by Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter

Greta Gerwig is a twenty seven year old Brooklynite who struggles to find her identity in “Frances Ha,” a well-received comic essay from Noah Baumbach, the writer/director of “The Squid and the Whale,” and “Greenberg.”

When we first meet Francis Halladay, she’s telling a boyfriend that she can’t live with him because she’s committed to her current roommate, a close friend and classmate from Vassar. But in the next scene, the roommate, Sofie, announces that she’s relocating to a better neighborhood in Manhattan and that Frances will have to find someone else to pick up the rent. Frances then begins a series of haphazard moves that take her from one Brooklyn location to another, then her alma mater, then back to Brooklyn, without her ever seeming to find herself.

Because she insists on announcing every wayward thought that comes into her head, Frances manages to aggravate new friends and old. A modern dancer who can’t seem to move beyond the apprentice stage, she cultivates a dizzy narcissism that frustrates relationships and thwarts opportunities. Men call her “un-dateable” while women are attracted and repulsed by her in equal measure.

The movie alternates between embarrassing social gaffes and lyrical gambols through lushly photographed landscapes in Brooklyn, Manhattan, upstate New York, and, in later passages, Sacramento, California. Pearly, black and white photography is married to classic film scores, mainly by the brilliant French composer, Georges Delerue, in an attempt to underline Frances’ independent spirit.

The movie starts out on sure footing, quickly establishing Frances’ key relationship with Sofie, then with two male roommates who both take an interest in her. But her mouth quickly sabotages their attempts to get close. After the first twenty minutes or so, the movie, like Frances, settles into a series of redundant missteps that make its brief running time feel much longer.

The problem with “Frances Ha,” and its central character, is that writer/director Lena Dunham has told the same story on her bracing HBO series, “Girls,” with vastly more wit, energy and filmmaking skill. Dunham, who plays a similarly floundering twenty-something, creates tension by editing her scenes down to key moments, then moving on. Baumbach, who works the same territory, stays in a situation long after the point is made, then repeats, ad nausea.

As writers, Dunham and Baumbach express similar level of ambivalence to their peers. Both seem to sense that in speaking what they perceive as the untarnished truth to one another, their characters dispense with the basic civility that makes most day to day relationships bearable. Both directors describe a world of cramped apartments and peripheral jobs, where an abrasive form of candor, especially when it comes to sex, becomes the means of defending the little bit of space their characters control. But Dunham has a sharper tongue, a better eye, and the nerve to explore the darker implications of herself and her friends. Baumbach prefers to skitter over the surface, like a water bug.

Where Dunham cuts away the moment her intentions are stated, Baumbach lingers, like he’s so taken with being in a scene that he can’t get out of it. For example: after imposing on a recent acquaintance for shelter, Frances is invited to a small dinner party. The guests are mostly ten years older, successful and well into careers. With a kind of blind determination, she insists on engaging each guest with her willful self-aggrandizing, until the whole room tires of her. The scene is painfully uncomfortable, not for its revelation of character as much as the way it revels in her lack of discretion.

Although I didn’t warm up to it, “Frances” has received overwhelmingly good reviews. Kenneth Turan, in the LA Times called it “effortless and effervescent.” The New York Times’ A.O. Scott praised the movie as a “bedtime story for adults,” and cited Greta Gerwig for her “knack for physical comedy.” She has been described in more than one review as “radiant,” and a “contemporary everywoman.”

For the most part, I found it dreary, sad, and diffuse. The details of Frances’ life may be accurate but they failed to engage my sympathy. Several episodes focus on her struggle to find her way as an artist, but much more running time is spent on her frequent humiliations and inability to learn from them.

The use of celebrated themes by Georges Delerue, lifted in their entirety from the early work of Francoise Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, and Phillipe DeBroca, has been cited as an attempt to link “Frances Ha” to the French New Wave. But the music isn’t just quoted; it fills the movie, like original score. Director Baumbach may be in love with these masters, and he has been clever in copping some lovely music, but there’s no comparison between Frances and the characters in “Jules and Jim,” “Shoot the Piano Player,” or “Contempt.” And while the producers may have paid for the rights to Delerue’s haunting music, there’s something truly odious in the way the director has associated them with his shallow, sad-sack Brooklynite and her privileged but scattered acquaintances, most of whom would be on the street were it not for wealthy parents.

In the same way that Baumbach has cribbed from much better movies, he has twice cast Gerwig in the kind of roles Diane Keaton played in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” and “Manhattan.” He’s obviously taken with her, but as an actress, Gerwig can’t fill the young Keaton’s shadow. She flails helplessly through a scene that mimics the fugitive lobster routine in “Annie Hall.” Gerwig seems like an uncomfortable stranger in a family get together where Keaton effortlessly showed affection. And though she’s taken the lead in a dozen small films, Gerwig has yet to express anything close to the depth Keaton reached in Richard Brooks’ “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” or Allen’s “Manhattan.” Her main achievements, thus far, have been to define herself as awkward and detached.

If, in co-writing the script, Baubach and Gerwig had any idea who Frances is at her core, they have shied away from telling us. As written and played, she’s never more than a jumble of warring personal tics. She almost never seems to enjoy herself. Because it’s so relentless her story is pretentious and empty headed at the same time.

“Frances Ha” is now playing in Philadelphia. If it continues to play, expect a local screening.

Kon Tiki

While studying Polynesian culture in the mid-1940s, the Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl discovered carvings that suggested that the islands’ first inhabitants might have been sailors from South America. To prove his theory, Heyerdahl dared to cross the Pacific in 1947, on a primitive, balsa wood raft, despite warnings by about half the planet. His epic voyage became the subject of a huge bestseller, an academy award winning documentary, and now, sixty years later, a satisfying feature film.

In its original Norwegian, “Kon Tiki” was nominated for an Academy Award as a foreign language film. But this English version –the film was shot with two tracks—was not nominated, which created a marketing challenge for its US distributor, the Weinstein Company. None of the ads could say, “Academy Award nominee,” which seems to have dampened the company’s spirits. I also suspect that the original was trimmed by ten or fifteen minutes. While it might have been handicapped out of the gate, the movie remains a rousing entertainment.

It took the era of modern digital effects to facilitate a rich looking production on a modest budget, but the wait has paid off; convincing scenes of huge whales and sharks menacing the tiny craft underscore the danger. Heyerdahl’s obsession with authenticity, that made the trip even riskier, is well dramatized. And early on, the requisite storm keeps us on edge.

An inspired cast, vivid cinematography, and those huge sea creatures, keep “Kon Tiki” safely on course. But it misses greatness by a hair. The writers and directors have fallen just a little bit short of transcending the material. Had it been more imaginative in creating Heyerdahl or exploring his obsessions, it might have achieved the level of say, Robert Zemeckis’ “Cast Away.” Still, “Kon Tiki” is an impressive retelling of an amazing story. Finally the sea and this primitive raft are the real stars, along with the subtle visual effects that bring them to life on screen.

“Kon-Tiki” was more successful in its overseas theatrical distribution than here in the states. It made the rounds of the art circuit, but never really took off. While it looks great on a big screen you’ll probably end up seeing it on DVD. It’s worth looking for.

Dan:

What would happen if an old man and an old women in Central Park escape a rain shower by going into one of the small restaurants and agree to share the one remaining table.

They strike a deal, since they never saw each other before and would never see each other again. They decide to speak the absolute truth about how they felt about their lives, their relationships, and their desires.

The weather improves. They, walk they sit, they observe. But they talk and talk and talk. There are flash backs.
And at the end they tentatively shake hands…then hug… and go their separate ways.

I guarantee the above would lose a fortune because no one would want to watch!!! It would strike to close to home. But it is a fun concept and I share it with you just for the pleasure of the idea.

My point: When did we ever feel free to talk the truth about how we really feel to anyone….to anyone…to anyone.
Robert

Robert:

Dan

By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Film Critic

Right from the start, we know that a mysterious loner named “Mud” will mean trouble for two adolescent boys in Jeff Nichols’ finely crafted drama about growing up in Arkansas’ river country. And when we see the way Mud holsters his pistol– lodged in his belt, behind his back—we know that sooner or later the jeopardy will go beyond the usual issues in coming of age dramas. I think it was Jean Luc Godard who once wrote that all a movie needed was a guy, a girl, and a gun. Well this one adds two terrific kids to the mix.

For most of its solid, two hours, we feel pretty certain about where the movie is headed, because “Mud” makes to attempt to mask its devices; the loner in the woods, a shadowy woman, vengeful out-of-towners, and the domestic tension of two, down at the heels families, are all familiar elements. But writer/director Nichols realizes them with such a sure and inspired hand, that we warmly welcome all that reminds us of other movies…

Two teenagers, Ellis and Neckbone, find an abandoned boat on a small island and make it their secret hideout. Receding flood waters have left the craft in the crook of a tree, high above sea level; useless to anybody but kids seeking a respite from struggling families and confusing signals from girls.

