Captain America: Civil War (4/5 Stars)

At least once a year I feel the need to point out the moral ambituity of large-scale action sequences in modern blockbusters, specifically the untold and unfelt thousands of deaths that necessarily must occur when entire cities are reduced to rubble. I had been crying in the wilderness to nobody in parituclar about this for so long that I expected that I would continue to do it indefinitely. Imagine my pleasant surprise then when Marvel’s new movie, “Captain America: Civil War” not only admits the reality of human collateral damage but makes it the focal conflict for the entire story.

It starts with a covert operation in an African country by Captain America, Black Widow, Hawk, and Scarlett Witch (new to me but apparently introduced before). A bad guy is trying to steal a biological weapon. The fight starts in a parking lot moves to an office building and finally ends in a crowded marketplace. The bad guy has a suicide bomb in which he means to kill everybody. Scarlett Witch, whose mutant power is to telekinesis, moves the bomb explosion from the marketplace to the air but miscalculates and ends up killing about fifteen people in an office building. The Avengers given that they are conducting vigilante military operations are held suspect for this outcome. A proposal is passed to give the United Nations oversight over the Avengers.

Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, feels guilty enough for this occurrence (The fifteen dead were charity workers although any fifteen dead people would have been good enough for me) to support the resolution. Captain America, coming out against democracy, believes that the resolution would stop him from taking action for or against whatever he deems himself to be important. It may be obvious whose side I am taking in this conflict. I’m with Iron Man all the way. Captain America apparently thinks he knows better than entire democratic societies. That is the sort of behavior that gives Freedom a bad name.

The amount of characters and superheroes already introduced in this umpteenth of Marvel movies makes listing all of them and the actors playing them time prohibitive, but they line up in equal numbers on each side. Thankfully Thor and The Hulk are somewhere else, as their presence would seriously tip the scale against the more destructible members of the Avengers. The action sequences are better and more entertaining than previous Marvel movies. This is because instead of relying on the spectactles getting bigger and more explosive, the superheroes fight themselves (and thus aren’t nameless pushovers) and thus humor and creativity have to be employed to make sure nobody gets embarrassed. The abandoned airport fight is especially good. Also, as I said before, no massive human collateral occurs. The result is a very enjoyable movie and my favorite Marvel movie so far.

Joining the Marvel universe for the first time is SpiderMan (the other two Sony franchises have not happened in this particular franchise) and Black Panther. Now this is a good opportunity for a compare and contrast between what is considered to be one of the most beloved characters of Marvel and what is sure to be the most boring.

Spiderman, aka Peter Parker, is a dorky teenager who lives with his Aunt May in Queens, New York. Black Panther is the handsome well-mannered prince of the aforementioned African nation. When Stan Lee created Spiderman, his stated intention was to give the character all the regular flaws a teenager generally has like immaturity, acne, and a hopeless crush on a girl. Such honesty and relatability became endearing pushing Spiderman to an upper echelons of popular superheroes. Black Panther, in contrast, seems to be a corporate marketing committee’s response to an outcry for political correctness. He stands in like Two-fer in “30 Rock” as proof that the corporation believes black people can be noble, properly educated, and not sidekicks. It is perhaps a good thing that the effort was made but the fact that they went about it in a way that crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s goes a long way in making the character generally unrelatable and almost as important, boring. He has no flaws and by the end of the movie his one conflict is resolved. I can’t imagine what will happen in the next movie that will allow the character to learn and grow in complexity. Perhaps he will join Thor battling interstellar ice monsters. Peter Parker as we all know has a long journey ahead of him since not incidentally he starts from a far humbler beginning.

(I doubt anyone else has noted this but the term ‘black panther’ refers to the militant wing of an oppressed poor minority group. Is it not culturally insensitive for a wealthy member of a ruling majority class to appropriate the moniker? Or does this not count because they are both black.)

But enough about this. I really liked the movie and would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing a blockbuster. The humor, the action, and most importantly the maturity set it apart from most others. Finally I have added the original Captain America movie to my DVD queue. For the first time I have wanted to see it and fill in that particular gap in my Marvel movie knowledge.

Everybody Wants Some!! (3/5 Stars)

In 1995, Director Richard Linklater came out with a movie called “Before Sunrise.” In this movie, a guy (played by Ethan Hawke) traveling through Europe asks a woman (Julie Delpy) who is traveling to Paris to get off the train with him in Vienna. His plane leaves the next morning and he does not have money for a room. Would she be interested in just roaming the city with him walking and talking for a night? She thinks about it and then gets off the train and they spend the night walking and talking.

