Ash Is Purest White (2019)

Ash Is Purest White (2019)

Cast

• Liao Fan
• Zhao Tao
• Feng Xiaogang
• Xu Zheng
• Zhang Yibai
• Yi'nan Diao
• Zhang Yi
• Dong Zijian
• Ding Jiali

Director

• Jia Zhangke

Screenplay

• Jia Zhangke

Director of Photography

• Eric Gautier

Editor

• Matthieu Laclau

Music

• Lim Giong

Crime, Drama, Romance

141 minutes

 

 

The English subtitles for this superb film from China leave one word untranslated: “jianghu.” It refers to outlaw sects or societies and is literally untranslatable, but for the main character of this movie it means not just “gangster” or something like it; it connotes a particular code of ethics.

The character for whom this meaning is most sacrosanct happens to be a woman. In the movie’s opening scenes, set around the turn of the 20^th century, Qiao, played in a spectacular performance by Tao Zhao, swaggers into an underground mahjong parlor like it ain’t no thing, taking her seat next to gang big shot Bin and taking a few drags from his cigarette. When Bin mediates a conflict between his subjects, talking one of them into putting aside a pistol he’s just rashly brandished, Qiao picks up the gun and examines it with no small fascination.

Bin and Qiao are soon revealed to be rather more serious people than these first impressions indicate. Qiao has an ailing dad whose loss of a profession—he worked in a mine that’s soon closing—isn’t helping his disposition. Bin likes a peaceable rule, even as he offers to help out an elder operator who’s delving into real estate. “Some assholes are saying my villas are haunted,” the older guy complains. Before Bin can look into it, that guy is knifed in a parking lot.

Bin is caught up in an unspecified turf war that culminates when he’s attacked by about a dozen youths who brutally beat him. It’s Qiao who takes definitive action to save him—and winds up doing five years in prison for her trouble.

Like his prior film, 2015’s “Mountains May Depart,” this new picture from master Jia Zhangke is a three-part drama spanning decades. To this critic “Ash is Purest White” is a much more successful attempt at depicting a changing China through the lives of not-quite-tragic characters and their sufferings.

Once Qiao is sprung from prison, it’s 2006, and the monumental Three Gorges project, which was to transform permanently the Yangtze River, is underway. She takes a boat in search of Bin, is ripped off by a pretend-pious woman sharing her cabin, and has to chase her old boyfriend down to get him to fess up about his new life, which isn’t much to speak of. After a time is becomes clear that Qiao’s heartache isn’t merely over the loss of a boyfriend, but of the loss of a way of life. This compels her to embrace the jianghu code, or at least her interpretation of it, with even more ferocity. By the time we hit 2018, she’s completely transformed herself, much like the railway she took to get away from Bin after their unsatisfactory reunion.

Because Jia sets the final section of the film in the present day, as opposed to a rather sketchy not-too-distant-future he traveled to in “Mountains,” “Ash” resolves with a genuine immediacy. And his living-outside-the-law characters here are simply more compelling than the betraying strivers of the prior film. The movie represents both the director and his lead actress at the peak of their powers. Tao Zhao presents Qiao first as a tough kitten of sorts; during her prison stint, she looks drawn and wan, and stays seemingly timid upon release. Gradually, though, the actress shows that Qiao has indeed grown into a lioness. Albeit one that’s not just fearsome, but reflective and wise.

The movie is always a pleasure to behold, but be warned: The sound mix is so acute that every time one of the characters’ iPhones went off in the present-day scenes I was almost annoyed, thinking that someone in the screening room had left their device on. So wait a second in your local arthouse before yelling “turn it off!”

 

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Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Cast

• Rosa Salazar as Alita
• Christoph Waltz as Dr. Dyson Ido
• Ed Skrein as Zapan
• Mahershala Ali as Vector
• Jennifer Connelly as Chiren
• Keean Johnson as Hugo
• Michelle Rodriguez as Gelda
• Lana Condor as Koyomi
• Jackie Earle Haley as Grewishka
• Eiza González as Nyssiana
• Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as Tanji
• Marko Zaror as Ajakutty
• Casper Van Dien as Amok

Director

• Robert Rodriguez

Screenplay

• James Cameron
• Laeta Kalogridis

Comic Book

• Yukito Kishiro

Cinematography

• Bill Pope

Editor

• Ian Silverstein
• Stephen E. Rivkin

Music

• Junkie XL

Action, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller

Rated PG-13

122 minutes

With his 1992 debut of “El Mariachi,” Robert Rodriguez announced himself a director with an eye for action. He prefers to keep his camera movement light and energetic, his edits quick and focused. His movies tend to carry an unmistakable playfulness, like in the all-out barroom brawl between humans and vampires in “From Dusk till Dawn” and the bizarre yet stylish “Spy Kids” franchise in which two siblings face off against some truly surreal-looking enemies.  

Rodriguez brings this fun-loving, action-fueled touch to the big-screen adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s popular manga, Battle Angel Alita, salvaging a project that had languished in development hell since the early aughts. James Cameron, who co-produced the refashioned “Alita: Battle Angel” and co-wrote the screenplay with Rodriguez and Laeta Kalogridis, originally picked up the project around 15 years ago before eventually handing the reins over to Rodriguez. The script is still somewhat unwieldy, chock full of explanations about how robotic bodies work and the history of the decaying setting known as Iron City. Yet, underneath multiple levels of plot and world-building, there’s a weirdo heart keeping the action moving along.

