2014

Dirty Wars

“It’s almost as if there are two laws in America, and the American people would be surprised if they could see the difference betweenwhat they believe a law says and how it’s interpreted in secret.”
“You’re not permitted to disclose that difference publically?” 
“That’s correct.”

It is at this moment, during an exchange between Sen. Ron Wyden and our documentarian narrator Jeremy Scahill, that the viewer will be forgiven for momentarily making like Al Pacino as Lowell Bergman in “The Insider”, peering around incredulously in the wake of some bureaucratic double talk, and wondering “Is this ‘Alice In Wonderland?’” It’s not. It’s America’s War on Terror, President Obama’s Great Clusterf---. (“You mean, other than the Obamacare Web Site?” “Yes?”)

The “60 Minutes” reference by way of Lowell Bergman is not coincidental. Punched up by director Richard Rowley with arty effects and kitschy editing tricks that give it a faux-grittiness, “Dirty Wars” as a film experience often comes across like an extended episode of “60 Minutes.” The camera continually ponders Scahill, a war correspondent for The Nation, pondering, focusing on him during interviews as much as the interviewee, making sure to repeatedly promote the peril into which he repeatedly puts himself, allowing for hypothetically dramatic recitations of lines like “I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t.” It’s not so much “Dirty Wars” as it is “Jeremy Scahill Investigates Dirty Wars.”

It essentially dives directly into the mess, recklessly, but doggedly, just like Scahill himself. Embedded with the military in Afghanistan in 2010, Scahill suspects he is merely seeing what the they want him to see and, thus, goes off script, on a search for what we’ll term “the truth”. This takes him from Kabul to Gardez, to the site of a secret strike perpetrated by American forces that go to great lengths to cover their tracks. Scahill digs deeper, trekking to countries like Yemen purportedly without war, and finding further evidence of American military nefariousness. Ultimately this leads him to the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the months before JSOC becomes a militaristic Lynyrd Skynyrd post-killing of Osama bin Laden.

The story of this film, however, pivots on the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Muslim turned Jihadist that was tracked down and taken out with a drone to protect national interests, or some such. Part of the driving question, of course, is the legality of the President authorizing the killing (assassination?) of an American – an American, that is, on foreign soil – without submitting evidence to his nation's people. Moreover, Scahill and Rowley are intent on portraying al-Awlaki as a one-time moderate against Jihad who was gradually turned to the other side on account of his mistreatment by America post-9/11. This includes interviews with al-Awlaki’s father who filed a lawsuit to remove his son’s name from the kill list.

At the same time, that portrait of al-Awlaki, a bin Laden-in training only because America programmed him to be that way, has been challenged (and that challenge has been challenged, etc.). This reviewer will not pretend to know the whole truth, but one of the more interesting elements that organically and purposely emerges from “Dirty Wars” is the way in which the narrative can be framed. The film cheats this way, the President’s Administration cheats that way, and so it goes, on and on, an eternal loop. Pitch your version, draw your line in the sand, don’t come across, obfuscate anything else at all costs. For instance, the film never much addresses the opposing viewpoint, aside from interviews with occasional congressmen that are propped up more as comedy than serious consideration.

Still, the film’s ultimate intent comes in loud and clear. The investigative procedure as an arc consistently reveals another alley and another alley and another and so on, just as each “kill list” fashioned by the American government in its War on Terror leads to another “kill list” and to another and so on. “Dirty Wars” ends without an ending which is totally on point. For every extremist, real or imagined, America executes, another is compelled to stand up.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Lemon Drop Kid (1951)

“Lemon Drop Kid? I just don't believe you're not looking out for The Lemon Drop Kid.” Well, that cuts straight to the heart of the matter. Sidney Milburn (Bob Hope), aka The Lemon Drop Kid, because he puts away lemon drops like antacids, is a self-centered and vainglorious. Why there’s a scene in which The Lemon Drop Kid essentially spends a couple minutes admiring himself in a mirror. I’m not entirely sure what he’s so impressed with since his whole life seems to be one mishap on top of another. But then, he does have stellar comedic timing. He’s played by Bob Hope! But eventually, we assume, since the film is set at Christmas, he will come to see the error of his ways and have a reformation in the nick of time. Right? Won’t he?

Based on a character created by the notorious Damon Runyon, The Lemon Drop Kid – referred to throughout as just “Kid”, because I assume it’s easier – hangs around Florida race tracks, convincing suckers to bet this way or that way to make way for his own bet in order to clean up. But when he convinces a gangster’s moll to make the wrong bet, the movie is off and running. The Kid is summoned before mob boss Moose Moran (Fred Clark) who gives The Kid until Christmas to pay back the $10,000 his betting misdirection caused. Or else…

That’s how The Kid finds himself back in his old stomping grounds, wintry New York, pleading with his former pals for scratch only to find no help forthcoming or that he, in fact, owes them cash. He then checks in on his ex-flame Brainey Baxter (Marilyn Maxwell), whose name I unfortunately suspect is meant to be humorously ironic. Seems they were to get married but seems The Kid skipped town and seems Brainey is intent on sticking to the original matrimony plan and seems Kid is intent on re-weaseling out of matrimony. (Would a marriage to Bob Hope be like living in The Improv 24/7?)

The Kid’s off-the-cuff scam to masquerade as a Salvation Santa and collection donations toward his reprieve rather than charity goes belly-up and he winds up in the clink. To the rescue: Brainey. Not that she’s doing him a favor, mind you. She’s doing herself a favor, bailing out The Kid so she can re-demand they wed. I know it's merely a movie about Bob Hope making jokes, some of which are rather funny, but nevertheless, I struggle to reconcile Brainey's desire for marriage with this boor.

Anyway, The Kid reconsiders his unsuccessful scam, re-strategizes and implements Salvation Santa Scam 2.0. Placing his old friend Nellie Tuesday, to whom he owes money, at the forefront, he opens a phony old folks home – Nellie Tuesday’s Home For Old Dolls – in the place of Moose Maron’s shuttered casino which allows The Kid a true-blue charity license and the opportunity to enlist and unleash a whole army of streetside Santas theoretically collecting dough for the old dolls but really collecting it for The Kid. Not that he tells any of the Kris Kringles in his “employment” this, and, hey, he even gets Brainey believing in the non-existent virtue of his actions.

You might know that “The Lemon Drop Kid” made famous the Christmas tune “Silver Bells”, probably playing right now at your local mall. Its sudden presence in the film, which only features one other sing-along, may theoretically sound extraneous, but is quite truly the film’s loveliest moment. For a few minutes Hope retires the wisecracks and Maxwell takes his arm and so they stroll the snowy city streets and sing and you think “Hey, maybe this dude can leave the lemon drops behind. Maybe this is him turning the corner.” Well, it’s not, of course, it’s just the movie adding a musical number, which is fine, but still.

The Kid’s wide-reaching scam gets blown up again but he ferrets out another ruse to bring everyone together so all their attempts to “get him” collapse simultaneously and he gets away scot free. It’d be nice to think that ultimately The Kid has seen the light and that his settling down with Brainey won’t end in divorce after he drops a ton on the ponies up at Saratoga, but the movie really does not even attempt to disguise the fact he hasn't reformed. He's merely emerged in one piece, the same as he ever was. "Honey," he says, "don't ever lose me. It would ruin ya." Would it?

It ends with The Kid and Brainey in each other's arms. I wished it had ended with Brainey punching The Kid in the balls. You know, if he had any.

Christmas (Day After)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve

All Is Bright

Each year during the holidays I like to embrace my inner-whimsy and take a stroll on Michigan Avenue amidst the shoppers and buy a cup of coffee and watch the skaters down at Millenium Park. This year, though, a funny thing happened. While I was minding my own business, watching the skaters, listening to Lindi Ortega’s Christmas EP on my iPod, a couple girls asked if I might take their picture in front of The Bean. So I did. That prompted a couple to ask if I might take their picture in front of The Bean. So I did. That prompted another couple to ask if I might take their picture in front of The Bean and then in front of the ice rink. So I did. That prompted a couple other girls to ask…… You get the drift. All in all, I must have taken two dozen photos of different people simply because I was the one idiot hanging out down there by himself. Finally I just had to grab my cup of coffee and jet.

