Friday's Old Fashioned: Night Moves (1975)

Throughout “Night Moves” Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), private eye, is told by others of his almost pathological need to “solve” the case. The case involves a young girl, Delly (Melanie Griffith), who has gone missing. Harry is hired by Arlene (Janet Ward), her mother, a fading (faded) Hollywood starlet to find the gone girl. He does a little digging and, in not much time at all, tracks her to a fairly foregone location – that is, her stepfather’s Oceanside ramshackle stead in the Florida Keys. It’s such a simple job that there can only be twists and turns and looming turmoil, and there is, of course, just as there is also the marriage of Harry’s that is on the rocks. “The movie,” wrote the late great Roger Ebert, “is about the process of a criminal investigation, not its results.” That was referring to “The Big Sleep” which was about Bogey’s Philip Marlowe, not Bogey’s Sam Spade, which is the P.I. to whom Harry Moseby is jokingly compared, but the sentiment half-describes “Night Moves”. It is overly concerned with the investigational process as much as the results, but it is concerned with results too; it’s simply that the “results” have nothing to do with anything being “solved”.

This film, directed by Arthur Penn, is one that gets and appreciates a classic film reference. Early on Harry visits his wife at her office and she wonders if he might like to join her and her boss that evening for a showing of an Eric Rohmer film. “I saw Rohmer once.” Harry replies. “It was kind of like watching paint dry.” Buuuuuuurn. And that’s because he sees himself as a Sam Spade, a tough-talking, no-nonsense-taking hard-boiled gumshoe in a black & white noir made on the cheap, where issues are resolved not with philosophical discussions but with brawls and guns.

Mosbey’s backstory involves his position as a one-time NFL player with the Oakland Raiders (which means that because the film is set in 1975 he must have played at least a season or two with the rough & tumble 70’s incarnation of that swashbuckling franchise which no doubt indicates why he’s so darn good in fight), and I think that’s crucial. The character on paper and in the demeanor crafted so ably by Hackman comes across very much like an ex-professional athlete forced to the sideline and, consequently, his own version of twiddling his thumbs. He’s often seen playing chess by himself. It’s tossing cards in a hat as a one man private investigating firm. He needs a way to matter.

His marriage apparently stopped mattering at some point, or at least being a way to actively engage in life. He only seems enlivened by the thought of his wife (Susan Clark) when he can tail her, discover the man with whom she’s been cheating, and knock on the man’s door, not really even to confront him, since he doesn’t seem that angry, but have a conversation. The man tries to get him to have that conversation with, you know, his wife, but Harry is nonplussed. She’s basically trying to goad him into a reaction, like Justine did with Vincent in “Heat”, yet Harry’s reaction is just to bury himself in his case and take off for Florida. In another film, a lesser film, when Harry starts flirting with Paula (Jennifer Warren) down in the Sunshine State, and eventually sleeping with her, we might assume the marital problems were merely an excuse to forgive his adulterous transgressions. Except we already kind of think he’s a (what-have-ya). He and Susan have already crossed the rubicon.

All this marks “Night Moves” less as a traditional thriller than a character study – “My Night At Maud’s” as an American thriller. After all, Rohmer’s film, the one Harry dismisses, revolves around the idea of making choices that apply meaning to life, for if you don’t make the proper choices to apply that meaning then life is merely an existential wasteland. He chooses to get involved in this case of the missing girl and to push that case to and then past its limits to apply meaning to the life he feels himself incrementally drifting away from. Alas, by the conclusion of “Night Moves” he’s more or less wound up in one of those art films he so despises, utterly adrift, all alone, forced into an answerless predicament, a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing. He’ll probably spend the rest of his life watching paint dry.

Countdown to the Oscars: Film Location Awards

It’s been almost ten years since I arrived in Chicago and set off into the wilds of downtown for a job interview and emerged from the office building cozied up between a few much more towering edifices and looked up and did a double take and mentally gasped and internally cried: “OH MY GOD! THAT’S THE ‘ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING’ BUILDING! AM I GOING TO WORK NEXT TO THE ‘ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING’ BUILDING?!” For several years, I very much did, and as a zealot of the film de cinema, the rush never really dissipated for me.