Bullshit, right? Like on three levels. First level, what woman would get off a train with a complete stranger in a city where she knows nobody? That’s potentially dangerous and most women wouldn’t do it. Second level, what guy would propose this sincerely? Wouldn’t a normal guy assume that a normal woman would be creeped out by the proposal and consider it impolite to ask. Or would he not assume that the prospect of walking and talking (not even going to a bar or dinner because he has no money) would not be appetizing to a normal woman. Third reason, assuming they got off the train and spent the night together, who is actually interesting enough to carry on a decent conversation for at least ten hours straight. Who are these people?

Well, at least one of them was Richard Linklater. The movie is based off an experience he had during a trip from New York to Austin. He spent one entirely platonic night in Philadelphia with a woman just walking and talking before he left at sunrise. There are a lot of better directors working today than Richard Linklater but I seriously doubt any of them are as cool a person as he seems to be and if I could choose to strike up a conversation with any one of my favorite directors at a party I figure the best one ought to be Linklater. I can’t imagine him running out of interesting things to say.

“Everybody Wants Some!!” is another one of his movies like “Boyhood” and “Before Sunrise” that would be preposterous in its main characters “coolness” if it weren’t admittedly autobiographical. That is, if the main character here “Jake,” was supposed to be some normal guy, I wouldn’t believe it, but if Linklater says it is based on him, well, he did make “Waking Life,” so I guess it’s possible for a college baseball player to be this cool.

Jake (played by Blake Jenner) has just showed up to his college house. He’s not in the dorms as a Freshman because he has a scholarship to pitch for the very popular baseball team and with that scholarship comes the free housing off-campus (very cool). He is good looking (also cool) like every other guy in the all star baseball house (hot friends, add that to the cool) and at the baseball house party that night (parties are cool), he gets laid almost immediately (I told you he was cool).  

But this movie isn’t entirely about that. If it were, than Jake would be in danger of being a douchebag. But he’s not. He’s Richard Linklater. So in this baseball house are a lot of distinct personalities that are fun to hang out with and get to know. Jake, it turns out, is a sincere listener who essentially gets along with everyone and everyone gets along with him. The other pitcher is a wise fellow (curiously beyond his years really) who is great at casually philosophizing and smoking pot. The other guys are competitive but it would be weird if they weren’t, after all, this is an all-star sports team. And like most jocks I’ve known, they care quite a bit about winning but are as forgiving of slights made in competition. Case in point: there is another pitcher who is crazy unlikable and everyone teases him but it is unmistakable that they do not ostracize him from the team. (Actually in my experience getting along with jocks is easier than getting along with any other social group. Just show up, give 100%, and don’t complain. That’s really all there is to it.)

Another guy Jake spends a lot of time listening to is Finnegan (played by Glen Powell). His philosophy to life is illuminating. At the baseball house party the other players implore Jake to listen in on how Finnegan explains his playing style to a couple ladies. Now how a baseball player explains his playing style is code to explaining how he has sex. (It is assumed that the girls know this. I mean are they really at the baseball players house party to talk sports?) Anyway Finnegan explains that he doesn’t have the best bat, not that much of a heavy hitter, but he is a true team player, is smart on the field, and ready to help his mates out in a pinch. Classic curveball. Nice touch.  

Finnegan and Jake go to several parties over the weekend. The first is at a disco. The second is at a Country-Western bar. Then they help throw the baseball house party. Then they go to a punk rave. And finally Jake gets invited to a theater student’s party by leaving flowers and a poem on her door. He brings Finnegan and the other baseball players as well. Finnegan dresses up as a person who would fit in at all of these and instructs Jake to do as well. Jake asks at the punk rave, “aren’t we posers?” “No,” Finnegan explains, “it doesn’t count if you are doing it to hit on girls.” An eloquent philosophy and the way he practices it discounts the creepiness that other guys would not get away with. That is to say there might be a difference between changing your appearance and personality to trick a woman and take advantage of her and changing your appearance and personality because you are hoping to please a woman who would like you that way. Or at least the movie would like to think there is a difference. Or maybe this loophole only applies to Linklater who is much cooler than the rest of us.

The difference seems to be sincerity and given the types of movies Linklater has made for the last quarter century it should be fair to say that he treats people sincerely (sometimes to a fault, see “Slacker”). Perhaps we should at least take heart that at least once that attitude helped a guy get laid routinely. That is to say this nice guy never finished last. He wasn’t racing of course, that’s the whole point. But if he was racing, he wouldn’t have finished last. Not that he cared or we should either, but you know what I’m trying to say.

