Month: September 2015

The opening credits announce that David Gordon Green‘s Our Brand Is Crisis (Warner Bros., 10.30) is “suggested” by Rachel Boynton’s same-titled, decade-old documentary. Well, that’s one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that it’s been transformed into a Sandra Bullock film in much the same way that the once-austere Gravity became a spacesuit-Sandy-in-peril movie for her fans. Four days ago I wondered aloud if Green’s film will be “a Sandra Bullock flick with a real-world political undercurrent, or a political dramedy in which Bullock stars?” Well, it definitely ain’t the latter. Not precisely a Bullock formula thing, mind, but fairly close to that.

All I did during this morning’s 8:30 screening was scowl and grumble and lean forward and occasionally cover my lower face with my right hand. No moaning but occasionally my mouth would pop open in astonishment, or according to Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas, who was sitting beside me.

What’s a well-respected, semi-realistic political campaign movie? Michael Ritchie‘s The Candidate, right? Well, imagine The Candidate with Robert Redford still playing Bill McKay but instead of Peter Boyle as his campaign manager you’ve got the spirited and irrepressible but at the same struggling-with-depression Barbra Streisand (half the way she was in What’s Up, Doc?, and half Kuh-Kuh-Katey in The Way We Were), and that’s pretty much what Our Brand Is Crisis is, except it’s set in Bolivia and Redford is played by Joaquim de Almeida.

Over and over and over Bullock gets her closeups in this thing, and she looks so reliably and relentlessly herself in every shot and scene. She’s playing a brilliant political consultant in a sometimes surly, sometimes pratfally way, but Our Brand is Crisis is mainly about the fact that (a) she looks burnt-out sullen and kind of Lauren Bacall-y with her one-size-fits-all deadpan glamour-puss expression, nicely dyed blonde hair and distinctive black-rimmed glasses, and (b) she has a great-looking ass for a woman of any age, let alone her own.

Before people start calling me a sexist pig, understand that at the climax of a completely absurd mountain-road race between two political campaign tour buses, Bullock drops trou and shoves her creamy biege, perfectly-shaved butt cheeks out of a side window, “aimed” at her political opponents who are riding alongside. (It’s called “mooning.”) I would have respected this scene more if Bullock’s ass (or that of the ass model who was hired for this one bit) didn’t look so CG-scrubbed. It looks like a love-doll ass. (And don’t blame me — I’m just describing what I saw.)

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Last night I caught I Saw The Light, a mostly downish, spotty and not-very-enjoyable Hank Williams biopic that at least features a worthwhile performance from Tom Hiddleston as the volatile, short-tempered, alcohol-afflicted country music legend who died, stupidly, at age 29. I also caught Ridley Scott‘s The Martian, a smart, seriously enjoyable, technically satisfying and emotionally inspiring big-studio rescue + popcorn movie that’s about as deep as a jacuzzi. And it’s fine for that. As I tweeted last night, it’s aimed at the people who really love halftime shows at the Super Bowl. And it’s very amusingly written and rank with pop-music usage and commentary — it’s almost a Tarantino movie in some respects.

I’ll have to get into this late this afternoon as the clock is ticking…

It’s 7:40 am. I should have been out the door ten minutes ago for the 8:30 am Scotiabank press & industry screening of David Gordon Green‘s Our Brand Is Crisis, which, to go by initial reviews, is allegedly an in-and-outer with noteworthy performances from Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton. In order to do that I’ll need to blow off the 9:30 am screening of The Danish Girl (which I’ll be seeing an at early-evening public screening so no worries). At 12:15 pm I’ll be catching Brian Helgeland‘s Legend, the Kray brothers crime melodrama with Tom Hardy in both roles.

I’ll have about three and a half hours to tap out some thoughts and digressions before the aforementioned Danish Girl showing at 6:15 pm, which will be followed by a 9pm screening of Jay Roach‘s Trumbo.

There are several parties but I thought I’d try and drop in on the ones for The Danish Girl and Trumbo. For the first time in 15 years I haven’t been invited to the traditional Sony Pictures Classics party, possibly/partly due to my having shared suspicions about the apparently-not-so-hot quality of I Saw The Light (which I sat through early last evening) and Truth (which I’ll be catching at a p & i screening of tomorrow) or possibly because we’re all interesting but contradictory souls with fascinating personalities who will someday die and turn into dust and ash. I couldn’t fit the SPC party in anyway due to the already stuffed schedule.