As far as movies about girl robots go, “Alita” isn’t so bad. The movie’s star is a promising Rosa Salazar as the namesake hero, a mysterious yet powerful teen girl bot with oversized anime-style eyes and a good and very powerful heart that could power a city. Alita is the last of her kind, a superior enemy who was somehow were defeated by the humans. After she was found in a scrap heap, Alita is brought back to life with the help of a fatherly doctor, Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz), a paternal relationship that gives “Alita” some of its more stranger moments. More straightforward is the relationship Alita has with a secret nemesis, Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), Dr. Ido’s former wife, and Vector (Mahershala Ali), a smooth-talking kingpin who promises almost anyone who will listen to him a ticket to Zalem, the city hovering in the sky holding society’s upper class over the heads of the poor below.

Even with so many different creative demands on the story, Rodriguez makes the movie his own. Many of his movies feature Latino actors, like Danny Trejo in the “Machete” movies and Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara in “Spy Kids,” and the trend continues with “Alita” as the Peruvian American Salazar gets the chance to lead a big-budget movie. He includes Spanish and English signs in Iron City, and some of the extras can be heard speaking Spanish in the background. It’s still rare to hear or see Spanish spoken in sci-fi movies about multilingual futures unless the films are from Latin America.

“Alita” draws inspiration from various sci-fi sources, like the physical divide between the rich and the poor in “Metropolis,” the mysterious femme being with incredible powers of “The Fifth Element," and the multilingual, neon-lit grimy future world of “Blade Runner,” to name a few. Iron City is a place similar to what we’ve seen in other movies, but it’s outfitted with enough differences to tell it apart, like making the society corrupt enough for serial killers and robbing cyborgs of their mechanical parts and giving the place its own gladiatorial-like roller derby that gives Iron City hopefuls their only shot at getting into Zalem. Somehow all of these storylines are interconnected, which adds to the clunkiness of the script but it never allows it to get boring. Some kind of action sequence is always just a few minutes away.

Although Alita is built with some feminist empowerment in mind, some of the messaging malfunctions against old world patriarchy. The odd paternalistic doctor is just the start. Because she looks like a teen girl, of course, she develops a heterosexual crush on a human teen boy, Hugo (Keean Johnson). Never mind that she’s actually 300 some years older and very much a cyborg. The two share some cute moments, but others, like when Hugo introduces her to chocolate or when Alita offers Hugo her one-of-a-kind ancient technology heart so he can go up to Zalem, feel so old school. Was this all because she’s an impulsive teen girl? In another scene, after a devastating battle with a big bad cyborg, Alita must trade out the delicate, girlish body the doctor had built for his daughter (not weird – at all!) for a warrior-grade bod that adheres to her, um, vision of herself. That vision includes a corset-sized tiny waist and an athletic set of breasts that defy gravity. It’s been 300 years after the fall and we’re still holding onto Barbie-size proportions.

Thankfully, Salazar smoothes over many of these cumbersome details with her earnest motion-captured performance. She physically leans into the awkwardness of walking around as a teen girl bot, unsure of her new body and discovering its potential and limits. She explores her new surroundings with literal wide-eyed wonder. When she upgrades her body, she stands tall and confident, having sped through puberty in the span of a surgery. Her character’s chutzpah is the reason why it vaguely makes sense to jump from a “hunter killer,” a bounty hunter in futuristic terms, to a Motorball prospect when she’s working her way to becoming a warrior.

With so much background and story to cover, maybe “Alita” would have benefitted from a “less is more” approach. But considering its estimated budget of $200 million, “Alita: Battle Angel” is an awe-inspiring jump for the man who first burst onto the film scene with a movie that cost around $7,000. The visual bonanza cooked up by Rodriguez, cinematographer Bill Pope and editors Stephen E. Rivkin and Ian Silverstein is enough to power through any narrative bumps with quickly paced action and bleak, yet colorful, imagery.

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Aquaman (2018) - Film Review

Aquaman (2018)

Cast

• Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry / Aquaman
• Amber Heard as Mera
• Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko
• Patrick Wilson as Orm Marius / Ocean Master
• Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus
• Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane / Black Manta
• Nicole Kidman as Queen Atlanna
• Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry
• Ludi Lin as Murk
• Graham McTavish as King Atlan
• Djimon Hounsou as The Fisherman King
• Natalia Safran as Fisherman Queen
• Michael Beach as Jesse Kane
• Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin

Writer

• Will Beall
• David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
• Will Beall

Writer (Aquaman created by)

• Mort Weisinger
• Paul Norris

Writer (story by)

• Geoff Johns
• James Wan
• Will Beall

Cinematographer

• Don Burgess

Editor

• Kirk M. Morri

Composer

• Rupert Gregson-Williams

Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.

 

144 minutes

 

 

Whenever anybody asks me what “Aquaman” is like, I mention an early scene where opposing Atlantean forces square off and debate the kingdom’s future. One side rides armored seahorses that whinny. The other rides armored sharks that roar. "Aquaman" is as concerned with scientific accuracy as “SpongeBob Squarepants.” And that’s one of many reasons why I like it. 

It takes skill to be as ridiculous as this movie about a half-human, half-Atlantean prince who’s known on land as Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) without seeming to condescend to the material. Directed by James Wan (“Saw,” “The Conjuring”), it’s part of a thriving subcategory of superhero movies, also represented by “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Venom” and both “Ant-Man” pictures—sweet, goofy, at times psychedelically weird films that mostly reject the sour gloom that gets mistaken for maturity. But that’s not to say that those movies aren’t serious in their own way. “Aquaman,” in particular, feels simultaneously like a spoof and an operatic melodrama. Any film that can combine those modes is a force to be reckoned with. 

