Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Halloween)

As it turns out, last week’s episode of “Trophy Wife” was not the Halloween episode. This week’s episode – the aptly named “Halloween” – is, and Halloween, it seems, brings out the best and worst (best?) in our whole generally functional –give or take – clan. It splits the family into two groups – three and four – and views what happens out on the streets amidst so many little kid Iron Men and what happens on the home front when the cows come home to roost (coinage: Frank Drebin).

Bradley Whitford’s Pete has been established as a lawyer but we have rarely seen him in a lawyering light, aside from that mysterious phone call he fielded that led to him declaring how much he hates his job (which is just so tragic). Unless he doesn’t really hate his job, because “Halloween” suggests that aside from his legal puns (Marcia Hay Garden’s dismissal of this had me in stitches) he really might have the legal shark blood. This is because when a mystery kid in a mask shows up at the front door demanding candy, Pete recognizes the voice. It’s the voice of the kid that egged his house last year. Thus, exercising his right to indefinitely detain an American in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act (at least I think this is how the NDAA works), Pete drags the kid inside, apparently turns off the porch light and sets up a suburban kangaroo court.

The interesting thing here is not how it ends, which is inevitable, which is to say the kid is guilty despite being “released” and Pete literally winds up with egg all over his face, but in how the family professes to taking issue with Pete’s tactics while idly sitting by and sort of quietly encouraging it. Consider Dr. Diane Buckley. She professes sorrow for this detainee and keeps offering him candy, but Gay Harden delicately conveys how she’s really on Pete’s side. I suspect she just wants to elicit sympathy from the accused in case the authorities turn up and question everyone involved. In these moments you can see what a Pete/Dr. Diane Buckley wedded consortium must have been like, sub-levels upon sub-levels (flashback episode?).

Meanwhile, off in never never land, Jackie has failed to score an Iron Man costume for precocious Bert, apparently because she has no idea who Iron Man is nor any idea who Lady Gaga is (which is a shame because I suspect Jackie would dig Lady Gaga and her ability to turn anything into “acceptable” evening wear). Kate to the rescue! She cuts in line at a costume store by posing as the rich stepmom of a couple eager lads (after offering to buy a couple teenage girls booze who decline because they're, like, you know, totally "straight-edge"[which suggests a potentially dire irresponsibility lurking within Kate that I hope is explored]). So now Bert wants Kate to take her trick or treating rather than his mom which leaves Kate flattered and Jackie forlorn, though Jackie schemes her way into the mix. Needless to say, hijinks ensue. Leaving Jackie & Kate in charge of a kid on Beggar’s Night is like putting Laverne & Shirley in charge of a Christmas pageant.

Their trick or treating sojourn ends with a woman mistaking Kate & Jackie for a proud lesbian Mom & Mom of precocious Bert, which is sorta obvious and I only mention because it shines a spotlight on a more subtle and more clever demonstration on how sitcom sexual civics have evolved.

Warren’s Halloween costume is Ellen. As in, Ellen DeGeneres. The script does not do much with this idea, instead focusing (unfortunately) on Warren’s visit to the dentist the same day which renders his enjoyment of candy mute which just feels like the disgusting taffy that – as Kate explains – is handed out at apartments which is why apartments are to be avoided. Nevertheless, if most sitcoms had teenage sons dressing up as Ellen, the entire episode would revolve around insecure fathers having major freak-outs over their sons’ orientations. Not here.

Pete may have a little Col. Nathan Jessup in him, but he’s tolerant too. And we know he’s tolerant because he never bats an eye at his son wanting to dress up like Ellen. Maybe next Halloween, after Jackie does a little research, she’ll let precocious Bert dress up in Lady Gaga’s soda can curler wig? (Not that I dream of forcing my hypothetical children to dress up for Halloween in Lady Gaga’s soda can curler wig.)

Twenty Of My Favorite Movie 'Special Effects'

I was listening to a recent episode of the Grantland Podcast "Do You Like Prince Movies?" (best podcast name ever) hosted by the Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Wesley Morris and acclaimed journalist Alex Pappademas, and one detail struck my notably peculiar fancy. Although before I go further, I'd like to stress just how much I enjoy this podcast. I mean, I've long liked Morris as a writer, but I could listen to these two banter all day. On one episode they mentioned someone had emailed them with a request that they stay more on point, but I love when they get off point. In fact, this recent episode I'm addressing was among my least favorite because they brought in a guest - no disrespect to him - and that cut into Morris/Pappademas talk time. Anyway...

At this particular podcast's onset they discussed the recent Lifetime biopic of Donatella Versace and Pappademas said this: "I recently saw 'Gravity', which expands what we can do with movies, but my favorite special effect in any movie I've seen in the last 72 hours is Gianni Versacci."

That line, as it must, got me to thinking. It got me to thinking about my favorite special effects in film. Not my favorite special effects-special effects, mind you, because that's not Cinema Romantico's sweet spot. Not, I'm talking about special effects in the same vain as Pappademas, wherein Enrico Colatoni being made up as Gianni Versacci is more impressive than Alfonso Cuaron's 20 minute space-set tracking shot. Thus, I felt a list was in order.

My favorite special effects in movies. Which is to say, they are merely special effects as I define special effects, a definition which is entirely ineffable because I don't even understand it myself. Which is to say, this list is radically subjective and likely insane-looking to a casual observer. For instance, if you were to say "But that's NOT a 'special effect'", that is in all likelihood precisely what makes it a special effect (note lack of parentheses). (What?) If you've spent time here at Cinema Romantico, it will make more sense. If you're just dropping by, it won't, and I apologize, and I might recommended heading for the hills right now.

20 Favorite 'Special Effects'

1. Symmetrical Book Stacking. "Ghostbusters."

2. Tess Ocean as Julia Roberts. "Ocean's Twelve."

3. Al Pacino saying: "Wet out there tonight." "Glengarry Glen Ross."

4. Johnny Depp Walking. "Pirates of the Carribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl."

5. Jennifer Beals' Voice. "Devil In A Blue Dress."

6. Claire Forlani's Eyes. "Meet Joe Black."

7. Rosemarie DeWitt's Scoff Face. In Anything.

8. Angelina Jolie. Back Tattoo. "Wanted."

9. Donny. Slice. "The Big Lebowski."

10. Daniel Day Lewis. Skipping Rope. "The Boxer."

11. Edward R. Rooney. Flip-Up Sunglasses. "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

12. Bill Murray. Neck Brace. "Wild Things."

13. Val Kilmer. Pen Twirling. "Top Gun."

[Photo Not Included For Everyone's Sake]

14. Kate Winslet. Vomit. "Carnage."

15. The Mia Wallace Wig. "Pulp Fiction."

16. The Fuck You You Fucking Fuck Tee Shirt. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."

17. Anne Baxter in "The Ten Commandments."

18 This Amy Ryan facial expression in "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead."

19. This Christine Baranski facial expression in "Bowfinger."

20. This shot in "Miami Vice."

It's A Disaster

Is there anything worse than being the new boyfriend and your girlfriend taking you to weekly brunch to meet all her friends for the first time at once? Well, there is, sure, but we'll get to that in a minute. Glen (David Cross), however, is Tracy's (Julia Stiles) new boyfriend and she is taking him to weekly brunch to meet her all her friends for the first time at once. As they walk to the front door she provides typical instruction - don't mention this, don't talk about. Once inside, Glen, gracious to a fault, weathers the storm rather nicely. Until the guy in the hazmat suit shows up at the door.

Writer/director Todd Berger's tightly controlled 2012 film, set almost entirely within the generally vast reaches of a single two story home, is another entrant into the coincidental ongoing Rapture Series of the past year in film. Unlike most of those films, however, "It's A Disaster" is less focused on the Rapture itself than on the squabbling of the four couples forced by circumstance to weather the potential end of times together (and the momentary squabbling of the one couple that shows up late that allows for a brilliant recurring visual gag). Ultimately the disaster of the title is revealed to be not so much the possibility of the Rapture as Life Itself.

