The Next Voice You Hear...

The Next Voice You Hear... (William A. Wellman, 1950) Leo, the M-G-M lion doesn't roar in The Next Voice You Hear... probably so as not to offend any Christians with Roman Coliseum associations that might produce a "thumbs down."  But, that's not the oddest thing in a picture steeple full with them.  The wildest thing is to see William "Wild Bill" Wellman's name as director—maybe he's atoning for all those gangster pictures he did in the '30's—associated with its theme.  On a Tuesday, at 8:30 in the evening when Mary Smith ("American," as she's identified in the credits, and as well she should be as she's played by Nancy Davis, soon to be Nancy Reagan) is helping son Johnny (Gary Gray) with his long division, and Dad Joe ("American," played by James Whitmore) having finished doing the dishes for his pregnant wife after a typical pot-roast dinner, and settled down with a beer and his paper, that something peculiar happens on the radio.

Not that we get to hear it.  God speaks on the radio.  "This is the voice of God.  I'll be with you for the next five days."  Joe, a bit stumped, walks in to tell his family, and the first thing out of mother Mary's mouth is "Was it one of those Orson Welles things?"

Funny.  Joe thinks a local kid is pulling a stunt with a ham-radio kit, but a phone call reveals that another neighbor heard the same voice interrupting another program on another station.  "Did it sound like Lionel Barrymore?" asks Mary, out of the blue.  After the first night, Joe's pals at the Ajax Aeronautics factory have their own speculations "It's mass-psycho-orology. Only fat-heads are gonna fall for a gag like that!"

But, the next night, God shows up again.  The stations try to record it, but nothing shows up on the electrical transcriptions.  More people are hearing it, and it's determined that it's a global phenomenon.  And people are starting to seriously freak out.  Before the week is over, Joe "American" is going to go on a major bender, when all he wanted to do is buy a pack of smokes, and the resulting loss of stability splinters his family.

Not that he was any too stable to begin with.  What keeps The Next Voice You Hear from sinking into a sermon swamp is the casting of Whitmore and, yes, even Davis as the American couple.  Whitmore is no leading man material, but is a facile actor who pulls off charming even when he's a bit of a louse.  Here, he's impatient to a fault, perpetually late for work, flinty with co-workers, disparaging of supervisors, and even he and the wife do a little sniping back and forth at each other.  There's one sequence where son Johnny, so used to Dad's frustrating ritual of resuscitating a faltering car engine, mimes it for Mom split-seconds before the sound effects of the effort come clanking through the door.  It's not dysfunctional to any degree, but it is refreshingly a couple notches below "Father Knows Best."

Credit screenwriter Charles Schnee and Wellman for daring to throw a little real conflict (and a healthy dose of irony) into the thing to keep audiences out of a diabetic coma, and to make it as palatably earnest as one of Norman Corwin's inspirational radio-plays.  

And should one get all-blustery and harumph about the overt religious message, one should bear in mind that the next year The Day the Earth Stood Still would cloak the homilies in the shiny jump-suits of science-fiction.

Nebraska

Making Things Right
or
And Everything Looks Worse in Black and White

There's a story that Peter Bogdanovich got sick of telling during all the press junkets he did for The Last Picture Show about why he shot in black and white rather than color.  Truth was, that he started test-shots of the Archer City location (author Larry McMurtry's home town) in color, but the town always looked too good, and didn't have the sense of bleakness that he wanted.  The story goes that he went to Orson Welles (who was staying at his house) and mused maybe he should shoot the movie in black and white. "Of COURSE you'll shoot it in black and white!" Welles barked back.  After repeating the story over and over again at press interview after press interview, the last few times Bogdanovich simplified his answer: "Because Orson Welles told me to."

I don't think Alexander Payne shot Nebraska in black and white for that reason, or because it might recall the cover of the same-titled Bruce Springsteen album.  But, I think the bleakness is there, running as an under-current through the film as a view of life—not rosy and pink with vitality, green with verdancy, but shades of gray and the occasional extreme of black or white—the palette for a story of folks with limited choices in the nuances of life...and truth.  But, lest you think this one's about old folks with one foot in the grave, or Alzheimer's or something like that, it's not.  Not really.  It's about living life before you run out of it, and grabbing any kind of dignity out of that life, despite Nature's determination to take it away in any way it can.

