Friday's Old Fashioned: Black Sunday (1977)

The money shot in “Black Sunday” might well make you laugh as heartily as it will make you gasp. It is a shot of the gone-rogue Goodyear Blimp, piloted by terrorists and packed with a bomb and steel darts, looming like a floating airship “Jaws” over the upper deck of the late Orange Bowl stadium hosting the Super Bowl. (“Black Sunday’s” score was composed by John Williams, the man who actually scored “Jaws”, and who, of course, scored “Star Wars”, released in the same year as “Black Sunday.” And rest assured, you will detect the “Star Wars” score in the “Black Sunday” score. It’s freaky.) Perhaps I’m out of line. Perhaps it would not have been as funny at the time, five years removed from Black September – the villains of the film – committing their infamous and terrible act of terror at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Still, there is something wretchedly humorous in a flying corporate advertisement attacking the most corporate sporting event in the world, one attempting to gobble up the other. If it had been made just a few years later, “Mean” Joe Greene, in the midst of the attacking blimp melee, could have valiantly saved a bottle of Coke (and, in fact, the pilot at the controls of the gone-rogue Goodyear Blimp is heard to say just before the climax, “Could you go in back and get me a Coke?”).

“Black Sunday” was directed by John Frankeinheimer, a man who could really kick it with a decent script (“The Train”, “Ronin”), and the screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross and Ivan Moffat which was based on a novel by Thomas Harris authored in the wake of Munich. The script is detail oriented but swiftly paced, the direction is impressively taut, often employing handheld camerawork without feeling herky-jerky, and overall the film is as thrilling as it is unsettling. Much was made of how last summer’s “Man of Steel” laid waste to a whole city, yet never made it seem civilians were in any real peril. In “Black Sunday”, however, when an armed terrorist grabs a woman as a hostage and then charges headlong into beachfront crowds so as to use bystanders as a shield, you will feel the lump in your throat. This could be happening.

The viewing experience becomes that much more knotty upon realization the film has essentially provided no one for whom you can conveniently root. If anything, Frankenheimer is asking us to identify with Michael Lander, the Goodyear Blimp pilot, who decides to team with Black September for payback after being tortured as a POW in Vietnam only to return home to a court martial and a divorce. Lander is played by Bruce Dern, gleefully unhinged, occasionally, when in aviator sunglasses evoking Dr. Strangelove, and he is both an empathetic victim and a no-account finger-pointer. Everyone else caused him to want to blow up The Super Bowl.

It is Lander's vengeful insecurity that Dahlia (Marthe Keller), the Black September operative desperate to make a group statement by hitting America right where it hurts, plays straight to. She ably manipulates Lander to do her bidding, and they are both willing to go down in flames for their cause. Even when Dahlia is compromised because she insists on recording a tape confessional in advance of the attack, a tape which is discovered by the Americans, she refuses to follow orders and pull out. She is hell bent and hard-headed, not unlike David Kabakov (Robert Shaw), "a man who takes things to their ultimate conclusion", the Mossad agent hot on the Black September trail. Like Dahlia’s bullishness, he too has a fatal flaw, and it is in the film’s opening when he has a shot to take Dahlia out and doesn’t.

Kabakov, I guess, becomes the “hero” because he’s the person with law enforcement tracking those opposed to the law, but Frankenheimer does not go out of his way to draw us to Kabakov’s side. His methods are questionable, brutal even, and he confesses a reluctance to continue the investigation until his partner is requisitely killed, at which point it becomes as much about payback as right and wrong. If anything, the film shows us how perhaps potential terrorist threats can only be squashed (albeit barely) if rules are broken and the heroes are as heedless as the villains.

Dark, I know, but it’s why “Black Sunday”, in keeping with the spirit of its title, is rife with gallows humor. “Cancel the Super Bowl?!” cries Joe Robbie (as himself). “That’s like canceling Christmas!” Indeed. If you think for half-a-second that current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would cancel the Super Bowl because of a perceived terrorist threat, you must have missed the film employing real footage of Super Bowl XIII in “Black Sunday”, the Super Bowl in which Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Terry Bradshaw had to leave the game after hurling a touchdown pass with a concussion. Players will get concussed and Super Bowls will be played after blackouts and in wintry mix and during terrorist threats because ad revenue trumps all. Don’t believe me?

Look no further than the hapless Goodyear Blimp pilot whom Lander and Dahlia must murder to ensure Lander can take the controls. Alas, the murdered pilot is discovered in his hotel room, which springs Kabakov into action, when the hotel concierge is tasked with entering the pilot’s room and dropping off a courtesy bottle of J&B scotch.

In other words, a nifty bit of product placement saves the day.

Pause for the Cause

As I do each and every year on this day, I would like to take a moment to give thanks and pay homage to the anniversary of the single greatest moviegoing experience of my life. You know the film.

The Angels' Share

The title of “The Angel’s Share”, as explained in a lovely monologue, is culled from the portion of the whisky distillation process that evaporates – which is to say, it is the small share given over to the angels. Well, that’s a poetical thought, and one that speaks to the ultimate intent of the film. Its director, Ken Loach, is known for a naturalistic style, locations that feel lived-in, casts stocked with as many non-professionals as professionals, and he often uses this authenticity in service of varying social political points. But, the political is far from all Loach has on his mind, as “The Angel’s Share”, like so much of his work, evinces. It’s a film that blends naturalism with fantasy, if not always successfully at least always winningly. He wants to show it like it is, but he also wants to dream about how it might be.

Robbie (Paul Brannigan) is a young hothead in Glasgow who, as the film opens, avoids a jail sentence for a senseless beating of a stranger specifically on account of his status as a father-to-be. Perhaps, with child in tow, he can reform, and so the judge sentences him to community payback. Though he seems willing to make good, his past continually rears its head. Leonie (Siobhan Reilly), the woman carrying his child, might have faith in him, but her family does not, and when Robbie tries to visit the hospital after his baby girl’s birth, Leonie’s Uncles threaten him and chase him off. How can one change if not afforded the chance to do so?

In Robbie’s case, change will arrive, mystically, in libation form when his community payback supervisor Harry (John Henshaw), protective of his young charge but also willing to give him the necessary kick in the arse, introduces him to whisky. Well, Robbie has never tasted whisky in his life, but a few sips and he proves himself an unexpected bon vivant, an improbable track-suited whisky connoisseur. And so it is an aromatically wondrous distilled spirit that forges a new path for our wayfaring youth. This is the gray area where Loach so often excels, an ability to ground his plot in the everyday but offer a heightened plot point as the ultimate thrust of the story. Perhaps this is off topic, but it’s a style I desperately wish an American filmmaker would attempt to emulate, to willingly roll around in our red, white and blue gutter while still holding holy our highest hopes.

And so while Robbie’s livelihood is threatened and while he is held accountable by having to confront the man he nearly killed for no reason, “The Angels’ Share” still provides a magical elixir in the form of an invaluable bottle of Malt Mill Whisky that has just been discovered. Having learned the distillery process and forming a ragtag Whisky Tasting Club with a few of his community payback cohorts, the quartet, sporting festive kilts to ward off suspicion, journeys north to where the Malt Mill will be sold at auction. Posing as a group of overeager, undertasted whisky enthusiasts, they manage to secure an invite to the auction, merely means to the end of siphoning a bit of the cherished liquid to sell and kickstart their lives.

That’s Loach as a wire-walker, transforming “The Angels’ Share” into a modest and uniquely un-urgent heist film and asking for us to maintain empathy with a band of thieves. Of course, we must remember this is an English film, and the auction victor is distinctly American, a Connecticut WASP in a Red Sox cap. This, I imagine, will provide snickers all over the Isles, sticking it to the Yanks, and that’s understandable. But simultaneously, it works as a commentary about the social misfits and outcasts of Scotland taking a bit of the national pride back for themselves.

Like so many films made in and around Edinburgh and Glasgow, the accents are thick and difficult to decipher, not only at first but the whole way through. In spite of this, it never feels standoffish, and instead comes across quite universal. Your Malt Mill Whisky could be anything.

Terraferma

Villagers on a tiny island south of Sicily go up and down the beach, picking up old bottles and other washed up junk and tossing it into plastic bags. The next morning a ferry arrives from the distant Italian mainland, the ramp lowers and well-heeled, sun-tanned tourists by the dozens stride off as the locals rush to greet them with handmade signs desperately advertising rooms and boats for rent. The locals call this island, Linosa, "terraferma", or "solid land", but their figurative footing on that terrain has become slippery. Struggling to survive, they have become financially dependent on outsiders.

