reviews

Brad’s Status Is A Surprise Winner

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Last Tuesday (7.25) I expressed interest in Mike White‘s Brad’s Status (Amazon/Annapurna, 9.15). The trailer suggested it would be a smart, bone-dry father-son comedy about an insecure, middle-aged dad (Ben Stiller) who’s more than a bit haunted by career underachievement and, worse, by the dawning success of his son (20-year-old Austin Abrams).

My first reaction was “aah, this’ll be good and I wanna see it, but is Stiller playing the same kind of anxious, insecure 40ish guy he was in Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young? If so, should he be doing another so soon?”

Well, the trailer misled. Okay, Stiller’s character slightly resembles the vaguely terrified would-be hipster he played in that 2014 Noah Baumbach film, but Brad Sloan, the nonprofit counselor he plays in White’s new film, is a different kind of bird. A Sacramento guy who’s constantly in the grip of suppressed envy and twitches of self-disappointment, but who never descends into foolery or self-mocking caricature. Far from rich and no one’s idea of assured or super-confident, but an honest, moderately mannered fellow who can’t help….well, frowning at the mirror. At times. But doing his best to cover this up.

I saw Brad’s Status last night, and I think it’s really exceptional. It’s basically a smallish dramedy about Brad taking son Troy to Boston to check out some colleges. It begins as another Stiller humiliation piece, but it turns into one of the best mid-level adult dramas of this type in a long, long time, and a truly exceptional (which is to say very wise) generation-gap flick.

I wasn’t expecting that much at first, but about a half-hour in I began to realize that White’s film is a winning meditation about self-worth, self-image, self-assessment, real vs. imagined happiness and empty envy. It’s honest and real and very, very well written. Fleet, subtle, unforced. Fairly complex but evened out by the end.

Brad Sloan is easily Stiller’s best-written role and finest performance since Greenberg, but with a more appealing (if ambiguous) tone. More solemn and self-aware. Not stalled or self-destructive but forlorn and nearly resigned.

Brad’s Status is a character-inspection thing that cuts it right down the middle, on one hand making Stiller’s character seem overly envious or even a bit pathetic, and on the other giving him a certain degree of self-awareness and dignity and grace in the third act. It’s a quiet adult movie in the best sense of that term. It lets you sort it out, choose sides, figure the angles.

If Woody Allen had directed and written this it would be much more on the nose, or it would feel first-drafty. This is easily White’s best script since School of Rock, and his direction is just so. He balances the ingredients just right. I adore the way he doesn’t come down on one side or the other of any given issue or dispute. And I love that White himself is 47, right along with Brad.

Brad’s envy is focused on three college friends who went on to become rich and super-successful — Michael Sheen‘s Craig Fisher (a best-selling author), Luke Wilson‘s Jason Hatfield (a hedge fund guy) and Jemaine Clement‘s Billy Wearsiter (a now-retired playboy).

Without giving too much away there are a couple of payoff scenes in which Wilson and especially Sheen interact with Stiller. One of the brilliant aspects of White’s script is that he doesn’t precisely tell you that this or that guy is a complete dick, or that Stiller is better or worse than either one. He just lets you listen and consider.

And there’s a great score by Mark Mothersbaugh.  And Stiller has an emotional scene during a third-act concert scene that really works, I think. I believed it, at least. I’ve been there, felt that.

And Austin Abrams is really great. He’s a brilliant under-player. I believed his every word and gesture. He looks and half-sounds like Bob Dylan might’ve sounded when he was 20 or 21.

Yes, Brad’s Status is heavily narrated. Voice-over explanations and fill-ins sometimes rub me the wrong way, but this time it works, partly, I suppose, because Stiller’s Brad is a thoughtful ex-journalist who knows how to explain things well, and so his narrative commentary (which is very well phrased) fits right in.

“Hey, Dad…are you having some kind of nervous breakdown or something?”

Insanely Delicious Musical Crime Flick Blows Itself Up

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Most of Edgar Wright‘s Baby Driver (TriStar, 6.28) is inspired — one of the most strikingly conceived, purely enjoyable fast-car crime flicks I’ve ever seen. With Ansel Elgort as a Ryan Gosling-level getaway driver who needs the right kind of song playing in his ear buds in order to make it all come together, Baby Driver is essentially a kind of action musical — cray-cray car chases and ferocious gunplay synchronized with the sounds and vice versa. To some extent it reminded me of Drive, and at times of Thief, Gone In Sixty Seconds, Bullitt….that line of country.

