In Memoriam: Kumar Pallana

Whether it was his recurring turns in Wes Anderson's work - as Mr. Littlejeans in "Rushmore" or the heroic ex-assassin in "The Royal Tenenbaums" - or the slow-footed store manager in the under seen gem "10 Items Or Less", fewer people in this day and age have cut a more memorable face on the silver screen by saying so little. He didn't need to say much to make an impression.

Our world could have used more Kumar Pallanas. 

The Ultimate Danny Trejo Moment

It is perhaps the most pivotal moment in “Heat”, Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece positively brimming with pivotal moments. Our quartet of hella good bank robbers have just been made by the L.A. police and now must decide whether they should walk away or stay and take the score. Mann shoots the sequence almost exclusively in close-ups and medium shots of three of the four men, Neil McCauley (Robert DeNiro), the man in charge, Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) and Michael Churrido (Tom Sizemore). It all hangs in the balance, their livelihood and their lives. Chris needs the money (“the bank is worth the risk”). For Michael, “the action is the juice”. Neil is their brother in arms. Thus, he will not dissent. But wait……what about the fourth man of the group? The man literally billed in the credits as……Trejo? What does he want to do?

Image from And So It Begins....

Danny Trejo kind of comes across as random and at ease as Michael Mann does meticulous and self-serious. Mann, after all, spent his formative years earning an undergraduate degree in English at Wisconsin and a graduate degree from the London Film School. Danny Trejo, on the other hand, spent his formative years in and out of prisons and boxing at freaking San Quentin. Thus, it goes without saying that these two men view the cinema in different lights. In an interview Mann once indicated “I wasn't really interested in cinema until I saw 'Dr. Strangelove', alongside a set of films by F.W. Murnau and G.W. Pabst for a college course.” In an interview Trejo once relayed that the film “Runaway Train” was “…the first time I’d been on a movie set. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen because all these youngsters were dressed like little convicts and I kept smearing their tattoos. … A guy came up to me and said, ‘Can you act like a convict?’ I said, ‘I’ve been in every penitentiary in the State of California, I’ll give it a shot.’”

I’ll give it a shot. That he did, and he’s done it well. He never really doesn’t play Danny Trejo. He knows it, he’s okay with it, and it’s what Michael Mann plays straight to by literally naming the character “Trejo”. And Trejo himself seems very in tune to and grateful for his good fortune. He had a rough life, pulled himself together, showed up on a movie set, and stumbled into Hollywood, ultimately choosing to remain apart from so many in the business with egos and chips on their shoulders and an insatiable need to be taken more seriously.

Which brings me back to that scene in “Heat.” Everything Michael Mann does comes armed with intent, and so while it might appear as if Mann just didn’t have proper coverage or didn’t get a good close-up of Trejo, it’s actually the exact opposite. He sticks to single shots of Neil and Chris and Michael because their decision to stay and take the bank down is everything, a moment when who they are as MEN hangs in the balance. Then, finally, Neil turns to Trejo, who has been there all along, off to the side, cooling his heels, not a care in the world. Neil wonders if he’s in too. “Yeah,” he says with all the excitement of a man asking for butter on his toast. “Sure.”

Trejo. He’s just happy to be there.

Gravity

“Gravity” is the sort of film Hollywood should be making all the time and just isn’t. Visual effects are prevalent in the movies these days but too often are a crutch, a cover-up for narrative deficiency, or merely showing off for their own sake. Director Alfonso Cuaron, working in perfect harmony with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, has crafted an occasionally transcendent little piece of Cinematic Experience in which the effects mix seamlessly with the story he’s telling because the story he’s telling very much is the visual effects. Yet even though “Gravity” is propelled very much by those visual effects, it remains Hollywood to its core by also relying on good old fashioned Star Power.

The story of “Gravity” is deceptively – well, maybe that make that glaringly – simple, and that simple story is contrasted against the jaw-dropping camera trickery at work throughout. Its opening is a virtually uninterrupted twenty minute shot that glides and winds its way through the earthly orbit where astronauts Kowalski (George Clooney), the old pro, and Stone (Sandra Bullock), the specialist tasked to assist with a bit of Hubble repair on this first trip to space. Alas, back on earth the distant voice of mission control (Ed Harris, thus echoing Gene Kranz of “Apollo 13”) indicates a Russian attempt to shoot down their own satellite has gone awry. Debris hurtles toward our defenseless spacewalking astronauts. Communications are cut. Their shuttle is smashed to smithereens and their fellow NASA men and women lost. They are on their own in space, short on precious oxygen and looking for a way home.

Anymore movies of this ilk seek to address the plight of humanity, to be about our world and its present ills, to function as commentary as it goes about kicking ass. "Gravity", however, is much, much less “2001” than it is Spielberg’s “Duel” or Rodrigo Cortes’ “Buried”, a sorta real-time thriller that proves Murphy’s Law applies even in space. Which is not to suggest it lacks thematic ambition. It does not, and that is also, I fear, where perhaps the film partially miscalculates.

As established, “Gravity” is first, foremost and throughout a story being told visually, and yet when Cuaron and his son Jonas, with whom he wrote the screenplay, turn to theme they do so through either awkwardly wordy passages or images that have not earned their supposed weight. The latter is tied directly to the end, which feels less spiritually uplifting than it wants to be because of the former. Stone is saddled with a tragic, and tragically thin, backstory, yearning to illuminate effects of isolation both on the Earth and above it. And thus, Cuaron’s film shoehorns in monologues and helpings of characterization that distinctly feel as manufactured as his set pieces feel effortless. One scene meant as Stone’s turning point to the drive for home is so jarring and frustrating you’ll know it’s a fake straight away.

It’s weird, and it’s weird because “Gravity” is so regal in the way it looks that nothing Cuaron could have these characters say would live up to what they and we see. Earth can be a lonely place, after all, but never more so then when the entire planet itself is right in front of you…..so close, so far.

That we still find ourselves tethered to emotion and not just sensation is a testament to Ms. Bullock, who has chopped her hair and significantly dialed down the every-woman charm she oozes in such abundance. She seems more terse and withdrawn and impatient with Clooney’s glibness in the face of doom. As such, “Gravity” emerges less than some sort of metaphorical rebirth than a closed-off woman opening up to the battling back, fight and (space) flight. Her moments of weakness are as winning as her moments of strength, and that duality is what prevents me from betting onboard with the attitude of the finale.

For all the soundless explosions and zero gravity spins and dips that caused my weak-willed stomach to order my eyes shut, the shot I will remember most involves Stone floating wordlessly in a space station airlock moments after surviving another frenzied ordeal. She closes her own eyes and just…..floats. Physically re-grouping, mentally re-charging, preparing to forge on. It is open to symbolic interpretation, but I will go with a more literal reading. Even when you’re all alone in space, sometimes you just need a moment to yourself.

In Memoriam: Patrice Chéreau

"Why do you hate the grey hair, Magua?"

The name of General Marquis de Montcalm is first mentioned within the first 15 minutes of "Last of the Mohicans." We do not actually see General Marquis de Montcalm, however, until another half-hour has passed. And that seems about right. He is not there, not in view, but his presence, his role as "the gallant antagonist", quietly hovers over the proceedings. He may be a man of war, but what he really is is a delegator. Delegators don't need to be on screen for large chunks of time. They've got other people taking care of business.

Montcalm is a vital character in Michael Mann's 1992 masterpiece. He is the French general orchestrating the siege of the British-held Fort William Henry, commanded by Colonel Munro (Maurice Roeves). Eventually he takes possession of the fort by offering the British a deal - pack up, leave, go with God. Unless he doesn't actually want them to go with God. But more on that in a minute.

