Friday's Old Fashioned: Brewster McCloud (1970)

“Brewster McCloud” was the result of a familiar Hollywood scenario in which a filmmaker (Robert Altman) hits it so big (M.A.S.H.) that he receives carte blanche from the moneybags-that-be with his next movie. Even by those standards, though, the maverick Altman swung for the fences. Indeed, the original screenplay by Doran William Cannon, heavily revised by the director, was set in New York but moved to Houston, much of it taking place in and around the Astrodome, the so-called Eighth Wonder of the World, a monument to an American kind of excess destined to eventually go bust. “Brewster McCloud” begins with a bang, concludes with a bigger bang, and in-between exists as a wild, wandering satire of a country it can’t quite bring itself to believe in, maybe portending the 70s, maybe just responding to what was in the air. In opens with a deliberate Frank Debrin-ish recitation of the National Anthem by Daphne Heap, who is played by Margaret Hamilton, who was The Wicked Witch of the West, which Altman makes explicit by putting her in ruby slippers, giving way to a performance by the Merry Clayton of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem, and reminding us how good our national anthem could be, never mind our country.

Is it any wonder the eponymous Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) has taken to a fallout shelter beneath the Astrodome where, aided by something like a revisionist Clarence Odbody, a guardian angel (Sally Kellerman) who seems to have lost her wings, he goes about building his own mechanical wings to take flight like a bird and escape all this mess. Costumed in a red and white striped shirt that evokes Where’s Waldo, Brewster never quite entirely takes flight as a true character himself. He often recedes into the background of a movie in which he’s nominally in the foreground, with Cort’s deliberately standoffish air never taking hold of the screen like Shelley DuVall as his unlikely kinda, sorta love interest, demonstrating in her inaugural onscreen role that she just seemed to arrive onscreen intact in her one-of-a-kind eccentric air.

Then again, in the parallel sequences of an unnamed professor (René Auberjonois) rattling on and on about birds, these monologues essentially describing the behavior of Brewster, it’s a little like he’s in a National Geographic special, a specimen being observed. And he’s a specimen stranded in a world of ignoramuses, racists, and elites. Altman doesn’t let us simply work that out for ourselves; he makes it as pointed as possible, highlighted in how he calls these, shall we say, deplorables out by having bird poop repeatedly fall on them from above, ravens as sort of spiritual hecklers, calling strikes and balls on the playing God phonies below.

The denouement, though, in which Brewster does take to the air with his artificial wings is limited to the Astrodome’s interior, meaning that despite the initial free-feeling nature of the scene, undergirded with inspiring music, he’s still a caged bird. Even then, I wasn’t quite ready for the utterly dark turn this moment takes, joy giving way to agony giving way to horror. And if I wasn’t quite ready for it, I was even less ready for how the utterly dark turn took another turn right back into joy, albeit a brutally ironic kind of joy, deriding breaking the fourth wall to essentially invite us into the horror, a beautifully bewildering coda. It’s nothing new, of course, both before and after “Brewster McCloud,” to equate our society with a bloodthirsty circus crowd but rarely have I seen it conveyed with such manic rage. 

Americana

“Americana” is one of those there’s-a-movie-in-there-somewhere movies. Its interlocking narratives of various characters seeking a valuable Native American artifact in rural South Dakota hints at a darkly comic revisionist cowboys and Indians western though writer/director Tony Test can never quite finesse it into anything so substantial. His tone often veers, a campy crime drama striving for barbed satire, or a B-movie straining to be an A-list movie with something to say, just never quite sure how to say it, building to a big multi-character shootout in which gunfire becomes a wannabe spackle for all those tonal holes. Tost was the show runner of the second season of “Poker Face,” but while that show also tries out different tones from episode to episode, Natasha Lyonne’s unique air helps meld it together. And though Sydney Sweeney is featured on the “Americana” poster, she is merely one part of an ensemble, and her character, like the others, is defined more by a gimmick than an inner life. She has a stutter, and Lefty (Paul Walter Hauser) is a righty, and a young boy (Gavin Maddox Bergman) claims he’s in the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, the last one a set-up with no punchline. The ever-impressive Hauser gives the one performance that seems most at home, believably rendering a big-hearted sap who can’t help walking straight into a spiderweb, which is where everyone in the real-life cast ends up, like it or not.

Caught Stealing

Whether you love them, hate them, or have mixed feelings about him, Darren Aronofsky creates genuine cinematic experiences. Those experiences, however, tend to be intense; sometimes they even put their finger in your eye. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I have relished as many Aronofsky experiences as I have abhorred, but it’s also nice to see that in “Caught Stealing,” for the first time he seems to be making a movie for no higher purpose than the hell of it. That’s not to suggest this comedy neo-noir is lighthearted; far from it. You still must steel yourself to endure some vicious violence, vivid projectile vomit, and a recurring car crash brutally rendered. But. If you choose to engage his wavelength, you might just find yourself walking away from “Caught Stealing” not saying, “I admired it,” but “I enjoyed that.”