Always there is a holdout, and in this case it is elder Ernesto (Mimmo Cuticchio), the sort who ignores doctor's orders to light up another stogie, and who continues trawling seas that produce more illegal immigrants than fish. His oldest son pleads for his father to turn to the tourist trade as a means of a more prosperous income, but Ernesto will not budge.

"Terraferma" turns not on the Big Catch but on a raft of those illegal immigrants. The Law of the Sea, which conjures cliche (The Code of the Ocean) but is very much real on this solid land, dictates helping anyone in peril. The Law of the Land, however, the new Law of the Land, dictates you do not and rather report those in peril to the authorities so they can be picked up and carted back from whence they came. Ernesto, however, abiding by The Law of the Sea, willingly takes a pregnant refugee and her son aboard his boat, squaring them to his home and risking his well-being by keeping them hidden.

Caught in the middle is Ernesto's directionless grandson, Filippo (Filippo Pucillo). To be a fisherman means to embrace a way of life that is dying, and so he and his mother, Giulia (Donatella Finocchiaro), rent out their modest home to several teenage tourists and sleep in the garage. It's a twist on C.C. Baxter and his "Apartment", and I cannot imagine a metaphorical dead end appearing anymore bleak than sleeping in a cot in a garage next door to your own home.

A kinda, sorta spark develops between Filippo and the lone female renter (Martina Codecasa). It does not develop per presumptions, thankfully, and instead builds to a moment that forces Filippo to pick a side - help and risk your livelihood or hinder and save your skin.

The majority of the concluding act and the wrap-ups of the various plights, unfortunately, are all a bit too form-fitting for maximum emotional impact. Even so, if its morals are narratively oversimplified, director Emanuele Crialese does a splendid job with locale, pitting its limitless beauty against the limits of those inhabiting it.

This notion is brought home in a spectacular shot, repeated later in the film in a different incarnation, of Giulia seated on the cobblestone outside her home in a rickety chair alongside a worn-down wall, tiredly shutting her eyes, hidden in the shadows despite the island's prevalence of sun, as if the light picks and chooses whom it will find. Later when the tourists come to see her home, they lament its location. Not every home in paradise can have a seaside view.

Fill the Void

Shira (Hadas Yaron), an 18 year old Ultra-Orthodox Jew, has taken a meeting with a potential suitor. It is awkward like a first date and probing like a job interview, the two attempting to determine in a single sitting if the other is the one he/she wants to marry. When it times come for Shira to express her desire, she is blunt. She says she wants “a real home.” She says “I don’t want to lie.” This speaks not only to the true nature of Shira, but to the conundrum she faces, and the conundrum that it seems all the women in her strict Haredi Community in Tel Aviv face. Can you be true to yourself and true to your beliefs? Does one override the other, or are they one in the same?

Scheduled to marry a young man whom she has only seen and not conversed with, Shira nonetheless is pleased with this prospect. But tragedy strikes. Her older sister, Esther (Renana Raz), dies in childbirth. The baby boy, Mordechay, survives. Esther’s widowed husband, Yochay (Yiftach Klein), barely appears to have time to mourn before he entertains an offer to move to Belgium and re-marry to a childhood friend. This, of course, means Mordechay would go with him, and this pains Esther’s mother, Rivka (Irit Sheleg), who wants her daughter’s newborn close. Thus, Rivka makes a plea to Yochay – she asks if he will consider re-marrying Shira.

A man watches a movie and he is that man. I am an American and, of course, customs that dictate establishing actual contracts for marriage which require the approval of an all-knowing Rabbi and considering re-marrying your late wife’s own sister for the good of all are concepts with which I struggle in light of the way I was raised. Yet, the exquisite beauty of Rama Burshtein’s "Fill the Void", a 15 year project, winner of 7 Ophir Awards and Isarel's entrant for Best Foreign Language Oscar (it was not nominated), is how delicately it lays out the landscape of this specific world.

Religious devotion in movies can so often be employed for comedy, victim of heedless judgment, or it can be unabashed evangelism to sway non-believers. “Fill the Void” is none of these things. It’s not a peek behind the curtain, per se, which makes it sound suspicious and aloof, but an invitation to this culture. In fact, if the film suffers from anything, it is a near-suppression of the outside world and a focus on matrimony to the detriment of all else. Watching “Fill the Void” you would be hard-pressed to think Ultra-Orthodox Jews do anything other focus on family, and well, that’s actually kind of right. Perhaps they are not entirely insulated, but they do choose to sequester themselves.

It apparently took Burshtein upwards of a year to find the right actress to play Shira, and this is made obvious not merely on account of how good Yaron is, but how much she is required to convey. Adolescence is a mystifying time all on its own, but imagine having to consider a life-altering decision when you haven’t even genuinely grown into yourself. Shira, in essence, is being asked to mend the wound suffered by her whole family, which is a lot to take on at the age of 18. The script deals with it rationally, even as Shira struggles with the rationale, urged this way by her mother, urged another way by her slightly more free-spirited aunt. Yochay, meanwhile, seems nearly as tentative with the proposal as Shira, and yet remains adherent to his cultural beliefs. Ultimately Klein is Yaron's equal, subtly exhibiting the weight of theology.

And so the “Fill the Void”, which initially appears as an exploration of its title, becomes about how an individual can express herself by pledging belief to a group doctrine. I found it as difficult to embrace as I did easy to empathize, and in so many ways I think ninety minutes of emotional exploration boils down to its final awe-inspiring shot, the camera contemplating the trembling face of Yaron. She wants a real home. She doesn’t want to lie. Those are her beliefs, and in that instant she is unsure whether or not she still holds them to be true.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Tooth Fairy)

There are stages every child must go through, though, rest assured, I’m not discussing the traditional developmental stages discussed within child-rearing textbooks. No, I’m talking more about the stages of Parental Whimsy – as in, The Santa Claus Stage, when the child still has utter belief in the magical, and The Man/Not Yet A Man Stage, when the child is both ready and not ready at all for his/her ascent of Maturity Mountain, and the Leave Me Alone Stage, when the child finally reaches that dreaded point wherein he/she just wishes mom and dad would bugger off. Setting each one of its three children in separate storylines, “Trophy Wife”, in its second great episode in as many weeks, explores these stages with a bounty of rich one-liners and eventual oddball empathy.

Let’s examine these storylines in ascending order of awesomeness. (Reader’s Note: I recently saw someone on Twitter question the validity of the word “awesome”, wondering whether its content had become diluted because of overuse. Thus, I pledge to use the word awesome EVEN MORE going forward. Like, hey man, aren’t Malin Akerman’s pants awesome?)

While dining out, precocious Bert loses a tooth, and it seems that in Jackie’s world, tooth loss is an appreciable event on par with confirmation or graduation. Unfortunately, Pete loses the tooth before celebrating can be done which leads to bitterness on the part of Jackie for ruining the celebration which leads to Jackie and Pete squaring off in ex-wife and husband warfare – that is, taking activities the other one wanted specifically to introduce Bert to, and introducing them. I admit there is a little something too straight-outta-the-Sitcom-Hijinks-Manual for this story to work entirely, though as always the performances fight back, particularly in how Whitford genuinely seems so frazzled by the in-advance knowledge of Jackie’s anger. Bert, though, is still young enough to believe in the Tooth Fairy, and so a moment of reckoning inevitably arrives amidst all the nonsense that finds Jackie and Pete having to decide whether or not it’s time to reveal the Tooth Fairy’s true identity. They don’t. They let Bert hang onto the magical for at least another year. God bless their souls.

Meanwhile, Warren is taken with a female classmate, Allie, who texts Warren to say she wants to study. Warren being Warren, he assumes she actually wants to study, until Kate explains that girl code dictates that “studying” equates to “date”, which renders Warren as freaked out as excited. Guy On Girl Communication is not his forte. It’s the point every kinda/sorta-maturing boy faces, when he first falls for a girl and has literally no idea what he’s doing. (At least, this was a point boys reached in my day. Anymore I assume kids start drinking coffee at six and going to Daft Punk shows by themselves at ten.) Typically this means a boy is left to fend for himself, figure it out based on 80’s rom coms and Mr. Big lyrics, but Warren has a secret weapon – Kate.

