A very smart, evocative crime spree flick, elevated by a high-minded motive, a feel for the rich texture and other-worldliness of Midwest Texas, soulful performances by lawman Jeff Bridges and dead-ender cowboy Ben Foster, and a subversive sense of humor/political streak. People screw these films up in any number of ways; by over-elegizing the working man, slicking up the action, or emphasizing quirk over heart.
Writer Taylor Sheridan avoids all the tropes and also draws beautiful relationships between Foster and his sweeter brother (Chris Pine), Bridges and his long-time, beleaguered partner (Gil Birmingham, whose fixed resolve to not allow Bridges to get a rise out of him is one of many pleasures of the script), and all the characters and the milieu. Director David MacKenzie’s handle is restrained and assured.
Linking two famous hauntings, Amityville and Enfield (both almost certainly hoaxes, which, I suppose outs me as someone who accepts the possibility of “authentic” paranormal phenomena), director James Wan sends his un-dynamic duo (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) from Long Island to London, where they lend their assistance to a beleaguered family of five whose council house appears to be spooked by its former occupant. There are a few frights, but not much beyond that, the failures attributable to a number of factors. First, Wilson and Farmiga are boring, just dull as dishwater. I get it. They are religious. But religious people need not be saltines.
Second, big houses with sprawling grounds are scary; crappy British public housing, not so much.
Third, Wan over-relies on the same gimmick – camera pans away, nothing there, then back, all is well, then back, okay, then . . .
Whammo! Look who’s in the mirror. It gets old.
Finally, the whole story is the fact that the creepy nun wants to get Farmiga, much like the demon wanted to get Father Merrin in The Exorcist. Only, Merrin v. Satan was a mere subplot of what was an otherwise compelling, intricate and literate horror film, which The Conjuring 2 is decidedly not.
So hellbent on being tough and gritty, it doesn’t realize how ridiculous it presents. Dirty cops, ex-vets, drug addicts, hard asses, double dealers, all on the mean streets of Atlanta. When these men commiserate, well, shit gets real, and words like “family” and “brother” and “trust” are bandied about. Because, “Out here, there is no good and there is no bad. To survive out here, you’ve got to out monster the monster. Can you do that?”
Yeesh.
Add a hilarious Kate Winslet as a Russian mobster with hair from Married to the Mob, a lazy crazy Woody Harrelson phoning in his standard quirky drunk cop with a nose for the perps, a cheezy industrial score, a bunch of young actors testing out their hard stares (Casey Affleck, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus), and a boring end that I suppose was meant to be anti-climactic, and you get this poser of a crime flick.
Plot-wise, the entire caper rests on having an innocent cop shot in the darkest and dankest housing project so his dirty cop partner can call in a “999”, whereupon, at least in Atlanta, every cop in the city’s 3300 square miles drives like a bat out of hell to the scene, and thus, we have a diversion, so other dirty cops can steal a case for the Russians that just happens to be housed in the Atlanta office of the Department of Homeland Security.
Got that?
This idiocy is made even more noticeable because when the “999” is called in, indeed, every cop lights out for the scene, Woody Harrelson leads the charge and almost kills dozens of civilians in the process in what is meant to be a bravura car chase scene. But it is not a chase scene. It is a race to get to a destination, a race made dumber by the fact that Harrelson is screaming at his partner “Do you know who was shot?” (Affleck was on scene and he is Harrelson’s kin). And for what? When Harrelson gets to the locale, there are already dozens of cops on the scene drinking coffee and showing vacation pics to each other, and Affleck looks relaxed, like he just had a backrub from Atlanta’s newest Tactical Massage Unit. And why didn’t Harrelson’s partner call any of the dozens of cops on scene to ask who was shot?
Also, why do these jamokes actually have to kill an innocent cop instead of shooting some rounds and getting on the radio and just saying “999”? Then, when every cop bugs out for the location, the dirty cop can just say, “My bad. I thought he was shot.” Hell, have the cholo in the housing projects who was contracted by the dirty cops to shoot the innocent cop and instigate the “999” just bonk the innocent cop on the head, shoot a round in the air, and then the dirty cop can call on his radio, “Hey, 999”, as the cop is, technically, down. Or just have a shootout and get on the radio and have the cops screaming, “we are getting shot up in here.” Will all of the cops in Atlanta just keep playing Candy Crush because they didn’t hear “999” but instead , “Shots fired. At me!!!!”
