The Hierarchy Of Cinematic Female Ass Kickers

My friend Brad, movie buff extraordinaire, recently left a comment on the Facebook that went like this: "Listen 'Fast & Furious' franchise, I've learned to suspend my disbelief with your various vehicular stunts and lax grasp of physics. I will not, however, believe for one second that Michelle Rodriguez, tough though she may be, could ever hold her own (let alone win) against Gina Carano in hand-to-hand combat. That is simply asking too much."

I have, of course, not seen the movie in question, and will not see the movie in question, but, nevertheless, this, as it must, got me to thinking. Could Michelle Rodriguez really defeat Gina Carano in hand-to-hand combat? After all, Carano is a former mixed martial artist, once ranked as high as third in the world at her weight class.

Well, no. She couldn't. Not in real life, anyway, but what we're discussing here is movie life. And that's different. And while Brad is very much talking about movie life, not real life, I submit that in movie life Michelle Rodriguez could win in hand-to-hand combat against Gina Carano.

I submit this because winning in hand-to-hand combat in movie life goes beyond the physical specs. Winning in hand-to-hand combat in movie life is based not simply on billing but on je'ne sai quoi, and, most crucially, The Humphrey Bogart Factor.

The Humphrey Bogart Factor stipulates that a small, short man with lifts in his shoes and a toupee is the greatest badass the movies have ever known. Thus, Michelle Rodriguez could win in hand-to-hand combat against Gina Carano.

Which brings us to the ultimate question: where does Michelle Rodriguez rank in The Hierarchy Of Cinematic Female Ass Kickers?

The Hierarchy Of Cinematic Female Ass Kickers

The Jessica Chastain Level (level one). 

The back room brawler. Smoking cigars, calling shots, reciting terse monologues, taking names on legal pads, remotely kicking ass.

The Jennifer Garner Level (level two). 

The nicey-nice ass-kicker. She's in the field, but she also needs her ass-kicking to be morally justified. Revenge is questionable, consummate badassery is on a case-by-case basis.

The Michelle Rodriguez Level (level three). 

The bar room brawler. Sucker punching. Trash talking. Whiskey bottle over head breaking. Probably doesn't like you (but that's mostly because she doesn't like anyone). Could easily handle the nicey-nice ass-kicker because, you know, she'd cheat.

The Kate Beckinsale Level (level four). 

The elegant levitating ass kicker. Kicks ass elegantly but efficiently - always efficiently. Looks out of her weight class but makes up for it with agility and Beckinsality (defined as: capable of appearing to sport chic fangs when no fangs are actually present). Can also levitate.

The Angelina Jolie Level (level five). 

The pre-eminent ass kicker. The last resort. The entire national defense system in a single person. The red telephone. Call if hostile aliens invade or if a nuclear warhead needs to be caught in mid-air, chewed up and spit out. She could end all action movies in the first 10 minutes but chooses not to for her own entertainment as much as yours.

Fruitvale Station

There is a crucial scene at the midway point of the generally true-to-life account of 23 year old Oscar Grant who was shot and killed by a police officer on a train platform in Oakland on New Year’s Eve 2008. Oscar, played by Michael B. Jordan in the film, and his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), mother to his son, are in the city with friends and revelers for NYE. It is late. Sophina needs to use the bathroom. No place is open. So Oscar talks a shopkeeper just closing up, a Middle Eastern shopkeeper, into letting her use his restroom. He agrees. He doesn’t even accept Oscar’s offer of his last ten bucks. Then, another couple turns up, a white couple. She is pregnant and needs to use the bathroom, and so Oscar convinces the shopkeeper to allow one more patron. Black. White. Middle Eastern. The world singing in perfect harmony.

I have no idea if this scene actually took place. In the tireless (tired?) “what-did-and-did-not-really-happen” breakdowns regarding this film, I have not seen this scene addressed. It probably didn’t. But maybe it did. I’d at least like to think it did, and why wouldn’t I? It’s essentially “Fruitvale Station” buying the world a Coke. Of course, the scene is also stained by what we know is coming – that is, in but precious little time Oscar will be laying on a BART platform, shot in the back, the harrowing ordeal improbably captured via cellphone footage in the manner of amateur war photography.

The film opens with this footage. It is as disturbing as the first time you saw it. Bullets are discharged from guns and into the bodies of people in movies across the globe at alarming rates, but to hear one bullet fired from one gun into the body of one person for real will still put a lump in your throat. Yet, strictly in cinematic terms, I fear that my issue with the film stems directly from choosing to open with this breath-vanquishing footage.

Consider “Zero Dark Thirty.” That film opened over black with audio of real life phone calls from inside the World Trade Center the morning of Septemeber 11th. This was a scarifying way of showing how everything that happens in the film to come is a result of this. The cellphone footage at the open of “Fruitvale Station” works to show that Oscar Grant is doomed from the get-go. And I am not entirely certain this strengthens the film.

Granted, I am someone who has preached ad nauseum about the benefits of what I like to call Tragic Inevitability, but the tragic death of Oscar Grant, as illustrated via the cellphone footage, was not inevitable. It was sudden and terribly random. Director Ryan Coogler, however, demonstrating significant craft for his first feature, the film moving briskly but never feeling rushed, fills “Fruitvale Station” with portents of doom. A dead pit bull in the street is the most egregious example but even something like Oscar’s mother suggesting he and Sophina take the train into the city rather than driving – which really happened – is made to feel Homer-esque rather than just an unlucky coincidence.

“Fruitvale Station” is very much a Day In The Life Of movie, as we follow Oscar around for the day, leading up to the end, seeing him cast in positives and negatives. It can be difficult to get a precise read on who Oscar Grant was in real life when the angle of any given story causes the media to slant it this way or that way, but the film presents him, more or less, as a good-hearted screw-up. We root for him, but are also fully aware he has foibles.

Jordan’s performance is the essence of likable and Diaz ably conveys the real toll of everyday heroism, but Spencer steals the show. Famous for winning an Oscar for “The Help”, a film which I decidedly did not like, she gives a wondrously realized performance. Even at the bleak end, she never gives up the faith – but she doesn’t not give it up in a showy spiritualized way. Rather she has cultivated someone whose inner strength is so awesome but so unostentatious that improbably, in her own way, she has already managed to find peace on this earth.

She never stops believing her son has earned the right to live. Which is what makes it so unfortunate that the film’s structure goes to such lengths to make it seem as if his death is inevitable.

Only God Forgives

Ryan Gosling, our ostensible hero, whose character has a name but who I kept thinking of as Moody Ryan Gosling, is on the verge of going a few illegal rounds with Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) - perhaps the God of the title because he continually unsheathes a machete from thin air (although he's not much for forgiveness). What strikes you about this moment in particular is Gosling's attire. He has just been to a pricey, if icy, dinner, and is done up to the hilt in a finely cut three piece suit. Yet, in advance of being bloodied, bruised and bashed, he has only removed his jacket. He is a man in a two piece suit, sleeves rolled up, getting much, much worse than he gives.

"Only God Forgives" is the classiest excessively violent film you will see. Director Nicolas Winding Refn, who also wrote, sets the film in Bangkok, mainly the Red Light District it seems because he saturates the film in so much creepy crimson that it actually works to sort of distort all the blood that gets spilled. And rest assured, a significant deal of blood gets spilled.

A reviewer, of course, is typically expected to provide at least a bare bones synopsis, to present the reader his or her bearings, but I struggle to determine just what the hell I'm supposed to synopsis-ize. Let's see. Man's Brother is murdered. Man's and Brother's Mother turns up to assist in exacting revenge. Pitch concluded. Roll film.

If there is any humanity - by which I simply mean the condition of being a human and not some noble, ineffable quality - in "Only God Forgives", it is found in Kristin Scott Thomas's as the vengeance-seeking Mother, a quintessential blowhard American who strides into the film with her cigarettes and profanity and begins issuing orders. With her bleached blonde hair and, uh, idiosyncratic parenting methods, I swear she's channeling Dina Lohan. Don't be surprised if Lindsay winds up fighting in the Ghang-gheng for the Golden Dragon.