His stepmom understands the female mind – what’s more, she understands the young female mind. So, she tells Warren what to text and, as it turns out, Kate-authored internet slang pierces fair Allie’s heart. In a way, she’s the Bizarro Cyrano de Bergerac. Of course, once Warren is made to interact face-to-face with Allie, he panics and crumbles and so Kate comes to the rescue……NOT!!! Instead she waltzes into Warren’s room to confide in Allie how hot Warren is, which understandably leaves Allie a little terrified and wanting to flee.

My rival re-capper at The AV Club disputes this turn, declaring that “Trophy Wife is supposed to have at least one foot on the ground. Kate trying to talk up her stepson’s cuteness is unbelievable.” Respectfully, I disagree. Consider “The Big 5-0”, merely two episodes ago, and Kate, amongst other ill-considered ideas, barging into Pete’s office, clothesless beneath her coat. That entire twenty-two minutes consisted of Kate continually suffering well-intentioned mental lapses and throwing poo-poo against the wall to see what might stick (nothing stuck). And this is precisely what happens when she rolls up on poor Allie to spout the virtues of Warren. It might be unbelievable for most characters, but not for Kate, because she's just throwing more poo-poo against the wall. This also wonderfully works to put Kate and Warren on the same level. He thinks a good excuse to momentarily get away from Allie is to explain he needs to use the bathroom – “Probably gonna be in there for awhile” – and Kate thinks it’s a good idea to momentarily act as if she and Allie are competitors. Away from the text, she is as useless as he.

The episode really soars, however, when Dr. Diane Buckley hosts a sleepover for Hillary and her school government friends – “They rule the school. Democratically, of course.” So, Diane crafts appetizers I can’t pronounce and rents both Cate Blanchett “Elizabeth” movies, “and, if you feel like getting crazy, ‘The Aviator.’” The government girls, however, have chosen “Spawn of Satan 2.” Before long, Diane Being Diane, she has managed to embarrass Hillary by treating "Spawn of Satan 2" as if it were a Cate Blanchett movie and pointing all the plot inaccuracies, leading to all the girls texting behind Diane’s back, and then Hillary texting Diane to, more or less, tell her to go away. Marcia Gay Harden in that moment underscores why she won an Oscar, staring daggers at her daughter and offering: “I have to go. One of my patients DIED.” As in, Diane just died a little inside.

Yet, she also understands. That’s a painful reality, a difficult one to pull off in a network sitcom, and yet Gay Harden exquisitely captures that dividing line between joy that her little girl is growing up and sadness that her little girl is leaving her behind. And the show is smart enough to know that even though Hillary blows her mom off, she still loves her mom, and goes to check on her. That moment they share – hyperbole be damned – is artistry, and all alone makes it worthwhile to have kept in touch with this show.

Did the episode really to finish up with a "Scrubs-ian" montage? No. It did not, and it did not because it generated genuine feeling all on its lonesome, and no bit of musical monkey business was required to elicit or embellish it. You got the good stuff, "Trophy Wife." Keep believing in yourself.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Reckless (1935)

"Don't forget that weakness of yours. Wanting to make people happy. It's a mean one."

This is what Mona Leslie (Jean Harlow) says to her suitor, Bob Harrison Jr. (Franchet Tone), even though she's really talking to herself, and in those words she neatly, sadly summarizes her own primary flaw, suggesting a fatal self-awareness. Harlow's character is a famed Broadway showgirl, drawing a clear-cut parallel with her own life, and, in fact, Harlow initially did not want to take on the role for fear that it hued too close to actuality. Still, she succumbed, and earned a role with singing and dancing - that is noticeably dubbed (even though, it seems, others testify that most of it was not dubbed) - but also rich with drama and pain.

Evoking the title rather insistently, "Reckless" opens with light-heartedly ominous tones when Mona is jailed for, ahem, reckless driving. Not to worry, as her longtime friend, Ned Riley (William Powell), a sports promoter, is on the scene to bail her out, albeit with a little back and forth. She has to make it to the stage in time for a charity event put on by the S.A.M.L. As it happens, the S.A.M.L. stands for Society for the Admiration of Mona Leslie and is run by and consists of a single man - Bob Harrison Jr., the sole audience member. He is the wealthy son of a wealthy father, and this is how the rich woo the women they love.

They also woo them tirelessly, and perhaps this should have been the warning to Mona that for all his affectations not everything is quite as it seems. But then, as established, her weakness is wanting to make other people happy, and it is that desperate need that drives her forward. It is also the need that threatens to leave Ned out in the cold. William Powell is known so well for his quick wit and one-liners, and those are on display in "Reckless", but so too is a cigarette smoke cloud of melancholy. He also pines for Mona, but can't quite bring himself to admit his feelings, perhaps from fear, perhaps from timidity.

A majestic sequence finds he and Mona kicking back with ice cream cones under the night sky, Powell gradually hinting at the genuine feelings underneath, and then imagining a marriage proposal to a theoretical girl free of all the timeworn pomp and bluster. "I'd simply say: how 'bout it, kid?" Of course, he's really saying it to her. Alas, she has gently dozed off. The Accidental Doze is usually for laughs, but here it's for all the pain Powell can muster. And so is another moment, when Mona jaunts off the rehearsal stage to sit side-by-side and crack wise with Ned, both trying to cover their belief that true love is but a poetic myth. Above all, notice the shot of Mona gently grabbing his arm, the tangible illusion of the physical touch they both crave.

Eventually, having eloped, Mona returns home with Bob to meet his parents, including his requisitely disapproving father, dismissing Mona as a mere "Broadway Bride". But she also learns Bob had been set to marry his childhood sweetheart, Jo (Rosalind Russell), only to jilt her for Mona instead. On the surface, Jo appears to have squared with it, and is nothing but nice to Mona, only to quickly turn around and marry the first guy that asks. This drives Bob to depression and Mona to confusion and will eventually drive Ned to desperation in order to protect his friend.

David O. Selznick produced and concocted the story, and he based the story on the real-life tragedy of Libby Holman, whose husband Zachary Smith Reynolds, heir to a fortune, committed suicide - supposedly - after an argument with Holman upon learning she was pregnant. Harlow's own husband, however, Paul Bern had also committed suicide roughly three years before the release of "Reckless", which is precisely what made Harlow reluctant to do it. Indeed, when Bob commits suicide in the film, the public turns against Mona

Unfortunately this third act dissolve into scandal, combined with the film's song and dance numbers and its relentless reliance on Exposition Via Newspaper Headline, result in tonal inconsistency that prevents "Reckless" from officially achieving greatness. Even so, it's hard not to obfuscate its faults in your mind and merely focus on the good stuff.

The insatiable need of the artist to please everyone, and the eternal inability to do so (at least, in his/her mind), weaves throughout the whole narrative. It is the need that would appear to leave them so emotionally unlucky, Mona observing with a wryness only a stage performer could manage, "The joy of real love is not for us." Oh, how my heart weeps to hear it. And it weeps at the final shot, Powell making one more plea and Harlow reaching out to take his hand.

Neighboring Sounds

"The Wall", a 2012 film from Austria, featuring mysticism and allegory in equal doses, centered around a woman left alone at a hunting lodge in the Alps who finds herself unable to leave on account of an invisible wall. Thus, separated from society, she is forced to fend for herself and face isolation. The wall in Kleber Mendonça Filho's "Neighboring Sounds", Brazil's 2013 entrant for Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film (it was not nominated), however, is of a much more literal variety.

The film is set primarily on and around a towering high rise along a single city block in a mostly affluent neighborhood in Recife, a Brazilian city located along the Atlantic coast. As it opens, the residents have begun thinking of themselves as less than protected behind their own walls. On the street, cars are broken into, windows smashed, items and personal effects stolen. With safety rightly becoming a concern, Francisco (W.J. Solha), the patriarch who owns this slice of real estate, calls upon a private security firm for protection. This might suggest a burgeoning gangland war, but Filho strives for something eerier and much more esoteric.

Mood and atmosphere reveal themselves as the primary objective, working on our nerves much the same way the high rise itself works on its residents' nerves. Taking the film title to heart, all sorts of sounds, real world and engineered, permeate the soundtrack, all of them working to unsettle. Sirens, dogs barking, some sort of undefined clamor suggesting the aliens from "Contact" might be sending a message. In one moment it even offers the traditional horror film Loud Chord Banged On The Soundtrack as an unspecified someone or something flitters behind a doorway in our peripheral vision. Except Filho pointedly never answers our question: did that really happen? It is exemplifies the old horror movie adage that what we don’t see is always more excruciating than what we do. And, in fact, the film as a whole plays off that idea, slyly suggesting how one social group might specifically refrain from seeing another.