Despite his importance, Montcalm only has three scenes. And, in turn, that means Patrice Chéreau, the Frenchman known for his directorial efforts in his native country more than a few spots of American acting, only has three scenes. In those three scenes, he cultivates an arc that eventually pulls the bearskin rug out from underneath us.

Initially he is seen at a 1757-sorta meet and greet with a few Seneca Indians. He sends them on their way and then says "whatup?" to Magua (Wes Studi), the requisite villain, the Huron Indian hell-bent on revenge against Colonel Munro and his daughters. Even if Montcalm seems gentlemanly, this particular ally leaves us suspicious.

Alas, once Montcalm has battered Colonel Munro's defenses he calls a parlay, and it is there that he offers terms of surrender which involve Munro and all his soldiers and all the inhabitants of his fort to leave unmolested. Our suspicions are allayed.

Unless they aren't. Because in his final scene he seeks Magua's council in a dimly lit forest and essentially gives him the go-ahead to attack Colonel Munro and his men and women and children after they have departed the fort.

In all likelihood, that's revisionist history (or false history, if you prefer). But then Colonel Munro did not have two daughters named Cora and Alice and there was no Mauga seeking blood vengeance against the Colonel. (The Colonel's name was also Monro, not Munro.) And even if the real life Montcalm did not order such butchery, it paves the way for Chéreau's finest moment in the film.

If you pull up the "Last of the Mohicans" screenplay you will find Montcalm spelling out in no uncertain terms what he is asking Magua. In the film, Michael Mann chooses to let Patrice Chéreau communicate his desire for the dirty work non-verbally. He explains to Magua he is certain to face Munro again and then lets his gaze, those hyper-focused eyes, linger for a second before looking down. Contemplating. Wondering. Re-thinking?

He looks back up and it's an expression worth five very specific words: "You know what to do." And then he's gone.

Patrice Chéreau died yesterday at the age of 68. He was beloved for his filmmaking in France, filmmaking with with which I admit in great shame I am wholly unfamiliar. But Mr. Chéreau was a featured cast member in Cinema Romantico's all-time favorite movie. Thus, we honor him.

Over-Analyzing The Machete Kills Trailer Part 4

In opposition of this post's title and this ongoing series of updates no one that reads Cinema Romantico really wants, sometimes there is no need to over-analyze. Sometimes it's best to simply let an image speak for itself.

Kate the Great: Happy Birthday & Hideous Kinky

It’s impossible to quantify someone’s “best” performance – unless we turn it over to the cinematic sabermetricians who, if God is just, will forever continue to not exist – but upon being pressed for Kate Winslet's best performance I would cite her turn as Julia in “Hideous Kinky.” It is incredibly naturalistic, a portrayal wherein the actor appears to be making it up as she goes along, living a life on the screen in all its ragged, mistake-prone glory, resistant to convenient empathy, unyielding to straightforward judgment. In a recent interview for TimeOut London she said of the role “there was a lot I had to guess about maternal instincts because I wasn’t a parent.” I think this aids the performance because Julia has no maternal instincts and has no idea how to be a parent.

A mother of two she flees England for Morocco with her two daughters in tow in one of those classic (is that the right word?) attempts to “find herself." This was the film Kate chose to make immediately post-“Titanic”, defying agent advice and ignoring much more lucrative offers, going low budget and on location. Perhaps it’s easy to connect the dots and say that after starring in the (then) most successful movie of all time at 22, a befuddling age, Kate was in the midst of wanting to “find herself.” Though perhaps that’s just Entertainment Critic Psychology, and maybe after spending months aboard a replica of the most famous sunken ship in human history in a waterlogged tank in Mexico with James Cameron screaming at her she just wanted the hell out of Hollywood.

The film often feels light on the texture of Julia, more interested in her behavior in the moment, which is both endearingly free-spirited and frighteningly wayward. That we struggle to gain a solid grasp of who Julia is only strengthens the underlying theme of the film – as in, SHE doesn’t know she is so how could WE know who she is. Instead she’s grasping at doll figurines (which she sells to make ends meet when checks from her ex-husband back home stop turning up), dragging her children who appear more levelheaded than their mother all over creation, shacking up with an acrobat who has an, ahem, wife, deciding to seek out a Sufi mystic.

That last one’s significant. Sufism is all about achieving enlightenment, and a crucial ingredient to that achievement is selflessness. And Julia is painted quite consciously as being woefully and unwittingly self-absorbed. That’s not to say she doesn’t love her daughters, because she does in her own flighty way, but as the film progresses it calls upon her to genuinely take ownership of her role as a parent. It is at that point “Hideous Kinky”, which has been so choppily organic (which I mean as a compliment), dips a bit into more routine dramatization to pave the way for a resolution. Nevertheless, Winslet conveys an authentic desperation, a young woman trying to breathe underwater. Enlightenment gives way to duty, unless they are one in the same.

I have no idea if they are one in the same, and while I suspect the end of “Hideous Kinky” wants us to believe Julia has indeed “found herself”, I contend such a brilliantly maddening character should not be reduced to such a simple reading.

Sometimes I forget Kate Winslet is only two years older than me, which places her at 38 as of her birthday today. She seems older, even if she still looks younger. She’s a lived a life, man (and she’s saved a man’s life). Three husbands, a kid with each one, she’s going into space, she’s played Ophelia AND April Wheeler, and she earned one of those whatchamacallits. Speaking with Harper’s Bazaar UK this past year, Winslet said of her forthcoming new child and marriage: "It's complicated, I know, and uncertain -- but it's where life happens, between the cracks. It can be a painful process, but I truly hope that never stops for me."

That’s what “Hideous Kinky” is at its best, which is what it’s at most of the time: life happening between the cracks. A woman coming at life from her own oblique angle, and struggling at it – really, honest to goodness struggling at it. And really, that’s how we all approach the idea of enlightenment, isn’t it? From our own oblique angles, and struggling at it?

How much life influences art and vice-versa is anyone's guess (and some will). I can't imagine it's easy cultivating and and giving such performances of struggle, but I truly hope it never stops her. It's like I always say, she's the best there is.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Algiers (1938)

“And I start to tell the story. 'Uh, it's about Casablanca, and the refugees are there, and they're trying to get out, and there's letters of transit, and a fella has them, and the cops come and get him' ---- And I realize I'm talking about twenty minutes and I haven't even mentioned the character of (Ingrid) Bergman. So I say, 'Oh, what the hell! It's going to be a lot of s**t like ‘Algiers.’” – Julius Epstein 

It’s nigh impossible to discuss “Algiers” (1938) without also mentioning “Casablanca”, the stone cold 1942 classic that, as the lead-in quote from “Casablanca” scribe Epstein goes to show, was not simply based on an unproduced play but influenced heavily by the lesser known “Algiers.” It’s nigh impossible to miss the striking similarities, right down to the ocean liner tagging in for the plane at the end, but discussing them overmuch would distract from the things “Algiers” does differently. It’s not “Casablanca” – what is? – but that is not simply on account of the issue of quality (though “Algiers” quality is significant in its own right) – it’s not “Casablanca” because while it is romanticized, its ultimate worldview is just a bit bleaker. There will not be the beginning of any beautiful friendships here, merely the ending. Not that our fall guy doesn’t go out with a smile on his face.

Really there are two characters central to director John Cromwell's “Algiers” – the rhapsodically named French jewel thief Pepe le Moko (Charles Boyer, nominated for an Oscar) and the Casbah, the maze-like native-inhabited quadrant of Algiers, “a melting pot of all the human sins of this earth.” This is what we are told in an opening monologue functioning as a travelogue to give us our Casbah-bearings since that is where we will spend most of the movie since that is where Pepe is able to remain hidden. Even though he’s essentially out in the open. Which is what frustrates the requisite American detective (he prefers guns to brains – he’s AMERICAN) who is called in to supplement local Inspector Slimane’s (Joseph Calleia) investigation.

