Friday's Old Fashioned: Murder by Contract (1958)

Do not underestimate the importance of the title. "Murder by Contract." It's not "Murder, My Sweet" nor "A Perfect Murder" nor "Murder at Dawn" nor "Murder By Invitation" nor "Murder on the Orient Express." No, it's a murder by contract. This specifically implies a business transaction, a murderer as an entrepreneur. Indeed, Claude (Vince Edwards), comes across less a killer than a pragmatical financier who has unlocked the ultimate get-rich quick scheme.

As Irving Lerner's film opens, Claude is getting dressed up in best suit, as if on his way to a job interview. Which he is, it's merely that he is interviewing for a job rubbing people out rather than assisting transactions at the corner bank. He has a good job already, and an itsy bitsy amount of money, but he wants a specific house on the banks of Ohio River. Whether it's taking out a mortgage you can't afford in 2008 or knifing some poor stranger in 1958, it always comes back to real estate here in America.

Strangely, we come to sort of respect Claude, even as we find ourselves more and more appalled. He has principles, as it seems so many cinematic killers do. For instance, he refrains from using guns to take lives since, after all, guns are illegal. Never mind that murdering people is illegal, too. A dedicated professional like Claude does not view what he's doing as murder so much as a fulfilling of his contract. He was hired to provide a service. He provides it, he simply will not provide it (regardless of its legality) via illegal means.

Nor does he find any nobility in killing women. This is not on account of being improper for a dude to kill a dame nor is it because he believes men are superior to women. If anything, Claude seems of the opinion women are smarter then men. He labels them unpredictable, but this is meant as a compliment. A man will stroll into a barber shop and sit right down in the barber's chair all willy-nilly, not stopping to consider the face hidden behind the newspaper by not be the barber at all but someone there to whack him. A woman, however, is more likely to ascertain and prevent duplicitousness.

So, when Claude learns from his mafia contacts Marc (Phillip Pine) and George (Herschel Bernardi) that his latest contract involves famed nightclub singer Billie Williams (Caprice Toriel), he throws a hissy fit and asks for more money. He gets it. Except what he also gets is trouble, more trouble than he bargained for, as the film's shaggy dog guitar score supremely highlights the way that Claude's plight morphs into a mirror of Michael Palin's plight in "A Fish Called Wanda." Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and it goes wrong with a purposely perfect synchronicity.

It's weird to say, I realize, but "Murder by Contract" really does because blackly humorous, both in the way Claude is as interested in being a sightseer upon arriving in L.A. to do the job as, you know, actually doing the job, and in the way the job becomes a series of setbacks.

Here's a guy who's got it all figured. He scribbles his earnings on a notepad, tracking them to the day when he can buy that dream home. People, he hollers at an unsuspecting waiter, are too lazy to make something of themselves, too content to sit around and wait for good things to fall into their lap rather than going out and seizing those good things for themselves. Life isn't about random chance, about hoping for the best, it's about smart and through planning and, in turn, creating the best of your own accord. In the words of Caledon Hockley: "A real man makes his own luck." Thus, when Claude begins moaning how it's "a jinx" that's gone and done him in, it's laugh-out-loud funny.

The overarching theme of noir is, of course, fatalism, and here we have a noir protagonist who thinks his attention to detail makes him impervious to that theme. But oh, my dear Claude, no one out-plans his fate.

On the Road

If Jack Kerouac had managed to live another 50, 60 years and into this age of shaky-cam, frenetic-cut cinema I can only imagine he would have been an admirer. What is shaky-cam, frenetic-cut cinema but spontaneous prose for the silver screen? I still remember the first time I read Kerouac (which was not “On the Road” actually, but “The Subterraneans”) - my mind spun, forgetting as much as I was retaining, repulsed and engrossed. After all, Kerouac was the master implementer of the run-on sentence, torrents of text gleefully indifferent to nonsense like punctuation and structure, because sometimes life is just too damn short to adhere to grammatical construction, and any English teacher that scoffs at such a notion probably writes really polite sentences you'd want to take home to your mother while secretly lusting after all those carnal over-extended sentences done up in ripped jeans and smoking cigarettes and listening to The Clash in the corner and giving the finger to marks in red pen ornamented with the words "thirty-seven points subtracted for wordiness.”

I mention all this because director Walter Salles' adaptation of Kerouac's landmark "On the Road" manages to visually encapsulate the sensation of the run-on sentence. It moves and grooves just like the free-form jazz that inspired the book itself and permeates the film’s soundtrack, be-boppin’ and skattin’, not intent on rooting itself to anything tangible, just going with the flow. On the other hand, Salles' adaptation is unable to viscerally re-create the glorious gobbledygook of the bard of the beats.

It’s easy to make the case for “On the Road” being a cautionary tale but no one – dudes, at least – first encounters nor falls in love with “On the Road” at a time in their lives when they are interested in exhibiting caution. They read it when they want to ball up and throw caution away along with the napkins they used to clean their fingers after the extra order of chili cheese fries at the diner in Canon City, Colorado on a continental drive to the Pacific with no hotel lined up. As such, Salles’ version comes across quite revisionist.

The arc in the film does not necessarily divulge from the arc in the book, but it feels more weighted and much, much less off the cuff. Aspiring author Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) enters the orbit of romanticized rebel Dean Moriarty (Garett Hedlund) and the two strike out on the road. Eventually Sal comes to view Dean less as a romantic and a rebel than an irresponsible jerk while simultaneously feeling his euphoria for the white lines of the highway quashed. And Salles seems more intent to focus on the quashing than the hedonistic pleasures leading up to it.

Sal is distant, more like the writer who hangs back against the wall, observing and internalizing, and Dean’s charisma is strangely dampened. Though to be fair to Hedlund, bringing the part of Dean Moriarty to life is akin to re-creating Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show – that is, outside the realm of human possibility.

Even more interesting – and noble – is the apparent decision of Salles to focus more intently than Kerouac on what Dean’s decisions mean to the various women in his life. Kristen Stewart, she of the distinct “You don’t like me, huh? Big fucking whoop” Vibe, is sorta perfect as Marylou. And while she may be a wild child, Stewart outfits her with a handrolled cloud of sadness. Camille is summarized by an eventually tired-eyed Kirsten Dunst as being fed-up with Dean’s recklessness. Even Amy Adams makes an indentation with her brief cameo and frazzled hair.

The film may not elicit precisely the same reaction as the book, but by the time Dean is shivering on the sidewalk you will understand why Sal is done with him and done with the road. You might be done with the road too.

Europa Report

Anymore in the sci-fi films I watch – and, full disclosure, it is not my preferred genre – I feel as if the sci gets the shaft in the name of the fi, and that the fi too often drifts toward straight horror. This is not to suggest I’m pleading for nuts and bolts science. The finer points of scientifically minded movies are likely to go swooping right over the top of my generally useless pseudo-english lit head. And that’s fine. I don’t need specifics of the sci if the fi is well-handled and well-intentioned.

Take “Europa Report”, the 2013 sci-fi not-really-at-all extravaganza from director Sebastian Cordero. The gist is this: a team of six astronauts on a specially built spaceship make haste for Europa, the fourth largest moon of Jupiter, after potential signs of life have been detected. Well, we all know how these things work. There’s gonna be life, all right, but it’s going to be iniquitous life, Galilean fire-breathing monsters with spiked tentacles, or something of the sort, hell-bent on picking off our dear Earthlings one by one.

Cordero quite cleverly uses those expectations against us. Relying on the recent trend of found footage, the narrative is told by interviews from the mission command back on Earth, confessionals from crew members and everything else caught on camera during their journey and eventual exploration once set down on Europa. This provides the necessary sensation that because the footage is found, something must have gone wrong.

As they must, the crew lands all of one-hundred feet away from their intended set-down point. This causes problems, but they fashion solutions, intent on ferreting out proof of life beneath Europa’s icy surface whatever the means. In spite of those solutions, however, the mission still goes awry. Ominous chords appear on the soundtrack. “I saw something out there,” says a character, requisitely. Dread is ramped up as the ninety minute film progresses, but it patiently reveals itself to be something else.

Initially your thought might be that these crew members and the decisions they make and the risks they take are outlandish. Except that once you have steered a spaceship all the way to Europa, the normal rules of engagement are altered. Every person aboard seems to sense this, and so while their scientific minds may tell them one thing, their dreamy minds tell them something else. It becomes a collaboration of sorts between science and the dreams of what science can find. And what they find……well, that’s not for me to say.