"Neighboring Sounds" resists a straight-forward arc. Issues broached at the beginning are afforded no traditional payoffs. Joao (Gustavo Jahn), for instance, is Francisco’s son, reluctantly brought into the father’s business. He has begun seeing Sofia (Irma Brown) and they seem content. When the CD player is stolen from her car, Joao becomes determined to track down the thief and eventually provide a replacement. Their relationship ends, though, when Joao casually mentions it ending to an acquaintance. We don’t see the breakup and are never provided a reason for its happening.

Throughout “Neighboring Sounds” I found myself wondering just how much of the film I was truly seeing and what I might be missing as an American, though I appreciated the window into a different world. I can also say that with both the World Cup and Summer Olympics headed to Brazil in the coming years, my country's media forces have taken an interest, and pieces I have read seem to suggest deep-rooted class conflicts, the wealthy “insulat(ing) themselves from this dysfunction” as The New Yorker notes.

A high rise goes up and its walls work to insulate its tenants from a society and its past and its ongoing problems, yet society’s sounds still insinuate themselves. You can cordon yourself off, but it’s all in vain. The walls will be breached.

Wadjda

“A woman’s voice is her nakedness.” So says a school administrator to our 13 year old heroine, Wadjda. It seems enough that polite Saudi Arabian society calls for women to cloak their bodies in black but no, speaking outdoors for Wadjda is the equivalent of Vanessa Hudgens in “Spring Breakers” fondling James Franco's glock. This is difficult for Wadjda to accept and so, mostly, she doesn’t. She paints her fingernails, rocks black Converse, lets her abaya fall open to show off her skinny jeans, allows the hijab to fall back so all can see her long black hair. In her spare time she crafts mix tapes of rock ‘n’ roll and scams friends at school for a little extra spending cash. But don’t presume Wadjda to see a rebel without a cause. To the contrary, her cause is a shiny new green bike, never mind that women in Saudi Arabian society forbidden from riding bikes for fear their virtue be sullied.

Well, people in Saudia Arabia aren’t supposed to make movies either. Writer and Director Haifaa Al Mansour’s “Wadjda” is the first feature ever filmed within Saudi Arabia, a fact that I dare say might boggle the mind of an American, seeing as how our country is filled with people who, if the mood should strike, can try and make films on their iPhones. Mansour was granted permission to shoot her debut, but still, per reports, had to film covertly. After all, if a woman’s voice is her nakedness and this film is Mansour’s voice….. Knowing this allows for “Wadjda” to work on multiple levels but, of course, first and foremost, the film needs to work on its own level, which is to say it needs to ably tell its story. Which it does, employing a very straight-forward narrative to strong effect.

The description of “Wadjda’s” protagonist probably makes her sound like a caricature of a disenfranchised youth, the western world’s attempt to fashion a Kathleen Hanna of Riyadh. But the performance of Waad Mohammed resists the typical. It is her first acting role and, thus, likely she is simply playing a version of herself, but that is not to suggest she does not bring memorable flourishes to the part. For instance, she has this distinctive double-take, throwing her head back and sizing up her varying companions, calling shenanigans with her expression. It’s the funniest thing in the movie. What she does above all, however, is craft a young girl raised to be soft-spoken and polite who acts out not so much by being obnoxious and disrespectful, but by being thoughtful and forthright. That is, the performance and screenplay do not betray Wadjda’s upbringing nor sphere of influence, but neither do they betray her core attitude. And the film is remarkably effortless in conveying this with the simplest of tones and plot maneuverings.

Wadjda’s journey is mirrored by her mother’s (Reem Abdullah), who imparts the value of Islamic tradition on her daughter but also seems secretly, and occasionally openly, proud of her daughter’s independence. Indeed, Islamic tradition means that her husband (Sultan Al Assaf), pining for a son, may take a second wife, thereby fracturing this family. That subplot painfully underscores how aloof both mother and daughter seem to feel in this society. The script feints toward Wadjda eventually embracing that society and its strict religion, only to undercut it in a moment that may be “expected” but is nonetheless triumphant. It is a moment, I must imagine, open to controversy in Mansour’s country, employing religion as a means to an end. And it speaks to both the character's resourcefulness.

This is not my culture and these are not my values. I respect everyone’s beliefs, whatever they may be, so long as those beliefs are true to what they feel in their heart and not simply impressed upon them with such ferocity that they feel they have no choice. The end of “Wadjda” is a moment earned in more ways than one, and as heartbreaking as it is delightful. You are so happy for little Wadjda in that moment, but simultaneously so sad. The closing shots are set in such a way to make it appear as if she has reached the edge of the world as she knows it. I kind of wished she would have just keep right on going.

The Hunt

Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) is 42 years old, divorced with a teenage son, and a kindergarten teacher at a small school in rural Denmark. As the film opens, he is forging a friendship with a young student, Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), whose father (Thomas Bo Larsen) is her best friend. Her home is slightly combustible and she seems content to withdraw into herself, to stand on the periphery and watch, and Lucas, it seems, is the only one able to make delicate inroads to her personality. It would be sweet if the opening scenes, a deer hunt, shots fired, blood drawn, did not provide such ominous overtones. No, this relationship and this movie will not be sweet.

With the most innocent of crushes, Klara kisses Lucas on the lips. He politely scolds her, and she is emotionally hurt. This combined with her overtaxed imagination combined with her brother accidentally subjecting her to images not age appropriate all roll up into Klara re-withdrawing and making a comment to the schoolmaster that initiates a terrible trajectory. That is, Lucas is accused of molesting of Klara. Which leads to accusations of him molesting other children at the school. Which leads to Lucas’s life being turned upside down in an instant and the town itself instantly and forcefully turning against him.

That the audience is never made to doubt what did and did not happen, it is never in the dark about Lucas’s true innocence. But then true innocence is not related to the film’s true point. This is not the story of a wrongly accused man fighting for justice. Little to no interest is paid to the legal aspects of the situation. The school continually reminds the frightened parents that they have passed the matter on to the police, but no police are really seen. Detectives are apparently taking statements from other children and their parents, but these detectives and statements are not shown. Lucas is arrested and taken to jail, but we never see him interrogated, never see him meet with a lawyer. Lucas goes before a judge, but this scene takes place off screen. No, the only investigators and judges in “The Hunt” are Lucas’s fellow townsfolk.

The only interrogation the film shows is the schoolmaster’s friend, summoned because he “knows about these things”, ever so sweetly asking Klara the most leading questions imaginable. The schoolmaster seems to have made up her mind and the interviewer seems to have made up his mind, and because they have made up their minds, everyone in town has made up their minds. Lucas is a sinner and a sexual predator. Open and shut, no follow up questions asked. He cannot even enter his local grocery store without being verbally and physically assaulted. His son comes to his defense and finds himself shunned too.

Ultimately “The Hunt” is gut-punching commentary on society’s frightening rush to judge, to prosecute in the court of public opinion without hearing all the pertinent facts, to render the world in the sharpest of black and white. At the risk of sounding crass, I kept envisioning Danish CNN, reporting outside Lucas’s house, talking to “eye witnesses” who actually had not seen anything, influencing the whole public sphere to lean in one direction. And because he is considered a predator, justly or unjustly, everyone else’s terrifying predatory nature therefore is permitted. Throw a brick through his window? Go ahead! We "know" what he did! Pelt him with frozen meat? Sure! He's "guilty" as sin! This is a common scenario in our current world, one that demands introspection, I think, to correct, but introspection is difficult to come by in a world in hyperdrive.

What gets lost, purposely, as the horror progresses is Klara. As the film opens, she seems troubled. Once she makes her accusation, however, those troubles are forgotten and the new trouble – which isn’t even real – emerges. Of course, it’s difficult for parents and administrators to ascertain precise truth when an impressionable child is at the center, but the failure to perform due diligence and ask her real questions not only sends Lucas into a spiral but threatens the well-being of Klara too.

The final scenes harken back to the beginning scenes - Klara still standing alone on the periphery, only Lucas coming to her aid, and a hunt that ends in an oblique silohouette. Judgement has long since been thrown down. Life will not just go on ever again.