And not to mention your relatives and acquaintances.

It's also a damned funny movie, in the same low-key, sometimes painful way that its writer, Bob Nelson, wrote sketches for the late, lamented "Almost Live!" show which seemed to focus more on human dysfunction, rather than Pacific Northwest eccentricities.  The old saw "familiarity breeds contempt" is apt here, as the extended Gates family, long separated (for good reason, apparently), is blandly caustic, bringing up family histories and past imperfections as grist for the family grinding mill.

The Gates clan watch a baseball game: Rance Howard (far left);
Bruce Dern (asleep in the back) and Will Forte (placating, far right)
"Wow, this feels too much like real life" said one of the patrons in Nebraska's audience.

The story's simple and seemingly uneventful, but mindful of David Lynch's The Straight Story.  Woodrow Gates (Bruce Dern) is picked up by the police walking the highway in Billings, Montana.  "Where ya goin'?" says the Sheriff. "Headed down the road there,' says Woody, none too helpfully.

O-kay, there's a little detour to the police station, where his son David (Will Forte) comes to pick him up. "So you told the Sheriff you were walking to Nebraska..."  Woody's wife (June Squibb) won't drive him, he doesn't have a car, and he won't be given money for the bus. The reason he wants to go to Nebraska (Lincoln, specifically) is because he got a certificate in the mail from a magazine promotion company saying that he could have won a million dollars. Woody doesn't "buy" that it's a way to get him to buy magazines; he thinks he's won it, so he's walking to Lincoln to get his million.  Why didn't he just mail it in? "I'm not going to trust the mail with a million dollars."  Makes perfect sense.  Walking, though, doesn't.

There's no sympathy at home.  Wife Kate won't entertain any of this "I didn't know the son-of-a-bitch wanted to be a millionaire!  Know what I'd do with a million dollars? I'd put him in a home!!"  Brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk) thinks Dad's senile and doesn't want to hear of it.  Only David will entertain the notion of driving Woody to Lincoln, if only for the chance to connect with the old man.  They set off with some hitches and fits along the way, eventually stopping at relatives' to get a breather from what would seem to be a continuing series of minor disasters.  But, his old stomping grounds bring no comfort, as word soon gets around that Woody's driving to Lincoln to get a million dollars—a sum that strikes everyone dumb...and a little bit stupid. Old debts are brought up, and quite a few people want a part of that million dollars whether they deserve it or not...and for some reason, nobody thinks twice about how Woody might have come into that money—the amount leaves them a little blinkered.  And envious.  And opportunistic.

For David, it's an opportunity to gain some perspective (just the ability to see Woody's past surroundings adds a little knowledge) and, as he's stuck in a pattern of "getting by," some insight into both Dad and himself.  By the time the two ride off into the last shot—one of the loveliest and most potent of the past year's movies, a black-and-white sunset—a nice, warming resolution has been reached.  But not too warming.  It is a sunset.  And it is in black-and-white, lest it betray any cheer or a rosy sensibility.  Payne, evidently, did make a color version of Nebraska to satisfy some niche contractual requirements for the studio (Paramount Vantage), but has expressed hope that it never sees the light of electronics.

OF COURSE, it won't.  It would be a completely different movie, and a less effective one.

Nebraska is a Full-Price Ticket.

Now You See Me

"Sometimes The Magic Works, Part 2"
or 
The Slightest of Hands

Bullwinkle: Hey, Rocky!  Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Rocky: But that trick NEVER works!

The tagline for Now You See Me, the latest film by Louis Letterier (who brought to you the modern version of Clash of the Titans, a not too bad film, actually, as empty-headed gladiator-myth movies go) is "The closer you look, the less you see," and, even though that's supposed to be saying something about the power of illusion, it couldn't be more appropriate for the movie it's supposed to be selling.  You'll get the most out of this movie if you're asleep during it.*  

Better yet, don't get rooked into it, and do the opposite of the film's title and don't see it at all.  Because there's movie-magic, where you feel the sense of wonder and amazement, and there's the kind that just makes you feel that you've been "taken."  Now You See Me makes me feel like a rube.