Like the raft in Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” the boat becomes the vehicle for the boys’ journey to adulthood. It’s an old device, but with a new twist: stuck as it is, the boat mirrors the way the two boys are rooted in their lower middle class lives. Before the situation has a chance to stagnate, a stranger intervenes, a wily adult, who seizes the craft for his own purposes; shelter first, and then, if the boys will help him, escape. Intrigued by his charm, the boys ally with Mud in a dangerous gambit to reconnect him with a former lover and flee his past.

The same psychological territory has been covered in so many popular books and movies that we anticipate the beats long before they occur. But writer/director Nichols embellishes them with wit and fresh detail, mainly through sturdy dialogue and strong casting. As a writer he’s thought the characters through so well, and honored them with so many small quirks, that when the expected plot turns play out– for the most part, effortlessly–we gladly suspend our disbelief to go along with them. A lesser talent might have descended into sentiment, but Nichols is crafty; he deftly uses the predictable as a launch pad to the more idiosyncratic.

Although the movie fleshes out a town full of characters, it’s most satisfying creations are the two boys. Ellis, the more idealistic and callow of the two, identifies with the stranger’s need to reconnect to his lost love, and takes the problem on, to make it his own. Neckbone, his best friend, places his loyalty to Ellis above his skepticism about Mud and his shadow lover, and reluctantly becomes an accomplice. But the girl Mud is after, the idealized object of Ellis’ feelings, has been compromised in a way the two boys fail to grasp. Soon, they’re in harms’ way.

The story is loaded with kind of symbols that could have stripped it of genuine feeling, but a wealth of warmth, humor, and attention to detail, keep it light on its feet. As written and played the two boys are ingenious, reckless, and totally disarming.

Mathew McConaughey ‘s strong presence in the title role provides an important hook in the opening moments. A generous actor who immediately hits the right level in almost anything he takes on, McConaughey wisely avoids grandstanding; he never shouts when a whisper will do. Reese Witherspoon, in a smaller but effective part, projects her characters’ ambivalence in simple but vivid strokes. Sam Shepard, Michael Shannon, and the rarely seen Joe Don Baker, hold down lesser, but important roles. And Ray McKinnon, another reliable character actor, is especially effective as Ellis’ quiet and frustrated Dad. But the movie really belongs to the two teenagers, played by relative newcomers Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland. You won’t soon forget them.

“Mud” makes an excellent companion piece to “Beasts of The Southern Wild,” the standout drama from last year, (now available on DVD.) While the two films couldn’t be more different in terms of style, they both bring fresh visions to similar settings. “Beasts,” a vivid and deeply felt look at river dwellers in Louisiana, sidesteps Hollywood conventions to focus on a little girl, her sometimes father, and their impromptu neighborhood–a storm ravaged bayou they call the “bathtub.”

“Beasts” moves with the rhythm of its characters and pays no heed to the conventions that “Mud” embraces. No matter, both are first rate examples of different approaches to the same kind of material.

“Mud” is the sort of material the studios routinely took under their wings and nurtured to success during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. In opposition to the big hits, these middle budgeted movies were staples in past decades; what the studios used to refer to as “solid doubles.” No more. For the most part lower budgeted dramas like “Mud,” depend on complicated financial deals that involve numerous funders and advance sales from overseas distributors. This one, shepherded into distribution by the stronger and stronger “Lions Gate,” (home of the mega-hit “Hunger Games,”) is easily the most entertaining American movie of the spring. My hope is that the word of mouth brings more like it.

Oblivion

This handsome and expensive sci-fi extravaganza has taken more than a back seat to the onslaught of “Iron Man 3.” The monster success of the Marvel franchise has sent Tom Cruises’ latest into the trunk and locked it there. I liked the production design and the ultra-patrician looks of Andrea Riseborough, but by the time Morgan Freeman and his band of rogues rose up to defy the killer drones, my eyes were at half-mast. I don’t know whether it was the script that was tired or me, but I barely lasted through its two solid hours.

By Daniel Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter

I count only two interesting comedies on my list of memorable films from 2012; “Moonrise Kingdom,” released this summer and now on video, and “Silver Linings Playbook,” which has just gone into national release, and will probably remain in theaters through the awards season. See it!

It wasn’t that a handful of the years’ comedies failed to provide adequate laughs; “Ted,” “Jeff Who Lives at Home,”  “21 Jump Street,” and “Project X,” all delivered their share. It’s just that none of them were particularly interesting as movies. As much as I enjoyed the outrageous satire of “The Dictator,” for example, it was a slap dash, hit and miss affair, better in part than in whole.  Yes, I know: honest laughs are to come by.  Still, they need meat on their bones.  And nobody ever said comedy was easy.

Both “Moonrise,” and “Playbook” are qualitatively better than their less ambitious relations, in that they satisfy on more than one level.  Both place more emphasis on texture, character, and story than knee jerk laughs.  Wes Anderson’s idiosyncratic take on adolescence has been discussed here at length and is now showing up on many ten best lists. David O. Russell’s comedy, a smartly rigged battle of the sexes, has stimulated talk of year end awards.  Expect nominations for the director, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bradley Cooper.

Pat Solitaro, (Bradley Cooper,) an obsessive-compulsive, nursing wounds from a catastrophic break up, is released from a mental hospital to the custody of his parents, played by Robert DeNiro and British character actor, Jackie Weaver. Pat quickly proves himself difficult to both his folks and his therapist, via sudden outbursts that characterize unresolved stumbling blocks, most of which are tied to his relationship with the former spouse. Along comes a sexy neighbor, Tiffany, a widow with her own adjustment issues, who immediately sets her sights on the handsome, but wounded Pat.  The two mildly troubled protagonists are soon engaged in the kind of push and pull dynamics that are more familiar to students of screwball comedies from the 1930s than practitioners of modern psychotherapy.

During its early, platform release in the major cities, this movie elicited a lot of talk about tragi-comic elements, which I am given to understand, parallel Mathew Quick’s novel, on which Russell and the author based the screenplay.  Critics’ quotes extolling sudden shifts in tone, of the laugh one minute, cry the next variety, (that seldom work in movies,) appeared in the national press. But there were few dramatic speed bumps in the robust comedy I saw.  Yes, there’s a whiff of jeopardy as Pat’s narcissism roils through the first half hour. Early on he comes across as a self centered pest. But the movie’s screenplay steers clear of pathos, putting most of its energy into Pat and Tiffany’s herky jerky courtship. Before it can turn nasty the context of mental illness, is displaced by the less distressing problems of boy versus girl.  The movie references Hepburn and Tracy far more often than Freud and Jung.

There was real skin on the table in Russell’s last family chronicle, “The Fighter,” from 2010. But that was a different movie:  there was a genuine conflict of objectives in that outfit, with the career of a promising boxer at stake. “Playbook” sets up a network of family problems, but they remain at arm’s distance from Pat and Tiffany, which, in this case, is all to the good. Sooner rather than later, the movie focuses what we really care about; the incremental advances the two make toward each over the course of the film’s leisurely two hour running time.

One of the major differences between “Playbook,” and its screwball relatives from the last century is the setting; the middle class. Rough and tumble suburban Philadelphia stands in  for the stolid and landed Main Line.  Working class neighborhoods in the “great Northeast” take the place of country estates or upscale Manhattan apartments.  Jeans and football jerseys have been substituted for suits and gowns.  But the formula has remained intact.

As in “The Fighter,” there’s a strong supporting cast. Chris Tucker is a welcome as one of Pat’s fellow patients. Unlike so many movie sidekicks he’s more of a help than a hindrance, a nice touch.  Tucker is less frantic here than in the “Rush Hour” franchise or “The Fifth Element.”  Credit director Russell for keeping the comic actor grounded in his strongest role to date.  DeNiro serves up the same mannerisms that he has deployed in countless other comic vehicles, but here he’s smoother. His tendency to rely on facial contortions to convey humor has been kept in check by smarter lines and direction, which he has lacked elsewhere. Weaver, in the thankless role of helpless mom gets more out the material than is written.

Bradley Cooper, who has been effective in the two shock comedy hits “The Hangover I and II,” is convincing as a self centered narcissist, even though the results of his excesses barely register. He never comes across as disturbing enough to land in an institution, maybe because he’s just too sweet looking. Never mind; all that occurs before the curtain goes up.

Finally the movie’s true center, and its great trump card, is Jennifer Lawrence, in her most expansive performance to date. To say that the young star of “The Hunger Games,” and “Winter’s Bone” runs away with the movie is to understate the sturdy and persistent vision of writer/director Russell, but Lawrence has taken every nuance and worked it for maximum impact. At only 22 she convincingly generates the body and soul of a woman ten years older. There were reports that the producers were reluctant to cast her, owing to her youth. She has now proved them massively wrong. Her performance here recalls Carole Lombard at her peak.

