Tag Archives: 2014 Reviews

Winsome wisps of WASP-y whinging: Breathe In **

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 5, 2014)

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While I am aware that the “suspension of disbelief” is inherent to movie-watching, writer-director Drake Doremus and co-writer Ben York Jones are demanding a healthy amount of it from their audience with Breathe In, a tale of affluent angst set in John Cheever Land, shot in a formal, austere style recalling Robert Redford’s Ordinary People or Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm. First, you have to find 30 year-old Felicity Jones believable as an 18 year-old British exchange student named Sophie. There is certainly no problem for the UK-born actress to sell the “Brit” part…but chronologically, she’s too long in the tooth (like 30 year-old Dustin Hoffman was playing age “21” in The Graduate).

Then again, perhaps there was a method to this casting madness. Because you see, Sophie is one of those Old Souls. Which I’d guess is a device to make it more “believable” (and less creepy?) that she and the American host family’s Dad, Keith (Guy Pearce) experience some kind of instantaneous mutual attraction, telegraphed by an exchange of soulful stolen glances no sooner than Keith and his wife Megan (Amy Ryan) pick Sophie up at the airport to drive her to their upstate New York digs, where she will be sharing a room with the couple’s 18 year-old daughter (Mackenzie Davis). Nothing creepy about it at all.

Keith is a mopey kind of fellow, one of those embittered, frustrated musicians who has pretty much given up his dreams and settled for teaching piano to high school students. “Keith will be your piano teacher at school. He has a hobby with the symphony,” Megan tells Sophie while making small talk during their ride home from the airport. Keith bristles, quietly hissing “It’s not just a hobby”. Keith plays cello, and has been subbing, but is on pins and needles regarding an upcoming audition for an open chair. “Would you give up teaching?” asks Sophie. “Yeah.” Keith answers without hesitation. One beat behind, Megan blurts a “No”. Houston, we have a problem.

Keith seems to be the only brooding artiste in the family. His daughter is an outgoing sort; a high school swim team champ, she’s a bit of a ditz (if likable enough). Likewise Megan, who goes all Martha Stewart over cookie jars. She collects and sells them online. Sophie smiles politely while pretending to be fascinated by an upcoming “cookie jar expo” that Megan is quite jazzed about. But in her heart of hearts, Sophie is an Outsider. Just like Keith, who shuts himself up in his room practicing for his audition and gazing wistfully at old photos of himself in younger days, when he played in a rock ’n’ roll band.

Curiously, Sophie wants to opt out of taking Keith’s piano class. When Keith asks her why, she is evasive, muttering cryptic excuses. Naturally, Keith is intrigued. He insists she has no choice; until she “officially” gets herself taken off the rolls via the school’s requirements, it is mandatory that she come to his class. Reluctantly, she shows up. Keith invites her to “play something” as a way of introducing herself to the the class. After shooting Keith one of those world-weary, “Are you sure this is what you want?” looks, Sophie sits down at the piano, and proceeds to blow the room away Van Cliburn-style, with what she introduces as one of “Chopin’s warm-up pieces” (whatever you’re thinking is going to happen next…you are correct).

Ay, there’s the rub. Unless you are clinically brain-dead, whatever you think is going to happen next in this film, it pretty much does. You’re always  one act ahead . The actors are all quite good, and there are some nice touches; as in the way the director cleverly interpolates incidental musical interludes (e.g. Keith’s melancholy cello piece, Sophie’s fiery piano solo) with each character’s emotional turmoil. But there is a glaring lack of motivation for each character’s actions. They are just chess pieces, shuffling around on the thin outline of a narrative that isn’t quite all there. While there seems to have been a noble attempt to construct the story itself like a symphony (I get that) it unfortunately comes off like it’s an unfinished one, at best.

City mouse, country bear: Ernest and Celestine ***

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 29, 2014)

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The “odd couple” meme has become a staple narrative . The reason is obvious; something in our DNA that makes us root for the Mismatched Lovers or the Unlikely Friends to overcome the odds and find their bliss (especially when they’re defying the “rules” ). Who in their heart of hearts (sociopaths aside) wouldn’t want to see the wolf living with the lamb, the leopard lying down with the goat, dogs and cats living together…or in the case of the animated film Ernest and Celestine, a street-busking bear adopting a ‘lil orphaned mouse?

Co-directed by Stephan Aubier, Vincent Patar, and Benjamin Renner, and adapted by screenwriter Daniel Pennac from the children’s book by Gabrielle Vincent, the film is set in a fairy tale universe where anthropomorphic bears and mice live in segregated cities above and below ground, respectively.