And that's the mastery of marketing.  Great cast, with a bunch of actors who've got taste and have done terrific things before...and James Franco's brother, Dave...so there must be something to this, right?  I mean, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine,** Mark Ruffalo, Mélanie Laurent,*** Michael Kelly, and the Zombieland duo of Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson.  No slouches there.  

But the movie is such a drab circling-camera edit-fest (it feels like it was shot on a Roomba) that you know you're being misled somewhere, and you're being made to not think about what's going on on-screen, because, ultimately it makes no sense whatsoever.  The point of the movie is distraction, and there the movie succeeds quite well.  It's so busy and flashy, you stop thinking and take in the swirling, swooping actors and camera moves, and let them wash over you...and your brain stops. It's only at the end that you realize that the movie is a white-rabbit and it's disappeared, if it even existed in the first place.  Orson Welles said movie-making is smoke and mirrors, and there are plenty of mirrors here, but the result is pure smoke.

What's it about?  Four street magicians Daniel (Eisenberg) card-sharp, Merrit (Harrelson) a mentalist, Henley (Isla Fisher) escape artist, and Jack (Franco) pick-pocket, all accomplished, all a little larcenous, are recruited by a mysterious presence (who has surreptitiously observed all of them disguised in a hoodie—what, they couldn't see the face?) to form a guerrilla magic team called "The Four Horsemen."  They, after a jump of time, go from nothing to large coordinated shows, bankrolled by an insurance tycoon (Caine).  The first, in Vegas, involves the seeming transportation of a French citizen to his bank in France, that results in the sucking of millions of euros out of its vault, and spraying it throughout the large theater crowd...as if by magic.  This attracts the attention of the FBI in the form of agent Dylan Rhodes (Ruffalo) and Interpol's agent Alma Dray (Laurent), who pursue the clues and try to ascertain how they pulled off the heist.  Along the way, they interview Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman), a magic debunker, who has a vested interest in exposing the Horsemen for a series of buzz-kill videos and reality shows.  He shows the agents how it was done, then stops there, being very cagey about what the next scam will be.  As it turns out, it's in New Orleans, where Caine's insurance magnate tries to buy off Freeman to no avail.

At this point, you're wondering not about the "how," but the "why?"  What's everybody's motivation in this?  Freeman's stakes are relatively paltry—the group has just gotten started, who would care—so you begin to suspect he's behind it all.  Caine's interest in unimaginable, as he's putting out a large outlay of disposable cash for events that have no residual value, and leave him open to accessory and fraud charges.  And the agents' zeal is largely enigmatic (matching those of the Horsemen).  What's everybody in this for, other than to propel the movie?  It's a bit like The Sting (which had the guts to put the motivation up front) only skin-deep and with shallow surface-flash. Letterier and script-writers Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt provide no fore-thought, but just speed things up and turn on the pyrotechnics, so there's no time for questions and little room for answers, while the actors go through their paces with looks of ambivalence so as not to betray anything.

There's not that much to betray.  Once everything has been revealed (save for the fate of the Horsemen), there's no satisfaction, only a feeling of emptiness and pointlessness ("Really?  All that for that?") and then you begin to question everyone's behavior during the film, which makes no sense given the actions displayed throughout the movie.  One almost thinks that the film might have multiple endings, depending on which cineplex you go to, so tenuous is the resolution and back-story.  It doesn't bear close examination.

But then, we were warned.  "The closer you look, the less you see."

And it has nothing, absolutely nothing up its sleeve.

Now You See Me is a Cable-Watcher.


 * No Morgan Freeman jokes, please...

** Well, Michael Caine, he used to sign up for supermarket openings...

*** ...spent the whole movie wondering where I'd seen her before—Inglorious Basterds.

No End in Sight

This week, we're re-publishing some reviews of the films from the post 9-11 environment.

"There are 500 ways of doing it wrong, and only 2 or 3 ways of doing it right. Little did we know we'd have to go through all 500 ways."

