s time machine and British comedian Steven Coogan. The ridiculous thing about this movie is that it tried and succeeded to make the subject plausible, even going so far as to make the fake play actually very good. Someone out there needs to get the bright idea to adapt the three to four scenes we see of the play into a full-length musical. The numbers “Raped in the Face,” and “Rock Me Sexy Jesus,” are very fun and that part where Hamlet saves everybody from dying and forgives his father. That was actually quite touching. 
But the one thing that holds this movie together and keeps the over the top ideas from going completely overboard is the tour de force performance of Steven Coogan. His feverish, hilarious portrayal of a man whose life is crumbling before his very eyes is incredible. The desperation is palpable in his word and deeds. He wants to be an inspirational teacher a la Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society, but the limitations of his own personality and the crushing atmosphere of Tucson perform daily hosings of his psyche. At scenes you can see his sanity crumbling in his eyes. (Now is the time to Just Give Up!) He also manages to say something incredibly funny every other sentence. (Oh Gravel! The Bane of my Existence!) How this is done takes not only great dramatic talent but also great comedic talent. Mr. Marshzt may be a terrible actor but Steven Coogan is a fantastic one. This turn is Oscar Nomination worthy. It is the best performance I have seen so far this year. (My God, I have said that for three movies in a row. But I swear I meant it each time. I wonder how many more times I will say it this year.) Of course the academy will probably forget him and nominate some other really depressing dramatic actor who plays a really depressing paraplegic or some shit. This is like the one arena that the MTV movie awards actually gets it right. Oh well, a toast to Steve Coogan, before this summer I had never really noticed you. I wonder if you will ever get such a great role again. I sure hope so. 
Extra notes: I think this movie would constitute half of a great double feature will Littlle Miss Sunshine, another movie about lovable losers who find their home in the godforsaken deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. pss. And keep in mind that this movie has one annoying character. It’s a stupid racist white girl. Did not laugh once at her. I also really wanted to hear what the ten-year-old critic would say about Hamlet 2, but apparently he couldn’t get into the R rated play since we never hear his opinion. 

Into the Wild 10/26/07

Into the Wild ventures to places that no other movies dare to go. Frank discussions about life, love, truth, honesty, independence, and beauty. It embraces these subjects and takes no prisoners. What a relief it is to find a film that will go so deep. Truly we laugh sometimes, we find the sight of Alexander Supertramp dragging his kayak through the Grand Canyon absurd. We giggle at the scraggly scruffy man walking the streets of Los Angelos. But underneath it is clear that he knows something that we don't and that there is something inside of him that allows him to do things we would never do, or are sure we cannot. This is one of the years best films.

This was adapted from a very good book by John Krakauer, who also wrote Into Thin Air. The book is a short easy read and it is told in a very uncinematic way. It is a testament to the filmmakers how they made the film work, and how every expansion and addition to the story was correct and appropriate. I love especially the swimming in the ocean, the conversations with Wayne (Vince Vaughn), and the love story (break my heart that God=love place they found and I'm sure actually exists.)
One scene made the movie for me. Alexander Supertramp (Christopher McCandless played by Emile Hirsch in a fantastic peformance) is kayaking down the Grand Canyon when he meets a random Scandinavian couple. They offer him hot dogs and talk excited German. Most people might think this is ridiculous but anyone who has been travelling will not. I travelled the world once upon a time, and I have had such encounters. Whether its a Brit in Chile, Canadians in Greece, an American professor in Krakow, a young married couple on a night train to Copenhagen, A Brazilian in Vienna. I once got lost in Italy, slept on a deserted walkway, and ended up talking to a drunk Spaniard named Lucas for a half hour at 1am. Good times. When watching this movie, I realized a certain nostalgia creep in. The movie felt like all those times I hiked alone in woods or up mountains, those endless walks in deserted cities. Pompeii, Kilimanjaro, Grand Canyon, Tuscany, Jungfraujoch, windmills in Amsterdam in a rain storm. The exhiliration one feels when witnessing a sight that is truly awesome. It is true that this happens only when one is alone. All the senses are heightened and everything is more intense and exciting. This movie knows that feeling inside and out. At two and a half hours it is short.
If anything this movie will get some recognition for Cinematography. There are so many incredible shots in this picture. birds in a sunset, alaskan mountains, the grand canyon, everything. For every hiker, biker, or people who like walking outside once in a while, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie. 

Capote 11/20/05

This movie doesn't waste time with subplots. It's all about Capote. In a way that's refreshing, because he is, after all, the most interesting character. Played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in a performance that's bound to garner attention, Capote is a small, high pitched man. He is strong in many ways, and weak in many others. During this story he will come into a crisis, that he never recovered from. He needs two men to die, so he can finish a book about their death. He also is in love with one of them. He can save them if he tries, but he doesn't. The book becomes a best seller, and he becomes a wreck. The tragedy is real in this story. I'm seriously thinking about reading his book "IN Cold Blood" now. The movie has me curiously hooked.

The 40 Year Old Virgin 09/21/05

Quite the movie. As a comedy it's funny. As a romance it's satisfying. My only regret is that since it had built up so much, it didn't seem to need that extra gratuitous slapstick and melodrama in the end. ( i.e. Bicycle accident) Not that that really bothered me. I just thought it wasn't needed. Cahoots to the Carell for making a sex-comedy with heart. This type of film doesn't come along that often. Quite a fresh tomato.