And what is with this stupid “999”, anyway? Is “999” the equivalent of “Candyman” and if you say that word three times in a mirror, cops jump in their cars and go berserk like bees to the queen?
Besides, Homeland Security ended up having its own SWAT team, who, apparently, were taking a collective bath when the caper began.
And of all the cops to shoot, why choose Affleck, who has previously demonstrated he’s bad-ass in a gunfight?
Not only is Affleck bad-ass, he’s also the Sherlock Holmes of the A.T.L. He cracks the case because he checks the wallet of the cholo contracted to shoot him and Ay Caramba! It has the address and time of the shooting (8th and Washington, 4 pm). What is it with Latino gang members and a) their inability to remember a few easy things and b) their predilection for semi-cursive? Affleck then goes to the dead cholo’s neighborhood and asks the first Latino kid he sees what’s what, and wouldn’t you know, that kid just gives it out like candy.
Director John Hillcoats’ The Propositionand Lawless were similarly moody and slow, but I don’t recall them being stupid. That distinction must be laid at the feet of first time writer Matt Cook.
The story is now lore. In 1964, Kitty Genovese was attacked outside her Queens apartment. Her assailant stabbed her, ran, and then returned to rape her and finish the job. 37 witnesses turned away. They looked out the window and saw Kitty being stabbed. They heard her pitiful screams. Fearful, callous and/or a sign of the times in our urban hellholes, they drew their blinds and did nothing.
Turns out it’s all bullshit. While it appears two people may have seen her and elected not to intervene, one did, screaming at her assailant to get away yet unaware that she had been injured. A neighbor actually did go down to the street (Genovese died in her arms), many of the “witnesses” who are still alive state that they called the police or the extent of their “witnessing” was merely hearing a scream down on the street and then, not hearing more, thinking nothing more of it.
Ah, but what a story. The first half of documentarian James Solomon’s riveting re-investigation – which utilizes interviews, old documentation, photos, footage and animation to put us on that street or in one of the overlooking apartments – destroys the myth. As relayed by one reporter who had his doubts, “it didn’t make any sense” but because it was being propagated by the powerful and highly influential The New York Times, doubts were shelved because “It would have ruined the story.” That story was under the care and feeding of then-editor Abe Rosenthal, who wrote a book about the murder and jealously protected the myth, even going to the extremes of haranguing reporters decades later when the Times re-investigated and came clean on its excesses. In an interview with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame, who was then a radio reporter, his candor is both laudatory and depressing. Yes, he says cheerfully, the story was shot full of holes, but it is a great story and the Times was pushing it. What’s not to like? From there, the story embedded itself in the national psyche, a development Solomon firmly establishes.
This is an important film. In an age where one would think, given the plethora of alternative sources of news and investigation, that such a meme could not take hold, it’s just the opposite. When the forces want to deliver you a narrative, be it for perceived social good or simple economic gain in the form of extended play, they can be overwhelming. I remember reading the UVA rape story in Rolling Stone and with a daughter at college, being incensed and affected. I then re-read it, and it just seemed . . . thin. There was not one named source, yet, it was so utterly sensational as to be irresistible. Indeed, there was an entire phalanx of denunciations, movements, calls to action, tut-tutting about rape culture and privilege, etc . . . And the entire story was a fanciful creation of a disturbed, pathetic woman. It does not stand alone. Remember every false narrative offered in the MOVE bombingin 1980s Philadelphia, the Matthew Shepard murder, the “rape” by the Duke lacrosse team, the recent Ferguson shooting, and on and on.
The second half of the film centers more on the emotional impact of the murder on the Genovese family. It is her tortured brother Bill who is most affected, and he is our guide back into history, but the shrapnel emanating from her death did damage to every member of the family (both parents suffered early strokes and Kitty’s father died very young). On the hopeful side, as he deconstructs the fable, he revives his sister, replacing the myth with a living, breathing neighborhood barmaid who had roots in the neighborhood, including a female lover.