Film locations, in other words, are all around me. Yet it’s not simply the “Adventures in Babysitting” building nor the Cameron Frye painting at the Art Institute (which totally has its own name, FYI) or the Jewelers Building where Batman stood aloft looking down over a twinkling Gotham that looked so much more dazzling than when it was Pittsburgh or that other city somewhere on the east coast. No, there are so many more, so many you might never suspect, so many that are so small but so crucial. Locations like the Black Rock, the bar just a couple blocks down from me where bits and pieces of “Drinking Buddies” was filmed, or The Double Door, where “High Fidelity” ended and where I was less than a week ago, or the St. Vincent de Paul Parish where Kelly Macdonald in my beloved “The Merry Gentleman” visited and which I pass by, oh, say, twice a month during my favorite walk in the city.

It was my friend and film blogger and/or filmmaker extraordinaire Alex Withrow of And So It Begins... who brought to my attention the existence of the Location Managers Guild of America (LMGA) and, even better, the LMGA Awards, scheduled this year on March 7 at The Wallis Beverly Hills. Film Location awards! Of course! It makes so much sense! Let’s say “Birdman” wins Best Picture. You will, whether consciously or not, remember the St. James Theater as much as the bird costume. Sure, you’ll remember the visual effects of “Interstellar” but also lingering in the back of your mind will be the locales of Alberta, Canada.

The LMGA recognizes Outstanding Feature Film and Outstanding Achievement By A Location Professional and Outstanding Film Commission and, heck, despite only having had an awards show for two years they have a Lifetime Achievement Award! The vaunted Eva Monley Award, bestowed last year upon Alexander Payne, no doubt for this. We here at Cinema Romantico felt there was no choice but to hop on the bandwagon.

1st Annual Cinema Romantico Film Location Awards

Night Moves. Aidan Sleeper, Location Manager. It’s not simply the radiant foliage of Oregon standing at attention throughout but the barn functioning as a sort of eco-friendly Studio 54 where club-hoppers drink out of mason jars and listen to fiddles as well as the bouts of pro-environmental pissed off poetry that director Kelly Reichardt captures whether in the fleeting image of apocalyptic timber or a white collar home with a fake waterfall in the backyard whose real-life owner must not have realized Ms. Reichardt employed it to give said owner the middle finger.

Only Lovers Left Alive. Chris-Teena Constas (Detroit). The Tangier locations as managed by Mohamed Benhmamane are spectacular in their own right, no doubt, but what Jarmusch’s vampire film does for the Motor City is beyond reproach, eliciting a vibrant apocalyptic air through its locales, a nostalgia that makes it seem like modern America’s version of a fallen Rome. Maybe the ruined Michigan Theater was an obvious choice, maybe not, but, God help me, that sequence’s romantic doom is taken up to eleven because of its setting.

Beneath the Harvest Sky. Josh LaJoie, Location Manager. Admittedly part of this stems from my own whimsy. Though “Beneath the Harvest Sky” was filmed in Maine’s Aroostook County, nudging up right alongside the Canadian border, its look and feel is nonetheless akin to the rural Midwest, and that always arouses fondness in my oft-homesick mentality. The opening shot features kids tossing rocks at a ramshackle water tower because what else do they have to do? That water tower is more beautiful than any iron latticework on the Champ de Mars.

Boyhood. Peter Atherton, Robbie Friedman, Steve White, Jose Luis Hernandez, Location Managers. For Antone’s alone. What other place could so perfectly capture a father's heart-to-heart with his son in advance of the son on the precipice of becoming “a man”?

A Few Other 2014 Movie Shots I Love

I always write a lengthy diatribe about my favorite movie shot of the year (see: yesterday) but thought I might go one further this time around and pay homage to (rip off) my friend Ryan McNeil at The Matinee who annually puts up a hella awesome post in which he submits a few of his favorite movie shots of the year with no additional commentary. So here are a few of my favorite movie shots of the year with no additional commentary.

Night Moves

Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) inspects a motorboat his two fellow environmentalists, Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning), have purchased for decidedly non-recreational reasons, and wistfully points out that with a little care it would likely still have years left. Well, he’s not just talking about the boat, he’s talking about earth, because with a little care our friendly blue planet would likely have years left in it. Such tree-hugging optimism, however, ignores their real intent, which is to pack the boat full of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, park it by a mammoth hydroelectric dam and blow it to kingdom come. And if that’s true, it would seem these environmentalists turned eco-terrorists are subverting the very idea that a little care toward mother Earth goes a long way. Maybe all men, violent clowns in Gotham and staunch vegans alike, just want to watch the world burn.