Charles Ferguson's comprehensive dissection of the Iraq War is as clinical as an autopsy--and just as much fun. It's the only movie in memory that has the bodyguards and security force listed in both the front and end credits. Using news footage from a variety of sources and interviews with a comprehensive number of people who had boots in the sand (but only one of the decision makers whohad their heads there), Ferguson precisely points to the errors made by the bureaucrats in the Bush administration, who made up their minds before they had the facts, and then cherry-picked the ones (however few) that skewed with their assumptions. It's a pattern that has represented this administration from...well, probably from its inception. Rather than look at the facts and draw conclusions (what's called the "scientific" method), these officials use an Academic approach, the lawyer's approach, the PR approach, and sift the facts that much their presumptions. Then to sell it, they spin it with homilies from the glib ("stuff happens!") to the ignorant ("there is no insurgency in Iraq, but there is a high degree of domestic violence") when the results are not what they expected. And the people in charge of carrying out these pipe-dreams are the bureaucrats and neophytes who are owed a favor, and under-perform in times of crisis.

And when they resign under a cloud, they get a medal.

One gets more than a sense of blundering from No End in Sight, one gets a sense of the arrogance in the face of incompetence, and lays blame on four individuals, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, with able assistance from Paul Wolfowitz, none of whom served in the military, but asked that military to do the impossible while tying their hands.

The interviews are culled from both the U.S. and Iraq, reporters, military, active and retired, grunts and advisors, the haunted looks on their faces and the barely-contained disgust in their tones speak volumes of how success was constantly foiled by the decisions of the Bush administration and its cronies who seemed determined to follow the least effective, most destructive, most expensive path, leaving Iraq with sporadic electricity, water every other day, cities in ruin and a populace half of which is unemployed due to American actions, and the other half subject to violence and the constant threat of kidnapping and desperate to find a solution--any solution. In this chaos, with a voild in leadership, the desire for a strong leader is seen in the fundamentalist clergy, who seem destined to be the next elected leaders and the enemies of the U.S.

"I don't "do" quagmires," says Rumsfeld (twice) in the film. Wrong again. He does them exceedingly well.

No End in Sight> is a must-see, because it goes beneath the headlines that have hardly explained the war to the American public. And it goes a long way in explaining how corruption of the political system can lead to high levels of incompetence, as has been seen with both Iraq and New Orleans. And it does so without any snarky sarcasm, or cheap shots (at least none that aren't provided by the Administration's own words and actions). But there's no audience for the information. In the huge auditorium where I saw the film, there were only two people: me, and another guy.

No End in Sight is a full-price ticket.

 

A Night at the Opera

A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935) A career resuscitation for the zany Marx Brothers (or 3/4 of them—Zeppo does not make the studio transition with brothers Groucho, Harpo, and Chico), this was the first film made with the boys under their new contract with M-G-M, under the tutelage of Irving Thalberg. It was Thalberg's bright idea to take the Vaudeville vets back to Square One—back to the hit-days of The Cocoanuts, as they play glorified Rosencrantz's and Guildensterns to a couple of love-crazy kids for whom life is throwing a cold shower. It rather douses the film, as well, and softening the brothers' hellz-a-poppin' approach of the latter Paramount films. Unlike their previous film, Duck Soup, anarchy does not reign, but merely drizzles a little, getting the floor wet enough to allow the "bad guys" and authority figures to slip and fall.

I prefer the latter, where the focus is on the insanity of the brothers intruding on the niceties of the real world, with only rare interludes into unmolested cinema "reality."  It was a nice satiric touch to make them the heads of a small bankrupt nation who aspire to greatness (and economic recovery) by going to war,* and the send-up's of blind patriotism ring true in any decade.

Sadly, at the time, that didn't translate into boffo box-office, Thalberg's view of Duck Soup's drop in attendance was "there was no one to root for" (translation: anyone normal) so, starting with this film, the percentages were reversed.  There are lulls of song between the comedy bits, appropriate given the opera background of the story, giving breathing spaces to let audiences catch their collective breath—the kinds of interludes that prompted Groucho (in the film Horse Feathers**) to break the fourth wall to turn to the cinema audience and grouse: "I have to stay, but that's no reason the rest of you can't go to the lobby for a quick smoke or something!"