One of the reasons “Playbook” works so thoroughly, even in its most predictable passages, is the way it balances our own romantic longings against the conventions of romantic comedy.  We know from the start that Pat and Tiffany are destined to get together; the issue is how.  What we hope for is that the relationship progresses with enough credibility for us to project our own fantasies onto the characters.  And they need to be evoked by more than just snappy dialogue.  On this level the movie truly delivers: manifest in Tiffany’s body language as she chases Pat down the street, or during the dance lessons she improbably foists on him.  It’s in Pat’s futile attempts to erase her from his consciousness, long after we’ve acknowledged her as irresistible.  We may want to crown the big lout as he babbles on about getting back with his ex-wife at the same time he stares into the eyes of a sexual dynamo who’s all but thrown herself at him, but we know his resistance can’t last, and luxuriate in its absurdity.  Although trouble is on the periphery of their chemical makeup there’s little real disaster hanging over either characters’ head, so we enjoy their difficulties without fearing an accident of fate or other cliché intervening to jerk tears out of us in the last reel.

The rules of attraction are the stuff of our romantic fantasies, and the team behind “Silver Linings Playbook” has shown the good sense to position them front and center. It may seem like a small achievement, but it’s not. The movie is honestly enjoyable.

Promised Land

Director Gus Van Sant has worked in several modes, ranging from concrete middle brow dramas to open ended and lyrical think pieces.  He’s successfully courted the mainstream with the skillful “Milk,” “To Die For,” and “Good Will Hunting,”  and on a more personal level pleased art house audiences with the introspective “My Own Private Idaho,” “Last Days,” and “Elephant.” He can ground his work in easily approachable narrative or address more adventurous tastes. While his off kilter projects incline toward limited release, they often end up on critics ten best lists. Van Sant has several sides, all of them intriguing.

“Promised Land” is aimed at a general audience but its one of his less compelling works. The focus; “fracking,” a controversial, but by no means novel method of extracting natural gas from deep within the earth, is a hot button issue of the moment that’s unlikely to be settled any time soon. But this movie, though expertly acted and directed, adds little to the arguments, pro or con.  It boasts one interesting story turn, that in a more ambitious script, would have been one of several.  And while the pacing and cinematography are appealing, the movie’s energy dissipates long before the conclusion.

There may be no way to make drama out of an issue like fracking, which may be better suited to the resources of documentary. But that shouldn’t have prevented the writers, in this case actors John Krasinski and Matt Damon, from contriving a more arresting drama, perhaps by using the dilemmas of a small town sitting on top of large gas reserves as the background instead of the engine that drives the story.  What the creative team delivers is TV movie compact and efficient, but dramatically inert. There’s a lot of talk about traditional values, the difficulty of sustaining family farms, and the environment, but most of it is predictable.  The entire movie is more of an opening than a finished piece.

Matt Damon is better than the material and keeps us interested in the introduction. Frances McDormand, by now an old pro, and Rosemary DeWitt, seen mainly on TV, provide a few sparks, but the pleasant surprise is John Krasinski, who delivers a livelier performance than we’re accustomed to seeing on his long running series, “The Office.” Krasinski the writer has delivered a crackling good role for Krasinski the actor.  He and Damon have brought a strong director to the table, but haven’t given him enough rough material to work his usual magic.

Les Miserables

This fully rigged realization of the smash musical would be unthinkable without the most recent advances in digital imagery.  Lacking CGI the production would have run to hundreds of millions. As it is, the boldly imagined locales and gloriously recorded music set the studios back a mere 60 million, about a quarter of what was spent on “The Avengers.”  Director Tom Hooper, whose expressive “The King’s Speech,” was such a welcome surprise, has contrived an even more imaginative visual palette for the sprawling and epic musical drama.

The movie is off the charts visually.  A stupendous opening, involving the mooring of a ship by masses of slaves, comes and goes so quickly it’s almost thrown away. Before we can fully explore their intricacies, densely populated cityscapes, mostly of 19^th century Paris,  appear  and disappear.   Hooper has insisted that non-musical actors like Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe perform their own singing. And if you can believe the press, it was all done on the movie’s stunning sets, and in real time.  Hugh Jackman, a tried and true musical performer, realizes Jean Valjean with feeling and skill.  Unlikely as it seems, Hathaway delivers one of the movie’s highpoints with her big song, “I Had a Dream,” done almost entirely in close up, and what struck me as a single take.  Powerful and heartfelt.

The movie may be a little too overstuffed with spectacle, tears, and plot turns for its own good, but the high points are very high, and they keep coming.  Two raucous set pieces, one in a factory, the other in a tavern, provide welcome comic relief. Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are directed with such invention they almost stop the movie. The lack of dialogue can grate at times, but the music soars at others.  My only serious reservation has to do with the casting of Russell Crowe, an imposing physical presence as the obsessed police man, but a poor substitute for the stout baritone the role commands. Crowe summons the drama but falls short as a singer, and the movie, for better or worse, is almost entirely libretto.

Back in 1968, the great British director, Carol Reed, who had contrived one of the greatest dramas of the period, “The Third Man,” took up the challenge of turning Broadway’s “Oliver” into a textured movie musical.  Using the best technology available to him, he reached similar heights in balancing a large visual canvas with moments of emotional intimacy.  While the movie was financially successful Reed was taken to task by a number of high minded critics: The then towering critic Pauline Kael called “Oliver” a “lead pastry.”  It seems to me that “Les Miz” has been clouted with some of the same condescending brick-bats. No matter, audiences have made it a hit in its first week.

By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter

Already successful beyond industry expectations, “Argo” is more evidence that adults will fill theaters when something they relate to comes their way.  Few in the business predicted that a movie with an inexplicable title, that recounted a true life rescue from forty years ago, and dealt with the messy politics of post-revolutionary Iran, would play the multiplexes for more than a minute. But they were surprised: after opening to a modest 19 million the movie only dropped by 15% its second weekend.  That’s unusual.  In two weeks this modestly budgeted, (by Hollywood standards,) Warner Brothers release, has grossed its production cost, and will probably end its US theatrical run in profit.  That’s before ancillary markets, like DVDs and TV screenings.

Word of mouth and post screening polls show audience response at very close to the top of the range, adding to the likelihood of a long stay in theaters. This also bodes well for international box office. If “Argo” receives a few year-end nominations, Ben Affleck’s smartly directed docu-drama could end up grossing four or five times its cost, maybe more. But just as important, its’ success may clear a path for other adult movies in the next year or two.

Argo opens with the events that led to Iran’s 1979 revolution, which saw the overthrow of Shah Rezah Palavi by a religious and political uprising that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power, and took the country from relative modernity to a much more traditional culture, governed by Sharia laws. In addition to a forced march away from the west, there’s ample evidence that the turnover initiated a downward spiral in the society that has yet to reverse itself.  Contributing to that was Iran’s disastrous war with Iraq in the early ‘80s, that saw millions of fatalities on both sides.

Shortly after the installation of the Ayatollah and his regime, mobs incensed by the US’ reluctance to hand over the mortally ill Shah, stormed the embassy and captured over 60 of its personnel.  A failed attempt by the military to release the hostages resulted in the death of eight servicemen and further fed the hostility between the US and Iran.  It was a moment that foreshadowed the fall of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and the rise of Neo-Conservatism, which advocated a more pugnacious stance toward Iran’s anti-American posture.

After the token release of a handful of hostages, (a so called “humanitarian” gesture,) fifty two hostages remained in the hands of student revolutionaries for 444 days, bringing the Iranian masses together in opposition to America, and causing Carter to call for an embargo of Iranian oil. The embargo resulted in endless lines at gas pumps across the US, and ultimately Carter’s replacement by Ronald Reagan.

While blindfolded hostages were paraded in front TV cameras, few outside Washington were aware that six embassy personnel had managed to flee the compound and secure refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador.  As security tightened at every conceivable egress, various plans to retrieve the six were considered and abandoned.  Ultimately a scheme was contrived to send an intelligence agent in the guise of a movie producer, in the hope that in their relative disarray the Iranian’s would believe that the six were part of a Canadian film crew scouting locations, and that they would be allowed to depart the Tehran airport.  The only one who believed it had a chance of succeeding was the CIA operative who dreamed it up.

In the interests of credibility, an aging producer, (Alan Arkin) and a prosthetics artist, (John Goodman) are recruited to fake a production based on a stale Sci Fi script, complete with auditions and announcement in the trade press. While Arkin and Goodman pretend to produce “Argo” the intelligence officer responsible for the plan, (Ben Affleck,) fobs himself off as a producer and courts the approval of Iranian officials to visit potential locations.  When Affleck ultimately makes contact with the refugees, who are very close to being discovered, they express deep doubts about the plan.  The tension escalates from there.

Working from a script by Chris Terrio that bristles with hard-edged humor and an insiders’ feeling for show business, director Affleck toggles between Hollywood and Teheran, juxtaposing the clumsy machinations of movie production on the growing fear among the hidden Americans.  We’re shown that even a bogus production is subject to the vicissitudes of the industry’s processes, at the same time the risks to the hideaways rise exponentially. Although it has been reported that the real life escape from Iran proceeded smoothly, a nerve wracking escape sequence has been contrived, that plays like a high end episode of “Mission Impossible;” the original TV show, not the Tom Cruise reboots.

