Isn’t It Romantic – 6.5

Cleverly takes the piss of the rom-com genre in genial, lighthearted fashion. Doesn’t do much more, but if you enjoy Rebel Wilson (whom I wouldn’t have known from Melissa McCarthy) in a fantasy with Liam Hemsworth and some New York locations, it’s a pleasant way to kill time.

The Oscars

As the Oscars approached the big reveal for Best Picture, I thought things had gone remarkably well. There had been excellent musical numbers by major artists: Queen, Bette Midler, Gillian Welch, Lady Gaga. The presenters had largely acquitted themselves just fine without a host, and we had been spared the embarrassingly condescending and time-wasting bits involving “regular people.” Unusually, there had been surprise winners to my liking: Free Solo, which I had been touting for months, edged the favored RBG, perhaps a worthier subject but an inferior movie; and my choice for Best Actress, Olivia Colman, upset the unanimously-predicted Glenn Close. I had no skin in the game for the craft awards, but it was refreshing to see such diversity among the winners. All of the eight Best Picture nominees had received awards, so I wouldn’t have to feel sorry for a movie’s being “snubbed.” (Why I should feel sorry for any movie nominated for an Oscar is another matter.) Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody and Black Panther had each received multiple awards, fueling my speculation as to which way the Academy was “leaning.”

Then Green Book happened. It was not quite as confusing as Moonlight’s win over La-La-Land, and it did already have a Golden Globe under its belt. Nevertheless, the surprise was palpable and the controversy immediate. You will note from my personal Top Ten, which clocks Green Book in at #5, just behind BlacKkKlansman and Bohemian Rhapsody, that I am a fan. Viggo Mortenson was my Best Actor choice, Mahershala Ali clearly deserved his Oscar – unless, like me, you don’t consider his role to be “supporting” – and I fell in love with Linda Cardellini; so in terms of acting it’s hard to complain. But complain the critics did. The depiction of race relations was simplistic. Italians were stereotyped and demeaned. Dr. Shirley’s heirs objected to his portrayal. Blacks were somehow not appropriately presented. I don’t quite get any of the objections, but an aura of Political Correctness was applied and found the film retrograde and wanting. But hey, this wasn’t a documentary. What movie “based on a true story” doesn’t take liberties, often immense? To my mind, all the characters came out of the story looking good, kinder and smarter than they started. The only characters that took a hit were the Southern racists, and I haven’t heard complaints there. Almost everyone I know loved Green Book and recommended it. It was the “feel-good” movie of the year. Should that disqualify it?

There was a real split among moviegoers I talk to. Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody were “really fun.” Roma and The Favourite – the critical darlings – were “disappointing.”  The Times mentioned today that the audience rating for Green Book on Rotten Tomatoes was A+, while the Metacritics score was near a historical low. What’s wrong with having a movie that everyone loved, with great acting and a story with substance – it doesn’t hurt to remember the open bigotry that existed in our country not so long ago – get the Best Picture Award? It’s ironic that in the year the Academy tried to institute a Best Popular Picture Award and had to back away, the Best Picture Oscar went, after all, to the best popular picture.

The Front Runner – 7.5

A fascinating look at recent political history, turning on the question whether a candidate’s “zipper problem” should outweigh the substantive benefits he could provide the country. Of course, the question seems a bit quaint and dated, given the personal foibles of our current president, but it was certainly alive a decade later when Ken Starr and the Republicans were going after Bill Clinton. Hugh Jackman and Vera Farmiga were both excellent as Gary and Lee Hart, although JK Simmons came across as the Farmers Insurance spokesman. Most interesting was the personality of the candidate, who could stubbornly believe that the people didn’t care about his personal life. Since Hart is still with us, you have to assume Jason Reitman didn’t take too many liberties. As for depictions of the press, I thought their mob action was overdrawn until I saw actual footage of much, much worse in Maria by Callas.