In Slimane you can very much see Claude Rains’ Renault, the German Captain in “Casablanca” who functions as both friend and foe to Bogart’s Rick Blaine. Ultimately, though, Renault leans more toward friend whereas Slimane, theoretically working as friend and foe to Pepe, ultimately leans more toward foe. He’s gentlemanly – it’s a charismatically laid-back performance from Calleia – but he’s a gentleman with, as they say, a job to do. The American may not like his slow-burn tactics, but no one respects J.O.B. dedication like an American who prefers guns to brains.

Into the Casbah, however, must wander a femme fatale, and so she does in the form of Gaby, a beguiling tourist on loan from ol’ Paris. She is played by Hedy Lamarr. This was Lamarr’s first American film and it’s not difficult to see a star being born. Her smile feels startlingly authentic, as if just before every take someone off camera made some crack she found amusing, and she and Boyer create a viable chemistry that gets great mileage from its longing. One scene in particular finds the two of them seated in the forefront of a shot at a café table with a blathering American couple. As the couple blathers, Lamarr and Boyer ignore the blather to look toward one another. They don’t touch, they don’t even smile, they just look……and it burns with the fire of a thousand suns.

In the end, though, "Algiers" belongs not to Ms. Lamarr nor even to the Casbah but to Boyer. The performance kicks off light as a feather but it doesn’t take long for Boyer to delicately demonstrate that Pepe is plugging the dam with all that jauntiness. He's a thief, of course, a killer, to be sure, but also a bit of a jackass. There is a second female in this story, Ines (Sigrid Gurie), who is, more or less, Pepe’s gal. She loves Pepe and is loyal to Pepe. Alas, Pepe only loves Ines when it pleases him and is not loyal to her at all. He’s seeing Gaby, as established, but it’s not like he’s seeing her on the sly. He’s pretty brazen. Heck, at one point he TELLS Inez he’s going to see Gaby. Perhaps he deserves his inevitable comeuppance.

Gaby is thankfully provided one scene where she takes possession of herself by explaining to her fiancé in no uncertain terms why she’s really marrying him and that she will do as she pleases. Essentially, though, her character exists to tempt Pepe, to act as the ethereal representation of the boulevards and cafes of his homeland for which he so desperately craves. Thus, it is on her account that he becomes enamored the prospect of at long last setting foot outside the Casbah and following her back to Paris.

Not that he makes it. But that goes without saying. But it also stands to say that he very much does make it there courtesy of the film's most sumptuous shot, a dreamlike vision of the Eiffel Tower appearing in the foreground as he makes his hopeless break. The image is his respite, the end is his escape.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Cold File)

One of the unique things about having a show with multiple moms is the way in which parenting styles and successes and ineptitude can be compared and contrasted. Kate is the newbie, Dr. Diane Buckley is the old pro and Jackie is, well, we’ll get to her.

I remember when I was a kid and for reasons that escape me (and likely escaped me then) I went through a phase where I could not and/or would not sleep. This is the prase precocious Bert is going through and so when Kate insists she wants to play a bigger role in parenting, she is tasked with getting Bert to sleep. Needless to say, this goes poorly. He stays up all night watching TV and she feeds him coffee in the morning to get him going. Kiddo Crash & Burn awaits.

I remember when I was a kid that perhaps the most terrifying sensation was knowing you had done something wrong and covering up that something from your parents but becoming convinced your parents had through their sixth parental sense picked up on what you had done wrong and were now just letting you live in fear and waiting for you to trip up. This is what happens when Warren and Hillary spill salsa on the couch of their mom, Dr. Diane Buckley, and then spend the remainder of the episode convinced their mom is playing mind games with them even if they can’t be truly certain she is playing mind games with them. (She is.)

One mom is in control, one mom is in over her head, and so it goes. The show itself seems to have laid a strong foundation for its premise, which is reassuring, and employing one story to work as a reflection of the other story is simply beyond the grasp of most television Big Four fluff. Even so, if I had a wish it would be that they move away from these refried sitcom tropes and twists. How many times can something be spilled on a couch? (Though this is partially excused for the simple fact that we get to see Marcia Gay Harden salsa dance.) Did the precocious Bert really need to get kicked in the gonads by a soccer ball? (I envision the writer’s room late at night and one writer railing against this scene and another writer explaining that they were already in too deep, that they had to abide by “Chekhov’s Soccer Ball”. It stipulates: “If you show a soccer ball in the first ten minutes then in the last ten minutes someone has to get hit in the gonads with it.”) Do secrets need to snowball until their inevitable unraveling? Please don’t misunderstand, this doesn’t render the show unwatchable and it’s only two episodes in, but…..come on, “Trophy Wife”, play up to your potential.

The potential can be seen in Jackie – or, more accurately, Michaela Watkins who, at the risk of overstating it, is quickly selling me on the fact that she is a goddam genius. I centered my entire “Wanderlust” review around her performance – a brilliant turn with severely dry line readings as a Reality Atlanta Housewife who institutes a 4:00 Happy Hour and blows everyone (including Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd and, yes, Malin Akerman) right off the freaking screen. I sang her praises in “In A World…” where she helped to create a funny and real sisterly relationship. And now this, the stressed second ex-wife, waging psychological warfare with new wife while simultaneously providing potent parenting tips. “Half these kids only eat peanuts, half these kids can’t eat peanuts. One wrong bite and half the team is dead.”

She then leaves her own (adopted) child's soccer game to go on a pub crawl with her tai chi class. I wonder what happened there?

Dissecting A(nother) Scene From The Descendants

It is a scene I have referenced in other reviews and essays, a scene I have so frequently referenced because I can recall no scene in recent cinema (or the visual arts in general) that so quickly, precisely, emphatically, and brilliantly demonstrates the makeup of a family and how its members can be strikingly alike and different and loving and resentful at once. Truly, it is astonishing. Here’s why…

Matt (George Clooney), Alex (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller) enter the hospital to visit, respectively, their wife and mother. This is Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie). In the wake of the opening scene – a glimpse of Elizabeth perched on the back of a motorboat in Honolulu Bay – she has been left in a coma, her life support machine turned off. Matt, his appearance harried, politely asks the girls to wait in the hall. He'd like a moment with their Mom alone. They oblige. He enters his wife's room, closes the door and pulls the curtain behind and just in front of the door shut. He turns to his wife. He has a few things to say. He commences.

Matt: "You were gonna ask me for a divorce so you could be with some fucking fuckhead, Brian Speer? Are you kidding me? Who are you? The only thing I know for sure is you're a goddamn liar."

I’ve talked about the film’s brilliant employment of cursing (as in, people aren’t just cursing for the sake of cursing) before, but this just another example of it – how Matt routinely curses and then can’t quite figure out why his daughters routinely curse.

Matt: "So what do you have to say for yourself? Make a little joke? Tell me that I got it all wrong." Now he leans in close, really close. She looms in the forefront of her shot. "Tell me again that I'm too out of touch with my own feelings and I need to go to therapy. Isn't the idea of marriage to make your partner's way in life a little easier? For me, it was always harder with you, and you're still making it harder. Now you're on that ventilator and fucking up my life. You are relentless. You know I was going to ask you for a divorce someday."