But then another funny thing happened. I found another place in the park, a place away from the ice rink and The Bean and all the people, and it was quiet and the snow was falling and somehow downtown Chicago looked like old world Chicago, like at any second Michigan Avenue might start crawling with Model T’s and dudes in fedoras might pop up every which way and a drunken Daisy Buchanan might stumble by. It was so strangely serene, such a wonderful reminder of the eerie solitude a city can sometimes provide amidst so much bustle, I must have stood there for half-an-hour. And that’s when I returned in my mind to “All Is Bright”, a film I had seen nearly a month before but had been unable to put my finger on.

“All Is Bright”, Phil Morrison's long awaited followup to the stellar "Junebug", was released earlier this year, at some point, and slipped stealthily under the radar, a fact which seems extraordinarily appropriate because it’s an almost unbelievably quiet film. It’s about two ex-con Canucks, Dennis (Paul Giamatti) and Rene (Paul Rudd), who drive a truckload of Christmas trees across the border and into the heart of New York City where they set up a shoddy lot to hustle for cash. Rene wants to buy an engagement ring for his lady friend who happens to be Dennis’s ex-wife who told Dennis’s daughter that Dennis was dead since he’d been locked up for so long. This peeved Dennis, naturally, but he respects his own fake death and stays away, though he remains determined to scrounge up enough to buy his daughter a present for Christmas.

This could make for a tense relationship between the two, but it is not necessarily a tense film. Oh, there’s tension between Dennis and Rene, but that’s not the movie’s focus. Rather its focus is to peer into the cracks between ginormous plot developments and examine characters forced to just sit in a parking lot with a plethora of pine needles and stew about what their lives have become and fantasize about what they wish their lives could be. If ever there were a pair of losers, it’s these two, and yet, as we know, it was the shepherds who were told about the impending arrival of God’s newborn son. If we updated the nativity story to roll with the times, the angels would probably reveal themselves to Dennis and Rene.

Rudd talks a few city blocks a minute, generally about nothing, and thus Giamatti, positively irascible and a social cripple, is a perfect foil. He only seems at ease when he’s volatile, and then he quickly re-recedes within himself. Growing out a beard and his sideburns to lumberjack-esque proportions, Giamatti, who can often appear unpleased on film, appears even more unpleased than that, embodying the surliness of a man desiring to go straight and having to consistently fend off the desperate urge to crumble.

I’ve yet to mention one character. That is Olga, the no-gruff-taking Russian housesitter for a couple well-to-do Manhattan dentists we never see, played by Sally Hawkins less as a potential love interest for Giamatti’s sad-sack than an eastern European schoolmaster ordering him to sit up straight and get his shit together. Of course, her presence and specifically her presence within that sprawling Manhattan home of opulence, allows for a neon-lit invitation to Dennis to return to his life of crime.

You can probably guess what happens. But then Dennis can probably guess what happens too. That it is "expected" all along allows for it to loom over the entire film. It's not will he or won't he? It's, why will he? Maybe because he is who he is. Maybe to bring a little good cheer to his daughter on Christmas morning. Hey, who says those wise men didn't hijack that gold, frankincense and myrrh?

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife ('Twas The Night Before Christmas...Or 'Twas It?)

Christmas is a time for the familiar (songs, decorations and asking for DVDs as presents) and in that spirit, “Trophy Wife’s” requisite holiday episode, “’Twas The Night Before Christmas…..Or ‘Twas It?”, borrows a familiar refrain. It shows us the (metaphorically) bloody aftermath and then has the characters re-trace their steps to determine precisely what happened. It opens with a vintage seasonal tune contrasted against Pete and His Three Wives spread throughout the house, passed out in varying places of ludicrousness. Pete is wearing a Santa suit (how did he get into it?) and Jackie’s eyebrows are nearly shaved down to nothing (who did it?) and the Christmas tree is 1.) In the pool and 2.) On fire and all the presents have vanished and, of course, a dog. A random dog is in the house. Unless it’s a coyote. Or possibly a wolf. (“It’s a wolf.”)

Malin Akerman's Pants. Dear God, Malin Akerman's Pants!

So the confused quartet wakes, gathers ‘round the coffeemaker and attempts to determine and/or assign blame to the person responsible for this overall mishap. The blame, as is often the case, is aimed square at Kate. (Reader’s Note: Malin Akerman impossibly ups her pants from last week with a pair of searing red leather pants this week that are burned into my retinas. I mean, Malin Akerman in those pants halts any talk of potentially switching the Official Cinematic Crush back to Sienna Miller, as was Cinema Romantico scuttlebutt earlier in the year. I mean we’re nearing the point of All Malin Akerman Pants Recaps. I mean, Malin Akerman wears those effing pants.) To instill her own family traditions, she has crafted a batch of Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg.”), a sort of Swedish mulled wine, and invited Jackie and Dr. Diane Buckley over for Christmas Eve despite Pete’s protests because, after all, it’s Christmas. And that’s what you do at Christmas……you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do (shouldn’t under any circumstances do) and then dismiss their inherent bad-ideaness with a proferring of “It’s Christmas.” Kate, they assume, must have spiked the Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg”), or made it too strong, and caused a wide-reaching blackout. This is both very near and very far from the actual truth.

Lindsey Shockley’s script is a breakfast buffet of setups and the payoffs that are unpacked lickety-split and with escalating humor. Clearly its roots are in “The Hangover” but whereas that film was strictly Hollywood, a big budget allowing for multiple locales and grand-scale absurdity, “Trophy Wife” is gratefully restricted to the confines of the Harrison house (and the next-door front yard, allowing for a solo Jackie Nativity caper). It is not simply the smaller scale that strengthens it, but the fact that Pete and His Three Wives descent into Christmas Eve madness is both revealing – Pete really hates his job – and a glorious way of bringing them all together. They are sort of like the Coca-Cola (™) Polar Bears (“Give. Find. Love.” [™]) if the Coca-Cola (™) Polar Bears had been shot with a tranquilizer dart a la Frank The Tank in “Old School.”

That the kids are made to see their parental figures in such a state of distress on the most whimsical of days is no doubt disconcerting, yet there is something whimsical in the way we are made to eventually see that Pete’s Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg.”) stained reasoning for climbing into the Santa suit is to somehow keep the spirit of Santa alive for precocious Bert. And, of course, the ultimate reveal is that it was precocious Bert, only trying to help, who emptied an entire bottle of Absinthe into the Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg.") who brought about this whole debacle.

I was reminded of the bartendress with the fetching neck tattoo who served me brunch one Saturday morning this past summer and recounted the time in New Orleans she met a vampire while drinking Absinthe. (No, seriously. That’s what she told me. I loved her. I wish she’d been wearing Malin Akerman’s pants.) Oh, you can chuckle and shake your head at such a statement, but it made me think of how every once in a while life can seem so magical, and we are willing to let ourselves believe a man in a red suit climbs down our chimney or that we are talking to a friggin’ vampire. Stress and menial tasks and day jobs take so much out of us as we get older that it becomes difficult to re-discover a true sense of joy even at Christmas, and that’s just not right.

And you become so desperate to re-capture that joy that you get drunk and sing Ace of Base together, and it is in that moment, the Ace of Base sing along that tags the episode over the closing credits, that Pete and His Three Wives set aside their differences and look within their hearts and find what Christmas means to each of them even if that meaning will come back up the following morning in Absinthe-scented porcelain spew and be forgotten forever.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Huddle (1932)

No one would ever confuse Ramon Novarro with Rudy Ruettiger. The former was a Mexican screen star, originally of the silent era before transitioning to sound, known as The Latin Lover, gay in an era when acknowledging that fact publicly could lead to considerable consequences. Ruettiger, on the other hand, immortalized in the 1993 film "Rudy" was a blocky little guy who actually looked less like Sean Astin than John Belushi. But...they were both Roman Catholic, and they had films made sixty years apart of some similarity.