The four or five car chases in the film are exhilarating nutso stuff, but at the same time the action is undisciplined and show-offy and actually quite mad — Wright going for the gusto without regard to probability or (that horrid word) reality, but at the same time delivering the best squealing-rubber thrills since Gosling and Nicholas Winding Refn pooled forces, and absolutely leaving the bullshit fantasy realm of the Furious franchise in the dust.

But then Wright decides to send Baby Driver flying off the freeway around…oh, the 90-minute mark. And the last 15 or so minutes are flat-out insane and then infuriating. I was sitting there with my face contorted as I silently screamed, “What the fuck are you doing?…you fucking asshole! You really had something going there, but now you’re ruining the movie…you’re making it into some kind of bullshit Vin Diesel cum milkshake with a pop-fantasy ending made of dingleberries and drooling saliva. Why? Do you have a creative death wish?”

HE to director friend this morning: “I just saw Baby Driver last night….a wowser, near-great action musical for the first 80% or 85% followed by a ridiculously absurd, overly violent, catastrophically stupid finale that all but destroys the current and the vibe. A friend said ‘the wheels come off at the end‘ but they come off because Wright got under the car and loosened the lug nuts. Rarely have I seen a popcorn film as inspired and well-made as Baby Driver just blow itself up and shatter into pieces at the very end…a shame and a tragedy.”

I am nonetheless recommending Baby Driver for those first 90 or so minutes. But at the same time I’m telling you that any critic who’s written a gushing pass without mentioning that it destroys itself over the last 15 minutes or so…anyone who ignores this DEAD OBVIOUS FACT is a lying, jizz-whizzing whore who can never be fully trusted ever again.

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Decently Made, Culturally Significant Benchmark Flick

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Late yesterday afternoon I finally saw Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman. I found it stirring from time to time, and, like everyone else, I loved the fresh company of a canny and compassionate female superhero who knows all the angles and pretty much can’t be defeated. Or shouldn’t be. I was thoroughly swimming in Gal Gadot‘s performance as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, and particularly her character’s loathing of war and a nurturing, humanist determination to rid the world of this pestilence.

I wasn’t a fan of the bluish smokey gray color scheme during the World War I section, but I enjoyed some of the humor and the general winking attitude and professional aplomb. It’s a good film of this type as far as it goes. I didn’t mind a lot of it and I loved certain portions. Really. It’s not good enough to become a Best Picture contender in the fall, but I can understand why some who are super-thrilled by the cultural connotations would want to see this happen.


Wonder Woman poster in Paris metro

I also found Wonder Woman depressingly familiar. For this is yet another D.C. Comics superhero flick, and that means submitting to the same old D.C. formula elements — a draggy origin story that goes on too long, a romantic interest (Chris Pine‘s Steve Trevor), a team of colorful allies (Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Lucy Davis), several action set pieces, a pair of formidable but vulnerable villains (Danny Huston‘s Erich Ludendorff, Elena Anaya‘s Doctor Poison) and a super-demonic uber-villain whose cover identity is only revealed at the end.

To watch one of these films is to sit in a cage or a straightjacket and wait for the usual-usual to happen. It’s stifling. You’re watching it and saying to yourself, “I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming,” etc.

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Greatness of Loveless

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As I suspected it would be, Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless is a chilly, anguished and entirely brilliant film. Sad but so good. Every shot, every frame, every line is dead cold honest — it deals straight cards without a smidgen of bullshit. Plus it’s beautiful to look at and exquisitely performed. It’s a story about a marriage gone bad — a moribund mismatch, utterly ruined — and a 12 year-old boy, the emotionally aloof son of this mournful couple, gone missing. But like Leviathan, Loveless is about much more than just the tale.

It deals in specifics (certainly in terms of finely-drawn character and investigative logistics when it comes to searching for the boy) but it delivers a rich, reflective look at everything and everyone under the gray Russian skies. It’s about the whole undertow of Russian life right now, or more specifically five years ago as it takes place in 2012 — a capturing of things not right and depleted, of self-absorption and a lack of wholeness and fulfillment, a case of bitterness and uncertainty and a general sense of downswirl, the whole current of a culture no longer thriving with spirit and tradition and togetherness but starting to fray from a lack of these things.

If Leviathan was about Russian corruption from the top down and a populace drowning in hopelessness and vodka, Loveless is about spiritual attrition through vanity, selfishness, manipulation and too many ambivalent, disloyal people seething and shouting and staring at smartphone screens. Or into the abyss.

For me, Loveless is somber and dazzling at the same time. By no means a feel-good thing but definitely a movie that you’ll believe and trust in every way imaginable, and in that sense it’s the kind of immersive experience that you can’t help but feel nurtured by and delighted with. I was 100% engaged and enthralled. Hell, I was spellbound.