The ultimate theme gets driven home a bit too broadly in dialogue form at the very end for my taste, and yet I wasn’t all that bothered by it. Perhaps this is because while so often deaths on the movie screen are simply for body count purposes (“Who’s next?!”), no one in “Europa Report” dies in vain.

Blackfish

Opening in the vein of horror by showing us the dread that the rest of the film will then pointedly re-build to, “Blackfish” is, above all else, a full speed ahead rebuke not only of the prominent American theme park Sea World but of both the treatment of Orcas in captivity (in Sea World and other places) and the general idea of keeping Orcas in captivity in the first place. It has a side to take, a point to make, and it does so very, very effectively.

In a way, “Blackfish” is akin to a cinematic lawsuit, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite and the former Orca trainers turned activists she interviews functioning as prosecutors to argue the case to us, the audience turned jury. It even calls tear-stained witnesses to the stand that work to intentionally tug at our heartstrings. After opening its argument by hinting at the horror, it briefly reverses tracks to show the righteous majesty of the Orca – thus, when the bad stuff starts, and starts soon after, our outrage will be full blown. And it is. I struggle to think how it could not be. It has no qualms about being non-partisan, and though a closing credit indicates Sea World denied to participate in the documentary when asked, well, impartial jury members, would YOU have wanted to be interviewed for this documentary if you were an employee of Sea World? No doubt they would edit your footage to make it say “I killed Earl Milford.”

Cowperthwaite frames the film with the tragic death of Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau in early 2010 in an incident involving Tilikum, a bull orca involved in two other deaths. Tilikum’s far-reaching story then becomes the focal point of “Blackfish”, as we follow him being captured in the wild and taken to a shanty, “Way, Way Back”-esque water park called Sea Land where he seems to have – and the film argues he did – kill a female trainer that slipped into the water. Despite this, he is eventually moved to Orlando’s Sea World, which is where further tragedy awaits.

The film takes direct aim at Sea World, and parks like it, accusing them of blatantly sacrificing safety and blatantly covering up truths – as in, any trainer’s death is always the trainer’s fault, not on account of Orca aggression, even if the presented evidence contradicts that assertion.

Much like 2009’s Oscar winner “The Cove”, however, the foremost argument of “Blackfish” is that Orcas do not belong in captivity. The case is laid out carefully and emotionally. These animals are not only intended for the open ocean, they can think and feel, and so to keep them shuttered in cramped tanks is inhumane. It also leads to – in the word of one of the interviewees – psychosis, which manifests itself in dangerous behavior. Orcas in the wild are not known to do harm to humans. Orcas in captivity, as we are shown, are another matter, and it is impossible not to draw the conclusion that their living situation leads them to lash out.

Really, “Blackfish” centers much more on the circumstances that led to Dawn Brancheau’s death rather than the circumstances that placed Dawn Brancheau in the position where her death became possible, and I would be remiss in not mentioning that this particular aspect left me wanting. The activists turned trainers get plenty of face time, and the guilt is clear. What perhaps is not so clear is why they continued to remain employed in the face of what they all appeared to know was an ethically corrupt venture. I’m not suggesting they were unethical, not at all, and one interviewee says he stayed because he worried who would care for Tilikum in his absence.

Forgive your humble correspondent for a personal anecdote, but I think it’s relevant. A year ago, one fateful evening I happened to meet a young woman who was in Chicago for the weekend, employed as a trainer of elephants with Ringling Bros. Circus. Certainly, there is much scuttlebutt regarding Ringling's treatment of elephants (and the simple ethics of keeping elephants within those confines). To wit, when another guy sat down opposite of where she and I were sitting and eventually wormed his way into the conversation, his first query upon hearing what she did was inevitably “Do you abuse them?” She literally turned her back on him, and that was that. He left about 47 seconds later. Everything she told me indicated the elephants were treated with the highest regard, and she was, frankly, one of the sweetest, kindest, most genuine people I’ve ever met. Maybe that was all an act, and I was taught to believe the best in people so maybe I was naive, and maybe she was being lied to about what went on under cover of darkness, but maybe not.

With this reminiscence I wish merely to impart that there are two sides to every story. I don't mean this as a defense of Sea World, nor to imply that that their version of the story (which has been released in boilerplate increments) would stand up, because I'm not even talking about their version of the story. I'm talking about Dawn Brancheau's version of the story.

The family-penned obit of Brancheau, not recited in the film, mentions, as obits often do, "living her dream." I'm sure she was, and I hope she was, because so few of us do. Still, there seems something grandly if wretchedly ironic in the thought that one person's dream can be someone else's nightmare. That would be a story very much worth telling.

Blue Is The Warmest Color

I cannot recall a movie camera ever having as intimate a relationship with a main character as the camera for “Blue Is The Warmest Color”, the Cannes sensation and subsequent controversy-generating machine, has with Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos). A vast majority of the film is framed in close-ups, of all the characters, yes, but mostly of Adele, our teenage heroine who ages several years as the movie charts her course and whose ever-evolving personality is worthy of so many differing adjectives I will refrain from spouting them for fear this entire review might merely become a list. The work of Exarchopoulos is a genuine revelation, an exhaustive account of the fragility and beauty of the human condition.

The camera is relentlessly in her face, yet she never acts aware of it or bothered by it, perhaps distracted by a severe bout of Adolescent Confusion. Her hair, which she is forever re-arranging, almost seems to mirror this plight, up and down and askew. And the camera, to be sure, ogles that hair, just like it ogles her puffy cheeks and billowy lips, even going so far as to revel in the culinary – Adele slopping spaghetti off a fork and slovenly shoving a gyro into her mouth. It's all refreshingly unflattering, a raw young woman uninterested in traditional glamour, and more power to her.

Or it could just be overtly symbolizing sexual appetite. Sexuality is at the forefront of Adele's odyssey. The film opens with a classroom conversation revolving around notions of destiny and love at first sight. If that sounds like cheesy rom com fodder, it is important to address the manner in which director Abdellatif Kechiche presents it – kids paying attention and tuning out, answering honestly and cracking jokes. It feels authentic, cut straight out of any classroom in any country anywhere in the world, kids taking it seriously and not taking it seriously at all, because they don’t know what to think. Adele doesn’t know what to think, particularly about the boy in her class all her friends view as the cat’s pajamas.

Adele and he go out. They kiss. They sleep together. It’s all okay, but we sense that Adele senses a spark she assumes is supposed to exist is missing. She doesn’t feel, anyway, what she felt in that one momentary encounter with the blue-haired mystery girl. It seems abnormal to her, perhaps only because it’s “supposed” to, and so she acquiesces to her teenage hormones, dumps the dude and goes exploring.

The first meeting between Adele and The Blue Dahlia, Emma (Lea Seydoux), is a pitch-perfect, exemplary-acted sequence in which Adele finds herself out of place at a gay club and Emma swooping to a version of “the rescue.” Throughout Exarchopoulos employs facial expressions - stealing glances and unsure smiles - and body language to illustrate a person undergoing a wholly new experience she both can’t quite understand and can’t quite get enough of. And Seydoux, reveling in her young charge’s fawning affection, plays the response to the hilt, providing indoctrination as she subtly slides closer and closer, suggesting what she really wants. You know what she really wants.

And so we come to the sex scenes, the source of so much controversy, especially here in America where if sex scenes are not softly lit and body parts are not concealed by bed sheets, we have media freak-outs and the MPAA threatens NC-17 ratings like a frazzled homeroom teacher threatening detentions. Real life lesbians are apparently calling out these sex scenes as being unrealistic, and I don’t doubt it. Then again, as a scotch enthusiast, when someone in a film references “good scotch” and then pulls out a bottle of Glenlivet I don’t start shouting “Hey! That’s not good scotch!” Rather, I might be inclined to observe what the scotch's presence in the scene represents.

The sex scenes are crucial, first, simply because they are shown, as opposed to the film fading to black after hugs and kisses and then fading back in the morning after. A 180 minute film chronicling the rise and fall of a whole relationship should not skimp, and it does not. But the scenes and their length and their explicitness are crucial, second, because it is meant to demonstrate Adele’s experimentation. Is this what she likes? Or is Emma what she likes? Or are they one in the same?

