History Time

Darkest Hour (2017): written by Anthony McCarten; directed by Joe Wright; starring Gary Oldman (Winston Churchill), Kristin Scott Thomas (Clemmie Churchill), Ben Mendelsohn (King George VI), Lily James (Elizabeth Layton), Ronald Pickup (Neville Chamberlain), and Stephen Dillane (Viscount Halifax):

Old-fashioned, talky history picture got Gary Oldman and a whole lot of make-up and prosthetics a Best Actor Oscar for playing Winston Churchill. The film takes place over the course of a few weeks in 1940 during which Churchill becomes Prime Minister and is immediately faced with the dilemma of fighting or making peace with Nazi Germany while Germany's forces route the Allies on the continent. 

It's certainly rousing stuff of a certain type, historically inaccurate in certain pumped-up scenes of Yay Blighty. Oldman is excellent, or at least he's not recognizable as Gary Oldman much of the time, and the Academy loves that shit. One could literally start Dunkirk immediately after this movie ends and have an almost seamless four-hour movie from two different directors. Recommended.

A Brief History of Time (1992): written and directed by Errol Morris; starring Stephen Hawking and friends and family: Errol Morris' documentary weaves together the life of physicist Stephen Hawking with illustrations of his contributions to physics and the process of his thinking. It's enjoyable and informative, though I would have liked more physics. And maybe a couple less scenes from Disney's The Black Hole. Seriously. Recommended.

Full Fathom Five For Fighting

Super 8 (2011): written and directed by J.J. Abrams; starring Jeff Courtney (Joe Lamb), Ryan Lee (Cary), Zach Mills (Preston), Riley Griffiths (Charlie), Kyle Chandler (Deputy Lamb), Ron Eldard (Louis Dainard), and Elle Fanning (Alice Dainard): Lightweight Spielberg homage from J.J. Abrams comes with the approval and cooperation of Spielberg himself. It's a lot like ET gene-spliced with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goonies, and the South Park 'dream' episode in which the kids are trapped on a bus by a monster. Elle Fanning is distractingly wan and emaciated throughout. The kids are underwritten and overdetermined and not all that appealing. Not a terrible film, but so much of a pastiche it hardly seems to exist. Lightly recommended.

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017): written and directed by Martin McDonagh; starring Frances McDormand (Mildred), Sam Rockwell (Dixon), and Woody Harrelson (Willoughby): Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell get lots of pithy dialogue and violent moments to earn their Best Acting Oscars (Lead Female and Supporting Actor, respectively) in this pungent NuTarantino offering from writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, 7 Psychopaths). It's not as good as you might expect from the awards, but it's certainly an actor's showcase of a certain sort. Recommended.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947): adapted by Philip Rapp, Everett Freeman, and Ken Englund from the story by James Thurber; directed by Norman Z. McLeod; starring Danny Kaye (Walter Mitty), Virginia Mayo (Osalind van Hoorn), Boris Karloff (Dr. Hugo Hollingshead), Fay Bainter (Walter's Mother), Ann Rutherford (Walter's Fiancee), and Thurston Hall (Bruce Pierce): A special edition that removes Danny Kaye's bafflingly popular patter songs from this movie would be super. James Thurber's short-short story gets pulled and twisted like taffy to accommodate a romantic plot involving Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. The movie's a lot of fun except for those patter songs. Boris Karloff is a delight as a menacing 'doctor.' Recommended.

Living in Oblivion (1995): written and directed by Tom DiCillo; starring Steve Buscemi (Nick Reve), Catherine Keener (Nicole Springer), Dermot Mulroney (Wolf), Danielle von Zerneck (Wanda), James Le Gros (Chad Palomino), Rica Martens (Cora), Peter Dinklage (Tito), and Kevin Corrigan (Assistant Camera): Witty look at Indy film-making remains fresh and exciting more than 20 years after its release. Everyone is good. The character of 'Chad Palamino' is not based on Brad Pitt, apparently, despite decades of rumors, but another young actor of 1995 whom writer-director Tom DiCillo refuses to name. Johnny Depp, maybe? A young Peter Dinklage has a show-stopper of a rant about the preponderance of dwarves in movie dream sequences. Highly recommended.

Emma (1996): adapted from the Jane Austen novel and directed by Douglas McGrath; starring Gwyneth Paltrow (Emma), Greta Scacchi (Mrs. Weston), Alan Cumming (Mr. Elton), Sophie Thompson (Miss Bates), Phyllida Law (Mrs. Bates), Jeremy Northam (Mr. Knightley), Toni Collette (Harriet Smith), and Ewan McGregor (Frank Churchill):  In and around the fictional English village of Highbury and the surrounding estates, romance is blooming in the second decade of the 19th century. Or at least it's brewing inside 21-year-old busybody matchmaker Emma's head. Gwyneth Paltrow is very sparkly and glowy as Emma, while the supporting cast is solid and witty throughout. Well, maybe except for Ewan McGregor, hot off Trainspotting. McGregor admitted later that the part was outside his range and not helped by a terrible wig. Oh, well. Recommended.

Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017)

Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017): written and directed by Dan Gilroy; starring Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel), Colin Farrell (George Pierce), and Carmen Ejogo (Maya): Denzel Washington certainly deserved his Best Actor Oscar nomination for this film. The film itself is inconsistent and lacking a solid ending. It just sorta ends. It's also got the rhythms of a movie based on a true story, which it isn't. Even the underlying legal topic -- a constitutional challenge based on the inability of poor people to get adequate counsel in criminal cases -- seems like a true-to-life topic.

Washington plays the title character, a mildly autistic lawyer who's been doing backstage work for a practicing defense attorney for decades until the lawyer suffers a stroke that leaves him in a persistent vegetative state. The practice is shuttered by legal hotshot Colin Farrell as part of the comatose lawyer's instructions -- the firm had been running in the red for years.

Farrell offers Israel a job. Israel first declines and then, not finding other work, accepts. Israel has a keen legal mind and a near-photographic mind. He's been working for years on that constitutional challenge, but he's also outraged by injustice throughout the system. Alas, his outrage leads to problems for himself and the firm. 

Then, as you may or may not guess, he's basically tempted by the Devil (OK, not literally) to stop living his paycheck-to-paycheck life and start earning money and having fun. And buying new suits. And going on a date with Carmen Ejogo's idealistic community organizer.

The plot is somewhat boilerplate right up to the last five minutes, when the movie just sort of shrugs and ends. Farrell's character is a bit more nuanced than this sort of money-chaser usually is. Ejogo is good in a somewhat thankless Angel of the Conscience role. 