Most of the film's dialogue belongs to Thomas and the remainder of the screenplay must not have been much more than a sketchbook for the potential poses Ryan Gosling could strike. He does so little with his face, though, you will find yourself fixating on his slightly slashed eyebrow and considering what its supposed to symbolize.

All this might make it easy to dismiss "Only God Forgives" as nothing beyond an exercise in filmmaking, which should not necessarily lead to a dismissal, but I dare say Refn, in his own weird way, is up to something. Consider the striking prostitute named Mai (Rhatha Phongam) that Moody Ryan Gosling routinely visits and even briefly asks to pose as his better half. An early scene finds Mai tying Gosling's hands to a chair, sitting on the edge of the bed across from him and pleasuring herself - presumably for his benefit. But as she does, Gosling's mind flashes to disturbing images of having his hands sliced off by Chang's machete. Yikes.

This will occur again at moments of what should be high erotica - Gosling dreaming of his hands going the way of firewood. Meanwhile his murdered Brother (Tom Burke), whose murder sets in motion the theoretical story, is murdered because he sought out a prostitute, not to gain pleasure but to murder her.

Violence in lieu of sex, over and over. In other words, Refn's real fetish here is violence. It reminded me of a James Toback line regarding the know-it-all MPAA: "They would rather watch someone be beheaded than be licked."

So apparently would Refn.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Trade Winds (1938)

“Trade Winds”, the 1938 film perhaps most famous for turning Joan Bennett from a blonde into a brunette, has, like pretty much every film before and after it, a beginning, a middle, and an end. The issue, however, is that three crucial pieces don’t quite seem to fit together. The open is surprisingly, interestingly somber before ceding to a delightful, globe-trotting middle and eventually wrapping up with an odorous dessert of red herring.

In the wake of her sister’s suicide, Kay Kerrigan (Bennett), blonde, confronts the millionaire in the finely woven robe whom she deems responsible. He seems so convinced of his immortality that he willingly gives her a gun and tells her to shoot. Oops. She does. He drops dead. This prologue, the way Bennett coolly mans the piano as she plays her precious Chopin tune in the build-up to the murder, provides an air that borders on noir. Even more so when Kay inevitably flees, is tracked by Detective Blodgett (Ralph Bellamy) and, in a fit of awesome hysteria, guns her car right off a ferry and into the ocean.

Detective Blodgett is emblematic of the film’s shift. Initially he comes across hard-nosed and quick-thinking. Until we realize he is the exact opposite, put-upon and a dolt. And so when it turns out Kay did not drown, because of course she didn’t, a Private Investigator is brought in to bring her in. This would be Sam Wye (Frederic March). He is much less a cynical gumshoe than a boozy playboy who tracks missing persons on the side. And although he is adept at tracking those missing persons, he also enjoys fraternizing with the femme fatales along the way, and so Blodgett is ordered to go along as his right-hand man to negate the possibility of any funny business (a task at which he inevitably fails). So, they follow the trail of Kay Kerrigan with the trade winds, from Hawaii to Japan to China.

Blodgett, of course, functions as comic relief, consistently three or four steps behind, even though Sam lets him think he’s one or two steps ahead just to be nice. This duo, however, quickly becomes a trio on account of Sam’s saucy secretary, Jean (Ann Sothern), whose crush Sam only requites at certain moments for his own personal gain. But, as mentioned, Jean is saucy, so she shutters the office and enlists herself in the Find Kay Kerrigan cause. And while the chemistry between March and Bennett is decent enough, the real jolt of energy in “Trade Winds” is delivered by the four principal characters winding their way across the Pacific, interacting, bantering, double-crossing, outsmarting, and so forth.

Perhaps the film’s best decision arrives when Sam and Blodgett and Jean catch up to Kay. This happens fairly early on in the film’s middle portion and despite changing her appearance by dying her blonde hair brunette, no one fails to recognize her. Well, Blodgett fails to recognize her but that’s because he’s the comic relief. Sam figures out who she is. Jean figures out who she is. In fact, for a moment “Trade Winds” seems intent to pit Kay and Jean, who is smarter than that saucy persona may imply, against Sam. That would have been a unique direction to take, but instead it opts for the more traditional route – the P.I. and the Fugitive falling in love.

This also suggests intriguing complications. After all, she is 1.) A Murderer and 2.) A Fugitive. Rather than give thought to these constraints, however, we are served the requisite red herring to get her off the hook. A detail not noticed initially is discovered, which is credible, I suppose, since Blodgett is eventually outed as an incompetent and probably would have missed it at the original crime scene but still……it’s the easy way out. Painting yourself into a corner and then suddenly (!!!) realizing you have an ejector seat. Why if “Trade Winds” was remade today you can envision this closing sequence stacked with all those trendy quick cut flashbacks to the earlier scene and seeing what we DIDN’T see (because how could we have?).

It’s the strangest movie, one that leaves you with a sour taste after a solid main course and a first course filled with curiosity. After going brunette in this film, Joan Bennett chose to stay a brunette. I kind of wonder what would have happened had she stayed a blonde.

The Time I Rented Superstar

On a recent episode of Ryan McNeil’s Matineecast, for reasons related directly to the podcast itself, he was forced to visit a local video store in order to obtain a copy of the robot boxing movie “Real Steel.” To offset the potential embarrassment of being seen in a video store with “Real Steel” in hand he chose to simultaneously rent a few artsy-fartsy films.

I nodded, and I nodded because oh so many movies ago when I had just returned to Iowa from my Arizona misadventure, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Nicolle, mentioned what she found to be the non-stop hilarity of Molly Shannon’s SNL-inspired comedy “Superstar.” She wondered if I had seen it. I said that I had not. She immediately determined that I needed to see it. I expressed extreme hesitation. She was unimpressed by my hesitation and explained that the forthcoming Friday I would rent “Superstar”, drive to her apartment and we would watch it. And this is how I found himself at Hollywood Video renting “Superstar.”

Yes, I rented this DVD.

But as I removed the DVD case from the shelf, I realized I was about to walk up to the counter with nothing but “Superstar.” I immediately broke out in hypothetical flop sweat. I lived down the street from this video store for nearly two years. I would be glimpsed in there who-knows-how-many times! And no matter how many Julie Christie and Alfred Hitchcock films I rented, I feared I would be seen by the staff simply as “the dude that rented ‘Superstar.’”

In a panic, I scanned the shelves. I spied “The Pledge”, the Sean Penn directed film starring Jack Nicholson. I had not seen “The Pledge.” I wanted to see “The Pledge.” I determined it had enough art & fart to potentially offset Molly’s Shannon’s armpit-grabbing opus. I took it and conscientiously placed it over top of the “Superstar” DVD so that as I walked to the register any other patrons would only see “The Pledge.”

Of course, in the midst of my predicament I had somehow forgotten that in order to rent a movie the clerk would have to, you know, scan the movie into his/her system. I set the DVDs on the counter. He scanned “The Pledge”. He set it aside, and there waiting, in all its infamousness, was “Superstar.” He scanned it. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. My fate was sealed.

I’m the dude that rented “Superstar.”

Springsteen & I

“Bruce and I have been friends since 1985. Even though he doesn’t know me.” 

So a guy gets dumped. But the guy’s going to a Bruce Springsteen concert, so he fashions himself a rudimentary sign that declares: “Bruce, I Just Got Dumped.” We cut to actual concert footage. Bruce sees the sign. He reads it aloud into the microphone: “Bruce,” Bruce says, “I Just Got Dumped.” He understands. “We’ve all been there.” So Bruce brings the guy up on stage and gives him a hug. Then Bruce and The E Street Band tear into “I’m Going Down”, the greatest I Just Got Dumped Song there ever was.