A Night at the Opera (written by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Al Boasberg, and, reportedly, the great Buster Keaton) sees Groucho as false-impressario Otis P. Driftwood, under contract and slightly under-thumb of society-craving Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont).  Chico is the manager of Riccardo (Allan Jones), who aspires to opera stardom and is in love with Rosa (Miss Kitty Carlisle—as she was known as a panelist on "To Tell the Truth").  Harpo is the dresser of Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), a gas-bag opera star,who also has designs on Rosa.  Immediately it becomes a case of clashing egos, thwarted love and abuse of power and entitlement, perfect diva-size targets for the Marxes to lampoon.  It's safe and sane, such a pity.  But, there is enough rich material to satisfy Marx Brothers fans.

And, thanks to the wonders of technology, you can skip over the other parts if you so desire.***  Where's my remote?  (Probably under Mrs. Claypool)

Still, one must be grateful.  Half a classic film is better than no classic at all. 

* Mussolini took Duck Soup as a personal insult and had it banned in Italy.

** Did it ever occur to you that the titles for the first Marx Brothers films (except for The Cocoanuts)  could be euphmisms for "Bull-shit?" Well, it certainly occurred to me!

*** In his review of A Night at the Opera, Roger Ebert says that is exactly what he does.

No Strings Attached

"Turning Natalie Portman Into a Girl"
or
"That 'Flippy' Thing You Did?  Good Call."

"SUCH a chick-flick!" said one of the girls sitting in front of me at the conclusion of No Strings Attached, the new rom-com with Natalie Portman (who exec-produced, as if you didn't have ENOUGH reasons to hate her) and Ashton Kutcher.  This one might be the most negligible film in the 12 month span which will see her in five new movies (based on previews, I think Thor might actually be the weakest link), having a kid, getting married, and probably winning an Oscar (Geez, Nat,' over-achieving much?).

And, yeah, total chick-flick, but one with a tiny spin to it, although it still falls into the "happily-ever-after" formula they've followed since the days when we innocently worried that Doris Day might lose her chastity to Rock Hudson.  No such worries here.  There's a lot of hay-rolling in this one, body-double or no, although we see more of Kutcher's tush than hers (for a change).  Virtue is not the issue here, but "true love,"* now permanently split, I guess, from sex (not that they really got along).

But, and this is the "neat twist," it is Portman's Emma Kurtzman, who has commitment issues, not, as is typical, the male of the species. "I'm not really an affectionate person," she blandly tells her camp-buddy Adam (they keep "meeting-cute" throughout their lives, which in movie terms means they're destined to be together (Hell, they're in a romantic comedy—of course, they're destined to be together!).  But, when both are "available," they have a brief encounter (clocked at 45 seconds), that puts Emma in mind that, rather than suffering through that whole "relationship thing" that they become "friends with benefits," casual sex partners available at the drop of a text message.  Then, in a Hawksian role-reversal, which as in His Girl Friday, makes the original premise snap into focus a little better, it is Kutcher's tv-assistant director who wants something more, as in commitment, from which Portman's Emma wrinkles her nose, rolls her eyes and turns on her heel.  It gets complicated.  It gets messy.  It gets resolved.

This sounds like a dreadful premise, but for all the "R"-rated language and suggestiveness (though never veering into "bro-mance" crudeness), and the seemingly-required "safe" arc of the storyline,** it is a clever and funny movie in the particulars, thanks in no small part to Elizabeth Meriwether's clever screenplay, a less-leaden-than-usual direction by Ivan Reitman, and a splendid ensemble above and below the title.  Incidents and details seem fresh and buoy you up, disguising the fact that there may be some clockwork mechanism behind the face, and the cast makes the most of these moments, making it all play fast and a little loose (with the exception of Kevin Kline, who is just a little practiced and arch as Kutcher's never-grown-up father, but that could be explained away as he's an actor).  Portman manages to make her "stick-in-the mud" Emma stiff and likeable simultaneously, and is only too happy to sacrifice her dignity in scenes (she has a great drunken wobble-walk in high-heels that's priceless), and Kutcher—who gets a lot of stick for just being Ashton Kutcher—doesn't take himself so seriously that he avoids turning winsomeness into weakness.  Both's comic timing makes for a good chemistry, despite the obstacles their characters regularly throw between each other.  In the end, it is two people's trip to normalcy in a chaotic world that seems to want to either crush them or ignore them, and only by narrowing their focus to each other can they achieve the specialness they think they deserve.