These matters of sex and orientation, however, become more blurred for Adele as the film progresses and she moves in with Emma and takes a job as a teaching assistant. Quietly, a social chasm opens up between the two. Emma is as an artistic free spirit with academically inclined friends, a fact which leaves Adele intimidated and overwhelmed, and occasionally confounded. When a hoity-toity male guest of an Emma-thrown party pontificates about the quality of the female orgasm compared to the male orgasm, it seems less the film lumbering to make a point than Adele confounded by such frank discussion in the presence of strangers.

The film's set up and much of its story suggests a journey of self-discovery, yet the further into the film Adele wades, the less certain of herself she is. In that way, those contentious scenes, accused by some of being too perfect, make that much more sense. Under the covers with Emma it all makes sense. Out in the real world, not so much.

She hedges on her relationship with Emma, dabbling with guys, but not with any point or purpose. She is focused on having a solid job that provides an income, but she doesn't come across that happy in this job. The final shot, appropriately, is about as far away from her as we ever get. She is no longer in close up. Her back is to us. She is walking away. We are losing sight of her.

I fear she is losing sight of herself.

Fight of the Century

Honest question: if we can be subjected to "Aliens" fighting "Predators", then why can't we see Jolie square off in the center ring at Madison Square Garden with Beckinsale? Winner gets to punch all those doofuses in the "Grown Ups" movies in the nuts.  

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Friday's Old Fashioned: His Kind Of Woman (1951)

“His Kind Of Woman” was an RKO production of the inimitable Howard Hughes, and it shows. The rambling plot revolves around a gangster stuck in Mexico yearning to change his appearance and sneak back into America. It is apropos. Three times over the course of its two hours “His Kind Of A Woman” reverses its tracks and becomes something else. Hughes’ dissatisfaction with original director John Farrow led him to bring Richard Fleischer in for re-shoots and for Hughes himself to re-write the ending of the film with Fleischer. Who knows what Farrow’s original intentions were, but if Hughes only re-scripted the end, not the rest, the evidence would suggest he yearned to break free from the noir genre and into something much more communal, something for everyone to enjoy. And I enjoyed it. Did I ever.

It opens, seemingly, as another in a long line of dark-hearted Robert Mitchum vehicles, him starring as Dan Milner, a down-on-his-luck gambler offered $50,000 to fly down to Mexico, cool his heels and await instructions without having the slightest inkling of just what these instructions will be. On his way to remote Morro’s Lodge deep in the heart of Baja, he encounters a comely nightclub singer Lenore Brent (Jane Russell), bound for the same place. The pins are lined up – The Loner, The Femme Fatale – for fate to twists its screws. Then again, Robert Mitchum – Robert Mitchum!!! – doesn’t drink, and so perhaps this should clue us into the fact that “His Kind Of Woman” is not what it appears.

Once at Morro’s, with nothing for Milner to do but wait and see, the film sort of morphs into a laid-back version of a screwball romance, Milner courting Lenore even if it turns out Lenore is courting a famed Douglas Fairbanks-esque movie star, generous if deluded Mark Cardigan (Vincent Price). As it happens, Lenore is not really Lenore, but Liz, merely posing as Lenore in an effort to woo Mark who is estranged from his wife (who will show up, as she must, to re-woo her husband) to have at his fortune. This might make most men run, but not Milner. Heck, what’s he got to do, ‘cept for snoop around and try to figure out who’s paying him to be there and why. So he flirts with Lenore and does a little reconnaissance on the side. And Lenore turns out to be not quite so devious – a gold-digger with a heart of gold.

The scheme emerges. A gangster, Nick Ferraro (Raymond Burr), deported from the US, is hiding out aboard a boat anchored off the Mexican coast. His thugs abscond with Milner and drag him to the open sea where Ferraro, whose height and build matches Milner’s, plans upon reconstructive surgery to assume Milner’s identity and return scot-free to the States.

And this is where the film pulls its boldest tonal shift, leaving noir and screwball back at the resort and transforming not merely into an action-adventure but damn near a parody as Mark Cardigan – alerted to Milner’s predicament by Lenore – becomes Kirk Lazarus and Tugg Speedman in “Tropic Thunder” fifty-seven years before “Tropic Thunder.” He takes up his hunting rifle, dons a cape, stands valiantly in the bow of a boat, issues orders, quotes Shakespeare, leads his charges into battle, literally embodying one of the many heroes he portrays on the silver screen. Meanwhile, Milner is strapped down like a shirtless Frankenstein and threatened with a memory-erasing serum. It’s quite nuts and freaking awesome.

It’s a third act meant to appeal to a broader base, a broader base that may have already jumped ship, and that particular appeal may, in fact, frustrate the narrower base more interested in its establishing noir aspects. In other words, it’s a Howard Hughes-served goulash, and whether or not saying it hangs together is factually provable seems beyond the point. Strange as this may sound, it reminded me of Abbas Kiarostami’s “Taste of Cherry”, in so much as that film concludes and then cuts to Kiarostami and crew on location making the movie. His intent is to remind us that it’s “just a movie”, but the reminder only arrives upon movie’s end.

“His Kind Of Woman” is a movie all along, and this swashbuckling conclusion only works to enhance that sensation. It makes itself up as it goes along and, thus, at a certain point Vincent Price decides to appropriate the film for himself. And rather than prevent this appropriation, Hughes encourages it. I’m glad he did.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Lice and Beary White)

With its size, mishmash of personalities and jumble of ages, the Harrison clan at the center of “Trophy Wife” has been ripe for an episode in which they are placed and pitted together and thrown to the proverbial wolves. Call it a Bottle Episode, if you must, but particularly when familial dynamics are at play, that sort of proximity can wield all manner of lunatic drama and comedic truth bombs. Thus, when it became apparent that the latest episode of “Trophy Wife” would center specifically around a lice outbreak within the Harrison household, I was excited about the possibilities.

Alas, rather than airing grievances amidst so much head scratching, what we get are run of the mill hijinks. No new revelations. No interesting confrontations. It feels like a placeholder. I remember in my Lutheran confirmation class how one of our weekly tasks was to memorize a Bible verse. One of my classmates on a particular night offered that the ol’ short and sweet “Jesus wept” was his “backup verse.” (And when our Pastor overheard this announcement, man, did that kid get chewed out.) “Lice and Beary White” feels like a backup episode. “What are we going to do this week?!” “Crap, I don’t know! Just run that one about the lice and the teddy bear!”

Kate is summoned to see the school nurse and advised precocious Bert has lice. So she drags him home where Dr. Diane Buckley immediately assumes command of a household that is not technically hers. Kate is less than pleased, but powerless to stop her simply because Dr. Diane Buckley overpowers everyone. Jackie’s dazzling "Brazilian Blowout" hair, meanwhile, becomes a casualty of lice shampoo despite her best efforts to thwart the cleaning. Before long, Kate is trying to woo Jackie to her side to put an end to Dr. Diane Buckley’s generalship. This is by far the episode’s strong point – the three wives not going so much toe-to-toe as Diane reigning supreme, Kate helplessly fighting back and Jackie playing both sides (very, very poorly) with one eye always on the escape hatch. I could have gone for more psychological warfare between the trio as opposed to delving into Kate replacing Diane’s lice shampoo with something that isn’t lice shampoo and Diane using the something that isn’t lice shampoo on Hillary who……oh, you can figure out the rest. Perhaps I demand too much, but I believe in this show and would prefer they solve story traps with a little more panache. (All this said, I did great enjoy the payoff for Hillary’s tale. It's the getting there that left me shrugging my shoulders.)

You might be wondering where Pete is during this showdown. He’s there, in the house, but having gone to the strip the sheets off all the beds, he happens upon Beary White – that is, an aptly named stuffed bear that apparently vanished without a trace some months ago. He is a special family bear who is passed down from child to child, and was passed from Warren to precocious Bert. (This passage, it seems, took place in a changeover ceremony featuring a "walkabout" and a "re-birthing", and, frankly, I would preferred an entire episode centered around that.) All evidence suggests Warren kept Beary White for himself but, for reasons I really don’t understand (you’re the Dad, Pete, just give the bear to the kid to whom it belongs), Pete decides to implement the second Harrison house kangaroo court in three weeks.

Perhaps if this becomes a recurring schtick, if in the face of every little family dispute Pete decides to play judge and jury rather than man up and wear the Dad Pants, I will revisit and rethink this episode. As of right now, however, it feels frustratingly and uselessly recycled, further evidence that “Lice and Beary White” is merely a casserole of sitcom leftovers.