There is an essential truth in this passage, a passage that an outsider, a non-Springsteen fanatic, a non-devout disciple of E Street might not understand (or want to), and it is this: Bruce Springsteen is our therapist. He talks us through things in his songs and makes us feel better. He helps us make sense of the world and all that we struggle so mightily to understand. Watching that moment unfold I nodded along, partly because any time a girl has dumped me do you know what song I play? “I’m Going Down”, of course.

A few years back a call went out to all Springsteen fans to record confessionals. Thousands were submitted and director Baillie Walsh, essentially working more as an editor, and his team sifted through the footage to craft a galloping, miraculous eighty minute ode to Springsteen-ism. It mixes bits of Springsteen concert footage – from the 70’s up through now – with an untold number of talking heads, explaining what Bruce means to them, what made them fans in the first place, etc.

One detail you will notice right away as the fans commence speaking is their languages and accents, their colors and creeds. There is a predictable stereotype of Springsteen, primarily invented and perpetuated on account of one song and one album cover, that he is a flag-waving jingoist. A real Springsteen fan knows this is nowhere near the truth, and “Springsteen & I” should debunk it once and for all. English, Aussies, Danes, Koreans, on and on, everyone stands up and testifies. A Polish man explains how Springsteen’s music mirrored his own feelings about communism in his country in the 80’s. Walsh immediately transitions to a performance of “Born in the U.S.A.” In other words, lyrical content aside, his themes are always universal. He speaks for all of us, man. Young, Old, Gen Y, Baby Boomer, a Truck Driver with a Masters, and so on.

One of the best, and most crucial, recurring passages involves a husband, who is not a fan, being interviewed by his wife, who is a fan. As someone who attends concerts solely on account of his loved one he appeals directly to Bruce to please, for the love of God, shorten the concerts. (Springsteen routinely plays upwards of three hours.) It’s funny, but it’s also our one vantage point from outside the fanatic circle. Look, I understand how this documentary and this devotion could play to an outsider. It could probably seem a little………cultish. And that’s because, well, hell, it kinda is.

And “Springsteen & I”, admittedly, whole-heartedly, is not, nor meant to be, an objective look inside the House Of E Street. If you know nothing of Bruce and watch this film, you will likely not glean much deeper insight into what makes a Bruce fan. Many of the testimonials, so many of which are heartfelt and beautiful, are admittedly identical to the kind of rhapsodizing any fan offers regarding his or her idol. But then I think that’s why this documentary garnered but a few one night showings as opposed to a proper release. It’s not intended to create believers, but to be enjoyed by those who already believe.

An older gentleman, hair graying, wearing sunglasses, drives down the highway, talking into the camera mounted on his dashboard. He speaks in a halting monotone, searching for the precise words to explain what Bruce means to him, but struggling. “His music,” he says, “is like flipping through a family photo album.” He pauses. He searches for more words. Well, what can he possibly say? Then...he begins to cry. At first, it’s a little funny. It is. I laughed. Not because it's pitiful - far from it - but because, well, it’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it, that we all have this most personal relationship with someone we've never met.

He keeps crying. And then…I started crying. I did. Right there in the theater (and I wasn’t the only one). Because how I could not? Because I understood exactly what that guy was trying to say and exactly why he could not find the words to say it. Because I am that guy and that guy is me and all Springsteen fanatics are each other.

Tramps like us, baby.

Almost Famous.....13 years burning down the road

Recently I sat down to watch a movie I had never seen, got about three minutes into it, realized I wasn’t feeling it, switched it off, turned to my DVD case, mystically, magically, grabbed "Almost Famous" for, I believe, the first time since I moved to Chicago, put it on, and let it wash over me. Dear readers, it was like seeing Mary in the beer-soaked graffiti of a highway underpass. It wasn’t like falling for the first time, but it was close.

Anita (Zooey Deschanel) has chosen to leave the “house of lies!” governed by her restrictive mother (Frances McDormand) to go out and look for America. But before she does she pulls her then 11 year old brother, William Miller, our protagonist, close in an embrace and whispers in his ear, “Look under your bed. It will set you free.” She is referring to her impressive collection of vinyl, which he leafs through, as if at the altar, finding a record by The Who which comes attached with Anita’s handwritten note: “Listen to 'Tommy' with a candle burning and you will see your entire future.” So tell me, if I have a son or daughter and yearn to arm him or her with Tift Merritt’s "Bramble Rose" how would the note that says “Listen to 'When I Cross Over' with a candle burning and you will see your entire future” look if it’s attached to an mp3? How can you “go to the record store and visit your friends” when you get lonely if there are no record stores and your friends all cost 99 cents on iTunes?

I don’t mention all this merely to rant and rave about how eventually our souls will merely be apps on our mobile phones but to say that this time around with "Almost Famous" I found myself most caught up in the movie’s exploration of – to quote the esteemed Roger Ebert in his original 4 star review – “the time…when idealism collided with commerce.” This is the sensation summarized by the real life rock critic, the late Lester Bangs (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, in a brief but deft performance), whom the real life journalist Cameron Crowe knew, in a scene near the beginning of the film when he councils the 15 year old version of William Miller (Patrick Fugit): “It’s just a shame you missed out on rock ‘n’ roll. It’s over. You got here just in time for the death rattle. The last gasp.”

William, though, is not only young and naïve but entirely idealistic. He doesn’t seem to quite believe Bangs. Thus, when Rolling Stone magazine’s Ben Fong Torres (Terry Chen), having read William’s work in underground rock papers, utterly oblivious to his real age, offers the burgeoning scribe a chance to go on the road with the rising rock band Stillwater and write a big time article, William, who has to first convince his mother to let him go, takes it. And so he finds himself on Doris the bus, hauling from town to town, watching as Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), the axe man, and Jeff Beebe (Jason Lee), the front man, wage war, sometimes psychologically, sometimes openly, eventually threatening not only the tour but the entire existence of the Zeppelin-esque quartet.

As fate would have it, William is not the only idealist on this melodic odyssey, the other being Penny Lane (Kate Hudson, nominated for an Oscar), not a groupie, mind you, but a band-aid, the queen of the band-aids, young feministas who tour with rock bands not to be close to someone famous but “because of the music.” And you believe her. Yes, you do. William falls for her with but a glance except Penny has fallen for Russell except Russell is a rock star with a potential harem anywhere he goes and a wife back home who he doesn’t seem to like as much as Penny, not that he necessarily realizes it. Round and round they go. Ultimately they will all individually have to, as they say, come of age.

It’s telling that Crowe does not insert the brief scenes of the high school graduation ceremony William does not attend over the sequence in which William loses his virginity at the hands of all the Band Aids not named Penny Lane, but rather over the sequence in New York near the end when he turns up at Penny’s hotel to save her from an overdose. This is not merely William becoming a man, this is William truly losing his innocence. As such, the question then becomes whether or not you can – as Planet Earth Poet Laureate Bruce Springsteen once so elegantly posed – “hold onto your idealism after you lose your innocence?”

As Penny, Hudson literally glows almost every time she appears onscreen. She has never managed to re-capture the decided spark she had in this role and it is entirely possible this is because the part she is playing is so close to her own personality. But that does not mean her acting here was not top notch. The way she phrases “You okay?” when she opens the door on William to reveal she’s in Russell’s bedroom when our young scribe is trying to get an interview is so caring, so hip motherly-henish, when considering she is about to close that same door and go sleep Russell. And her scene on the airplane at the end is the inside of an active volcano. You can SEE her heart breaking, you can SEE this whole thing that has played out for the last couple of hours ending and now she realizes it and she doesn’t want it to – more than anything in the world, she doesn’t want it to – and so she presses her hand to the window as the plane taxis in a moment that has its roots in a thousand other scenes but transcends every one of them to become a spiritual sledgehammer.