No Strings Attached is a Matinee.


* ...and, coincidentally, Cary Elwes, Westley from The Princess Bride, is in this, although discretely disguised behind a nerdlinger beard, so he doesn't pose a realistic threat to Kutcher.

** One of these days I have to finish that post on Judd Apatow.

The Next Three Days

"Thinking Outside the Cell-Block"
or
"It Doesn't Matter What We Believe"

Director Paul Haggis you either love or you hate.  The haters find him manipulative and obvious (I'll buy the second charge, but movies, even documentaries, are—du-uh!—manipulative by their very nature) and will never forgive him for making Crash, which beat out Brokeback Mountain for the Best Picture Oscar.*  The lovers, well, there aren't too many of them outside the movie industry—but Clint Eastwood and the Bond producers love him, and that's good enough for me.

His third film, The Next Three Days, which he wrote and directed,** tells the story of a couple (with child) who are separated, when she (Elizabeth Banks) is arrested, tried and convicted for murder.  Her husband (Russell Crowe), a school teacher, exhausts their finances—selling two homes—and all legal recourses, trying to prove her innocence.  After three years of incarceration, her child doesn't even acknowledge her (having lived half his life without her), and after her last appeal is turned down, she attempts suicide.

Time to think outside the box...the legal system, and the penal system.  The civilized courses have failed...as a matter of course.  It's time to take action, and matters...into one's own hands.

In a way, this is the same movie Haggis has been making all along, his thesis converted into an action plot device more positive in its usage than negative in its omission.  Both Crash and In the Valley of Elah feature protagonists trying to do more than the expected by-the-book (or society) response, to subvert the easy knee-jerk "comfortable" reaction, and (I dunno) think a little deeper.  He seeks the help of a multi-prison escapee (Liam Neeson, in a too-short cameo), who gives him a broad picture of the strategies of going over the wall, and more importantly, staying out.  One of the first things he says may be what's written on the first page of Haggis' screenwriting notebook, as it informs so much of his work: "You have to do a lot of lookin'—things that disrupt the day-to-day routine."  That semi-somnambulent day-to-day routine has been the loam Haggis has toiled in over the years, and in this film, he finds a protagonist who tries to take advantage of it, rather than subvert it.*** 

It's a heist film, basically, with human valuables.  It is also, for a brief time, an "incredible mess" movie as Crowe's John Brennan must—painfully—learn the ropes of the outlaw life (and occasionally be beaten with them).  This pays off later in the film—well, nearly everything pays off later in the film—as the "anything that could go wrong" scenarios start piling up in the film's nerve-rattling desperate finale, and one remembers how those early efforts only served to make matters worse.  The barriers that Brennan must overcome are represented by a filming scheme that places so much of the film behind screens and windows of various opacities—a traditional trope of prison films (it just doesn't happen so much out in the so-called open, as it does in here—Haggis wants us to know there are traps inside and outside prison).

Great cast.  Crowe is nicely casual initially, then gradually turns into the ragged obsessive/compulsive he needs to be, Banks does drama as well as she does comedy (very), and, beyond Neeson, there are nice cameos by Daniel Stern, Olivia Wilde (as a divorcee...really?)...and particularly, Brian Dennehy, who, with the least amount of dialogue, makes the most of his scenes.

There will, no doubt, be an increase in interest in "bump"-keys, and breaking into vehicles with tennis-balls, and Haggis even throws a bone to his critics by purposely leaving a plot-thread frustratingly unresolved.  It's a good film, professionally done, and with enough twists and turns to keep one engaged, while still taking the time—one of the critical elements the film focusses on—to keep things realistic, and not turning the down-to-earth perps into clairvoyant superheroes.  I'd say it was a matinee if the scope reached a bit more, but, as it is...

The Next Three Days is a Rental.  A good one. 


* A decision I've always agreed with: I think Crash was reaching for something to say—especially about the 7-10 split of a city that is Los Angeles, and the casualness of racism as the easy way out.  Brokeback Mountain, although I admired its photography and I thought Heath Ledger had the best cowboy voice in movie history (great work, that—Jake Gyllenhaal, not so much) felt too much like a Joan Crawford movie in reverse-drag.  Mellerdrama at its sawdustiest.