Dallas Buyers Club

There is a tight shot in which we find our protagonist Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey) splayed before a series of dimly lit red candles, confessing his sins, or, at the very least, pleading desperately with God to save his life or spare his soul, either/or. Then the shot switches. The camera is much further back and we realize he is not in a church confessing, but at a table in a dank strip club with a drink and a scantily clad woman gyrating in front of him. The meaning could not be more clear - saint and sinner, angel and devil.

That dichotomy is both striking and obvious, and that would be also an apt description for "Dallas Buyers Club", which in spite of being a rip-roaring, rule-breaking true life tale of a big hat, no cattle Texan diagnosed with HIV in the mid-80's, fits snugly into the limitations of the disease-of-the-week genre. Ultimately those limitations and its apparent disinterest in viewing the entire panorama of the AIDS crisis are rendered meaningless, and this is because of an astonishing lead performance by Matthew McConaughey, playing a part that doesn't seem a stretch but still feels brand new.

Woodruff, an insistent heterosexual with a thirst for booze, a lust for ladies, an occasional taste for drugs, and a damn the torpedoes attitude learns his diagnosis not far into director Jean-Marc Vallée's film. He is told he has thirty days to live by the requisite smug doctor (Dennis O'Hare) who knows better than him. (A requisitely luminous Jennifer Garner is the other doctor in order to ensure that doctors CAN be caring people!) Ron, of course, lives a lot longer, first popping too much of an unapproved drug that lands him back in the emergency room and then flying to Mexico and kicking off a whole new anti-FDA regimen that works well. So well, in fact, that Ron poses as a priest (saint/sinner!!!), smuggles in a trunk load of vials and cuts the ribbon on The Dallas Buyers Club, selling a cut-rate membership to the HIV infected for all the drugs they need. Legality, of course, is beside the point. "They're not illegal," Ron explains, "merely unapproved."

That line will make you realize just how charismatically McConaughey can turn a cliche, and that is what he does over and over throughout "Dallas Buyers Club", apparently indifferent to the screenplay's timeworn intention to set him forth on The Hero's Journey. He is introduced as a bigot, AIDS is made to be the problem, and the ensuing struggle is all about the elixir of redemption and enlightenment. To be sure, Ron Meets Cute with Rayan (Jarod Leto, gracefully subverting any hint of caricature), his transgender hospital room mate who will help to open this homophobe's eyes. Ah, but simply because Ron's eyes are opened, don't assume this will elicit a New Man.

In a way, Ron Woodruff is a Frank Capra Every Man for the Me Decade, presented more as a clever capitalist than an AIDS activist, simply finding a way to significantly profit from the sickly hand he's been dealt. Ethically he might be a schmuck, but damn if you can't admire his entrepreneurial craftsmanship, and it is through this medicinal trafficking that Ron's worldview is re-shaped. Who says good old fashioned American greed can't collide with a little good will?

The friendship between Ron and Rayan, the film's most vital, is primarily a business partnership, Rayan more or less acting as Ron's Buyers Club receptionist, a notion which actually plays straight to gender stereotypes. And that's how Ron, I think, wants it. Even having contracted HIV, even spending his days and nights in company of gays, Ron never quite warms to them nor even accepts them, but still manages to (amidst all the good ol' boy posing) quietly unearth a respect for them that goes beyond client/peddler. The way he deals with an ex-friend upon an un-friendly encounter in a grocery store is ripped from the pages of the Casting Stones Playbook, yet McConaughey makes it seems less a Victory For Civil Rights than an ornery Texan kicking ass and taking names.

Which is why the film's lack of focus on the Big Picture, the over-arching AIDS epidemic, the inequality to which the infected would have been subjected, feels correct for the material. Gay rights is important, don't get me wrong, but "Dallas Buyers Club" is all about one unlikely man's untraditional road to tolerance.

Why Amy Adams Is My Favorite Lois Lane

Here’s what never made sense to me about Lois Lane – how could she not tell that Clark Kent was really Superman? Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting this because Clark Kent’s feeble disguise of black horn-rimmed glasses can be seen through from a vast distance with even my legendarily poor eyesight nor because Clark always conspicuously vanished from the premises at the time of Superman’s many heroic arrivals. That’s pointless plot hole-ism, and that is not what I’m discussing nor an ism in which I have any interest. No, I’m well aware that such trickery is allowable and, thus, believable in the universe housing Superman. What troubles me is Lois Lane’s role as the single character in the same universe whose defined traits should allow her to uncover this ruse immediately, and that is why the Amy Adams version of the Daily Planet’s award-winning reporter in “Man of Steel” is by far my favorite.

The look of Lois Lane may have been modeled on Joanne Carter, but her essence was based on both the real and imagined – Torchy Blane, the fictional reporter in a string of B-films from the 1930’s, and the real-life Nellie Bly. Bly, of course, was, in some manner of speaking, the O.V.C., Original Veronica Corningstone. She entered a man’s profession in a man’s world and owned it.

Torchy Blane hopped aboard the Bly Bandwagon and added spunky dialogue and cinematic derring-do to the equation. Consider "Torchy Blane Goes To Panama", wherein (ahem) Lola Lane’s version of Torchy heads down Panama way to ferret out the story of a bank robbery. None of the boys in none of the walks of life want to let her play, and she ain’t havin’ it. “You’re wrong, boys,” she snaps, “here’s the open sesame that swings wide all portals, my press pass.”

Lois Lane, version AA, wields that press pass like the neat scotch she drinks down in one shot (swoon…..). But even if she didn’t have the press pass, even if Perry White called her on the carpet and she was forced her to turn it in, she’d still find a way to make her non-existent deadline. After all, in "Man of Steel" she is not content to merely cool her heels in Metropolis, waiting for the superhuman flyboy to barnstorm into town so she can write about him. Ha! Here, Lois has won her rightful Pulitzer before the opening credits commence, suggesting - strike that! - proving that she doesn't need no Superman to make her journalistic career. And even with that medal hanging on the wall above the mantle, she hoofs it up to the Arctic to investigate a mystery craft buried in the snow and ice and discovers Superman on her schedule, no one else's.

Granted, she finds him by following him and getting injured all so Superman can swoop in to the Meet Cute Rescue, a discouraging script tactic that sorta harkens back to the time Torchy Blane was trying her damnedest to eclipse. You know what they say? One step up, forty-three steps back.

Max Edwards, writing for Artsclash, opines "What we are looking at in the systematic destruction of agency that 'Man of Steel' proposes is a new kind of sexism in movies. On the face of it, female empowerment in Superhero movies has never been higher. But look beneath the surface and you will see the same tired tropes battered about: the girlfriend must be conventionally attractive (Scarlet Johannsen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Amy Adams), must submit to the wisdom of men, the hero will inevitably save her from a classic damsel in distress moment. And she will continue to wear heels in spaceships, because that’s what’s right and proper for a woman to do."

Alyssa Rosenberg, writing at Think Progress, would disagree, remarking that "Lois is a tremendously refreshing break from pop culture’s present pack of scheming, slutty girl reporters, and part of what makes 'Man Of Steel' perhaps the most unabashedly feminist superhero picture of the current era. This is a movie where women remain fully clothed, they scream when rational, and at every step of the way, they have important roles to play in the events at hand, whether as heroines or villainesses like Zod’s deliciously tough henchwoman Faora (Antje Traue).

The truth, I would submit, lays in no-man's-land, and I would submit that the essence of the truth can be found in "Lost's" Kate Austen. You recall Evangeline Lilly's Kate, the castaway on a mystical remote south Pacific island that diehard fans of the show were consistently criticizing for getting in the way. Say that a small gang was dispatched to one end of the island to investigate a mysterious disturbance, Kate would announce her intention to go along at which the all-male group would announce she was not allowed to go along at which point they would leave and she would simply skulk along behind them and only reveal herself at a critical moment in which her specific presence caused everything to go wrong.

The subtext might seem clear - women be trippin'. Except that Kate, as initially established, a crafty convict with reasonable convictions for having wound up in handcuffs, was fairly empowered. Until the off-camera storytellers chose to reduce that power by saddling her with the ancient Love Triangle trope, as if she could only be defined by which man she chose (or which man chose her). Thus, any time Kate was left out of the loop, she fought back by worming her way in, only to be inevitably scolded by the story. Viewers blamed Kate, ignoring Kate's defiance to the asinine script contrivances to which she was continually subjected.

Idiot men have been speaking on behalf of women at the movies for far too long, and yet those women never cease to fight back. Remember Scarlett O'Hara? She couldn't dance with Rhett because she was in mourning. "She won't consider it" said the mustachioed douche in charge. "Oh yes, I will," said Scarlett. Of course, Scarlett had Margaret Mitchell writing for her. Kate had Damon Lindelof. And Lois has David S. Goyer.