Affleck has covered the story’s sprawl with an even hand. There’s a pleasing balance among the several locales that enriches the suspense.  Crisp but unhurried editing contributes to the steady pace.  Playing the CIA operative the actor/director is well supported by a host of familiar faces; Bryan Cranston, Victor Garber, Kyle Chandler, most of whom who disappear into their rolls.

But Afflecks’ restraint keeps the movie from achieving a feeling of intimacy, which might have elevated “Argo” beyond the level of a ripping good tale that also happens to be true.  It lacks the heat of his fictional “Gone Baby Gone,” or “The Town,” both of which, (but especially the latter,) boasted richly detailed characters who became hemmed in by their particular  idiosyncrasies.  While “Argo’s” script is attentive to moments of crisis, it refuses to light on any individual for longer than it takes to establish a story point. The result is a kind of insularity that favors the macro over the micro. Finally, the movie remains grounded in events.

Ben Afflecks’ relentless good taste as director drains energy from Ben Affleck the actor, to the extent that the movie is more reliant on plot turns than people.  It’s satisfying to see the Iranian military take off after Americans fumbling their way through the Teheran airport, but it’s the minimum required to keep the story rolling, because we’re not as invested in the hostages had they been written with more attention.

Let me illustrate the point by way of another movie.  The evening after seeing “Argo,” I watched the latest installment of the Bourne series.  While shamelessly contrived, “The Bourne Legacy,” evokes more body heat than it merits by keeping the focus on its two main characters, played by Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz. The knowing direction of Tony Gilroy, who proved himself so adept at character with the canny, “Michael Clayton,” holds nothing back in terms of exploiting their emotions.  Once we’re invested in Renner and Weisz, we’re captive to the director’s whims, regardless of how implausible.  It isn’t a fair comparison but, I found the disposable material of “The Bourne Legacy” more engaging than the more relevant “Argo.”

Events dictate Argo’s agenda, as opposed to the specifics of personality.  At just two hours the movie is almost too sketchy; a longer running time might have allowed for more intimacy with the individuals whose lives are at stake.  “Argo” is a solid B, but takes a place behind the director’s less tidy but more electric work. Still, it’s recommended.

DVD Alert

For a fine example of how character can drive a movie from the inside, rent the DVD of Angieska Holland’s exquisite nail biter, “In the Dark.” A harrowing tale of survival in the sewers during World War II, the movie burrows deep into human behavior, both good and bad, and mines unbearable tension as a handful of Jews resist both the Nazis and their elemental urges. This is a case where we become involved with characters who are twice burdened, which adds another level of depth to the inherent suspense.  Highly recommended.

Seven Psychopaths

“Seven Psychopaths,” esteemed playwright Martin McDonagh’s second outing as writer/director, is for those who miss the pulpy excesses and quirky illogic of Quentin Tarrantino, and are willing to settle for second best until the real thing comes along.  A bloody, profane, and loose limbed comedy about a landscape of ironically self-aware criminals, it provides an ensemble cast enough dialogue and hot lead to chew up the scenery and one another, which they do with relish.

I found this violent romp by turns hilarious, irritating, inspired, contrived, intelligent, and stupid.  On its surface it’s like the weather in the Midwest; if you don’t like it just wait a few minutes and it’ll change.

The plot, if it can be described as such, revolves around an alcoholic screenwriter, (Colin Farrell,) who accidentally becomes entangled with a clutch of dognappers. The story kicks into gear when the hapless thieves abscond with a prized pooch belonging to a hot tempered mob boss. Most of the action generates from the attempts of said dognappers, (Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) to keep one step ahead of the murderous owner, (Woody Harrelson).  As the bodies accumulate, Farrell’s hapless screenwriter flails at creating a past due assignment entitled “Seven Psychopaths.” Yes, it’s that kind of movie.  Along the way there are numerous digressions that introduce psychopaths Harry Dean Stanton and Tom Waits. First rate actresses appear on the fringes; Abbie Cornish, Gabourey Sidibey, and former Bond femme fatale, Olga Kurlyenko, but they’re quickly shunted off, terrorized, or blown away to make room for the real mayhem makers, the male psychopaths of the title.

McDonagh, the acclaimed Irish playwright of “The Pillowman,” “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” and others, has noted that he prefers movies to theater, although I suspect what he really prefers is the grander payday. He appears to enjoy creating characters that have the same relationship to reality as invisible ink, then putting forth a heroic effort to breathe life into them with his estimable wit. He’s got an unpredictable sense of humor, and a deeply misogynistic point of view, and the craftsmanship to seamlessly meld the two.

The screenplay for his first feature, “In Bruges,” a comedy about two hit men on the lam, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2008. He has returned to the same genre with “Seven Psychopaths,” and vastly outdone himself in terms of body count and vulgarity.  If you like this kind of thing, you’ll probably smile and giggle through most of it. When it comes to high end trash I vastly preferred Oliver Stone’s polished “Savages,” from this summer. “Savages” is just about due for DVD release and it’s worth a look.

More on “The Master”

Because I had such complicated feelings about it, and because I continued to hear such conflicting  responses to Paul Thomas Anderson’s ambitious project, I went back to a theater for a second viewing, a rare occurrence as there are so many other films to see.

I wanted to see “The Master” again because the reports I got, some from friends, made it seem like we had seen entirely different movies.  And, in truth, I couldn’t get a clear handle on my own response to it. In fact, much of the movie had become a blur. Ok, now that I’ve taken another look, a little more clarity.

“The Master,” is a one of a kind, as bracing and vivid, for me anyway, as Martin Scorcese’s brilliant “Raging Bull.”  On some level I think the movie has an almost hypnotic effect on an audience, so much so, that it can be subtly disorienting experience; not easily recalled and arranged in the mind.

More than one or two viewers reported that they couldn’t relate to Joaquin Phoenix’s character because no background material was provided about him. Not true! As a matter of fact, there’s a lengthy and very candid sequence where Freddy reveals his inner torment to Lancaster Dodd in the course of an interview. And in fact, the scene is carefully bracketed; Freddy insists on stretching the perimeters of their first “processing” session. Dodd complies and Freddy accesses a painful aspect of his adolescence.  Very moving.

Others reported that Amy Adams part is insubstantial, and that she appears in only one or two sequences. False, again!  While Adams role is secondary to the two leads, she’s an integral element at four or five key moments in the story: Academy Awards have been handed out for less screen time, and she has certainly earned a nod for her excellent work in an essential supporting role.

A number of viewers mentioned getting lost in the last third of the movie. First time around I also found the last half hour or so somewhat baffling. But on a second viewing it struck me as perfectly clear, even though the very last sequence is handled with a large note of ambiguity.  Aspects of the relationship between Dodd and Quell remain mysterious to the end, but in a positive way, as there’s no question that the two have impacted one another.  Most important is that the particulars of that ambiguity are elegantly expressed.

This brings up another question, one that bears relevance to both the popular and fine arts, if we can still make that distinction.  Are films, books, or any other means of expression, responsible for answering each and every issue they pose?  I don’t think so, but they are without question, obligated to use their raw materials to express them as well as possible.  And I think Anderson has elegantly fulfilled that obligation.

The questions posed by “The Master,” address the issues of what it’s like to be alive in the contemporary world, with all its peculiar sights and sounds, and the impact of our interactions with others as we stumble through time. The restless, inarticulate, but driven misfit and the precise, educated, but unfinished cult leader are pieces of a larger puzzle that briefly fit together, and then move apart. Anderson has done an extraordinary job shaping them and their environment, putting them together, then setting them loose to continue on separate paths.  The writer/director has left it up to viewers to consider the material and draw conclusions, should we care to, but he’s realized the particulars with startling clarity.  I think his movie is here to stay.

by Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter

The fall harvest of stylish, English language features has begun with two releases that have found nearly universal favor with the mainstream media.  But the elements that distinguish both “The Master” and “Looper” are willful idiosyncrasies that are more likely to win them cult status than year end awards.

“Looper,” the more approachable of the two, presents a dystopian view of the near future, built on a perennial sci-fi concept that was exploited with great success by “The Terminator.”  As its complex narrative unspools, writer/director Rian Johnson’s vividly realized sci-fi mash up also echoes elements of “Blade Runner” and a terrific, but little scene cult movie from Spain, “Time Crimes,” which is under development as a studio production. (Note to the studio: move on–Johnson has just stolen your thunder.)

In its opening sequences “Looper” offers up a hard edged sketch of America in 2024, that plays like the warning cries of our more progressive economists. A brutish, inchoate social order has set masses of the poor and disenfranchised against an all but invisible ruling class.  Joe, (Joseph Gordon Levitt,) who aspires to the upper echelon, makes his money performing executions for a venomous mob boss, played with great finesse by Jeff Daniels.  Joe’s prey are other criminals, sent back from the future, where disposing a human body has become the nearest thing to impossible. Why that is, is never explained, but the premise is set up early in the movie, so you go with it.  After shot-gunning his victims at close range Joe and his fellow “Loopers” immolate the remains in blast furnaces, leaving the future clean and tidy.