Whereas "Rudy" found its title character growing up in Joliet, Illinois and working at his father's steel mill, "Huddle" finds Novarro as Tony Amatto, perhaps a fore bearer of future Miami Sharks Head Coach Tony D'Amato, growing up in Gary, Indiana (an hour's drive from Joliet) and working at his father's steel mill. Both men, of course, dream of leaving the steel furnaces behind for scholastic advancement at high-tier universities, but whereas Rudy has to struggle at a community college to be allowed entrance to uppity Notre Dame, Tony gets a scholarship to uppity Yale straight away. How? Well, it's never said, but then I imagine this is merely futuristic commentary by director Sam Wood on George W. Bush's entrance to New Haven. (Yes? No? Fox News is telling me no. MSNBC is telling me yes. I'm so confused.)

The cinematic character of Rudy, however, was rather insistently one-dimensional, never not The Guy With The Biggest Heart Ever, whose myriad of objections are never not about to be overcome with a few heapings of the Human Spirit. Tony Amatto, on the other hand, is born of a more motley complex, even if he follows a generally typical hero's journey.

Upon arrival at Yale, he is made fun of and looked down upon, for his upbringing and his corny straw hat from the sticks. Why you can practically hear a 1932 set of twins chiding him for not being a "Man of Yale." Not to worry, though, because once Tony discovers the sport of football and finds a significant aptitude for it, all this will change. Because that's how these things work. Because college football worships its heroes (guilty as charged, your honor) and because colleges take advantage of those heroes. Arguably the film's best exchange, satire disguised as comedy, features Tony's Dad asking his son of the college and its team: "How much do they pay you?" Tony replies: "They don't pay you anything. You just owe it to the school."

It called to mind one of my all-time favorite college football heroes, Heisman Trophy winning quarterback of my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers, Eric Crouch, and The Great Plane & Ham Sandwich Caper which found Crouch having to cut a check of $22.77 out of his own bank account lest he run afoul of the NCAA. Nothing's free in college, boy, and no you don't get a cut of the proceeds of the jersey with your number I and many, many others wear every Saturday.

The better Tony performs on the field, the bigger a head he gets off of it, and when the daughter, Rosalie (Madge Evans), of the owner of the steel mill where his father works rejects him, he gets soused and is nearly caught by Coach Gale (Ralph Graves). Caught being drunk in public! I'm not saying public drunkenness is a detail to be overlooked, not at all, but that compared to modern day college football problems (see: Jameis Winston), this one seems positively square. But then, being hungover the day of a game is never good, and so Tony goes straight Tommy Lewis and is sent off the field by Coach and when Tony goes to Coach to confront him, they get into a fistfight.

Yes. A fistfight. Is this how all problems between Coach and Star Player were resolved in 1932? Would Coach Gale dismiss all modern day players as pampered for being unable to take an uppercut from the head man in charge? Will footage be leaked on Youtube of Nick Saban and A.J. McCarron getting into a fistfight because "Katherine Webb has become too much of a distraction"? But hey, why quibble with strategy that works? The fisticuffs get Tony to man up and take charge of his affairs and ultimately pledge devotion not just to Rosalie - who ultimately pledges devotion to him in spite of her meanie father because of course she does - but to the Yalies themselves. And therein lies the difference between "Huddle" and "Rudy."

Look, "Rudy" is mostly just well-scored caramel sauce, but what it also goes to show is that the individual is just as important - if not more so - than the institution. The South Bend-set business - er, place of higher learning - attempts to foil Rudy at every turn, but Rudy triumphs to show that he is as good as it. Tony Amatto, however, ultimately decides to play in the all-important Yale vs. Harvard an game with an appendicitis to show how his school spirit trumps even his own health.

The film ends not with images of Tony being carried off the field but with stock footage of the Yale campus and its architecturally glorious buildings. No man is greater than the institution.

White Reindeer

One of my most enduring memories is a sliver of a mental image from the earliest part of my childhood, perhaps pre pre-school, so early that I was still a devout believer in Santa Claus. This is crucial because the mental image is of my bedroom door, cracked ever so slightly, on Christmas Eve, staring at it all night long, never sleeping, though of course I must have, simultaneously delighted because a jolly round man in a red suit was about to enter my home and terrified because a jolly round man in a red suit was about to enter my home. In that moment of that memory, Santa was real, and I suspect I hold onto it because it reminds me of an incorruptibility that you cannot fathom nor appreciate when actually living through it.

Zach Clarke’s “White Reindeer”, a film born of modesty, modest budget and modest sets, is a complicated, fascinating and altogether brilliant deconstruction of both the Christmas spirit and season. Nothing here is not on purpose, from the garish snowflake sweaters that pop up on character after character to the downed quarts of eggnog that induce sickness to several scenes set at Macy’s, the venerable American institution that more or less established St. Nick’s place in the culture as a means of, quoting Mary Lisa Gavenas, “snaring more Christmas shoppers.” Thus, in one striking montage Clarke has Anna Margaret Hollyman and her band of merry women go straight Bling Ring on Rowland H. Macy’s empire. To heck with ole Santa Claus.

And yet the film itself starts so innocently, nestled all snug in its bed. Suzanne (Hollyman) is a seemingly put-together realtor in Virginia, married to a minor local celebrity, a weatherman, who has just landed a job in postcard Hawaii. The opening credits are punched up with Christmas carols as Suzanne attends to gift shopping, picking out a tree, an embodiment of the holiday spirit. Then she returns home to find her husband shot dead in the entryway. Her holiday spirit is extinguished, and she begins a forlorn, mundanely exotic quest akin to so many Christmastime characters – re-examining the past, confronting the present, steeling for the future.

Her husband harbored requisite secrets, and while this understandably bums Suzanne out it does not necessarily pique her anger. Rather she is overcome by a moribund curiosity, a desire to know the man she merely thought she knew. So, like a child coming to terms with assorted yuletide myths, she finds herself in a state of shock, her belief in the magic of life shattered.

To be clear, “White Reindeer” takes more than a few weird turns, equal parts lewd and unsettling. It might make the faint of heart flee, but I think it’s necessary. And I think it’s necessary because in its own way it undercuts that enthusiastic innocence Suzanne feels toward Christmas. Strung-up lights on the roof and plastic reindeer in the front yard only work to mask what really goes on in every hearth and home - the wassail is spiked and online shopping brings no everlasting joy.

And that is what makes Clarke’s film an astounding achievement, how in the midst of such subversion he creates a film that still finds warmth and a willingness to believe. That is a tricky balancing act, one many films with greater pedigrees do not possess the resolve to even attempt, and in managing it Clarke has made one of the best films of the year. Suzanne is not a miser like Scrooge, but more in the vein of an Internet-era George Bailey, her faith tested but upheld, carving out meaning in a cul-de-sac gone loopy.

Perhaps the single most startlingly unique sequence in a film this year occurs when Suzanne has essentially locked herself in the bathroom at a neighbor’s, uh, shall we say, soiree. One half of the neighbor couple, Patti (Lydia Hyslop), enters, sits on the edge of the tub, and Suzanne confides. I will not reveal the precise context but, suffice it to say, the context is everything, and when Patti offers the refrain “Christmas is whatever you want it to be”, it is remarkable to note how this moment becomes everything at once. It is lovely and cathartic and absolutely absurd, and while P.C. groups and hardened attenders of Christmas Eve Mass may staunchly refute my diagnosis that this woman in this situation in this movie dressed like that could evoke the true reason for the season, so be it. She does.

“White Reindeer” is exceptionally naughty around the edges but centrally nice, a stark commentary, a darkly hilarious comedy ("Autumn is my stripper name, my real name's Fantasia") but, above all, an expressive and gleefully untraditional dramatization of a few words we hear sung near the end: “God and sinners reconciled.”