Lois is established as capable of handling herself, but the script decides she needs to be placed in peril to be bailed out. Lois is tough enough to assume a trendy space helmet to willingly walk into harm's way aboard a spaceship, but the script decides she needs a helpful Russell Crowe apparition to hatch her escape. Lois is rough enough to go up in a military plane to bomb the bad guys to send them hurtling through a black hole, but the script decides need to be hurled out of the plane so Superman can swoop in to save her. In other words, the script can't commit to the very character it has already created.

Which is why when Lois's editor won't run with her Alien Comes To Earth story, she leaks the story to a nefarious blogger (is there any other kind?). Why? "Because," she says, "I want my mystery man to know I know the truth." You go, girl, and also know that we know the truth. We know the truth that in the next movie you're going to send that gangly new reporter named Clark-something to fetch you coffee and donuts.

This is a Lois Lane world, it's just the guys with the rich dads that got them jobs don't know it.

Pitching Lady Gaga/Muppet Duets

Did you hear the news?! Lady Gaga is filming a Muppets Holiday Special! We here at Cinema Romantico have been clamoring for a Gaga/Muppets collaboration since way back when, and are overjoyed to see it come to fruition in any capacity. I can only imagine such a special will involve a number of song performances featuring Gaga and her various Muppet cohorts, and so Cinema Romantico - a full-fledged and utterly unashamed Little Monster - is here to provide a few suggestions as to just what such a primetime special could include.


Kermit. “I'm Sticking With You”, Velvet Underground. Close your eyes. Go ahead. Don't be bashful. Close 'em. Now, remove all pre-conceived notions from your mind. C'mon. Remove 'em! All right? We good? Good. Imagine Kermit & Gaga singing this song and, I swear, it will just feel......right.


Miss Piggy. “I Shot Mr. Lee”, The Bobbettes. People of a certain age likely know The Bobettes’ “Mr. Lee” as being part of the stellar “Stand By Me” soundtrack. But people of a certain age, and of other ages, may not be as familiar with the follow-up, the slightly more sinister minded “I Shot Mr. Lee.” (“One, two, three, I shot Mr. Lee. Three, four, five, I got tired of his jive.”) Can you imagine a Gaga/Piggy duet on this tune? CAN YOU IMAGINE??? I’m inclined to say this is the one I most want to see.


Gonzo. “Suspicious Minds”, Elvis Presley. I feel like Gaga and Gonzo would get along pretty well, two creatures enamored with show-biz and a craving for the spotlight. And I feel like putting The Great Gonzo in his patented cape - evoking a late-era Elvis - and Gaga in an Ann-Margret wig and having them croon this classic together would bring the house down. Perhaps over the closing credits?


Fozzie Bear. “Spirit in the Sky”, Norman Greenbaum. Performing this number with the Muppets' resident funny man will indulge the meta side of Gaga, being that Greenbaum more or less wrote the song as a joke, tossing off a “gospel” song just to prove he could write one despite never having written one and knowing nothing about gospel music. Plus, the thought of hearing this song in Fozzie's voice leaves me in stitches.

Rowlf. “Faster Than The Speed Of Night”, Bonnie Tyler. You might not know that the resident E Street pianist (which is to say, Bruce Springsteen's pianist) Roy Bittan played on this totally righteous track, and if anyone can possibly live up to the majestic Bittan Sound, well, it’s Rowlf. Imagining Rowlf rocking the keys as Gaga struts and preens and shrieks in the foreground makes me joyously delirious. (Admission: I have long been desperate to hear Lady Gaga sing this song, partially because I think my single greatest wish is for Roy Bittan to produce a Lady Gaga album.)

I’d like to take this moment to advise the Lady Gaga/Muppet Holiday Special should include a cameo from Emily Blunt reprising her role as Miss Piggy's sassy Parisian secretary. Make this happen, ABC. No excuses.

Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem. “When The Levees Break”, Led Zeppelin. Some contend Animal is based on The Who’s Keith Moon, but I’d like to think of him more as a John Bonham. If you can’t envision Animal riding a motorcycle through a Muppet Theater hallway, you’re crazy.


Beaker. “Physical", Olivia Newton-John. Here we’d get Gaga into one of her more less-than-existing outfits and have her chase a terrified Beaker around his laboratory while belting out this song before finally Beaker’s head just explodes.


Statler & Waldorf. “Pass the Mic”, Beastie Boys. Really, what are Statler & Waldorf but old-school bomb-droppers from the balcony?

Friday's Old Fashioned: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

For, oh, the first 20 minutes of Robert Wise’s “Odds Against Tomorrow”, the film seems very much cut from genre granite. Three men who are down and out decided to turn to a bank robbery to score the funds that will make their lives properly bloom. We expect them to plan the robbery, to execute the robbery, and for the robbery to go awry. But then at roughly the 20 minute mark something happens – namely, one character calls another character a derogatory term. I will not type that term out loud and instead say the character subjected to the term is played by Harry Belafonte. Who is black. And did I mention this film was made in 1959? It is jarring, a kick in the ribs. At that point, “Odds Against Tomorrow” boils over into something else, both a tough-minded character study and a harbinger of the racially radical 60’s.

The bank job is the brain child of Burke (Ed Begley), a former cop, who wants a stack of cash to square him for life. Into his web he tries to pull Earl Slater (Robert Ryan), an ex-con, and Jonny Ingram (Belafonte), a nightclub singer and gambling addict. Initially each man stands Burke up. They may need money, too, but robbing banks is immoral. “That’s for junkies and joy boys,” Jonny declares. Little do you know, Jonny.

Each man’s respective situation will eventually dictate, of course, his part in the plan, but the film is refreshingly patient in watching each man wind his way there. So often heist films are all about the heist, but “Odds Against Tomorrow” is as much about what leads to the heist as the heist itself. Backstories emerge. Jonny may be impeccably suave, but that in-control appearance belies an out-of-control addiction to the track. He loses more and so he gambles more and so he loses more and now he’s deep in debt to his bookie (Will Kuluva), a bookie who moseys around town with a flunky (Richard Bright) who is not so subtly gay, appearing to even sorta make eyes at Jonny the first time he sees him and/or issues a warning. This also goes to show how ahead of its time this film must have felt, particularly because his sexuality really isn’t even overplayed or explicitly addressed or meant as a key plot point…..it just is.

Jonny has a daughter and wife…..well, make that ex-wife. She’s been driven away by Jonny’s money-wagering and she and daughter, of course, exist to be threatened by the bookie. But they are also there to offer further insight into Jonny’s worldview, and the fact his ex-wife is ingratiating his daughter into white society does not sit well with him. He is sophisticated but also seems convinced that racial lines should remain separate.

Which is about all he and Earl have in common. That Earl’s violent racism is never explained feels accurate, because like Lady Gaga (and boy, wouldn’t Earl have just LOVED Lady Gaga?!) he was simply Born This Way. His reason for being re-led back into crime stems from his lady friend (Shelly Winters) for whom he wants to provide the requisite better life. Not that you should mistake him for an enlightened romantic. When his buxom (and married) next-door neighbor (Gloria Grahame) comes calling he does not hesitate.

Yeah, there is anger in this film, these dudes are ticked off, and that volatility is what drives them to the heist. Based on a book, the screenplay was written by Nelson Gidding and Abraham Polonsky. Well, in 1959 no one knew Polonsky co-wrote it. He was famously blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1951 and did not actually earn a proper writing credit for “Odds Against Tomorrow” until 1997. And it is not difficult to detect a seething Polonsky behind the scenes, aggressively taking out his understandable anger on the page, firing 12 Point Courier Font missiles at everyone.

The heist goes wrong, but that goes without saying, and by that point the heist has actually become less important to the story then the men committing it. The cops arrive, only to fade into the background, ceding the stage to the tension between Jonny and Earl that has been threatening to erupt for ninety minutes into something so much more. They are so discontent with themselves and their fate that they turn on each other, though the showdown winds up less personal than allegorical. Racial inequality in America was a powder keg. The fuse was lit.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Date)

The ecosystem on sitcoms is often extremely insular. A series starts and characters are established and the characters’ behaviors are prescribed and those behaviors lead to readymade routines. This is mostly, okay, I guess, if the characters’ behaviors are humorous and the routines effectively utilize those behaviors and so on and so forth. But it can also become frustrating. I’m not talking about stasis necessarily, but characters not being allowed to recognize their own behaviors and, in turn, their own foibles and shortcomings. And that is why a moment near the end of this week’s episode of “Trophy Wife” is the best thus far in its infant run.