I remember very clearly how delighted I was with the sound system (and particularly Huey Lewis‘s “The Power of Love”) when I first saw Back To The Future at whatever Hollywood theatre it was. (Probably the Cinerama Dome.) How many times have I seen the first-and-best entry in this franchise? Three, but I stopped re-watching back in the early ’90s so it’s been a quarter-century. Some films gain; others fade. But I’m still into seeing Back in Time, a crowd-funded doc about the cultural impact of this series, etc. “Countless hours of footage during filming,” etc. Interviews with director Robert Zemeckis, Steven “beardo” Spielberg, Bob Gale, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Huey Lewis, Dan Harmon. Pops on 10.21.15.

A few weeks ago I read an eight-year-old old draft of Bryan Sipe‘s Demolition (10.8.07). Though well written and “sensitive” in the vein of American Beauty-ish (i.e., a guy going off the track, ignoring social norms, following odd instincts), it struck me as a bit too self-consciously quirky — just a little too precious. But the movie reps a significant upgrade of the material, and credit for this, of course, goes to director Jean-Marc Vallee.

Last night I saw Demolition at the Prince of Wales. The fact that Fox Searchlight won’t release until next April has stirred curiosity about what’s wrong with it — why bump it out of award season? The answer is “who knows but it’s not half bad.”

As indicated, it’s about a youngish, day-dreamy investment banker (Jake Gyllenhaal) succumbing to all kinds of weird, self-absorbed behavior as a way of dealing with his wife’s car-crash death. He doesn’t grieve as much go inward. He ignores his job, grows a stubble beard, becomes enamored of fixing machinery and then tearing things down. In so doing he begin to increasingly mystify and then piss off his father-in-law (Chris Cooper). He also slides into a nonsexual but connected relationship with a customer service rep (Naomi Watts) for a vending machine company. She has a somewhat alienated son (Judah Lewis) and a big, suspicious, more-than-a-little-angry live-in boyfriend.

The settled-in acting never feels calculated or pushed or “performed”, and the photography (by Yves Belanger) and editing seem extra-fleet and tight and generally supplies a more sophisticated feeling than Vallee’s Wild or Dallas Buyer’s Club had.

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As mentioned on 9.8, Demolition costar Judah Lewis, whose age is being kept hidden for some reason but who seems to be around 14, has a certain je nais sais quoi X-factor “star is born” thing going on. I caught Demolition early last evening, and Lewis’s scenes with Jake Gyllenhaal (i.e., “Are you fucking my mom?”) definitely pop. Edgy magnetism, the camera likes him or something, etc. Lewis plays Naomi Watts‘ son Chris, a bordering-on-too-pretty kid with longish blonde hair who may be gay. Something about his looks and acting style reminded me of Leonardo DiCaprio between Growing Pains and his costarring role in Critters 3. Lewis’s eyes have a certain “extra-alert but masking something vulnerable and uncertain” quality, and Chris has the usual rebellious, cigarette-smoking, rock-and-roll-dancing early teen thing down pat. Whatever “it” is, Lewis has it. With Demolition not coming out until April, Lewis’s first feature will be Ericson Core‘s Point Break (Warner Bros,. 12.25). He should grow his hair longer — he looks and sounds cooler in the film than he did in this red-carpet interview, which was taped last night.

Hats off to HE’s ad guy Sean Jacobs for throwing this together yesterday — the first in a series of many charts that will attempt to gauge sentiments about potential Oscar favorites in the usual categories, Best Picture being the natural lead-off. (It’s included in HE’s first Little Yellow Pill newsletter blast, which goes out today.) I can’t allude to the source but during Telluride I heard second-hand that Leonardo DiCaprio‘s confidence about the quality of The Revenant is through the roof. Do I seriously believe that Son of Saul has a shot? No — it’s a likely Best Foreign Language Feature nominee, but it’s easily one of the ten best of the year and right now there’s no ignoring that fact. Will the same Academy faint-of-hearts who refused to watch 12 Years A Slave screeners watch Beasts of No Nation, much less vote for it? Yesterday I was quoted by a WKYC TIFF poll as follows: “If you want a very good film that some might even walk out on, it’s this one. But it’s almost Apocalypse Now-like.”