After efficiently but cheerlessly disposing of a succession of bound and masked bad guys from the 2070s, Joe is assigned to whack his thirty year older self, (Bruce Willis.)  Since he’s been saving up for a lengthy retirement in France Joe balks at the prospect of cutting short his own future, although he’s already witnessed the disastrous results when one of his pals balks at the same assignment.

The younger Joe; Levitt, and the older Joe; Willis, can’t quite bring themselves to kill one another, and depart in different directions.  Younger Joe is on the run from fellow assassins who have taken after him for failing to complete his assignment, while older Joe goes after a young man who’s destined to grow up and dispose of the entire criminal community.

Midway through its lengthy running time, close to two hours, the movie goes through a change of tone and venue, as younger Joe takes refuge with a single mother raising a little boy on a depression era farm, played in near disguise by Emily Blunt.   Unbeknownst to the fugitive hit man, this little boy will have a profound impact on both the future Joe and the current one.

Writer/director Johnson has taken the elements of the movies mentioned above, along with a few others, spun them around in his centrifuge like mind, and patched them together with a vigorous visual style. Plot strands become frayed as the body count rises, (and rises,) in the first half but come together as the story moves towards the tense climax.

Had I not viewed “Timecrimes,”  a week or so earlier, via the Netflix instant download feature, I might have held “Looper” in slightly higher esteem. But seeing the low budget yet resourceful Spanish import in such close proximity, left me slightly wary of Johnson’s plot machinations.  It wasn’t the similarities between the two so much as their related themes. Nevertheless, there seemed just the whiff of things borrowed about the newer film.

As skillfully rigged as it is, and it’s quite extraordinary from moment to moment, “Looper” feels bifurcated. To some extent this is a function of its length. Joe’s problem isn’t stated until very late in the movie’s first half, after we’ve been treated to a lengthy succession of grisly murders and other abuses of human bodies. At this point we’ve been treated to a compelling period design, that calls out for further explanation. But the bulk of the story, when it finally accepts its mission, takes place on the farm, far from the meticulously drawn environment of the first half. The movie almost leaves its origin dangling.

Another directorial element estranged me from Joseph Levitt’s well played character. Director Johnson has chosen to alter Levitt’s face in the movies key sequences, so that he better resembles his older self, the character played by Willis. It’s no more than a flourish, but a distracting one, that when it’s introduced, leaves you scratching your head and asking yourself what happened to alter Joe’s face. The alteration occurs at a pivotal moment, when we’re asked to invest in a relationship between Blunt and Levitt that’s sketchily built, at best.  This small detail makes what should have been a smooth transition lumpy.

But at just the point where the movie seems ready to choke on an over abundance of invention another character enters the mix and revives it from within; a little boy played by Pierce Gagnon, a very young and gifted child actor. In light of story elements that I hesitate to relate for spoiling an important revelation,  Gagnon elevates what might have been a pedestrian device; the cute and threatened innocent,  into a character true to his own internal logic. And delivers the movie from the last act doldrums.

The impassioned fan bases fired up by both “The Master” and “Looper” will probably overlap, but not by much. This latest essay on the mentor/student relationship from PT Anderson, director of “Boogie Nights” and “There Will Be Blood,” is another cultish item, in several senses, that is leaving some audiences elated, and others, thoroughly confused.

“The Master” is still playing in town, and although I saw it relatively late in its run, I believe that the controversy that has risen around it will return to haunt us at awards time. So for what it’s worth, my two cents.

In my mind, anyway, the question the movie imposes  is fairly simple; is it possible for a movie to be thrilling movie making and unsteady narrative at the same time? On a scene to scene basis “The Master” comes to life on several levels. But as it settles into its later section there seems to be an almost willful reluctance on the part of writer/director Paul Thomas  Anderson to develop  the kind of plot turns that would take it to the level that most viewers expect from English language features.

A lengthy essay in a recent Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times described “The Master” as belonging to a recurrent trend the writer categorized as “cryptic cinema.” At the same time he tried to draw a distinction between Anderson’s latest and “The Tree of Life.”  One he called a memory piece, the other a failed narrative.  For me, it was the typical “distinction without a difference,” one that ultimately boils down to a matter of taste. If you like Terrence Malick’s personal memory piece you’ll probably get a kick out of Anderson’s essay on mentoring.

I didn’t find “The Master “ murky or unclear, although it willfully dispenses with the kind of back stories that would make either of the two main characters,  the cult leader Lancaster Dodd, or his ambivalent student, Freddie Quell, comprehensible in terms of simple motivation. What the movie does, and does so well, is to interject us into their tumultuous lives, like a fly on the wall.  And much of what we witness is startling, complicated, and compelling.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd states the case for himself in everything he says and does.  He’s a driven individualist with a voracious appetite for both the physical and the ethereal, and the troubled Quell sees both in him. It would be wrong to describe  the opposing elements in Dodd’s makeup as warring with one another. Quite the opposite; for better or worse Dodd revels in his contradictions. And there I think is where many people have trouble dealing with both the movie and his character.

Quell, realized with startling physical detail by Joaquin Phoenix, is deeply at odds with his contradictions. Early on, when he impulsively hops onto Dodd’s yacht he’s close to his wits end.  In the simplest terms, Quell is a raging sociopath. But as he gradually comes under the influence of the so called master he is subtly transformed, (not without lapses,) into a character better equipped to cope with the conflicting impulses at his core.

The movie is hobbled, at least for my taste, in several key sequences, that begin and end in the same place, and are simply unrealized in terms of narrative. One glaring example is a picturesque scene set in the Southwest, where Dodd and Quell engage in a dangerous, high speed, motorcycle drive through the desert. The idea that they’re testing each others mettle by example is interesting, but it lacks a defining moment that would make its intentions clear.  And that’s only one of several sequences that leave too many unexplored questions.

At the same time there are  others that nearly explode with well defined  feeling: in particular, a sequence where both Lancaster and Quell spend a night in jail. For Dodd the incident is an occupational hazard, a moment where fate has turned against him, but one that will quickly pass. For Quell, it’s a serious crisis that cuts to the quick of his fears, and brings him close self destruction.  The sequence is interesting because it reveals the differences between a man who is at peace with his conduct and one who has so far been unable to reconcile his feelings with his emotions.

At the movies conclusion, and I believe it actually does conclude, Quell has arrived at a different level, and some sense of internal peace. I won’t go into that here, because I’m sure some or you would rather experience it firsthand. For others, it will seem like to little, too late; they will have already given up on the movie.

Amy Adams comes alive in a couple of strong scenes, for once playing against type. I wish she and Laura Dern, also in the supporting cast, had been given more to do here, but they do the best they can with the script. Others provide strong moments, although every human element has been arranged to complement the two leads.

Finally, Anderson has one more trick up his sleeve; crafty production design, complemented by extraordinary cinematography.  To say the production design has been lovingly rendered by Director of Photography Mihai Malaimarie is to understate the case.  Malaimarie’s images are literally eye opening. A European who was worked with Francis Ford Copolla, he seems to be showing us aspects of the American landscape of the mid-fifties  in a way we’ve never quite seen it before.

I suppose I would be remiss for not touching on the flashpoint of Scientology, from which Anderson has supposedly taken his cues. It seems to me that the real life L. Ron Hubbard is merely a jumping off point for the fictional Lancaster Dodd.  Like the period itself, his character is merely a reference point for the director, who’s spun his own, unique take on mentoring, like he’s done  before in “Hard Eight,” “Boogie Nights,” and “There Will Be Blood.” Anyone looking for vindication or castigation of a particular ideology in “The Master” is advised to look elsewhere.  Anderson is much more interested in the process than its medium.

By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter

Wes Anderson’s inspired “Moonlight Kingdom”

Those who have longed for Wes Anderson to revisit the comic landscape of “Rushmore,” will be tickled by his latest, “Moonrise Kingdom.”  An inspired comedy about two twelve year olds on the run, it provides solid rolls for a large cast that include Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Frances McDormand, and others.  It’s funny where it could have been sad, and wise where it could have been smug.

As he has in the past, Anderson uses his settings, a sprawling, island house and a goofball scout camp (that might as well serve as a summer retreat for Rushmore) as launch pads for his two lead characters.  The deadpan, almost completely silent introductions of the locations, and the people who inhabit them, are rendered with such precision you know the director has complete confidence in his material. As the story alternates between the flight of two twelve year olds and the havoc it wreaks on the adults chasing after them every offbeat element effortlessly gels.

After a chance introduction at a quirky theatrical production, Sam and Suzy, two quirky eleven year olds, find a common ground in their disaffection. For the next year they write to each other, making plans for a summer getaway.  Although only dimly aware of it, they share the same impulse; to keep the older generation from imposing the kind of limitations that stifled their own lives.  It’s only much later that they come to appreciate each other’s individuality and develop the kind of affection that makes their relationship special. We’ve seen this many times before; it’s a classic archetype. But rarely has it been done with the same mixture of dry eyed wit and affection.

