Amy – 8

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An awfully good documentary about Amy Winehouse on several levels. It captured her art. It captured her tortured personal life. Other than her mother, it showed us all the important people around her, bad and good. It told her story, pretty much from beginning to end. Going in, I knew her name. Leaving, I felt I knew her. What made the documentary exceptional was the access the director had to intimate moments, home movies, family and friends as well as clips of the public persona, so we could see what was going on behind the scene. And then there was the paparazzi effect: as we watched, we scorned the ruthless cameramen who made her life hell while taking in their pictures ourselves. We are not as bad as Jay Leno, cracking jokes about Amy’s drug dependency, but the movie feeds us this story, and we eat it up.

Spy – 6

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Allison Janney adds gravitas to any role, and I felt grounded whenever her deputy director of the CIA was onscreen. Not so much everyone else, but Jason Statham and Miranda Hart were perfect hoots and Rose Byrne was utterly gorgeous. Of course, it was Melissa McCarthy’s movie, which was both a strength and weakness: you couldn’t take her seriously, so there wasn’t much for the jokes to play off of. Her humor is better in a supporting role.

Testament of Youth – 6.5

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It seems harsh to be critical of a movie that is all about women’s rights, noble sacrifices, death and the pointless horrors of World War I and has a nice British cast and period costumes, but I got the feeling this should have been a one-hour TV show, rather than a two-hour movie. Alicia Vikander was fine in the lead role, but not quite Carey Mulligan or Reese Witherspoon all-the-time watchable, and for me the plot, always over-obvious, tended toward maudlin. I daresay this was more a woman’s movie.

Love and Mercy – 7

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I’m not sure this movie would be of interest or make sense to anyone who hasn’t followed Brian Wilson’s career, but that’s still a pretty big market. And even for those like me who have been fans forever, the movie left some pretty big holes – like how he came under the control of his Svengali, Dr. Eugene Landy, and what happened during all the years it took Paul Dano to become John Cusack. And speaking of Dr. Landy, why do directors keep casting Paul Giamatti in these roles, where instead of the character you just see Paul-Giamatti-in-a-bad-wig? The best bits are in the studio, where the young Wilson crafts his music, and the fake “archival” shots of 1963, the beach and “Fun Fun Fun.” Some truths are stranger than fiction, and this is one of them.

Broadway 2015

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We have spent five weeks in New York going more to the theater than movies – especially since we were shut out of the Apu Trilogy on Memorial Day – so I thought I could use this space for a brief recap of what we’ve seen on the boards in a variety of venues: Broadway, Lincoln Center, Public Theater, Circle in the Square, Playwrights Horizons, New World Stages – four musicals, three dramas, all worthy, only one disappointment (Grounded, with Anne Hathaway).

Far and away our favorite was Hand to God, the story of a repressed Texas boy and his sock puppet. Every moment was hysterical, the acting was uniformly stellar, and we were overwhelmed by the creativity of the puppetry. It was a little like Ted, if it were live and Mark Wahlberg played Seth MacFarlane’s part as well as his own.

More conventional but just as funny was Qualms, Bruce Norris’s new play just about to open. Jeremy plays the odd-man-out in a get-together of swingers at the beach. It recalled a Terence McNally ensemble piece, with sex the only topic on the agenda.

As for the musicals, Fun Home deserves all the accolades it is getting, but I was only 3/4 engaged, maybe because of the unfamiliarity of the music, the staginess of the production in the round, or the lead character’s announcing the ending at the play’s start. The King and I was a total delight. Perhaps no one could have matched Kelli O’Hara’s brilliance, but Ken Watanabe was a puzzlement: he had great stage presence but came up short in the acting, singing and speaking English departments.

An American In Paris featured extraordinary dancing, but a little dancing goes a long way with me, and the story – never a strong point – reminded me too often of the movie, which I saw recently and didn’t like. The familiar Gershwin songs were wonderful; the less familiar ones not so much. We also saw Clinton The Musical, which I would describe as a hoot. Written by an Australian Ph.D student living in England, it felt more like a Hasty Pudding theatrical than Broadway production, but the songs were cute and the portrayal of a bouncy, perky, power-hungry Hillary was charming.