Very rarely in this film is Matt actually afforded ethical high ground. He is not the most compassionate person. This is not to say he is a mean-spirited person – he’s not – but merely person with a few glaring and problematic flaws (humans, I think they call them). He is not a doting father – and admits it – and had become less than an attentive husband – and admits it – and, yet, while there are understandable reasons for his spouse wanting to take solace in an affair it’s still, you know, an affair. But even then Matt can’t leave his old ways behind, can’t stop being a selfish jerk, can’t stop being an immature jerk.

Immaturity. It’s a pall cast over the entire King family. This is not, however, the immaturity of Team Apatow, video games and bong hits and such. This is the immaturity skulking about within any mature adult, how even a successful real estate lawyer and descendant of Hawaiian royalty suffers in part from emotional stuntment. Which is what makes it so perfect when he picks up and hurls across the room his wife’s teddy bear – put on display, I suspect, to render good tidings – and dismissively declares “Daddy’s little girl”, both an item and a term meant to evoke……immaturity.

Now Matt lets his daughters in the room. Scottie is eager. Alex is reluctant, maybe even angry. "Hi, mom," she finally says, "sorry for being bad." Oh. Well. Maybe not angry? Maybe forgiving? She continues: "Sorry for wasting your money on private expensive schools when you could have been using it on facials and massages and sports equipment." Nope. She's angry. And not forgiving. Her voice rises. "And sorry we weren't good enough for you. Especially Dad." Matt: "Stop it. That's outta line."

Alex: "What?! Are you gonna ground me?! Are you gonna ship me off to another boarding school?! Give me a time out?!" 
Matt grabs her. Spanks her (yes, actually spanks her, though rather reluctantly.)
Matt: "Goddamn it."

So…the husband just spent his face-to-face time with his wife telling her off. Now the oldest daughter is spending her face-to-face time with her mom telling her off. As in, the oldest daughter possesses the father’s own attributes, and the father scolds her for it while failing to realize his own failure to set an example.

Scottie: "You got served!" 
Matt: "Scottie, go wait in the hall." 
Scottie: "She's the one who's outta line." 
Matt: "Go find Sid." 
Scottie: "He's smoking! I shouldn't be around secondhand smoke." 

Ah, and so too does Alex’s failure to set an example for Scottie result in Scottie’s confrontational attitude and immaturity. (Father → Oldest Daughter → Youngest Daughter.)

Alex: "Did you just spank me?" 
Matt: "You have no right to talk to you mother that way.” But he, of course, does. “She's going to die in a few days. Those could be your last words." 
Alex: "I have every right to speak that way to her. I'm angry at her. How can you be so forgiving?"
Matt: "I'll be angry later. Right now let's just think about the good parts.” Which, of course, he has not been thinking of. “And don't say that stuff in front of your sister. Say something different."

Alex weighs her Dad's "order."

Alex: "Look, Mom, I know that we fought. I always wanted to be like you. I am like you. I'm exactly like you." 

In a film filled with masterstrokes, this one is the most masterly. I wish I could convey in my archaic blogging verbiage how Woodley communicates that last line – begrudgingly, admiringly. “I’m EXACTLY like you.” Alex’s mother/Matt’s wife never speaks in the film. Not once. It’s brave to have so many characters talk about another character without giving the targeted character an opportunity to respond. There are critics who would argue this choice actually constitutes the exact opposite of bravery. But the more I consider “The Descendants”, the more I realize this viewpoint is entirely wrong. Alex may be angry at her mother but she is her mother’s daughter. And so, in a very real way, Elizabeth is present and speaking the entire movie, she’s just present and speaking through Alex.

In the confrontations father and daughter have you can catch a glimmer of the confrontations husband and wife must have had. At the same time, you can catch a glimmer of what two combustible personas can do when they align – such as in those moments when father and daughter unite to act as amateur detectives to find and confront that fucking fuckhead Brian Speer.

Matt: "You are like her. Mostly, I guess. Maybe in some bad ways. Remains to be seen." 

You wonder, don’t you? You wonder if Alex will take heed from the examples her mother and father failed to set. But then you wonder some more, and as you do you can almost make out a mental image of a futuristic Alex riding recklessly on the back of a motorboat in choppy waves with a smile on her face and the wind in her hair. Remains to be seen.

A Non-Review Of Don Jon

When I entered the theater Sunday afternoon for a showing of "Don Jon" there were only two other people - a couple and, thus, sitting together - in the whole auditorium. I took a seat in the middle of the fourth row from the screen because, I confess, I'm someone who enjoys being much closer to the screen than back from it. Naturally, right before the previews commenced, another couple entered, sat directly behind me despite there being an entire swath of seats from which to choose, and talked throughout the movie.

Our world is full of talk. Talk radio is an epidemic. I enter the kitchen at work and the TV is always on, loud and proud, someone talking at amplified volumes. There is small talk and serious talk and shop talk. People, as established, can't even not talk for ninety minutes during a movie. When 2013 is all said and done there will be two talks remembered forever and neither of them will be President Obama and President Rouhani talking - it will be Wendy Davis and Ted Cruz filibustering. Orations have given way to Obstructions, words for the sake of words, talking all night and saying nothing.

"Don Jon", the directorial debut of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who also wrote and stars), is full of talkers - loud talkers, shit talkers, people talking to get what they want, people talking to tell lies to get what they need. There is a recurring Catholic Priest in the confessional (who we never see) who by film's end must have ordered our boy Don Jon to say at least six hundred Hail Mary's and four hundred and fifty Our Fathers. And Don Jon says them, sure, all of them, but he doesn't, you know, SAY them. And I'm reasonably certain the Priest we never see is not really HEARING what Don Jon is confessing before absolving - he's just waiting for his turn to talk.

Don Jon and his friends talk, mainly about whether this girl is a "seven" or that girl is an "eight" and what makes a girl the hallowed "dime". Don Jon's gum-smacking gal Barbara (Scarlett Johannson) talks, issuing orders masquerading as sexual banter. Don Jon's Dad (Tony Danza) and Mom (Glenne Headly) talk - well, argue - ceaselessly, just like any good old fashioned Italian stereotype. Don Jon even talks to himself when he's alone - in voiceover - in a vain effort to convince himself he doesn't have a problem (he's a porn addict, as if "Shame" had been directed by Norman Jewison). But do you know who doesn't talk?

Monica (Brie Larson). All the way to the right.

Don Jon's sister. Monica. She doesn't talk. Like, at all.

Monica is played by Brie Larson and stars as just another spot of satire in a satirical sorta film. Monica is attached at the hand to her smartphone. Literally. In every single scene we see Monica - at the family dinner table, at church, at the family dinner table, at church, at the family dinner table, etc. - she is holding her smartphone and looking at her smartphone and scrolling through her smartphone. No one seems surprised or bothered by it. Not even the church parishioners. We gather this must be standard behavior for Monica. Also, did I mention she doesn't talk?

This is Levitt the writer poking fun at our teenage culture - hell our entire culture - and our obsession with our smartphones and how in the moments when we are not actually talking we are looking at these teeny screens in front of our faces, so engrossed that I have actually seen pregnant women on the train have to clear their throats to get people hovering over their phones to look up to give up their seat to get right back to hovering over their phones. It's a brilliant gag to have Monica in all these scenes but never acknowledging anyone or anything aside from her phone. But hey, did I mention that she DOESN'T TALK?

It's a modern-day silent-era performance. Her facial expressions are entirely non-existent. She lives in a bubble of smartphone apps, I suppose, and those probably lost their amusement a long time ago. So many people in such a role would be trying to, as they say, make his/her reel, but not Larson. No one engrossed with their smartphone betrays much emotion, they just......look. So Larson just......looks. She hears, and you can tell she hears what goes on around her because she occasionally reacts but whenever she reacts it comes across as an annoyance that she was disturbed from her Facebook or her Twitter or her Instagram or her Candy Crush and a non-verbal desire that clearly indicates "Christ, can't you people just shut up for five seconds?"