Crudup is her equal, though he stupefyingly did not so much as sniff an Oscar nod. Why? The movie gods only know. As critic Jeff Labrecque once lamented, “If Crudup’s marvelous performance in …Almost Famous didn’t make him a star, maybe it’s not meant to be.” No matter. He’s charming and a pig, a friend and a foe, truthful and a bullshitter, craving the spotlight and shying away from it, saying it’s just for the fans and knowing it’s not, smiling sincerely and sardonically. He has a mystique all right, a mystique that he slowly strips away while simultaneously reinforcing without any effort. The phone call he fields from William’s mother is the high point, the moment when he shows how he is unafraid to let the character not only be vulnerable but also a little clueless about his station in life. “Uh, yes, ma’am.”

McDormand (also nominated for an Oscar – and, thus, likely splitting the vote with Hudson and opening the door for Marcia Gay Harden in "Pollock" which was a nice little performance but, eh, seriously), meanwhile, on the other end of that line, and in the whole movie, would seem on paper to nearly be a caricature. Yet she comes across consummately true to life. How? Let’s not even analyze it. It’s ineffable.

For a movie set in, as William’s mother puts it, “a Valhalla of decadence”, of sex and booze and drugs, the film prefers to stay on the sunny side of the street. This was the sole sticking point of a film that otherwise registered very well with critics. The venerable Andrew Sarris wrote: “For whatever reason, too much of the dark side has been left out.” Mr. Sarris is without a doubt correct that the dark side – the dark side I’m well aware existed, I mean I’ve read Stanley Booth’s book about The Stones – is rarely glimpsed but, seriously, Sarris, you cynical bastard, can’t you just go watch "Sid & Nancy" and leave the rest of us alone?

One moment you might miss, the segueway between Russell screaming “I’m a golden god” from a fan’s rooftop and the now famed "Tiny Dancer" sing-along, is the band’s harried manager (Noah Taylor) telling the kids who have hosted Russell so long and then the shot of one young girl blowing a kiss goodbye to the guitarist in the early morning light, a shot which suggests that lucid dream all of us have every now and then of spending one night, one afternoon, one morning, one moment, with a musician who means so much to us. Did that really just happen? Was that real? Was I dreaming? No, I don’t want to know. Either way, just let me have it. Please. It’s a moment only an earnest romantic could create and Cameron Crowe, believe me, fits the part.

"Almost Famous" is an older Crowe looking back through the prism of time and remembering what he wants to remember, and if he excises the dark parts in the name of earnestness and romanticism, well, I, for one, stand firmly on his side. Penny Lane lives. Stillwater doesn’t break up. William’s story gets published. Mother and Daughter re-unite. And, contrary to the otherwise esteemed opinion of Lester Bangs, William Miller, and the lucky rest of us, did not miss out on rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not over. It’ll never be over. They didn’t ruin it. They didn’t strangle everything we love about it. Rock ‘n’ roll will live forever.

One could say when considering all this information that even upon losing his innocence the real life Cameron Crowe maintained his idealism.

In Memoriam: Dennis Farina

When you think of Dennis Farina, you generally think of the long line of tough guys he played. You also think of his smile – his smile was memorable – but you think of that smile in terms of a sinister weapon. You think of him grinning like a jack-o-lantern as he pops a few caps into Delroy Lindo’s sidekick in “Get Shorty.”

That was the first film in which I can recall encountering Mr. Farina. I was home sick from school and I rented “Get Shorty” and John Travolta bops Dennis Farina in the nose and Farina goes on the warpath. It doesn’t end happily for his character, of course, but a Farina character pretty much always thought he was the king of the comedy whether the screenplay said so or not.

Well, it makes sense that Farina was so convincing as a tough guy. He grew up here in Chicago and became a Chicago cop. Being a cop in Chicago is a profession not intended for the faint of heart. He remained with it for 18 years. Then Michael Mann – longtime and brilliant chronicler of cinematic tough guys – came calling, employing Farina’s services as consultant on the set of “Thief.” A star was born.

He worked often in TV, typically in law enforcement kinda roles. He turned up for memorable parts in films like “Midnight Run” and “Snatch” and “Sidewalks of New York.” And it just goes to show – and this goes back to “Get Shorty” – that as tough as Farina often played, he also had a natural gift for comedy. Often it was an unhinged kind of comedy, but comedy nonetheless.

In Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 masterpiece “Out of Sight”, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, Farina portrayed Marshall Sisco, father to federal marshal Karen (Jennifer Lopez, who is magnificent regardless of what any J.Lo-bashers might tell you). So often parents and children on screen make no sense. I’m not talking about the way in which they look – no, I’m talking about the way in which they behave. That too often seems to get lost. Do we really believe that SHE was raised by HIM? In “Out of Sight” you believe, implicitly, that Karen was raised by Marshall. She is a chip off the old investigatin' block.

Farina is hardly in the film – just a handful of scenes – but creates a memorable character, and memorable particularly in the way he interacts with his daughter. They are presented, quite refreshingly, as pals. This is a close relationship, built on respect. Notice when he’s walking her through the airport how he chides her but doesn’t give advice, doesn’t tell her what to do. It’s called trust. And yet we can tell the inevitable strains of career (hers) are beginning to nudge them apart. And in a scene where Daughter celebrates birthday with Dad – and he gifts her a brand new gun, which is one of those moments that is so in character it resists a schlocky Cinema Romantico-ized metaphor – Farina lets that knowledge show. “We don’t talk much anymore,” he says, and as he says it he looks down in such a way to suggest that he knows why they don't talk much anymore. And that he understands why it has to be that way and, yet, still can't square with it. I can’t say for certain, but I bet every Dad with a grown-up Daughter gets misty-eyed at that scene.

Then Lopez offers: “Whaddaya say I come by next Sunday and we watch the Super Bowl together?” Farina’s face lights up – literally lights up. “I’d like that,” he says. It’s an absolutely remarkable moment. Lots and lots of films centered entirely around dads and daughters don’t have moments that genuine and moving.

Dennis Farina passed away yesterday at the age of 69. He played a lotta tough guys, true, but he always played them with love.

A Hijacking

A Danish cargo ship in the Indian Ocean has been hijacked by Somali pirates. The families of the seven crew members being held hostage have gathered before the C.E.O., Peter Ludvigsen (Soren Malling), of the company owning the ship. They want to know how Peter is so certain their family members are still alive. Peter explains the ship, in truth, is not worth much to his company. The crew members are the pirates' sole negotiating chips and, thus, must be kept alive. This is reassuring, but also horrifying. In other words, "A Hijacking" asks: how much are these human lives worth?

Sometimes we and the crew members and the pirates have to wonder. The pirates' negotiating translator, Omar (Abdihakin Asgar), portrayed as surprisingly genial, until he is very much not, wants $15 million. Peter, who has chosen, perhaps unwisely, to handle the negotiations himself (these are his men), counter-offers a measly $250,000. And later, after several weeks have already passed, after threats have been made against the crew, Peter's offer has come up all of $650,000. Omar laughs. You might laugh too. It seems insulting, careless. But is it?

"A Hijacking", a docu-thriller, written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, pointedly refuses reducing itself to simplistic black & white or typical thriller cliches - heck, we do not even see the actual hijacking. We catch up with it after it's happened. The one crew member with whom we truly become close is the bearded cook Mikkel (Pilou Asbaek), who we see in a few quick early scenes cheerily dishing out breakfast and coffee, making a call back home to his wife and infant daughter, breathing in the striking skyscape alongside the rolling water.

We live through the inexpressible nightmare alongside him, trapped below deck and in rooms they cannot leave to relieve themselves. The pirates, speaking in dialogue that is jarringly (smartly) not sub-titled, brandish their machine guns like party favors, as if learning how to operate them for the first time a few days ago. Time and again my heart leapt as these automatic weapons waved to and fro in the frame, fully expecting them to be discharged for no reason. Imagine living like that for months.