Then again, “Night Moves”, the jaw-dropping new film from director (and editor and co-writer) Kelly Reichardt, refrains from spelling out its characters’ exact intentions. Minimalism is her preferred technique, and while it could be said that minimalism attempts to get at the truth by withholding, I would argue that she shows us all we need to know. This is not to say our principal trio explicitly debate ethics. Aside from a single passage not even involving them, we are pointedly left to wonder “the point.” Sure, Josh has some brief rambling about how their actions will get people “talking”, but talking about what and to what purpose?

Yet despite this absence of motivation, each character is provided a specific voice, the means by which we get to know them. Harmon is oddly breezy, as if such vigilant acts of green-minded rebellion are old hat for him. Dena, the rich girl with the cash to fund the operation and who has never gone along for something of this scale and illegality, is a classic Chatty Cathy, cracking jokes and talking fast and apparently unaware of what emotionally awaits. Her chatter, in fact, is what allows them to score the necessary amount of a fertilizer from a suspicious store owner, a scene that in any other movie would be crafted for suspense but is intended here to simply observe behavior. It’s a scene that makes you believe in the kindness of strangers even as it simultaneously proves that idiom a lie. Her talkativeness leaves us to wonder the precise relationship between she and Josh, since he is tight-lipped and closed-off, emitting a strong air of torment but without convenient clues regarding what ails him or where he comes from.

One sequence finds Josh returning to Harmon's hidden-away trailer with dinner, only to pause on account of sounds emanating from inside. Though it's never overtly addressed, we and Josh are left to assume Harmon and Dena are having sex. Rather than combust, he sets down the food and sets off for a stroll through the woods. In other words, love for nature is what drives him, not a love for anyone else. It's a remarkable emphasizing of opposite desires - selfless and selfish - driving them all. 

Reichardt’s previous work has determinedly made the landscape a supporting character, particularly in the brilliant "Meek's Cutoff", where a group on the Oregon Trail comes to feel the landscape as a vice, the gorgeously rocky vistas threatening to press in and squash them as their journey goes awry. In "Night Moves", the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, inhabited by organic farmers and naturalists, is a distinctly serene place even amidst the rainy gray. Yet there are other moments frightfully illustrating man's dismissal of its own pristine surroundings. Consider the sequence when our principal trio drives through a campground. We see them from within the interior of a nameless couple’s motor home, the apparent husband and wife ignoring the trees of Joyce Kilmer poems to watch a game show on their gas guzzling vehicle’s mounted television. The indignation in the shot is overt, and other moments sprinkled through are just as rife with acrimony (such as an area of burnt-out trees painting the forest as a neglected hellscape), and yet what most interests Reichardt in the end is not deploring anti-environmentalists (or even the environmentally clueless) but questioning the motivation of eco-terrorists.

Thematically, "Night Moves" feels most influenced by "If A Tree Falls", the 2011 Oscar-nominated documentary that chronicled a failed terrorist operation by the Earth Liberation Front leaving certain members of its sect in jail or on the run. The overriding idea there had less to do with ecology than with the empty realization all their so-called action changed nothing. How much regret certain characters in "Night Moves" feel is debatable, but what comes in loud and clear is the futility of their choice. The eventual explosion itself is heard off camera, never seen, perhaps a budgetary decision, but more likely a signifier how something that may inflict fiscal and symbolic damage is still just background noise.

This is the closest Reichardt has yet come to submitting a genuine genre piece, and she includes red herrings and manufactured suspense, like a flat tire at the worst time, while the third act centers around a moral dilemma as old as Michael Corleone, and beyond. Even so, the film never feels stale nor fake, pulsing with a taciturn dread, a portion of which can be traced directly to Eisenberg's performance. He's gone down in pop culture to this point as a loquacious neurotic, but proves entirely convincing as someone forever clammed up. And the more he loses control of the situation, the more he withdraws, eventually losing himself not in Oregon's forested valleys but in the perpetuating urban jungle.