But...there's a moment. It's a moment when Don Jon and Barbara have just split up and so he's talking to his parents, explaining himself, and his Dad is talking, because how could his son let such a foxy lady go, and his Mom is talking, because how can he continue to deny her the grandchildren she so desperately wants, and all that talking gets out of the way and then....

Monica looks at her brother. Just looks at him. There's hardly a change in her demeanor from any other time but there is a change. The pointed eyes, yes, but more than that she's looking at him. It's the only time in the whole film she has actually looked at someone. Levitt knows. She knows. We know.

Well, eventually Monica talks. She has to. That's how these things work. But when she does inevitably open her mouth, the content of her utterance is not necessarily stunning – it’s what I’d been thinking, and perhaps what you’d been thinking too. Rather its profundity is a direct correlation of its simplicity.

The phrase Talk Is Cheap is typically deployed to denote that words must be accompanied by action. Perhaps an even more literal reading of the phrase, however, might be that this modern world of incessant and banal blathering is what has rendered it cheap. Air needs to be filled, after all, and so the words come at us in such sustained waves that we have fewer and fewer moments without noise and less and less time to formulate and get lost in our own thoughts.

Monica is merely pointing out the obvious, it's just that no one else could hear it until then over all the braying.

Rush

Too often the media and the public are prone to an emotional desire for our athletes and sports stars to neatly fit into ready-made narratives. Consider LeBron James, arguably America's most famous athlete. At first he was an Ohio kid playing for an Ohio team, prepared to bring long-suffering Cleveland a championship, The King. That was the narrative. Until "The Decision" when James unceremoniously left Cleveland for Miami and automatically became The Villain. Now that is the narrative, and anything said or written about him must revolve around villainous decision.

This is what makes Ron Howard's "Rush", his adrenaline-soused story of the 1970's Formula One rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt, both a little smart and a little stale. At the movies we demand tangible change in our characters, for them to begin with one perspective but come around to another just in the nick of time for the closing credits. And while Lauda and Hunt do change in their attitude to one another, their overriding worldview very specifically remains the same. They maintain their own narratives.

Scripted by Peter Morgan, "Rush" opens with the apparent intention to hone in on James Hunt, played by a charismatic Chris Hemsworth with a mane of hair that all on its lonesome seems to emit Sexual Radioactive Frequencies. Before the movie is but a few minutes old he has already scored with the nurse charged to tend his wounds and then squired her to next his race. Quickly she is forgotten, as are most (all?) of the women in Hunt's life, such as the vixen Suzy Miller (Olivia Wilde). She waltzes into the garage in her swank fur coat, makes doe eyes at him and a scene later they're married. At first I thought this was weak writing, then I realized it to be a strength. Hunt doesn't dabble. He does.

His dream is to become Formula One champion, but that dream runs into a nearly immovable object in the form of Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), an Austrian known as The Rat. Lauda is as calculating and cautious and austere as Hunt is spontaneous and rebellious and wild. He is uninterested in friends, unbothered by enemies, and clinically buys his way into Formula One by creating a souped-up racing car the specs of which he will only reveal for a spot on a specific team.

Eventually, of course, Lauda proves more than Hunt's match - he proves to be better. So Hunt, the perpetual skirt-chaser, is left to chase Lauda whose devotion to discipline keeps Hunt (and his own wife, played by Alexandra Maria Lara) at arm's length. As this happens, the film gradually becomes Ladua's - and Brühl's - as much as Hunt's. In that way, it sort of echoes their rivalry, one-upmanship. The two men circle each other, citing stock platitudes, condemning the way the other man lives and drives (or, is it drives and lives?), but finding a mutual respect despite the chasm.

Of course, there are also race scenes, a lot of 'em, and they are handled with a knowing va-voom (Anthony Dod Mantle did the film's cinematography). They are rip-roaring, to be sure, straight ahead and purely visceral, and indicative of "Rush" as a whole. It is very much the same thing for a full two hours, establishing two people as disparate personality types and then repeating the attributes of those personality types over and over and over, etc. Rather than dig a little deeper to see what molded these two men into those personality types, however, the screenplay is generally content with the established surface.

Consider the in-flight bout of coitus that Hunt shares with a striking Stewardess in the jetliner bathroom. We never see the Stewardess's face as it happens, instead we see Hunt admiring his own face in the mirror. This might suggest the zenith of solipsism but that sort of psychology is simply not what "Rush" wants to be about.

Thus, the ultimate payoff left me less than effusive if still admiring. That is because by the time the film begins these two men have already found themselves, and are now merely in the process of living out their respective lives in the way each one sees fit.

Re-Forecasting The Best Actress Oscar Race

The news broke this past week – The Weinstein Company is moving the Nicole Kidman Grace Kelly biopic “Grace of Monaco” to 2014. And with the move went Cinema Romantico’s meaningless prediction that the impeccable Ms. Kidman would win this year’s Best Actress Oscar. Thus, with Oscar season swiftly approaching, it is time for us to re-evaluate the field and predict a new victor.

The obvious choice would be Kate Winslet for “Labor Day.” She is 1.) Is gunning for her 2nd statue just like Ms. Kidman and 2.) My Favorite Actress. But #2 is precisely why I can’t pick her. I already jinxed Nicole and got her movie moved, I won’t dare cast the jinx on Kate The Great.

Once upon an English lawn Naomi Watts – Ms. Kidman’s consigliere – was seen as a surefire contender for her work as Diana (Princess, that is) in “Diana” but the reviews for that film would make Uwe Boll blush.

Berenice Bejo has been getting serious buzz for “The Past” but, come on, it’s French! Like the Academy’s going to see that one! (Reader: “But ‘The Artist’ won Best Picture!” Cinema Romantico: “That’s because it was silent and set in Hollywood! They didn’t know it was French!”)

There has been significant scuttlebutt surrounding Cate Blanchett for her sadistic turn in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” but that film was released in August. August!!! August is like the 1990’s to an Academy voter! By the time Oscar ballots roll around the voters will be up to their ears in “Last Vegas” DVD screeners. Speaking of which…

Mary Steenburgen – mark my words – is going to steal “Last Vegas” right out from under all those imposters. Not that the Academy will notice. And not that I will notice (since I probably won’t see it). 

The Academy may be unaware this performance actually exists. Our sources would neither confirm nor deny.

I’ve already started plastering Academy members doors with Rooney Mara In “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” flyers but most Academy members then just storm outside and tell me to get off their lawn and then mumble something about Judi Dench’s new movie.

Jennifer Lawrence is well on her way to being the Academy’s new Christoph Waltz but the new “Hunger Games” is too big budgetish.

Rose Byrne will probably cancel herself out between “The Internship” and “Insidious 2.”

Lake Bell in “In A World…” would be a game-changer but, uh, hey, isn’t, like, Meryl Streep in a movie again this fall?

Reader: “Hold it…”

Shailene Woodley was resplendent in “The Spectacular Now.” But, of course, the Academy has no idea who she is.

Reader: “Wait, wait, wait…”

Will Cameron Diaz's back tattoo in "The Counselor" have what it takes to score a Best Actress nod?

I personally feel like Cameron Diaz’s Back Tattoo in “The Counselor” should be in contention but feel those odds are long.

Reader: “Oh God…”

Malin Akerman is Debbie Harry in “CBGB” but that evokes Supporting Performance.

Reader: “Stop! I see what’s happening here! You’re going through the entire list, ruling out everybody, so that in the end you’re only left with……” 
Reader #2: “Left with who?” 
Reader: “Lady Gaga in ‘Machete Kills!’ This entire post was a set-up! WE'VE BEEN HAD!” 
Reader #2: “Run! Run outta the room! Shut your laptops and run! Everybody!!! There’s still time! If we don’t hear it, he didn’t say it!”