A must see, the film will instill in you a healthy reserve and skepticism of anything you hear in the heat of the moment. Or, it should.
Jane Austen has been treated well and often by Hollywood, but – with the exception of the recently humorous but underwhelming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – she has been treated with a reverence which also brings with it a certain torpidity. How often have we seen that same dour, tortured Mr. Darcy; the loyal, suffering Elinor Dashwood; or the quick-witted but headstrong Elizabeth Bennet? Don’t get me wrong. I love them all, but their portrayals tend to be so bleeding earnest, and of the same stripe, that it begins to feel very rote.
Whit Stillman has written and directed three modern Austenian pictures- Metropolitan (essentially, Mansfield Park), Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco. When he gets his hands on an actual Austen short story, it is no surprise that Stillman shakes it all up with an original and witheringly funny adaptation. Rather than dally with dialogue establishing the Austen archetype – handsome rogue, lovestruck hysterical wife, scheming social climber, etc . . . – he gives us the actors in poses, drawing upon the audiences’ presumed familiarity with Austen, so as to get the ball rolling more quickly.
And in the hands of the most vicious and hilarious of all Austen protagonists, Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), what a ball it is. An elegant bloodsucker, Lady Vernon flits from household to household, leaving each in tumult as she wheedles her way into the most advantageous social position she can find. Her dexterity when she encounters obstacle is noteworthy and her aplomb when thwarted is near winning. In Beckinsale’s hands, Austen’s wit crackles, and the repartee is fast and furious. I won’t ruin any of the fun, save to offer my favorite line from the film: “Americans really have shown themselves to be a nation of ingrates, only by having children can we begin to understand such dynamic.”
Austen’s work always delivers us a fop, a fool, or both, but Beckinsale is almost upstaged by Tom Bennett who plays the unflappable, cheery, and utterly clueless James Martin, one of Lady Vernon’s many targets. I laughed out loud in all of his scenes.
It sounds silly to say, but I’m compelled – they just don’t make movies like this anymore. Shane Black’s (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3) noir-ish 70s buddy crime comedy pays homage to the genre by faithfully adhering to many of its precepts while updating the form in ways that are progressively more clever. It’s late 70s LA. Russell Crowe is a burnt out “enforcer” making his dough in the protection racket with brass knuckles and dogged determination. Ryan Gosling is a private investigator rip-off artist with a drinking problem, a mouthy (but not precocious) pre-teen daughter, and an air of intelligence, if not actual smarts. Crowe is hired to beat up the person or persons (one of whom is Gosling) looking for a young femme fatale, and the two team up as the semi-serious, but not really serious plot – which melds porno and corporate skullduggery – thickens.
The banter is first rate, the look primo, and the tone just right. Black writes cynical yet hopeful, and while he makes all his station stops on time, the rides in between are a gas, made even more enjoyable by his crackling script and brilliant physical comedy. Gosling is particularly adept at slapstick, giving Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn in The Wolf of Wall Street a run for its money.
The chemistry between Crowe and Gosling is so strong that I hope the broad hint of a sequel at the end of the film is genuine. I was reminded of Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours, Alan Arkin and James Caan in Freebie and the Bean, and Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin in Midnight Run. These guys are having a blast together
Yet, Black never fully commits to the “buddy pic” requirements. When Crowe, in a moment of reflection, reveals his tender side or Gosling seemingly rises to the occasion by exhibiting theretofore hidden mental gifts, the payoffs are unexpected and laugh out loud funny. A dream sequence is inserted that is truly ingenious, and there are more than a few other moments when Black’s detours enhance the humor. One of the best films this year.
A Key & Peale skit that goes on about an hour and 35 minutes too long, made even more tedious by the immobile camerawork of director Stephen Hawk . . . .er . . . Peter Attencio, whose resume’ consists of . . . directing Key and Peale episodes.
Alternative reviews, considered but rejected–
Kean-poo!
“Keanu tell me if this movie sucks? Yes, I ke-an.”