Aquaman made his DC Expanded Universe debut in “Batman vs. Superman” and was part of the ensemble in “Justice League,” but this is the first movie that’s put him front-and-center. The results are enjoyable enough that you may wish Warner Bros. had done it sooner. While it’s not billed as such, this is an origin story, positioning Arthur as a reluctant hero. As concieved by screenwriters David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, adapting Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris’ source, Arthur is a mixed-species character who feels alienated from both of the civilizations he embodies. He's the offspring of union between a lighthouse keeper named Tom Curry (Temura Morrison) and a stranded Atlantean named Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) whom Tom nursed back to health. Atlanna then returned to the sea and was put to death for the sin of birthing a half-human child. 

Arthur has long hair and tattoos, a knack for wisecracks and a fondness for beer, and just wants to be left alone. He rejects allegiance to land or sea, but eventually succumbs to prodding by the idealistic Atlantean Mera (Amber Heard) and becomes a uniter at a time when radical forces, led by Arthur’s treacherous half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), want to destroy the land-dwellers as revenge for polluting and militarizing the ocean. Arthur is one of those Joseph Campbell-certified, Fated-for-Great-Things heroes, thus the mythically resonant first name. He even has the equivalent of the moment where the future King Arthur pulls the sword from the stone.

The movie is overlong and a bit repetitious (as big-budget superhero films tend to be), and its second half is more distinctive than its first because it lets its freak flag fly. But Wan and company mostly do a brilliant job of shaking the algae from cliches. Rather than get bogged down in plot particulars, they concentrate on characterization and performances, production design, costumes, and visual details. 

Every frame has marvelous details that you might not catch on first viewing. The Atlanteans use their mouths to speak, but there are no visible bubbles, only vocal distortion that suggests "bubbly-ness." When the characters aren’t swimming at dolphin speeds, they square off against each other as if they’re standing on a sidewalk on land, bobbing ever-so-slightly. The water dwellers have lighting that's supplied by luminous deep-sea creatures and high technology that’s inspired by aquatic animals and plants. Some of the battle armor features oversized crab and lobster claws. In one scene, Mera wears a dress with a collar made of glowing jellyfish and a multicolored seagrass skirt. In an arena sequence, we hear taiko drumming on the soundtrack, and the camera moves to reveal a lone percussionist: a giant octopus. 

The fight sequences use high-speed, 360-degree camerawork to create surprise and delight, rather than to add superfluous hype. We’re constantly surprised by where movements start and end, and there are multiple slapstick jokes woven into each encounter. "Aquaman" embraces the childlike absurdity of armored Atlantean troopers coming up onto the land and martial arts-fighting their enemies in broad daylight, presenting the mayhem as plainly as a kung fu showdown in a schlock fantasy like “Infra-man” or TV’s “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.” Rather than cross-cut between multiple lines of action, the camera sometimes swims or flies from one location to another and back again—most spectacularly in a chase-and-fight sequence set in a Sicilian seaside town, where combatants smash through the walls of cliffside homes and scramble across tiled rooftops. 

Momoa anchors the film, imbuing the big guy with surly charm, like one of those early Marlon Brando characters who was a jerk most of the time, but so magnetic and wounded that you couldn’t help but care about him. The rest of the cast is just as committed, notably Kidman as Atlanna, who carries on as if she’s playing the lead in an ancient Greek tragedy; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane, aka Black Manta, a pirate who swears revenge on the hero; and Willem Dafoe as Atlantis’ counselor Vulko, who advises caution and reason to no avail, and who’s like a second (aquatic) father to Arthur. 

The most remarkable aspect, though, is the way "Aquaman" pushes against the idea that every problem can be solved by violence. There are plenty of bruising fights on land and sea, plus laser shootouts and aquatic infantry clashes, but some of the most important showdowns are resolved peacefully, through conversation, negotiation, and forgiveness. Men as well as women cry in this movie, and the sight is treated not as a shameful loss of dignity, but as the normal byproduct of pain or joy. For all its wild spectacle and cartoon cleverness, this is a quietly subversive movie, and an evolutionary step forward for the genre. 

 

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DESTINATION WEDDING (2018) - FILM REVIEW

Destination Wedding (2018)

Cast

Winona Ryderas Lindsay
Keanu Reevesas Frank
DJ Dallenbachas Ann

Director

Victor Levin

Writer

Victor Levin

Cinematographer

Giorgio Scali

Editor

Matt Maddox

Composer

William Ross

Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rated R for language throughout and sexual content.
90 minutes

 

 

 

A lot of people are not going to like “Destination Wedding,” because the characters never shut up and complain all the time. But I thought it was a hoot. Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, in their fourth film together, are clearly having a blast, and they won me over.

Lindsay (Ryder) and Frank (Reeves) meet at the airport, waiting for an eight-seat plane to take them to California wine country for a wedding. After they have bickered at the airport, the hotel, the rehearsal dinner, through the games and activities and the wedding itself, and are now back at the hotel, they are at the moment when love should be triumphing over all with a tender embrace. But this isn’t that movie. Lindsay asks Frank, “What if the real destination is falling in love?” Frank’s response is, “What if you never say that again?” He means it.

The title of “Destination Wedding” may make it sound like a Hallmark Romance film, but this is a romantic comedy with very little romance, and the comedy is not based on gentle misunderstandings. It is strictly in the hyper-verbal, twisted category.

Frank and Lindsay start arguing seconds after they meet, when he steps in front of her at the airport gate. She accuses him of trying to get a better seat and compares him to “investment bankers, politicians, terrorists,” and everyone else with no manners. He says he stepped away just to get farther from her. It begins to dawn on them that they may be going to the same event. Lindsay: “How many destination weddings can there be in Paso Robles?” Frank: “I was hoping there were two.”

