The film is conceptually ingenious, spooky, nerve wracking, terrifying and meticulously paced and acted. This tale of a family’s descent into madness and the occult scared the bejeezus out of me. Only slightly gory, the horror is all psychological. It is, however, very cruel to its characters, sometimes too cruel even for me.
I’m getting too old for this shit.
Imagine HBO’s Veep, but instead of the made-up travails of a narcissistic, ambitious politician in the form of Julia Louis Dreyfus, you have Khrushchev, Beria, Molotov, Zhukov and Malenkov, all jockeying for power and survival after Stalin has passed. Like Veep, writer-director Armando Iannucci’s movie is undeniably hilarious, providing the entire swath of the comedic, from slapstick (the scene where each central committee member arrives at Stalin’s unconscious body on the floor, only to engage poorly with his urine, is gut-busting) to sharp wit delivered so fast, you catch it 30 seconds later. Steve Buscemi’s scheming Khrushchev is inspired, as is Jeffrey Tambor’s vain toady Malenkov (good to see him again since his banishment for his own crimes against the state).
The only aspect that drops this a half point is the milieu. It is undeniably funny, but we are dealing not with the trials and tribulations of Vice President Selena Meyer, which are ultimately trivial, but the terror and horror of the Soviet state, which sometimes tempers the laughs.
But only a little (at least, for me). It is, after all, a very black comedy. The film is currently on the Showtime schedule and was also one of The New York Times top 10 for 2018. It’s also one of mine, thus far.
I caught this a few rainy days ago. There are very few films that deal with contemporary hot button issues well. Most of the time, the inclination of the writer and director is so patently obvious that the art is robbed of plausibility and force.
This movie is an exception. The issue is subordinate to the human story, and while that story is primarily told from the viewpoint of an anti-death penalty character (Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean) ministering to convicted murderer and rapist Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), that in no way colors the message, which is admirably equivocal, even, to my mind, shockingly, a hair pro-capital punishment. That is probably just me, given the hackneyed uniformity of most such films, but that the picture provides an emotional and almost ethical argument for the practice is astonishing.
Sarandon is restrained and effective as a woman of faith called to provide spiritual comfort to a man who has committed a monstrous crime, and as that man, Penn exhibits all the bravado, self-pity, cruelty and narcissism of a thug. Eventually, she learns she is not there to redeem him in any way, and shucks off her self-comforting fantasies that he was just a good boy led astray, and focuses on simply leading him to confession.
Director Tim Robbins takes meticulous pains to display the brutal toll on the victims’ families and has the balls to juxtapose the execution with an unforgiving flashback of the crime, and unlike what Poncelet has been selling Prejean up until the last moments before he is executed (he is innocent, he was stoned, his accomplice did the killing and raping and things just got out of hand), those flashbacks show him as a vile, entirely in control piece of shit.
Nobody is caricatured. No easy rhetorical gotcha’ lines are delivered. The employees of the prison, the medical professionals involved in the process, the families, they are treated with rare grace and equanimity. An example: Sarandon has dinner with her wealthy family, some of whom question her service to Poncelet. In the wrong hands, they would have been portrayed as the aristocratic, privileged rich, more concerned with their name and espousing small, likely bigoted views. Robbins, however, shows them as loving and concerned, with questions (“Why spend so much time on this cretin when you could be helping young children not to grow up into becoming this cretin?”) similar to that of the audience.
Similarly, Poncelet is never a beatific victim. Near the end, he praises Hitler, he spews racist invective, he even makes a sexual come on to Sarandon. But she works with him, to help him find a dignity within himself through the sole act of the admission of his guilt and contrition.
Great film.
What is good: the song-and-dance numbers are assured and fun, the melding of animation and reality is deft, and it is for the most part very pleasant.
What is bad: you don’t remember one of the tunes upon exiting the theater; it is very long and the plot, such as it is, is ragged; Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) comes off as kind of bitchy, with no real affection for the family; the father (Ben Whishaw) is a pitiful whiner; Lin Manuel-Miranda would have been better off writing the musical numbers rather than offering his version of the cockney lamplighter (that version has said lamplighter on MDMA with an accent rivaling that of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood for authenticity); and Meryl Streep is shoehorned into the picture as a gypsy, replete with her own hammy, endless, obnoxious number.
Brian De Palma is a fascinating subject, in many ways, as fascinating a subject as a director. His best work is admittedly and unabashedly derivative, basically a total homage to Hitchcock (Carrie, Dressed to Kill, The Untouchables). He has also made some atrocious films (Body Double, Casualties of War, Bonfire of the Vanities) and some films you can hate and then love and then hate again (Scarface, Carlito’s Way).
No matter how you feel about De Palma’s work, his recollections of film making in 70s and 80s Hollywood are a blast, and he’s a very easy and open storyteller. This is an entertaining, comfortable review of his work presented entirely in clips and a single interview.
A few great tidbits: as a teenager, De Palma tailed his own father when he was cheating on his mother; during the execrable Casualties of War, Sean Penn would physically bully Michael J Fox and whisper to him “television actor.”
Good, fun stuff. I’d take this sort of retrospective over a slathering like HBO’s Spielberg any day of the week. Currently on Netflix streaming.
Mr. Rogers should have been right in my wheelhouse when I was a kid. I was around six or seven when he went national. However, public television was not a staple in my Catholic household. The only glimpse I got was when I went to the home of my Jewish friend, whose parents included PBS in their progressivism, but by the time we became pals, Fred Rogers was there to be mocked, not appreciated.