But it's Washington who commands the movie, not in least because he's in pretty much every scene. The autism seems a bit gimmicky, a bit too much of the moment, but Washington plays it well. He gets a couple of nice speeches. And a chance to play someone with archaic suits and an archaic haircut. He really elevates the film from Lightly Recommended to Recommended all on his own.

The King's Speech (2010)

The King's Speech (2010): written by David Seidler; directed by Tom Hooper; starring Colin Firth (King George VI), Helena Bonham Carter (Queen Elizabeth), Derek Jacobi (Archbishop Lang), Geoffrey Rush (Lionel Logue), Michael Gambon (King George V), and Guy Pearce (King Edward VIII): Colin Firth certainly is good in his Oscar-winning Best Actor performance as King George VI, afflicted with a stammer and stuck with a whole lot of public speaking gigs once he assumes the British throne after his brother's abdication. 

The whole thing is about as rock-solid a BBC sort-of production as one could want -- indeed, it really plays like a Very Special Episode of Masterpiece Theatre. Geoffrey Rush is fine as the eccentric speech therapist who helps Bertie overcome his speaking problems and Guy Pearce is subtly wormy as Edward VIII. 

One can understand the Best Actor Oscar. Oscars for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture testify more to how much Hollywood loves a certain type of Presitgious British Cinema (and movies about real people who have to overcome physical and/or mental problems) than to the movie's quality. Recommended.

Seven Samurai (1954)

Seven Samurai (1954): written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni; directed by Akira Kurosawa; starring Toshiro Mifune (Kikuchiyo), Takashi Shimura (Shimada), Keiko Tsushima (Shino), Kamatari Fujiwara (Manzo), and Bokuzen Hidari (Yohei): Akira Kurosawa's intimate epic is still one helluva thing 64 years after its first appearance. Haunting images, hectic action, low comedy, quiet character moments -- it's as broad and deep a movie as has ever been made. There's nothing I can add to a discussion of it other than to note that it's swell -- Watch it! Highest recommendation.

Limelight (1951)

Limelight (1951): written and directed by Charles Chaplin; starring Charles Chaplin (Calvero), Claire Bloom (Thereza), Sydney Chaplin (Neville), Nigel Bruce (Postant), Buster Keaton (Cameo), and Norman Lloyd (Bodalink): Limelight won Charlie Chaplin an Oscar for Best Score 22 years after its release because Oscar rules at the time stated that a movie cannot be nominated for an Oscar unless it plays for at least one week in a theatre in Los Angeles. Chaplin had been exiled from America by the time of Limelight, alleged to be both a Communist and a statutory rapist several times over.

Boy, though, Limelight is a sentimental, speechifying, melodramatic, self-indulgent bore. The great Chaplin dragged his heels when it came to making full-sound pictures -- The Great Dictator (1940) was his first film with dialogue throughout. Chaplin with sound is... well, increasingly dire. The Great Dictator comes to a screeching halt as it concludes with what only feels like a 9-hour speech from Chaplin's character about world peace and all that stuff. And that speech would look like a high point of Chaplin's sound career once his later sound films came out.

Autobiographically, though, Limelight fascinates me: Chaplin's lead character really seems like an idealized version of Chaplin's music-hall comedian father, absent for much of Chaplin's childhood. Claire Bloom's depressed ballet dancer seems like a love letter from Chaplin to his music-hall singer mother, whose career was cut short by children and mental illness.

But oh, the speeches, delivered by Chaplin again and again. The pithy aphorisms. The pearls of wisdom. The music-hall comedy routines of Chaplin, none of them funny, none of them playing on Chaplin's gift for physical comedy but instead playing on unfunny song and patter. 

And so, so, so long. 

The only onscreen pairing of Chaplin and Buster Keaton is wasted in a piano/patter routine which at least supplies the one big laugh of the movie -- a piece of physical comedy that concludes the Chaplin/Keaton bit and, thankfully, results in the death of the Chaplin character by slapstick.

If you saw only this Chaplin movie, you'd be puzzled by how this guy became the world's biggest movie star, not just then but perhaps of all time. So don't watch this movie. Not recommended.

Oscars and Monsters and Poor Career Choices

The Revenant (2015): adapted by Alejandro Inarritu and Mark L. Smith from the novel by Michael Punke; directed by Alejandro Inarritu; starring Leonardo DiCaprio (Hugh Glass); Tom Hardy (John Fitzgerald); and Domhnall Gleason (Captain Henry): Set in early 19th-century Montana and South Dakota, The Revenant is an odyssey of survival and revenge for guide Hugh Glass, played almost silently by Leonardo DiCaprio in a role that won him his first Best Actor Oscar. 

There's nothing wrong with that acting -- boy, does Glass suffer, and boy is he covered in filth and wounds for most of the movie! Alejandro Inarritu won his second straight directorial Oscar (the first was for the previous year's Birdman), and he certainly puts on a grimy, Sublime, haunting show of photography. Vaguely based on a true story, The Revenant is the Western as horror movie with more than a hint of a Republic serial re-imagined as being deadly serious yet, through the sheer accumulation of unfortunate events, almost comic as it reaches its end. 

Glass is a Beckett character, crawling through the muck, transforming into the vengeful 'dead' man of the title. Tom Hardy has never been better as pragmatic trapper Fitzgerald, Glass' nemesis in the movie (though not in real life). Some trimming might have helped -- by the time Glass and the horse go over a cliff, my suspension of disbelief had been exhausted. Recommended.

The Thing (1982): adapted by Bill Lancaster from the novella "Who Goes There?" (1938) by John W. Campbell Jr.; directed by John Carpenter; starring Kurt Russell (MacReady); Wilford Brimley (Blair), Keith David (Childs), Richard Dysart (Copper), and Donald Moffat (Garry): Alien (1979) was a great screech of cosmic horror mingled with body horror in the best Lovecraftian tradition. The Thing is its thematic sequel, taking fears of bodily invasion and transformation and making them even more horrifying and goopy. 

The Thing was adapted previously by Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks in the 1950's as a sort-of Cold War paranoia thriller with an evil carrot rather than an evil, well, disease. This version is truer to John W. Campbell Jr.'s 1938 novella in terms of location (Antarctica, not the Arctic of the 1950's version) and monster (a body-invading, endlessly replicating Thing rather than a vampiric, Frankensteinian Creature). The Hawks film was much truer to the character dynamics of Campbell's novella, where manly, competent men met a terrible threat with overwhelming, intelligent, manly camaraderie.