The only disappointment was Grounded, Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of a fighter pilot reduced to running a drone at an Air Force base in Las Vegas. Her performance was a tour-de-force; the problem was the play. I never figured out what its point was. It was better, in any event, than The Heidi Chronicles with Elisabeth Moss, which was the other play of this season we saw on our previous visit.

In honor of the recent, rather boring Tony broadcast, I will herewith hand out my awards for the above shows, which don’t vary much from the official results.

Best Actress in a Musical: Kelli O’Hara was transcendent. I melted every time she sang, above all on “Hello, Young Lovers.”

Best Actor in a Musical: Robert Fairchild’s effortless dancing, fine singing and pleasant personality made me forget Gene Kelly’s smarmy original.

Best Actor in a Play: Steven Boyer gave the most moving performance we saw, and the performance of his hand puppet Tyrone was not far behind.

Best Actress in a Play: Geneva Carr gave a performance beyond her years as Boyer’s mother, expressing a gamut of emotions as widow, mother, teacher, lover, confused Texas blonde.

Best Featured Actress in a Musical: Sydney Lucas and Emily Skeggs were nuanced, age-appropriate Alison Bechdels.

Best Featured Actor in a Musical: Brandon Uranowitz did well with the sympathetic underdog role in American in Paris.

Best Featured Actress in a Play: Sarah Stiles made homely beautiful and had the season’s best sex scene.

Best Featured Actor in a Play: Jeremy Shamos and John Procaccino stood out, but not too much, in the wonderful ensemble cast of The Qualms.

Best Set Design: The ship in The King and I.

I’ll See You In My Dreams – 6.5

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Such a quiet movie: for maybe ten minutes it proceeded without a background soundtrack, except for the explosions from San Andreas in the theater above us and the screeching of hearing aids from the elderly crowd around us. Ironically, the best moments in the movie came from music: Blythe Danner’s karaoke version of ‘Cry Me A River’ and  a long montage of Danner wandering after her lover’s death, accompanied by my favorite song of 2015, ‘Let’s Be Still.’ Otherwise, it was a pretty forgettable film, with lots of acting by Danner, which seemed more acting than real, perhaps because of the flimsy story and hokey characters around her.

Mad Max: Fury Road – 3

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Ridiculous to the max. A two-hour chase scene without the distraction of character, plot or dialogue.

Far From the Madding Crowd – 7

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There was no need to make Sgt. Troy look like an untrustworthy cad, with a mustache that drooped over his upper lip, supercilious eyes and foppish clothes. We knew, without that, that he nowhere the equal of the telegraphically named Gabriel Oak, but this was typical of the unsubtle approach of director Thomas Vinterberg to the Thomas Hardy novel. The movie itself, however, was not without its period charms, most notably Carey Mulligan’s beautiful, expressive face. I was reminded of Reese Witherspoon and Wild: spending two hours watching Carey Mulligan was never less than pleasant.

 

Still Alice – 8

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A lovely movie, much less mawkish than commentators led me to believe (perhaps they considered Julianne Moore’s role too Oscar-obvious?). Julianne Moore was much of the reason, and her performance was touching without being pathetic. We felt for her but we were never uncomfortable in her presence. But if she was one-half the movie, the other half carried its weight, as well. The family dynamic was realistic and Kristen Stewart was bravely unglamorous. Most of all, it raised the question, common to so many of us, of how to deal with Alzheimer’s, in our loved ones and ourselves.

Mr. Turner – 6.5

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In this consistently bizarre portrait of the artist, we get no insight into J.M.W.Turner or his art. Instead, we get a character study of Timothy Spall as a grunting, lecherous, antisocial individual who walks as if his legs are stilts protruding from his hips. The movie is a montage of short vignettes, each cut short before its finish, each unrelated to the one that follows. Together they produce an impression – but of what? Actual historical figures are thrown in, as are some of Turner’s famous paintings, but how they came to be there is as much a mystery at the end of the film as its outset.