Broken Circle Breakdown

“If I Needed You” is among the most well-known and, alternately, most consistently covered country-western songs. Townes Van Zandt wrote it and recorded it, but I might venture to say a great many people first heard it via Emmylou Harris and Don Williams (at least, that’s how I first heard it). Guy Clark covered it. Ricky Skaggs covered it. Australian chanteuse Kasey Chambers covered it. Andrew Bird and (my beloved) Tift Merritt covered it. There have been countless others and no doubt there will be countless more. At perhaps the most the crucial juncture of “Broken Circle Breakdown” our protagonists, Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) and Elise (Veerle Baetens), fronting a Belgian bluegrass band, step to the center of a stage before a rapt audience and contribute their version of “If I Needed You.”

This musical melodrama from director Felix Van Groeningen, recipient of two awards at the Tribeca Film Festival (actress and original screenplay), possesses a story that is nothing new. It’s jumping-off point is disease – specifically, cancer that ravages the little daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), of Didier and Elise, and how this creates an irrepairable rift in their marriage. It’s a common cinematic scenario, but it’s uncommon in the propulsive energy of its telling and in the way it seems almost desperate to include a flood of themes and ideas. Not all these themes and ideas are wholly successful, but then our lives are not wholly successful either, and “Broken Circle Breakdown” goes all in a noble attempt to encompass lives lived and lost.

The film utilizes a broken narrative. It is not broken, however, in the manner of an Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, whose films feel like puzzles with random pieces snapping into place throughout. Rather the narrative is high tides and low tides, Happiness and Sadness running right up against each other again and again as the film continually moves from present to past, fighting the disease and falling in love. If a happy life for you means sticking to the middle ground and avoiding the peaks and valleys, “Broken Circle Breakdown” may feel alienating. It may also feel exhilarating. And crushing. Didier and Elise live their lives one bluegrass tune at a time. For those three minutes and five seconds they’re free. Of course, those three minutes and five seconds end, they always end goddammit, and then what?

Ah, but do they end? To be clear, “Broken Circle Breakdown” is chock full of metaphors and allegories, some potent, some better left to the compost pile on Didier’s in-progress countryside farm, but all refreshingly on the prowl for some sort of higher truth. Music, as has been spouted many times in many platforms, connects us, not simply in the here and now and across barriers of race and creed, but across time and space and perhaps – depending on how far you want to roll with this – into the spirit world, whatever your definition of the spirit world may be. (This blog is agnostic, even if its sole creator and contributor is not.)

Facing the idea of mortality at far too young of an age, Maybelle confronts her father on the topic, who tells it like it is – or, I should say, the way he thinks it is. Elise thinks differently. This elicits arguments. Does life reach beyond Earth, or does it end once and for all when our time here ends? Didier, for all his intense devotion to music, is a pragmatist, someone who feels he can provide for himself on his own farm and erect his own veranda. Elise, her body adorned in various tattoos telling the story of her life, has starry-eyes, and has faith in reincarnation. These ideas become a bridge to one of the strangest, boldest, craziest subplots of the year, Didier’s fascination with the amber waves of grain of America, its standing invitation to re-invent yourself.

That fascination, however, becomes entangled – and this is where it gets strange and bold and crazy, and problematic – in science – specifically in the idea of stem cells, an avenue that could help her daughter and an avenue that is slowed down on account of America. This is underscored with Presidential addresses viewed through the prism of TV, footage that you’ll swear is editing leftovers from Andrew Dominik’s “Killing Them Softly.”

It also allows for the film’s most explosive moment, and it occurs in the aftermath of the “If I Needed You” duet, a moment of terrifying rawness that will not end as Didier subject his audience and bandmates to his political viewpoints as he passionately harangues them. Is this “Broken Circle Breakdown” forcing science and religion to collide or is it the filmmakers off camera forcing science and religion to collide? Well, in an interview with Indiewire van Groeningen indicates that the play on which the film was based was, in fact, “trigger(ed)” by George W. Bush’s decision to stop stem cell funding.

That is to say, "Broken Circle Breakdown" unmistakably has a message to impart, and in certain places it feels oversized to fit. But, "Broken Circle Breakdown" also does not pretend to have all the answers, and that is crucial. The closing scene will haunt your dreams because you will not stop wondering......did the character hear the song? I have my answer. What's yours?

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Punisher)

When I was home for Christmas, my sister asked me if I was actually enjoying “Trophy Wife” or if I just recapping it out of Malin Akerman-prompted obligation. I replied that, yes, I was actually enjoying it, though I could tell she remained skeptical, and so I launched into a diatribe. Basically it’s like this, so many American family-centric sitcoms employ the kids as mere props, a means-to-an-end, plot devices, and the real rough-and-tumble nature of parenting – the I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing panic, the grit-your-teeth-and-get-through-it obligations – remain on the sideline for antics and one-liners. But “Trophy Wife” never forsakes its whole family, and this has never been proven better thus far in it short run than in “The Punisher”, its best episode yet. In a very real way, it echoes the sentiments of an article by Jennifer Senior for New York Magazine (unwittingly, I assume, as the episode aired two days after the article was published), albeit comically. To borrow the phrase of the esteemed Pat Benatar and tweak it – Child-Rearing Is A Battlefield.

At episode’s open, Warren is about to jump off the roof and into the pool as Hillary films it with her smartphone. Kate, however, catching this stunt in the nick of time, orders Warren off the roof. Warren obliges. By jumping into the pool. Kids. So Kate sits them down with the intent of doling out punishment, only to realize she has utterly no idea how to dole out punishment. Thus, she phones Warren’s and Hillary’s real mother, Dr. Diane Buckley, the Dolph Lundgren Punisher to Kate’s Thomas Jane (pop POP!!!), for punishment-doling advice, eliciting the episode’s first masterstroke – that is, Dr. Diane Buckley as Kate’s Qui Gon Jinn.

It’s killer to watch how the teensiest of commands like “Kids, go to your room”, purposely delivered by Marcia Gay Harden with little-to-no effect, wield such authority, but the episode refreshingly refrains from overplaying Dr. Diane Buckley’s role. She’s there for Kate, despite her dislike of Kate, and will offer brief council (in person and then by phone and then in person again), but she will not make Kate’s bed and clean Kate’s room. Kate has to make her own stand, which she does by confiscating all “screens” (phones, laptops), but “screens” are Warren’s and Hillary’s lifeblood and they will fight back, making life hell for Kate if she makes it hell for them.

Remember, Hillary and Warren are Dr. Diane Buckley’s kids, so they think just like her, and one delightful moment finds Hillary copying her mom’s mannerisms down to the tee. I mean, you can see Hillary as a teenage Dr. Diane Buckley (or vice-versa) and that is as awesome as it is terrifying. Back and forth they go, and it is all heightened, yes, but what makes it so exhilarating is to see the very real struggle Kate is going through in attempting to figure out how the hell to parent. The stress, the agony, the moments when she thinks she has it figured out and then realizes she doesn’t, and this is all builds to an instant when “Trophy Wife” recycles a standby sitcom trope – Something Falls Into The Garbage Disposal And The Garbage Disposal Gets Turned On. Usually it’s a wedding ring, but smartphones are really the new wedding ring, and so it’s Kate’s smartphone that goes into the Garbage Disposal on account of Warren and Hillary, and so Kate turns on the disposal and her phone gets chewed up and even though she was trying to impart stepmotherly wisdom by taking away their phones, when her phone gets taken away…..

I know nothing of the Emmys and I’m not saying Malin Akerman should be nominated for an Emmy. What I am saying is that if the Emmys have a Best Bleeped Cursing Award, it’s Malin Akerman’s to lose. Because at the sight of her chewed up phone, she loses it, and she loses it by unleashing a bleeped-out curse-ridden monologue that is cut short by a commercial break but actually continues going when the show returns from commercial. Now the show is not making light of swearing in front of your kids, but reminding how close parents are at every second of every hour of every day to blowing their f*&%ing gaskets.

Speaking of which, Pete and our old friend Jackie are summoned before precocious Bert’s teacher who explains he has been sending signals that he is unhappy with the distance between his parents. Thus, Pete, despite seemingly be around Jackie all time despite not being married to her, puts on his game face (sort of literally) and braves a game of mini-golf with ex-wife and son. It’s pirate-themed mini-golf and so, naturally, they have to speak in pirate voices, and while at first it’s amusing, it really doesn’t go anywhere. Yet, that’s okay, and it’s okay because, I suppose, as a parent that’s what you do. You mini-golf and you talk like a pirate for as long as you have to make your kid happy, and even if you feel as if this outing is going nowhere, well, look at the smile at your kid’s face. Isn’t that enough?