Knight of Cups (2/5 Stars)

I don’t like movies that require reading to understand it. I suspect “Knight of Cups” is that type of movie. Specifically it may have been a good idea to read “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is quoted directly several times. Is this an adaptation of that book? I don’t know, maybe?

“Knight of Cups” was directed by Terrance Malick and ostensibly written by him as well. I say ‘ostensibly’ because the actors seem to be walking in and out of scenes improvising without a script. Malick consistently uses a narrative device somewhat unique to him throughout the film. You have seen him do it before in a movie like “The Thin Red Line.” He employs poetic voiceover over the eye of a wandering camera. It provides a celestial quality to a scene especially those that are hectic and that have the original audio cut from it. This worked so well in “The Thin Red Line,” because the underlying action was very easy to understand. In was a WWII movie that involved an army trying to take a Pacific Island. The voiceover commented on the scene but never needed to explain what was happening. The story was very clear in that respect. “Knight of Cups,” however (and Malick’s last two films as well “The Tree of Life” and “To the Wonder”) employs this device without the simple plotline and the effect is quite different. It feels like it is being used to cover up bad directing in the editing room. There are plenty of “scenes” in which actors walk around improvising dramatic situations in desperate need of some direction. Since everything is cut up and entwined with vines of excess cinematography and voiceover it is hard to tell what they scenes are about, but that may just be hiding the fact that they might not actually be about anything. This movie perhaps means something to Malick but he sure didn’t feel the need to explain it to me.

It’s a beautiful movie of course. The cinematographer is Emmanuel Lubezki, winner of the Academy Award three years in a row. His target this time is Los Angeles and the areas that surround it. The camera follows a writer, played by Christian Bale. He doesn’t look or act successful but apparently he very much is. He is invited and attends many gorgeous parties in lots of mansions. He spends time with an assembly line of models. Among them are Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Frieda Pinto, Imogen Potts, Teresa Palmer, and Isabel Lucas. And I haven’t mentioned yet the naked nameless ones. He has a manager that says something about making him richer than he already is.

Christian Bale does not particulary care about any of this and kind of walks about in a daze. That may indeed be Malick’s point: that this Hollywood lifestyle of riches and easy sex with beautiful women is ultimately unfulfilling. However that brings to mind the biggest question every critic who has seen the movie has had to ask: That is, if Terrance Malick does not like all these beautiful things (architecture and women and everything between), why did he expend so much effort to catalog it in this movie. He very much has an eye for it. One telling example is the Las Vegas roadtrip scenes. Terrance Malick may feel that Las Vegas architecture is fake, unfulfilling, and whatever but he goes about that sentiment in a very confusing way. He makes it look flat out gorgeous and then has Christian Bale walk around it totally unimpressed. This happens several times in the same way until the movie ends without the characters or the world changing in any significant way. 

The fact that Christian Bale is rich and respected, sleeps with many beautiful women, and hangs out at all these great parties will probably inspire envy in the normal viewer not the knowing spiritual yearning of a world weary philospher that perhaps Malick is trying to get at. This is nobody’s fault but Malick’s. It is fair to say the movie is “out of touch.”

I like his earlier work better. It is amazing how many great artists this can apply to. It is cliché but that does not mean it should not be examined. Perhaps it should be examined because it is so cliché, i.e. so common. After all, some artists (say Martin Scorsese or Tom Waits) never stop being great no matter how old they are. So what is Terrance Malick’s problem?

I suspect it follows from being known as a genius and then subsequently surrounding oneself by ‘yes men.’ It helps to have that asshole producer that will direct one to take the audience’s expectations and comprehension abilities into consideration when making your art. When one is making one’s name in the world, one cannot but help having this influence. No studio in their right mind would give a young unproven director money without an experienced producer looking over the shoulder. But sometimes a director gains a reputation for being great and there comes this notion that they can do no wrong and at some point all of their bad tendencies and indulgences flow through. Who was there to tell Quentin Tarantino that he could have an hour and a half of just talking before any action occurred in “The Hateful Eight.” Why doesn’t anybody explain to Michael Bay that action movies should not have running times of over two and a half hours? What the fuck is David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”? What is it???!?

“Knight of Cups” contains every beautiful technique that makes a Terrance Malick movie the unique special thing that a Terrance Malick movie is except the movie part. It’s an important part that movie part. I hope he remembers it next time.