Here, our heroes are fractious as per the model of the Nostromo's crew in Alien. Given that the Thing could be any one of them (or even all of them -- it's just that invasive!), their paranoia is understandable. But they still team up to battle an alien invasion. One of the things that makes The Thing stand out even more now is the lack of references to the characters' lives outside Antarctica: one imagines that, remade today, there would have to be some motivations assigned to the characters for their resistance to the invasion. 

Because people don't do things in NuHollywood unless there's a wife or child involved. This lack of 'personal motivation' makes The Thing bracing in my estimation -- the men are trying to save the world with no possible hope of rescue or survival. And even the most grumpy among them realize the scope of the Thing's danger and set to work. It's almost like people can do things for the common good without specific personal motivation!

The actors (what a cast!) are great, the creature effects still chilling and awful, the scenery still Sublime, the whole thing still rousing and disturbing. What's weird is that The Thing is hopeful about humanity in a way few horror movies allow themselves to be. But avoid the dopey 2011 prequel! Highly recommended.

Misery (1990): adapted by William Goldman from the novel by Stephen King; directed by Rob Reiner; starring Kathy Bates (Annie Wilkes); James Caan (Paul Sheldon); Richard Farnsworth (Sheriff Buster), Frances Sternhagen (Deputy Virginia), and Lauren Bacall (Paul's Agent): Kathy Bates deservedly won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Annie Wilkes, self-proclaimed "number-one fan" of historical romance writer Paul Sheldon. And James Caan is really good as Sheldon in a role that confines him to bed and wheelchair for much of Misery's running time. 

This is one of a handful of the sharpest adaptations of a novel by Stephen King, alternately funny and horrifying in a way that replicates King's prose. King signed off on Rob Reiner directing after the success of Reiner's previous King adaptation, Stand by Me, the movie from the novella that gave a name to Reiner's production company (Castle Rock). William Goldman and Rob Reiner tone down some of the novel's more gruesomely baroque moments (bye-bye lawnmower!), but there's still lots of body horror to go around. Bates' Wilkes is a menacing but at times oddly sympathetic character -- it seems at times that she's fully aware of what a monster she is. Highly recommended.

Sisters (2015): written by Paula Pell; directed by Jason Moore; starring Tina Fey (Kate Ellis) and Amy Poehler (Maura Ellis): What a dreadful movie, dreadfully wasting a talented cast in a misbegotten attempt to put smart comic actors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in a raunchy attempt to duplicate a Judd Apatow film. Or maybe Seth Rogen's Neighbours. It's awful. An immensely talented cast is awful. The writing is awful. The desperate mugging and improvising by the cast is awful. There are laughs scattered throughout, but it's agony to reach them. Possibly the worst 'major' movie of 2015. Not recommended.

Gods of Egypt (2016): written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless; directed by Alex Proyas; starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Horus); Brenton Thwaites (Bek); Elodie Yung (Hathor); Bryan Brown (Osiris); Chadwick Boseman (Thoth); Gerard Butler (Set); and Geoffrey Rush (Ra): That none of the major characters are played by Egyptian, Persian, or Arabic actors stirred something of a media firestorm. The moviemakers may have welcomed this -- Gods of Egypt wasn't going to get any buzz for actually being good. What the Hell happened to Alex (The Crow, Dark City) Proyas in the last 15 years? Great Osiris! 

The set design and CGI are the most interesting things in this movie which, like Disney's Aladdin, riffs without credit on those two old Thief of Baghdad movies by centering its story on a thief (Bek) who gets caught up in wacky supernatural adventures. The cast keeps a straight face. They should get awards for that. Not the worst big-budget, CGI spectacular ever made -- its dopiness is pretty much in line with about a hundred other gods-and-monsters movies from the 1960's and 1950's. 

The movie would be much more interesting if the Egyptian gods all had their animal heads for the entire running time rather than just when they're fighting. And given that the gods have gold running through their veins (and I assume arteries), what's their body temperature? For reasons unexplained, the great serpent Apophis looks an awful lot like a Dune sandworm on steroids, marking the sandworm's second unlikely cameo in an 18-month period (the first being in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies). Lightly recommended.

Churchill's Secret (2016): adapted by Stewart Harcourt from the novel by Jonathan Smith; directed by Charles Sturridge; starring Michael Gambon (Winston Churchill), Romola Garai (Nurse Millie Appleyard); and Lindsay Duncan (Clemmie Churchill): Prime Minister Winston Churchill suffered at least two debilitating strokes in June 1953, two years after being re-elected in 1951. The public didn't know this until decades later, as it was covered up. This partially fictional film details Churchill's recovery, with the narrative focused through a fictional nurse who cares for Churchill at his ancestral estate while he convalesces. It's a typically fine BBC/PBS production with beautifully modulated performances throughout, most notably by Romola Garai as the fictional Nurse Appleyard and Michael Gambon as Churchill.  Churchill's warts -- especially his problematic family life -- are on full display, though the entire effort really serves to humanize him. Recommended.

The Magnificent Seven (1960): adapted from the Akira Kurosawa film Seven Samurai by William Roberts; directed by John Sturges; starring Yul Brynner (Chris); Eli Wallach (Calvera); Steve McQueen (Tanner); Horst Buchholz (Chico); Charles Bronson (O'Reilly); Robert Vaughn (Lee); Brad Dexter (Harry); James Coburn (Britt); Vladimir Sokoloff (Old Man); and Rosendo Monteros (Petra): By my count, this is the second major Hollywood MetaWestern (after Shane). That is, what seems like an elegy for the vanishing American West of the late 19th century -- so vanishing that most of the action takes place in Mexico! -- is also an elegy for the American Western movie. In 1960, Westerns were well on their way out. The Magnificent Seven celebrates their strengths while also pointing the way towards the relatively brief renaissance of the grittier, grimier, more morally ambiguous Spaghetti Western that would soon rise and then quickly fade.

These are still the clean-cut cowboys of the 1940's and 1950's Western. But the early scenes that introduce protagonists Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner focus on how these two gunslingers really have nowhere to go in the increasingly civilized American West -- the only job available for McQueen in the American border town at the start of the movie is as a grocery clerk. When three Mexicans from a village annually looted by bandido Calvera and his men meet with Brynner to offer him money to solve the Calvera problem, Brynner accepts. And has little problem rounding up the other six members of his merry band.