Tags over the closing credits are typically meant to be humorously inconsequential, but I think “The Punisher’s” tag is vital. It is Pete hard at work on a vaguely defined writing project ("Is it a short story? Is it a trilogy?") called "The Magistrate's Lover." It sounds awful, which is to say it sounds fabulous, but what’s really crucial is what this short story/trilogy represents – namely, Pete’s outlet, his escape from the mini-golf and ex-wives and the parental ordeal. “The Magistrate's Lover” is Pete’s coping mechanism. Just let him have it, man.

Best Line: “I have the peripheral vision of a hammerhead shark.” – Dr. Diane Buckley (stated by Gay Harden not as braggadocio, but as mere fact)
Episode MVP: Malin Akerman’s Pants (but that goes without saying)

Friday's Old Fashioned: Red Dust (1932)

Per TCM, "Red Dust" was banned from showing in Berlin, "deemed too hot for Nazified Germany." Well, you can certainly see what must have left Hitler in such a dither. This was 1932, two years into the Hays Code, but two years before the Hays Code was genuinely enforced, and the sexuality of "Red Dust" is so overt that had the MPAA been around (imagine the MPAA and Will Hays uniting! Egads!) this whole glorious cinematic kerfuffle would have been hit with an NC-17 broadside.

Set in a rubber plantation on Indochina, the film offers an early shot of a tiger, lurking in the jungle, striding right into the camera, told to be preying on the plantation's workers, but mostly just hanging out on the periphery of the film to function as a growling symbol of the animalistic nature of sex and love (or is it just sex and not the other?). But that tiger, in spite of being an actual tiger, feels less palpable than the "Life of Pi"-esque CGI carnivore manifestation. This is specifically because the real tiger in "Red Dust" is Jean Harlow, ribald and grinning and having the time of her life.

The famous scene - re-created in her pre-eminent "Bombshell" - features Harlow in a rain barrel. According to legend, Harlow was naked for realsies and demonstrated this fact by briefly flaunting her unadorned chest region for the pleasure of the hard-working crew. Director Victor Fleming quickly evaced this no doubt striking footage for understandable reasons, yet more or less serves the same shot earlier when Harlow bends down and allows her cleavage to roll around in full view for whole the viewing audience. My apologies to all if that sounds crass, but the shot is the shot. Fact.

The first time we meet Harlow as the woman of the night Vantine, she more or less emerges from the indoor equivalent of the mist - her voice heard off screen, her figure shrouded in darkness, and a light going on to reveal her perched in bed in a kind of nightgown that seems more appropriate for a suite at the Plaza then at a plantation in Indochina. Which is where she is. Why she's there escapes me. It was mentioned, I merely fail to recall. Of course, the "why" is not as crucial to the story as the why, which is that she needs to provide counterbalance and temptation to the plantation owner.

He is Dennis Carson, a character whom I really feel like could have used a more baroque name, played by Clark Gable without the mustache and, in one scene, without an undershirt, which was the 1932 equivalent of Kevin Bacon momentarily going sans towel in "Wild Things." He is immediately at odds with Vantine, perhaps because her take-no-shit attitude is too reminiscent of his own. He wants her gone, but the boat meant to carry her downriver to Singapore is in need of repairs. (And you can't tell me Vantine didn't employ her feminine wiles to ensure the boat needed repairs.)

The plot thickens when Dennis's new surveyor, Gary Willis (Gene Raymond) arrives with his bride Barbara (Mary Astor), not cut out for the monsoon lifestyle. Quite quickly the differences between the effete and societal Barbara and the uncouth and sassy Vantine become apparent, and an obligatory sexual push/pull emerges. Barbara finds herself swept up into the arms of Dennis when a storm materializes out of nowhere, and with it goes any sense of her decorum. He unlocks something within her. Thus, she throws herself at him, and he sends her husband off to do work deep in the jungle to provide a clear runway to a classic case of plantation adultery. And Vantine watches from the sideline.

 
It might be fashionable to say that Vantine is the devil on Dennis’s right shoulder and Barbara is the angel on Dennis’s left shoulder, but that is not quite right. Rather Vantine is the devil on Dennis’s shoulder and Dennis is the devil on Barbara’s shoulder and Barbara is the angel wracked with insecurity. In real life, Harlow was wracked by insecurity, and from the numerous films of hers I watched this past year, that insecurity is often on display. And while in “Red Dust” her character looks at Barbara with both envious and jealous eyes, Barbara is truly the one suffering from a crisis of identity, repressed until now.

Why else would she fall into an affair at a clap of thunder? Raymond does not present much competition to Gable – Barbara actually calls him “helpless” – but then this is not so much about a love triangle about competition as it is about self-recognition (or the opposite). Barbara is made to realize that she truly has no sense of her self, and while her spouse sort of mans up at the end, it's really more of a faux-manning up, perpetrated by Dennis and Vantine as much as himself. No, it's difficult not to see Barbara slinking off to an everlasting marriage of misery. But hey, at least now she won't be denying it.

Dennis, meanwhile, is made to recognize he is where he belongs, a grimy plantation owner keeping time with the lowest common demoninator. Vantine is the only one who seems able to recognize her life's position from the get-go, even if she thinks of herself as no good. You get what you think you deserve.

Oscar Nomination Q & A

Now that the nominations for the 86th Academy Awards have been unveiled the time has arrived for Cinema Romantico to answer the most pertinent questions. Let's get to it.

Not your Oscar host. I don't think.

Q: Who's hosting the Oscars again?

A: I have no idea. I’d like to see Brad Pitt as his character in “The Counselor” host, but host from a barstool on the side of the stage, making pithy comments as the ceremony goes along, repeatedly calling the endless parade of odes "sophomoric."

Q: Kind of like Armond White at the recent New York Film Critics Circle awards?

A: Eh, maybe not that harsh. I’m sure Armond White will dismiss the Oscars as the “religion of immoralism”.

Q: Aren’t they really just harmless fun?

A: Not in Armond’s World, sparky. In his world, tuning in to the Oscars does not mean you think movies are kinda cool, it means you are the bedfellow of motion picture communism.

Q: God, that’s a depressing way to start this Q&A.

A: Not as depressing as Adèle Exarchopoulos failing to land a Best Actress nod. You know she moved mountains in "Blue is the Warmest Color." Literally. Moved mountains. France registered a 7 inch shifting of the Pyrenees the night of its premiere.

The woman who gave The Best Performance Of The Year clearly has no time for the Academy's shit.

Q: Well, she had to make room for Meryl Streep's record breaking 887th Best Actress nod.

A: My sources indicate that next year she will take on Cameron Diaz’s role in a remake of “The Counselor” at which point everyone who hated the original version will suddenly swoon for it. (Harrison Chadwick of the Paducah Observer says: "'The Counselor'! NOW I get it!")

Q: Will Meryl get to use the Rihanna accent?

A: Of course!

Q: I also think it's worth nothing your LakeBell4BestActress hashtag never really gathered steam.

A: #fail

Q: Adèle or no Adèle, Lake Bell or no Lake Bell, it’s Cate Blanchett’s award to lose, no?

A: Oh, absolutely. The only suspense will be whether or not Vivien Leigh’s Ghost storms the stage to demand credit.

Jennifer Lawrence: Backlash Antidote.

Q: The Best Supporting Actress field includes last year’s Best Actress winner, Jennnifer Lawrence. Thoughts?

A: I had a chance to speak with Myron Plotz, associate director at the National Backlash Research Institute (NBRI) in Oceanside, California, this morning, and he indicated that from his office’s perspective, this is the most interesting Oscar race in years.

Q: Really?

A: Yes, around his office they apparently call Jennifer Lawrence “The Steamroller”. This is on account of the fact that she effortlessly, charmingly “steamrolls” any and all backlash. However, the NBRI has been detecting faint levels of backlash surrounding her “American Hustle” performance and that paired with a partial resistance from some pockets of the media to “American Hustle” in general plus the endless assortment of amusing JLaw GIF’s may result in unprecedented Lawrence Backlash.

Q: So Lawrence will lose?