Zyagintsev is a major-league, genius-level hombre, no question, and this movie is another serving of that recipe, that stew, that vibe that makes you lean forward in your seat and just go “wow, I need to see this again as soon as possible.” Is that “entertainment”? For me it is. Will the megaplexers have the same reaction? Of course not. They’re too dull and stupid to get a movie like this, but if you have even a shred of longing for the rock-solid elements that Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, Leviathan and Elena provide, it’ll fill you up like a big juicy steak.

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Waves of Alien Nausea

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I didn’t dislike Ridley Scott‘s Alien: Covenant — I hated it. And I’m not saying that out of some lazy-wrath instinct or pissy posturing or what-have-you. I’m talking about serious stomach-acid sensations here. Then again I mostly despised Prometheus so it didn’t take a great deal of effort to come to this.

If Prometheus rang your hate bell, you’re going to despise this one also. For Alien: Covenant, which runs 121 minutes but feels like 150, is truly a spawn of that awful 2012 film. Is it “better” than Prometheus? All right, yeah, I suppose it is. Is it therefore worth seeing? Maybe, but only if you like watching films that make you resent everything on the face of the planet including yourself.

I’m not going to tap out the usual story, character and actor rundown. All you need to know is that I didn’t give a damn about any of Alien: Covenant. Nothing. I was muttering “Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou” the whole time. Ten minutes in I was going “awww, Jesus…this already feels sloppy and reachy.” Of course it has a back-burster scene. Of course it was thrown in to compete with the John Hurt chest-fever scene in the original. All I could think was “the Hurt version was set up so much better, and delivered so much more…this is just Scott hanging wallpaper.”

I hit the bathroom during the the last ten minutes. You never do this if a movie has you in its grip, but I didn’t care.

Scott’s Alien (’79) had clarity, integrity — it was simple and managable, and it didn’t make you feel as if you had hornets in your brain. Best of all it didn’t explain anything in terms of backstory or motivation. The original Alien space jockey (I will love that elephant trunk and split-open ribcage for the rest of my life) was wonderful because there was no explanation about what had happened or why. It was delightful for what it didn’t explain.

Alien: Covenant is detestable for the exact opposite reason — for all the boring and tedious backstory gruel (i.e., all in service of explaining Michael Fassbender‘s malignant creationism) that it explains and clarifies, and then elaborates upon.

The Telegraph‘s Robbie Colin, who loves this fucking thing and cheers the fact that it’s “a million miles from the crowd-pleasing Alien retread 20th Century Fox [execs] have presumably been begging Scott to make,” calls it proof of Scott “operating at the peak of his powers.”

To me Alien: Covenant is a portrait of Scott as a giver of corporate neckrubs. And it grieves me to say this about the director of The Counselor, which I not only worshipped but which will probably turn out to be Scott’s last brilliant, hard-as-nails, close-to-flawless film.

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The Killers

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Under the mandate of General Efraín Ríos Montt, a notorious Guatamelan strongman who belongs in the company of Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic, over 200 residents of Dos Erres — men, women, kids, elderly — were murdered on or about 12.6.82. The killers were an elite Guatamelan special forces unit, known as the Kaibiles. The killings were part of Montt’s scorched-earth policy, under which up to 200,000 indigenous and Mayan people died.

Wiki page excerpt: “[The Kaibiles] bashed the smallest children’s heads against walls and trees, and killed the older ones with hammer blows to the head. Their bodies were dumped in a well. The commandos interrogated the men and women one by one, then shot or bashed them with the hammer, and dumped them in the well. They raped women and girls, and ripped the fetuses out of pregnant women.”

Last night I caught a screening of Ryan Suffern‘s Finding Oscar (Film Rise, 4.21), a Steven Spielberg-sponsored doc about a long investigation of this notorious genocide. The invited crowd was obviously affected, impressed. So was I up to a point. It tells a horrific story but also an emotional one, and the combination works for the most part. But I was slightly bothered by Suffern’s emphasis on a humanistic, up-with-people, we-can-get-past-this approach.

Justice finally caught up with the bad guys 30 years later, but I didn’t want to be comforted or told “there, there.” I wanted, rather, to immerse myself in the details of this Central American horror. I wanted to sink into this realm and sort it all out like a special prosecutor. I wanted to channel the spirit of Jean-Louis Trintignant in Z.

Finding Oscar is not so much a detailed investigation of a massacre as an attempt to convey the emotions beneath it — the guilt shared by two older men who participated, the satisfaction and catharsis felt by investigators as they sifted through thousands of pieces of evidence over the years, and especially the emotions of two boys who escaped this slaughter and are now in their late 30s — Ramiro Cristales and particularly Oscar Ramirez, who now lives in Framingham, Massachusetts.