The title of Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next, which had its big debut last night at Toronto’s Princess of Wales theatre, suggests some kind of satirical jeremiad against American military interventionism over the last six or seven decades. Nope — it’s actually an amusing, alpha-wavey, selectively factual love letter to the kind of European Democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders has been espousing for years. And it’s funny and illuminating and generally soothing (unless you’re a rightie). A distributor I know called it “toothless,” which is arguably true if you want to put it that way, but the film is engaging in an alpha, up-with-people sense. It’s basically an argument in favor of “we” values and policies over the “me and mine” theology that lies of the heart of the American dream.

The primary theme of Sanders’s domestic philosophy is that benefits for working Joes are far more bountiful in many European countries (France, Italy, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, Portugal), and that we should try to humanize American life by instituting some of their social policies. He’s talking higher taxes, yes, but guaranteed health care, free universities, longer vacations (up to 35 days per year in Italy), a far less predatory work environment, better school-cafeteria food, more relaxation and apparently more sex, etc.

By any semi-humane measuring stick this is a much more attractive, more dignity-affirming way of life — imperfect and fraught with the usual problems, but far preferable, it seems, to the ruggedly Darwinian, rough-and-tumble, wealth-favoring oligarchial system that Americans are currently saddled with.

Moore simplifies like any documentarian trying to reach a mass audience. I’m sure there are many, many problems in Democratic socialist countries that he’s ignoring and then some. As Screen Daily‘s Allan Hunter notes, “Some of the people who actually live in those countries might find [Moore’s] views a little starry-eyed and unsophisticated.” But I strongly doubt that Moore has fabricated anything here.

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Not that I believe for a second that Sanders will become the Democratic nominee, but if that were to happen you know that Mr. and Mrs. Under-educated and None-too-bright (i.e., the majority) would vote for Greg Stillson hands down.

All I have time for this evening are the two opening-night TIFF screenings — Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition at 6:30 pm and Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next at 9:30 pm. These plus some running around activities between now (3:15 pm) and 6 pm or thereabouts. Demolition and Invade are throwing after-parties, of course.

“Atom Egoyan’s ongoing search for his own best form makes no real breakthrough in Remember, a state-hopping Nazi-hunt mystery that puts a creditably sincere spin on material that is silly at best. At worst, tyro writer Benjamin August’s screenplay is a crass attempt to fashion a Memento-style puzzle narrative from post-Holocaust trauma. Toggling variables of disguised identity and dementia, as Christopher Plummer’s ailing German widower travels across North America in search of the camp commander he recalls from his time in Auschwitz, the pic is riddled with lapses in logic even before a stakes-shifting twist that many viewers might see coming. Crafted in utilitarian fashion by Egoyan, Remember does little to earn the poignancy of Plummer’s stricken performance.” — from a 9.10 Variety review by the often accommodating Guy Lodge.

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The right owns blacklisting, or rather their fathers and grandfathers earned it back in the late ’40s and ’50s, branding it into American conservative legacy like red-hot iron. The idea of blacklisting anyone for their political convictions is reprehensible, of course, but if, let’s say, anyone on the left wanted to play around with the idea of blacklisting a rightie or even flirt with a fantasy along these lines just for amusement’s sake, contemporary righties would have no choice but to take it and like it. They could complain but they have no leg to stand on. Their forebears bought the farm.

I’m sorry but I was listening last night to “Walking In The Rain,” the ’64 Ronettes song that was written by Barry Mann, Phil Spector and Cynthia Weil. And out of the blue the chorus just seemed…well, poorly thought out. I’m not saying it’s on the same level as those King Kong natives building a huge gate in that wall intended to keep all those dinosaurs and giant apes from invading their village, but it sure as hell is illogical.

The lead-up to the chorus goes “He’ll be kind of shy / But real good lookin’ too / And I’ll be certain he’s my guy / By the things he’ll like to do.” And then the mind-blower: “Like walking in the rain / And wishing on the stars up above / And being so in love.”

Has anyone in the history of the planet earth ever been able to look up and see stars in the middle of a rainshower? Ever? Particularly the kind accompanied by thunder, which “Walking in the Rain” producer Phil Spector threw in for added emotional effect?

Obviously one can interpret the lyrics as being about a would-be boyfriend who likes to (a) walk in the rain as well as (b) wish on stars after the weather has cleared, but to the casual listener the lyric clearly suggests that the rainstorm stroll and the star-wishing are happening on the same dreamy date.

It’s fucked up, and to my knowledge nobody has pointed this out in over half a century.