A: Not so fast. Plotz sees Lawrence as perhaps as the one person in Hollywood most capable of owning the backlash. Plotz notes that self-deprecating ownership of backlash is, in fact, the most potent countermeasure to backlash. Thus, if Lawrence can get ahead of the critical kickback, she may well be able to stymie it. If not, Lupita Nyong’o will be your winner.

Q: And you're predicting?

A: Lawrence. But I'm secretly rooting for Sally Hawkins in "Blue Jasmine."

Q: How can it be secret if you just said it?

A: Next question!

This is A.J. Langer as Rayanne Graff, who was not nominated for an Academy Award.

Q: It would appear Jared Leto of "Dallas Buyers Club" has surged to frontrunner status for Best Supporting Actor.

A: Indeed. I’m gonna lose a lot of money from a wager I made 20 years ago that A.J. Langer would be the first in the “My So Called Life” cast to win an Oscar.

Q: Really? In that bet you went with A.J. Langer?

A: I ♡ Rayanne Graff forever. Also, you clearly never watched this show. Girl had game.

McConaughey's comin' to get ya, Oscar.

Q: Matthew McConaughey took Best Dramatic Actor at the Golden Globes for "Dallas Buyers Club". Does this make him the Oscar favorite?

A: I think so. It's his "time."

Q: But why isn't it, say, Leo's "time"?

A: Because Matthew McConaughey went out wandering in the rom com wilderness for a decade. He was fallen, now he has risen. The human angle! That’s what wins Oscars!

Q: So you’re suggesting Leo needs to jerry-rig a redemption story for himself?

A: Precisely! He’s got, what, six weeks until the ceremony? Plenty of time for him to stage a rolling-around-in-the-gutter breakdown, issue a phony apology and then propose to Margot Robbie.

Q: His "Wolf of Wall Street" co-star?

A: Imagine if those two got engaged in the middle of awards season? My God, the media would swoon so hard it might just become Leo's "time".

Q: It's not "time" for Christian Bale?

A: Christian Bale had his time which therefore makes him ineligble to have it be his "time".

Q: What about Chiwetel Ejiofor?

A: His "time" is the future.

Q: Wouldn't logic dictate that it should be Bruce Dern's "time"?

A: "Time" is relative. And unfortunately, fair or not, "time" has appeared to pass Dern by.

Q: How about Alfonso Cuaron? Is it his "time" to win Best Director for "Gravity"?

A: It's not really his "time", but it might very well be his time. The one thing that could potentially trip him up is if it's revealed portions of that virtuoso never-ending unbroken take to open the film were faked.

Q: Well, of course, they were! It's set in space!

A: Shhhhhhhhhhh!

Q: All right. The last one. The big bottle of Evian. Best Picture. It would seem, despite the 9 nominees, that it's down to "12 Years A Slave", "Gravity" and "American Hustle." Do you have a prediction?

A: Not yet. We need to wait for the Best Picture Narrative emerge. I'm sensing a game-changing twist the first week of February.

Q: Cuaron's quote about giving Sandra Bullock "herpes" at the Golden Globes wasn't the game-changing twist?

A: Hardly. That was just the stand alone opening to grab the audience's attention. Now we settle in and wait for all three acts of the campaign to unfold.

Q: Any closing thoughts?

A: Indeed. In lieu of failing to nominate Nicole Holofcener for Best Original Screenplay for "Enough Said", I say to the Academy (paraphrasing the "probable" Oscar host): a plague of pustulant boils on all your scurvid asses.

Wait A Second.....

Her

It's a common scenario - thinking a person on the street is talking to you or talking to him or herself, only to realize he or she is actually chatting up someone on the other end of a bluetooth. In Spike Jonze's subtly super-stylized "Her", set in what Andrew Niccol's "Gattaca" might have termed The Not Too Distant Future, we are often made to see pedestrians chatting up technologically advanced earpieces as if they are more microscopic Google Glasses. This is to say that "Her" is clearly intended to resemble our world as much as create a new one and comment on our society as much as portray the one of its own invention.

Though Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is not quite an official hermit, he has significantly withdrawn socially since separating from his wife (Rooney Mara). Their courtship is primarily seen in flashback snippets, moments of joy paired with the rising anger that leads to their combustion. Theodore’s day job is at a wonderfully expository company called BeautifulLetters.com wherein he pens flowing college ruled tomes for men and women too insecure in their own thoughts to say what they mean and/or want. On one hand, it’s lovely to think that in The Not Too Distant Future handwritten letters delivered by post have once again become trendy, but it also neatly suggests a futuristic inability to communicate. Clearly Theodore can communicate on behalf of others, but struggles to communicate himself. This is paralleled by his apartment complex pals, Amy (Amy Adams) and Charles (Matt Letscher), who appear to be on disparate planets even when standing next to each other.

Quietly desperate to emerge from his high-rise cocoon, Theodore turns to society's new rage, O.S. (Operating Systems), which creates itself on his laptop and is then beamed into his earpiece in the form of a femininely agreeable voice that goes by the name Samantha (Scarlett Johansson, strictly voiceover). She giggles at his jokes, maintains his email and offers herself as a therapeutic sounding board. In doing so, her melifluous tones re-connect him with life, while in the meantime this abstract intonation comes alive within the confines of her own unseen world.

The delicacy with which Jonze, also working as screenwriter, builds this slightly heightened world, offering numerous shots of humans so close together but never further apart, matches the delicacy with which he sculpts this relationship into one of both heartbreaking and depressing believability. To be sure, Jonze is satirizing the modern world, our slow withdrawal into our smartphones, and parodying the idea that eventually even our boyfriends and girlfriends will be accessed via apps. That the insecure Theodore never seems insecure about revealing his girlfriend to be an operating system, however, and that most no one he to whom he reveals this seems startled, is telling. And that it never comes off as weird as it would seem in theory, is both kinda frightening as well as a testament to Phoenix’s sad-eyed turn.

Adams’ Amy would at first glance appear as Theodore’s requisite real world ballast, but even she finds herself caught up in an O.S. courtship when her marriage crashes against the rocks. No, Mara’s Catherine is ultimately the one most disturbed by her former spouse’s sonic love affair, and she calls him on the carpet for his unwillingness to deal with real emotion in a monologue that might seem on the nose except that for all the ill-communicaton in this film, her directness comes across refreshingly old school. I wonder if in “Her’s” landscape, Mara’s character might be viewed as a luddite, the sort unwilling to square with the technological turns the world has taken. This mostly remains unexplored, but even so “Her” proves itself to be of a more bygone era than its premise might suggest, Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan for Now.

The story of "Her", apart from its production flourishes and plot ornamentations, is rooted very much in the conventional. The high-waisted pants favored by the male characters, after all, can be seen throughout the decades in the history of American fashion, and, in a way, Theodore & Samantha are very much like those pants. She may be a voice, and she may be forced to call upon a body surrogate to re-invigorate their "sexual life", but then that problem - like all of Theodore & Samantha's problems - are the kind couples been having since before rotary phones.

The conclusion could maybe be viewed as a little simple for all the ideas "Her" yearns to propose, but then I'm not entirely certain the conclusion should be viewed so much as a cure as the most tried and true of stopgaps - every now and then all we need is a little human touch.

Wolf of Wall Street

Our exceptionally dastardly protagonist of the title, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a renegade but smart and swank Wall Street buccaneer, has just discovered his home is under FBI surveillance. As it happens, his lieutenant is making a call that could ruin both of them and everybody else. Two problems. One, Jordan is not home, having gone to the nearby country club to necessarily call from a pay phone. Two, he has popped a few too many of the Lafite Rothschild of Quaaludes and, thus, has lost all sense of motor skills. No matter. He crawls (literally) to his Lamborghini and somehow climbs in and somehow drives home to deliver the warning. "I'm lucky I didn't get an accident," he whimsically advises in voiceover.

Except the next morning he awakes to find a couple cops towering over him. They want to know if he drove his Lamborghini last night, the Lamborghini parked in his driveway that is smashed and dented to bits. The film flashes back and see what really happened - that is, a severely impaired Jordan ramming into cars and plowing into utility poles and running over mailboxes and up onto lawns. The implication is clear. The wheelers and dealers, the wolves of wall street and pups they are nurturing, are only receptive to the former rather than the latter, not merely indifferent to the destruction they leave in the wake of their sinful mayhem but blind to it.