Woe to the mouse that gets spotted above ground or to the bear caught wandering below. Fear of the “other” is systemically ingrained in the mice, as evidenced by the Grimm’s Fairy Tale-like opening scene, where young Celestine (Pauline Brunner ) and her fellow orphans have the hell scared out of them by their mean-spirited matron (Anne-Marie Loop).

She’s telling them a bedtime story about the “Big Bad Bear”, whom they should never, ever approach, because he has an appetite for anything that moves…especially young mice (“Alive and kicking, with their little coats and backpacks!” she exhorts). “How can you be sure he’s so bad?” ventures Celestine, who gets admonished for heresy.

The bears, on the other hand, assign the mice a more benign archetypal role in their bedtime tales, telling their kids it’s the “Mouse Fairy” who leaves the coins under the pillow whenever they lose a tooth. Of course, if they actually see a real mouse, their first impulse is to jump up on a chair or to grab a blunt object.

That’s what Celestine discovers one evening whilst tiptoeing around a bear family’s home, looking, in fact, to steal a young cub’s tooth from under his pillow (an assignment from her dentistry school instructor; whittled down bear’s teeth make perfect replacement molars for mice…who knew?).

Fleeing for her life, she ends up hiding in a garbage can, in which she becomes trapped overnight. In the morning, she’s discovered by a bear named Ernest (Lambert Wilson), a hungry street musician scrounging for food. The fast-thinking Celestine talks Ernest out of turning her into breakfast by giving him a hot tip about a place she knows where he can find some good eats-the storage cellar of a nearby candy store.

Ernest returns the favor by helping Celestine break into a bear dentist’s stash of teeth. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship,  about to be challenged by the fears and prejudices of their respective societies (and the “authorities”).

It’s a simplistic fable about tolerance and empathy, but beautifully told. The animation, with its hand-drawn aesthetic and comforting palette of soft pastels, recalls the illustrations of Ludwig Bemelmans (creator of the “Madeline” books I read as a kid). Funny, touching, and charming to a fault, the film, while primarily aimed at children, has wry, offbeat touches that adults should appreciate as well.

Interestingly, I was strongly reminded of Fred Coe’s 1965 dramedy, A Thousand Clowns. In that film, Jason Robards plays a happily unemployed free spirit named Murray (not unlike Ernest) who has likewise taken on a young ward (his nephew). Murray encourages his nephew to flout society’s conventions, especially when it comes to the concept of “finding a career” (Ernest encourages Celestine, an aspiring painter, to forget about dentistry and express herself through art).

However, Murray soon finds himself at odds with the Child Welfare Board, who challenges his competence as a guardian (Ernest and Celestine are each brought up before a judge, ostensibly for their “crimes”, but are really on trial for being non-conformists). On one level, Ernest and Celestine is a fairy tale for kids, but can also be seen as license to follow your bliss. And that is a good thing.

Fear of fly fishing: Nymph()manic, Vol. 1 ***

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 22, 2014)

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Lars von Trier’s lasciviously entitled Nymph()maniac: Vol. 1 could be renamed “The Joylessness of Sex”. Not that I was expecting to be titillated; if there is one thing I’ve learned about Denmark’s #1 cinematic provocateur, it is that he is nothing, if not impish. Yes, the film has explicit sex scenes, but there is much more ado about men, women, families, fly fishing, music theory, mathematics, life, the universe and everything. One could say that Von Trier has found the intersection of The Tree of Life and Emmanuelle.

In the noirish opening scene, a middle-aged man (Stellan Skarsgard) out for an evening stroll stumbles across a brutally beaten and barely conscious woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) lying in a dark alley. Despite red flags (she adamantly refuses to be taken to a hospital or to file a police report), the kindhearted gentleman takes her to his modest apartment to recuperate. The man, who is named Seligman, tucks her into bed in a fatherly fashion and offers her tea and sympathy.

Naturally, he is curious about how she got herself in this predicament. While initially reticent to open up to this total stranger, the woman, who simply calls herself “Joe”, decides to start from the very beginning. In fact, she’s about to give him quite an earful; she informs Seligman that she is a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac and begins  a full confessional (according to Google, elig is German for “blessed”…interpret that as you wish).

And so begins Joe’s Scheherazadian tale, with four actresses playing her at various ages from toddler through young womanhood (most of Young Joe’s screen time belongs to 22 year-old newcomer Stacy Martin).