Maria by Callas – 4

If you’re an opera fan – or, better, a Maria Callas devotee – there’s plenty here to savor: biography, interviews, soaring music and endless views of La Diva. If you’re not, there’s a lot of scratchy recordings, pictures of Maria getting into limousines and out of airplanes, old newsreel-style clips and not much insight into why she was considered such a phenomenon or so controversial. Not finding her particularly attractive in personality or looks, I was more taken by the sideplot and glamor of Aristotle Onassis.

Bohemian Rhapsody – 8

I give this a zero for originality and a 100 for hitting all the right chords, and when the chords in question are booming ’80s arena-rock anthems by Queen, you’ve got a head start on a really fun movie. It’s also a feel-good movie, despite the difficult private life and AIDS-related death of the lead character, Freddie Mercury, largely because all the people around him are wholesome, loyal and talented. The other three band members don’t change, don’t do drugs, don’t backbite, and they all contribute musically and write hit songs. Freddie’s wife is selfless and sweet in an impossible situation, and his eventual male lover is centered and mature. (Compare all this with the Temptations’ story, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.) I was never a Queen fan, but here their music is winning and powerful – maybe partly because we never have to listen to a song in full. Ironically, their first label head, played in full disguise by Mike Meyers, refuses to release “Bohemian Rhapsody” because it’s too long, while the movie of the same name can’t manage to fit it all in, either. My only cavil was the attention wasted on Mercury’s bite. Whenever he wasn’t singing, it looked like Rami Malek was fiddling with his retainer.

The Happy Prince – 6.5

Rupert Everett’s paean to Oscar Wilde’s final, desperate days is mainly interesting for its connection to Oscar Wilde. “The Importance of Being Ernest” was in the back of my mind the whole time I watched Wilde’s dissolution in turn-of-the-century Paris and Naples. Coming on top of Collette, I’m getting familiar with the period, not to mention the disadvantages dealt to women and gays. An unrelated thought: how nice it must be to be able to cast Colin Firth, Emma Watson and Tom Wilkinson in secondary roles in your project.

NY Fall Entertainment

Our fall entertainment schedule in New York began and ended with audience singalongs. At “Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin” the elderly crowd at the 59E59 Theater heartily joined in on “God Bless America” and many other Berlin classics. They weren’t as put off by Hershey Felder’s unpleasant looks and persona as I was. A much younger crowd at sold-out Madison Square Garden on our last weekend danced and sang along with the much more charming Billy Joel, as he ran through his catalogue from the ’70s. His voice was more mature but still strong, his hits all brought back memories to me, and they seemed to resonate with many around us who hadn’t been born when they first came out. As for my musical taste, it’s still rock’n’roll to me.
Another musical we saw fit somewhere in between Irving Berlin and Billy Joel: “Oklahoma!” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s songs were at the same high level as the other two, and it was fun to hear them again. Unfortunately, Daniel Fish’s attempt at a new look at the story can only be described as a misdirection. Departing from the original, Curly shoots Jud in cold blood, then is promptly acquitted so he can go on his honeymoon in an obvious miscarriage of justice. This leaves a sour taste in the viewer’s stomach, one that was foreshadowed by a feral dream dance sequence to start the second act. You don’t feel any better about the peddler Ali, who is stuck with a cackling hen for a wife, or even Ado Annie, who is fated with a husband dumber than a cornstalk. To play “Oklahoma!” as such a total downer takes the fun out of all the bright, cheery music that has gone before – music that dramatically does not support the second act’s depressing turn.
“Girl from the North Country” also featured some good music – this time by Bob Dylan – and was also depressing, but intentionally so, as it took place in Duluth mid-winter during the Depression. There wasn’t much of a story, just a collection of characters who interacted in a boarding house before it went bankrupt. The vibe was reminiscent of last spring’s “Carousel,” although unlike that show and “Oklahoma!” the African-American lead was actually portraying an African-American. Half the Dylan songs were unfamiliar, some were shoehorned into the plot, and many weren’t played in full; the result was I left wondering if I would have preferred a Dylan concert.
We saw five straight plays – all of which I was glad to have seen, none of which was a Michelin three-star worth the trip. The one getting the most attention was “Waverly Gallery, partly because of its author, Kenneth Lonergan, but largely because of its superb cast, led by 86-year-old Elaine May, playing an 85-year-old heading into dementia. As much as I didn’t like cheap jokes at the expense of the aged in Albee’s “Three Tall Women,” I somehow never minded May’s doddering, and the more reviews I read the more I admire her performance. Joan Allen, Lucas Hedges and Michael Cera were treats in their own right. The autobiographical play was more a meditation on a family situation than a dramatic engine, but it prompted one’s own meditations – and it was easy to hear as the characters all had to speak up to accommodate Grandma’s fading hearing.
“Lifespan of a Fact” benefited from equally strong performances by Daniel Radcliffe and Bobby Cannavale, a wonderfully mismatched pair. (Cherry Jones, as referee, wasn’t given as strong a role.) The plot was more a conceit than a story you could actually believe, but after a career of working with fact-checkers at TIME I enjoyed the ring the actors sparred in: should the article/essay be bound by literal facts when it was telling a bigger truth? Or, for example, how would you handle a piece by Hunter Thompson?
“Emma and Max” was another three-character drama, written and directed by the movie director Todd Solondz. The New Yorker called it “ham-handed,” which means it wasn’t subtle, which means I could understand it. It had the most inventive set of the plays we saw; the characters were cliches, but ones I appreciated; and the plot was linear and, in its way, hard-hitting. The whole thing could be described as small-scale, but given the size of the Flea Theater and the $15 ticket price, “Emma Max” represented the best value of our trip.
“Uncle Vanya” at Hunter College didn’t cost much more and, played informally in the round, was a memorable introduction, for me, to a theater classic. The Vanya character was a powerhouse, quite the opposite of Wallace Shawn in “Vanya on 42nd Street,” which we started to watch via Netflix. Chekhov, of course, doesn’t need my review.
The only disappointing play was “Bernhardt/Hamlet,” a star vehicle for the estimable Janet McTeer. I spent most of the evening quibbling over nits that didn’t make sense or didn’t seem right. The whole thing had an air of artificiality, exemplified by the character of Alphonse Mucha, whom I subsequently studied in the Metropolitan Museum bookstore. In sum, I didn’t get a sense of Sarah Bernhardt or enough Hamlet.