The title refers to Lower East Side bartender Hank Thompson’s (Austin Butler) being a one-time highly regarded baseball prospect before a high-speed one-car crash ended his dreams of playing in the show, but also references Aronofsky himself, essentially making it clear he means “Caught Stealing” as pastiche. The emergent underworld odyssey of Hank nods to Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” rendered explicit in that movie’s star Griffin Dunne appearing in “Caught Stealing” as Hank’s boss, and the late 90s setting evokes not just Quentin Tarantino but so many Quentin Tarantino rip-offs, a soundtrack of pop hits and a litany of big names in small parts, right down to the concluding cameo that feel as spot-on as it does superfluous. “Caught Stealing,” though, proves more than merely some glossy replicant by bringing its main character to genuine life. 

To this point in his career, Butler has generally opted for a stylized approach to acting, but in “Caught Stealing” he shifts into a remarkably successful naturalistic register. He exudes a benevolence, and a righteous moral center, despite the character’s tendency toward being his own worst enemy. It’s what makes it so believable that his paramedic girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) would be so drawn to him. Butler and Kravitz, in fact, have some of the year’s most electrifying chemistry, two people who feel truly in love and excited by the other’s presence, and Aronofsky does not rush past it but revels in it, embodying one of the oldest, truest reasons we go to the movies, to see beautiful people carousing onscreen. And this is why when the script moves Yvonne aside, there is disappointment but also resonance; it hurts; it counts. 

“Caught Stealing” is set in motion by Hank being left in the care of his punk next-door neighbor Russ’s (Matt Smith) cat when he needs to jump back across the pond for a family emergency. It doesn’t take long, though, for Russian mobsters to come looking for Russ, and Hasidic gangsters too, not to mention an NYPD narcotics detective, all of whom are searching for a key of which Hank belatedly realizes he has been left in possession. If the cat had been a black one, this might have signified Hank being caught under the cloud of bad luck, given how all the people in his close orbit suffer as he tries to finagle a way out of this jam. But the feline is a grey Siberian forest cat, and the script is careful to make clear that while Hank catches a truly bad break, he is equally guilty of bringing harm to the people closest to him via his own poor decision-making, all tied back to the car crash. And that’s why Aronofsky returning to the car crash again and again in flashback is not excessive but apt, demonstrating the cycle he is stuck in, and only through another car crash does he realize he can finally break that cycle and set himself free. 

Friday's Old Fashioned: Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

“Manhattan Murder Mystery” begins with a thunderous overture in the form of Bobby Short’s 1973 recording of Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York” as the camera sweeps overhead with panoramic views of the glittering city skyline at night. Carol Lipton (Diane Keaton) might like New York, or have liked it once, but she seems less enamored as the movie opens, palpably suffering through a New York Rangers hockey game at Madison Square Garden to which she has been dragged by her husband Larry (Woody Allen). Is it any wonder when they return home to their apartment and their down-the-hall neighbors Paul and Lillian House (Jerry Adler and Lynn Cohen, respectively) invite them over some late-night coffee, she jumps at the chance despite her spouse’s protestations? When Lillian asks Carol if she works, she replies that she used to, at an ad agency, but that was many years ago. This comment is never followed up on, but it doesn’t need to be. Her age is never said, but she and Larry have a son in college and Keaton was 47 at the time of “Manhattan Murder Mystery’s” release and there is a palpable middle-age drift in Keaton’s line reading of “many years ago,” one that communicates how Carol’s life did not slip off track, necessarily, but started to coast. When Mrs. House turns up dead, ascribed to a mysterious heart condition, Carol becomes convinced a murder has been committed and sets out to solve it.

In many ways, “Manhattan Murder Mystery” feels familiar, but that’s part of the point. “Paddington” and “Paddington 2” director Paul King might have encouraged his cast to pull inspiration from writer/director Allen’s 1993 comedy, but Allen’s 1993 comedy is pulling inspiration from the noirs of the 40s and 50s. “Too much ‘Double Indemnity,’” Larry cautions when Carol spitballs insurance as Mr. House’s possible motive. In truth, “Manhattan Murder Mystery” is nowhere near as tightly plotted as that masterpiece. There are contrivances galore and myriad gaps in logic and the conclusion, itself an ode to “The Lady from Shanghai,” is a bit underwhelming. Not that it matters. Allen is more focused on comedy than precise narrative coherence, yielding at least one true classic bit, the falsification of a phone call, the scene that to which “Paddington 2” paid gleeful homage. Even more than that, though, “Manhattan Murder Mystery” succeeds via the chemistry and energy of its leads, reteaming for the first time since the 70s, though unlike “Annie Hall” in which Allen’s character led the narrative, Keaton’s leads this one, a refreshing and crucial change of pace.