Hosts Pete (Blaise Miller) and Emma (Erinn Hayes) are in the midst of a divorce they have been keeping a secret from their friends. Emma cheated with Buck (Kevin M. Brennan) and Pete cheated with Lexi (Rachel Boston). This cheating is augmented by the fact Buck and Lexi are married, but lessened by the fact Buck and Lexi are in an "open" marriage. Hedy (America Ferrera) and Shane (Jeff Grace) have been engaged for six years with no timetable for setting a date. Tracy has only ever dated guys who end up being crazy. Glen, however, seems promising, until he doesn't.

They talk about things and they talk shit to each other. They drink. They eat. The guys go to check the score of the game. The power goes out. What's going on? This brings us back to the guy in the hazmat suit, the next-door neighbor (Berger), who ostensibly shows up at the door on the prowl for batteries but really shows up to explain the situation to the characters and us. Sure, sure, it's a bit of screenwriting convenience, but one which I openly excuse because it nicely underscores the group's self-involvement.

The film plants fairly obvious clues - sirens are often heard in the distance, a panicked jogger - that a serious event is afoot, except the characters are too wrapped up in their own issues to notice. The event is this: dirty bombs have been unleashed downtown and in other American cities by unknown people for unknown reasons. People are advised to remain in and seal up their homes, wait it out. The plot, as it must, will thicken, just in its own character-centric way.

It's a bit like Aaron Sorkin writing an episode of "The Twilight Zone", though the dialogue - a little more cutesy than compelling - can't quite chomp like Sorkin's and a couple of the characters hew too closely to archetypes (such as Shane, the sorta guy who you just know watches "The Walking Dead" too analytically) and the deeper layers revealed in each character are really only deeper in theory. Berger's primary interest, however, seems less rooted to the individual characters and more to the group as a whole, and the way a batch of young arrivistes might react in the face of the apocalypse. That is, personal problems boil over and the specifics of the situation outside the door remains background noise even as it directly influences the evolving stages of grief.

The end is open but it's the best kind of open end - the kind that only refuses to end narratively, not thematically. "It's A Disaster" sees its inherent idea all the way through. Never mind that their lives have been up-ended in more ways than one. Never mind that they are on the verge of enduring a "Very long and very painful ordeal." Even when surrender is the best option, we can't bring ourselves to wave the white flag.

The Counselor

If venturing to the theater for maverick Ridley Scott's "The Counselor", it's best to check your expectations at the door. I'm not talking about your expectations as to whether the film might be great, good, bad, or awful - no, I'm not talking about your expectations regarding the kind of film you are about to see. It's a crime thriller in so much as it involves cocaine and gunfire and it's a drama in so much as it features famous actors in showy parts, except it's not really either of those things, not in the traditional sense. And it's not style before substance, though there is an entire Texas-sized buffet of style (people are dressed so well in this film I started to feel insecure), because there is substance aplenty in the form of numerous dense meditations that purposely appear intent on biting their thumb at the ancient axiom "Show, Don't Tell." It's simply less a movie than cinematic metaphysics.

The setting is interesting. Most of the action takes place in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the two cities straddling the border, a hot spot in recent pop culture visual arts, but while the location is crucial in spurring along critical portions of the script it is not truly an integral part of the story that Scott and his writer, famed novelist Cormac McCarthy, seek to tell. "Do you know how many people were killed in Juarez last year?" a character asks The Counselor himself (Michael Fassbender.) The Counselor shrugs. "A lot?" he offers. He has no idea. He probably doesn't care. Cold, but the truth has no temperature. Sociology and politics are not the point.

It is also interesting how little of the crime at the quasi-center of the picture is discussed in detail. As stated, it involves the cocaine trade, yet explicit details of the requisite deal gone wrong are not really addressed. We see glimpses of it, snippets intercut with other goings-on, but it never conveniently lays out precisely what is happening and why. It is some event taking place in some other world, far, far away from the people putting it in motion. Crime is not the point.

Scott and McCarthy are more interested in what occurs around the crime. What motivates these people? What is the benefit of such risk-taking? What is the danger? What is the thrill? For the first quarter of the film, in fact, people try talking The Counselor out of agreeing to this criminal act, whatever it may be, and he continually smugly defers. You know what they say, that could never happen to me.

It happens to him, and to his two associates who also enter the deal - Reiner (Javier Bardem) and Westray (Brad Pitt). As characters all three are short on past and personal details, and instead McCarthy establishes them by the lackadaisical way in which they take on the crime and then defines them by the way they react when that crime inevitably goes wrong. Reiner is resigned, yet unrepentant for what his ways have wrought. His end seems as off the cuff as his lifestyle (and hair). Westray is almost humored, as if this is the punchline he's waited for all his life. In fact, he cuts off the typical reaction at the pass, dismissing regret as "sophomoric."

The Counselor, however, being a first-timer, is the one in terrified denial, the one convinced he can wash the sins from his hands with one phone call or one piece of advice. He doesn't realize he made an addendum to his lease on life, nor that this addendum directly influenced his bride-to-be, the ravishing Laura (Penelope Cruz). Ah yes. Laura. Underwritten and rarely present, until her presence is required by the plot and she is shuffled back on stage and then right back off stage.

But don't presume McCarthy has no interest in the female mind for there is another character we have yet to discuss......the arrestingly named Malkina, played by a devil-may-care Cameron Diaz with fingernails to die for and a leopard tattoo that forcefully (heavy-handedly) connects her to a couple precious pet leopards (this is what drug money buys) who are seen hunting in the makeshift Texas wilds as Malkina and Reiner watch from afar over Cosmos. Her presence is consistently felt, even if she often lingers out of sight of the scheming men, though the film returns to her again and again in brief increments suggesting she transcends her appearance as a traditional gold digger. Her final lines, Gold help me, made me think of "Jurassic Park's" Dr. Ellie Satler: "Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth." No, McCarthy may think most highly of women (though he doesn't think "highly" of anyone at all).

Of course, that just mentioned sequence is verbose and sensationally on the nose, and that does not make it rare. After all, McCarthy is a novelist, and so "The Counselor" is chock full of opulent tangents that speaking strictly in a Robert McKee sense are out of place on the silver screen. It's all talk. But then the majority of these characters are all talk. They talk, until they have nowhere to turn, and then they plead. Or just shut up and take their medicine.

Late in the film Rubén Blades suddenly appears on the opposite end of the phone. Frankly, I had no idea who his character was and I still don't. He may as well be Cormac McCarthy himself, laying out in monologue form his theme, how humans are too reluctant (frightened) to admit their actual predicament, their true place in life. Whether you are a goody two shoes, a cocaine cowboy or a Counselor, you cannot know peace without acceptance.

And you cannot see "The Counselor" for its raw, writhing, murky beauty without first accepting what it is.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Tryst)

At the end of “The Tryst” – which is named “The Tryst” for reasons that simply escape me, because Trysts denote something illicit and this episode felt about as illicit as “According to Jim” (is that still on the air? I'll assume yes) – Kate and Pete, who have been clamoring all episode for a precious “adult’s night out”, sit down to a dinner of dino nuggets and gummy bears (and whiskey). An adult’s night out has more or less transformed into a kid’s night in. And that is sort of what “The Tryst” feels like – adults reverting to kids, kids acting like adults. This is supposed to be a Halloween episode (I think?) and, thus, this is “Trophy Wife’s” version of a madhouse.