** After Crash and In the Valley of Elah, The Next Three Days is not original—it is based on the French film Pour Elle (Anything for Her, 2008)

*** Even a late-minute extreme act by one of the protagonists is an expression of trying to break out of the routine, to think outside the box (or in this case, the van) and break the lock-step the other is in.

Nowhere Boy

"Playing the Chords You're Dealt"
or
"Portrait of the Walrus as a Young Man"

"Half of What I Say is Meaningless/

But I Say it Just to Reach You/

Julia"

John Lennon, after Khalil Gibran

It's always going to be John Lennon who is the focus of dramas based on The Beatles; there have been a couple already (even two about his assassin) and PBS has Lennon Naked in the wings.  No biographies of McCartney (no drama, really), Harrison (no dharma, really), or Starkey (trying to think of the last movie about a drummer...).  It's always Lennon.  Partially because he's capital-F Fascinating, but also because he was so capital-F "F'd up."

All of The Beatles were born into a world in flux, all born during the second World War, and, in turn, they would change the world, as they themselves were changed by having that world screaming at their feet.  But, that's The Beatles story.

Lennon's story is as fractured as his snarky-twee published stories are.  Raised by his strict Auntie Mimi and his jocular Uncle George, he barely escaped the Strawberry Field Salvation Army orphanage—a place that he would ultimately turn into a personal childhood playground, given the choice—(Odd, that Lennon was forever looking at alternatives to his situation as an answer...even the bad ones—he was never satisfied, until the end).  His father, Alf, was a merchant marine and never home.  His mother, Julia, was a perpetual teen-mother, bi-polar, substance-abuser and sex-addict.  Mimi took John to keep him close to Julia (rather than with Alf), while simultaneously keeping them apart.  No wonder he was never comfortable.

Sam Taylor-Wood's Lennon bio-pic Nowhere Boy (one of the few real references to Beatles songs in the thing) tells the story of Lennon's turbulent teen years—can you imagine being in charge of Lennon when he was going through puberty?—when he was flushing through some independence, experiencing second-hand death, sex, and music, all swirling through a loyalty-abandonment battle when he meets his long-lost Mother...and begins to understand the circumstances of his own almost Dickensian story.  That Julia also inspires his dedication to music, and the forming of his band The Quarreymen (the proto-Beatles), whose first concert starts to lock in the relationships that would inform the rest of his life, makes this movie a bit like being fortunate enough to watch a lightning strike.  It makes great drama,  and the screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh does a masterful job of making a familar story fresh, and putting in the comedic grout that informed Lennon's manner, while also capturing in smart, short-touches portraits of McCartney (Thomas Sangster) (their first meeting is wonderfully indicative) and Harrison (Sam Bell).

Kristin Scott Thomas does a great job of showing the brittle side of Aunt Mimi, while also quietly showing why she was such a good co-conspirator with her charge.  Anne-Marie Duff's Julia is a girl-child, too immature to be a mother, as she always wants to be the girl-friend.  But the miracle is Aaron Johnson, who doesn't really look like Lennon (in the same way that Joaquin Phoenix never looked like Johnny Cash in Walk the Line), but has done such a fine job of looking at documentaries and studying the much filmed Lennon, that he has the manner down...so much so, that he begins to resemble him, mostly in motion, until you just accept the impersonation.  We've seen our share of bad Beatles imitations, but Johnson captures the illusion in all its facets of the diamond in the rough, and the Spaniard in the Works.

Nowhere Boy is a Matinee.

Ninotchka

"Ninotchka" (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937) You don't often get to see a perfect movie—a movie of fine material: a great script, perfectly cast and executed, yet isn't calcified in pre-calculation, that lives and breathes and takes advantage of accidents. Something that feels like life, only written better. A movie that beguiles, while still acknowledging the real world, and that any interruption will just have to wait until "The End"...which comes far too soon. A movie that widens the eyes, expands the mind and tickles the funny bone. That's "Ninotchka."