OSCARS 2016

Putting aside much hesitation, I intend to touch this subject for several reasons, none of which I bet are good enough, but nonetheless drive me to assert a basic point. Sure, it's a technicality in the large scope of things but its not like this blog is a big deal anyway. I mean it's public but nobody reads it except Tia Debbie (Hi Tia Debbie!) and so it seems to me to be the perfect place express my annoyance. I have not shared these thoughts on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform. I look forward to no conversations about it. Don't comment on this post if it isn't about movies.

#OscarsSoWhite controversy is technically a stupid argument. It takes place in a larger discussion of race inequality, which is not stupid but rather important. But #OscarsSoWhite is a stupid way to shed light on that larger discussion.

The larger discussion can be summed up like this: the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is largely made up of old white men (i.e. not black people), the major motion picture studios are headed by non black people,  and there is more opportunity for people who are not black than for black people in essentially all areas of the industry. From here one can make an even larger point about race inequality in general. Examples that come to mind: extortionate court system, mass incarceration, voting discrimination, and exclusionary zoning (inner city ghettos, housing projects, and segregated bad public schools are all included in this).
But #OscarsSoWhite is not actually about any of these issues. It is trending because of the lack of black nominees in major Oscar categories (actors, writers, directors, producers) the last two years. It seems like there may be racism amongst the old white men who make up the Academy but these accusations fall by the wayside rather quickly when one takes on specific cases of who got snubbed and who didn't. For instance, "Creed" directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan was only nominated for Supporting Actor for Sylvester Stallone, the white guy. 'Creed' a good movie but it is a good movie in the sense that the J.J. Abrams reboots of 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' were good movies. I think its fair to call it either the 8th sequel in a franchise or the newish requel . It is very rare that non originality like that gets nominated for Best Picture. And Michael B. Jordan had a fine performance but the Lead Actor category is historically much more competitive than the Supporting Actor category. Take 2013's "Captain Phillips" when Tom Hanks was snubbed for Lead Actor but Barkad Abdi was nominated for a Supporting Actor. Or consider other boxing movies like Warrior (only Nick Nolte nominated for Supporting Actor), Cinderella Man (only Paul Giamatti nominated for Supporting Actor) or even Million Dollar Baby (Morgan Freeman won for Supporting Actor, Clint Eastwood only nominated for Lead Actor). Every example of supposed racism in this year's Oscar fall along similar lines.

But then the argument changes. #OscarsSoWhite does not point out examples of actual racism in the movie industry but a symptom of the overall problem. This too is stupid.

Why, because the problem of general racial inequality in the movie industry is not something that would affect Oscar nominations because Oscar nominees do not and never have reflected the general movie industry.  The movie industry in general is commercial is scope. If the Oscar nominations reflected that then the Best Picture nominees would be gauged by box office numbers. (And if they did, "Fast and Furious 7" would have been nominated. It coincidentally has a largely diverse cast.) But they never do. In fact, Oscar nominated Best Pictures are routinely movies that the big studios have passed on and most people who watch movies have not seen. This year "Spotlight" won Best Picture. To say it represents the movie industry in general is absurd. And the Oscar nominated movies that did make a lot of money at the box office this year are not lowest common denominator movies. They are great niche movies like Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, and Inside Out. Those movies were not sure things to make a lot of money. The fact that they did was a bonus for everybody who cares about movies, but it certainly was not the reason they were nominated for Oscars.

Given that unique exceptional movies are the ones that are generally nominated for Oscars it would make sense that Oscar nominees do not follow the general demographics of society (that is to say 10% black people). Some years there are more, some years less, and some years exactly 10% depending on whether the movies the black people were in were unique exceptional movies. Great art by its very nature is unpredictable. It is impossible to tell where or when it will crop up next.

To appease #OscarsSoWhite there is a simple solution: make a category of Best Black Actor/Film/Whatever and then black people can be nominated and guaranteed to win an Oscar every single year. But for obvious reasons such a solution is absurd and more importantly insulting to every black person nominated because it casts a shadow over whether those nominated truly deserved it or whether it was some sort of pity vote. Such a designation would automatically consign black people to the kids table. There is a parallel to this already in the Animation category where a movie like Pixar's "Inside Out" may have made the Best Picture list if had not already been guaranteed an Oscar in a category with little competition.