The music shifts from low-key but cheery jazz from the charming score by composer William Ross to a trumpet trill like the opening of a bullfight as we see the film’s title, followed by its more telling alternate: “A Narcissist Can’t Die Because the Whole World Would End.” Subsequent chapter title cards let us know that we are not here to be beguiled by the ostensible charms of the countryside or the festivities, by the welcome baskets or the tour of the winery. The real feelings of Lindsay, Frank, and the movie itself about the various events are revealed because what they think is shown but scratched out: “Just what the world needs – Another Goddamn sunset wedding.”

Lindsay is the groom’s ex. Frank is his half-brother. Neither of them wants to be there. They don’t like the couple getting married. They don’t like anyone at the wedding. In fact, they pretty much don’t like anything, except maybe for not liking people, gatherings, or the idea of love.

Professionally, they appear to be opposites. Frank works for JD Power, which gives out excellence awards to corporations. Lindsay goes after companies for bias and poor citizenship, or what Frank terms “a career in reverse fascism.” But their jobs have something significant in common. They both judge everyone. And at the tedious rehearsal dinner, they find a companionable rhythm in coming up with wordy but hilarious comments on the other guests, who exist in the film only to be insult fodder.

Frank and Lindsay are the entire movie. The rest of the cast is dressed in neutral tones and hardly get a chance to say a word. Ryder and Reeves stand out in dark clothes and never stop talking nonsense and complaining about everyone, even in the midst of what has to be one of the most ridiculous sex scenes ever filmed. But when Frank and Lindsey are annoying each other most, Reeves and Ryder still have an easy charm and a sparkling chemistry together that gives their characters’ anxieties enough good humor to keep us on their side.

Writer/director Victor Levin (“Survivor’s Remorse,” “Mad About You”) has clearly suffered through cutesy weddings where the welcome basket includes fun facts about the history of the area and coupons for foot massages. You know, the weddings where the couple puts out helpful baskets of flip-flops labeled “Walkin’ Shoes,” because guests have to trek through mud and grass in party clothes to get to the picture-perfect ceremony. This is his revenge, like your snarkiest friend’s nasty commentary on a wedding video, or the romantic comedy version of David Foster Wallace’s essay on cruises, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.” As with Wallace’s cruise, the destination wedding might not be fun, but seeing Reeves and Ryder suffer through it is. 

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MAMMA MIA - HERE WE GO AGAIN (2018) - FILM REVIEW

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) 

 

Cast

• Meryl Streep as Donna Sheridan
• Lily James as Young Donna Sheridan
• Amanda Seyfried as Sophie Sheridan
• Pierce Brosnan as Sam Carmichael
• Colin Firth as Harry Bright
• Stellan Skarsgård as Bill Anderson
• Dominic Cooper as Sky
• Julie Walters as Rosie Mulligan
• Christine Baranski as Tanya Chesham-Leigh
• Andy García as Fernando
• Cher as Ruby Sheridan

Director

• Ol Parker

Writer

• Ol Parker

Director of Photography

• Robert D. Yeoman

Comedy, Music, Romance

Rated PG-13

120 minutes

 

 

If you loved the first “Mamma Mia!” movie back in 2008, well, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” offers even more—and even less.

The sequel (which is also a prequel) features a bigger cast, a longer running time, extra subplots and additional romantic entanglements. But it’s emptier than its predecessor and has even lower stakes. It’s less entertaining, and for all its frantic energy, it manages to go absolutely nowhere.

Once again inspired by the music of ABBA and set on a picturesque Greek island, the second “Mamma Mia!” is the lightest piece of Swedish pastry with the sweetest chunk of baklava on the side. And while that may sound delicious, it’s likely to give you a toothache (as well as a headache).

At one point, during a particularly clunky musical number, I wrote in my notes: “I am so uncomfortable right now.” But while the goofy imperfection of this song-and-dance extravaganza is partially the point—and theoretically, a source of its charm—it also grows repetitive and wearying pretty quickly.

No single moment reaches the infectious joy of Meryl Streep writhing around in a barn in overalls performing the title song in the original film, or the emotional depth of her singing “The Winner Takes It All” to Pierce Brosnan. Along those lines, if you’re looking forward to seeing Streep show off her playful, musical side again, you’re going to be disappointed. Despite her prominent presence in the movie’s marketing materials, she’s barely in it.

That’s because Streep’s free-spirited Donna has died, we learn at the film’s start, but her presence is felt everywhere in weepy ways. Her daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), is re-opening the inn her mom ran—now christened the Hotel Bella Donna—on the same idyllic (and fictional) Greek island of Kalokairi where the first film took place. Writer-director Ol Parker (whose relevant experience includes writing those “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” movies) jumps back and forth in time between Sophie nervously putting the finishing touches on the big party she’s planning and the story of how her mother originally ended up on this remote slab of land in the Aegean Sea—and became pregnant with Sophie in the late 1970s without being entirely sure of who the father was.

Lily James plays young Donna as a firecracker flower child—a friendly mess of wild, blonde curls and high, platform boots. (James’ sunny presence is one of the film’s consistent bright spots.) We meet the younger version of her best friends and jumpsuit-clad backup singers, Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn, doing a dead-on impression of Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Alexa Davies, standing in for Julie Walters). And we see her flirt and fall for the three guys she has giddy flings with the summer after college graduation.

First, there’s the skittish Harry (Hugh Skinner), who tries to charm her with his halting French in Paris. Next comes the sexy Swede Bill (Josh Dylan), who woos her on the boat that carries her out to the island. Finally, there’s aspiring architect Sam (Jeremy Irvine), who’s already vacationing on Kalokairi when she arrives. They will grow up to be Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard and Brosnan, respectively, and they will be forced into singing ABBA songs that clearly make them miserable.