Yet, in a stirringly haunting passage, when the crew members are let out for fresh air, a weird camaraderie emerges, as the men fish and haul in a big catch. Hostages and Hijackers celebrate. They high-five. Literally. They booze it up and sing the few songs to which they all know the words ("Happy birthday to you"). Without explicitly saying so this demonstrates how, law-breaking or not, they are essentially on the same level as far as multi-million dollar businessmen are concerned, businessmen who fashionably remain outfitted in form-fitting suits and perfectly adjusted French Cuffs even as negotiations on drag on and on.

Of course, the negotiations are not that simple either. As the American negotiating expert (Gary Skjoldmose Porter) brought in explains to Peter, it is simply not possible to give the hijackers the ransom they demand straight away because they will just up their price. No, it has to be a slow-burning back and forth. Fair enough, but this slow? Seemingly both the situation and the guilt weigh on Peter. He sleeps in his office, snaps at his wife, essentially becoming imprisoned too.

The final scenes revolve around, shall we say, a precious family trinket. How precious? Well, that’s the $15 million question. Or, is it the $250,000 question? How much is anything we consider precious worth? “A Hijacking” answers: not that much.

Friday's Old Fashoned: L'avventura (1960)

Aboard a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean Sea, the enchanting if twitchy Anna (Lea Massari) explains that the previous night she had actually looked forward to going to bed. Not dozing off, mind you, but the physical act of laying her head on the pillow, allowing her to ponder and perhaps even ultimately work out the many problems at the forefront of her mind. Instead, she fell asleep.

I nodded, wistfully. When I was ten-plus years younger I often enjoyed the physical act of laying my head on the pillow, suspended in that strange pre-sleep state, pondering and perhaps even working out the many problems at the forefront of my mind. Then, I got older, and that welcoming sensation waned. These days I lay my head on the pillow, think about all the things I’m going to think about and fall asleep.

This is all to say, I am a different person then the first time I encountered Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’avenntura” (1960) in my early twenties when I was finally taking the plunge on classic and/or avant garde cinema by employing the late great Roger Ebert’s bi-weekly Great Movies columns as a kind of manual. Was I ready for it at that age? No. I was not. (I saw on Twitter recently that someone first watched “L’avenntura” at 17! My, how times have changed. Even if I’d heard of Antonioni at 17 I doubt I would have had access to his oeuvre at Waukee Video.)

It was not its ponderous pace nor the idea that “nothing happens”, which is the kind of criticism a film like this is libel to receive. I watched Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” around the same time, which bears a certain resemblance to “L’avenntura”, and was enthralled. But “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, I think, was much more explicitly about creating an atmosphere and experience. “L’avenntura”, on the other hand, his more embedded in that surface of apparent nothingness, and I required more life and cinematic experience to grab hold of it.

Two things finally brought me back to it. One, I noticed The (Contrarian) King of New York, Armond White, mention it as a summer movie to see – “Summer won’t get any hotter – or cooler.” Two, I saw the new Sofia Coppola movie, which I adored, and in which, as is often the case with her exemplary work, “nothing happens”, and that sent me galloping to the Netflix queue.

We sense Anna falling out of tune with the world around her right from the get-go - in conversations with her father, the curious indifference to her impending nuptials with Sandro (Gabriele Ferzeti). The prospective newlyweds and their friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) then take a pleasure cruise in the Tyrrhenian Sea with a few hoity-toity friends. They stop the yacht near a foreboding outcropping of rocks, to swim and explore, and Anna and Sandro quarrel.

Then Anna vanishes.

Well, at first it appears likely that she is acting out toward her fiancé, stalking off and hiding out just to peeve him. He and Claudia and the rest of their party hike up and down the rocks, from one side to the other. No Anna. The authorities are summoned. The search continues. Perhaps she was not acting out. Did she fall? Did she jump? Did she hitch a ride? Was she taken? A fishing boat in the area is detained and the men are questioned. Nothing comes of it. The search seems fruitless. Sandro seems mystified. Claudia seems angry, at herself, at her friend, at the gods above.

Then, in a moment that comes across purposely not built to, as if the camera suddenly was switched on by accident and caught something not meant to be seen, back aboard the yacht, Sandro takes hold of Claudia and kisses her. Say what? Make no mistake, this is not a moment of passion. It is a moment of impulse, perhaps an erotic one, but perhaps even that is giving it too much credit. Claudia immediately tears away and Sandro does not even appear to comprehend his own actions. Yet, something has been set in motion.

The movie moves back to dry land as Sandro and Claudia sort of become mod P.I.’s, swooping up and down the scenic Italian coast on the hunt for their lost friend, following supposed leads and pseudo credible sightings. But they never really get any closer to locating Anna, they merely get further and further away. And as they do, the more Claudia seems tempted to fall into the arms of Sandro, and the more insistent he becomes that she does so. Until he falls into the arms of another.

Anna, their supposedly beloved Anna, is a missing person and here are her fiancé and best friend cavorting as if it’s a haunted honeymoon. Anna’s other friends on the yacht seem to have moved on completely. They make jokes at Anna’s expense, then correct themselves, but not too harshly.

"We are all on our own, aren't we?"

The eeriest passage in the film finds Claudia - and here we should note that Vitti, evocative of a Roman Ari Graynor, flummoxing, faultless beauty nearly overwhelms - far from the tourist-ridden Piazza, and a few local men unapologetically sizing her up. And then a few more local men wander into the frame and look her up and down and then a few more and then a few more, etc. It's troubling, but what is even more troubling is Claudia's reaction - that is, no reaction. None. It's as if the men are not even there. Whether disgust or arousal, should not some sort of reaction be elicited?

But Claudia and Sandro seem hollowed out, going through the pretense of some illicit affair. Sandro goes so far as to suggest marriage but this proposal (if you want to call it that) is born less of romance than a question on top of the question - as in, "What else do we do?"

The film, I dare say, goes on too long. But I kind of mean this as a compliment. Early, it's riveting. Eventually, it's dull and distant, and that goes back to the search for Anna. They only get further and further away from her and, as they do, they only get further and further away from themselves.

By the film's close we start to think Anna had the right idea.

Spring Breakers: Opening Scene

As the title card "Spring Breakers", in a sort of neon pseudo-confetti appears on the screen, the soundtrack strikes up the sounds of Skrillex. We cut to assorted shots of revelers on a pristine beach. The revelers are noticeable for their activities, age and attire - lewd, young and skimpy. They are primarily female - at least, at first.

Then we see a dude. He's grabbing his crotch, as if he was raised on rap videos (which he might have been). Another dude just over his left shoulder is giving us the finger. Then we see a girl with her back to the camera, shaking her moneymaker. Then a beer bong. Then......well......I believe Seth MacFarlane wrote a song about them - namely, boobs. We see boobs. We see beer being poured on them as they sway to and fro in all their admitted glory. And then the camera jump cuts......but to the exact same shot, just a little bit closer. It's as if the director, Harmony Korine, is saying prior to the jump cut, "Oh? You're offended." Jump cut. "How offended are you now?"

For a normal movie, this might be enough. This is not a normal movie. It keeps going, perfectly matched by the stop/start nature of Skrillex. A dude mimes jerking off with a beer bottle. Another middle finger. More boobs. Then girls sucking on red/blue/white ('merica, bitches) popsicles, a la Kate Upton. Now are we done? Nope. More boobs. Dudes "urinate" out of beer cans onto not-entirely-clothed female faces. More popsicle sucking. Cut to black.

(Wipes brow.)

So, why do I find this opening as majestic as I do scuzzy? Can those two even co-exist? If so, how? I mean, are these sixty or so seconds any different from "Girls Gone Wild" (or, as "Arrested Development" might say, "Girls With Low Self-Esteem") and its hideous, jaw-dropping exploitive nature? Well, sure. For one thing, "Girls Gone Wild" is really nothing beyond soul-rotten home video tripe that exists to sell a product - albeit a product to the sort of dudes we see in "Spring Breakers" grabbing their crotches and pretending to jerk off.