The rest, as they say, is movie history. There's almost no blood or gore in the film. However, Sturges stages the deaths of those Magnificent Seven who don't survive the final battle with Calvera in various, almost mournfully abject ways, never moreso than with one gunslinger who collapses into an upright fetal position against a wall. It's not that much of a cinematic leap from The Magnificent Seven to the more graphic and downbeat The Wild Bunch, set even later in the Western period and offering a continuation and an amplification of this movie's elegaic qualities while also offering a revisionist take on Western morals (and clothing styles).

This is a fine movie -- stylistically still very much a last gasp of classical Hollywood cinema. The cast does lovely work, from Brynner and McQueen as the greatest of the enlisted gunslingers to Horst Buchholz as a young gunfighter from Mexican heritage. The musical score by Elmer Bernstein is also pivotal. This is the rare remake of a foreign film (Kurosawa's Seven Samurai) that works beautifully on its own. Highly recommended.

Foul Play (1978): written and directed by Colin Higgins; starring Goldie Hawn (Gloria Mundy); Chevy Chase (Tony); Burgess Meredith (Hennessey); Brian Dennehy (Fergie); Dudley Moore (Stanley Tibbetts); and Billy Barty (MacKuen): Foul Play's writer-director Colin Higgins also wrote Silver Streak and Harold and Maude, and was writer-director of 9 to 5. That's a pretty solid resume for Higgins, who died at the age of 47 in 1988. And Foul Play is still a lot of fun. Foul Play was slightly retooled to be a star vehicle for both Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase, the latter coming off his single, hyper-popular-break-out year on Saturday Night Live. I'm pretty sure Chase's pratfalls in this movie were written for him. 

The movie itself is quite charming, though there are a couple of jarring bits of violence amidst the goofball stuff. And there are Hitchcock homages galore. Burgess Meredith slathers it on a bit too thickly as Hawn's lovable Irish neighbour. Billy Barty and Dudley Moore have terrific supporting roles (this was Moore's American movie debut), with Moore's work pretty much getting him 10 and Arthur. I still think Dan Brown stole the Albino in The DaVinci Code from this film. I mean, there's even a papal assassination plot and an anti-Catholic organization in this movie! And Billy Barty! Goldie Hawn is super-cute. Chevy Chase is Chevy Chase. Recommended.

Bedfellows of the Strange

Brooklyn (2015): adapted by Nick Hornby from the novel by Colm Toibin; directed by John Crowley; starring Saoirse Ronan (Ellis Lacey), Fiona Glascott (Rose Lacey), Jane Brennan (Mary Lacey), Emory Cohen (Tony), and Domhnall Gleason (Jim Farrell): Pleasant, nicely acted melodrama got a couple of Oscar nominations for Saoirse Ronan (Best Actress) and Nick Hornby (Best Adapted Screenplay). Montreal also does fine work pretending to be a town in Ireland in 1952. This is the sort of immigrant's story that makes me think of Golden Age Hollywood and earnest CBC movies. But the cast is charming and the low-key writing and characterization fine except for a bit involving an eight-year-old boy writing love letters for his writing-challenged older brother that seems to have wandered into the movie from some lame 1970's Disney comedy. Recommended.

The Sitter (2011): written by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka; directed by David Gordon Green; starring Jonah Hill (Noah), Sam Rockwell (Karl), Ari Graynor (Marisa), Max Records (Slater), Landry Bender (Blithe), Kevin Hernandez (Rodrigo), and JB Smoove (Julio): Jonah Hill plays Fat Jonah Hill for the last time (to date) in a movie that's a lot funnier than it should be. One thing that helps is that the movie isn't simply foul-mouthed -- it's intermittently perverse, which is actually rare. It's also short and surprisingly tightly plotted and directed. Recommended.

Date Night (2010): written by Josh Klausner; directed by Shaun Levy; starring Steve Carell (Phil Foster), Tina Fey (Claire Foster), Mark Wahlberg (Holbrooke), and Taraji P. Henson (Detective Arroyo): A bit of a mess into which I assume Tina Fey and Steve Carell were parachuted so as to improvise some laughs. This bullets-and-cops-and-fish-out-of-water comedy seems to have been written in, oh, 1985. It wasn't, but it seems like it. A short, perfectly adequate time-waster that would have been even better with a Giorgio Moroder soundtrack and star turns from Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. Lightly recommended.

The Watch (2012): written by Jared Stern, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg; directed by Akiva Schaffer; starring Ben Stiller (Evan), Vince Vaughn (Bob), Jonah Hill (Franklin), Richard Ayoade (Jamarcus), and Rosemarie DeWitt (Abby): The Trayvon Martin tragedy saw the studio re-title this film (from Neighbourhood Watch). I don't know if some scenes were removed as well. The movie seems to lack a transitional middle section, but that may just be sloppy writing and/or editing. 

This cast and these writers should have managed something at least mildly great. They don't, but the movie improves noticeably about 45 minutes in as it finally gains some traction and leaves the sad-nebbish comedy behind for loopier stuff involving an alien invasion of suburbia centered on the local Costco, of which Ben Stiller is the manager. Richard Ayoade (Maurice Moss on The IT Crowd) is mostly wasted, though he manages to put an amusing spin on some of his lines. Stiller and the newly thinnish Jonah Hill are also fine. Vince Vaughn is a comedy-killing machine, as is mostly always the case. He's the place where jokes go to die. Lightly recommended.

Heroes in Dark Places

Chronicle (2012): written by Max Landis and Josh Trank; directed by Josh Trank; starring Dane DeHaan (Andrew Detmer), Alex Russell (Matt Garetty), Michael B. Jordan (Steve Montgomery), and Michael Kelly (Richard Detmer): Josh Trank and Max Landis' fine, found-footage superhero drama led to Trank's horrible Fantastic Four movie, which really seems like a case of Unintended Consequences. 

Oddly, the means by which the three teenagers in Chronicle gain their telekinesis-based superpowers would have made for a good new origin for the Fantastic Four -- as indeed one character's descent into madness would have made for a reasonable take on Doctor Doom. So it goes. 

The found-footage premise works organically through much of the movie, especially once the characters can telekinetically fly the camera around on its own. Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan do fine, nuanced work as our three super-powered teenagers. And Chronicle, despite its (relatively) low budget, does a nice job of showing the wonders and terrors such powers would visit upon people while also creating actual, sympathetic, flawed characters. 

All this actual storytelling means that a concluding super-hero battle actually possesses the ability to shock and disturb. Easily one of the ten greatest superhero movies ever made because it's actually a movie and not an Ad for American Exceptionalism, Toys, and Fast Food. Highly recommended.