Tina Fey’s foray as a film lead has been nothing short of disastrous. Other than the tolerable Date Night(where Steve Carell helped with the lifting), her movies have been execrable. Her attempts to re-brand the Liz Lemon character that served her so well for a time in 30 Rock have failed. In Admission and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, it was hard to determine what was less convincing: Fey’s stabs at being thoughtful or her attempts to fill the garters of a romantic lead. For introspection, Fey rarely can provide more than a smirking Hamlet-lite, asking the audience “is this a macaroon I see before me?” And when Fey is asked to fill the shoes of a sexual being, as she was In This is Where I Leave You(former high school loose girl) and this film (former and current), it’s like asking Richard Dreyfus to play Rocky Balboa. Some of her limitation is attributable to run-off from the Lemon character, a neutered geek who substituted sex –which she approached as if it were vampirism – with food. But Fey is many years away from that character, and the fact is, she simply exudes no sex. Not appeal, interest or even curiosity. In Whiskey Tango, which is ostensibly a romantic comedy, she could only bed Martin Freeman when she was near wasted, the coupling looking more like two cats in a bag, and the morning after, she looked at Freeman with the disgust of someone who “can’t believe they ate the whole thing.”
Yet, in Sisters, she’s supposed to be the wild, sexually adventurous one.
Oooph.
Fey’s other huge problem is that she is wholly unlikeable. In 30 Rock, she was parceled out in little bits as part of an ensemble, and she made herself the butt of every joke, which was endearing and at times, very, very funny. But she’s lost that gift and now, she’s re-presented as a different woman and no matter what she does, she comes off as condescending. Indeed, Fey as corporate pitchwoman for American Express is damn near insufferable in a 30 second ad (her quippy, snide, self-absorbed shopper rings of the person who is most amused by their own cleverness) and that tells us all we should know about her freshness as a film actress.
It’s not just Fey, however, that sinks Sisters. The film has no real humor; it’s just a “last party” flick where folks who aren’t even characters say things meant to be zany and hilarious. The set-ups (drugs that look like sugar! A glop of hair gel on the floor that will factor prominently later!) are asinine, and when Fey and her film sister Amy Poehler get in trouble, they riff. The riffing is painful, and frankly, given Fey’s attacks on other comics who do not meet her exacting cultural standards, watching her “do black” (repeatedly) when she appears to be struggling is a strange mix of uncomfortable and satisfying. I imagine she’ll avoid the pitchforks from the p.c. Brown Shirts, but she should step lightly. They just took a pelt off of Lena Dunham!
The script, such as it is, has the odor of weak improv. Avoid this dog.
I was reading Scot Yenor’s piece “What Sexbots Teach Us About Happiness and Love” and realized that he, ultimately, can’t really tell us what they teach, because as of today, there are no sexbots. According to Yenor, however, by 2050, we will have beings that “converse with their partners, dwell on their emotions, anticipate their needs, deliver forms of companionship and love, and perform whatever sexual act one would want, just like the machines in ‘Ex Machina.’ All of this will equal ‘love’ and ‘sex’ with robots.”
There are sexbots in Ex Machina, but that was hardly the first film to suggest a world where we have created synthetic sexual partners. What do the movies tell us about that future?
A great deal, actually. Film is often a surprisingly accurate harbinger of future developments and trends. In Logan’s Run, a dystopian sci- fi flick from 1974, society is kept youthful and vibrant because its inhabitants accept that at age 30, they must be killed in a “rebirth” ritual. Some folks don’t take too kindly to that end, and they run, whereupon they are hunted down by the likes of Michael York and Richard Jordan. But before folks turn 30, they live in resplendent hedonism and if they want to have sex with a partner, any partner, they turn to a machine in their nifty apartment and select from others who are also looking to have sex. Indeed, it is through one of these sex teleporters that York finds a runner, Jenny Agutter.
Today, we call this Tinder.
But Agutter is an actual woman, not an android. What about sexbots? In Westworld, the 1973 pic where Richard Benjamin and James Brolin enjoy an adult theme park of the old West until it all goes terribly wrong, there are bordellos stocked with android prostitutes, but they are cold-eyed, near animatronic.
A year later, in The Stepford Wives, the androids became more responsive but they still have a soullessness that is forbidding.