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Son of Road Cancer

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There is no Fate of the Furious. It doesn’t exist in my head or this realm, and anyone who pays to see it this weekend is a stupid animal, and the 65% of Rotten Tomato critics who gave it a left-handed, “what the hell” pass can never be forgiven.

Posted on 12.12.16: “The fact that I adore grimly serious fast-car movies means that I have no choice but to loathe the Fast and Furious franchise, and to condemn F. Gary Gray‘s The Fate of the Furious (Universal, 4.14.17) sight unseen. Because this franchise has steadfastly refused to invest in any semblance of road reality, and has thereby locked me out of the action time and again.

“Because I really love that low-key Steve McQueen machismo thing. I worshipped the driving sequences in Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Drive. Those screeching, howling tires and clouds of smelly white smoke in their wake. The kind we can really believe in. Hey, guys? McQueen is looking down from heaven, and he thinks you’re all pathetic. Particularly Diesel and Johnson.”

Posted on 4.2.15 (and the dates don’t matter because the Furious franchise is a steady sewage stream): “When a big, stupid, assaultive franchise flick is about to open and break the box-office, as is the case with [fill in the Furious blank], most critics play it smart by ‘reviewing’ with a light touch. Like smirking bullfighters, they toy with the beast rather than plunge a lance. ‘What’s the point of actually taking this one on?,’ they seem to be saying. ‘A pan will just make me and my newspaper or website look old-fogeyish and out of touch with the megaplexers.’

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Les Girls

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Posted from Park City on 1.28.17: “I saw enough of Amanda Lipitz‘s STEP to absorb the basic scheme. Despite a raggedy approach it’s a spunky, engaging, ‘we’re black and proud and headed for college if we can earn good enough grades and somehow manage the financial aspect’ thing. It’s about hard work, high hopes, heart, family, ups and downs, etc.

“Shot in late 2015 (or a few months after the Baltimore unrest sparked by the death of Freddie Gray), the doc focuses on three senior girls at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women who are members of the stepdance team, and are known as the “Lethal Ladies of BLSYW.”

“The most magnetic of the three is Blessin Giraldo, a spirited looker who’s looking to attend college away from Baltimore, where she’s seen some tough times both at home (her mother suffers from depression) and elsewhere, except she’s having scholastic difficulties and is therefore putting her future in some jeopardy.

“The second most interesting is the brilliant Cori Grainger, a shy, cautious type hoping to attend Johns Hopkins University on a full scholarship. Bringing up the rear is Tayla Solomon, whose single mom is a corrections officer. Like Blessin, Tayla also isn’t earning high-enough grades, at least at one point in the saga.

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Letter To A Friend About Long Strange Trip

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Amir Bar Lev‘s Long Strange Trip (Amazon, 241 minutes) is a first-rate chronicle of a great, historic American band. Don’t let the four-hour running time stop you because this time the length fits the scale of the tale. This is one sprawling, Olympian, deeply dug into, nook-and-cranny achievement.

It takes the time to fully explain the appeal of Grateful Dead music and the whole Deadhead ’80s culture thing, which I paid no attention to when it was happening. I loved the frequent use of Frankenstein clips and echoes, and I adored Al Franken‘s comments (“I’m not a Dead authority but a fan”) during the last third.

And I laughed out loud when Robert Hunter recites the “Dark Star” lyrics — “Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes / Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis / Searchlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion / Shall we go, you and I while we can / Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?” — and asks “what is not clear about that”?

The Dead were brilliant at making sloppy haphazard chops sound mesmerizing and anthem-like, but according to their ex-manager Sam Cutler they were mostly terrible in business matters, at least in the early days. But the decision to let fans tape all the shows during the ’80s was genius.

Act One (’65 to ’71 or thereabouts) is a good, comprehensive mid-to-late-’60s history lesson — efficient, amusing, well-honed and sometimes great. But Act Two (or the last two hours) really brings it home. This is where the heart is, what turned the light on — the thing that told me what Amir Bar Lev is really up to.

The last 15 or 20 minutes of Long Strange Trip is about the sad druggy wind-down and death of Jerry Garcia, and that saga seems to end four or five different times. But it finally gets there and poignantly at that.

Long Strange Trip is more about what happened inside — creatively among the band members, managers and hangers-on, and particularly among the Deadhead throngs in the ’80s — than any kind of rote, surface-y rundown of their performing and recording history (this happened, that happened).