Spotlight (2015): based on true events and written by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy; directed by Tom McCarthy; starring Mark Ruffalo (Mike Rezendes), Michael Keaton ('Robby' Robinson), Rachel McAdams (Sacha Pfeiffer), Liev Schreiber (Marty Baron), John Slattery (Ben Bradlee, Jr.), and Stanley Tucci (Mitchell Garabedian): Excellent, old-school movie which turns true-life events into the stuff of an intellectual thriller without sacrificing verisimilitude. 

A top-notch cast takes us through the investigation of child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in and around Boston back in 2001-2002. The reporters of the Boston Globe's in-depth investigative unit (a unit named Spotlight, hence the title) eventually find not only widespread abuse but a cover-up that really does seem to go all the way to the top. It's a nicely modulated movie about why reporting matters, and how the most terrible crimes can be covered up by seemingly decent people for 'the greater good.' A deserved Best Picture Oscar Winner for 2015. Highly recommended.

Everest: based on a true story and written by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy; directed by Baltasar Kormakur; starring Jason Clarke (Rob Hall), John Hawkes (Doug Hansen), Michael Kelly (Jon Krakauer), Emily Watson (Helen Wilton), Keira Knightley (Jan Arnold), Josh Brolin (Beck Weathers), Robin Wright (Peach Weathers), and Jake Gyllenhaal (Scott Fischer) (2015): Enjoyable movie based on the true story of a disastrous couple of days on Mount Everest in May of 1996. Journalist Jon Krakauer's terrific Into Thin Air (1997) documented the affair, and while the movie isn't based on that book, Krakauer does appear as one of the characters. The movie holds up well on the small screen, though one focuses more on the characters when one isn't being threatened with visions of the Sublime every five minutes. Highly recommended.

Lace: The Final Brassiere

The Theory of Everything: adapted by Anthony McCarten from the non-fiction memoir by Jane Hawking; directed by James Marsh; starring Eddie Redmayne (Stephen Hawking), Felicity Jones (Jane Hawking), Maxine Peake (Elaine Mason), and Charlie Cox (Jonathan Hellyer Jones) (2014): Eddie Redmayne's Oscar-winning performance as ALS-afflicted physicist Stephen Hawking really is remarkable, on par with Daniel Day-Lewis's break-out Oscar-winning portrayal of Christy Brown in 1989's My Left Foot.

Unlike Day-Lewis, Redmayne portrays a man who gradually becomes immobilized by his disease. Like Day-Lewis, Redmayne avoids going for mawkish sympathy from the viewer. Felicity Jones is excellent as Hawking's first wife -- as Jane Hawking, Jones may actually be on-screen more than Redmayne. She makes Jane brave and sympathetic, more sympathetic than Stephen by the end (the movie is based on one of her memoirs, after all). 

The movie's relatively faithful to reality, with the requisite condensing and conflating of events. The direction is competent, workman-like. When it strives for the cosmological sublime, it looks like a Discovery Channel show on space-time that's been stripped of Morgan Freeman's narration. Brief explanations of Hawking's importance to physics occur throughout, accurate though truncated. 

Hawking's atheism (counterpointed throughout with Jane's devout Roman Catholicism) isn't addressed honestly, though, or accurately in relation to his best-selling A Brief History of Time. The movie makes that non-fiction work in which Hawking posits a model of the universe that he explicitly states leaves God nothing to do as a love letter about faith to his wife, by omitting the whole 'nothing to do' thing from discussion and instead focusing on Hawking's metaphoric bit about "reading the mind of God" as if it were literal.

Titles to keep the viewer aware of when things happen would have been nice, especially as the make-up people seem to have forgotten to age Felicity Jones over the 30 year span of the film's events. And the first half of the movie, which deals with the first two years or so of Hawking's ALS and marriage, is far stronger dramatically than the increasingly montage-like later scenes, as we rush through three decades like a careening space probe being sucked into a black hole. Recommended.

American Lives

The Great Gatsby: adapted by Francis Ford Coppola from the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald; directed by Jack Clayton; starring Robert Redford (Jay Gatsby), Sam Waterston (Nick Carraway), Mia Farrow (Daisy Buchanan), Bruce Dern (Tom Buchanan), Lois Chiles (Jordan Baker), Scott Wilson (George Wilson), Karen Black (Myrtle Wilson), and Roberts Blossom (Mr. Gatz) (1974): Faithful, somewhat plodding adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age masterpiece. Mia Farrow makes for a somewhat weak Daisy, but Redford as Gatsby and especially Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway are pretty much pitch perfect, as is Bruce Dern as the almost Mr. Hydesque brute from old money, Tom Buchanan. Coppola parachuted in to save a hated, unfinished Truman Capote adaptation in about three weeks. It's too bad they couldn't have had him direct the film as well -- I'd imagine it would have had a lot more bounce and zest than what it got from the workmanlike Jack Clayton. Recommended.

The Last Picture Show: adapted by Peter Bogdanovich and Larry McMurtry from the novel by Larry McMurtry; directed by Peter Bogdanovich; starring Timothy Bottoms (Sonny Crawford), Jeff Bridges (Duane Jackson), Cybill Shepherd (Jacy Farrow), Ben Johnson (Sam the Lion), Cloris Leachman (Ruth Popper), Ellen Burstyn (Lois Farrow), Eileen Brennan (Genevieve), Sam Bottoms (Billy), and Randy Quaid (Lester Marlow) (1971): Often found on 100 Best Movie Lists either All-Time or All-American, The Last Picture Show is a gritty, minutely observed look at life in a small Texas town in the early 1950's.

Naturalistic and episodic though carefully structured, starkly black-and-white, beautifully acted by newcomers like Cybill Shepherd and old-timers like Ben Johnson, who would win a posthumous Best Supporting Oscar for his role as Sam the Lion. Cloris Leachman would also win an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the haunted, lonely wife of the town's high school's coach and phys. ed. teacher. A young Timothy Bottoms is the protagonist, while a young Jeff Bridges plays his best friend, Duane. Well deserves its place in the upper reaches of the pantheon of American movies. Highly recommended.

Malcolm X: adapted by Spike Lee and Arnold Perl from the book by Malcolm X and Alex Haley; directed by Spike Lee; starring Denzel Washington (Malcolm Little/X), Angela Bassett (Betty Shabazz), Albert Hall (Baines), Al Freeman Jr. (Elijah Muhammad), Delroy Lindo (West Indian Archie), Spike Lee (Shorty), Lonette McKee (Louise Little), Tommy Hollis (Earl Little), James McDaniel (Brother Earl), Kate Vernon (Sophia), and Theresa Randle (Laura) (1992): Spike Lee's epic biopic towers over most movies of the 1990's, and should at the very least have earned Best Picture and Best Actor (for Denzel Washington as Malcolm X) Oscars. But Hollywood really loved Al Pacino chewing the scenery in Scent of a Woman that year. So it goes.