A Star Is Born – 7

If you like watching Bradley Cooper (with Sam Elliot’s voice) and Lady Gaga (with and without makeup), you’ll find plenty to like in this movie, which owed its feeling of longeur partly to overlong closeups of the two stars. If you’re looking, however, for credible characters, gripping story or particularly good music, you may be disappointed, as I was. The dramatic peak arrives one-third of the way in, when Jack calls the starry-eyed Ally onstage to sing a song they have never rehearsed, to heartwarming effect. Everything curdles after that. Jack’s descent into drugs and alcohol made no emotional sense to me, let alone his suicide after a seemingly successful stint in rehab. And Ally’s looks and songs lose their authenticity, and her final memorial to her husband’s memory is totally forgettable. OK, so maybe A Star Is Born is not meant to be a feel-good movie. Somehow the depressing turn doesn’t jibe, however, with all the closeups of our glamorous stars.

Madeline’s Madeline – 7

An innovative and rather intense look inside the mind of a 16-year-old biracial girl (Helena Howard), who comes in and out of focus, both literally and figuratively. Actually, more interesting is her relationships with, or maybe it is just her views of, two white mother figures, played adroitly by Molly Parker and Miranda July, whose vulnerability builds as Madeline’s feline ferocity strengthens. Then there is the bizarre improvisational theater troupe, which seems absurd but maybe is what they do in Brooklyn.

Three Identical Strangers – 6

Maybe it’s just that I wasn’t shocked, or even surprised, that 45 years ago someone engineered a study of twins separated at birth, or that an adoption agency wouldn’t tell the adoptive parents about the twins, or that one of the reunited triplets would eventually go his own way and have emotional issues, or maybe it’s just that I didn’t enjoy spending time with this particular group of people. For whatever reason, despite its constantly noted self-importance, the film left me cold. What most struck me, in fact, was the media’s obsession with the story of the triplets, how they piled on, one after the other. And it’s hard to imagine so much being made of this today; were the early ’80s just simpler times?