Kate and Pete want to throw a Party For Grown-Ups. But this means unloading the kids. So they call Jackie, who is landscaping right there in Kate and Pete’s backyard unbeknownst to them, because personal space to Jackie is as meaningful as name brand toothpaste (she makes her own), to ask if she can babysit. Jackie quickly agrees and then quickly calls Dr. Diane Buckley to see if she can babysit instead so Jackie can go to the party to which she was most decidedly not invited. Dr. Diane Buckley quickly agrees. I’m still not sure Hillary and Warren have not outgrown babysitting age, but this is underscored when Dr. Diane Buckley makes Hillary official babysitter so she can go to Kate and Pete’s party to rescue Hillary’s math book for studying. (BTW: Marcia Gay Harden speaking French……for the WIN!!!)

The party, as it must, leads to all sorts of complications, and I’m not talking about Kate’s hipsters mingling with Pete’s lawyers. I’m talking about Dr. Diane Buckley getting Instagramed by Meg (Natalie Morales), Kate’s bestie, with Solo cups as if she’s a PTA mom on a bender, which leads to Dr. Diane Buckley traipsing into the dank dive bar Meg tends to demand the photo be removed which leads to Meg challenging Dr. Diane Buckley to beer pong for the right to leave the photo up or erase it. (“Is that how you and the hobos settle disputes around here?”) It also leads to Jackie shacking up with Sad Steve (Nat Faxon), the aptly named lawyering pal of Pete who is blissfully unaware of his nickname (until he isn’t), who has accrued 110 days of sick leave and just wants someone with which to spend them. So, sniffing opportunity, Kate and Pete play forceful matchmaker to Jackie and Sad Steve, which goes about how you’d expect, both hilariously awful and weirdly perfect.

Jackie is, as Jackie will be, amusing the whole episode, attaching herself to the Harrison household like a mango margarita sipping organism, the sort that criticizes everyone else for crossing boundaries while she barrels right across those same boundaries like the unbalanced entrepreneur/inventor she “is”. There is so much Jackie in this episode, though, that I actually started to suffer a slight case of Jackie Overload. It was……too much. I swear to God. That’s what I said to myself. “Too much.” And then I tried to square with that in the midst of the episode because I was confused how I, an avowed Michaela Watkins fan, could be wishing for less Jackie. It made no sense!

Except it did. See, most sitcoms don’t expound the effort to put you in their characters’ shoes (or into their short-shorts, as in the case of Kate, which seems disturbing, which is why this is in parentheses). Instead they wash over you like the breeze on the beach where you’ve lived all your life. Watch it, laugh, move on to the next thing saved to the DVR. But this episode, written by Gail Lerner, put me side by side with Kate and Pete, so that I was feeling what they were feeling. They wanted less Jackie (“maybe she could get lost in a bazaar”). I wanted less Jackie. And then, in the midst of a double date with Kate & Pete and Jackie & Sad Steve, when Jackie panics because she’s Jackie and escapes to the alley outside the restaurant and ruminates her fashion choices with the bus boys, when Kate finds her for the requisite “talk”, Jackie makes an admission. She says: “I’m too much.”

I gasped. Literally gasped. I’ve written so many times before how much I adore films that reveal themselves in full to me with their final shots, and that’s precisely what “Trophy Wife” did in this episode. You feel one with Kate in that instant, because you felt what she felt. We all misjudged Jackie, and she deftly undercuts us with a moment of recognition that most sitcom characters are simply not allowed to have because to recognize their own flaws is to threaten the lifeblood of the ecosystem. That’s not to suggest Jackie is about to become a whole new person. She’s in touch enough to diagnose her problem, but her likely prevalence for a journey to a Navajo Medicine Man to offer the proper cure means it may not happen anytime soon. And besides, I don’t think we want it to, and neither does she.

Jackie needn’t be “too much.” Just being, you know, much will do.

Las(t) Vegas: Steenburgen City

The first time I saw the trailer for “Last Vegas” I just shook my head and quickly moved on, figuring I’d never think about it again. Until I noticed in the credits that Mary Steenburgen would be playing a role (she, of course, is not really allowed to be featured in the trailer because, like, duh, she’s a woman and this is Hollywood).

I love Mary Steenburgen. I do. Woman’s Got Game. I’ve seen all manner of Steenburgen films, and I’m not just talking about “Melvin and Howard” and “Philadelphia.” I’m talking about the totally boss “Sunshine State” and “Casa de los Babys” and “Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School” and “The Open Road” and “In The Electric Mist”. “Dirty Girl” is #2 right now in my Netflix queue (which I want to see for Juno Temple as much as Mary Steenburgen, but still). Okay, I haven’t seen “Did You Hear About The Morgans?”, but I’m just waiting for it to pop up on TBS one Sunday morning when I’m hungover (kinda like how I saw “The Proposal” after having my wisdom teeth removed). And if none of these are technically/officially “Mary Steenburgen Films”, and they aren’t, well, hey, she’s in ‘em, and she rocks ‘em all.

Nearly a month ago on this very blog I wrote: “Mary Steenburgen – mark my words – is going to steal ‘Last Vegas’ right out from under all those imposters.” Those imposters being Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, Kevin Kline, and Morgan Freeman (who aren’t really imposters, but you know what I meant). Well, “Last Vegas” opens this weekend, and so I checked out a few reviews to gauge Steenburgen’s work in preparation for my inevitable home video viewing. Guess what?!

Chris Packham of the Village Voice writes: “The film’s hidden asset is the luminous Mary Steenburgen.”

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club writes: “Billy starts falling for a lounge singer his own age (Mary Steenburgen) and having doubts about his impending marriage. Steenburgen is appropriately alluring in the role, and wasting her performance on a second-rate love triangle in a third-rate geezer comedy is downright criminal.”

Scott Foundas of Variety writes: “The singer, Diana (Mary Steenburgen), is also ‘of a certain age’ and has been around the block a few times, but unlike her male counterparts in “Last Vegas,” she’s been written as more than a one-dimensional type, and she’s played by the marvelous Steenburgen with a richness that goes even beyond what’s on the page. She’s an oasis of real, grown-up emotion in a movie that often feels more sophomoric (and a lot less funny) than the concurrent ‘Bad Grandpa.’” He continues: “The rest of the movie rarely if ever rises to Steenburgen’s level.”

Todd McCarthy of Hollywood Reporter writes: “And then there's Steenburgen's Diana. Her musical gifts draw you in first but her self-deprecating humor, wisdom of the ways of the world and fundamental optimism make her a keeper and deserving of heated competition among men. In her best film role in years, the actress delivers a fully realized character from the outset and deepens it into someone you really care about even in an essentially comic context.”

And oh yeah, before I forget, my homey Dann Gire at the Daily Herald out there in Arlington Heights succinctly states: "Steenburgen trumps quartet of aging stars in Sin City comedy."

Do you think, Hollywood – DO you, Hollywood? DO you think?! – that maybe, just maybe, it might be time to shuffle all those dudes aside and give Steenburgen her own movie?

All Is Lost

Robert Redford has just shimmied up the mast of his broken-down sailboat adrift in the vast reaches of the Indian Ocean to inspect the damage at the very top. While doing so, a familiar sound, an ominous sound, appears. The camera shifts ever so slightly to the left and he and we see it – looming thunderheads. Redford’s face in this moment tells you everything you need to know about his latest film, the marvelous “All Is Lost.” That is, his reaction is distinct because of the notable lack of a reaction. He does not frown, furrow his brow, sigh, mumble under his breath, do a double-take, laugh with ironic humor, bellow “Why me, oh Lord?!”, etc. He just……considers. I suspect his thought process is this: “Storm. Okay.”

He shimmies back down the mast. It is shot dramatically, but not overly so, more in the manner of the everyday difficulty of tricky tasks. He gathers his things and places them below deck. He fills a jug of water. And then, as the rain begins to pelt the boat, he shaves. He’s about to ride out a monsoon, so, hey, this may be his last chance to deal with those excess whiskers for awhile. This man fighting for survival on the open sea, we realize, is a practical man.