Ah yes, the ABBA songs. They provided the confectionery connective tissue for the smash-hit stage musical and the original movie. This time, the ‘70s Swedish supergroup’s tunes that are the most rapturous are also replays from the first go-round: a flotilla of fishermen singing and prancing to “Dancing Queen,” or the splashy finale uniting the whole cast for “Super Trouper.” Much of the soundtrack consists of lesser-known songs, and the uninspired way those numbers are staged and choreographed rarely allows them to soar.

Once again, though, these actors are such pros that they can’t help but make the most of their meager material. Baranski and Walters in particular have crackling chemistry again. The brief moments in which the supremely overqualified Firth, Skarsgard and Brosnan pal around with each other as Sophie’s three dads made me long to see them together in something else. Anything else. A documentary in which they have lunch on the porch under sunny Greek skies, even.

And then Cher shows up. Now, it would seem impossible for this superstar goddess ever to be restrained. But as Sophie’s frequently absent grandmother, Cher seems weirdly reined in. Again, it’s the awkwardness of the choreography: She just sort of stands there, singing “Fernando,” before stiffly walking down a flight of stairs to greet the person to whom she’s singing. (As the hotel’s caretaker, Andy Garcia conveniently plays a character named Fernando, which is an amusing bit.)

But if you’re down for watching A-list stars belt out insanely catchy, 40-year-old pop tunes in a shimmering setting, and you’re willing to throw yourself headlong into the idea of love’s transformative power, and you just need a mindless summer escape of your own, you might just thoroughly enjoy watching “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.” Don’t think, and pass the ouzo.

 

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FRENCH BIO DRAMA AT MIDNIGHT - RODIN (2018) - FILM REVIEW

Rodin (2017)

1h 59min | Biography, Drama, Romance | 24 May 2017 (France) 

To be caught up in the world of sculpting is a special thrill that “Rodin” offers, as much as “sculpting” and “thrill” might seem like contradictory words. Writer/director Jacques Doillon achieves this by focusing on a mascot for passion of the art form, Auguste Rodin, known for starting modern sculpture. Through his intense eyes, presented with the face of Vincent Lindon, the careful shaping of stagnant figures can be vigorous, sexy, and when this movie is especially good, hypnotic. 

Starting at his middle-age (and pointing out that he didn’t excel at his craft until after his 40’s), “Rodin” is no plain biopic, and it certainly doesn’t require knowledge of his work to get hooked on the film. It’s in fact best when it does away with historical details and feels like a film about an artist and their art form, who just happened to exist. Doillon’s script initially focuses on Rodin’s time crafting a piece on Dante’s Comedy, but it expands to his cameos from other famous artists: Monet, Cezanne, and Victor Hugo are just a few fellow creatives who are thrown into the mix. The story later tells of how Rodin’s sculpture of Balzac, deemed unflattering however honest, forced the sculptor to reckon with failure.

Lindon brings the same workmanlike energy that he had recently in “The Measure of a Man,” when he played a grounded, blue-collar man, who cared deeply about getting a job. But he neatly takes that gaze he brought to desperate Skype interviews to the intensity of a wild artist who thinks visually. From the start, Rodin and his other sculptors talk about the the art form as if it always involved five senses, and that they were capturing a moment of movement. It’s an exciting notion, even just to hear people talk about this stagnant art form with such passion, and Lindon vividly portrays a genius for that way of thinking.

As a narcissist who loves studying women’s bodies and making them pose, his relationship with them (all, seemingly) is chaotic. He has a life partner named Rose (Severine Caneele) who he has but discarded by the beginning to fool around with a rising young artist named Camille Claudel (Izia Higelin), thinking she will be his ultimate muse, and that her desire to marry him can be delayed. She does indeed inspire him, and they have excellent chemistry that makes this a horny movie about sculpting, but a plot thread of competitiveness arises as the apprentice threatens to beat the master. The two lovers ultimately create art that is evidence of their tumultuous passion. Rodin may initially treat her like just another muse, but Higelin, and Doillon, clearly do not.

Doillon’s filmmaking perfectly matches the passion of Rodin, like a musician biopic that feels like one of their songs. When he rushes out of one room to the next, the camera goes with him, and when he fixates on his sculpture, the gaze is still. The movie isn’t locked into his point-of-view so much as his energy, and it makes us all the more attentive that the camera is focused more on the expressions of the humans, not the famous sculptures they’re looking at.

And just as true to a film about a sculptor, Doillon continues the dedication to the practical tools of his craft, like camera framing and the placement of his actors within the frame. It’s not overly-precise but full of life, just like how the whites and grays of Rodin’s studio pop in a way such a color palette rarely does. With breathless compositions of Doillon’s own, the art forms of sculpture and film become one.

The film should almost come with an asterisk; yes, it’s all about Rodin, but Rodin as a subject is relatively incurious. On paper, he’s another macho rock star with clear talent and repetitive vices, looking for his next big hit. But this real life figure’s story isn’t singlehandedly what makes “Rodin” so enrapturing: it’s Doillon’s messy, non-precious handling as a screenwriter, and the gorgeous images he sculpts himself as a director. And it’s in the way Lindon shows a constant fire in his soul to create beauty. “Rodin” quietly defies biopic convention by showing that a great biopic does not need a great hero, so much as a vision and an immense passion.  

An account of the famous French sculptor's romance with Camille Claudel.