The movie takes surprisingly few liberties with the facts of the story, primarily in creating compound characters to streamline the narrative. As Malcolm X (nee Malcolm Little), Denzel Washington gets to travel from hustler and hood to questing intellect over the 3+ hours of the movie, and all of it convincing. The rest of the cast is superb, with stand-outs including Angela Bassett as Malcolm's wife, Betty Shabazz, and Al Freeman Jr. as the manipulative, charismatic Elijah Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam.

Lee's direction conveys gravitas, lightness of tone, and impending disaster with equal surety. One can see the energetic, bombastic director of previous films that include Do the Right Thing, but that director can now give the viewer a moving, often very formal biopic in which the didactic moments are dramatically satisfying. Lee also plays with film stock and other factors to simulate period-specific 'real' footage from the time in as deft a manner as anything Oliver Stone had managed in JFK the previous year (and Malcolm X actually uses footage from JFK for the Kennedy assassination in this film, as Stone was one of many who helped Lee get the long-delayed Malcolm X made).

Washington, Lee, and the screenwriters credited and uncredited make Malcolm X into a sympathetic figure on an almost unbelievably rich and complex journey of spiritual growth. One misses him when he's gone from the film, while the film brilliantly shifts from its depiction of events to actual footage of the real Malcolm. The two-part conclusion to the film, with Ossie Davis's 1965 funeral oration followed by contemporary footage shot for the film, is a stunner. So too the movie. Highly recommended.

Satire is a State of Mind

Being There: adapted by Jerzy Kosinski and Robert C. Jones from the 1971 novel by Kosinski; directed by Hal Ashby; starring Peter Sellers (Chance), Shirley MacLaine (Eve Rand), Melvyn Douglas (Ben Rand), Jack Warden (President 'Bobby'), Richard Dysart (Dr. Robert Allenby), and Ruth Attaway (Louise) (1979): 

The last great performance of the inestimably great Peter Sellers should have nabbed him a Best Actor Oscar. But the Academy hates comedy. Hal Ashby's film, adapted from Jerzy Kosinski's partially plagiarized 1971 novel, was a pet project of Sellers for years. Only the success of the later Pink Panther films secured him the clout to get it made. And boy, is it dandy.

Sellers plays Chance, the live-in gardener for a Washington recluse known only as the Old Man. Chance is... well, simple. Very simple. Amiable and harmless and simple. And boy, does he love TV! And having apparently never left the Old Man's house, no record of Chance's existence seems to exist. When the Old Man dies, no provisions for Chance exist in the will. So he's cast out to walk the streets of Washington, DC.  

Almost everything Chance knows about the world comes from the mediated world of television: he wants to watch TV all the time, if possible. And as he watches, he'll sometimes imitate what he sees. He imitates the gestures of people around him.  He parrots back what people say to him (along with the occasional 'I understand,' which for Chance really means 'I don't know what you're talking about, I'm just being polite'). And when pressed, he'll talk about gardening. There's almost no there there. So of course some people view him as wise and insightful.

Sellers modeled some of his performance on the screen persona of Stan Laurel. It's absolutely winning in any event, ranging from subtle bits that modulate Chance's affably blank stare depending on the situation to moments of absurd slapstick. Chance reflects back to people what they want to see in him. None of his utterances are cryptic or wise, but people -- and especially the rich people he falls in with -- take his comments on proper gardening as wise thoughts on the U.S. economy.

Being There is a surprisingly bleak satire of American politics, sweetened by Chance's utter simplicity and sweetness. He's a holy fool who has fallen in with the Illuminati. And the Illuminati just aren't all that bright. Indeed, the rulers of the world pretty much all seem to be idiots made idiotic by their own narcissistic self-involvement. Chance's former housekeeper knows what he really is; as she observes when she sees him on a talk show, just being white in America can get a person almost anything.

Being There is in many ways the mirror-image of another great satire of the 1970's, Network. But here, the sinister Cabal that really runs things is made up of people who've willed themselves into perfect blindness. What the last scene of the movie, made up on the set by director Ashby and Sellers, means to the overall movie is something for the individual viewer to decide. Me, I'm still not sure. Highly recommended.

Best in Show: written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy; directed by Christopher Guest; starring Parker Posey (Meg Swan), Michael Hitchcock (Hamilton Swan), Catherine O'Hara (Cookie Fleck), Eugene Levy (Gerry Fleck), Bob Balaban (Dr. Theodore W. Millbank, III), Christopher Guest (Harlan Pepper), Michael McKean (Stefan Vanderhoof), John Michael Higgins (Scott Donlan), Jennifer Coolidge (Sherri Ann Cabot), Jane Lynch (Christy Cummings), and Ed Begley Jr. (Hotel Manager) (2000):

Maybe the high point of movies made by Christopher Guest and his merry band of co-writers and performers, though some prefer Waiting for Guffman. I don't include This is Spinal Tap because it has Rob Reiner directing. This one, focused on several people whose dogs are competing in a dog show based on the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, is a comic gem. 

While the characters all verge on being comic grotesques, they're invested with enough warmth and sympathy to make Best in Show a rarity -- a gentle satire. The performances are superb, the direction smoothly negotiates the faux-documentary approach, and the writing absolutely sparkles with wit and goofiness. Best in Show is an all-timer. Highly recommended.

Captains of Action!

Mr. Baseball: written by Monte Merrick, Kevin Wade, Gary Ross, John Junkerman, and Theo Pelletier; directed by Fred Schepisi; starring Tom Selleck (Jack Elliot), Ken Takakura (Uchiyama), Aya Takanashi (Hiroko), and Dennis Haysbert (Max) (1992): So-so Fish Out of Water Learns From Others As They Learn Also From Him comedy-drama. The laughs mostly come in the second half. Tom Selleck goes topless for about half the movie and looks pretty good for a guy in his late 40's. Lightly recommended.