Friday's Old Fashioned: Thunder Road (1958)

Robert Mitchum’s face – the smile in particular, that smile of cocky yet indifferent bemusement, never getting overly worked up since he treats threats as fun ‘n’ games – lets us know that somehow he knows every detail of what is about to happen, fatalism written in the smoke that curls from his constant cigarettes. More than anything, he is the rugged, lackadaisical evocation of a Man That’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do.

You never expect him to survive in “Thunder Road”, not from the moment he first appears as Lucas Doolin running moonshine on the country roads of Kentucky from Harlan down to Memphis, avoiding not only the requisite Feds but the requisite rural moonshine conglomerate out to either convert him to their side or put him outta business. But that you never expect him to survive is not so much a sign of story weakness (“you can see it coming from a mile away” as they say) as the sense that such a life is simply a curtain of criminality slowly being drawn all around you.

Naturally Mitchum is hardly bothered by this prospect. The film’s critical monologue involves him explaining how his past bootlegging life was, as one that pre-dated his involvement in WWII, a different idea, moonshine distilled of a much purer (metaphorical) variety. It is an existence he has essentially given up on re-creating, knowing its time has passed and, thus, HIS time has passed. Life moves pretty fast, and when you’re a bootlegger turned soldier turned bootlegger you don’t have much time to stop and look around. Pretty soon you’ve missed it. Thus, he keeps making those illegal runs to Memphis, counting on the inevitable to catch up with him. Which it does, of course, just in time to coincide with the film’s conclusion, echoing an earlier shot that practically comes casked in foreshadowing.

This is a Mitchum project through and through. He concocted the story (James Atlee Phillips and Walter Wise received screenwriting credit), co-wrote the theme song and even co-directed much of the film if you choose to believe the post-picture legends. (That, or Arthur Ripley directed it.) “Thunder Road” props up his own legend as much as it carries him to his demise. He is provided a love interest in the form of a nightclub singer named Francie (real-life singer Keely Smith) who is woefully underwritten, a character without an interior, existing to shine a spotlight on Lucas and say wonderful things about him and how much she loves him and why she can’t bear to see him put his life on the line for a little grain alcohol. He loves her, sure, or says he does, because he knows he’s supposed to, but even in her elegant company he’s a lone wolf.

He receives not only a Reflective Character in Francie but a Rebellious Apprentice in the form of Robin, his younger brother, the ace mechanic who keeps Lucas’s automobile in tip-top shape. Robin dreams of running moonshine. Lucas aims not to let that happen by any means necessary. Robin is played by James Mitchum, son of Robert, which is a kind gesture by father, but I must report the facts and the facts are that while younger Mitchum is serviceable in most moments he cannot quite rise to the occasion for the pivotal scene when he calls out his big brother. And his kinda, sorta romance with Roxanna (Sandra Knight), meant as the movie’s gut-punch capstone, fizzles as a result.

Not that any of these problems are truly problematic. As stated, repeatedly, “Thunder Road” is a Mitchum film. You could have the young Eva Maria Saint begging Mitchum to set aside whiskey running and Kyle Reese trying to pull him off the ledge. Mitchum’d just smile that smile and smoke that cigarette and keep on truckin’.

Planet Earth Poet Laureate Bruce Springsteen, who famously ripped off the title of this film for a classic tune, once said: “I realized that after I put all those people in all those cars I was going to have to figure out someplace for them to go.” But in “Thunder Road” the movie the protagonist is never unaware of where he’s going.

Right off the cliff.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Pilot)

The mantra put forth near the end of the opening episode of “Trophy Wife” by the married couple at its forefront – Kate and Pete – goes like this: “I don’t know what I’m doing.” She says she doesn’t know what she’s doing and he says he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Often a show’s mantra can be turned around to poke holes in the show itself, but not this time. “Trophy Wife” establishes itself as a fairly evocative illustration of the struggle to raise kids, not knowing precisely how to go about doing it but doing it anyway because do it you must.

Struggling to raise kids, after all, is a staple of the American sitcom. The parents don’t know what they’re doing, the kids take advantage, hijinks ensue. If you went on a date with a Big Four Network exec and opened his/her medicine cabinet (which you ‘never would’) you would find a non-perishable bottle of this very formula. (And a vial of "Forest Rangering With The Stars".) And by no means am I claiming “Trophy Wife” does not heat and serve pre-packaged sitcom tropes. Does a child’s hamster die? Yes. Do the parents set forth on a suburban voyage to purchase a replace (or imposter) hamster? Of course. Yes, Malin Akerman, my Official Cinematic Crush, playing the role of Kate, bumbles into chairs and smacks ice queens on accident with her purse (and fondles her own “grapefruits”) and, sure, a lot of the one-liners feel as if they were found in the sofa cushions.

Yet the show has entirely in its favor this sort of supremely endearing chaotic quality. In a hospital waiting room right near the start it casts two tons of exposition on the audience to get us all caught up with the current situation and it’s never confusing and always entertaining. It just sorta powers through. Let me try to explain here……Kate is Pete’s (Bradley Whitford) wife, yes, but she’s his THIRD wife. Hence, “Trophy Wife.” But the term Trophy Wife is actually misleading (but it does look good on those promo shots accompanied by the hella comely Malin – am I right ABC, you marketing wizards, you). Pete’s not a smug jackanapes scouting for a status symbol. He likes Kate and Kate likes Pete and Kate likes Pete’s kids – a couple with Jackie (Michaela Watkins) and one with Dr. Diane Buckley (Marcia Gay Harden) – but the kids are suspicious of Kate because she’s just the next wife on the spousal assembly line. But Kate doesn’t just want to gossip and sleep and shop and chug vodka – though she does chug vodka, but hang on – and so she gets involved and makes an effort and wants to do right by her step-children and that’s how she ends up chugging vodka. (It all makes sense in its own context.)

Oh, and I’m sure that a stepmother chugging vodka to protect her stepdaughter will likely send some overprotective parents’ group into a hissy fit, but she does what she does for the kid. Everyone here is acting on behalf of the kids. That’s some noble shit, man, and it’s actually different from most sitcoms which prefer to employ the struggle to raise kids as the mere platform for crude jokes and wacky comedy that often comes at the kids' expense (which is ostensibly okay because it’s “not really about the kids"). “Trophy Wife” is intended as a comedy – and it is comedic, and I did laugh (The Diane Buckley Pool, anyone?) – but, more than anything, it’s loving, and I sort of loved this little pilot and this eclectic contemporary clan that clearly has differences that they can clearly put aside for the sake of the children even though the differences clearly remain intact. It’s a little bundle of enjoyable madness, this show.

I felt a like Kate Harrison, tossed into the middle of something, playing catching up, and wanting to play catch up and determined to play catch up, to stay the course. It’s sink or swim for this Trophy Wife, and for “Trophy Wife.” Kate swims. The show swims. I’m swimming. Buoyancy, baby.

Prisoners

There is an arresting visual moment in “Prisoners” when we literally see the gray raindrops that have been present essentially since the film’s grave inciting incident begin transform into wet snowflakes, fall giving way to winter right before our very eyes. It is not unlike an earlier moment when this thriller’s already unhinged premise seems to transform into something so sensationalist it jumps the shark. It would be nice if film could simply exist in a vacuum I suppose, but the recurring real world situation that kept populating my mind was Cleveland and the abduction of those three girls and the unspeakable horrors inflicted upon them. How can we know what anyone is truly capable of and what terror unknowingly lurks behind every door? This is the unsettling truth “Prisoners” grasps and throttles – for better or for worse – home.