Director:

Jacques Doillon

Writer:

Jacques Doillon

Stars:

Vincent Lindon, Izïa Higelin, Séverine Caneele

Official Sites:

Official site [France] | Official site [Japan]

Country:

France | Belgium | USA

Language:

French

Release Date:

24 May 2017 (France) See more »

Also Known As:

Роден See more »

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Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Films du Lendemain, Artémis Productions, Wild Bunch

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LAD MOVIE - DISOBEDIENCE (2018) - FILM REVIEW

"Disobedience," Sebastián Lelio’s follow-up to his 2017 Oscar-winning film "A Fantastic Woman," and his first English-language film, starts with a Rabbi giving a sermon about free will. He speaks of angels, beasts, and Adam and Eve. He says, fearsomely, that humans are "free to choose." Then he drops dead. There's something refreshing about a story so unconcerned with "subtlety." Put it all out there. Foreground the theme. Underline as you go. "Disobedience," based on Naomi Alderman's novel (with adaptation by Lelio and Rebecca Lenkiewicz) is a good old-fashioned melodrama, albeit with a quieter touch. 

Disobedience (2017)

R | 1h 54min | Drama, Romance | 27 April 2018 (USA) 

The rabbi who dropped dead was Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser), an important figure in the London Orthodox Jewish community. His daughter Ronit (Rachel Weisz), a New York-based photographer, left years ago. When she returns home, she walks into the unchanged world of her childhood, looked at by relatives and former friends with curiosity and concern. She is rebelliously secular, with long free hair, cigarettes, short leather skirts. The obituary for her father states that "sadly" he had no children. It stings. She's been gone so long she had no idea that Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), taken in by her father as a protégé at 13, and Esti, her childhood friend (Rachel McAdams) have gotten married. There's an awkward moment in the kitchen when she makes the connection. The shock on Weisz's face is eloquent, although we don't know the backstory yet.

The eloquence of the performances is key to the material succeeding, since Lelio does not introduce the characters, and their connections, in a straightforward way. It takes some time before you figure out who Dovid is to Ronit, although from their behavior you can tell they once were close. She forgets herself and almost hugs him in a friendly greeting, and then laughs when he recoils from her touch. Dovid and Esti invite Ronit to stay with them during her time in London. This is playing with fire, since it soon becomes clear that Esti and Ronit had an adolescent romance, well-known to the community at the time. Lelio's approach helps us feel we are thrust into the middle of a very tight-knit community, with a long shared history. Exposition is always awkward, so Lelio doesn't bother with it at all. "Exposition" wouldn't be spoken out loud in this crowd since everyone knows everything about everyone else. Dovid and Etsi don't yet have children. She is a teacher in a girls school and enjoys her work. He is set to step into Rav Krushka's sizable shoes. Ronit's arrival throws everything into confusion. 

This is Lelio's third film in a row about women (the first being 2013's "Gloria"), and he is deeply empathetic to the ways in which repressive societies put women in all kinds of impossible double- and triple-binds. In "A Fantastic Woman," a trans woman fought to be allowed to grieve for her dead lover, and Lelio's focus on the cruelty of the surrounding world pushed the film into a nightmare-scape. He dials this back in "Disobedience." There are no villains. Even the strict culture of Orthodox Judaism isn't really a villain. The culture is shown as a close one, with many social benefits, benefits which Ronit—in leaving—has missed out on. With all of the dramatic and sexual stuff in the film, the best scene may very well be a group scene early on, when Ronit joins Dovid and Esti's Shabbat, attended by a small group of Ronit's relatives. The "mood" at the table is far from friendly or warm, but it's also not toxic. This is a family. Ronit is a lost lamb, but there is still space for her in the fold. A lively debate occurs, and when Esti pops in unexpectedly with a cutting observation, Ronit stares at her from across the table, thrilled. These all feel like real people, not caricatures. (In this way, it reminded me a little bit of Peter Weir's "Witness," where you could see why Rachel didn't just run away with the cop, leaving the Amish world behind. You could see why she wanted to stay, why she had to stay.)

The relationship between Ronit and Esti, past and present, is clearly the focal point of the film, but Lelio takes his time getting there. McAdams is miscast, but she does a fine job showing Esti's burgeoning emotional life, exploding out of her in a rush: it is as though time stopped for her when Ronit fled the community so many years ago. But McAdams is so inherently positive. In a 1950s film, she'd play a perky ingenue. She's wonderful here when showing mischievous delight sneaking a puff off Ronit's cigarette. But when she has to show Esti's anguish at being forced to marry in order to cure her of wanting to sleep with women, she can't get to the depths required. She knows what the depths are, but she can't get there in the way a Lili Taylor, or Elizabeth Moss, or Natalie Portman could. But the scenes between Weisz and McAdams are fascinating, each actress listening closely to the other, paying attention to every nuance. It doesn't reach the scope of Grand Tragic Romance, but then, it isn't meant to. These were two women whose normal adolescent crush was banned. In a way, time stopped for the both of them. 

The colors of the film are subdued and chilly, all blacks, greys, smoky-blues, so that at times it looks like a black-and-white photograph. It's beautiful, in a classical and formal way. "A Fantastic Woman" featured many surreal dreamlike images, but Lelio plays this one straight. So straight, though, it is sometimes a detriment. It's the kind of movie where teachers are shown giving lectures which directly comment on the action of the movie. Dovid and his young rabbinical students discuss sensuous love and its importance, and Esti discusses "Othello" with her students. In one scene in "A Fantastic Woman," Aretha's "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman" is prominently featured, and in a scene in "Disobedience," to break an awkward silence with Esti, Ronit spins the dial on the radio and stops on The Cure's "Love Song," which just so happens to narrate perfectly the emotions of the moment. These obvious choices really stick out.

