As much a success of style as of content: telling James Baldwin’s story through his own words, both recorded live and read posthumously, with video from the day mixed with later interviews, gave us an unusually rounded and real picture of a man we know more as a reputation.
If not the worst movie of the year, it will take something to beat it. I had read it was that rare thing, a German comedy. We waited 85 minutes for the comedy, but by then the characters were so unpleasant to watch that we gave up. The lead woman was not just unhappy below the surface, she was a mess above. The lead man was supposedly the comic character, but his eccentricity was never explained, nor was his presence in the Bucharest scenes, and you just felt sorry for him when not squirming at the awkwardness of it all. The secondary characters were no better – not a recognizable human person among them – and the business situations were equally caricatured. Finally, the hand-held camerawork was unnecessarily annoying. In short, I can’t think of one redeeming aspect, although we did miss the final 80 minutes.
Here was a film to think and talk about: how many themes did you detect, and what were they? An Argentine writer, winner of the Nobel in literature, returns to his small home town in the country – why? to bask in his glory, to refresh his imagination, to experience nostalgia? – or does he? (As an introduction to Argentine cinema, this was a nice companion to Neruda.) People greet him on the surface, then turn petty and hostile. They don’t understand him, but does he understand them? He bumbles along in his world of fiction (Oscar Martinez won the Argentine Oscar for Best Actor), finding that he can’t go home anymore – or can he?
No director working today portrays women as well and as beautifully as the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. Penelope Cruz has been perhaps his most famous muse (in five Almodovar films), but in Julieta he works with Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte (the young Julieta) to stunning effect. One or the other is almost always on screen, framed artistically, with blond hair that denotes their age or their psychological condition. Based, somehow, on three stories by Alice Munro, the plot is never frothy, nor so melodramatic that you lose touch with the reality of the people and their feelings, albeit little that is recounted is personally familiar. By going back and forth between the two characters – Julieta is writing her daughter about her past – we never tire of either one, and long to see how engagingly beautiful Almodovar will make her next. The ending lacked conviction and left me hanging, but life doesn’t neatly wrap itself up, either.
There’s nothing wrong with making a feel-good movie, in which 37 consecutive scenes end with a moment that brings a smile or a tear, in which every child is perfectly behaved, in which every injustice is overcome, in which even the allegedly hard-hearted gruff boss is played by Kevin Costner. Nothing wrong, but you might as well be watching a fairy tale, instead of a supposedly true-life story about America’s space program. Then again, most fairy tales have more suspense and produce more dread that something might go wrong. See Loving for a more realistic picture of life in Virginia in 1961.
Not as bad as the reviews and a meticulous adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, but both book and movie had more incident than soul. We moved from one gangland killing to another with admiration for the machinery but little emotional involvement. Part may be due to Ben Affleck’s constant on-screen presence, with hair and designer clothes ever in place, more the Hollywood movie star than credible human being.
Why? What was the point? Natalie Portman didn’t look like Jackie – not as pretty, nowhere near the presence – and we were given her at her most insecure, at her most vulnerable. No American who lived through “Camelot” could have directed such a picture, and you wonder why Pablo Larrain – much more at home with Neruda – even tried. As for history, Bryan Cranston’s LBJ in All the Way was so much more authentic to the period. Peter Sarsgaard’s Bobby Kennedy missed by a mile, and none of the bit players rang true, although it was fun to see Greta Herwig in a dramatic role. If my score weren’t so low already, I would deduct another 2 for showing a recreation of JFK’s assassination – tasteless, exploitative and totally unnecessary. No Oscar for the lisping Portman.
Matching Hell and High Water in regional atmosphere, Manchester reverberated more closely to home for me, recalling Mystic River and Dennis Lehane novels, Spartina and the whole ball of Matt Damon/Ben Affleck/Mark Wahlberg New England wax – not surprising, as Damon was a producer and Ben’s little brother Casey was the star. I’ve loved watching Casey since Gone, Baby, Gone, and he was riveting here, although there was maybe a tad too much. He was damaged goods, in much the way of Isabelle Huppert in Elle, and the whole point of the movie was watching, and understanding, how he dealt with life after being responsible for the death of three daughters. The second point, I guess, was the counterpoint of how his 16-year-old nephew coped with the death of his father. There was too little Michelle Williams (Casey’s wife), but maybe she would have taken away some of the film’s focus. For those, like me, who pine for movies about “real life,” this was it.
Hokey and manipulative, plus cursed by that bane of bad plots, “based on a true story.” Why did Saroo have an adopted brother? Why did Nicole Kidman have such an awful hairdo? Neither helped the movie, but both were based on the true story. Dev Patel’s matinee-idol looks, of course, weren’t based on the truth; they were to make you fall in love with him and his quest. I didn’t. The child Saroo was a charmer, and I was happy to follow the first half of the film, although not so much that I’d ever want to go to India.
A twisted story with neat directorial touches in every nook and cranny. Every character was driven by sex – and that means “every,” major or minor, old or young. While that may not have seemed totally realistic, it did seem, well, French. Whereas many thrillers fall apart when viewed in retrospect, the more I thought about Elle, the more I found to think about. “Elle” is Isabelle Huppert, and she is one tough, troubled but strong woman, making psychological sense if we could only figure her out. What’s also remarkable is that while the story is all about her – just as it was in Things to Come – there are 13 other fully realized characters with roles to play – and sex drives to deal with.
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