Saving Mr. Banks

Of the many common movie fan phrases, the one that perhaps drives me most batty is this: “It’s a just movie.” (Imagine Nick shuddering like Burl Ives’ snowman at the sight of The Abominable Snowman). Such a phrase does not merely discount the hundreds upon hundreds of names typically displayed in a film’s closing credits, but also slights the intent of the filmmaker and/or writer. One scene in the just released “Saving Mr. Banks” communicates the latter to perfection. Author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) is at the premiere of the film based on her famed book, “Mary Poppins”, and as it unfolds we can see her see her own life literally flickering on the screen in front of her eyes. It’s not just a movie, as Thompson’s exemplary acting demonstrates. Rather her book which became this movie was her character’s opportunity to – paraphrasing “Atonement” – give her family happiness.

Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), proprietor of the Magic Kingdom, shepherd of a grand movie studio, had long yearned to transform Travers’ beloved character “Mary Poppins” into a big screen extravaganza. Alas, Travers, presented as an idealistic shrew, has no interest in an animated Poppins nor in Poppins singing a medley with Mickey and Goofy. But with money tight and no new income, she is forced to reconsider, and flies to La La Land, much to her vocal chagrin, to be wooed. It doesn’t start out so well. Her hotel room is adorned with stuffed toys she stuffs into a closet and the troika of screen and songwriters interpreting her work leave her cordially furious. At every song and dance for which she does not care, at every suggestion (threat) of dancing penguins, she threatens to withhold the rights, and Disney and Co. freak out.

As Disney, Hanks is really something else. He is a showman who wields his charming personality as a means to get what he wants, and he always get what he wants. “She wants to know why Mr. Banks has a mustache?” his secretary wonders on behalf of Mrs. Travers. “Because I asked for it,” replies Disney, and that is the end of the conversation. He is baffled by Travers’ antagonism, partly because he’s unused to it, partly because her demands seem so superfluous. Ah, but he’s shrewd, awful shrewd – how else does one create an empire? – and though it takes time he is able to deduce the necessary avenue to garnering the rights. And while it is never not calculating, Hanks still conveys his character’s true love for the material itself, a showman and a businessman rolled up into one. What did Capt. Jack Sparrow say? Ah yes. “It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide.”

Thompson is his equal, delivering her countless acerbic witticisms (her recitation of a famous Friedrich Shiller quote, and Hanks’ subsequent reaction, is priceless) with relish, offering gleeful unimpressed faces right and left. That she is not a cartoon villain but understandably protective is a testament to both Thompson and to the film’s parallel narrative. As Disney and the latter day Travers duke it out, the film continuously flashes back to Travers’ childhood in Australia, where she goes by her real name of Helen Goff, a precocious young girl with a close, meaningful relationship to her banking father – her father named, ahem, Travers (Colin Farrell).

I will fully admit my hesitation at the outset of this storyline, what with its emotionally-manipulative music and readymade platitudes. Yet that set-up gives the downward turn of the storyline, of Helen’s father's spiral into drunkenness and illness, such a bitter, beautiful irony. Their rapport seems so pure in the face of a moneygrubbing world with which Travers can’t quite square, and its side-by-side placement with the fight for the "Mary Poppins" rights illuminates how much her father meant and how she wrote the story for him. And that’s why “Saving Mr. Banks” goes to show that a movie is often is never just a movie.

Don’t misunderstand, “Saving Mr. Banks” is a movie, packed with tear-jerking monologues and a handsome visual sheen that illuminates the whole film into Disney’s Back Lot Of Eden. And, of course, there are dancing penguins. It somewhat harkens back to "Shakespeare In Love", simplifying matters that are undoubtedly more complicated so the audience eats them up like Mickey Mouse pancakes rather than hardtack. But those unabashed old Hollywood flourishes do not undermine the Father & Daughter heart of the film.

The most moving sequence in its two hours is Travers confessing that he and his daughter share a Celtic soul, and that those souls know this world is an illusion. "As long as they hold that thought," he says, "they can't break us. Can't make us endure their reality." Oh, perhaps that is mere movie psychology too, but perhaps not.

"Saving Mr. Banks" might have us believe that Walt Disney Knew Best and P.L. Travers' stone cold facade eventually crumbled in the face of The Happiest Place On Earth. But Emma Thompson, performer extraordinaire, might have us believe that her Celtic soul knows The Happiest Place On Earth is an illusion. And as long as she holds that thought, whether giving up the rights to "Mary Poppins" or not, Walt Disney and Disneyland can't break her. Can't make her endure their "reality".

Inside Llewyn Davis

Robert Frost did not hone in his craft at the Gaslight Lounge in Greenwich Village in the early 60’s but, nevertheless, his words kept returning to me in the wake of The Coen Brothers’ latest stylized opus. “Two roads diverge in a yellow wood.” It’s no secret that the Brothers Coen often function less as impartial observers than puppet masters, choosing a protagonist and then putting him/her through their own brilliantly storyboarded version of cinematic Wipeout! Even their sunnier characters are made to face the gauntlet – Marge Gunderson’s relentless optimism is tested, The Dude’s strikes and gutters philosophy is questioned – but I’m not entirely certain they have ever crafted a character whose fate seems determined so much by himself.

Over and over two roads diverge in a metaphorical yellow wood and the title character, Llwellyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a failing, fading folk musician, a chronic couch surfer, in the dead of winter with no winter coat, is made to choose which road to take. Yes, yes, you could argue that Joel and Ethan Coen are crafting the interlocking freeway system that keeps leading Llewyn to these varying forks, but I could counter that as writers they do a keen job creating a character whose prior life before the film’s kickoff clearly would have led him to this specific point. His choices have resulted in the need to make these decisions. And while Llewyn is another character – there have been several at the movies this year – resistant to easy empathy, Isaac still imbues him with a sort of humanity, albeit a standoffish, self-destructive humanity.

And anyway, Llewyn is an artist. Trust the art, not the artist, right? Then again, I’m not entirely sure Llewyn trusts his own art, let alone himself. Several times, including the requisite story bookends, the movie looks on as he simply sits down and strums his guitar and sings. It’s clear he possesses talent, even if it might not be otherworldly (like the croaker with the poofy hair going by the name Dylan who shows up in silhouette near movie’s end), but a particular scene in which he lashes out and demeans his folk singing as a mere “job” changes our perspective. These are not joyful tunes in sync with the harmony of life nor defiant odes to life’s banality nor material that seems interested in sparking change or leading protest, these are grief-stricken yodels of defeat. We are not watching a star being born, we are watching a star that never quite was crushed by the weight of gravity.

One of the film’s most striking scenes involves Llewyn’s spur of the moment audition for a gruff record producer (F. Murray Abraham, perfect in a single scene cameo). In a different film this might have gone in another direction, but Abraham is both blunt and courteous. He actually presents Llewyn with an opportunity, though it’s an opportunity of compromise and so Llewyn declines. Why exactly? Hubris? Artistic integrity? Some mixture of the two? I can’t say I know for certain, I can’t say for certain that Llewyn knows either. Like Alvy Singer ripping up the ticket right in front of the traffic cop, Llewyn just can’t help himself. Any semblance of sun peeking through clouds is ignored until it recedes.

There is virtually no sunshine in the film. It forgoes the black and white of Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” and, yet, the visual palette of “Inside Llewyn Davis” somehow feels even more cruel. All the color has been drained from Davis’s face, eliciting a vibe of the walking dead as he trudges from place to place in the desperate hope that someone will put him up for the night. The person he calls on more than any other is Jean (Carey Mulligan), his former flame who is now dating a different chirpy folk singer (Justin Timberlake). Mulligan, so well-known for her graceful countenance, plays against type here as a woman worn-down and impatient with Llewyn’s aimlessness and bad attitude. She essentially does not complete a sentence without including a swear word directed at Llewyn. After all, she’s just found out she’s carrying his child.