Harmony Korine, for whatever anyone wishes to say about him (and feel free), knows how to implement the camera and cuts and music and any number of in-editing tricks to create something beyond a mere product, something Jiff Ramsey would have termed "film de cinema."

Except that simply enlisting a French cinematographer, Benoît Debie, prettifying the whole picture in a visual sheen that makes it seem as if you're watching all this debauchery through aviator sunglasses while high on mushrooms, does not automatically make it any more tolerable or excusable.

What struck me upon re-watching "Spring Breakers" (my original review), even more than its Malick-ian overtones, reliance on montage-y images and voiceover, is that underneath all that deliriously glossy surface is something surprisingly traditional. Girls go on spring break. Girls get sick of spring break. Girls go home. Seriously. That's what it is, right down to the end. Which is not a bad thing. The last shot, God save my soul, actually made me wistfully smile. And all of this makes the shameless opening sequence so vital.

The opening exists apart from everything else in the film, just as spring break itself exists apart from everything else in the world in some sort of mystic spring break continuum. Ultimately we can hate it, be discouraged by it, frightened of it, rail against it, but it doesn't matter. The beat goes on.

Spring break forever, y'all.

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides (Two Years Later)

--“You haven’t changed.” 
--“Implying the need.”

I have a complicated relationship with Capt. Jack Sparrow. I loved Johnny Depp’s performance as the slurring, mincing, eyeshadow-inundated pirate in 2003’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl” so much I named it the performance of the decade. I meant it. I stand by it. I put that performance side-by-side with George C. Scott in “Dr. Strangelove” and Kevin Kline in "A Fish Called Wanda" and Peter Sellers in the original “Pink Panther” and Buster Keaton in “Steamboat Bill Jr.”, film scholars be damned. It’s that good, so committed to appearing so extemporaneous, the only performance I can recall that manages to steal the totality of a $140 million production right out from under its elephantine production and special effects.

On the other hand, I was so repulsed by the third entry in the series, “At World’s End”, after being just generally annoyed with the second entry, that I walked out on it. No, really. I did. Got up and walked right out of the theater.

What has always troubled me is the possibility that the second and third (and fourth) films would taint his astonishing achievement in the first. With each successive cash grab and with each subsequent attempt to go bigger and the deeper in overtaxed movies, he becomes more buried and the further from his brilliance we get and the more distant it becomes. Thus, in the face of “The Lone Ranger”, featuring a much dissected performance by Depp as the infamous Tonto, and 10 years (to the month) since the Capt. Jack Sparrow Winds that brought so much relief and liveliness, I chose to take the plunge I consciously neglected two years ago. That is, I watched the fourth entry in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, “On Stranger Tides.”

And when I say watched, what I mean is that I DVR’d it off ABC Family and viewed it in increments – here and there over dinner or lunch, when I had 10 minutes to kill waiting for a friend, etc. It was (almost) exactly what I expected, which, as those who have been with Cinema Romantico since the beginning know full well, I do not mean in any way as a compliment.

One, the film is endless. Truly the last three films in this series (and even the first one in some respects) represent the frustrating sensation of a family vacation at its tail-end, when the sight-seeing is done and the station wagon is on the last stretch of road and all you want to do is be home but home seems so…far…away. Even watching it in increments it feels endless! “God, that six minutes went by like four hours.”

Second, the film is incoherent. This is not to say the plot – involving a search for the mystical Fountain of Youth – is necessarily incoherent – though it does, as it must, reach overkill with chalices and mermaids and yada yada – but that it comes across as if possessing a disdain for pacing, skipping from action scene to action scene so relentlessly and carelessly it loses its grip (which, of course, is why it feels endless).

Third, the film is uninventive. As established, it involves the Fountain of Youth, Ponce de Leon’s supposed “baby”, as mystical a fable as this old Blue Planet has ever conjured, and upon arrival all we receive is the movie's umpteenth sword fight and a crib from the end of "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade." I suspect the irony of the Fountain of Youth and the film’s tired employment of it was entirely lost on its makers. Alas.

Fourth, Penelope Cruz, portraying the perfectly named Angelica, the is-she, isn’t-she daughter of the legendarily frightful Blackbeard (Ian McShane, solid), is wasted. And a pity too because I suspect another movie may have been lurking in the edges, based around Angelica and the woozy Capt. Jack.

In the first three films Depp never really had (all due respect to Keira Knightley, whom I like very much) a proper contessa with whom he could playfully spar. The de Havlliand to his Flynn, if you will. There is a splendid moment on an isolated beach when Depp and Cruz verbally have at it, she telling lies and he believing them, if only for a second, before thinking better of it, even though we can tell he doesn’t really want to. The fatal issue? This moment happens about four minutes before the movie ends. T’is a pity, for if so much story had not needed advancing by keeping them apart, perhaps they could have spent more time together. And so it seems we only get further and further away from Depp’s original genius. But do we?

Very early, after the prologue I have completely forgotten, Capt. Jack Sparrow is shackled to an ornate chair for a council with King George. But Capt. Jack Sparrow, as we know, prefers talking with his hands, wild, effeminate gestures, and this task becomes nigh impossible when handcuffed to arm rests. Yet, try he must, and so the clinking and clanging of the irons accompanies his every word in the misbegotten attempts to pantomime. It is funny. It is really funny, and it harkens back to what makes the original performance so special.

It's still there, by God, in each movie, right under our noses, we just have to look for it. If only the makers of these monstrosities had bothered to try.

The Way, Way Back

“The Way, Way Back” fits squarely in the ever-expanding Coming-of-Age genre and, yet, despite painting in broad strokes and fulfilling all the accustomed beats, it skillfully eclipses its own been-there, done-that nature and hones in on something truer. The adults meant as trail guides for our youthful protagonist are niftily shown to have never really come of age themselves. “It’s spring break for adults,” someone says, but the movie is never that simple. Or stupid. So often when characters Come-of-Age it is presented as a giant leap, but in this case it is rightfully shown as one small step.

Duncan (Liam James), 14 years old, possessing a perpetual hunch, oblivious to sarcasm, so withdrawn as to nearly be a social cripple, is forced by his mother Pam (Toni Collette), divorced, to tag along with her boyfriend Trent (Steve Carrell) and his bitchy daughter to a Cape Cod resort town for the summer. Collette ably conveys her character as an emotional weakling, dependent upon a significant other for her own sense of self-worth, even if it’s an immature windbag like Trent. Carrell - perhaps a bit one-note, though perhaps the person he's playing is one note - is not afraid to play unlikable, wielding the word “buddy” passive-aggressively, masquerading as a surrogate father to Duncan by issuing orders – clean off your plate, leave a note – that he himself fails to heed. He attempts to lead by words, not by example.

While Trent fancies himself a mentor, Owen (Sam Rockwell), he of the omnipresent cargo shorts, flip-flops and bed hair, lifer at the rickety water park that saw its best days two decades ago (this movie feels like it belongs in the 80’s, which I admit is probably at least partly why I responded so strongly to it) where Duncan takes a job, seems less than ideal to be a figurehead to anyone. But first through happenstance and then of his own accord, Owen plays father figure to eccentric effect.

Let’s be honest, Duncan’s rite of passage on paper comes across entirely rote. But Rockwell, in an animated performance, goes a long way in making it still ring true. In a very real way, he is a poor role model, mid-thirties and managing a kid-rampant water park (what does he do in the off season, rent out snowboards in the Berkshires?), just another adult with an adolescent streak. But he has the common sense and decency not to try and mold his young charge into some preconceived package of what constitutes a Man, but see Duncan for who he is and help to him understand it and, ultimately, express it.