Pauline Kael observed that melodrama is "the chief vehicle for political thought in our films," which you can see time and again, particularly in films made before the 1950s. In literature, melodrama can come off as overblown, preachy. But cinema can make melodrama seem not just real, but urgent and relevant. "Disobedience" could have gone even further in the direction of "Stella Dallas"-melodrama torment. Some of it comes across as curiously low-stakes, considering the circumstances. But, in a way, that's refreshing too.

A woman returns to the community that shunned her for her attraction to a childhood friend. Once back, their passions reignite as they explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.

Director:

Sebastián Lelio

Writers:

Sebastián Lelio, Rebecca Lenkiewicz | 1 more credit »

Stars:

Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola |

Country:

Ireland | UK | USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

27 April 2018 (USA) See more »

Also Known As:

A rabbi meg a lánya See more »

Filming Locations:

Golders Green, London, England, UK See more »

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Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$237,393, 29 April 2018, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$237,393, 29 April 2018

See more on IMDbPro »

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Company Credits

Production Co:

Braven Films, Element Pictures, Film 4

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1ST SUNDAY CLASSICS IS A LAD MOVIE - LOST AND DELIRIOUS (2001) - FULL MOVIE + FILM REVIEW

Lost and Delirious (2001)

R | 1h 43min | Drama, Romance | 20 September 2001 (Israel) 

A newcomer to a posh girls boarding school discovers that her two senior roommates are lovers.

Director:

Léa Pool

Writers:

Susan Swan (novel), Judith Thompson (screenplay)

Stars:

Piper Perabo, Jessica Paré, Mischa Barton

Lost and Delirious is the story of three adolescent girls' first love, their discovery of sexual passion, and their search for identities. Set in a posh, private boarding school surrounded by luxuriant, green forest, Lost and Delirious moves swiftly from academic routine, homesickness, and girlish silliness to the darker region of lover's intrigue.  

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 September 2001 (Israel) See more »

Also Known As:

Pasión prohibida See more »

Filming Locations:

Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Québec, Canada

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Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$41,215, 8 July 2001, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$302,365, 2 September 2001

See more on IMDbPro »

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Company Credits

Production Co:

Cité-Amérique, Dummett Films

MOVIE CLIPS (SHORT VERSION OF THE LOVE DRAMA)

"Lost and Delirious" is a hymn to teenage idealism and hormones. It has been reviewed as a movie about steamy lesbian sex in a girls' boarding school, which is like reviewing Secretariat on the basis of what he does in the stable. The truest words in the movie are spoken by Paulie, the school rebel, when she says she is not a lesbian because her love rises above mere categories and exists as a transcendent ideal.

Indulge me while I tell you that as a teenager I was consumed by the novels of Thomas Wolfe. His autobiographical heroes were filled with a passion to devour life, to experience everything, to make love to every woman, read every book in the library. At night he could not sleep, but wandered the campus, "uttering wild goat cries to the moon." I read every word Wolfe ever published. Today I find him unreadable--yes, even Look Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again . I have outlived that moment when all life seemed spread before me, all possibilities open to me, all achievements within my reach. Outlived it, but not forgotten it. "Lost and Delirious" stirred within me memories of that season in adolescence when the heart leaps up in passionate idealism--and inevitably mingles it with sexual desire.

Yes, there is nudity in "Lost and Delirious," and some intimate moments in the dorm room when the movie recalls the freedoms of the 1970s, before soft-core sex had been replaced by hard-core violence. The movie would be dishonest if it didn't provide us with visuals to match the libidos of its two young lovers--the heedless rebel girl Paulie (Piper Perabo) and the cautious rich kid Victoria (Jessica Pare), who is excited by her schoolgirl affair, but not brave enough to risk discovery; after all, her parents may not take her to Europe if they find out.

Paulie and Victoria represent two types familiar from everyone's high school--the type who acts out, and the type who wants to get all the right entries under her photo in the yearbook. At reunions years from now, Paulie will be the one they tell the stories about. Piper Perabo plays her with wonderful abandon and conviction, and Jessica Pare's Tory is sweet in her timidity. Perabo has scenes that would merely seem silly if she weren't able to invest them with such sincerity. The scene where she stalks into the library in her fencing gear, for example, and leaps onto a table to declare her love for Victoria. The scene where she challenges Victoria's new boyfriend to a duel. The scenes where she identifies with the wounded eagle she tends in the forest. The way she quotes great love poetry, promising, I will make me a willow cabin at thy gate. Their school is a vast, beautiful brick pile (actually Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec). It seems to have only two faculty members: The headmistress and English teacher Faye Vaughn (Jackie Burroughs), who teaches Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" as if she sees herself as Cleopatra--or Antony. And the math teacher, Eleanor Bannet (Mimi Kuzyk). Paulie spots Bannet as a woman not quite brave enough to follow "to thine own self be true," and insolently calls her "Eleanor" in a classroom. Faye Vaughn, on the other hand, feeds into Paulie's hungers by being as romantic as she is--although Paulie doesn't always see that. Also on the staff is Joe Menzies (Graham Greene), a wise old gardener who acts as a Greek chorus, uttering wry epigrams.

The story is told through the eyes of a new girl named Mouse (Mischa Barton), who is a little slow to catch on that her roommates are sapphic (the first time she sees them kissing, "I thought they were just practicing for boys"). In the immortal words of every high school movie--for Mouse, after this year, things will never be the same again. Of course, after every year, nothing is ever the same again for anyone, but when you're 16, it seems to be all about you.