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Pick Her Up Just To Say Hello

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Until I saw Miguel Arteta‘s Beatriz At Dinner (Roadside / Film Nation, 6.9), I never realized how short Salma Hayek is. Look at her compared to her female costars in this trailer — she’s like a munchkin. I’m not saying this to be a dick, but to mention that her church-mouse proportions serve as a metaphor when Beatriz, a spiritual healer and massage therapist, has an unfortunate encounter with a group of Orange County synthetics. Poor Beatriz seems beaten from the start.

From 1.17 HE Sundance review: “Beatriz drives down to Newport Beach to give a massage to Cathy (Connie Britton), a rich client. But then Beatriz’s car dies, and so Cathy invites her to stay for the party. She first has to overcome the small-minded objections of her husband (David Warshofsky) because the dinner is basically about business deal with a rich, Donald Trump-like monster (John Lithgow). Also attending are Strutts’ wife (Amy Landecker) and are a smarmy Orange Country couple (Chloe Sevigny, Jay Duplass).

“But then Beatriz starts blowing it by ignoring the conservational flow and trying to pass along a moral or spiritual lesson whenever there’s a lull. Then she starts to drink too much wine. Then she throws a cell phone at Strutt over his disdain for society’s lessers. Then she insists on playing a song on her guitar. And then she begins to wonder if she might have a moral duty to stab Strutt in the neck. Then she has some more wine.

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Reluctant To Admit That Boredom Seeped In

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Such is the ardor and devotion of the notorious James Gray cabal that when a fellow who is either a member or temporarily posing as one — New Yorker critic Anthony Lane — tries to gently dismiss Gray’s The Lost City of Z (Amazon Bleecker, 4.14), he can’t help but dance a little side-step. Which wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t muttering to yourself, “C’mon, man…spit it out.”

One, do not trust the 89% Rotten Tomatoes rating — the foo-foos have been worshipping Gray for years and will almost always give him a pass no matter what. I’ve said two or three times that this film will empty the sand out of your hourglass and make you feel imprisoned in your theatre seat. On top of which you must always, always beware of the word “fantasia” if the speaker isn’t referring to a 1940 animated Disney feature. Remember also that Lane is obliged to show a certain deference to David Grann‘s “The Lost City of Z,” which ran in The New Yorker before being published in book form.


New Yorker illustration by Wesley Allsbrook.

Two excerpts tell the tale:

Lane excerpt #1: “Gray has borrowed the title [of the book], and he dramatizes many of the episodes to which Grann and other writers have referred. Yet the movie that results should not be combed for historical truth. It is best approached, I would say, as a fantasia on Fawcettian themes.”

Lane excerpt #2: “Does The Lost City of Z count as an action movie? It seems more like a study in restlessness. You could frame Percy Fawcett as desperate, deluded, and ill-prepared. [But] Gray’s Fawcett is a sturdy and somewhat monotonous creature, who, for all the strivings of Charlie Hunnam, does not consume us.”

I re-posted my reactions, originally penned after catching The Lost City of Z at the 2016 NY Film Festival, on 2.23.17.

Ghost In The Shell Goes Down, General Spring Grimness, etc.

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It’s not just my loathing of almost all Asian machismo action spectacle (martial arts, sword and wire ballet) that floats my boat. I’m also indifferent to Japanese anime and manga and regret whatever influence they may have upon modes of 21st Century filmmaking. It therefore goes without saying I never intended to acknowledge, much less see or write about, Rupert Sanders‘ Ghost In The Shell. 

The Paramount release not only opened this weekend to sucky reviews but also underperformed — a lousy $19 million from 3,440 theaters. Yes!

The audience was 61% male vs. 39% female. Johansson’s skin-tight outfit plus the sexual aroma of Japanese manga indicated that Ghost In The Shell was basically about giving guys boners, which would explain the less ardent female response. Box Office Mojo‘s Brad Brevet notes that Scarlett Johansson‘s Lucy opened with $43.8 million, due in part to a larger (50%) female following.

I’ve been mainlining movies my entire life, and I don’t even want to know about this weekend’s box-office biggies, much less sit through them. The dismally reviewed Boss Baby (50% Metacritic, 48% Rotten Tomatoes) narrowly edged Beauty and the Beast to win the weekend. Lionsgate’s Power Rangers came in fourth with an estimated $14.5 million. Who watches this shit? It’s April 2nd, and there’s almost nothing I want to see between now and May 1st. Well, two or three.

The only film opening next Friday that I believe to be 100% worthy is Cristian Mungiu‘s Graduation.

Who cares about Going in Style, The Case for Christ and Smurfs: The Lost Village (all opening on 4.7)?

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