Dr. Diane Buckley is running some sort of vaguely defined 80's-themed costume charity ball only for parents at the high school and enlists Pete’s assistance, not so much because she needs Pete’s assistance but because she wishes – in classic Dr. Diane Buckley fashion – to let Pete know that she owns him. Kate is not amused but tags along anyway, dressed as “Working Girl” Melanie Griffith (why couldn't she dress like Samantha Fox?!). Eventually she will urge Pete to stand up to his ex-wife although I bet you can’t guess where she provides this urging.

Or maybe you can. It’s a sitcom, after all, and Kate and Pete get locked in a janitor’s closet. (Hangs head.) Maybe it could have been cutesy if it had gone more self-referential about the 1492-era trope, except “Community’s” dissection of the so-called Bottle Episode really should have provided the final word on Bottle Episodes forever and ever, amen. It’s all just so poorly done, what with “the clock” being Kate’s need to pee (Malin Akerman peed on Ben Stiller in "The Heartbreak Kid", people, so don’t tell me she wouldn’t willingly pee in a mop bucket). Thankfully, however, they’re not stuck in the closet the whole episode, probably because the writers midway through the script meeting we’re all like: “Shit! Did you realize we put them in a janitor’s closet to resolve their problems?!”

Meanwhile, off in Never Never Land, Jackie is tasked with babysitting for Hillary and Warren, both of whom seem too old for a babysitter, but nevertheless! The kids stumble upon a Jackie-created video for an online dating profile, which is suitably Jackie-esque (read: a trainwreck), and decide to re-dress, re-shoot and re-edit the video for her. Jackie complies, leading to her affection for Pete’s bedspread as a potentially chic outfit. I loved this subplot, this idea of Jackie ostensibly being in charge as babysitter only to have the tables turned without her even realizing it and the kids taking charge of what they are able to read as her helplessness, and wish they had even pushed it a little further. It must be said that these are two knowing performances from Bailee Madison and Ryan Lee as, respectively, Hillary and Warren, portraying kids of genuine intelligence who are also saddled by the blinders of youth.

Alas, precocious Bert feels a twinge of sadness that his mom wants to date and potentially provide him with another dad, but possible slop is made tasteful by the deft manner in which Michaela Watkins plays it. She has a real skill for displaying wisdom without ever coming across wise, and also for being in tune to what really matters in life despite her obvious self-involvement. Each week Watkins has walked the high wire (even as the character crash lands into the safety net below the high wire repeatedly), and if the few reading these recaps find themselves rolling their eyes at my relentless rhapsodizing about her work, well, ya best deal cuz when my infamous Actress O.C.D. kicks in, it's no holds barred.

Even so, this was my least favorite episode of “Trophy Wife” thus far. Early on, Pete finds Kate sitting on their bathroom floor eating potato chips that she keeps hidden behind the bleach. “Sometimes,” she explains, “I just want to eat chips before dinner.” This is an exemplary moment, an illustration of the parental balancing act, the need to set an example but the craving for a little middle-aged delinquency. “Eat your vegetables! Not the Frito-Lay’s! I WANT FRITO-LAY’S! WE ALL WANT FRITO-LAY’S!” We need more of this, less of being stuck in janitor’s closets. It’s like when Hillary and Warren are trying to makeover Jackie into something she’s not all for the goodness (horribleness) of online dating. Jackie doesn’t wear cocktail dresses, Jackie wears bedspreads.

Be you, “Trophy Wife.” Wear the bedspread.

Game 6

---We interrupt your regularly scheduled Friday's Old Fashioned for a review of a film I watched several months ago in order to pay homage to an infamous date in baseball history.

Michael Hoffman's “Game 6” is a strange feeling movie, but then writers and sports fans are strange people and “Game 6” is about a man who is both at once. He is Nicky Rogan, played by Michael Keaton in a performance of cunning likability, a noted New York City playwright which is at odds with his simultaneous status as a devout since-he-was-six-years-old Boston Red Sox fan. His new play is set to debut on Broadway October 25, 1986 – that is, the same night the baseball will go rolling through the legs of Bill Buckner, causing the Red Sox to fall to the New York Mets in Game 6 of the World Series. Talk about omens.

Written by acclaimed author Don DeLillo, the film is verbose – mostly in a good way – and does not lack for want of a theme. It follows Nicky as he cuts to and fro all over New York City, hopping into cabs and hopping out of cabs, always finding time to discuss how he used to drive a cab and keep it clean and keep it moving (shades of Max), running into various characters – his daughter (a rebelliously chic Ari Graynor) and an old playwright pal Elliot Litvak (Griffin Dunne, who exec produced) who has fallen on such hard times we half expect to find him eating right out of a dumpster. A character says to Elliot, bluntly, “What happened to you?”

What happened to him was Steven Schwimmer (Robert Downey Jr.), theater critic, reclusive harbinger of doom for all playwrights, whether aspiring or already successful. One blood-drawing review sent Elliot spiraling into a depression from which he never recovered. Schwimmer, of course, is set to review Nicky’s new play and Elliot is there is to issue dire warnings, like a Macbeth witch with a Walkman, although Nicky seems unconcerned. “I’ve got a good life,” he says. Does he? Although his beloved Red Sox are but one win from their first World Series championship in over 70 years, Nicky, often babbling to himself, has seen them lose so many times he seems to be attempting to convince himself that they will lose again even as he simultaneously clings to the desperate hope that they will not.

Failure and Obsession are the lifeblood of “Game 6” as it asks over and over that age-old question: Why do we care so much? Why can one review destroy a life? Why can a team and/or a game “pound in your head like a hammer of fate”?

Whether the film intends to truly make us wonder if Nicky plans to skip his own premiere – where the kind but old leading man struggles to remember his lines – for the game is perhaps open to debate, but any true fan of a particular sports team (which I am) already knows full well what he'll choose. The arts are important, as important as anything in the whole wide world, in my humble opinion, but more important than Game 6? Ha! And, in fact, knowing the outcome only enhances Nicky’s plight, as if it is a modern day tragedy he is authoring in his head. This story would not have felt right had Buckner made the play and hit a home run in the next inning to win.

At first glance the film’s weak point seems to be Nicky’s odd befriending of his latest cabbie, the oddly named Toyota Moseby (Lillias White) and her young son, who watch Game 6 alongside him, offering encouraging platitudes. “Baseball is life. Life is good.” What the hell is this, you wonder? But stick with it and eventually the way in which Nicky, whether by denial or something else, chooses to envision his own partly happy ending, I think gives away the fact these characters are mere apparitions. He is a writer, after all, and the writer, it seems, has imagined his own Magical Negro (coinage: Spike Lee) to offer the moral support he so desperately needs in these trying times.

The end comes cloaked in the guise of convenience and melodrama, but I liked it. The film, smartly, does not pretend to have answers to its questions, content with merely offering a hypothesis or two, but very conscientious of how sports can cut through a myriad of differences to momentarily unite us as utterly unlikely families of commiseration.

CIFF Review: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Writer/Director Arvin Chen’s new film takes for its title The Shirelles’ 1960 pop standard, a song performed in an obligatory karaoke scene blending reality and fantasy, joy and sadness. It is a demonstration of what made many of those songs from the 50’s and 60’s so great – sonically they were all sunshine and rainbows, lyrically they were often honest and aching. Thus, Chen takes that idea and communicates it cinematically. The film has a fanciful air and a bright visual sheen, but lurking is an undercurrent of melancholy. Formally, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” is very much a rom com, what with its meet cutes and misunderstandings, and yet it’s still willing to drop a tab of Alka Seltzer into the sugary milkshake. Here, whimsy actually has consequences.