For if their solution of more black studio heads and black academy members were granted, that would still not be a guarantee of recognition every single year. Why? Because the Oscars recognize merit not demographics or how much money a class of people have. People who know something about movies and pay attention to the Oscars recognize this. I certainly do not agree with all of the Academy's choices every year (as my picks will suggest) but I have seen enough of the movies to know that it isn't simply politics. More than usual the people who deserve recognition, get it. If they didn't, Oscars would not have gone to outsiders such as Marlon Brando, George C. Scott, Roman Polanski, and Woody Allen, several of whom refused to accept them. The cynicism which fuels #OscarsSoWhite is perhaps the most annoying thing about it. They probably haven't seen the movies. They chose this controversy because it was visible and immediate and with the foreknowledge that any argument it may spawn could be shouted down with all the history of slavery and segregation.

These people may then suggest that #OscarsSoWhite is helpful because it starts the argument. Anyone who has been acquainted with bad artists is familiar with this line of thinking. These are the same people that make offensively bad movies and go on to defend their incompetence by suggesting that all they care about is "reaction" or that it doesn't matter that their art lacks effort or meaning because they meant to do it that way. I strongly reject this type of nihilistic thinking. The difference between shit and art and between good political discourse and bad political discourse amount to the same thing. That the person behind it cared enough about people to put some effort into what they were doing and tried (and hopefully succeeded) in illuminating the world around us. This is something #OscarsSoWhite lacks. It got people mad at each other for stupid reasons and the real problems (which necessarily require cooperation between diverse groups of people that it sowed anger amongst) are still unsolved.

Okay here are my Oscar Picks.

BEST USE OF A SONG

It was viewed as a snub when the screenwriters of "Straight Outta Compton" were nominated because they were white. What this ignores is the power of the N.W.A. lyrics that are indispensable to the movie and probably instrumental in the reason the movie was nominated in the writing category.

"Fuck Tha Police" Straight Outta Compton
"Good Vibrations" Love and Mercy
"Something Stupid" Joy
"You Belong to Me" Carol
"Make Them Laugh" Minions



BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

I only saw one foreign language film this year but it was special enough for me to include the category.

White God, Hungary




COSTUME DESIGN & MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING

I'm combining these categories because they have essentially the same nominees.

Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Carol
The Hateful Eight




SOUND EDITING & SOUND MIXING

Again I'm combining categories because the nominees are the same but also because one film is going to be getting a lot of the these categories

Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Revenant
Sicario



PRODUCTION DESIGN

Guess who?

Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
The Martian
Room
Ex Machina




VISUAL EFFECTS

I actually did not understand how Mad Max: Fury Road lost this one but I really liked the movie who they lost to so I'm going to just go with the flow and spread the wealth around.

Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Revenant
The Martian





FILM EDITING

If Mad Max: Fury Road hadn't got every other prize I'm not sure I would be giving this to somebody else but here we are. Needles to say they both have great editing.

The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens




BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Always the major story every year in this category is Roger Deakins being snubbed again. The weird thing is that for the last three years, Lubezki has straight up beaten him with some masterful cinematography

The Revenant - Emmanuel Lubezki
Sicario - Roger Deakins
Mad Max: Fury Road - John Seale
Beasts of No Nation - Cary Fukunaga
The Hateful Eight - Richard Richardson




BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

If I could pick a movie that encapsulated 2015 the best it would be "Results," a movie essentially about the gig economy and how that affects relationships. I could not have been imagined five years ago and Kevin Corrigan is the best part of it.

Kevin Corrigan - Results
Mark Rylance - Bridge of Spies
Steve Carell - The Big Short
Nicholas Hoult - Mad Max: Fury Road
Tom Hardy - The Revenant




BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Alicia Vikander won the Oscar for a movie I haven't seen but she may as well have won it for this movie as well.

Alicia Vikander - Ex Machina
Julie Walters - Brooklyn
Rooney Mara - Carol
Phyllis Smith - Inside Out
Sonoya Mizuno - Ex Machina




BEST ACTOR

Boy if anyone ever deserved an Oscar both for the movie he was in and for all the great movies he has been apart of it would be Dicaprio.

Leonardo Dicaprio - The Revenant
Samuel L. Jackson - The Hateful Eight
Peter Saarsgaard - Experimenter
Idris Elba - Beasts of No Nation
Guy Pearce - Results




BEST ACTRESS

It is amazing how the two most intense movies of the year, "Room" and "The Revenant," are so dissimilar to each other.

Brie Larson - Room
Cate Blanchett - Carol
Elizabeth Banks - Love and Mercy
Charlize Theron - Mad Max: Fury Road
Saoirse Ronan - Brooklyn





BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Best Animated Film Category is B.S. and I won't be including it this year.

Inside Out - Pixar
Ex Machina
Results
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton





BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

I've studied finance and so I know how it can be to make it funny, soulful, and entertaining and still be true to the source material. Adam McKay and Charles Randolph did that masterfully in this movie.