In "Night Moves" it is not the landscape threatening to eat its characters alive, but industry and commerce threatening to eat the landscape, and soon all that will be left is parking lots of concrete and SUV’s, and outlet stores peddling high-priced equipment for camping trips no one wants to take.

10 Most Un-Summery Summer Movies To See This Summer

The Summer Movie Season Of 2013 was, to this fan of the artsy-fartsy, hipstery doo-dah, the greatest Summer Movie Season Of All-Time, and I’m not exaggerating. It was the Summer Movie Season of Sofia and Greta and Brit-B-Brit and Jesse & Celine and Sarah Polley’s Family and the ladies of “20 Feet From Stardom” and the righteous tentpole majesty of “White House Down” – #notashamed – and Lake Bell getting hers. It was The Summer Movie Season that literally concluded on the last weekend of August by granting me My Favorite Film Of The Year. I genuinely had no idea summer movies could be so grand.

Alas, ‘tis now the Summer Movie Season Of 2014, and circumstances have swung considerably. Consulting the releases over the course of the next few months leaves me despondent with a forecast of further melancholy. Superheroes and more superheroes and more superheroes and giant robots and ninja turtles and Adam Sandler (but I repeat myself) and extra “Expendables” on top of the original “Expendables” who seem to completely contradict their own name by CONTINUALLY SHOWING UP FOR MORE MOVIES and refusing to extend an invite to Angelina Jolie because they TOTALLY KNOW SHE'D SHOW THEM UP and Lake Bell being rewarded for writing, directing and starring in one of the 2013’s best films by being arm candy for Jon Hamm in “Million Dollar Arm” because HOLLYWOOD LITERALLY HAS NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH WOMEN UNLESS THEY JUST DO IT THEIR DAMN SELVES. (Breathing into a bag.)

Lake Bell: "Okay. So. I had this idea for a really intense chamber piece where three women-"  Hollywood: "Woah. Hold yer horses there, Lake. We were thinking, what if instead you were the Love Interest in 'Million Dollar Arm' and we put you in a Sari?"

This is what we do, right? We moan. We groan. We gripe. Movies suck. They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Hollywood is awful. Earth is evil. The Universe is just a big fat poopy head. I’m playing right into the stereotype of the jaded film critic. Like those fussy dudes at The New Yorker, right? Everyone hates those guys cuz they hate everything. Except Richard Brody wrote the following: “The year 2013 has been an amazing one for movies, though maybe every year is an amazing year for movies if one is ready to be amazed by movies.” And it’s amazing how many people who probably think the film critics at The New Yorker hate everything are more than likely never ready to be amazed by the movies. They are more than likely ready to point out how that ketchup bottle wasn’t in the previous shot and now it is and this movie is LIES!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I want to be amazed. I do. And so I stopped with the woe-is-me and then I started looking around, and I started finding all sorts of potential diamonds in the sweaty, humidified, summery rough. Here then is the most un-summery summer movie preview on the Internet. Though I should advise, the majority of these films might not make to your town right away, if they make it to your own (heck, my town) at all. Nevertheless. (Release dates and release areas are noted in parentheses to give you a better understanding of what you’re not going to be able to see in which case you may have to go see “X Men: Days Of Future Past In The Present Indicative Tense”.)

10 Most Un-Summery Summer Movies To See This Summer 

God’s Pocket (May 9, limited release)

Even if this hadn't turned out to be one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's last efforts, I'd still have been gung-ho to see it. 

The Immigrant (May 16 in NY and LA)

In certain circles, this is as big as “The Dark Knight Rises.” Perhaps you’re not in those circles, perhaps you’re not even aware those circles exist, and that’s fine. But I’m in those circles. And I’m FREAKING OUT! 

The Love Punch (May 23, limited)

Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson are a retired couple out to get what’s owed them. “Jonathan! Bring me my green light!” 

Night Moves (May 30, limited)

It’s the latest from the hella realist Kelly Reichardt, an eco-thriller, and the buzz on the festival circuit last year was considerable if not deafening. Also, it provides me the perfect excuse to offer two "30 Rock" hyperlinks in a row (with a Katy Perry hyperlink tossed in just because). #ThisIsHowWeDo 

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 We interrupt this listicle to bring you The Godzilla Reboot (Reboot) Cast Power Rankings! Because This Godzilla Cast Is SO COOL! 