Its focus is two couples, connected as family, but each one finding its romantic ideals tested. Mandy (Kimi Hsia), suggesting a reformed party girl, breaks off her engagement to San San (Stone), whose name alone evokes a Sad Sack if his general demeanor did not, more from fear than any logical reason. She stays indoors and watches soaps as the soap’s leading man continually materializes beside her, dispensing advice that only appears to enable her already questionable attitude.

Meanwhile, Mandy’s older brother, Weichung (Richie Jen), a demure optometrist, finds his long repressed homosexuality re-bubbling to the surface when a handsome flight attendant (Wong Ka-Lok) enters his shop and makes eyes at him through his brand new frames. This is problematic because Weichung has a young son with his wife of nine years, Feng (Mavis Fan), whose own turmoil involves potential downsizing at her office job.

Help for both confused men arrives in the form of gay greek chorus, fronted by wedding photographer Stephen (Lawrence Ko), who is in a marriage to a lesbian – a tart character that could have used a little more screen time – that purposely has no boundaries to afford maximum happiness. He coaches hapless San San in an effort to first re-woo Mandy and then become his own man. He urges Weichung to be honest with himself, and so Weichung tentatively begins to explore feelings he put aside for responsibility upon saying “I do.”

Feng, as it happens, is the weight that keeps “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” from floating into the billowy clouds, not unlike an umbrella-sporting character near the start who finds himself whisked into the sky at a moment of profound happiness. Most films would have been content to focus on Weichung’s coming out, to show him as the victor simply for acknowledging the truth, but Chen’s film also acknowledges the price to pay for that truth is Feng’s own well-being.

Hope and hurt collide, and a happy ending is proven more difficult to achieve than merely taking a magical umbrella ride.

CIFF Review: La Jaula De Oro

It goes without saying that the border between Mexico and the U.S. can be, whether politically or narratively, divisive. To one the border might appear as a demarcation of hope, a new beginning, a second chance. To another the border might appear as a false hope, a line of trouble, where dreaming only leads to despair. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of director Diego Quemada-Diez’s marvelous film, “La Jaula De Oro”, a prize-winner at Cannes, is how gracefully it straddles both sides of this argument, refusing to pick sides or offer solutions. Rather Quemada-Diez, to quote the late great Roger Ebert, puts human beings on the screen, and asks his audience to walk a little awhile in their shoes.

Our introductory image is Juan (Brandon Lopez) tromping through his shanty Guatemalan neighborhood. It is telling because it visually encapsulates the film’s whole forthcoming journey – straight-ahead and determined, whatever may come. He and his pal Samuel (Carlos Chajon) and his girlfriend Sara (Karen Martinez), who cuts her hair, tapes her breasts, and masquerades as a boy, hop a train, intent on making the perilous 1,200 mile journey north to Mexico and ultimately the El Dorado that is Los Angeles. These repeated wide hanging shots of trains in the Central American countryside, aspiring immigrants packed body-to-body on the roofs, are stirring, evoking modern-day refugees aboard boats bound for Ellis Harbor.

Of course, it’s not so easy. The trio encounters a younger Indian whose language is hard for them to decipher (impossible for us as it purposely goes without subtitles), Chauk (Rodolfo Dominguez). Juan, hotheaded, a thief of necessity, wants him to stay away. Sara and Samuel are more gracious. But Chauk seems to come as both a blessing and a curse, and his presence results in them being deported back to Guatemala. Nevertheless, they hop another train and re-strike out for points north.

A multitude of harrowing setbacks and snafus await, including a brief allusion to an event chronicled in a This American Life episode. Often these characters are willing or left without an alternative other than to place their trust in the hands of those they meet on the road. Juan may be brash, but his naivety can be jaw-dropping, and this leads them straight into trouble. Yet, what choice do they have? After all, the mythical border crossing they yearn to make would rely on them submitting themselves as drug mules. By any means necessary, right? The idea of faith in your fellow man is shattered, yet simultaneously reinforced in the way that Juan and Chauk come to find a mutual respect. Not a friendship, per se, just the recognition that shared hardships can bring.

That is one of “La Jaula De Oro’s” neatest concepts, its offering of standard setups – including one involving Sara that shall not be revealed – and then its admirable defiance to commonplace payoffs, if it even provides payoffs at all. No one is safe, and that lends the film a fierce urgency.

In spite of so much risk and tension, the characters never lose sight of their intent, clinging to the ideal of the fabled borderland. Once there, however, reality intrudes. The dream drives them forward, the dream is unmasked as an illusion, and both ideas blend together in a haunting finale showing a quiet snowfall not as the purity of a brand new start but as the burying of all facile assumptions.

CIFF Review: Miele

I apologize straight away for opening a review this way but as the oft-repeated Robert Warshaw phrase goes: “A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man.” And if this is true, and I contend whole-heartedly that it is, then it also must be said that a man goes to the movies on a certain date and time. The critic must be honest enough to admit he is that man on that certain date and time. This is to say, I saw “Miele” the very same day two girls were arrested in connection with the bullying of Rebecca Sedwick that led her to commit suicide. The terms suicide and euthanasia both come attached with a great deal of weight in society, but is there a difference between the two? And should they carry such negative connotations? This is the question “Miele”, the directorial debut of Valeria Golino (of whom you may have heard), poses.

Our protagonist is Irene (Jasmine Trinca), bringing to mind a less possessed Milla Jovovich, whose working name is Miele (i.e. Honey) and who earns scratch as a for-hire Angel of Death, rambling about Italy to assist people in need of suicide and/or euthanasia by washing down barbiturates used to put dogs to sleep that she scores from Mexico with vodka. She also sets the mood with by-appointment musical selections. It’s an all-encompassing service. We never learn how she fell into this job, nor should we. For-hire Angels of Death, I imagine, just sort of emerge from the mists rather than answer ads in the classifieds.

The film displays admirable patience in allowing the audience to figure out on its own who she is and what she does (or should the latter come first?). It is strongly suggested, but not spelled out. Eventually we learn she maintains her own standard of ethics – namely, she only aids the already terminally ill. Thus, as she must, she is assigned to an older man, Grimaldi (Carlo Cecchi), who seeks to be euthanized not on account of his health, which is fine, but simply because he has grown tired of life.

Irene becomes indignant, actively trying to stop him, but gradually gives ground. A teensy subplot involves Irene’s father, with whom she socializes but doesn’t really interact. This clearly colors Grimaldi as a kind of father figure, and honestly “Miele” might have been better sans that bit of business. It works better as a re-prioritizing of Irene’s ideals. She draws closer to Grimaldi and finds her worldview, for better and for worse, altered. Rather than plowing toward some dramatic faceoff, it quiets down into a graceful understanding, an admission of the world’s reality. No reason is ever established for Grimaldi’s desire to check out. He even mocks that notion, saying something to the effect of “Now’s the time when I tell a sad story?” Whatever brought him here is deep-seeded, a long time coming.

Ultimately the film concludes that no one really wants to die. We all want to live, but a point may arrive where life seems unlivable. Is it truly unlivable? Regardless of what some may argue, I contend only the individual knows. That is not to suggest the absence of a breakdown – whether emotional, whether societal – but that it is entirely possible for an otherwise healthy human being to reach such a place of despair.

Rebecca Sedwick reaching that point wrecks my heart, and I desperately wish she could have seen that there was a way out. But I also believe she must have reached a point where she genuinely felt she could not go on, and I hope beyond hope that her soul found peace. And paradoxically, I wish everyone in life could be as kind and generous as Irene is helping distribute death to those who seek it.

Machete Kills

"But then I realized, there's not a lot going on up there." This is what a particular character says at a crucial juncture in the film of our title character, Machete (Danny Trejo), an unrepentantly old school ("Machete don't Tweet") secret agent, who has been tasked to save America and, by extension, the world itself. I would argue, however, that this assessment is unfair.