The Equalizer: adapted by Richard Wenk from the TV series created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindhelm; directed by Antoine Fuqua; starring Denzel Washington (Robert McCall), Marton Csokas (Teddy), Chloe Grace Moretz (Teri), and Johnny Skourtis (Ralphie) (2014): A revenge action-thriller lifted by the moody direction of pulp-auteur Antoine Fuqua (whose Training Day nabbed Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar), Washington's quirky, OCD-tinged performance as a hardware-store employee with more specialized skills than ten Liam Neesons, and a very solid supporting cast in both sympathetic and antagonistic roles.

It doesn't really resemble the 1980's TV show (and Washington doesn't resemble in any way Edward Woodward's slightly foppish original Equalizer) until the very end, when it comes into full focus as an origin story. It's the sort of relatively low-budget, low-CGI action movie that now seems refreshingly old school in an age of superhero slug-fests. Bonus points for using The Old Man and the Sea and Don Quixote in a respectful and surprisingly relevant manner, especially the former. Recommended.

Hot Fuzz: written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright; directed by Edgar Wright; starring Simon Pegg (Nicholas Angel), Nick Frost (PC Danny Butterman), Timothy Dalton (Simon Skinner), Olivia Colman (PC Doris Thatcher), Jim Broadbent (Inspector Frank Butterman), Edward Woodward (Tom Weaver), and Paul Freeman (Rev. Philip Shooter) (2007): Really, pretty much on my top-ten of all-time action comedies, and closer to the top of that list than the bottom. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright riff on everything from Chinatown to Midsomer Murders to Point Break to Bad Boys II to Harry Potter to The Wicker Man and many, many others in this tale of a big-city cop (Pegg) shipped off to a seemingly idyllic small town because he's so good at his job that he's making all the other cops in London look bad.

Nick Frost plays Pegg's buddy here as he does so often, equipped with some ridiculous malaprops along the way. The lengthy, town-ranging battle that rages at the end sends up an almost infinite number of movies and TV shows while simultaneously being both thrilling and hilarious. The second movie in Pegg&Wright's Cornetto Trilogy (following Shaun of the Dead and followed by The World's End) , movies which use many of the same actors in different roles while nonetheless featuring the ice-cream treat Cornetto at some point in each. Flash Fact: In Canada, we'd call a Cornetto a Drumstick. Highly recommended.

Grabby Grab-bag

Seems Like Old Times: written by Neil Simon; directed by Jay Sandrich; starring Chevy Chase (Nick Gardenia), Goldie Hawn (Glenda Parks), Charles Grodin (Ira Parks), Robert Guillaume (Fred), T.K. Carter (Chester), and Yvonne Wilder (Aurora) (1980): Highly enjoyable Neil Simon farce written specifically for Hawn and Chase, who were coming off the success of their first film together, Foul Play. Chase does an insane number of pratfalls, Hawn is goofy and funny, and Charles Grodin offers able, mostly deadpan supporting work. The rest of the supporting cast is also excellent, including a half-dozen dogs used to surprisingly potent comic effect. Recommended.

The Paper Chase: adapted by James Bridges from the novel by John Jay Osborn Jr.; directed by James Bridges; starring Timothy Bottoms (James Hart), Lindsay Wagner (Susan Fields), and John Houseman (Professor Kingsfield) (1973): Excellent chronicle of first-year law school at Harvard gives one just enough bildungsroman without overwhelming the viewer with some sort of message. Timothy Bottoms is excellent as first-year-law-student Hart, who faces assorted school and relationship problems on his way to understanding the law.

Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner does nice work as Hart's on-again, off-again love interest. John Houseman won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the imposing contract law professor Kingsfield. The male hairstyles may look wild now, but the movie grounds everything in verisimilitude. It's one of the few movies set at college with classrooms and facilities that actually look like college classrooms and facilities (and have some of the same lax security from time to time). Highly recommended.

The Alphabet Murders: adapted by David Pursall and Jack Seddon from the novel The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie; directed by Frank Tashlin; starring Tony Randall (Hercule Poirot), Anita Ekberg (Amanda Beatrice Cross), and Robert Morley (Hastings) (1965): Completely loopy attempt to reimagine Agatha Christie's Belgian super-sleuth as some sort of combination of Inspector Clouseau, Our Man Flint, and James Bond... as played by Tony Randall doing a Peter Sellers imitation. The approach doesn't really work, but the film has a surprising number of laughs. I'm guessing it was a box-office bomb, as no one ever tried something like this again with Poirot. Bizarre enough to be lightly recommended, especially if you're accustomed to the more traditional portrayals of Poirot by such actors as Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, and David Suchet.

Seven Keys to Baldpate: adapted by Anthony Veiller, Wallace Smith, Glenn Tryon, and Dorothy Yost from the play by George M. Cohan based on the novel by Earl Derr Biggers; directed by William Hamilton and Edward Killy; starring Gene Raymond (William Magee), Margaret Callahan (Mary Norton), and Henry Travers (The Hermit) (1935): Fifth version (!!!!!) of a 1913 drama adapted from a popular novel by Charlie Chan creator Earl Derr Biggers. Fifth version! And there would be more under this title and others! It's a mystery farce set at an off-season hotel where a writer has gone to write a novel in 24 hours. The hotel is empty and only he has the key. Or does he? Much running around ensues in a very stagey manner, and things wrap up in barely more than an hour. Of interest for its historical value, but certainly not in any way a classic. Lightly recommended as a curiosity more than an entertainment.

Bury the Lead

Last Vegas: written by Dan Fogelman; directed by Jon Turteltaub; starring Michael Douglas (Billy), Robert De Niro (Paddy), Morgan Freeman (Archie), Kevin Kline (Sam), and Mary Steenburgen (Diana) (2013): Relatively enjoyable, fairly tame senior-citizens' version of The Hangover gets aided by its top-notch cast. A number of scenes play like ads for Las Vegas, LMFAO, and Red Bull (to name three of the most blatant). Coming off cancer surgery, Michael Douglas looks haggard and about a decade older than everyone else in the cast. Lightly recommended.

Stardust: adapted by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman from the novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess; directed by Matthew Vaughn; starring Charlie Cox (Tristan), Claire Danes (Yvaine), Mark Strong (Septimus), Michelle Pfeiffer (Lamia), Robert De Niro (Captain Shakespeare), and Kate Magowan (Una) (2007): Somewhat loose adaptation of the Neil Gaiman novel originally and heavily illustrated by the great Charles Vess is a real charmer for those people looking for something to watch after watching The Princess Bride for the fiftieth time.