A pair of families gather for Thanksgiving. All seems normal until the youngest daughter of each family suddenly goes missing. When they do, the rain begins to pour and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has never not solved a case, shows up. Speculation on an abductor centers around a musty motor home where the two young girls were seen playing. The motor home belongs to Alex (Paul Dano), whose glasses, hair and complexion are like Thriller Suspect 101. Alas, Alex, possessing an IQ of 10, can hardly mumble a sentence. After the requisite holding period he is released and returns home with his Aunt (Melissa Leo). Loki has his doubts about Alex’s innocence and so does Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), the blue collar father of the younger of the two missing girls.

Convinced Alex is responsible for the abduction and maddened by what he views as police inaction, Keller acts by abducting Alex, locking him up in an abandoned house and relentlessly torturing him in an effort to unearth the truth. This is not a spoiler if you have seen the preview nor is it really a spoiler if you haven’t, for this “twist” occurs fairly early and “Prisoners” is – to quote its own metaphor – a maze that far exceeds any single reveal. The film, in fact, is a good two-and-a-half hours. Overlong? It is, but I dare say director Denis Villeneuve’s intention is to actively impress upon us that length – just when we feel the road to whodunit? straightening out, we hit another curve.

“Prisoners” is the sort of the film that allows quality actors to delve deeply into the finer points of characterization. Jackman turns a sickly shade of pale and purposely plays at one note – thunderous. Gyllenhaal outfits his character with twitchy eyes, blinking repeatedly and rapidly in such a way that suggests they have been made to see more than they can believe (and says as much if not more than the stock introductory scene of his Thanksgiving dinner at a Chinese restaurant). So too does he come equipped with the teensiest tattoo of a cross on his thumb which plays directly off Keller’s own fascination with faith – the cross dangling around his neck and from his rearview mirror. Faith hangs over the whole film like its low skies, often fairly insistently, but often people of faith are very insistent in theirs.

Gyllenhaal and Jackman are, of course, not alone in the cast, joined by the adept Viola Davis as well as Terrence Howard – both of which comprise the couple of the second missing girl – and Maria Bello as Keller’s wife. Skilled as this trio is, they are primarily – interestingly (curiously?) – relegated to the sideline. Bello spends most of the movie zonked out on sleeping pills. Howard (sporting an excellent homage to the Cosby Sweater in his first scene) and Davis are meant to function as the conscience to Keller, but his conscience seems of little consequence and so they are more or less moved aside. The push and pull of Keller and Loki is the movie’s center.

The ethics at play in “Prisoners” are not convenient, and for that reason it is able to rise above its genre restrictions and requisite red herrings (particularly in the frustrating form of one character that just gets dropped in to distract the narrative). Ultimately its most fascinating theme is that of Keller’s absolutism. Faith, let’s face it, can be just as frightening as reassuring, and there is underlying commentary here about the modern day misappropriation of faith – I’m Right/You’re Wrong/No In Between.

That is what makes the end a puzzle. It's less ambiguous, I would argue, than a choose-your-own adventure, a modern-day Lady or the Tiger? Villeneuve is saying the question of what happens after the final cut is one not to be lightly considered, and not for him to presume to set himself up as the one person able to answer it. And so he leaves it with all of us: should one be made to pay for their sins or be left to wrestle with them in their own mind?

Blogging Trophy Wife

Some readers may recall Cinema Romantico's previous attempts at blogging a TV show - "New Girl" - ended in spectacular failure. Some readers may recall that I broke my vow to watch and blog the entire first season of "New Girl" partially on account of my Official Cinematic Crush Malin Akerman when the ratings success of "New Girl" caused TV execs to look toward more movie actresses to potentially fill half-hour sitcom roles. Movie actresses like......Malin Akerman. Knowing that my watching of "New Girl" could potentially aid and abet Ms. Akerman's presence in a crappy TV show, I could not in good conscience continue.

I quote myself: "Look, I know she's great and dry and funny on 'Children's Hospital' but this isn't what we want from Malin full time, is it? It can't be! Please! Tell me it isn't! She's a silver-screenster! If Ms. Akerman winds up on some TV show where she has to film an episode as noxious as 'The Landlord' that would be too much to bear! It would be one thing if she landed the lead on, say, a Showtime original with a no b.s., hard-charging role with a creator who played by no rules but his own, but this article makes it sound like we're talking Big Four Network and that is 'Sleepaway Camp' frightening."

Oh, but the fickle Gods of TV have a wicked sense of humor, for here comes Malin herself as the title character of the brand new Big Four (ABC) sitcom "Trophy Wife" - premiering tonight at 8:30 CST.

Imagine that instead of Malin and a bottle of water, that's me and a bottle of scotch.

I confess the thought of watching this show fills me with dread and anxiety in equal doses and yet......Malin is my Official Cinematic Crush. I must stand up for her. I will stand up for her. I will watch her TV show. So help me God, I will watch it right down to the end (maybe?) whenever that end may come to pass. And I will blog about it.

Having learned a few things from my last stab at this TV blogging business, however, I plan to go about it differently. In the case of "New Girl" I felt too aligned to pre-conceived notions (which is wildly unfair to any creative venture) and an ill-conceived need to extract extra meaning and submit advice to imaginary show-runners and publish the post in the airing's immediate aftermath.

This time I will merely watch and then write whatever the hell I feel like writing whenever the hell I feel like writing it. Call it: Recap Vomit. Join me, won't you, vomit bags in tow?

The Lifeguard

You know the trope: city-dwelling character is forced by circumstance to un-reluctantly come home only to eventually find the values at home do and always have superseded those in the big ol' mean city and decides to remain home forever and forever. The late, great Roger Ebert once wrote: "I await a movie where a New Yorker tries moving to a small town and finds that it just doesn't reflect his warm-hearted big city values." "The Lifeguard", the brainchild of writer/director Liz W. Garcia, seems for a time, boldly, ready to heed Ebert's advice. Alas, convictions in cinema are harder to maintain than come by, and eventually it whimpers across the finish line.

Kristen Bell is Leigh. Twenty-nine (and ten months) and a reporter in New York, and about to encounter a solid dose of Symbolism in the form of a story involving a tiger chained up in an apartment. She packs her things and flees for her hometown in Connecticut.

There, in a scarily easygoing manner, she reverts not merely to an old life but to childhood. She moves back in with her parents (Amy Madigan and Adam LeFevre). Mom is suspect but Leigh is Daddy's Little Girl, and Daddy treats her just like one. She reclaims her teenage job as a lifeguard, as if it was just there waiting all these years for her return. She re-groups with a couple old high school pals. Todd (Martin Starr) works at an art gallery and is still in the closet. Mel (Mamie Gummer), assistant principal at the high school, is married and trying to have a baby.

A character asks Leigh: "Are you having a nervous breakdown?" The brusque opening of quick cuts and character fragments suggests without specifically saying so that is, in fact, what Leigh is undergoing, but that people ask her without much genuine follow up suggests an authenticity. No one really thinks anyone is in the midst of a nervous breakdown. That's just a cocktail party term for depression. Right?

I think it's highly legitimate that Leigh is in the midst of a serious and troubling rift with reality and appreciate that "The Lifeguard" suggests this possibility without belaboring it. For instance, her relationship with a disgruntled sixteen year old, Little Jason (David Lambert), seeking to light out for Vermont, is presented with little depth or texture. It's not unlike a teenage romance, driven primarily by hormones and an insatiable desire of I-Don't-Know-What-I-Want. Watching Leigh slip into the fictitious warmth of childhood routines like a Liz Lemon Slanket is unsettling.