Machete may stalk through the entire overlong film with the same scowl, but this does not mean he fails to process the avalanche of exposition he overhears. He relays all the pertinent facts each time he is called upon for the 411, it's just that these pertinent facts disinterest him. Except they are only disinteresting to him because he is acutely aware of their uselessness. No movie in 2013 will include more gobbledygook about the who, when, where, why, and how than "Machete Kills." Everyone explains everything. In fact, they over-explain everything to the point that it's difficult to comprehend anything, and this is what leaves Machete with that dull scowl. Why all the details when the only detail that matters is Machete kicking ass? He's just in a hurry to get to the action scenes and can't understand why no one will shut up.

Robert Rodriguez's sequel to his 2010 opus which itself was based off a fake trailer featured in his 2007 two-part ode to the "Grindhouse" is far less a movie about politics south of the border and yada yada than a collage of characters and images and set pieces with purposely poor special effects and scattered bits of machine gun fire and push-up bras. There may be a few humorous nods to the "Star Wars" franchise but more than that Rodriguez riffs on Russ Meyer, in so much as every.single.woman featured features to the extreme their cleavage.

I don't mean to imply Rodriguez is a sexist. He lets his ladies - be it Amber Heard as Miss San Antonio and Machete's handler, be it Michelle Rodriguez in an eyepatch, be it Sofia Vergara running a brothel of scantily clad assassins - get in on the action, throw punches, kick people in the face (and other lady-centric places), fire guns, and the whole what-have-ya.

The problem is not the action's stylistic lack of style, the problem is there being so much of it. At first it's a little funny, but a bad key being banged on the piano over and over and over becomes grating after twenty minutes, let alone one-hundred and forty-seven. Canny ideas remain on the periphery, unwilling to even try to sustain themselves. I'm aware it's not the aesthetic for which Rodriguez is aiming here, yet each "Machete" film has desperately made me long for that first half-hour of "Desperado", a virtual ballet of action-movie choreography accomplishing nothing beyond being cinema for cinema's sake. Making movies cheaply and on the fly is admirable in this age of out-of-control budgets, and the man's work ethic is impressive, but it would be nice to see Rodriguez shoot for the stars figuratively rather than literally. (Yes, "Machete Kills" goes to space. Sort of.)

The actors, at least, generally appear to be having fun, particularly Demain Bichir, who is really allowed to cut loose, and Amber Heard who, bless her soul, is truly acting her ass off, and Mel Gibson as the requisite villain, playfully spoofing his own image and actually re-demonstrating what a clever, committed actor he is regardless of what a terrible human being he may (or may not, I don't know him) be.

Oh. Right. "Machete Kills" also stars Lady Gaga. You didn't think you were getting out of this review with at least a paragraph about this blog's beloved siren from the lower east side making her feature film debut in a role that may (or may not) be three (or four) roles at once. Which is key. You say she's merely playing herself, I say none of us even know who she is. The opening of the film is actually a make-believe trailer that touts Lady Gaga "starring as whatever the hell she wants to be." Which is sort of what she is and what her role in "Machete Kills" is. Whether she's really her, or whether her is someone else, or that someone else is someone else, is not explicitly clear, and would, as is often the case, be less interesting if it was. A chameleon in her own life, a chameleon on camera. So what if she's only in it for 120 seconds?

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Breakup)

Wait, is it the Christmas episode already?! I don’t ask this because the latest episode of “Trophy Wife” is rife with carolers and wassail, but because it seems to very prominently feature your requisite Ghost of Past, Ghost of Future and Ghost of Present. I’ll explain.

Kate’s Ghost of Past appears in the form of Meg (Natalie Morales), last seen trying to pilfer alcohol from a kids’ party that didn’t actually have any alcohol, showing up at Kate and Pete’s place despondent because she’s just broken up with her boyfriend of two weeks. Thus, it’s multi-vodka-brands-in-a-blender time! Which leads to drunken hijinks. Which leads to drunken hangovers. Which leads to Meg eating Hillary’s carefully constructed edible solar system. (Parenthetical Tangent: If as a hypothetical parent my hypothetical son or hypothetical daughter is commissioned to construct an edible solar system, will I ensure an edible Pluto is included? You’re damn right, I will.) Pete grows understandably impatient with Meg and lets Kate know, which finds Kate caught between her Past and her Present.

Warren’s Ghost of Future appears in the form of his mother, Dr. Diane Buckley (and Marcia Gay Harden brings the heat this week), actively forcing him to study for the PPSAT (Preparation for the Preparation of the SAT’s). Poor Warren. The kid’s only 15 and has no idea what he wants to be, which Kate reassures him is okay because she didn’t what she wanted to be at 15, which just makes Dr. Diane Buckley that much more staunch in her demand that Warren like his whole future is at stake (BECAUSE IT IS, DAMMIT!!!) before he’s even legal to drive. So Warren needs a respite. Which he finds when our ol’ best friend Jackie needs a little help in helping precocious Bert put together his Lego Millenium Falcon.

Warren’s a master with Legos, not with verbiage, and so when Jackie (Michaela Watkins, continuing to Reagan) councils him on the un-necessity of test-taking he quickly comes to the rescue. This leads to the age-old scene of Warren fielding a call from Diane who knows where he is and him lying about where he is and trying desperately to impersonate his Dad, and despite its age-oldness, ye gods, did it make me laugh. If only because the utter pitiableness of his attempt was something to which I could relate.

So Kate has to find a way to deal with the pressures of her past in the present and Warren has to find a way to deal with the pressures of his future in the present, and Pete – poor Pete (who we learn in an aside hates his lawyering job) – just wants to watch a movie. That’s all. Just ONE movie. He hasn’t sat down and watched a movie since he broke his leg. But, of course, the past and the future infiltrate, and his movie-watching attempts are foiled.

And this, “Trophy Wife”, is not helping my desire to want kids.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Don't Bother To Knock (1952)

Despite having some knowledge of the direction in which “Don’t Bother To Knock” would go, it still wound up knocking me slightly dizzy all on account of Marilyn Monroe. When she comes gliding through the revolving doors of the McKinley Hotel on the mean streets of NYC, looking very much like the naïf fresh off the bus from Oregon that she is, taking a babysitting gig up on the 8th floor and reading her sweet little charge a sweet little story and then sweetly handing her a sweet little teddy bear, I swear I forgot anything I already knew. Even when she slipped into the nightgown, assumed the fuzzy slippers and donned the earrings of the mother of the little girl in her care, I merely fooled myself into thinking all Marilyn wanted was a daughter and family to call her own.

Then, finally, the camera finds a close-up of her wrists, and I saw the scars, and I was jarred back into my pre-gathered knowledge. Yet even THEN I found myself re-lulled into a false sense of security because, well, I thought, maybe she was so overwhelmed by the fury of life she felt she had no way out. But also, because she’s Marilyn Monroe.

Richard Widmark is the other one who can’t quite allow himself to be rid of her lilting clasp, no matter how frightening and tight it may turn. A pilot who has come to the McKinley to win back the woman who broke his heart, only to fail, he first spies Marilyn – let’s call her Nell – through the window across the hotel’s courtyard. Yearning for a whiskey drinking companion, Widmark – let’s call him Jed – invites himself over. She’s gorgeous, after all. But she’s also unstable. He sees a suitcase with the wrong initials. Nell says that belongs to her sister. He sees a man’s shoes. Nell says those belong to her sister’s husband. The sweet little girl bumbles sleepily out of her bedroom. Nell finally breaks down and admits the truth. Jed goes to leave. He doesn’t. He can’t. How could he?!