The cast is strong, and given enough decent lines and character bits to keep everything percolating in what may be a slightly too-long film. Michelle Pfeiffer is terrific as the arch-witch Lamia. Several transition scenes involving walking and riding are photographed pretty much exactly as these things are done in Peter Jackson's Tolkien movies, possibly in the hopes of tricking some people into thinking they're at a Lord of the Rings movie. The score also comes pretty close to Horner's LOTR score at points. I do wonder whether these things were done at studio insistence -- certainly the majority of the movie is lighter and cleverer than Jackson's Middle Earth. Recommended.

The Fisher King: written by Richard LaGravenese; directed by Terry Gilliam; starring Jeff Bridges (Jack), Mercedes Ruehl (Anne), Robin Williams (Parry), Amanda Plummer (Lydia), Michael Jeter (Unnamed), Tom Waits (Uncredited) (1991): Gilliam and LaGravenese's urban fantasy offers a sometimes sarcastic love letter to New York. Bridges, Ruehl, Williams, and Plummer all do terrific work, though only Ruehl (deservedly) won an Oscar.

Seen now, The Fisher King is a document of a much dirtier New York, one that hadn't yet had Times Square turned into a food court at Disneyland. Williams manages to modulate manic and melancholy as he did in few other movies, and Bridges is his usual Jeff Bridges self, making the acting appear too effortless and invisible for him to be recognized for how good it always is. He's probably the perfect fit for the role of a vain, self-centred, but potentially decent talk-radio shock-jock: he may be handsome, but he's not afraid to look awful in a variety of ways.

This is probably Gilliam's biggest commercial success (along with 12 Monkeys). He tones down his weirdness without ever losing it -- his vision of New York suggests the medieval at the right points, and not the shiny medieval, but the crap-covered ground-level world we laughed at in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It isn't Gilliam's best film, but it's certainly his sunniest. Highly recommended.

Dated

Suspicion: adapted by Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, and Alma Reville from the novel by Anthony Berkeley; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring Cary Grant (Johnnie) and Joan Fontaine (Lina) (1941): With the only Oscar-winning performance in a Hitchcock film -- Joan Fontaine for Best Actress -- one might imagine that this is first-rank Hitchcock. It isn't.

There's some question as to whether or not Hitchcock really was over-ruled by the studio about the ending. Whether or not he was, the movie makes absolutely no sense with the ending it has. The possibility that Hitchcock always intended the film to suggest that one character is delusional only makes sense within a framework in which either a number of events never actually occur, in which case the character is insane, or the events do occur but are coincidental, in which case the entire universe is insane.

Suspicion was a big financial success and gave Hitchcock a lot of creative control thereafter, as this was also the first film he produced as well as directed inside the Hollywood system. Regardless of the ending, the gender dynamics in Suspicion have dated so poorly that it's agonizing for repeated stretches, and not in a way that's enjoyable unless you're writing a paper on gender dynamics in Hitchcock films. Fontaine certainly gives some sort of performance, as she's on-screen for almost every minute of the movie. Grant is uncharacteristically menacing, which is interesting in and of itself.

There are the usual bravura Hitchcock touches, including a host of scenes in which shadows suggest spider-webs enveloping the characters, and the famous Glowing Glass of Milk Scene, which comes almost at the end of the picture if you're waiting for it. But for a 99-minute movie, this is awfully draggy, with almost schematically unlikeable characters made completely baffling by that godawful ending. But it's Hitchcock, so it's still lightly recommended.

Two Christmas Stories and an Oscar

Brazil: written by Charles McKeown, Terry Gilliam, and Tom Stoppard; directed by Terry Gilliam; starring Jonathan Pryce (Sam Lowry), Robert De Niro (Harry Tuttle), Katherine Helmond (Ida Lowry), Ian Holm (Mr. Kurtzmann), Bob Hoskins (Spoor), Michael Palin (Jack Lint), and Kim Griest (Jill Layton) (1985): What's left to say about this scabrous, bleak, and jaunty sideways look into a dystopian future that looks a lot like the past? I don't know. Don't watch the studio's recut 94-minute version, for sure, with its bizarre happy ending.

How about the role of Christmas in this dystopia? Everyone's celebrating it throughout the movie, funny enough given the paranoid, joyless state of the State. Secret policemen carol in the basement of the Ministry of Information Retrieval (which is to say, the Torture Ministry). Everyone's got stacks of gifts on their desks to hand out to anyone who comes in. Everybody's shopping. Keep consuming, and put on a happy face, even if you need plastic surgery to do so.

This is Gilliam's masterpiece, filled with great performances by almost everyone (Kim Griest as the love interest is a bit weak, but she also doesn't have a lot to do). Jonathan Pryce, with his Stan Laurel face, makes a terrific bureaucratic Everyman, his daydreams making him also Walter Mitty in Oceania. Robert De Niro is amazingly loose and funny as a renegade duct repairman (there are a lot of ducts and tubes and pipes in the world of Brazil).

The whole enterprise gives us a burned out, crummy future in which the incessant terrorist bombings are really just another control method of the State. Weird motivational posters appear everywhere in the background. The mined-out countryside hides behind endless billboards covered with scenes of verdant nature. Pryce's daydreams give him a way out, but his fears of the State invade even them from time to time. Is there any escape from this particular Inferno? Highly recommended.

Iron Man Three: written by Drew Pearce and Shane Black; based on comic-book material by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Larry Leiber, Warren Ellis and Adi Granov; directed by Shane Black; starring Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark), Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), Don Cheadle (James Rhodes), Guy Pearce (Aldrich Killian) and Ben Kingsley (The Mandarin) (2013): Much better than the woeful second Iron Man movie, mainly thanks to co-writer/director Shane Black, of Die Hard fame. The whole movie seems to have been constructed around the problem of having Iron Man armor and Robert Downey Jr., unarmored, appear on camera as much as possible. The solution really boils down to Iron Robot and His Amazing Controller, Tony Stark. The movie is probably the campiest big-budget superhero movie since Batman & Robin, though here the lines are a lot funnier. Lightly recommended.




Klute: written by Andy and David E. Lewis; directed by Alan J. Pakula; starring Jane Fonda (Bree Daniels), Donald Sutherland (John Klute), Charles Cioffi (Peter Cable), and Roy Scheider (Frank Ligourin) (1971): Melancholy character study/film noir about a private detective (Sutherland's Klute) and the prostitute (Fonda's Bree) who may know something about the disappearance of Klute's businessman friend. Fonda deservedly won a Best Actress Oscar for her work here. Sutherland is also very good as the stoic, laconic Klute. Alan J. Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis construct a film world occasionally dominated by looming shadows and a sort of run-down crumminess out on the streets of New York. Recommended.