Part of the magic is in the casting. Anderson has given the roles to two virtual newcomers, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, who have yet to develop the manners of more seasoned performers.  Anderson directs these two in the same way that Milos Forman handled the non actors in his early, Czech comedies, “Loves of a Blonde,” and “Fireman’s Ball.” Forman understands that some people have a natural ability to perform on screen, and that they can be successfully integrated with professionals. Anderson has the same instinct.

In the case of “Moonlight Kingdom” it was a real gamble, because the roles are complicated; Sam is a skilled survivalist, narrowly focused on the mechanics of escape.  Suzy is a thwarted romantic, who shows up with books and a record player. There was a good chance the two kids wouldn’t be able to make the parts work; that they’d remain a puzzle to the audience. But over time Hayward and Gilman convince us of their mutual affection, as well as their stubborn individualism.

The movie is set in the late sixties, when the mail, outside of the considerable expense of long distance calling, is the most efficient means of communication. It seems odd in a world of instant messaging, texting and Skype, where the concept of absence, at least in terms of sound and image, is almost unimaginable. But the script has no trouble getting the idea across.

Harvey Keitel shows up mid-way through, as a scout commander who takes over the search after his subordinate, played by Ed Norton, fails.  His appearance here echoes his role in “Thelma and Louise,” but with an eye to making fun of the iconic aspects of Callie Khouri’s script.

“Moonrise Kingdom” barely runs 90 minutes, but every one of them adds to its momentum. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman’s off kilter framing and wandering camera are a good fit for the material. Like so many post-modern comedies, the style draws attention to the conventions of filmmaking, becoming a kind of in joke between the creators and the observers. In this case it works.  The script remains above the smug superiority of siding with either the kids or their elders; none of the characters, with the possible exception of a social worker, played by Tilda Swinton, gets short changed by parody.

The story stumbles a bit, during several half-baked finales.  There are moments when Anderson’s direction veers into the self-consciousness that soured “The Darjeeling Limited,”  “The Life Aquatic,” and to a lesser extent, “The Royal Tennenbaums.” But after minor lapses “Moonrise Kingdom” ends on a note wry comedy that compensates for the two or three mannered minutes that precede it.  All and all it’s one of the most enjoyable movies of the year.

“Moonrise Kingdom” isn’t playing local theaters, but it will be coming soon.

Looking back at Sasha Baron Cohen’s “Dictator”

About halfway through “The Dictator” I surrendered to my baser instincts and went with it.  Resistance became impossible. A lot of it was just too funny.

The latest Sasha Baron Cohen isn’t the explosive frontal assault that was “Borat.” And it lacks the vulgar leaps into fantasy that distinguished its poor relation, “Bruno.” But Cohen’s obsessive comic energy finally overcomes the limp direction and strait jacketed story line that keeps his first narrative feature earthbound.  And for every misfire in the scattershot script, there are two hits. Since those hits keep you laughing through the slower passages, and outnumber them about two to one, you have no choice but to give in to the thing.

“Borat” slapped so many faces, and so rudely, it ratcheted up the stakes for the “mockumentary.” Before Cohen took a whack at it the genre was wheezing, as Christopher Guest, its most inspired practitioner, (“Spinal Tap,” “Best In Show,”) softened in middle age. Late night comics (Jimmy Kimmel in particular) and the guys behind the shockingly funny “Jackass” movies, had taken the most jarring elements from the genre and repackaged them in short blasts.  Their stuff, while often hilarious, is narrowly focused, and fails to deliver the satisfactions of long form storytelling.

Cohen came along, after getting his feet wet in TV, and imposed Borat, his eerily spaced out Eastern European, on the most volatile fringes of US culture.  In addition to hilarity, Cohen generated suspense as you began to wonder how much he could antagonize his unwitting, real life co-stars, without having his head handed to him.  “Bruno,” to a lesser extent, takes the same tack, using sex as the main provocation.  While it’s uneven, the high points keep it alive. And, like “Borat,” the potential for bloodletting creates a fair amount of tension.

So now, with a studio budget and the semblance of a story line, Cohen and his collaborators have moved a little closer to the territory carved out by Jerry Lewis, who no doubt, owes his anarchic impulses to the Marx Brothers.  Cohen’s sensibility is closer to Groucho than Jerry. And given the liberty of an R rating, he can fling sharper brickbats at a wider range of totems.

Like Borat, his General Aladeen is tailored to raise hackles in both the East and West, a good thing. But the shopworn plot contrivances, many as old as Mark Twain, too often shackle him. He and his co-writers try to joke their way out of the hoariest devices, but the exits often saddle the talented supporting cast with second rate dialogue.  It’s disappointing to see high class talent like Anna Farris and Horatio Sanz stuck dragging the movie forward while the star gets most of the freshest material.

What saves “The Dictator” is the many inspired sketches, a handful of them gut splitting. A sequence with a pregnant woman on the verge of childbirth soars on the wings of bad taste.  A helicopter flight over Manhattan yields expected but hilarious results. There are more funny throw away jokes than you can count. And two thirds the way through Cohen’s Aladeen delivers a speech about the advantages of dictatorship that reaches the satiric level of Groucho’s harebrained monologues in “Horsefeathers,” and “Duck Soup.”

“The Dictator” is now on its last theatrical legs.  You might want to catch it on an uneventful weekday night. Its impulsive vulgarity is bound to seem more provocative in public than your living room.

“A Dangerous Method” on DVD

Let’s face it; there wasn’t much of substance in the theaters this spring. The result is a blah summer of DVD releases. There was a sprinkling of bracing comedy, the kind of thing you might enjoy sitting outside with friends, on a balmy night in front of a large flat screen. I’ll cover some of that in an upcoming column.

But among the things that escaped my attention earlier is David Cronenberg’s complicated and informative “A Dangerous Method,” The movie made the rounds of the specialty houses in the late fall of ’11, but failed to attract Oscar’s Midas touch. As a result it remained in obscurity.

Viggo Mortensen is Carl Jung, Michael Fassbender is Sigmund Freud, and Kera Knightly is the archetypal “neurotic,” in this well-articulated study of the ideas the two doctors developed to treat what was then called “hysteria.“

The noted playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton, whose credits include two movies you need to see in order to appreciate his range, “Dangerous Liaisons,” and “The Quiet American,” penned the subtle script. Given the wealth of material on his subjects, Hampton was wise to hone in on Freud and Jung’s disagreement over the nature of the subconscious. The material is more biographical than dramatic, but it keeps things moist with the affairs that dogged both marriages.

Renowned for his horror films and “A History of Violence,” director Cronenberg slows the pace here, subordinating his penchant for bloodletting to Hampton’s attempt to clarify the murky relationship between Jung and his former mentor. Vincent Cassel gooses the middle with an extraordinary, but all too short appearance as the infamous Otto Gross. Kera Knightly takes on a difficult part and shows us more of her guts than she has in the franchises that have earned her millions.  The handsome production takes us back to Austria and Germany between the wars, then reminds us of the devastation wreaked by the Nazis in a poignant postscript.

Those curious about the origins of analysis and psychoanalysis will be compelled by this well-acted and directed period piece. As a DVD experience this one shines; you can stop and review passages that may seem too weighty to absorb on one viewing.

I thought the show was one of the best in many years, if not the best.

The movies, as I wrote, were good, but not great.  I think “The Artist” is fun, but amounts to little

There were a lot of good documentaries showcased that will go on to do well in video and TV.

I liked Meryl Streep in “Iron Lady.”   And Viola Davis in “The Help.”

“A Separation” was a good choice.  There was a lot of intelligent entertainment last year.

I think I missed one major award: I thought they’d give it to Davis;  they gave it to Streep. No big deal.

The criticism that the Academy skews older is okay by me; IFP, the Independent  Feature Project, which has its show the day before, skews younger.

Actually older people, 45 plus, go to the movies more than younger,  and consume more DVDs.

Dan Cohen

By Dan Cohen,

NewsLanc’s Santa Monica Reporter

Last time I talked about Oscar qualifiers I admired, but with reservations.  The following are those I admired with few if any qualifications.

My Week with Marilyn

On its surface this slice of movie lore, probably as much fiction as fact, appears no more substantial than an after dinner mint. But I found it more amusing and thoughtful than the far weightier prestige films of the year. Because the script is so faithful to its original intentions and so finely tuned to its characters, it actually reaches deep into a little understood phenomenon; the power that fame, and the few icons who command it, wield over the rest of us.

Michele Williams, who channels the spirit of Marilyn Monroe with wit and delicacy, doesn’t have a prayer to win the Oscar. First, her movie underperformed at the box office, for reasons beyond my limited understanding. And second, because it appeals to the generation that experienced Marilyn Monroe as a movie star first hand, while she was still alive and engaged with her public.  Monroe remains an icon, whose films are never far from repertory or cable, but sixty years on it’s hard to appreciate the power she held as both personality and a movie star.  Suffice it to say she was one of a kind.