“Don’t Bother To Knock”, which was written by Daniel Taradash (who won the adapted screenplay Oscar a year later for “From Here To Eternity”) and based on a book by Charlotte Armstrong, never leaves the McKinley Hotel, and opens very much in the vein of noir. Jed’s ex, Lyn (Anne Bancroft), slumped at the bar, chatting up the bartender (“I’ve been thinking” – “That serious, huh?”), before the spotlight finds her and she takes up a mic and sings a standard. You have to respect a songstress who employs a barstool and a bar rather than a green room and a stage. Meanwhile, upstairs in his room, where apparently Lyn’s performance gets piped in, Jed smokes and drinks and paces and revisits Lyn’s Dear John letter. He’s come to win her back. We know this will end in failure. Unless the film wishes to turn down a different avenue. Which it does. Which is when Nell floats into the lobby.

Her Uncle Eddie (Elisha Cook Jr.) is the elevator operator, seemingly an amiable chap who just wants to help his niece and, thus, scores her the babysitting gig. She condemns him as pushy and manipulative, un-attentive to her real needs, but eventually we see this may merely be her imagination. This is because (and while I could issue a parenthetical spoiler alert, I will not) Nell is revealed as mentally ill, fresh out of the psychiatric ward, intent on re-setting herself, but shown to be much less than remedied.

This is what makes Monroe’s casting so genius. It might be fashionable to state she was playing apart from her usual bombshell roles and mining psychological depth, but I think that sort of misses the point. Consider Ray Liotta as the psychologically unstable cop in “Unlawful Entry.” His inherent Ray Liotta-ness is so pronounced that from the get-go you know – you KNOW – he’s unstable. How Madeleine Stowe fails to glean the Ray Liotta-ness emanating from his character in waves is beyond me.

On the other hand, because of Monroe’s inherent Marilyn-ness, you and Jed are on a completely level playing field. How can this woman – so soft, so angelic – be off her rocker? Even when she’s tormenting that sweet little girl and conking hapless Eddie on the head, it’s difficult for Jed to flee and difficult for you to want Jed to flee because, well, she’s Marilyn, man. Perhaps that’s the casting agent stacking the deck, but then that’s what I found so fascinating.

Theoretically “Don’t Bother To Knock” is about the way in which Jed is able to overcome his own needs to help this woman in obvious mental peril, and how this allows Lyn to see him in a new light. I was somewhat unconvinced, however, not least because of the final scene, which almost seemed callous in the face of Nell’s fate as she is led out those same doors she came in. But maybe that’s just my Marilyn-ness Affinity showing itself once more. And maybe that’s what “Don’t Bother To Knock” knew long before the real Marilyn met her sad demise – that no matter how bad things got for her, no matter how mismanaged her life may have been, no matter long she may have been gone now, we just can’t stop bringing ourselves to care for her.

CIFF Review: Bluebird

If you have survived a harsh winter, and as both a native and current Midwesterner I can attest to having survived a great many of them, you understand their oppressiveness. Snow seems permanently embedded to the ground, the frozen chill refuses to subside, the sky just won't stop being grey, and any reasonable human being feels the urge to withdraw from the world in general and hibernate until spring (which likely won't arrive until April). Director Lance Edmands captures that wintry relentlessness with an astute eye and an indescribable ability to imbue mentally that you too are trapped in this Maine tundra (the guy sitting next to me put on his jacket midway through).

Thus, "Bluebird" purposely and a little problematically wears you down. It will not give an inch on its weary atmosphere. Even the character names come slathered in somber metaphor. The primary family's last name is Dyer. The requisite slime-infested lawyer's last name is Lyman. Even the symbolic respite that provides the film its title doubles as a harbinger of doom. That is, Lesley (Amy Morton), a school bus driver in the small town where the film is set, is distracted by a bluebird during her routine check after dropping her many young charges off, and fails to see little Owen sleeping in one of the seats. She finds him in the next morning. He has gone into a coma on account of hypothermia and is rushed to the hospital.

Owen's mother Marla (Louisa Krause), her mind clouded by her usual diet of drinks and drugs, was supposed to pick him up but forgot. Not that she would have even been taking Owen to her own home since her son stays with his grandmother (Margo Martindale), who patiently remains at Owen's side, forced to watch Marla go back out for more drinks and drugs. The requisite slime-infested lawyer shows up and suggests monetary compensation.

A lawsuit and her own error might be enough to make Lesley loony, but there's more. Her husband Richard (John Slattery) is on the verge of being laid off from the local lumber mill where he has worked for 25 years, though he keeps this to himself. He keeps mostly to himself. The subject of his past infidelity is raised, never addressed. Slattery's (the film's) funniest line is as follows: "This house is falling apart." It's so uninterested, as if the house has been falling apart for quite some time, as if life in general has been falling apart for quite some time.

Paula (Emily Meade), the lone daughter of Lesley and Richard, seems the sliver of light, but the gauntlet of a New England winter combined with familial distress gets to her too. The boy she's sorta seeing promptly brushes her off after they have sex and her life at school is unavoidably affected by her mother's horrible mistake. Still, she has the guts to stand up to her father, and mostly no one else appears capable of such intestinal fortitude. Morever, she is the only one with an occasional smile not merely meant to mask the sadness.

The film's finest moment finds Paula, who works part-time at some sort of value store, stocking the shelves with assembly line snow globe music boxes. As she does, she winds up each one so that the music plays and the itsy-bitsy fake snow falls. The next scene shows Marla slumped in her parked car, popping pills and smoking a cigarette. It's winter. It's not going to end. You choose how to cope.

CIFF Review: Domestic

So much of the so-called Romanian New Wave has been built around exceedingly long takes filmed with stationary cameras, setting up a precise, sometimes picturesque, frame and then blocking actors within that space. It is meant to invoke a sense of realism, and often it does, but, at the same time, in this cinematic world of quick cuts galore, it can come across surreal. Indeed, Director Adrian Sitaru’s “Domestic”, amidst those long takes and real-looking people, presents a distinct tone of the surrealist.

Set almost entirely inside an apartment building in Bucharest, “Domestic” chronicles, in its unique way, a pair of families and a partially noble dognapper with a recurring dream he struggles to make sense of. Him being a dognapper is not merely meant as comedic fodder as animals factor into the story as prominently as humans.

Mr. Lazar (Adrian Titieni), the building administrator, is shocked to see his wife (Clara Voda) return home with a live hen intended for dinner. But this means someone has to snuff out the hen. So the Lazars argue as their daughter, Mara (Ariadna Titieni), weighs ethics against monetary compensation for doing the dirty deed. The sequence – which has to be ten minutes at least – is a single take demonstration of how the film’s laughs arrive directly from a natural escalation of their built-in absurdity.

A few doors down a cabbie (Gheorghe Ifrim) brings a rabbit home to his son for a makeshift pet. Ultimately the rabbit winds up in a stew and that leaves the son despondent which leads to the son bringing home a pigeon intent on it being a makeshift pet. In other words, pets are not merely the props, they are very much the point.

Please indulge your humble “reviewer” in a personal anecdote, but it bears relevance. When my sister went away to college her roommates had a cat for whom none of them were interested in caring. So my sister took it upon herself to care for the cat, and inevitably she became attached. But when my sister finished college and begin criss-crossing the U.S. on a multitude of adventures, it fell upon our father to care for the cat, and inevitably he became attached. This is the theme “Domestic” gently unspools, building to an antepenultimate scene that effortlessly shows how two characters have become attached to a cat for whom neither of them ever much cared.

Well, build might be a strong word. “Domestic” is far more aligned to vignettes than standard arc, and so ginormous developments – such as a certain character’s death – are dropped in during otherwise casual conversation, and other conversations only exist for the sake of themselves. Not that I’m complaining. A Christmas dinner monologue revolving around God, for instance, evoked Garrison Keillor, if Garrison Keillor left Lake Wobegon and re-settled near the Carpathian Mountains. Many individual moments are enjoyable, intriguing ideas are raised, but the film feels incomplete.