The Godzilla Reboot (Reboot) Cast Power Rankings

10. Ken Watanabe. I like Watanabe but I feel like this is the one place where they didn't get off the beaten path.

9. Aaron Taylor-Johnson. From Kick Ass to Vronsky to one-third of Blake Lively's ménage à trios to screaming and running away from Godzilla. Dude keeps you guessing. Respect.

8. Sean Bean. Whoops! Sorry! I'm confusing "Godzilla" with "Jupiter Ascending"! But don't you agree that Sean Bean should have been in this as a big game hunter gone rogue trying to tag the beast?

7. David Straithairn. This reminds me, I'd like to see a John Sayles-scripted "Godzilla." I imagine it would focus less on Godzilla itself and more on frustrated Tokyo building contractors. 

6. Victor Rasuk. I do recall watching "Raising Victor Vargas" and wondering: "Hmmm. How would Victor Vargas react to a Godzilla attack?" 

5. Elizabeth Olsen. The most unlikely female lead in a gargantuan summer blockbuster since Sienna Miller starred as Black Mascara, the winsome shit-talking villain of the old Confound Comics whose costume was skinny jeans and runny black mascara and whose superpower was a combination of cigarette-smoke and scotch breath that could paralyze a person. (Or did I dream that?) 

4. Richard T. Jones. Cuz this dude's the starting two-guard on the Oh! I Know That Guy I Just Don't Know His Name! All-Stars. 

3. Juliette Binoche. She's only # 3 because, really, once you act opposite Dane Cook, holding your own against Godzilla seems less like a sell-out than a relief. 

2. Bryan Cranston. If I had one wish this summer movie season it would be that "Godzilla's" ultimate reveal is that Cranston's character is actually Tim Whatley.

1. Sally Hawkins. It's always nice to have a rooting interest in a disaster movie and I am totally hitching my star to Sally's wagon. Survive, Sally. Survive. 

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The Fault In Our Stars (June 6)

It stars the Shailene-ster. What else do you need to know? It’s a mainstream release. It’ll be in your city. Just go. 

Life’s A Breeze (June 13, limited)

This modern-day Irish treasure hunt had a showing at the Siskel Center in March and I had to miss it. I won't miss it this time. By which I mean, I'll wait for it to be released on Netflix and watch it then.

Can A Song Save Your Life? (July 4)

This film, John Carney’s much anticipated follow-up to the stellar “Once”, has been re-titled “Begin Again” because, of course, all summer movie titles are required per Hollywood Law to possess no more than five words lest confused patrons think they’re stumbling into an art film. Cinema Romantico, however, refuses to honor the title “Begin Again” and will continue calling it “Can A Song Save Your Life?”, kind of like how a certain sect of Chicagoans stubbornly refuse to refer to the Sears Tower as the Willis Tower Because bitch, please. Wait. Where was I? Right. “Can A Song Save Your Life?” The reviews have been mixed, but this worries me not. After all, I can verify with 100% clarity that a song can save your life. And not a single person on this earth nor a single alien in the night sky can tell me any different. 

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We interrupt this listicle to ask the most pertinent single question of the Summer Movie Season. That is: How Many Funny Lines Will Rose Byrne Actually Be Allowed To Deliver In "Neighbors"? 

 My guess? One. Well, like, half of one. Maybe. Because maybe they cut her half of one funny line in post. Because they had to make room for Seth Rogen's nineteenth "Hey, everybody! I smoke pot!" joke.

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Land Ho! (July 11, NY and LA)

Aaron Katz’s follow-up to Cinema Romantico’s #1 Movie Of 2011 that earned a few jaw-dropping raves outta Sundance. I will hitchhike to Manhattan to see this if that’s what it comes to. 

Mood Indigo (July 18, limited)

A Michel Gondry film in which Audrey Tatou becomes the literal living embodiment of a Duke Ellington song. Which perfectly fits with my recurring dream where I meet a woman who becomes a literal living embodiment of Kathleen Edwards' "12 Bellevue." 

The Two Faces of January (August 8, limited)

Kirsten Dunst stars. And as a Dunst Completist, I have to see it. To quote Coach Norman Dale, "I apologize for nothing."