It’s a shame, because watching this documentary and Rogers interacting with little kids, you can see both the wonder in their eyes and the deep connections he developed. There is a vignette with a little boy who is explaining to Mr. Rogers’ most famous hand puppet, Daniel, about how his cat was run over by a car. The boy is being stoic but when Daniel becomes emotional, you can see the boy become protective as well. His concern transfers to the puppet and in the transfer, he creates a beautiful and healthy way to express his grief. It’s a stunning exchange.
Genuinely sweet, good and largely uncomplicated public figures are a difficult find. This documentary does a great job of telling the story of one such man. It has faults – it is thin on his background, it over emphasizes some cable noise about his effect on children (i.e., made them soft), and it succumbs a little to the “these dark times” trope – but these are nits. Highly recommended as both entertainment and moral tonic.
This rom-com starts off balky, rights itself into a traditional flow, gets deliciously weird (catty women do some frightful things to rivals in Singapore) and then, eventually, wins you over. Not in a “what a splendid and unexpected surprise!” way, but rather, in a “I am no worse off than I was 2 hours ago and I’ve certainly spent my time in less valuable pursuits” way. The film’s additional bonus is as a travelogue. I would now like to visit Singapore and if I were crazy rich, I’d really like to make the trek.
I just finished Blood in the Water, an exhaustive history on the Attica uprising and its aftermath. And lo and behold, Brubaker hits the cable movie rotation. I remember it being overly preachy but engaging, but times have changed, and now, Stuart Rosenberg’s (Cool Hand Luke) film seems rather reserved and even-handed. It isn’t but that’s how it feels today.
No matter the prevalence of a particular bent, the picture juggles its message and a gripping mystery within the prison adeptly, the feel is right, and it is never dull.
Henry Brubaker (Robert Redford) is a reform warden incarcerated incognito as an inmate in the Arkansas prison he will soon be running. From the outset, he witnesses abuses by trustees (prisoners given the right and authority to be armed and act as corrections officers) that include brutal beatings, theft of food for resale, and extortion for basic necessities. As for the conduct of the governmental officials of the prison, it is no better. The doctor charges for services, the cooks charge for edible food, and the warden hires out men to local businesses for free. Rape is rampant and problem inmates (including a young Morgan Freeman) are shut in dark, airless cells in a separate area of the prison.
Brubaker soon reveals himself, and in his attempts to change the prison, he is met with stiff resistance from the local community, the trustees, and soon, even the governor who appointed him. His liberality is thrown in his face by the conservative elements, who see him in league with the prisoners, while the liberal faction sees only the damage done by his upending the system and his refusal to take half a loaf.
There are problems. Redford is plagued by his good looks. His embedding into the prison population without notice is a stretch. He is also so self-righteous and literal, it grates, and the end is just piling on. Also, a potential sexual chemistry between Burbaker and assistant to the governor Jane Alexander is needlessly left unexplored. And Roger Ebert, per usual, hits the nail on the head: “The movie (refuses) to permit its characters more human dimensions. We want to know these people better, but the screenplay throws up a wall; they act according to the ideological positions assigned to them in the screenplay, and that’s that. … Half of Redford’s speeches could have come out of newspaper editorials, but we never find out much about him.”
Still, the film melds political tract and thriller pretty effortlessly, and it is extremely well-acted, featuring strong performances by David Keith and Yaphet Kotto in early roles.
One of my favorite ghost stories, it has all the elements: a believable tortured performance by George C. Scott, a recent widower with whom an old house begins to communicate; absolutely chilling, hair-standing on the back of your neck moments; an engrossing mystery that seamlessly ties into the increasingly disturbing hauntings; and, a unhurried pace which heightens the terror. Trust me. Or trust Martin Scorsese. It’s on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time.
Also, scariest wheelchair ever.
Terrible, excessive, a yawning blot of a movie. I can’t get enough. From the opening scene, where our protagonist is shown as a boy, watching his father fight a fire, and his father blows up, in slo-mo, before his eyes, and the old man’s fire chief hat rattles at his feet, to the sobering realization that this boy has grown up to be a firefighter himself. Verklempt.
Better, the boy grows up to be a male model firefighter (in the guise of Billy Baldwin, straight out of Zoolander) who gets the rookie treatment (“wash my socks, cook my food, hey, stand in front of this thingie I call a firehouse . . . rook”) and his greatest tormentor is Kurt Russell, his older brother, who says things like “The only problem is that in this job is there’s just no place to hide. It’s not like having a bad day selling log cabins. You have a bad day here and somebody dies… and that’s just not fucking good enough.”
Which is an awesome line and can be replicated in all professions every day.
Of course, Baldwin looks like he couldn’t lift an IPhone much lest hoist a hose, but he does have a few humdingers himself. Like “you did it man. You did it all the way Steven, you were really a hero today.” Allowing Russell to retort, ” Brian… its not about being a hero. I went in because there was a kid up there. You know, I just, I do what I do because that’s my way. And it was Dad’s way. Maybe it’s not everybody’s way. ”
Which can also be replicated in all professions every day, but it helps if you’re talking to your brother.
It’s not all sweet, sweet perfection. Baldwin’s love scene with a Jennifer Jason Leigh is, uh, unconvincing. But it is on top of a fire truck and has the feel of a Whitesnake video.
Basically, this is a two hour fellating of the brawn, brio and body odor of American firefighters, scored by whoever did Triumph of the Will (okay, too much, but I was close – it’s Hans Zimmer). There is also a mystery stitched in this cupcake, and when solved, it is not just preposterous, it defies the laws of physics.
There is only one explanation-Ron Howard fell in love with a firefighter and made him a valentine.
Unwatchable and yet, I cannot look away.
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