But perhaps that is a virtue. We are conditioned to expect that the oft-debated dream will be returned to at the conclusion, and its meaning will be readily apparent, and all will fall into place. And sure enough, like clockwork, the dream re-appears at the conclusion but......not so fast! It really doesn't answer any of our questions. Thus, a sequence over the closing credits shows our characters CONTINUING to debate the dream.

Even when the movie ends, its characters’ trundle on.

CIFF Review: Suzanne

Maria (Adèle Haenel) and Julien (Paul Hamy) are discussing Maria's sister and Julien's lover, Suzanne (Sara Forestier), and how she left her job with her young son in tow to be with Julien. Maria suspects Julien of pressuring her but Julien says "I didn't ask her to." He continues: "You know how she is." He smiles. Maria smiles. They know how she is.

How she is is impulsive, an erratic carefree spirit. Within the film's first ten minutes Suzanne has become pregnant, though tellingly we never see nor hear about nor so much as get the first name of the father. Why does she want to keep the baby? "Because I feel like it," she replies with a shrug. In most films that might constitute the screenplay's lack of understanding its own protagonist, but here it communicates to us in toto who Suzanne is and how she sees the world.

Director Katell Quillévéré, who penned the screenplay along with Mariette Désert, has in many ways crafted a French answer to Derek Cianfrance's "The Place Beyond The Pines", in so much as it as an era-spanning document of a family and its ongoing crises. "Suzanne", however, is more compact, refraining from separate acts, content to unspool in a free-flowing form evoking the refreshing sensation that it is being written on the screen.

On a couple occasions Suzanne even briefly drops out of the story, as it focuses more on the exploits of Maria and her and Suzanne's father Nicolas (Francois Damiens) and their efforts to raise Suzanne's son as she abandons him for a wayward life of crime on the arm of Julien. In fact, I suspect Quillévéré could easily have made a "Suzanne" B-side called "Maria." It can be tough to stay on the side of a character that willingly walks away from her child, and that we stay at least partially rooted to her selfish struggle is because Maria stays at least partially rooted to her sister. Sisterly Love is binding, and "Suzanne" conveys this gracefully, not least because of the knowing performances of Forestier and Haenel. They are two girls facing mature decisions with only lives primarily of immaturity to guide them.

It must be said, however, the film's final act is spurred by an extreme coincidence, which is always bothersome, and a particular character's reckoning felt cheap. Although maybe it wasn't cheap at all. Maybe its all-of-a-suddennes was very in tune to her herky-jerky arc of life. And maybe my emotional connection to that particular character - and too often, I feel, critics are unwilling to confront lurking emotional connections to evens on the screen - influenced my line of thinking.

Nevertheless, I have substantial admiration for a film that allows its primary character to take possession of her (or him) self rather than letting the plot square things. Is Suzanne's conclusive choice a case of too little, too late? It could be argued, but I enjoyed myself so much I was willing to believe she'd finally turned the corner.

Captain Phillips

For obvious reasons the title of this film is required to be "Captain Phillips." That is because its base material is the book recounting the real life Richard Phillips' excruciating trials at sea in 2009 when his container ship the Maersk Alabama was boarded by four armed Somali pirates which resulted in him being taken hostage aboard his ship's own lifeboat and a dramatic standoff with the US Navy. Thus, Captain Richard Phillips, played by Tom Hanks in a performance driven by behavior and reaction, with a full blooming Boston accent as a kicker, is front and center. Ultimately, however, "Captain Phillips" is very much about another Captain, even if the other Captain has bestowed himself the title with no real qualifications other than machine-gun intimidation.

The film opens with Phillips and his wife (Catherine Keener, a single scene walk-off) in a minivan on the way to the airport discussing their sons' futures and, in turn, the changing world and its scary economy. We've seen this sorta thing before, sure, but then director Paul Greengrass does an interesting thing and cuts to the coast of Somalia where Muse (Barkhad Abdi, standing up to Hanks in character and acting) is enlisting only a precious few squabbling applicants to join him in rickety motorboats to invade a passing ship to hold for ransom. It is a scene straight out of Depression-era America, desperate men clamoring for paying tasks down on the dock. By no means is this meant to excuse the actions of the pirates, merely to paint perspective, that the requisite clock-ticking thrill-ride to come is not ethically delineated in picture perfect slices nor simply about patriotic heroics. To borrow a term Captain Phillips himself uses in the film, this is real world.

At sea, Phillips is shown to be level-headed but also a taskmaster, telling his men to enjoy their coffee even though the spin Hanks puts on the words each time betrays the fact he'd rather they put aside their coffee and get back to work. There has been rumination (and a lawsuit) regarding the real life Phillips' altruism, whether he had steered his ship into waters he should not have, à la Steve Zissou. That is something none of us outside of the actual event can know, even if we puff our chests and presume to, but I would argue this initial illustration of Phillips hints that he might very well do just such a thing while simultaneously still making crew safety a priority. A juxtaposition, they call it. But let's move on.

"Captain Phillips" was directed by Paul Greengrass, an Englishman who has sort of become the consummate re-teller of harrowing real-life drama (this completes a very unofficial trilogy coupled with "Bloody Sunday" and "United 93"). But his un-frilly, all-momentum approach can also be found in his more pulpy pieces, like the excellent "Bourne Supremacy", and here he demonstrates his unique ability to maintain both narrative hold and a sense of surrounding amid his many quick cuts and full-out freneticism.

As the pace picks up and the pirates board, we never lose our place in the story nor the place of the various men - good or bad - as they traipse around the endless deck of containers and through the darkened bowels of the ship. (Funniest line of the film? "Captain, the Maritime Emergency Line isn't answering." Fear not, American ship captains!) It is also in these moments, as Muse ignores with disgust an offer of $30,000 in the ship's safe and demands more hostages for more ransom, that Phillips proves himself to be graceful and clever under pressure, routinely placing the safety of his men first and his safety last. Muse proves himself to be alternately hotheaded and icy cool, both smarter than might you think and as foolish as you might expect, eventually wandering right into a trap but maintaining a serenity worthy of his Captain counterpart.

This is all quite tense, but it is when the four pirates abscond with Captain Phillips in the lifeboat and make for the Somali coast in a lethargic getaway that the film finds its most frightening and revealing level of tautness. The United States Navy, of course, becomes involved, with warships and SEAL units deployed, and a hostage negotiator brought in whose negotiations merely mask the real intent - prevent Phillips from reaching Somalia by any means necessary.

It's an extraordinary counterbalance - the claustrophobia of the five men in the lifeboat and the immense global scope taking place in the water just outside. The fact that you know precisely how this all turns out might have worked to subtract suspense, but instead fuels the strain felt by the men in those close quarters. Hanks does admirable acting here, maintaining his wits, but non-verbally communicating how his life is in peril not just from his captors but in the looming rescue attempt of those on his side.

This too is when Abdi is at his best. His cohorts come apart but he seems almost contentedly resigned, understanding that either his warlord commander kills him, the US Navy kills him or he makes it to America via an orange jumpsuit. These are his only options. Maybe these were the only options all his life. He and Hanks have a late exchange that is given away in the trailers but upon seeing it here with the whole weight of the preceding two hours heaped on their back, they reach a plain of truth that no righteous jibber-jabber can wash away.

That is why I desperately wish Greengrass had cut the last shot of the film, pulling back across the Indian Ocean, allowing for one final glimpse of the lifeboat and the warships. Perhaps he wanted to re-underline the true enormity of what took place, but the real enormity is seen in the two prior scenes. Two men, two reactions.