The Big Short
The Martian
Room
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Brooklyn




BEST DIRECTOR

I actually don't see how a movie can win every technical category and not win Best Director. This man, George Miller, did the work. I can only suspect it was because of the subject matter: post-apocalyptic road warrior grunge, which is understandable in its own way.

George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road
Alejandro Inarritu - The Revenant
Cary Fukunaga - Beasts of No Nation
Adam McKay - The Big Short
Lenny Abrahamson - Room




BEST PICTURE

Yeah I loved this movie. I thought it was almost as good as WALL-E which I felt was one of the best movies ever made. 2015 was a great year for movies, perhaps the best since 2007. Go and see as many of these as possible.

INSIDE OUT
Mad Max: Fury Road
Results
Ex Machina
Spotlight
The Big Short
Love and Mercy
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Beasts of No Nation

Hail, Caesar! (4/5 Stars)

The new Coen Brothers movie “Hail, Caesar!” is not so much a satire of the big studio soulless entertainment of film’s first half-century as much as it is a celebration of it. After all, the big all encompassing studio has long since been a ripe satirical target. However the type of entertainment it would produce, as if art were something that could be manufactured en masse in a factory, did have its admirable attributes, lots of which are on display in this movie. Here we have five “types” of movies that the producers churned out: a western with trick horse play, a Busby Berkeley dance number, a high society melodrama, sailors tap-dancing a la “On the Town” and finally a biblical epic starring the biggest movie star of them all, Baird Whitlock (played by George Clooney). The Coen Brothers put on fine displays of them all. It is entertaining though it hardly means anything. But if that is all you want in a movie, than this is a very good one. It delivers just that.

Ostensibly the movie is about Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a producer. He is not the boss of the movie studio (that guy is in New York) but he is the highest-ranking person on the lot. His job is all sorts of things and takes day and night to do it. To over simplify things, he keeps the productions running and the stars (who are full-time employees of the studio) out of trouble. He solves problems. Take for instance the case of DeeAnna Morgan (Scarlett Johannsson) the mermaid in the synchronized swimming number. She is pregnant and unwed. Eddie, conscious of what it looks like to the moral movie-going public of family friendly pictures, helps her as only the representative of a huge corporation could. He plans to keep the pregnancy a secret, hire a professional person (Jonah Hill as Joseph Silverman) to adopt the newborn, and have this person give the child up for adoption back to DeeAnna a few days later. The professional person is just that. Whenever a star does something stupid, he is keen to be framed for the crime. It is let on that he spent six months in jail for a drunk driving incident.

On one of the last days of shooting the big biblical epic "Hail, Caesar" Baird Whitlock is kidnapped from the set. The kidnappers ask for $100,000. Eddie does some math and is content to pay it after realizing it will cost more to delay shooting a week (not to mention the bad press). The kidnappers happen to be a study group of communist screenwriters. They are not so rough on Baird. After slipping him a mickey and spiriting him to an isolated beach house, he is let in on the study group. They calmly and professorially explain Communism to him. He is receptive although that may be only his dim nature.

Mirroring this is the studios treatment of Jesus in “Hail, Caesar” which seems to look a lot like Ben Hur. The studio wants to give the people what they want (Jesus!) but do not want to offend anyone (an opinion on Jesus!). To that end, Eddie invites three priests from three Christian denominations and one rabbi to his office. He shows them the script and asks their opinion. There is nothing to object to as Jesus is seen only once in one scene with his back towards the camera (like “Ben Hur”). Nobody agrees on Jesus but nobody objects to the script because nothing is actually said about Jesus. Hollywood has pulled this fast one from time immemorial and for good reason too. Whenever an artist has something to say (take for instance Scorsese’s “Last Temptation of Christ,”) they are met with protests. Jesus remains hidden from big studio mass-market films to this day. 

Not that the Coens do the communists any favors. It turns out, through a lot of intellectual rigamarole and bandying about, the Communists want the ransom money because they are greedy. That claim it as payback for their services because they have been blackballed but are still working. The fact that they care about money does not bother them. An old venerable man explains that history is a science and that the Communist Revolution will come so it does not matter whether the study group acts selfishly. In fact to act selfishly will hasten the revolution so acting in their self-interest is in furtherance of their cause anyway. I dislike communists and though I have sympathy for anyone who is unfairly kept unemployed (what kind of good capitalist would I be if I were not) I love the fact that Hollywood Communists are being made fun in this movie for their stupid political beliefs. I have seen nothing but tragedies about them so far (thanks a lot McCarthy for turning them into noble sufferrors) so I consider this as a relief on the subject. The only thing worse than letting the Communists write screenplays was not letting them write screenplays. At least that way people could have a demonstration of how dumb is the philosophy.  