Robert Redford is 77 years old. His first on screen acting role was an episode of “Maverick” in 1960. He has founded Sundance and, in turn, helped power a powerful indie movement (and bless him for that). He has won a Best Director Oscar (“Ordinary People”) and a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. He has earned a Kennedy Center Honor and the National Medal of Arts. He has played Bob Woodward, The Sundance Kid and The Great Gatsby himself. But in spite of such achievements, it’s as if “All Is Lost” was the singular moment to which he has been building his entire career.

His acting has often stemmed from a strawberry-blonde reticence, an innate ability to maintain a level of secrecy, to suggest his characters’ overarching motives are theirs alone to know, and yet still quietly draw you into the emotion of their plight. His charisma comes partly from the craggy face, sure, but much more than that it is a matinee idol stoicism that he can employ like no other. The most recent film ripe for likely comparisons to “All Is Lost” would be “Cast Away”, the 2000 drama that found Tom Hanks stranded on a deserted island in the Pacific. Hanks, however, a fine actor in his own right, is much more extroverted, and so he inevitably needed a volleyball to talk to. Redford, rest assured, does not need a volleyball. Aside from the opening voiceover, he must say no more than twenty words during the film, and these words may as well be automated – an S.O.S., a holler for help, a well-timed swear word. He doesn’t need to speak. He has a non-verbal conversation with us for an hour-and-a-half, and you will remember every syllable.

Director J.C. Chandor, who also wrote the screenplay, offers virtually no shots of Our Man in the wide open water, a mere speck in the oceanic nothingness. Rather the camera remains generally attached to Redford, and so we remain attached to him too. I don’t say “Our Man” to be flip. That’s how the closing credits bill him. Our Man. His struggle and ours.

The script is scant in broad details as even that voiceover to kick off the film provides no information of traditional pertinence. The character is writing and apologizing to someone, yet we don’t know whom nor for what. The mere fact that he is on the high seas alone, eating beans from a can, indicates a disconnect from whatever life he had before. Thus, when he wakes one morning to discover a random shipping container has fatally severed his boat, the film becomes not just a test of Our Man’s mettle, a fight to stay alive no matter what occurs, but a perilous journey to eradicate every single loose end from his previous existence.

Bit by bit, all is lost, pushed away, cast off the starboard side, sunk, as the film’s relentless physicality gives way to something spiritual, a re-purification, a haunting baptism by fire.

12 Years A Slave

Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black American in 1841 who is lured from New York to Washington D.C., drugged, kidnapped and sold into slavery, finds himself on the plantation of Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch). Having received strong advice from Solomon on a particular task and knowing him to be an accomplished violinist, Ford expresses thanks by gifting Solomon a brand new violin. Solomon’s face is joyous disbelief. Ford’s intent is entirely gregarious, but then he says something. He says that he hopes Solomon will enjoy playing the violin for his many years to come.

Earlier, shackled below deck on a riverboat bound for the deep south, Solomon sits with two other chained black men. They dispense advice to Solomon. Don’t talk. Don’t admit you can read and write. Don’t reveal your real identity. This is the only way to survive. “I don’t want to survive,” Solomon says. “I want to live.” And for a time, he thinks he can. But when Ford references “many years”, Solomon knows he is stuck. We know he is stuck. Ford may very well be a decent person at his core, but he is merely a middle manager in a system of raging injustice that has been the norm for so long everyone in Dixie accepts it as gospel. That is what stings just as much as the gruesome outbursts of violence – the casual racism, its deep roots which at that time in America must have appeared impossible to dig up.

“12 Years A Slave” is based on a true story, which seems unthinkable, until you remember that slavery itself was unthinkable. It is the sort of film I wish would not be viewed in terms of awards and letter grades and Rotten Tomatoes scores and hoopla and backlash. It is the sort of film that simply should be seen and considered. It is a film directed by Englishman Steve McQueen, a stylist of the highest order, an adorer of long takes that work like one sustained, body blow. The violence and horror, and the insistence on the violence and horror, have and will be much discussed, such as an extended unbroken sequence in which Solomon is hung by a noose while other slaves move to and fro in the picture behind him, knowing that to offer aid is to risk their livelihood. It is a shot that would not be out of place in, say, “Gone With The Wind”, evoking the antebellum countryside in soft sunlight creeping through the trees…aside, of course, from that terrible image at the center of the frame. This is what those movies – some of which I like very much – were not showing you, McQueen is saying. Those movies scrubbed out that image at the center of the frame.

The fact that we know going in Solomon will be freed – he has to write the book upon which the film is based – frees up McQueen. Solomon is a free man. To prove he’s free, he needs to get his papers. How will he get his papers? A conventional film would have made this the driving plot point, a thriller with racial injustice as a mere backdrop, but the driving plot point of “12 Years A Slave” is the relentless de-humanizing of its main character. To achieve freedom Solomon must first remain alive and to remain alive he must give in totally to captivity. It is a terrifying juxtaposition.

Solomon’s ability to think for himself, he is convinced, will be an ally, the weapon he can wield to get Ford on his side to plead for freedom. But when Solomon runs afoul of his overseer (Paul Dano) on the plantation, Ford is presented as powerless to stop this overseer from getting his gun and killing Solomon where he stands. Ford may own the plantation, but he answers to the system. Instead Ford “protects” this slave he favors by sending him away to a different plantation, one run by a man named Epps (Michael Fassbender) who is less misguided than delusional. This was the only place, Ford explains, willing to “accept” Solomon. Why? The word Ford uses to explain himself is “exceptional” – Solomon is simply too “exceptional” to be trusted.

Slowly, with Epps cracking his whip and quoting the Bible as a means to enable his own demented mind, Solomon is stripped of his exceptionalism. He is made to be like everyone else, a hand in the field, and even when he is tasked to put bow to violin it is merely in the service of Epps’ own degrading amusement. This is not to suggest Solomon is portrayed as being above his unfairly persecuted comrades, but that ALL black people in slavery-infused America were robbed of their exceptionalism, their individuality.

I thought of Edward Zwick’s “Glory”, the 1989 film about the 54th Massachusetts, the first all-black regiment in the Civil War. Though that was a film that took the tack of so many when trying to aid American in wrapping its mind around slavery by filtering it through the perspective of an idealistic white man in Col. Robert Gould Shaw, it was still strong at what it did and possessed a line in which Gould says of his African-American soldiers: “Their poetry is not yet written.”

That sentiment rang through my head again and again during “12 Years A Slave.” Northrup’s poetry was eventually written, but how many voices that needed and deserved to be heard remained silenced? What of Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o), a fellow slave for whom Epps has a grotesque, guilt-ridden eye. He uses and abuses her. Epps’ wife (Sarah Paulson, the most unnerving performance in a film packed with them) despises her. Her life is essentially intolerable. She begs Solomon for help, and in doing so backs Solomon into a frightful moral corner. This shows Solomon to not be simply a Cinematic Object Of Suffering. Here, with Patsey, he is given the chance to re-humanize himself, albeit in a queasily unconventional way.

Solomon only makes it to his cathartic end on account of a carpenter from Canada who comes in the form of Brad Pitt with an Amish beard, a character that briefly challenges Epps’ rote philosophy, a convenient lantern for Solomon. It’s as if he’s a shooting star, almost appearing imaginary to a disbelieving eye, and that feels right. When Solomon’s freedom finally arrives, you can see the oppressive weight lift, and it is only at that moment you truly realize just how much he has gradually given in and lost sense of himself.

This scene, too, calls back to an earlier scene, a moment aboard that ominous riverboat when another prisoner is rescued, leaving Solomon alone and bewildered. This is why the ultimate sequence, our protagonist re-united with his family, carries less happiness than regretful relief. For every slave rescued from bondage, too many were not, and it will forever remain this great nation’s greatest shame.

I am always suspicious of films whose "importance" is touted first, because this overlooks the fact that even an important film needs, above all, to be a good film. And to be clear, "12 Years A Slave" is a great film. Its acting is powerful and multi-dimensional, its writing (by John Ridley) is revelatory, its music (by the normally bombastic Hans Zimmer) highlights and underscores as opposed to consistently overwhelming, and McQueen's assertive directorial style blends perfectly with the material's forceful nature. But beyond that, this great film opens a window that we have too long shuttered cinematically, or, at the very least, obscured by looking through in a white-centric or theoretically repentant way.

"12 Years A Slave" is decidedly brutal, and needs to be that way. Slavery was brutal and untenable and this very necessary film refuses to let us bury our heads in the sand.