Survival. That's all it is. That's all any of this is.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Social Network)

The seminal TV family of the 80’s were the Huxtables, the lovable brood under the wise care of Cliff and Clair. By the end of each half-hour in the era of Reagan, wise lessons had been dispensed, often to the kids on account of their good-hearted if misguided hijinks, but occasionally even to the adults. Slipping on my nostalgia-tinted glasses I recall the episode in which Theo gets his ear pierced which leads to Cliff scolding (chiding) Theo which leads to Cliff’s Dad telling Theo of the time Cliff got his ear pierced. ‘Round and ‘round they go, poor ideas encapsulate an eternal truth. Sigh.

Wait. Where was I? (Taking off nostalgia-tinted glasses.) This was the sort of family we saw on TV in the 80’s, the realities of pointed familial squabbling stuffed out of sight in the closet like so many anti-tank missiles. We have since entered a different age of television, of course. Familial squabbling is front and center (think: The Bluth Family). Placidness has given way to franticness, Cosby sweaters have given way to Malin Akerman’s slashed tee shirts (righteous) and rather than discuss differences between right and wrong in an honest, forthright manner, TV families have become much more hostile and brazen in their tactics to provide teachable moments. After all, truth bombs have supplanted valuable lessons in this world of Facebook.

Which, as it happens, is the social media tool from which the most recent episode of “Trophy Wife” culls its name – “The Social Network.” This is because the dry martini that is Dr. Diane Buckley suspects her daughter is sneaking off to sex parties and so she orders Pete to snoop around her daughter’s room to gather information which Kate is totally against. Pete snoops anyway which finds him snooping through her Facebook profile which finds him accidentally making status updates under her name about the mystery boy named Ace (no, really) with whom his daughter may or may not be having sex. I like it, and I like it because it exposes Pete right away as opposed to making it a secret that he spends the entire show trying to cover up. Cover-ups are not the driving force of “The Social Network” – instead it covers all manner of manipulations.

Dr. Diane Buckley manipulates Pete into snooping through Hillary’s room and then she manipulates Kate into taking Hillary to see a movie since Kate thinks “being a friend” is the best parenting method all in an effort to get Hillary out of the house so she – Diane – can go snooping through Hillary’s room. And even if she doesn’t find anything well, hey, it doesn’t matter, since Diane is in essence manipulating Hillary’s entire school by creating a fake Facebook profile for “Courtney Winters” and becoming “friends” with all of Hillary’s friends as a means to spy on her daughter. (“Light catfishing” she calls it, which I like to think of as a respectful nod to “light treason.”) Meanwhile Hillary manipulates Kate by using Kate’s desire to “be a friend” by skipping out on the movie to attend what may or may not be the aforementioned sex party.

Meanwhile, off in the never-never land of second wife Jackie’s home, she decides to manipulate a local businesswoman into aiding her burgeoning “wearable jewelry” enterprise by utilizing her and Pete’s adopted son, precocious Bert, in the scheme of manipulation. (It also goes well past the point of saying that Michaela Watkins as Jackie gets the episode’s best line and best line delivery with “Wait, why am I driving on the freeway?!”) Precocious Bert than manipulates Warren – Pete and Dr. Diane Buckley’s son – into helping create pieces of “wearable jewelry” to meet Jackie’s impending deadline.

This is family life in the twenty-tens. Everyone’s in the wrong even if their heart is mostly in the right place, and even if their suspicions are outed as being mistaken. Jackie learns her lesson, and so do Kate and Pete and Dr. Diane Buckley and Hillary. Well, Dr. Diane Buckley will apparently remain lightly catfishing for the foreseeable future, but the show’s capping scene involving Warren and his undying crush on "Courtney Winters" goes to show that even questionable ethics can lead to a spot of good. Stay strong, American families. It’s a murky moral ground out there.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Trouble Along The Way (1953)

John Wayne was kind of meant to play a football coach. As I have written before, The Duke didn’t have dialogue so much as rhetoric, and the role of a football – college, that is – coach affords all sorts of opportunities for his specially made brand of speechifying. The one potentially different shading in his role as Coach Steve Williams in “Trouble Along The Way” (1953) is that he is a disgraced coach, one in possession of suspect ethics. That’s a fairly significant step forward for the gruff symbol of All-American Nobility, the man who never shot another movie character in the back, the man who we like to imagine slept beneath a Stars & Stripes comforter. Of course, despite his suspect ethics this movie prominently features the Catholic church, and so we can only assume forgiveness of his sins awaits.

Echoing the recently reviewed “College Coach”, itsy-bitsy St. Anthony’s College is facing immediate closure unless the vast sum of $170,000 can somehow be corralled. Alas, though Donna Reed may be in this movie, this isn’t Bedford Falls and a gaggle of priests and students won’t march into Father Burke’s office and hand over saintly stacks of cash free of charge. This is, however, 1953, the height of the Frank Leahy era at Notre Dame. Catholic College Football thrives! So, Burke wonders, why can’t teensy-weensy St. Anthony’s get in on that Saturday afternoon moolah? Old and broken-down but spiritually spry, Burke wades into a pool hall to find Williams scamming suckers for a few bucks and offers the ex-coach a second chance. At first, Williams turns him down flat. But he will have a change of heart – or, more accurately, a forcing of his hand.

College football actually factors less into “Trouble Along The Way” then Williams’ relationship to his daughter, charismatic eleven year old tomboy Carol (Sherry Jackson). He’s a single dad and his ex-wife, the scheming, party-throwing Anne (Marie Windsor) wants Carol back in her life if for no other reason than it would constitute a “victory” over Steve. Enter: Alice Singleton (Reed), the social worker tasked to check up on Carol and determine whether Steve is a fit father. Her requisite backstory – she grew up sans mother – would seem to leave her inclined to recommend moving Carol from her father’s stead to mother’s, even if Steve and Carol have a solid relationship. So Steve takes the coaching gig as a means to give he and Carol a place on campus where they can theoretically hide out from the vile clutches of his ex-wife and her mom. Upon taking the job, however, he realizes his team is in over its heads, so he instantly returns to his nefarious ways, recruiting academically questionable students and then asks the various priests in charge to simply have faith in the legitimacy of the phony transcripts.

That last detail is intriguing. There is much blending of Faith with good old fashioned Political Machinations. Father Burke has faith that football will save his school, but he’s also aware of the necessary oil to grease the machine. Does he turn a blind eye to the reality of Williams cunning ways? He probably does, and he more or less admits it near the end when he steps down from his post, purportedly because of his age. You can tell, though, in Coburn’s gently weary performance, that he views this stepping down more as a way to atone for his sin and hopefully absolve the school of theirs. The Father makes himself the Fall guy. Respect.

So too does Reed convincingly portray these conflicting emotions. Initially her existence appears entirely predicated on being the Shrew, Disagreeing with John Wayne at every turn before eventually Falling In Love With Him because, hey, he’s John Wayne (and so John Wayne can compliment her legs even though she’s constantly outfitted in dresses past her ankles). And she does fall in love with him (well, she says she does, but I was suspicious) but we eventually we come to see that her actions are based not on favoritism to the ex-wife or spite toward the ex-husband but affection for the little girl. She believes a little girl needs her mother, until that perception is changed.

Which brings us back to John Wayne who, by his own admission, played John Wayne in all of his movies. And though he threatens - well, let’s say hints - at playing a variation of John Wayne, he remains John Wayne throughout. He may forge transcripts and bend rules to his advantage but Father Burke takes the blame, explaining he merely asked his coach to do “the impossible.” He may angrily, drunkenly grab Alice and try to kiss her and when she pulls away grab her and try to kiss her again and when she pulls away a third time grab her and try to kiss her again, but this doesn’t prevent her from declaring love for him. His perception doesn’t change. He did what he did because it’s the way he’s always done it.

In other words, Wayne (Williams) is not so much forgiven for his sins as he is declared to have never committed any in the first place.