Three Russian emissaries (Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach) are in Paris on official business, hoping to get top dollar for some diamonds confiscated during the Russian Revolution. Out of the discriminating eye of the commissar, they decide to stay at Paris' most opulent hotel--the better to attract the interest of capitalist speculators, comrade. Of course. As luck would have it, it's also the domicile of the Russian Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), in exile, and shy a few diamonds due to the Revolution. When her "kept man," the Count Leon D'Algout (Melvyn Douglas) encounters them, he plies them with the finest life Paris has to offer, stringing them along while the gears of the authorities grind slowly to take back the diamonds before they can be sold.

The delays in retrieving money for the Soviet State puts the Reds on high alert, and a by-the-book-politburo-crat, Nina Ivanova Yakushova (Greta Garbo) is dispatched to investigate.

She does not like what she sees.

Her humorless buttinski attitude might put things on the right track, and that's the last thing Count D'Algout wants, but he finds his and Paris' charms are lost on "Ninotchka." She is so gray and humorless, with a suspicious look in her eye and expressionless of face, she is more than ideologically committed to the Socialist state, she is practically Vulcan (emphasis on "practical"). The Count must work overtime to beguile her, and overtime is something this representative of the Worker cannot abide. Like it matters. The Count becomes intrigued with her, and decides to make time on his own time.

"Ninotchka" is political satire as fairy-tale, complete with the converted princess and the pixieish subservients (all thing being equal, comrade, but some are more equal than others—or is that "fairest of them all?"). The conceit is charming, and add the star-power of Greta Garbo as "Ninotchka" and the thing practically fizzes. Garbo has always been a legendary presence, somewhat unapproachable. But her work in this film, with Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's words and buoyed in its interpretation by "The Lubitsch Touch," is the effervescence that pops the film's cork. Again, the structure of the story helps. Garbo's no-bolshevik attitude at the beginning sets up a magical transformation from mugly ducklink to beautiful swana-be. That she is funny in both aspects and possessed of a comic timing with the accuracy of a Swiss watch, while still radiating the sex appeal that made her a box-office queen, is a bit of a miracle. It's my prejudice to think that such a lionized star couldn't possibly be such a fine actress. You learn something new every day.

Which is exactly the point. You might as well enjoy it. One can't help it when the lesson is so delightful.

North Face (2008)

"Die-hard Climbers Die Easier Than You Think"

Released in Germany, Switzerland and Austria in 2008 (and only just now making its way to the U.S.), "North Face" (aka "Nordwand") chronicles the 1936 attempt by two teams (one German, one Swiss) to climb the sheer North face of the Eiger ("The Ogre") near Berne, Switzerland. Though the western edge had been summitted since 1858, but the concave bowl on the North slope was considered a particular challenge—"the last problem of the Alps." The deaths of two German climbers in 1935 resulted in a suspension of climbing attempts, but several teams made the trek in 1936 to be the first to attempt that route's first summit.

The film makes it an exercise in politics and career advancement for an assistant at a Berlin publication (Johanna Wokalek), an amateur alpinist, who persuades her childhood Berchtesgaden chums Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andreas Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) to make the attempt so that she might cover it for her paper. Kurz is initially reluctant, but his affection for Luise and the challenge of the mountain persuades him to make the attempt in July of 1936. It's watched closely by the German government, as the ascent might make quite a splash for the Nazi Olympics coming up.

The film itself is a marvel, with the actors doing their own stunts and "really being there" grasping the sides of the mountain. Director Philipp Stölzl creates tense climbing sequences of a type that hasn't been seen before, where every missed opportunity, dropped piece of equipment, and injury is keenly felt in a way that films like "Touching the Void" can't seem to convey. Partially, it's Stölzl's use of time as a factor He doesn't take short-cuts, compress events, and deliberately reminds the audience of the clock and time and daylight passing. His climbers are seen as more altruistic, as well, to the point where one liberty is taken with the story to keep the German boys in a good, audience-identifying light. And there is marked cross-cutting between the struggles on the mountain and the tourists living in the lap of luxury on the ground, while crowding the telescopes to check the climbers' progress.

It's one of the best mountain-climbing films ever made,* with a richly dramatic story keenly conveyed. That it's, for the most part, true is just frosting.

"North Face" is a Matinee. Dress warm.

* The only down-side is composer Christian Kolonovits' intrusive score which, for some ungodly reason, uses samples of pick-axes for percussion, making you think there are others on the mountain just out of sight. It's distracting and takes away from the drama on the screen.