Playing “Marilyn”, especially as she struggles to make her mark in a bad movie, seems on its face, a fools’ errand.  Even in the best of times Monroe’s personality was something of a mystery; the task of getting under her skin during an awkward period seems even more daunting.

When Williams first appears your impulse is to dismiss her entirely.  Her physical resemblance to Monroe is on a par with the kind of casual impersonator you see at a costume party.  Complicating the effort, Williams has a very different physical profile, which impacts the way she carries herself.  Monroe, at her height, affected an almost delirious caricature of the feminine ideals of the period, the late 50s and very early 60s. There’s no way to make that impression today; it requires time travel.   But ten minutes in, you’ve dropped all reservations and surrendered to Williams’ strategy of evoking an impression of Marilyn from the inside. In this she’s truly exceptional.

The same can be said of Kenneth Branagh’s Laurence Olivier.  Everything from the voice to the body language fails to jibe with our recollection of Olivier, a great actor who disappeared into his roles and was almost invisible apart from them. But Branagh brings so much conviction to the lines that, in a short while, the real Olivier ceases to exist.  The central parts are complemented by a gallery of spot on supporting players; Eddie Redmayne, Julia Ormond, Emma Watson, Toby Jones, and a bunch more. Nobody disappoints.

But the movie is more than equal to its performances. The script is tartly funny and knowing from the first minute to the last.  Simon Curtis, a veteran of British TV, directs with clarity and confidence. Cinematographer Ben Smithard employs a gentle color palette that eases the immersion into the low budget period recreation without drawing attention to it.

The unlikely events, the stars’ dalliance with a young writer, are set during Olivier’s attempt to hitch his theatrical fame to Monroe’s exploding movie fame.  The vehicle he’s chosen to produce, direct, and star in, is a period drawing room comedy that almost everyone but Olivier recognizes as an artistic and professional misstep. After a troubled shoot “The Prince and the Showgirl,” sandwiched between the touching “Bus Stop” and the sidesplitting “Some Like It Hot” failed on every level.

What “My Week with Marylin” does so well, and so effortlessly, is to simultaneously make fun of and respect the public’s nearly slavish devotion to great icons.   The Marilyn of this movie is a tortured performer at work and a selfish narcissist the rest of the time, but someone whose huge appeal simply can’t be denied. Not that there’s anything simple about that; it’s way too complicated to fully understand.

Only a few actresses have held as profound a sway over the general public as Monroe; Garbo at her height, Ingrid Bergman and perhaps Katharine Hepburn for a time. But there was a peculiar fervor around Marilyn Monroe; a collision between her personae and the period that resulted in the kind of idolatry that remains with us today.  Somehow this small movie addresses that issue, without underlining it.

There’s a great scene at the midpoint, when the character played by Eddie Redmayne, the narrator, delivers an unspoken truth about the movie that’s collapsing around them, that everybody but Monroe and Olivier seem to realize.  “You’re a great star trying to be a serious actress” he says, “and he’s a serious actor trying to become a great star; and this picture isn’t going to do that for either of you.” This is one of the best written lines of the year in one of the few really well written movies of the year. You savor every funny/sad minute of it.

A Separation

It’ll be no surprise if “A Separation” wins the Oscar for best Foreign Language film of 2011; it’s  one of the few genuinely compelling dramas of the past few years, in any language.  Movie lovers who stay away on account of the film’s setting, Iran, and its’ current status on the world stage, are denying themselves of one of the most satisfying experiences in recent memory.

In their rush to sell it to audiences, some critics have described “A Separation” as a kind of thriller, which is a misrepresentation.  The movie is suspenseful, and rivets your attention, but suspense, that is, the narrative’s ability to make us want to know what happens next, is the marrow of all drama. It’s just that there are very few modern dramas rigged well enough to hold our attention the way this one does. So it gets mistaken for another genre.

A youngish man and woman sit before a judge to air complaints about their marriage. Their diction and expressions speak volumes about their middle class roots. The woman, stylish and well made up, wears a scarf that covers her head, so we know the two are probably Muslims. In the early scenes we may be tempted to compartmentalize them, even though they live with modern conveniences, in what appears to be the upper middle class section of Tehran. But as the story unfolds, over a full (and at times breathless) two hours, becoming ever more complicated and perilous, we can’t help but identify with each of the main players.

There’s a feeling of real flesh and blood at the heart of writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s script.  This is his fifth feature as director and about his tenth as screenwriter.  I haven’t seen the others but the story here is so smartly rigged that it could serve as a blueprint for a class on screenwriting.  The filmmaking, from the acting to the cutting, to the cinematography (which I believe is digital) keeps us focused on the ever escalating tension. The direction, of the fluid sort sometimes referred to as “invisible,” is anything but. This is the craft of storytelling at its highest level.

The initial problem has to do with the custody of a teenager, but the conflict ultimately extends to a handful of other people and problems. Complicating matters are cultural and religious issues, all expertly developed and explained.  One of the more compelling characters is a municipal judge, who is called upon to function as a detective, psychologist, and civil authority at the same time. As he struggles to sort problems and handle them with both restraint and respect for the law, we fully understand his patience, expertise, and the difficulties he faces every day.

“A Separation” has been outlawed in Iran, which is ironic because it’s more than sympathetic to the people and place.  I don’t why it ran afoul of the government; maybe because it refuses to tow a party line. Regardless, “A Separation” is a terrific movie.

Pina

I don’t know a thing about dance, but I do know that “Pina,” is a stellar performance film in a class of its own, and like “A Separation,” a completely satisfying evening at the movies.  If I had to rank the great films driven by dance, this one would be close to “The Red Shoes,” although is a kind of documentary. I say a kind of, because it plays more like a dream than non-fiction.

As a matter of fact, I have attended a handful of dances and ballets over the past twenty years or so, enough to appreciate the level of director Wim Wenders inspired homage to the late, celebrated choreographer Pina Bausch.  It’s been reported that he and Bausch talked about a film project for more than two decades.  But if the stories are to be trusted, Wenders couldn’t find a way to film Bausch’s work until 3D was perfected.  It sounds like he instinctively sensed that the creative use of 3D might capture the energy and excitement of Bausch’s distinctive choreography. The amazing thing is, by using 3D as a character, he’s almost created a new genre.

Most of the movie’s running time is devoted to actual dances, some shot on a stage, some on locations, and some cut together from both.  Since Bausch choreographs like an architect, regardless of where she sets her pieces, the 3D creates the kind of visual spectacle that even the theater can’t quite deliver.  Not that the two can be compared; they can’t. Theater is live and spontaneous; movies are canned and calculated.  But “Pina” is a thing apart from anything you’ve seen on a two dimensional plane. The vivid, space busting camera work, is a worthy substitute for the ambience of a live performance.  The clever editing, adjusted to accommodate for three dimensional images, finally marries the subject and content, almost like it did in the ground breaking “Avatar.”

The movie proceeds as a series of set pieces, mainly highlights from Bausch’s better known shows. There’s a long section from Stravinksy’s “Rite of Spring,” pop pieces like Jun Miyake’s catchy jazz number “Lillies of the Valley,” chamber music, and several standards; a completely eclectic program, although you rapidly become confident that whatever comes next will be accompanied by eye popping choreography.

The characters in most live action 3D movies, (as opposed to animation, a category unto itself) have mostly seemed like moving two dimensional cutouts, as opposed to representations of actual flesh and blood. I’m thinking here about titles like “Alice,” “Hugo,” and the glut of 3D horror and sci- fi the studios have been grinding out to goose box office.  3D calls for a rethinking of moment to moment film grammar, and most directors (other than the animators) have shucked that responsibility. Their results have been mainly tiring.

What “Pina” accomplishes, is to bring the viewer into intimate contact with the dancers and their energy.  The 3D camera, which seems to have a mind of its own, captures the elegance, humor, drama, and the relationship between the dancers and the spaces they inhabit.

On some level “Pina” plays like a cerebral sci fi. The only dialogue appears as voice over to images of various members of the company.  Bausch, who died midway through production, also appears, adding an additional poignancy to remarks by her dancers/collaborators.

“Pina” is so charged with dynamic movement and music I’m sure it’ll play as a normal DVD, but trust me, the 3D theatrical is transporting.

Will Oscar play a role in the future of these three outstanding movies?  “Pina” is a possible in the doc category, “A Separation,” likely in Foreign Language slot. “My Week With Marilyn,” is a long shot at best.  “A Separation” is also nominated for best screenplay, which it fully deserves. But I won’t be hurt if Woody Allen wins for “Midnight in Paris.”   Concerning the others;  my hope is that by the end of the inevitable three plus hours of tedium, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer will have gotten their just rewards, although I’m not holding my breath.  And my best  guess is that “The Artist” will have taken more than its share of Oscar.

Movie alert!