This, we swiftly ascertain, is a common refrain for our title character. There is another woman referenced whom he impregnated and helped get an abortion. That situation takes a predictable curve initially, but rather than become the focus it merely lingers. Until eventually, suddenly, Llewyn is made to face it in a particular way. That happens regularly throughout the film, opportunities for him to go in a different direction, all laid out for him like a shiny new second chance, and each time he willfully shoots it down. Even when he seems set, whether by choice or no choice, to dedicate himself to his on-again, off-again occupation as a merchant marine, it goes awry. And it goes awry all on account of his own lazy dismissiveness. No one has ever repeatedly pushed that symbolic boulder up the hill with such bitter indifference. Sisyphus and a cat named Ulysses (that isn’t Llewyn’s but that he dutifully carries around like a Ginger Tom penance). Yeah, it’s the Coens all right.

As with any Coen film, a sense of the surreal pulses throughout, from a cross-country journey that comes across like a hunger-pang hallucination to a nighttime alley encounter that serves as the denouement. Suddenly we realize the film has come full circle, the end was the beginning, we are where we started, so fitting because it underscores the lack (the want) of any progress. If we are the sum of our choices then perhaps the place Llewyn ends up is where he was always meant to be.

American Hustle

“American Hustle” opens with the following disclaimer: “Some of this actually happened.” This is partly meant to instantly counteract the extravagant amount of liberty-taking with the film’s factual roots and partly meant to simply get a laugh, a broad twist on a typical device, but I suspect there is something more to it. I suspect this unshackles the film from having to be an exposé, a commentary on having to Hustle for the American Dream, or some such, and instead frees it up to be a sprawling $50 million shaggy dog story.

Undoubtedly the film will invoke comparisons to Martin Scorsese with its frenetic camerawork, pop-heavy soundtrack and implementation of a rotary telephone for a character beatdown. It will also allow for citations of Paul Thomas Anderson, himself influenced by Grandmaster Marty, particularly 1997’s “Boogie Nights”, what when you consider “American Hustle” is set in the 70’s and makes liberal use of the era’s flamboyant costuming and disco tuneage. Some movies, however, do not aim to advance nor re-invent the form, merely to gather varying techniques of the form and wield them for the sake of sheer blinding entertainment. “American Hustle” is not The Story Of Abscam as much as it is David O. Russell’s Variety Hour – starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and assorted others!

Bale is Irving Rosenfeld, yet another character that allows for its actor to undergo a physical transformation, adding serious paunch and a delightfully ridiculous comb over. Partly a dry cleaning entrepreneur, but mostly a con man, Irving falls for/teams up with Sydney Prosser (Adams), so desperate for any other kind of life that she sees Irving not for the fake hair on his head but for the desire to deceive in his heart. It's love at first lie. These two set the stage, past and present, with voiceovers that continually trade off, two grifters reciting a ripping yarn over cocktails. Bale finds real pathos amidst all the put-ons and Adams is remarkable, the film's foremost emblem, conveying that her desperation to be someone else is, in fact, who she is.

Sydney adopts an English accent, re-casts herself "Lady Edith" of the isles and the two indulge in a prosperous scheme until undercover FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Cooper) nabs them. If Sydney is determined to lead a different life then Richie is determined to move through the ranks at the speed of sound. So, he enlists them in a sting to go after Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, and, in turn, crooked congressmen and, in turn, maybe, just maybe, the mob (represented in a particular walk-off cameo of inexpressible perfection).

Enter: The Wildcard, Rosalyn (Lawrence), wife of Irving and mother to the son he has adopted. Her initial appearance, after we have already seen Irving fall for and pledge devotion to Sydney, is a masterstroke, painting her as an afterthought, which is clearly how she views herself. He tries keeping her out of his crooked lifestyle, she worms her way in, repeatedly and hysterically. The role itself, from the screenplay by Russell and Eric Warren Singer, is killer, first and foremost, but Lawrence, who overcomes the comes-and-goes nature of her Jersey accent with manic energy, owns it. She threatens to blow up everything (the scam, the microwave) and threatens to steal the film entirely, if not for the fact her theatrical fervor is met head-on by the whole ensemble. (In keeping with the put-on-a-show nature of the whole film, I kind of wish Lawrence and Adams had swapped parts midstream. I so would have liked to see what each one could have done in the other role.)

As the untraditional crew lures Polito into its web, Richie reveals himself to be terrifically unstable and less intelligent than he thinks, falling for Sydney. She might be falling for him too, but she might be playing him, but then she might be doing both. Irving meanwhile forms a genuine affection for Polito and his family, and for Polito’s ideas to rebuild Atlantic City and, in the process, create new jobs and new wealth for New Jersey. This subplot, however, the political and social ramifications of the high-reaching undercover op, feels like an afterthought. It merely crops up around the edges, failing to provide the intended equilibrium to the Abscam shenanigans, and Russell repeatedly appears to purposely upstage tension and/or drama by playing for laughs. Thus, “American Hustle” ultimately fails to ring with any profound meaning, and yet I don't think it wants to.

There are so many little moments of absurd bliss and physical and verbal drollery inviting cuts from a theoretical editing standpoint that stay in because they are the point so much more than any “point”. As the stakes of the sting are raised, the more Richie yearns to elaborate on the ruse, to be a big shot, to rent out a whole suite at the Plaza, to be someone else.

One heightened moment goes so far as to find him dressing up like Tony Manero in "Saturday Night Fever" and squiring Sydney to the discoteque. He’s play-acting, and from the get-go we can tell that what Irving and Sydney (or is it Edith?) get off on more than the cash is the burlesque. The conclusion suggests our “heroes” have settled into their own skin, but it's telling that is the least convincing part of the picture. Everyone here just wants to lose themselves in the part, to put on a show, and what a hell of a show “American Hustle” is.

Don't See The Interstellar Trailer Here!

The first trailer for Christopher Nolan's much-ballyhooed, seriously-anticipated "Interstellar" made its appearance this weekend. There are roughly 575,000 media outlets you can check for coverage. Here, you can watch a music video for "Nowhere Fast" from 1984's rock opera "Streets of Fire"!!! Now this is truly interstellar!

 

Reconciling the Love Actually Wars

The Internet has recently been alive with denunciations of 2003’s English rom com “Love Actually” which has led to opposing tomes of appreciation which has led to critiques and dismissals of both the denunciations and opposing tomes. Perhaps this can be attributed to Christmas, perhaps this can be attributed to the film’s 10 year anniversary, perhaps this can be attributed to the grinches who become angry when mythical flickering images on a screen don’t resemble reality, perhaps it’s all of the above or none of the above, I wasn't sure. I sat down and gave it all serious consideration.

Were the haters more than mere bastards so heartless they wouldn't even stand for make believe romantic running through airports? Were they actually astute observors of the cinema's propensity to mytholigize romance and, thus, its inevitable trickle down effect to real life where all us hapless wannabe lovers expect January Jones to be waiting for us at the corner bar?

Were the lovers more than mere pollyannas whose devotion to cotton candy ethos render them disappointed upon whimsy-infused excursions to London to discover not every single British woman is exactly like Sienna Miller? Were they actually the last of the romantics, the old guard fighting for the right to maintain belief in fairy-tales in a world gone cold from incessant analytics and cries of "that would never happen in real life"?

I weighed all of this and even went so far as to concoct a non-debatable thesis (“Love Actually” is totally the awesomest ) in order to formulate a point-packed essay to defend this film a few of my friends and I watch each Thanksgiving night in a tryptophan and bourbon induced haze. But then I realized something. I realized such an essay was virtually pointless in the face of one inescapable fact…….

That is, Keira Knightley’s hat is just so fetch. If we can't set aside our squabbles this holiday season all in the name of Keira's hat, what hope do we have?