In his New Yorker obituary for Keaton, Hilton Als noted that what made their collaborations so successful was that “Keaton never gives us the feeling that she actually hears or understands what Allen is saying.” This was never truer than in “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” so much that Allen wrote it into the text, a hilarious sequence in which Larry declares that he forbids Carol from breaking into the House’s apartment in the middle of the night. She breaks in anyway. “Is that what you do when I’m forbidding?” he rhetorically, haplessly asks. Though Larry is spurred to win his wife back over, motivated in part by their mutual friend Ted (Alan Alda, perfect), recently divorced and nursing a longtime crush on Carol, the chief excitement is in watching Carol unlock a newfound sense of joy. At one point, she remarks that she feels “dizzy with freedom,” and Keaton brings that sentiment to life, undergirded in the handheld camerawork. In most movies, the camera drives the action, but in “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” the camera hastening around corners and down halls and across streets always feels as if it’s hustling to keep up with her. 

The Lost Bus

In “The Lost Bus,” the worst wildfire in California’s history, 2018’s Camp Fire, which burned up 150,000 acres, caused 16 million in damage, and took 85 lives, is seen predominantly through the eyes of real-life school bus driver Kevin McKay who was enlisted to evacuate 22 students and their two teachers to safety. Director Paul Greengrass and his co-screenwriter Brad Inglesby load up their Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) with all manner of personal problems, many of which were based on fact, like a sick son, and some which were not, like his work superior (Ashlie Atkinson) not being too keen on his job performance. I understand the dramatic impulse given a factual story that does not provide traditional tidy closure, but it can’t help feeling callous, creating a narrative hurdle for Kevin to cross, as if shepherding kids through an inferno is the only way he can prove his self-worth. It makes “The Lost Bus” feel like the sort of Hollywood disaster movie it often transcends. 

The real drama is strictly elemental, a battle against the elements, man v fire. Rather than a distant cloud of smoke, Greengrass does not recount the start of the fire, a faulty power line stemming from corporate malfeasance and spurred on by unrelenting dry conditions, through the point-of-view of a character but with the camera itself, showing that deadly wind whipping through trees, as if evoking the wildfire’s emergent pulse, not just bringing the blaze to life but making it feel terrifyingly alive. And though Greengrass keeps touching base with the firefighters and their increasingly futile efforts at containment, he smartly keeps his focus on the bus while also keeping any sense of exploitative action set pieces to a minimum. In doing so, the lost bus becomes a kind of allegory, akin to a skiff in a flood, of mankind overwhelmed in a losing battle against the escalating effects of climate change. At one point, rather than continuing to try and navigate their way out of the all-encompassing smoke, Kevin decides to just stop the bus when he realizes they seem to be in the one place where the fire isn’t, hoping to wait it out. But eventually, the fire finds them anyway. 

A House of Dynamite

As best I can recall, “A House of Dynamite” is the only Netflix movie I have ever seen in a movie theater first. And I was distressed to learn that even on the big screen, Kathryn Bigelow’s ticking clock nuclear thriller was coated in that same stale streaming sheen endemic to the small screen. It might have been appropriate, though, at least from my point of view, given that the doomsday movies I grew up with – “The Day After,” “Special Bulletin” – were all made for TV. Yet, even if “A House of Dynamite” can sometimes look like television, it never feels like television, infused with a couple crucial anti-plot touches in the form of an enigmatic inciting incident and ending. And while Bigelow’s screenplay co-written with Noah Oppenheim contains some clumsy dialogue, like a recurring line ripped from the godawful “Armageddon” (“This is insanity” - “No, this is reality”) and the weighty observation giving the film its title cited as being plucked from a podcast, god help us, she is not just visually mapping her narrative but creating a deliberately distressing emotional experience. 

“A House of Dynamite” begins with White House Situation Room Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) tending to a sick child, and Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) at Alaska’s Fort Greely missile-defense complex taking a tense phone call, unnecessary dollops of character. The real power comes from simply watching Walker go to work, like she has a thousand times before, a breakfast order becoming a split-second window into her whole character, the necessity of staying on task and not wasting time, which becomes paramount when it becomes clear an unattributed intercontinental ballistic missile is not one more exercise but a real-world threat, headed for the United States, namely Chicago, as if my city hasn’t suffered enough in 2025. Everybody has trained for this, they are constantly reminded, but in carefully laying out the procedures born of that training, we are made to realize that even when every i is dotted and every t is crossed, the system is not necessarily infallible. 