But I get carried away. The point of the movie is the studio fun. On great display is Alden Enrenreich (as Hobie Doyle) who is the cowboy of the film. He actually can do all sorts of tricks with a lasso. In fact, on a dinner date he takes a noodle of spaghetti, makes a lasso out of it, and hooks his dates thumb from across the table. Amazing! Now that’s entertainment. Also Channing Tatum does a great tap dancing number as a sailor who is not gay among a bunch of other sailors who are also not gay. The song is called “No Dames” and is about how when they are all at sea together there will be no dames. It is not gay. It is sad. Do not be tricked by the smiles and tap dancing.

Anomalisa (3/5 Stars)

Back in 2008, when I reviewed Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” I wondered if he would retire. I mean what more could he say? (By the way isn’t it amazing that I can refer to a review I wrote eight years ago?) When I heard that he was coming out with a stop-motion animation movie this year, I saw a glimmer of hope that the idea was just crazy and ambitious enough to not be a let down from his previous masterpiece. Well, it was inevitably a let down. The worst thing had to be that I had to wait eight years to see it. If he had spent a year or two making this in between bigger projects I would have been totally content. But the prospect of waiting several more years for him to create something else after this movie is rather painful. I guess what I’m saying is that I want more, Charlie Kaufman. “Anomalisa” wasn’t enough. Give me more!

Michael Stone, a graying middle-aged man voiced by David Thewlis, has just landed in Cincinnatti to speak at a customer service convention. He is big stuff in the area. Several times his book is referred to as the cause of a 90% boost in efficiency. Not that the movie cares much about customer service. The choice has been made it seems for ironic purposes. Michael Stone is suffering from some kind of strange mental problem. Everyone he meets has the same face and the same voice (Tom Noonan’s). Even when he calls home he hears over the phone the same voice for his wife and son.  

The hint for what is happening is in the name of the hotel he is staying at: Fregoli. He has what is called a Fregoli delusion: wherein the sufferor sees the same face and voice for every person he meets. The one exception is a woman he meets named Lisa, voice by Jennifer Jason Leigh. She is an anomaly, hence the title: Anomalisa. He immediately falls in love.

It does take awhile for this to be set up. The first half of the movie attempts to establish the dullness of this man’s life and accomplishes the task. In the second half he meets Lisa, they involve themselves in a not so torrid love affair, and the very next day over breakfast her face and voice tragically turns into Tom Noonan’s.

At that point I was rather interested in what was happening. In particular, there is a dream sequence that is funny and exciting. But too bad, the movie ends with no third act or resolution. Some more astute friends of mine observed that the Fregoli delusion was just a metaphor for his sad relations with women. I noted with some disappointment that this mundane explanation was more likely than my apparent misunderstanding that the movie was literally about the Fregoli delusion. I feel it would have been a more interesting movie if it were literally about the Fregoli delusion. Oh, well. 

I really hope it will not be another eight years for the next Charlie Kaufman movie to come about.

Brooklyn (4/5 Stars)

Winter movies are generally awards fare and thus tend to gravitate toward the dramatic. The two movies I saw before this one were “The Revenant” and “Room” the two most intense movies of the year. I was ripe then to see “Brooklyn” an adorable movie about nice people in pretty places.

Nick Hornby adapted “Brooklyn” from the book by Colm Toibin about a young Irish woman who immigrates to America. Nick Hornby, well known for his novels about young men (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy) has made his last three projects on adapted screenplays of novels about young women (An Education, Wild, and now Brooklyn). It is a pleasant development and does its little job in trying to fill the yawning chasm in the modern movie marketplace for stories about women. His skill in drawing women is evident in the fact that the lead actress in each of his movies has gone on to score an Oscar nomination. Saoirse Ronan, who plays the lead this time, Ellis, is no exception.

Ellis leaves Ireland for economic opportunity. At home there is no job better than part time cashier. In America, she has the opportunity to develop. There are many people helping her. Her family in Ireland is supportive. In NYC, a kindly Irish Catholic priest (played by Jim Broadbent) helps her get a home in a boarding house, a job in a fancy Manhattan department store, and night classes for accounting. Such are the benefits of being Irish and immigrating to America in the 1950s as opposed to the 1850s. She is standing on the shoulders of 100 years of past immigrants who are kin to help her out. About the worst that happens to her is a bout of homesickness, which is cute because it only happens when nice people miss nice people.