Friday's Old Fashioned: Christmas Holiday (1944)

The title of Robert Siodmak’s 1944 film is taken from the Christmas Holiday of a young G.I., Lt. Charlie Mason (Dean Harens). He is all golly-gee and gee-whiz and intends to fly home to San Francisco to propose to his truly beloved. It’s setting itself up as another in a long line of festive yuletide romances, keeping us warm around the flickering silver screen. But then Charles receives a telegram. It is from his truly beloved. She has gone and married another. (Assume Hans Gruber vocal affectations...) Ho. Ho. Ho.

That is when we receive our first inkling that “Christmas Holiday” may not be content to play so nice. Indeed, Siodmak, working from a screenplay by the great Herman Mankiewicz, seems to purposely be trying to throw us off the scent. Now you may know the film stars Gene Kelly and so you may know he will have to factor in at some point, but the film remains intent to lay down the groundwork with Lt. Mason instead. If his naïve outlook is stained by his not-to-be fiancé, it is ruined by his encounters in New Orleans when his flight is diverted there in the midst of a storm.

At his hotel Mason meets a hard-drinking writer named Fenimore (Richard Whorf), whom you can imagine Mankiewicz modeling after himself, who explains a (cough, cough) hostess at the Maison Lafitte nightclub, Valerie de Merode (Gladys George), is notorious at getting wayfaring strangers out of jams, and so they hustle over in the rain and lightning to see if she can provide a solution. Frankly, booking Mason passage in a raging storm when all the flights are grounded seems beyond her or anyone’s doing, but then Fenimore is less aid-worker then iniquity-enticer.

Mason meets Jackie (Deanna Durbin), a singer when she’s not busy (cough, cough) hostessing. They chat. They dance. They get a bite to eat. He squires her back to his hotel room and makes up a place for her on his couch because she INSISTS she will not take his bed. It’s all warm & fuzzy, rated PG. Sentimental, yes? Hmmmmmm, to quote another Mankiewicz script, yes and no. Jackie confesses her secret. Her real name is Abigail Manette, wife of Robert Manette (Kelly), whose charming veneer belies a problematic Mama’s Boy Disorder – mirroring a couple notable Hitchcock villains – and a penchant for gambling, which is his downfall when he murders a bookie and he and Mother (Gale Sondergaard) go to great lengths to cover it up.

She relays her whole story to Mason on the night before Christmas, opening with the tragedy, doubling back to the believable romantic prelude and then reciting the inevitable downfall. Mother blamed Abigail, because of course she did, because her boy is only God’s greatest gift even if he’s clearly not. There are more than a few shades here of Anna Schmidt and Harry Lime, a woman who cannot bring herself to stop loving a man committed to an illicit lifestyle. Kelly does a nimble job playing a smoothie with a heart of darkness, and the further into the film we get the more we and Abigail are able to detect the motherly manipulations at play. Thus, Abigail is left with a choice - stand by him or start over.

Ultimately "Christmas Holiday" is not as much about its aw-shucks G.I. being made to roll around in the gutter nor Manette's true self revealed as it is about Jackie genuinely giving way to Abigail. With sleight of hand, the film slowly wins us to Jackie's side, much like Mason finds himself to drawn to Jackie, and we root for her to leave her past behind and complete the necessary process to becoming new woman.

But that's nonsense for Christmas fables and, as Jackie says, Christmas is really just for kids. We ain't kids anymore. We know better. We know Christmas is the darkest night of the year, and it is Christmas night when we realize Jackie's true self - she is Abigail, she is in the throes of her own psychosis, and a character we thought we felt genuine affection for, we feel nothing for at all.

Top 5 Actor vs. Actor Showdowns

I am a fervent adorer of "Ocean's Twelve", as we know, but rather than launch into yet another passionate argument for the film's unappreciated brilliance, I'd simply like to re-iterate that its single flaw is this: a scene was not included that featured George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts sitting in a room together and LITERALLY reading from a phonebook, trying to one-up each other. A Hollywood Actor Royal Rumble.

Last week I was listening to a podcast with Grantland founder Bill Simmons and the site's resident film critic, Pulitzer Prize winner Wesley Morris. Morris mentioned how Meryl Streep has openly admitted to competing with actresses in films. This led to a later discussion on how the infamous scene between Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in the diner in "Heat" was essentially like a pickup basketball game, one on one, Jordan vs. Bird, which led to pitching an idea of re-visiting noted movie moments to ask "Who Won The Scene?" And this, as it must, got me to thinking.

Not necessarily about scenes and wondering who won them, but actorly competition, a full night of Hollywood's best squaring off in the ring, a stellar undercard and the monumental main event, live from Madison Square Garden.

Top 5 Actor vs. Actor Showdowns

Al Pacino vs. Denzel Washington

You want to get the undercard to a heavyweight title fight off to a fluffy start, and what better way than these two Oscar-winning titans hollering at each other for five rounds? But maybe it wouldn't just be hollering? Maybe the heat of battle would allow Al to re-locate his long-gone nuance and Denzel to internalize and, in turn, show us his soul. Or maybe not and they'd just holler, and five rounds of Pacino & Denzel hollering would be pretty cool. 

Amy Adams vs. Rachel Weisz 

I dare say it wouldn't have the pre-match buzz of our other bouts, but, trust me, this would bring the heat. Two chameleons, one American and one Brit, staring each other down and throwing elegant haymakers, gracefully swerving from sassy to charming to sexy to spinster to hippie to indie to classical to bawdy and back again. 

Christian Bale vs. Michael Shannon 

The intensity. Sweet Jesus, man, the INTENSITY!!!!!! They wouldn't touch (figurative) gloves, they would squint and spit and chew scenery. It would be exhausting in the best way possible. 

Cate Blanchett vs. Kate Winslet

You're toast, Blanchett. 

Daniel Day-Lewis vs. Meryl Streep

The main event. 15 rounds. No referee because he/she would just distract. A fury of tics and accents and costume changes and bone marrow embodiments. I'd think Streep might be the favorite, if only because Day-Lewis seems to require so much prep work and getting-into-character time. Unless he spent the months leading up to the bout prepping and getting-into-character. Still, no one has really ever counterpunched Day-Lewis, and Streep could counterpunch. But then, Streep has never had anyone get back up off the ropes. And Day-Lewis would get back up off the ropes. Let's call it even 'til we see it.

Muscle Shoals

The overriding question of director Greg Camalier’s “Muscle Shoals” is how……how did a relatively obscure town of 12,000 in the northwest corner of Alabama become such a major player in defining the sound of popular music for well for over a quarter-century? The opening of the film might suggest something mystic, Camalier’s camera surveying the lay of the land, gliding over the Tennessee River carving its way through the countryside, peering in on swamps and cotton fields. “The songs,” says famed U2 frontman Bono, “came out of the mud.”

That might sound overblown, but it might not. Consider the local native who recites the tradition of his great-great-grandmother, a Yuchi Indian, whose people believed that a young woman lived in the Tennessee River and sang songs that protected them. Alas, the Yuchis were moved off their land and all the way to Oklahoma, but there were no songs to be found. So the great-great-grandmother spent five years walking all the way back to the Tennessee River just to hear the music once again. It’s a beautiful story, and one that hints at the aura consuming the southern land where the movie is set. Perhaps it describes the Muscle Shoals Sound, or perhaps it can be described as something else.

Perhaps it can be described as the vision of Rick Hall, the mustachioed proprietor of the FAME studio, a man whose mother walked out on him and who is more than willing to concede he was driven by slights and not merely the want to make something of himself but to be the very best at what he did. He has an argument that he was, and the many immensely talented subjects interviewed stand as his witnesses.

Percy Sledge had never recorded a song until he entered Hall’s studio in Muscle Shoals and proceeded to lay down the immortal “When A Man Loves A Woman.” Aretha Franklin’s significant talent was misused at Columbia, until she signed with Atlantic, Jerry Wexler brought her to Muscle Shoals and the Queen of Soul was born. Wilson Pickett seemed suspicious of his surroundings, until he began recording and realized he was in his element and matched by Hall’s musicians. A trend emerges. These were black artists, but the Muscle Shoals backing band, The Swampers, were all-white.