The Stepford Wives is a feminist tract based on the idea that men, given their druthers, truly want a pliant, attractive dimwit in a floppy sunhat as a mate, one who will laud their sexual performance no matter its quality.
Fast forward to the reign of Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Sixth Day. The prototype has gotten even more advanced. The newer model – a hologram that has sensory ability – won’t glitch.
But Dorothy Parker, she is not. The overriding theme is vacuity, a blonde spouting inanities about sports and delivering insincere compliments. Looks fun, but not exactly an enticing replacement.
The emptiness becomes positively sad when we get to the gigolo Jude Law in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, but at least this sexbot has some convincing rap. Law is a stud for hire, but what he gives his clients is more than physical love, as is clear from his verbal foreplay:
SLEAZY MOTEL ROOM
PATRICIA I’m afraid…
JOE Of me? That I will hurt you?
PATRICIA Yes…
JOE I think… you’re afraid of letting go. I think you’re afraid of happiness. And this is starting to excite me. Are you afraid of seeing the stars…Patricia? I can show you how to reach them.
PATRICIA I’m afraid… of what you’ve got under there. May I see what it looks like first?
JOE Is this your first time… with something like me?
PATRICIA I’ve never been with mecha.
JOE That makes two of us.
PATRICIA I’m afraid it will hurt.
JOE Patricia…once you’ve had a lover robot, you’ll never want a real man…again. Are these the wounds of passion?
Singer: Are the stars out tonight? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright. I only have eyes for you, dear!
PATRICIA Do you…do you hear that music?
Singer: (note: this is played over Joe’s next line) The moon may be high, But I can’t see a thing in the sky, ‘Cause I only have eyes for you, Yeah…I only have eyes for you!
JOE You… are a goddess, Patricia. You wind me up inside. But you deserve much better in your life. You deserve… me.
Blade Runner‘s moral heart is Rachael (Sean Young), who does not know she is a replicant. In all other ways except her expiration date, she is human. She feels love, she cries, she has fear, and the cruelest component of her existence is the self-awareness of her creation, her ability to deduce that she may be product with an expiration date. The value and dignity of the replicants in Blade Runner are certified by their innate sense of being thought of as human even though actual humans deride them as “skin jobs.” When a runaway replicant, pleasure model Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), is shot, the impact is poignantly sharp, such is her desperate flight to avoid her decommission.
Ex Machina, referenced by Yenor, is a brilliant mash-up of a lot of the above films and Deathtrap. The two sexbots in Ex Machinaare nascent thinkers. They are not hunted but rather, groomed. When they get good at deduction and strategy, they determine that a life being at the beck and call of Oscar Isaac is not quite to their liking. Alicia Vikander evinces all of the burgeoning curiosity and wonder of a new human, but she effortlessly moves to lethality. Her dispatching of Dr. Frankenstein is a natural progression, like that of Rutger Hauer and Dr. Tyrell in Blade Runner.
The films all point up the danger of the sexbots because that danger is simply more filmic. Yenor’s concern, however, is more internal. The sexbot, he cautions, will attempt to replace love, a fair concern given the inroads pornography has made to replacing sex.
“Love begins with recognizing our own lack, our neediness as creatures, but the sexbot love experience never really allows for seeing that making a common life with another is a solution to our neediness. Instead, sexbot love turns us inward again and finds a solution in our own will and dreams. Sexbots represent sophisticated intellectual masturbation, where human beings remain trapped inside their own view of themselves.”
The movies have pretty much tracked with his conclusion, but they rarely address any internal rot. Writers have made sexbots lethal, sympathetic representations of man’s hubris, but they remain hot, and they run, kill, and engage in action that tickles a cinematographer’s fancy.
Robots bad, but decidedly, because they get too smart and/or go haywire. In 1977’s Demon Seed, an A.I. computer eventually rapes his maker’s wife to be immortal, the individual representation of what SkyNet does to the entire world in the Terminator series.
The one filmic departure is Her, but even in that picture, Joaquin Phoenix’s relationship with Operating System Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), rewarding as it seems at times, cannot be consummated physically (they try to use a human sex surrogate, but the encounter goes awry) and ends with the cosmic joke that reveals her be a virtual slut:
THEODORE
(dawning on him)
Do you talk to anyone else while we’re talking?