Of special mention is the boarding house and the nightly dinners there. At the head of the table is Mrs. Keogh (Julie Walters) who prides herself on being strict and proper but betrays an absolute glee in spending her nights around the table with several twenty-something girls. She and the other girls, Patty (Emily Brett Rickards), Diana (Eve Macklin), and Shelia (Nora-Jane Noone), pull off something rather rare in movies. We have all seen characters that are funny without knowing it and characters that make wisecracks meant obviously for the consumption of a movie audience. But it is rare to feel like a fly on the wall in a place where there are several obviously witty people genuinely having a good time talking to each other. That is what is going on in these boarding room dining room scenes and it is a delight to watch them. I want to be there.

The Irish community in Brooklyn goes so far in helping Ellis that they actually facilitate her love life as well. She meets an Italian named Tony at a church dance. They start dating and Tony is a swell guy. He proposes something that he feels might be too fast and it turns out to be dinner with his family.

This leads to the only real conflict in the movie. At some point Ellis goes back to Ireland. She is walking around her dowdy small town with her education (which swiftly lands her a good job) and her glamorous NYC style (she stands out to say the least) and quickly attracts the small town’s most eligible bachelor, Jim Farrell (Domnhall Gleeson, again.) So now there is a love triangle but each guy is great so the audience isn’t really sweating it. I liked this movie. If you ever wanted a safe evening where nobody anywhere would be offended by anything and it also would be a decent movie, than this one is recommended.

Room (5/5 Stars)

If I were to compare the experience of watching “Room” to another movie, I would settle on a very odd choice: Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” Not because it has comparable subject matter but because the two movies have a first half that rivals the best movies ever made and a second half that is merely good. I would suggest anyone somewhat interested in seeing “Room” to read as little about it as possible. Many of the spoilers occur quite early in the movie. Thus it is impossible to discuss the movie without giving something away. So stop reading if you intend on seeing it someday.

“Room” was directed by Lenny Abrahamson. He entered my consciousness with last year’s “Frank” starring Michael Fassbender as a very alternative musician. “Frank” was an exceptionally unique movie at turns comical and whimsically strange. This movie is especially gritty and seriously real. The contrast shows Abrahamson’s exceptional range through two movies. I highly anticipate his next one.

“Room” was adapted by Emma Donoghue from the novel “Room” by Emma Donoghue. It is somewhat rare that a novelist would write the screenplay to her own book but given the skillful way it was accomplished here it is more a question of why it is not done more often. I expect the original conceit of the book is still present in the movie. It is quite the conceit. The story is told by a five-year-old boy named Jack who lives in Room with Ma. Also in Room is Bed, Sink, Dresser, and assortment of other household items. What makes Room special is that all these supposedly common household items are not common at all. In fact, there is only one of them known in existence (at least to Jack) and thus each is referred to in the capital. It dawns on the audience that as far as Jack knows, nothing exists outside of Room. It is slowly revealed that his mother has been kidnapped and imprisoned by a man named Old Nick for seven years. He has continually raped her for that entire time thus resulting at least once in a pregnancy. Apparently Ma has not told Jack about the outside world yet.

The first half of the movie contains not only the explanation of what the situation is but also much specificity on how raising a child in a garden shed for five years works. The reality of it automatically makes the situation very intense. That we are then witness to an ingenious scheme of escape in which much of the success of the outcome relies almost entirely on how Jack will react to a lot of things he has never seen before in a situation of incredible danger, is what I meant by the first half of movie being one of the best one hour of movie storytelling I have ever seen. 

Now given that all of this takes place in a little room and consists of a mother and son talking to each other makes the performances very important to the success of the story. In this way, Brie Larson, who plays Ma, has earned her inevitable Best Actress Oscar. She plays her character on many levels: in what she perceives, in what she chooses to reveal to her son, in how she explains to her son what she reveals, and how she feels about all the risks she must make him take. Jacob Tremblay plays Jack in such a realistic way that one would hardly think a five year old would be capable of doing it.

I do not know how much more I am going to willing to write about the movie. This will be one of my shortest reviews in a while as I got to this point and then decided not to write about the second half. You know what other artwork I was reminded of when I saw this movie. I was reminded of Mary Shelley’s book “Frankenstein.” Imagine seeing the world for the first time as a fully conscious creature. There is a moment in this movie where Jack sees the sky for the first time. It is just incredible to be there.