If ever there was definitive proof of the absurdity of a racial barrier, it was Muscle Shoals, a few mega-talented non-descript white men uniting with Aretha to create R-E-S-P-E-C-T. No, music can’t offer a cure-all, despite the yearnings of my romantic heart, yet place musicians of different races and creeds in a studio and it all falls away. Hey, no ethnicity was prescribed to the woman in the Tennessee River singing songs.

Eventually The Swampers separate from Ron Hall, opening their own studio in Muscle Shoals. Each one garners high quality acts, though the film seems evasive about whether or not this elicited a genuine rivalry. Hall indicates initial anger, though claims later that it passes with time. I’m not so sure, and while I possess no doctorate in psychology I think it’s fairly easy to detect lingering resentment in Hall even as he tries to downplay it. But the film’s intent is not to wrestle in the mud, just to focus on the music emerging from it.

The answer to its ultimate question is never really explicitly given, rather organically forming itself in bits and pieces through the various observations from those who made the Muscle Shoals sound and those who recorded with it. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones came to record several tracks, including “Wild Horses”, one of the few songs from the most hedonistic era of that magnificent band in which Mick doesn’t simply sneer but sings with genuine heartfelt affectations. Of the recording, Jagger says: “Muscle Shoals inspires you to do it a bit differently.”

And maybe that’s how Muscle Shoals did it. It offered an alternative, a different way of attacking the music, influenced by the area, by its pace and behavior, stirred by its mystery. Or maybe they were lured like the great-great-grandmother, by the music, by the songs emerging from those mystical waters.

Philomena

The person of faith is not necessarily without cynicism nor incapable of viewing the world without objectivity. It is just that he or she typically has trust in some sort of higher power and that trust provides a faith that ultimately there is over-arching meaning in both good and bad. The cynic, on the other hand, is not necessarily without faith. It is just that he or she is more prone to view the world with suspicion and to ask questions that hopefully provide concrete answers. This is why “Philomena”, the new fact-based film from English director Stephen Frears, might have been better titled “Philomena & Martin.” It is about two people as much as one, a woman of faith and a cynical man, how their worlds collide, how the core of each person is revealed as more similar than they and we might have previously thought but how, ultimately, the difference between a person of faith and cynic is still very much perceptible.

Based on a book by Martin Sixsmith titled “The Lost Child of Philomena Lane”, the film chronicles its title character (Judi Dench) and her quest to track down the young son taken from her as a fourteen year old in an Irish catholic convent. Now, years later, at the age of sixty, facing pangs of regret, she finds an unlikely ally in Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a disgraced journalist who reluctantly chooses to get back into the game by telling a human interest story. The scandal that throws his life out of whack is less an integral part of the story, really, than the requisite jumping off point for Sixsmith. Desperate for work and prodded by his editor, he chooses to heed fate and follow the trail of Philomena and her lost child.

In flashback, we see how this came to pass, Philomena impregnated at 17, thereby disgracing the nuns who give her care and who eventually give the young boy away to a well-to-do couple that comes calling. When Martin inevitably asks why she waited so long to spill her secret, her response will elicit a nod from anyone in the audience suffering from that old Catholic guilt – namely, she too felt she had committed a sin. Except that by not telling anyone and, thus, lying, she was also committing a sin. She then found herself forced to choose between the lesser of two sins.

This bewilders Martin, a pragmatist who doesn’t believe in God, but it also angers him and allays him to Philomena’s aid that much more. When he senses, correctly, that the convent is covering something up, he becomes driven almost as much by spite, by payback that he feels Philomena is owed. Although whether Philomena feels entitled to such payback is an altogether different idea. What sets itself up as a mystery – who is Philomena’s son and where is he? (what you might have figured were spoilers in the preview are barely half the story) – gradually morphs into something else, a rumination on the idea of forgiveness and whether faith can be misplaced in certain people and (supposedly faith-based) institutions.

Martin, of course, is scheduled for an end-of-the-film transformation from the get-go, his empathy toward Philomena blooming with every step of the investigation. That transformation is less than obvious, however, and not all black and white. Coogan, in fact, co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope and utilizes his own talents sublimely, wry comedy that slowly gives way to a softer edge without abating his skepticism, reaching an understanding of the person at the center of his human interest story without his own ideals necessarily being re-shaped. And though the film would not succeed without Coogan, he is in many respects merely paving the way for Dench to take charge and own the proceedings.

Her character's earnestness can threaten to grate - and, in fact, occasionally does grate Martin - but that earnestness is proven to be hard won. It is not an easy life this Philomena has lived, and the injustice she has faced might have left another person faithless. That she maintains it and that she is willing to offer absolution to those who caused her so much misfortune in the first place is wholly commendable. But it is not - and Dench's performance makes this abudantly clear - a blind faith. She knows the score of the game, she knows the way the world works, she has examined it for herself still chosen to put her trust in God.

You don't have to agree, but then she's not asking you to.

Enough Said

We’ve all done something incredible stupid in our lives. We are so flummoxed by our stupidity, however, that rather than the confront the stupid thing we’ve done to potentially correct it or at least soften its blow, we let it fester. We hope it will unexplainably go away or magically resolve itself of its own accord. This never happens, of course, and so it snowballs and when the moment inevitably arrives that we confront this incredibly stupid something from seemingly so long ago, the point of sympathy has long since passed. We are just…..stupid.

Much of “Enough Said”, the new film from writer/director Nicole Holofcener, centers around just a moment of such stupidity. It is a spin on the classic Cinematic Misunderstanding, yet never feels born of an Idiot Plot. This is because the misunderstanding is furthered and stretched to its breaking point on account of a character who recognizes the foolishness of her behavior, but can’t quite bring herself to face or correct it. Though the misunderstanding may sound wacky in theory, the film’s dialogue and character interaction is so unforced and winning that it succeeds as a modern day twist on the screwball comedy.

Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a forty-something divorced L.A. masseuse. She has a fruitful evening at a party, meeting a future client, poet and author Marianne (Catherine Keener), and meeting a potential suitor, Albert (James Gandolfini). Their meet cute is noticeably organic, and that sensation continues through their first date, played with a tranquil charm by the two actors as they trade middle-aged war stories. Physically, of course, they don’t match up, the hefty Gandolfini and the fit Dreyfus. This is not played for laughs but for verity, a natural contrast that is honestly addressed. Eventually Eva sees past it because their emotional chemistry matches up, and the interactions and affectations of the two make it seem like they’re walking on air.

Right. So. Cinematic Misunderstanding. Perhaps it’s a “spoiler” but then I knew the “spoiler” going in and the film’s energy removed it from my memory until it appeared. Eva forges a friendship with Marianne, and Marianne is not shy about pouring over tidbits and voicing displeasure regarding her ex-husband. Dude sounds like a lout, and Eva agrees. Until Eva is made to realize that Marianne’s ex is Albert. Well, she needs to speak up naturally, but she doesn’t, and so the film barrels leisurely jaunts to the point when this fact must be exposed with all parties present.

Is she keeping quiet simply to advance the plot? Not so fast. Holofcener is a better writer than that, establishing Eva as someone who doesn’t speak up in situations where speaking up is required and as someone who routinely fails to recognize her own neediness. A nicely drawn subplot involves her daughter Ellen’s (Tracey Fairaway) impending departure for college, a difficult time for any parent, more so when you have re-entered singledom and are about to be left again. So, without necessarily realizing it, Eva begins clinging to Ellen’s best friend Chloe (Tavi Gevinson) who, desiring a more prominent mother figure herself, reciprocates that clinginess. Frankly, it’s as touching as it is awkward, another signal of the script’s finely-tuned delicacy.

Eva can’t make herself to confess to Albert and she can’t make herself break free from Marianne and she’s having real trouble letting go of Ellen. Albert is having separation issues with his own daughter, also set to depart for college, but issues stem less from her leaving than her refusing to let him see her off. He has a comfort in his own skin that Eva does not, and that Marianne could not appreciate. And so what emerges from the story is the eternal problem of not seeing people for who they are, for wanting them to be what they are not, for desiring change in them more for own state of mind than their well-being, and for the infectious need of approval from others.