Maybe the most emblematic character is the weirdo at “the booth no one ever comes to”, played by Jim Rash (who wrote and directed the film along with Nat Faxon, who also has a bit part), who has been making threats to leave and move on for years only to never quite get around to doing so. Advancement is not necessarily the enemy, it’s just rife with difficulty and necessary of want. Caitlyn (Maya Rudolph), the Diane Chambers to Owen’s Sam, was only going to be around for “one summer.” As if. Betty, Trent’s next-door neighbor, played by a hilariously garish Allison Janney, introduces herself to Pam by exclaiming: “I’m off the wagon. Accept it and move on.”

Her daughter (the majestically named AnnaSophia Robb) also seems mired in stagnation, tired of her same shallow O.M.G. besties. Thus, it’s credible that she would befriend the mopey Duncan – she’s not so much attracted to him as drawn to him, which is a crucial difference. And when she gets around to presenting Duncan with what I can only assume is his first kiss (like that’s a spoiler) it, smartly, is not so much a flicker of love as it is his indoctrination to young adulthood.

I wish Rash & Faxon, two Oscar winners for screenwriting, for God’s sake, had offered something more challenging than a (sigh) montage to illustrate Duncan’s initial transition from misanthrope to first level of outgoingness, and the water slide climax also may have benefited from something smaller and more human. These are but structural quibbles, and overcome with the greatest of ease by the movie’s buoyant spirit.

The final shots echo the first shots, save for the sight of our formerly meek hero’s mother crawling across the seat partitions to join her son way, way in back. It may not look like much, a several second journey in a musty station wagon, except as anyone who has taken, or tried to, knows, that journey is a whole lot harder and longer than it looks.

Pacific Rim

Near straight away in Guillermo del Toro's much-hyped robots vs. aliens thingamajig "Pacific Rim", one character says to another character: "Hey, kid, don't get cocky." That, of course, is Han Solo speaking to Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars: A New Hope", which has always been my favorite in the legendary saga. Technically it is sci-fi, sure, but what appeals to me most is its throwback nature to the golden era of film. It's inconceivable to think that Han and Luke could sit in WWII-era gunner turrets and blast away at TIE fighters hurting through space like they were Luftwaffe, but believability is not the issue. Camaraderie is, and that is what our space cadets achieve in that sequence.

And that is my favorite part about del Toro's $190 million opus - the camaraderie. The film focuses on fighting robots, but rather than focus on them overmuch del Toro has created an idea that makes human characters an integral part of the robots. So, when we receive our multitude of fancy pants CGI showdowns they are more than mere effects on a movie screen meant for our amusement.

Earth, as relayed in the somber but kinetic opening voiceover and montage, is in the midst of an epic battle with ginormous monsters - called the Kaiju - that have emerged from a nebulously identified portal in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. We initially see one, Godzilla-like, laying waste to the Golden Gate Bridge. And while the Golden Gate Bridge is my favorite manmade landmark in these here Fifty States, well, I smiled thinking of all the New Yorkers watching and saying: "Thank God they're not destroying OUR city for once."

To combat the Kaiju, America commissions a fleet of Jaegers, which are like mechanized Floyd Mayweathers, which is to say they are equally ginormous fist-swinging robots so complex they need to be piloted by a pair of humans. This is not merely a multiplayer Wii in armor, however, as these pilots are placed in "a neural drift" connecting them by brainwaves. Thus, it is imperative the two pilots share an intimate connection and implicit trust.

Our protagonist is Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam), still grieving over the death of his brother, with whom he operated a Jaeger, in the opening scenes. He has become a wayfaring stranger, working on a "coastal wall" that the US government has chosen to construct to fend off the Kaiju as it becomes stronger and more prominent and, in turn, the Jaegers less effective. (The contrarian in me could not help but think this would have made for an interesting alternative film, following a coastal wall worker like a CGI docudrama, but never mind!)

Raleigh is recalled into service by his former commanding officer, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), who ignores his orders to stand down and employs both the few remaining Jaegers and a nuclear warhead to end this fight once and for all. Raleigh teams with Mako, carrying necessary baggage of her own, sort of a more bookish Gogo Yubari, played by Rinko Kikuchi with blue streaks in her hair that have already staked claim to Best Cinematic Hair Highlights Of 2013.

They will team with a father/son (Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky) duo that sort of fulfill the Iceman/Slider dynamic to Raleigh & Mako's Maverick/Goose to unleash the warhead. Also included in the plan are a Russian twosome (Heather Doerksen & Robert Maillet) that inexplicably get hardly any screen time.

Lurking on the fringes, meanwhile, as comic relief but also crucial propellents of the plot are a couple scientists, Dr. Newton Geizler (Charlie Day) and Dr. Herman Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), disagreeing at every turn, but eventually finding a way to drift neurally into the minds of the monsters.

A word here: I am admittedly someone who finds non-stop hilarity in Day's incessant screeching. You may very well be someone who does not and, as such, might find him to be the weak link.

Which brings me back to Hunnam. He is ripe for a cross between the existential brooding of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and the circus stunts of Tom Cruise's Maverick, but often comes across like a placeholder for an actor with more personality. Elba, in fact, is the one actor who convinces entirely, always making us believe he really is at war with ginormous monsters and even fashioning a climactic oration that makes me suspect he was once a speech-writer for President Thomas Whitmore.

Of course, most people are coming to see robots and monsters throw down and they do to fine effect. The camera work is, as it always is anymore in these summertime spectacles, dizzying, but it's not too dizzying. It is also constantly nighttime and raining. If the late great Roger Ebert had seen this movie he would have commented on this, and so we will borrow from his "Godzilla" review and simply change the title. "It rains all through ("Pacific Rim") and it's usually night. Well, of course it is: That makes the special effects easier to obscure."

What impressed me most, though, was how the movie never stopped making sense. Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of plot holes, but what I mean is the narrative was consistently graspable even as it threatened to become unwieldy. That is craft, and it is welcome and I commend del Toro for it. And that craft is precisely why a two hour-plus movie never feels that long, an achievement all too rare these days in the blockbuster derby.

I confess there is not much in the way of true empathy for these characters, but, nevertheless, it spurs the big dumb monster movie spirit lurking within each one of us. Why you can practically imagine that in the fictional universe where "Pacific Rim" is set, this would have been a propaganda film released directly into the days of the Kaiju War to rally the cause.

The World's End Soundtrack......Featuring Kylie Minogue

As longtime (and likely frustrated) readers know, Cinema Romantico is always on catlike alert for any excuse to work in a Kylie Minogue reference. Thus, when the songs comprising the soundtrack to the forthcoming Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright collaboration "The World's End" were announced, we were elated to spy a familiar track. Namely, this one.....

 

What always gets me is the line "remember the old days / remember The O'Jays". This song was released in 1990. The O'Jays most popular tune, "Love Train", was released in 1973. So "the old days" were considered 17 years prior. "Step Back In Time" is now, ahem, 23 years old.

Pardon me while I silently grieve. (And consider the possibility that this song's presence in "The World's End" might indicate a possible time travel montage. Or a group sing-along. Or both.)

Friday's Old Fashioned: Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

Watching (and greatly enjoying ) “Frances Ha” made me yearn to return to Francis Truffaut’s “Shoot the Piano Player”, a film I only first visited several years ago. Partly my re-visitation was on account of “Frances Ha’s” decided French New Wave roots, though mostly it was the notion of the Frances of the title suffering a crisis of identity.

“Shoot the Piano Player” at first glance appears to have its own identity crisis. Its jump cuts, which make the jump cuts of “Frances Ha” appear elegantly understated, are frequent and fierce. The film is a drama and then it is a comedy and then it is a romance and then it is a tragedy. This makes it sound like going for a ride on a cinematic pogo stick, an unwieldy collage of random bits, but it slowly comes into focus as it progresses. For all its bouncing around, it knows what it is, which is to say that it knows who its protagonist is – even if its protagonist is not at first what he seems.