30 For 30: This Is What They Want

Often films in ESPN’s lauded “30 for 30” documentary series have been too meek in putting their primary subjects through the ringer in an effort to appease and/or lionize them, which merely make for fan-friendly greatest hits compilations rather than box sets that truly dig around in the past, present and future to capture an entire life. “Jordan Rides The Bus”, for instance, chronicling Michael Jordan’s ill-fated stint as a minor league baseball player came across like a biographer too in awe of its own subject to ask the tough questions. The recent “Nine for 1X” doc about Mary Decker Slaney – an American middle distance runner I greatly admire – skimped on her ass-hattery toward Zola Budd after their infamous collision at the 1984 Olympics and completely disregarded her doping controversy at the 1996 Olympic Trials. What did Lester Bangs say in “Almost Famous”? Ah yes, “If you want to be a true friend to them, be honest and unmerciful.”

“This Is What They Want” - which debuted this past Tuesday - is honest and unmerciful. And perhaps it is honest and unmerciful because its subject, tennis legend Jimmy Connors, was honest and unmerciful. It’s not simply that so many talking heads interviewed refer to Connors as an “asshole”, it’s that Connors refers to himself as an “asshole”. But, he amends, pointing right at the camera, at us, “a happy asshole.” He was also, however, one helluva a tennis player, which even those who consider him an asshole – tennis greats like John McEnroe and tennis commentators like Mary Carrillo – consider to be an absolute truth. He was anti-establishment – perhaps, in a way, to a greater extreme than even the notoriously foul-mouthed McEnroe – in a sport that gives off such a distinct of air of establishment.

Connors’ whole story is seen through the prism of the 1991 U.S. open when, at the (for-a-tennis-player) ancient age of 39 he entered as a wild card and made an improbable run to the semi-finals. One of the film’s neatest observations, one I had never much considered, is regarding the U.S. Open itself. “It’s America’s Grand Slam,” says ESPN commentator Chris Fowler, “but it’s New York’s tournament.” I loved that, and it’s true. The weird weather, the jetliners streaking the sky above the courts, the matches that last late into the night/morning so that the two blend into some never-ending Lou Reed song dressed up in natty, sweat-strewn tennis shirts and Rafael Nadal-esque headbands with Maria Sharapova shrieks for backing vocals. Thus, it seems so fitting that Conners would make his last stand in The City That Never Sleeps, since coincidentally he didn’t sleep after his two-sets-down comeback against Patrick McEnroe (John’s Brother) in his first match lasting deep into the night/morning.

The film follows Connors’ charge, the stakes and emotion escalating with each match, until he is conquered in the semis by Jim Courier while looking like every one of his 39 years. Not that it matters by that point. “One last time,” says longtime sportswriter Mike Lupica in quoting someone else. That’s what Connors got, and what we wish all our favorite sports stars would get before the end – one last time to show what they once were and to be that way again. They mention the actual winner of the tournament, but it doesn’t matter. Connors was the people’s champion – the irascible, unlikable Connors somehow became lovable if only for a fortnight.

Not that he wasn’t still irascible and unlikable, hollering at officials and displaying mind-games for tactics that while effective still paint his ethics as questionable. Perhaps what I found most fascinating about “This Is What They Want” was Aaron Krickstein, Connors’ opponent in the fourth-round match that Fowler termed “the summit.” In an epic five-set slugfest, the wunder-thirtysomething outlasted Krickstein, barely, employing all amount of psychological trickery, berating officials and earning the crowd’s noisy adoration.

The film tags itself, however, with a brief what-became-of Krickstein (who is interviewed throughout) segment, and Krickstein is honest in admitting both the match’s long-lasting emotional effect and how his life in general has not gone quite the way he has wanted since leaving tennis. It’s quietly heartbreaking. And then the kicker. He admits Connors, once a friend, has never talked to him since that day in 1991. We see various talking heads being told this too, and their reaction is similar to yours – “Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!” And Connors does not mince words when pressed, saying that for him to reach out to Krickstein "just wouldn't be me." It’s a painful and painfully true insight into the mind of what made Connors such a mad genius.

One of the last shots shows Connors re-taking that same US Open court so many years later, this time the stands devoid of the cheering throng. It is incredibly perfect. He urged the crowd on and it replied in kind. He gave them what they wanted, yes, but for Connors to go where he did for so long was not so much a product of those people but his ability to isolate himself from everyone and go to a place understood only by him.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Safety Last! (1923)

“Here goes: a new Harold Lloyd is unthinkable because physical comedy depends on the proximity and possibility of death, which no longer seems acceptable to viewers who are completely aware of the prevalence of stunt doubles and digital effects, and who are repelled by the idea that a performer would actually face death for what is, after all, only a movie.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker 

Watching the dramatic climax to 1924’s silent masterpiece “Safety Last!”, it’s just as easy to get caught up in what is going on far below as what is going on way up high. That is, you can see action taking place in the street in real time, pedestrians bustling, old-timey cars gargling along, all seemingly oblivious to The Boy – or Harold Lloyd, the actor – straddling the side of the Bolton Building by the pointy ends of his wingtips. It lends the sequence such authenticity that you will find yourself overwhelmed with concerned for his safety, as if an actual plummet awaits, as if we are watching a real life man cross the real life gorge above the real life Niagara Falls on a real life wire, which is more or less what is really happening. (Debate, it seems, continues regarding how much of this was Lloyd’s stunt double and how much of this was really Lloyd. Either way, it ain’t CGI.) At the end, when he gets his foot tangled up in a rope and goes over……woah. My stomach sunk. Then it rose. Because, of course, what actually awaits is not a plummet but – in the words of Planet Earth Poet Laureate Bruce Springsteen – a kiss from his baby’s lips.

The film’s apex and the shot of Lloyd dangling from the hands of the clock – a shot quoted (and seen) in other films, such as Martin Scorsese’s recent “Hugo” – is justifiably unforgettable, and yet what stands out to me the most in watching the whole film for the first time is its continuous commitment to physical comedy. But the physical comedy isn’t all such colossally high stakes, scaling buildings and such, it is very much rooted in the every day, and that lends it this brilliant sensation that every day for The Boy (and for all of us, really) is a struggle.

Consider the opening sequence, wherein The Boy is set to depart his small town and his dearly beloved (Mildred Davis) to strike it rich in the big city. To get to the big city he needs to hop the train. Except merely hopping the train turns into an epic ordeal. Later, in the big city, making it on time to his clerking job at a woman’s department store goes from easy-peasy to a comedy of errors. These are all set pieces, of course, deftly timed, skillfully acted, and quite funny, yet they also demonstrate The Boy’s desire to make something of himself and keep his word to his sweetheart. (Well, maybe that bit of business with the cop he used to know and is clumsily inserted to set up for later isn't, but never mind that! Nothing to see here! Please disperse!)

Ah yes, the word to his sweetheart. What is true love if not deception and an old-fashioned ruse or two? For The Boy has led The Girl to believe he’s in the money, sending her expensive jewelry in lieu of buying himself a warm meal and inflating his precise position within the company. So, when she arrives unannounced in the store, he has to make like it’s his store, and when the real boss throws an offer of $1,000 to anyone that can successfully drum up a solid marketing campaign, he sees the chance to set things right without her ever realizing they were wrong. Which leads him to scaling the building for a bit of daredevil publicity.

In that way, “Safety Last” is a bit like my favorite episode of “Seinfeld”, in which Jerry re-races a race from his past, a race that he only won on account of unintentionally nefarious means, and which he wins again on account of unintentionally nefarious means. That is to say, he merely furthers a lie. And that’s what The Boy is doing as he scales the building – furthering a lie. Then again, the plan calls for another man to climb the building, the man who earlier runs afoul of the cop, which leads to all sorts of monkey business and, eventually, requisitely, The Boy making the climb in the hopes that he only needs to go one story for the other man to take over in an impersonation of The Boy. Needless to say, this plan fails, and The Boy is required to make the entire climb.

Call it, his necessary comeuppance. And perhaps that is why we can excuse his many little (to medium) white lies. He lies only because he loves The Girl, and he climbs the building only because he loves The Girl, and because the real-life Lloyd and the real-life Davis were real-life husband & wife (and remained so) you can even go so far as to say the real-life Lloyd was risking life and limb only because he loved Davis. Maybe that’s irresponsibility too? But love is a lot of things. Some people will say it is the feeling of safety with the person you love.

The Boy simply wants to provide that safety for The Girl (though perhaps in a Kathryn Bigelow film she could have gone and got it for herself) and to achieve it he must first put his safety last.