The closing lines achieve a simple perfection – inane on the surface, deeply true underneath. First acceptance, then change.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Russ Bradley Morrison)

The latest episode of “Trophy Wife” may be named after one person, but it is all about collaborations, two people working together (or two people together and not working). It divides neatly into three separate storylines by pairing off its characters, and by doing so it ably demonstrates which of the untraditional family’s children is most influenced by which of the untraditional family’s parent.

Storyline #1 involves a parent-chaperoned children’s outing to a local museum. Pete is supposed to chaperone with Dr. Diane Buckley, but he falls ill. Thus, Kate, played by Malin Akerman in a pair of form-fitting red and black pants so scorching I almost want to center my entire recap around them (“Malin Akerman’s pants, a fetch rosewood with rip-roaring, oddly-angled swabs of black, transcend HD, igniting the TV in a fireball of fashion, roasting hapless male eyes like chestnuts), goes in his stead. This leads to Kate and Warren (“I’ve been saving my allowance to buy something at the gift shop”) to decide the best way to get Dr. Diane Buckley off their backs is to ensure she “get some”. Thus, their museum expedition revolves less around museum-y things, and more around finding the hardline Diane a date.

Enter: Russ Bradley Morrison. Played by Dennis Haysbert, he is a fellow chaperone, intensely formal and on point. His job, he explains, is mergers and acquisitions and you can practically see him happily attending business junkets, getting a kick out of continental breakfast and staying up late to re-read the C.E.O’s mission statement for fun. It could have been far too obvious, his and Diane’s similarities, but Haysbert crafts a perfectly-pressed character with just the right amount of starch.

Meanwhile, our old friend Jackie is tasked with aiding Pete in his hour of need, playing a whimsically demented Kathy Bates to his hapless James Caan. Lord, it pains me to say it, as much I tout Michaela Watkins’ genius, but this is far and away the weakest of the three tales. It’s like a bad horror movie seen through the eyes of a man overdosed on codeine, shopworn gags and punchlines aplenty. You don’t pigeonhole Jackie in a horror movie that’s already been written, you imagine a horror movie as written by Jackie. It shouldn’t be a bad horror movie in a suburban haunted house. It should be a bad horror movie in a suburban house turned hippie commune.

Meanwhile, precocious Bert has been banned from recess at school for being too excited – dancing in class and performing Bertwheels – and he enlists the aid of Hillary seeing as how she was once the teacher’s pet of his current teacher. They bake cupcakes. Practice fawning compliments. And Hillary turns up in class to put in a good word. It generally backfires, but not completely, and ends with Hillary achieving the upper hand simply by demanding and taking it.

And so the lines are drawn….from Hillary back to Dr. Diane Buckley, from Bert back to Jackie, and, strangely but wonderfully, from Warren to Kate. Kate seems capable of getting through to Warren because they are simultaneously working on the same level of maturity without realizing it. On the surface Dr. Diane Buckley is all about rigid discipline and smart planmaking, but what she’s really about is full-on control and sitting at the top off the food chain. (She's also got a wild streak that only appears when she wants it to, suggesting so much by showing so little.) No doubt she would have publicly dismissed her daughter’s actions, while privately commending them. And Jackie……well, you can’t tell me Bert didn’t learn to do his Bertwheels from watching Jackie do her Jackiesaults.

Oh. Right. Pete. Well, Pete is probably lucky he doesn’t fall ill more often.

Friday's Old Fashioned: China Seas (1935)

Alan Gaskell (Clark Gable) is set to pilot his steamship from Hong Kong to Singapore, though the China Seas, a dastardly mass of water if there ever was one, what with the looming threat of piracy and potential typhoons. It’s enough to drive a captain to drink during his stopover onshore, which is precisely what Gaskell has been doing, which is why he appears worse for wear as he navigates the swarming docks to where his ship awaits. But soon enough we see what’s really weighing on Gaskell. Hey, pirates are ornery and storms are volatile, but neither can compare to the combative winds of Jean Harlow.

Harlow was beautiful, of course, but what truly made her a star’s star was the attitude. She was a blonde fireball as much as a bombshell, able to go toe-to-toe with any gruff male, as she does repeatedly with Gable in “China Seas.” Yet, at the same time, we sense a second layer beneath all that feistiness, as she convincingly demonstrates a vulnerability covered up with sassy retorts. Per TCM, Irving Thalberg, producing boy wonder, supposedly said of the film: “To hell with art this time.” He merely wanted a box office bonanza, an action-adventure on the high seas, rollicking stunt work on a display in a studio-made monsoon, and that’s all there to fine effect, sure, but there is also emotional oomph for a garnish.

As the unfortunately named China Doll, Harlow is the main squeeze of Gable’s Captain. Or so she thinks. Because when the Captain enters his quarters who comes traipsing outta the powder room but China Doll. He was set to set sail without her, see, and then tries to escort her back to dry land, but, nuh uh, she’s staying put. Alas, when an old lost love of Gaskell, the elegant and refined (she’s English!!!) Sybil (Rosalind Russell), comes aboard and makes eyes at Gaskell and he makes eyes at her, poor China Doll’s whole life plan is on the verge of going overboard.

Here, we might expect a screwball scheme to emerge as China Doll attempts to re-woo Gaskell and slander Sybil. Not quite. Rather during dinner at the Captain’s table, China Doll cozies up to the Jamesy McArdle (Wallace Beery), a hard-drinking lout, cut of the same uncultured cloth. In the process, China Doll quite obviously makes a fool of herself, talking loud and saying a lot of nasty stuff, apparently assuming that misplaced bravado will fool people into thinking this is her brave face. Sybil sees right through it and calls her out. And though you feel bad for Sybil and everyone else at the table, Harlow lets you feel her hurt too.

She loves Gaskell, she does, and fears it’s her down by the boondocks countenance that has caused him to seek solace in the arms of high society. Thus, when she discovers that McArdle, posing as Gaskell’s ally, has hatched a scheme to allow pirates onboard, arm them and steal all the gold squired away in the safe so that he can get a cut, she is torn. Torn by love, torn by anger, torn by jealousy. That sounds dark, but it is handled more in the manner of the yarn the title suggests.

Action scenes abound, including the obligatory typhoon that swoops in and sends waves crashing across the deck which, in turn, allow for bouts of both heroism and cowardice. Pirates attack and shots are fired and they seek the gold in the safe as Jamesy subtly plays both sides. And these effects, I must admit, remind me how much I prefer manmade wind and rain to computer made wind and rain. The computer stuff looks real. The manmade stuff feels real. Not that it matters so much since the effects are merely filler between the Harlow and Gable and Beery banter. Harlow and Gable and Beery banter, as we know, trump any tempest.

And Harlow, as we know, must trump Russell. Which Russell found, per TCM, “patently absurd.” She may have got along winningly with Harlow the person, but the character Harlow was playing? “How can you spend time with her?” Russell theoretically wondered of Gable. “She’s rather vulgar, isn’t she?” Maybe. But maybe one woman’s vulgar is another man’s lively.

On the surface, “China Seas” might appear undone by a classic Idiot Plot development, in so much as China Doll goes to Gaskell’s cabin to warn him of McArdle’s behind-the-scenes nefariousness. Gaskell keeps stopping her warning short, telling her off, sending her away, wanting nothing to do with her. It could be argued as an Idiot Plot because if China Doll simply were to shout “McArdle and a bunch of pirates are going to steal the gold!”, the remainder of the film would cease to exist. That she chooses to refrain from shouting it out is not on account of her being idiot, far from it. Rather she is demonstrating who rules the roost.

If her behavior puts all the other passengers in peril, well, so be it. Harlow is the queen, the ship is her castle, and all the rest are merely her subjects.