Walker is not the only prominent character in “A House of Dynamite”; there is also Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) trying to determine the responsible aggressor, General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), senior officer at the U.S. Strategic Command, focusing on potential retaliation, and, of course, the President of the United States (Idris Elba), forced to make the ultimate call. Rather than crosscutting between them, however, Bigelow and Oppenheim choose to present “A House of Dynamite” as a triptych. Just as the missile is about to make an impact, Bigelow flashes back twice more to see the same scenario play out from other vantage points. It has a peculiar effect, cutting tension that might have been more preeminent had it presented these events simultaneously, and not really providing alternate viewpoints as a typical Rashomon effect might suggest. What it does, though, is play with and eventually subvert our Hollywood-coded expectations that there must be a solution to this apocalyptic problem. If Walker didn’t solve it, then Brady will, and if Brady doesn’t, then Potus will…but will he?

     
Bigelow keeps her locales limited, never even providing us an establishing shot of Chicago, just a dot on a map. This is akin to “Dr. Strangelove,” which stuck to just a few sets to evoke a small number of increasingly mad men holding the fate of the world in their hands, though in “A House of Dynamite,” it underscores how the people enlisted to help protect our fate might themselves be just like us: helpless. Unlike the former, the latter is not a comedy, and Bigelow’s handheld camerawork emphasizes drama and suspense, but there is emergent bleak humor too. Letts is essentially playing “Dr. Strangelove’s” Buck C. Turgidson straight, and though we are conditioned to expect POTUS to rise to the occasion, Elba’s harried air and the way he slumps in his seat in his Presidential Limo both suggest someone shrinking from it. A phone call to his wife as he labors to make a call about a counterstrike becomes a pointed evocation of how this is all up to him, which might be the movie’s single most terrifying moment if you consider, as Bigelow no doubt intends us to, it in light of the real POTUS. 

Embedded throughout “A House of Dynamite” is the struggle to determine the party responsible for firing the missile in the first place, an ambiguity that foreshadows an equally ambiguous ending. That ambiguity, however, is no cop-out but on purpose. In the great post-Cold War thriller “Crimson Tide, Denzel Washington’s Naval lieutenant commander observes that in the nuclear age, the true enemy is war itself. In the end, Bigelow doesn’t say it; she shows it.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Indian Runner (1991)

In preparation for the release today of the Bruce Springsteen biopic about recording his 1982 album “Nebraska,” I rewatched “The Indian Runner,” Sean Penn’s 1991 directorial debut inspired by a song from that same album. The song was “Highway Patrolman,” telling the story of two brothers, Joe and Frankie Roberts (respectively, David Morse and Viggo Mortensen in the movie), the former a calm family man and a state trooper, the latter a hothead prone to violence, putting a macabre spin on the chestnut Family First by charting how their relationship comes to a head. The song itself is starkly presented, just Springsteen and his guitar and harmonica, a touch of mandolin, but Penn lays “The Indian Runner” on thick with frequent bouts of ominous slow motion and scads of portentous symbolism that strive and fail to create something mythic. (He also tags the movie with a quote to ensure we don’t miss the conclusion’s point, demonstrating a lack of trust in the viewer that grinds my gears.) Penn honors the details of the verses but also fleshes them out, adding characters, a mother (Sandy Dennis) and father (Charles Bronson) for the brothers and a wife (Patricia Arquette) for Frankie, adding an extra layer of irony to Springsteen’s key observation that a man who turns his back on his family “ain’t no good.” 

On the other hand, Penn eschews trying to visually translate the chorus, the one about Joe and Frankie taking turns dancing with Joe’s future wife Maria (Valeria Golino in the film) “as the band played Night of the Johnstown Flood.” It’s as beautiful a lyric as Springsteen ever composed, and maybe Penn knew he couldn’t do it justice, but it also speaks to what’s missing from “The Indian Runner”: just the tiniest crack of light. It is a morose experience, perhaps reflective of a writer/director it is said once smoked four packs a day. Brief montages of happiness feel forced, ostensible beatific images of Joe and his family skew oddly mournful, and though Bronson’s powerful performance as Mr. Roberts initially seems to suggest a hard-won peace with the world, that peace proves a lie.

Frankie’s father has essentially written his son off as a lost cause and you can understand why. He’s a real nasty piece of work, played by Mortensen as such, giving even his few moments of grace the feel of a sly-grinned con. He’s virtually impossible to like and that’s the point: Penn wants to put us in the headspace of Joe, to grapple with the struggle of offering love and protection to someone so unworthy of it. I appreciate that approach, but there is an appreciable lack of tension between the brothers and no genuine sense of their deep roots that renders this central relationship inert. I can’t imagine Penn didn’t see the two sides of himself in Joe and Frankie and meant it as a manifestation of such, and it’s why the whole time I was watching, even if 1991 technology might have made it impossible, I wished Penn would have gone full Michael B. Jordan x 2 in “Sinners” and just played both parts himself. That might have made for something special.