The protagonist is Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour), the piano player of the title. He plays at a dingy little Parisian bar. He is quiet and timid, so quiet and timid that he fails to realize Lena (Marie Dubois), the heaven sent waitress at the dingy bar, is making eyes at him until the crusty owner (Serge Davri) tells him. He is so quiet and timid that he spends much of the movie in the midst of internal conversations illustrated through wry voiceover. Should he put his hand on Lena’s back? Should he not put his hand on Lena’s back? What will she think if he does? What will she think if he doesn’t? I confess I found this so identifiable I nearly broke out in flop sweat.

Charlie Kohler, however, is not Charlie Kohler at all. He is Edward Saroyan. We learn this because Charlie’s (Edward’s) brother Chico (Albert Rémy), pursued by the requisite gangsters for the requisite debt owed, turns up at the dingy bar in search of a little familial aid. Being the blowhard that he is, within minutes he has blathered his brother's true identity to anyone within earshot. In Edward’s former life he was a classical pianist of exceptional repute. Alas, his better half, Theresa (Nicole Berger), confesses that she sorta makes like Costanze to Salieri in order to get Edward that classical pianist gig. Needless to say, this does not end well.

That it does not and still plays so fast and loose, a jaunty ragtime not played to win prizes but just to make people jitterbug, is a testament to Truffaut's accomplishment. There is a throwaway moment fairly late in the film when one of the gangsters on Chico’s trails tells a fib about the maker of his gun. The person to whom he’s fibbing does not believe him. He swears on his mother’s life he’s telling the truth. Cut to: what we presume to be the gangster’s mother, old, perhaps a little haggard, dropping dead. Those quick-cut flashbacks that Seth MacFarlane and Mitchell Hurwitz and Tina Fey employ(ed) to such extravagant effect on, respectively, “Family Guy” and “Arrested Development” and “30 Rock”? Well, there it is. And while the device is inherently meant to be random, I can hardly recall any other example where it felt as wondrously random as this one.

More than anything, though, "Shoot the Piano Player" deals in dual identities. Charlie is Edward until he is Charlie again. His wife is faithful until she is unfaithful. His employer is a friend until he is a foe. And even though the film ends in a cloud sadness, so too does it underscore its own dualistic nature by simultaneously ending with a whiff of hope.

Is it strange to suggest someone re-retreating into the haven of a false persona could be read as hopeful? Perhaps, but Edward Saroyan isn't what or who he is - he's what and who he turns into.

Airplane II: The Sequel: The Remake

When Hollywood gets together for its weekly what-remakes-are-we-greenlighting? meeting I suspect that the priority level of a remake for "Airplane II: The Sequel" ranks somewhere right around the priority level of a remake for "The Air Up There" (which is to say, expect to see a remake of "The Air Up There" in the next 5-10 years). However, I think a remake of "Airplane II: The Sequel" is of dire necessity. Allow me to explain.

As you might recall, the so-called plot of "Airplane II: The Sequel" involves a passenger space shuttle being flown to the now-colonized moon. Things go haywire. Hijinks ensue.

You may have heard that Sir Richard Branson and cronies are sending a Virgin Galactic shuttle into space and that it is going to be loaded to the gills with stars and notable names who can afford the sky-high ticket price. According to the New York Daily News, the stars currently booked for this initial space flight include Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Hawking, Russell Brand, Katy Perry (Brand's ex), Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lance Bass and, oh yes, Kate Winslet.

Well, there you go. I mean, really. That's a movie. Stars go into space. Things go haywire. Hijinks ensue.

I'm envisioning that Justin Bieber eats fish for dinner and his toes curl up because, seriously, no one wants him around for the whole movie. (Too mean? All right. He'll take some dramamine because he's afraid of flying and then pass out for the whole movie.) I'm envisioning Ashton Kutcher getting "space dementia" and being all, you know, Kutcher-ish and Angelina Jolie finally just punching him in the face and stuffing him in the overhead. I'm envisioning Russell Brand and Katy Perry squabbling and breaking into the minibar and throwing things.

I'm envisioning space aliens attacking. I'm envisioning Leo & Brad Pitt stepping to the forefront because they assume that since they are Leo & Brad Pitt they must be the leading men of this movie. But then they get into an argument over which one of them gets top billing. They summon Kate & Angelina to settle the argument. Kate & Angelina look at each other and roll their eyes and decide to take matters into their own hands.

Your Airplane II: The Sequel: The Remake leading ladies.

They ask Stephen Hawking how to build a space laser out of the items onboard and so Stephen Hawking coaches them through building a space laser with items onboard. They build it. It doesn't work.

So Kate and Angelina just don space suits and fight off the aliens one-by-one in hand to hand combat in space.

The movie ends. The credits roll. We cut to a shot of Lance Bass exiting the space shuttle lavatory.

Much Ado About Nothing

Professor Sean Garrity: “We just used them in a modern re-telling of Macbeth set in gangland Chicago.” 

Jeff Winger: “Fresh take. Never would have thought of it.” 

- Community

It is nigh impossible to discuss Joss Whedon’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” without also discussing its featherweight production history – that is, on 12 days of down time during filming of his gazillion-raking “The Avengers, Whedon assembled a smattering of his acting pals and in handsome black & white filmed his version of the play on location at his own Los Angeles residence.

Often modern day adaptations of the renowned English bard, as evinced in the quote above, become overly focused on the setting rather than the text or the material or the vibe. Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet gives his Big Speech in a Blockbuster and Leo's Romeo sports a Hawaiian shirt and Alicia Silverstone is Princess of France at the height of WWII. But once you get past the initially bothersome Look At That! nature of the production (as in, Look! It's a super cute stuffed puppy on that bed!), Joss Whedon's house winningly transforms into a Californiacated Globe Theater. In other words, it allows the words and performances to command the spotlight.

So too does the Whedon dwelling play up the inherent screwball nature of the text, transforming it into a chronicling of the boozy, dreamy weekend wedding of Claudio (Fran Kranz) and Hero (Jillian Morgese). The film, in fact, that kept running through my mind was Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married." As it demonstrated, so often a wedding becomes less about the prospective husband and wife then everyone else around them. Rachel's name may be in the title, but her sister Kym makes it all about her shit. And it may be Claudio and Hero's wedding, but Benedick (Alexis Denisof) and Beatrice (Amy Acker) make it all about their shit.

That Whedon chooses for his opening shot a quick flash of Beatrice exiting Benedick's bed post-apparent one night stand is not insignificant. It actually removes weight from their relationship, adds frivolity, and assists in strengthening the notion of games that people play when later on members of the household decide to play matchmaker to the quarreling pseudo-lovebirds. I greatly appreciated how the breeziness of the film's creation underscores the breeziness of Beatrice and Benedick's courtship. This is not necessarily everlasting love but, well, a girl and a guy gettin' it on and then seeing what happens.

Don Pedro (Reed Diamond), of course, chief villain, has his own fun wherein he chooses to sabotage the impending marriage by employing various matters of sleight-of-hand to give Claudio the impression that his bride to be is less than virtuous. Well, that's a tricky detail for the modern day take, isn't it? The groom impolitely telling off the bride in the eyes of God? Tonally I wonder if it threatens the film but, if you will permit me to play devil's advocate to myself, does it not also function as a rather nasty illustration of the wedding day meltdowns that usually take place behind closed doors?

Eventually, as they must be, the schemes of Don Pedro and cohorts are unraveled, in a manner of speaking, by Dogberry, who lives on the grounds of Leonato's (Clark Gregg) home as his personal security. Comedically hapless, Nathan Fillion runs with the role. The part brings with it an air of showiness but Fillion manages to convey desperate professionalism that continually founders on account of his own incompetence. He speaks every infamous malapropism as if he yearns to recant it the instant it leaves his lips.

And so what surprises me most in the end is not the quality of this film nor Whedon's decision to do it in the first place and the way he went about it, both of which seem completely in character. Rather it is that Fillion, he of the nimble charm, is, inexplicably, not a star's star. Perhaps it is because New Hollywood prefers Marvel to Avon but, nevertheless, Dogberry, no matter how dubious, is the only Avenger this reviewer requires.