Jordan is a product of Bayside, Queens, across the East River, which is not quite Bay Ridge, Brooklyn (though his eventual trophy wife, played by a flinty and bosomy Margot Robbie, hails from there), the mystical land in "Saturday Night Fever" from which young and desperate men would longingly gaze across the dirty water at Manhattan and what may well have been to them The Lost City Of Z. But whereas those men of another era were content to lose themselves in the lights of the disco floor, Jordan is determined to get rich quick and ventures deep into the canyons of New York City's financial district.

Landing a crummy job at a high line Wall Street firm, he meets his mentor, Mark Hanna, played in a delicious cameo by Matthew McConaughey as a laconically crazed Jedi Knight, who sets the template for the three hour ride to come by preaching the virtues of cocaine, which makes your fingers type faster, and "feeding the geese", which relaxes you, as a means to make money. Which Jordan does, until 1987's Black Monday when the firm goes under and Jordan is back on his own.

He quickly re-invents himself at a fly-by-night penny stock outfit in a strip mall in Long Island, discovering that his dive bomb sales tactics can easily persuade the poor and hungry to pledge scads of cash toward flailing investments. It's a perfect win-lose scenario - as in, Jordan wins, they lose, and screw 'em, because if they're dumb enough to give him his money they don't deserve to have it anyway. This is, more or less, Jordan's entire message encapsulated in a line, though he continually delivers it to his in-awe company minions in curse-stained monologues that are like a cross between Tony Robbins and a pentecostal preacher with white powder stains on his nose.

This would be an opportune moment to advise that while "Wolf of Wall Street" was adapted by Terence Winter, it was directed by Martin Scorsese, and the infamous hallmarks of the grandmaster are on full display. The loaded soundtrack is wielded for maximum effect and all assortment of editing tricks are utilized not simply to enhance the experience but to effectively communicate the story. This, for instance, is not a story about how hard work trumps all. It's a lightning quick way to the top, and Scorsese and his longtime editing cohort Thelma Schoonmaker underscore this with a myriad of quick cuts graduating Belfort from his questionable digs in Long Island to a jam-packed edifice in Lower Manhattan. The reward is what matters here, not the means to it and not the eventual reaping, and Scorsese drives that point home again and again, but briskly, and always intentionally undercutting it.

Jordan looks the camera in the eye and begins to explain in explicit detail precisely how the ruse his company, Stratton Oakmont, perpetrates works and then......cuts it short. "It doesn't matter," he declares. "What matters is this-" At which point Jordan's lieutenant, Donnie, relays a certain carnivorous dollar figure. The bottom line, baby. Donnie is played by a lunatic Jonah Hill, sporting big framed glasses and a Long Island accent that suggests Mike Francesa if he had chosen stocks rather than sports radio. Often the funniest thing in any given scene of drugs, debauchery and nakedness is Hill off to the side in the background, watching with a stoned-out vacant look, as if alluding all the while to a willful ignorance of the happening.

It would not at all be improper to note the structural debt paid to "Goodfellas", though the fall of Henry Hill is much more pronounced than the fall of Jordan Belfort, which I would argue is decidedly on purpose. This is not to suggest Belfort is positioned as a redemptive or complicated character. Far from it, and DiCaprio commits to playing him insistently one-dimensional, a gonzo addict hellbent on getting rich, having sex and popping pills. Repeatedly he is placed in potential Come-to-Jesus moments, and essentially each time he turns his back on it, never more spectacularly than when he is about to cut a deal with the SEC and walk away from his company, only to relent at the very last instant because his ego and lasciviousness will not allow it.

That the FBI agent (Kyle Chandler) on Belfort's trail appears and then disappears for a large swath of time is not coincidental, just as the utter neglect of camera time for Belfort's two daughters in a two hour and fifty-nine minute film is not coincidental. We, in fact, do not even know Belfort has had a daughter until it's mentioned long after the fact, nor do we know he is having a second until his wife enters the frame with a quite-clearly pregnant belly. Consequence and Family Life are of no interest to Belfort, and so they are kept tucked away off camera.

The film's final third is an absurdist descent into horror, though not quite complete self-destruction, because Scorsese and Winter are willing to admit that even though a character like Belfort deserves to be tossed into a Bond-like pool of sharks, our world simply does not work this way. Our world, to quote an oft-espoused cliche, is what we make of it, and too often the bankers and brokers fashion this world in their image. So even though Belfort is condemned to prison, the only scene we see of him in prison is set on a tennis court, strictly time off. And thus, the film comes full circle.

Tellingly, “Wolf of Wall Street” ends not with a close-up of DiCaprio, who has been on screen for virtually every frame, but DiCaprio re-fashioned as a motivational speaker teaching suckers to sell him a pen. No one seems able or willing, and the camera glides over the top of the audience - us - as we watch and contemplate, asking us what we think of the preceding three hours. One man’s thought: take that pen, Belfort, and shove it up your ass.

Why The Golden Globes Are Hollywood's Office Christmas Party

When I think of the Golden Globes, I think of Kate Winslet. No, no, no, not her gushing, gloriously over-earnest speeches when she scored two statues for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress back in 2009. I’m talking about this year. I’m talking about how she’s been nominated for Best Actress for “Labor Day”, a film which no one outside L.A. County has even seen. Hell, can we be factually sure the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has even seen it? Okay, they probably have (possibly), but let’s say for the sake of the argument that they have not. Is that such a bad thing? No. It’s not, and it’s not because by nominating Kate Winslet, this ensures NBC can offer multiple shots of Kate Winslet during the telecast. Now I don’t know about you, but I know myself, and hell be damn sure when I watch the Golden Globes I want Kate the Great to be at them. This is not about achievements in the medium, you see, this is about Hollywood putting on its Office Christmas Party roughly a month late. Kate the Great is an invaluable member of the Hollywood team. She should be at the party.

The Golden Globes air this evening on NBC. This means it’s time for critics who bemoan how awards don’t really “matter” to bemoan an awards show, which seems entirely arbitrary since an awards show’s entire purpose is to bestow awards. But they have to bitch about something, I suppose, and the Golden Globes and shameless schmoozing will do for today. To Twitter with the pitchforks!!! The Golden Globes, however, have never not been shy about their non-altruistic intent. That’s why they don’t keep the cocktails off screen. They’re on the table in HD, part of the show. The ceremony itself was originally a monotone affair of no great import until in 1958 The Rat Pack, bored stiff, decided to spruce up the proceedings, hijacked the stage and improvised as boozy masters of the ceremonies. Why if you listen closely today you can practically hear an incredulous Frank from the grave tell the latest lameazoid to point out the GG’s irrelevance on account of Madonna’s statue for Evita to 1997 to “lighten the fuck up, pal, and have a drink, why don’t you?”

Every article that hits the web around this time includes a variation of the history of the Golden Globes rise to prominence, and each variation will note how the Hollywood Foreign Press created itself to specifically in order to have greater access to the top actors of the day. Perhaps their intent was noble, to write in-depth think pieces about their craft and creations, or perhaps their intent was merely starry-eyed, to create an association to hand out some awards to hob-nob with Hollywood’s best and best-dressed once a year. I think that means I’m supposed to criticize them, to accuse them of simply finding an organizational excuse to host a bitchin’ party, but I’d rather not, thanks.

And yes, I'm fully aware a film critic’s role is meant to dissect the movie world’s various products and offer analysis regarding respective quality and content. But I sometimes fear that such incessant analysis loses sight of cinema’s utterly essential escapism. This is why over the years I have come to appreciate David Thomson more than any other film critic/historian/essayist, because he seems the one most willing to both critique films and revel in their inherent Movieness. These are important distinctions to make, and it is important to distinguish the Golden Globes as being more part of the Movies than part of Filmmaking, if you catch my drift.

Which brings me back to Kate the Great. Her real name, as established earlier, is, of course, Kate Winslet, whom I humbly believe to be our finest working actress. Except when presented and seated, champagne flute in hand, at the Golden Globes, she is a Star - i.e. Kate the Great. Call me star struck and rule me out of order, fine, but I’m willing to forsake my role as wannabe film critic for one (or two, counting the Oscars) night each year to merely be a movie fan. And as a movie fan, I supremely appreciate the chance to be a fly on the wall by sitting on the couch in my pajama pants of Hollywood’s Office Christmas Party. Because Christmas Parties are not truly consequential to a company’s production or quality. Rather they are a chance to cut loose, take it easy, party up, and sing some karaoke.

Which is why the Golden Globes really need to add a karaoke segment. If Kate the Great could just belt out a little Lita Ford tonight, I’d be the happiest guy not in the room.