“Chronicle” is the best movie of 2012, so far.  Unless you absolutely despise teenagers I highly recommend it. It’s a nimble sci fi about teenagers that transcends teen age. When was the last time you heard a 17 year old carry on intelligently about the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche?

By Santa Monica Reporter Dan Cohen

I wasn’t motivated to make a ten best list for 2011. After looking over a survey of world critics in “Sight And Sound,” (the journal of the British Film Institute,) I was even less inclined. The overwhelming majority chose “Tree of Life” as their best or second best.  And then the much appreciated “A Separation,” which wasn’t playing in this country at the time.   As much as I admired Terence Malik’s idiosyncratic memory piece it struck me as having more in common with art installations than narrative filmmaking.

Just to avoid a certain type of argument regarding what does or does not qualify as  a feature film, I’m going to sidestep the relevant issues regarding “Tree of Life,”  and get back to the problem I had making up a ten best list for 2011.

It was a year with a fair number of good films, distributed pretty much over the entire year. Even though the distributors would like you to think the best and most important came out in the last quarter, it was not the case in 2011.  “The Help,” “Midnight in Paris,” and the underappreciated crime drama, “The Guard” were released mid-year.   The Sundance Film Festival debuted “Win Win,” “Beginners,” and “Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene,” back in January; their releases were peppered throughout the year. And let us not overlook the hilarious low jinks of “Bridesmaids,” which dropped late spring.

So here we are, facing  the Academy Awards with the Golden Globes in the rear view mirror. Where does that place the major contenders, most of which saw wide release mid winter?  Here are a few comments on the handful I liked, but for one reason or other, couldn’t quite love.

“The Descendants”

We owe a debt to writer/director Alexander Payne for “Election,” “Sideways,”  “Citizen Ruth,” and maybe even “About Schmidt.”  But his latest, a good enough comic drama with the endlessly likable George Clooney, doesn’t breathe the same rarefied air.  It’s notable for its modulated ensemble and consistent tone, but it lacks the rude energy that takes his best work to a higher level.   Shailene Woodley, who, as I understand it, cut her teeth on TV shows (“The Secret Life of An American Teenager,”) is nothing less than outstanding as Clooney’s daughter. And Clooney, who exercises admirable restraint, delivers his lines with sympathy and insight.  Still, the material never cuts loose; it’s almost obsessively good natured and even tempered, to its detriment.

Writer/director Payne, who noted in interviews that he hadn’t directed a feature since the 2004 award winner, “Sideways,” said that he was scrambling to find material when he took up “The Descendants.” Hmmmm. In any case, I wanted to like it more, but kept comparing it to his better work.

“The Artist”

You no longer have to wonder how a “silent movie” would play in an era when the sound of Dolby and THX routinely blast you out of your seat.  If awards were given for most charming writing, directing and performing, “The Artist” would take them all, dialogue or no.

Director Michel Hazanavicius, up to now virtually unknown in this country, goes where only Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie,” and Chaplin’s “Modern Times” have gone before, completely foregoing dialogue at a time when dialogue either makes or breaks most movies. The Globes” rewarded his daring with a best picture award in the “Comedy or Musical” category, which is interesting because the film is neither.  A quick look at the other nominees in that category, “Bridesmaids,” “My Week with Marilyn,” and “Midnight in Paris,” shows that when Hollywood falls in love it forgets its own rules.  In this case, it seems that the Hollywood Foreign Press, an organization of less than a hundred, was reluctant to put “The Artist” up against another of its faves, “The Descendants,” which they awarded best picture in their drama category.  They probably should have reversed  their placement  which leads you to wonder what they were thinking. Here’s a hint: that’s why they’re called the Hollywood “foreign” press.

Chaplin released his “Modern Times,” as a non-talking feature in 1940.  No producer in his right mind would have faced such a headwind at the same time “Gone With the Wind,” was playing to mobs, but Chaplin did, and found an audience. Mel Brooks, fresh off successful parodies of westerns, (“Blazing Saddles,”) and horror movies, (“Young Frankenstein,”) took a different approach, setting  his anarchic sensibility loose on the form of the silents, with the aim of savaging their mannerisms. He was only partially successful.

“The Artist,” is nothing like Chaplins’ brilliant commentary on technology or Brooks’ raucous slapstick. It’s a light drama that affectionately mimics the conventions of the period with a touch of schizophrenia. It isn’t really a silent movie, it’s more like the shadow of a silent movie, informed by history and hindsight. “The Artist” has been called  an “homage” to silent film, and in the sense that it couldn’t have existed without them, it is.

Hazanaviscious, a Paris born director who saw success with two Bond style thrillers in France, steers clear of parody. He shoehorns as many conventions of silent cinema as can be comfortably fit into one screenplay then shoots like its seventy years ago.  “The Artist” works, but  isn’t quite as affecting as the films it’s about. Which is ok, I suppose, because very few of us  live with those films anymore. Having said that, I do wonder what the Gloria Swanson of “Sunset Boulevard” would have thought of it.  My guess is, not much.

The Iron Lady

Regardless of what you think about Margaret Thatcher’s politics, you can’t help but love Meryl Streep playing her.  No matter what your expectations are, you’ll be confounded by her performing wizardry.  And while there’s no arguing the film sidesteps the controversy over Thatcher’s conservatism, it never sets itself up to make the case for or against it in the first place.

The script, which moves swiftly over fifty years, focuses more on Thatcher’s coming of age than her conservative roots, although they’re referenced throughout.  The movie is more interested in how Thatcher developed the strength to become the UK’s first female prime minister.   The philosophy that guided her takes a back seat.

It begins with Thatcher in retirement, struggling to control the ravages of dementia.  Haunted by the presence of her long dead husband, she refuses to back away from day to day challenges that would diminish her status as the elder statesman.  Deeply committed to the iron that sustained her career, she goes to great lengths to keep face.

There’s a great scene where she engages in a bit of cat and mouse to keep an intrusive doctor from seeing the depths of her illness. The script is remarkable for showing how Thatcher calls on long held reserves of strength to keep the man at arms’ length. It’s poignant but not the least bit sentimental, like the woman herself.

The brilliance of Streeps’ performance is that she’s able to indicate her inner turmoil with the most subtle alterations of physical make up.  Her voice is a big part of it, but there’s a lot in the eyes and the body language.  She gets able support from Jim Broadbent as the husband who continues to spar with her, even in death.

Finally, since the story is so intimately bound up with the period and the tumultuous changes Thatcher brought to the country, the last thirty minutes or so feel threadbare. The treatment of the Falklands war is so sketchy it leaves a bitter after taste. All in all, though, it moves gracefully through her remarkable life, with little apology or sentiment.

A further note; “Iron Lady” recently opened in the UK, to strong business. The reviews, however, were scalding. By and large they criticized the movie for failing to address Thatcher’s politics. One writer, hardly a fan of the former PM, called it “rubbish.” They willfully failed to acknowledge that as an impressionistic work it couldn’t possibly uphold standards better applied to book or documentary.  Or maybe they were just haters.

“The Help”

I didn’t get interested in this movie until Melissa Hart Perry, a commentator on CNBC, delivered a lengthy rant about it on the Rachel Maddow show. I realize that was back in early summer, and seems like a million years ago, but I can feel her anger like it was yesterday. Up to that time the trailer had me convinced “The Help” was another tepid memory piece from the Disney factory.  But Perry made me think that there might be more to it, for better or worse.

I was surprised at how complicated and enjoyable it was, and how effectively the large, ensemble brought their parts to life.  “The Help” is a movie about another era, but it’s more like a movie made in another era. It recalls the better work of directors like Martin Ritt or Norman Jewison, or Stanley Kramer, who worked within the studio system making films that addressed the social issues of their time.  On balance I think Ritt was the most interesting. His best films include “Hud,” “Norma Rae,” and “Hombre.”   At its best moments Tate Taylor’s direction  recalls the strengths of the esteemed Ritt, and  I’m eager to see what he comes up with next.

“The Help” aggravated commentators like Perry because it’s view of racial inequality during the early sixties is seen through the eyes of a young, privileged white woman, played by the spirited Emma Stone  Among other things the film has been criticized for devoting more time to the issues of its white protagonist than the murder of Medgar Evers.  It’s a good point but the movie is only tangentially about the latent civil rights movement, and more about the relationships between a group of middle class southerners and their black help.

The expectation that movies will conform to any particular standard of truth telling is bound to be disappointed. The narrative medium is impressionistic; It’s unreliable and untrustworthy even when it appears to represent reality. Let one good example suffice; the portrayal of war versus the real thing.

Dramas generally reach us by evoking emotion, and by explicating human foibles through action. They work by showing, not telling. Their relationship to books, articles, and even documentary is tangential at best.

“The Help” is a good natured, sprawling entertainment, elevated by the stellar performances from Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain. Their heartfelt work is supported by a host of others in the cast; Stone, Allison Janney and Bryce Dallas Howard. I enjoyed every minute of my time with them.

Next time: 2011 movies I really liked.