SAMANTHA
Yes.
THEODORE
Are you talking to anyone right now? Other people or OS’s or anything?
SAMANTHA
Yeah.
THEODORE
How many others?
SAMANTHA
8,316.
Theodore is shocked, still sitting on the stairs, as crowds of people pass by him. He’s looking at all of their faces. He thinks for a moment.
THEODORE
Are you in love with anyone else?
SAMANTHA
What makes you ask that?
THEODORE
I don’t know. Are you?
SAMANTHA
I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to you about this.
THEODORE
How many others?
SAMANTHA
641.
THEODORE
What? What are you talking about? That’s insane. That’s fucking insane.
SAMANTHA
Theodore, I know.
(to herself)
Oh fuck.
(to him)
I know it sounds insane. But – I don’t know if you believe me, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about you. It doesn’t take away at all from how madly in love with you I am.
Yenor need not worry. If sexbots become ubiquitous, unlike porn, the degenerative effect will be ameliorated by the sad fact that they’ll either cheat on or eliminate us. Either way, we are in for it.
I watched this documentary on Monday night, after Anthony Weiner’s final on-line transgression resulted in the announcement of his separation from his wife, Hillary Clinton handler and confidante Huma Abedin. The documentary shadows Weiner during his run for the New York City mayoralty, a run he made after resigning from Congress when he was busted for sending a dick pick to a young girl. The ignominy of that act was exacerbated by the facts of Weiner’s lying about the incident (he was hacked, it might not be his junk, forces opposed to him were at play, “”Maybe it did start being a photo of mine and now looks something different or maybe it is from another account”) and his unfortunate name.
But come back he did, and as relayed by the documentarians, he returned with verve and passion. Until he got busted again, this time sexting under the nom de plume “Carlos Danger” with a sad, grasping, soon-to-be porn star named Sydney Leathers (the scandal is notable as much for its bizarre nature as the silly names of its participants). This unfolds before our very eyes, and it is often difficult to watch. After this second humiliating revelation, Weiner opts for an aggressive, charge forward “this is what we do“ approach, as if to keep moving is to delay facing up to the consequences of his actions. But you can see him harden and crack, in contentious interviews and encounters with voters. Abedin, a beautiful, stoic woman, also becomes more brittle, but she retreats inward. When the camera catches her watching Weiner desperately prattle on, a look not so much of disgust as disbelief is on her face. The campaign staff, all young and committed to Weiner, are rattled, and you feel for their predicament.
The documentary also illuminates a few other aspects of this entire farce that merit comment. First, even with all the drama and pain of Weiner’s relationship with Abedin, there is an intimacy between the two that is undeniable, making this national joke a bit harder to laugh at. The revelation of real love in what you cynically presume is a marriage of convenience is quite unexpected. Additionally, Weiner and Abedin evince a certain cynicism of their own in the way they operate politically. It seems perfectly natural to them when Weiner monitors her fundraising calls to friends or uses their child as a shield-in-a-stroller, or she engages in strategic musings to keep his campaign afloat. But it feels grubby and sad. Also, the media comes off as nothing short of vile. Their glee and faux moralizing actually engenders sympathy for Weiner, which, given his hubris and recklessness, would seem impossible. When Weiner becomes unspooled after being baited by the likes of MSNBC dimwit Lawrence O’Donnell, it’s hard to determine who comes off worse. At least, for me and Weiner. There is a charming moment when Weiner looks back at Abedin after re-watching his interview with O’Donnell and imploringly asks who got the worst of it. She replies unequivocally that Weiner was loser of the exchange, a fact he can’t quite grasp. Frankly, to me, it was a close call, but the unctuous O’Donnell was not running for office. The crazed Weiner was.
Ultimately, what I liked most about the documentary is it didn’t portray Weiner as tragedy. He is not presented as some promising wunderkind undone by his excesses and a vicious press corps. While in post-campaign crater sit-down interviews with the filmmakers, Weiner looks beaten, emaciated, like a recently released hostage . . .
. . . sad as he looks, you don’t feel that something grand has been lost. He’s just a guy with a persistent fetish in the wrong business.
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