And creepy. The film brings levity to her relationship with Little Jason, specifically in the way that an increasingly (convincingly) frazzled Mel realizes she has to stop looking the other way, act her age and confront her friend and the student of whom she is ostensibly a caretaker. I, like many others, have grown tired of movies presenting age-inappropriate relationships without so much as a hint of consequence, and here is "The Lifeguard" anteing up and painting not in black and white but ashen gray.

If it could have seen that toughness through to the last gritty frame it might have been something truly special with a headlining performance from Bell that is long on the courage to be unsympathetic. Alas, the film, like the innumerable indie rock songs filling the soundtrack with emotional cues, opts for a shortcut to sentimentality - dousing the flotsam ridden pool with chlorine, if you will.

Leigh's ultimate decision is made not so much on her own as by another character's decision - the best friend of Little Jason in an act not to be revealed. This could have suggested further cowardice on the part of Leigh, paralysis in the art of thinking for herself, but instead comes across like a forced Turning Point.

All's well that ends well, and Leigh literally drives into a sunset that reflects off her tear-stained face. It seems we are made to believe she has re-found her sense of self and purpose and meaning. But then why does the film close with Leigh looking directly into the camera? Is that just a stab at flashy filmmaking? Or is Leigh asking us what we think?

I think she still might need some therapy.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973)

"You've got your whole life ahead of you." Seriously. Seriously. When do people stop espousing this pseudo-philosophy? I heard it in my teens and I heard it in my twenties and I've heard it here in my thirties. I can only imagine I'll still hear it up into my forties and fifties for the simple fact that late in "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams" middle-aged Harry Walden (Martin Balsam) recites those words to his middle-aged wife Rita (Joanne Woodward). Bless Rita's heart, however, because although she does not vocally tell off her spouse we can easily tell she is mentally calling shenanigans. This whole film, in fact, is about Rita standing at the dividing line......strike that!......reaching the realization that she has already long since passed the dividing line of the point when your whole life is ahead of you. Most of her life is now behind her - summer wishes have shriveled up, winter dreams have died. (And a Merry Christmas to you too!!!)

As the film opens we find Rita and Harry sleeping in the same room but in separate beds. I shook my head and thought, “Oh, cinema, you and your whimsical innocence.” But then I remembered this wasn’t the Thirties. This was the Seventies. The Swinging Sixties had already happened. “Last Tango In Paris” had been released a year earlier. They’re sleeping in those separate beds for a reason! Even so, if ever a movie was meant for the Seventies it was “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.” That washed out look that seems to strangle out sunlight, prevalent in so many films of the era, provides a perfect undertone to the film’s purposeful oppressiveness. Their home, so spacious and ornate is nonetheless made to look like a dank, if well-designed, dungeon. “When did it get so dark in here?” Rita wonders aloud.

Woodward would have merely been 43 at the time of the film’s release but manages to play at least 10 years older, skillfully creating an advancing spinster with a whiny voice that often seeks to nag even in the most gentle of situations. (Listening to her pick away at her spouse when he’s in the midst of a mini-breakdown at Bastogne is cringe-inducing.) We see this is hereditary when her mother comes to visit. Her mother is played by Silvia Sidney in a performance that evokes Elaine Stritch on “30 Rock” – just less comedic and more harsh. Mother and Daughter attend a showing of Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries.” Mother has a heart attack and dies. Having a heart attack at a showing of “Wild Strawberries” threatens to make the Symbolicometer go haywire, but despite this and a few sensationalist dream sequences the film still manages to keep its wits.

Her mother’s death, of course, prompts a life re-evaluation, but that evaluation is more a downward spiral than a victory march. She clings to an old farmhouse as a means to cling to her past. She has long since lost contact with her son who apparently went gay and lives with a man. The film never quite goes so far as to say Rita not only disapproves but is disgusted by her son’s life choice, but the ever-fearless Woodward quietly hints in that direction. We initially suspect her husband is the standard uninspiring cipher who only exists to provide our female protagonist a reason for being so wrapped up in herself. Ah, but the script slowly unearths a sweet, patient man more in love with his wife than she is with him.

The film, in fact, sort of becomes as much as his as hers late in the second act when they take that aforementioned trip to Bastogne where he fought in WWII. There he re-connects with his past, and his re-connection aids in her kinda, sorta enlightenment. Decisions are made, steps taken, perhaps “you can see them coming”, but perhaps there are all sorts of decisions we can see coming in old age that we desperately try to stave off making because to make them means we have to cut significant emotional chords to which we have long clung. And maybe that’s why Harry tells Rita she has her whole life ahead of her, and why people keep telling me I have my whole life ahead of me even though I see so much of my life in a rearview mirror I sometimes wish I could just blend into.

Days get shorter. Years go faster. The world closes in. Rita's closing line - "I want to moved into a smaller apartment" - is, I reckon, meant as a rejection of the dark, empty representation of her current living space. I wondered if maybe it signaled she was ready to just slip into a Manhattan cocoon and hibernate in old age.

Over-Analyzing The Machete Kills Trailer Part 3

We're back! The third trailer (version: red band) for Robert Rodriguez's forthcoming "Machete Kills" just dropped via IGN. The previous installments of over-analyzing these previews have involved much speculation regarding the specifc role being played by fair devious maiden Lady Gaga. This latest trailer, however, officially ceases all speculation. Her specific role is now clear.

Lady Gaga is playing the baddest mama jama since Beatrix Kiddo sheathed her Hanzo sword.

How do we know this to be true? We know this to be true for two reasons.

1.) Lady Gaga is apparently driving a Volkswagen Bus.

2.) Lady Gaga, while smoking a cigarette, thrusts a gun out the window of her Volkswagen Bus and melodiously declares "Hola, motherfucker."

I already know she will be defeated by Machete, but I also know that her defeat will simply be one of those sweet-scented lies told on the silver screen to appease patrons yet to find true belief in Our Lady Of Perpetual Gaga.

David Thomson & Living In Dream

David Thomson is by far my favorite non-everyday film critic. No one sees the cinema nor writes about the cinema in quite the same way as him, which is among the highest compliments one can bestow upon a writer of any format. I had long held the impression his ostensible biography of Nicole Kidman was mere trash, a mash note, a love letter extended over nearly 300 pages. This notion, as I should have known all along, was utterly mis-held.

It is not a true biography at all. Rather it is a fascinating, hilarious and really, really strange look not simply at the exemplary career of Ms. Kidman as an actress but as her place in the culture as a celebrity. I won't even tell you where he goes with his chapter on Nicole's Chanel No. 5 ad. Only Thomson, man.

Thomson's prose never fails to routinely leave me joyfully reeling, looking up from the page for a minute or two to ruminate on some sentence (or series of them). One passage in particular from "Nicole Kidman" that was not even about Nicole Kidman knocked off my proverbial reading glasses. I loved it. I loved every word of it. I have included the passage verbatim below and will offer no context nor commentary. I simply offer it for you to read and consider.

"And here we come to a remarkable and distressing paradox in the American or the mainstream movie: that while the medium is founded on fantasy involvement, still so much of its material is held up to to short-sighted and depleting schemes of what is plausible. The audience, the customers, have always gone to see movies to make an imaginative journey - that of rising from their seats in the dark and going up to exist on the bright screen, in the sublimity of heightened behavior. But as if we're ashamed of yielding so much to the fanciful in America, we then go to great neurotic lengths to persuade ourselves that the action of movies is 'plausible.' And so the medium is innately dreamlike, while the content is ostensibly photographic and lifelike. Thus, we hope, we keep faith with our existence as a hardworking, rational, scientifically minded, capitalist culture - as opposed to people living in dream."