When I saw "Lost and Delirious" at Sundance, I wrote that it was one of the best crafted, most professional films at the festival. The director, Lea Pool, creates a lush, thoughtfully framed and composed film; her classical visual style lends gravitas to this romantic story. It seems important partly because the movie makes it look important, regarding it with respect instead of cutting it up into little emotional punchlines.

There is a temptation, I suppose, to try to stand above this material, to condescend to its eagerness and uncompromising idealism. To do that is to cave in to the cynicism that infects most modern films. This is a movie for those who sometimes, in the stillness of the sleepless night, are so filled with hope and longing that they feel like--well, like uttering wild goat cries to the moon. You know who you are. And if you know someone who says, "Let's go to `Scary Movie 2' instead," that person is not worthy to be your friend.

Footnote: The movie is being released "unrated," which means it is too poetic, idealistic and healthfully erotic to fit into the sick categories of the flywheels at the MPAA. Mature teens are likely to find it inspirational and moving.

Watch the full movie here 

Thanks reading and enjoy watching one of the greatest LAD movies ever.

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INTENSE LAD MOVIE - ALLURE (2018) - FILM REVIEW (IN CINEMAS ARPIL 6, 2018)

Allure (2017)

1h 45min | Drama, Romance, Thriller | 6 April 2018 (Canada) 

A house cleaner meets a teenaged girl and convinces her to run away and live with her in secret.

Directors:

Carlos Sanchez, Jason Sanchez

Writers:

Carlos Sanchez, Jason Sanchez

Stars:

Evan Rachel Wood, Julia Sarah Stone, Denis O'Hare

Plagued by the abuse of her past and the turmoil of failed intimate encounters, Laura struggles to find a lover and a sense of normalcy. Her beacon of hope comes in sixteen year-old Eva, a talented pianist disillusioned by the life her mother imposes upon her. An unlikely relationship is formed between the two and Eva becomes an obsession to Laura. In light of Eva's unhappiness, Laura convinces her to runaway to her house and they soon find themselves caught within an intense entanglement. Manipulation, denial and codependency fuel what ultimately becomes a fractured dynamic that can only sustain itself for so long.  

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 April 2018 (Canada) See more »

Also Known As:

A Worthy Companion See more »

Filming Locations:

Montréal, Québec, Canada

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Company Credits

Production Co:

micro_scope

Evan Rachel Wood has a predatory tiger in her tank as a teasing, twisted and tortured cleaning lady on the prowl in “Allure.” From the first scene, when a doughy dude enters her darkened bedroom, dons a blindfold and stumbles into her clutches, Wood’s androgynous Laura takes charge. Attempting to arouse her prey, she impatiently snaps, “You’re no good to me if you can’t get hard.” But when she stoops to violence and nearly smothers him with her hands while straddling his body during sex, he angrily flees.

The encounter clearly has left her hunger unabated. In the morning, she goes to a new client’s house. Going about her chores, she encounters Eva (Julia Sarah Stone), a waifish 16-year-old who cheerlessly practices classical music on a piano. There is a “For Sale” on the front lawn and it turns out Eva’s distant and demanding mother (Maxim Roy) plans on them moving in with her latest boyfriend—a decision that dismays her daughter. After checking her lipstick in the bathroom mirror she has just wiped down, Laura ambles into Eva’s room, smiles and compliments her on a Nirvana poster on her wall. The teen lights up from the attention, and soon she and the 30-ish hired hand are knocking back screwdrivers in Laura’s nondescript living room. Eva sleeps over on a basement couch and soon matters grow a great deal more complicated from there as the plot meanders into “Misery”-like kidnapping territory. 

Wood, whose whippet-thin appearance in this dank noir-ish drama semi-draped in mystery could be described as Kristen Stewart lite, fully dedicates herself to embodying a rather unpleasant and contradictory character as she attracts her prey and then goes about abusing them physically and emotionally. After meeting her father (the terrific character actor Denis O’Hare), whose gaunt features suggest he’s haunted by the past, we learn that he is also Laura’s employer and basically supports her. Does that suggest he is guilty about something? Signs point to yes. 

Their strained current relationship—they rather pathetically go to happy hour after work with other employees and never crack a smile—suggests that daddy dearest might be at the root of her sociopathic and destructive nature. Despite Wood’s best efforts, I couldn’t manage much sympathy for her manic-depressive Laura, even after the reason for her less-than-savory approach to sex is eventually explained. As for Stone, her good-at-heart Eva’s motives for sticking around, even after it is clear her succubus-like captor has issues up the wazoo, are never wholly believable. At one point, she almost makes a getaway on a public bus and it was all I could do to not yell “Go already!” 

The utterly humorless script of “Allure” often makes for uneasy viewing. Not even breaks for go-kart racing and karaoke (Stone’s wan take on Madonna’s “Material Girl” doesn’t even lead to a chuckle) provide relief. But at least Carlos and Jason Sanchez, Montreal-based sibling photographers whose well-regarded work emulates movie stills, know their way around visual atmospherics with glowing red lights and shadowy environs while keeping sunlight to a minimum. One of their best decisions while shooting in their hometown was to start with the damp chill of autumn and end with a full-on blizzard. Also, the darkness of the season often makes Laura’s rectangular box of an abode feel almost tomb-like—a nice touch.

If “Allure” were indeed more alluring, I probably wouldn’t have flinched so much at Laura and Eva’s awkward bedroom encounters. But it takes a better movie than this to justify exploiting the sight of the child-like Stone being pawed by the ravenous Wood, even if her character treats her more like a pet than a person. One thing the Sanchez brothers do get right? They know how to start with a bang and end on one. Here’s hoping they learn how to better flesh out the narrative in between.    

Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.

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