We learn how Joe (as a toddler) first discovers her sexuality.  Later, she recounts how she chooses to be deflowered (as a teenager) at the hands of a self-absorbed lunkhead named Jerome (Shia LaBeouf), who displays more passion for tinkering with his motorcycle. We eventually witness the most defining moment of her budding proclivity, when her more sexually precocious BFF, “B” (Sophie Kennedy Clark) talks her into a one-on-one contest: whoever accrues the most zipless fucks by the end of a several-hour train ride wins a bag of sweets.

Joe recounts a close relationship with her father (Christian Slater), a bit of a cosmic muffin who takes her on nature walks and delivers soliloquies about flora (“It’s actually the souls of the trees we’re seeing in the winter,” he assures her). The story occasionally returns to the present tense, mostly so fly fishing enthusiast Seligman can interject metaphorical observations via quotes from The Compleat Angler.

As Joe drones on, dispassionately cataloging her exploits, one word remains conspicuously absent: “love”. Alas, Joe’s wild sexual odyssey has been like a ride through the desert on a horse with no name…’cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

Joe’s emotional disconnect comes to the fore in a seriocomic scene that could have dropped in from a Woody Allen film. Joe remains nonplussed while being confronted by the apoplectic wife of one of her lovers (Uma Thurman), who has trailed her cheating hubby to Joe’s apartment with kids in tow. “Let’s go see Daddy’s favorite place!” the spurned wife spits with mock perkiness, as she points her children toward “the whoring bed”, adding “It’ll stand you in good stead later in therapy”.  In her brief 5-minute turn Thurman nearly steals the film with what I’d call an Oscar-worthy performance.

I feel like I’m only giving you half a review, because there is a Vol. 2 which I haven’t seen yet (it opens in Seattle April 4). So in that context, I suppose that the worthiness of Vol. 1 can be best determined by whether von Trier left me wanting more. And…He did. I’m dying to know (as Paul Harvey used to say) “the rest of the story”. Like nearly all of the director’s films, prepare to be challenged, repulsed, amused, befuddled, even shocked…but never bored.

A word about the “controversial” sex scenes, which are being labeled “pornographic” by some. Really? It’s 2014, and we’re still not over this hurdle? I have to chuckle, for two reasons: 1) this is really nothing new in cinema, especially when it comes to Scandinavian filmmakers, who have always been ahead of the curve in this department. Am I the only one who remembers the “controversial” full frontal nudity and “pornography” in the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow)…which played in U.S. theaters 47 flippin’ years ago, fergawdsake? And 2) at the end of the day, Nymph()maniac Vol. 1 isn’t about the sex, any more than the director’s apocalyptic drama Melancholia was about the end of the world. And as any liberated adult who may have glimpsed genitalia in a film (or locker room), and lived to tell the tale, will attest, that ain’t the end of the world, either.

The big whirl of little atoms: Particle Fever ***

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 15, 2014)

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What I know about particle physics couldn’t fill a flea’s codpiece. And if you’re like me (isn’t everyone?), I’d bet you don’t spend a good deal of your day contemplating quarks, hadrons, mesons or baryons (wasn’t he a famous English poet?). Nonetheless, I found Particle Fever, physicist-turned-filmmaker Mark Levinson’s documentary about a group of folks who do spend a good deal of their day thinking about such things, to be much more riveting than I had expected. Levinson documents the years of experiments and painstaking analysis that led up to the astounding announcement in 2012 that scientists had successfully identified the elusive “Higgs boson” (aka “The God Particle”), which could be the crucial key in proving that The Big Bang is, well, more than just a “theory”.

Levinson gives equal time to the empirical and theoretical schools of thought on this groundbreaking discovery. The former group is represented by the physicists who work at CERN, which houses the Large Hadron Collider (an immense complex that resembles the set of Metropolis), and the latter by academics and theoreticians. While largely concerning itself with the parsing of the scientific minutiae, it is the sometimes uneasy yet necessary yin-yang partnership between those camps that lends the film a very human center. One theoretical physicist sums it up best when he bemusedly wonders aloud if this discovery makes the previous 40 years of his life meaningless. Higgs boson only knows…

Quirky lodgings: The Grand Budapest Hotel ***1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 15, 2014)

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In the interest of upholding my credo to be forthright with my readers (all three of you), I will confess that, with the exception of his engaging 1996 directing debut, Bottle Rocket, and the fitfully amusing Rushmore, I have been somewhat immune to the charms of Wes Anderson. I have also developed a complex of sorts over my apparent inability to comprehend why the phrase “a Wes Anderson film” has become catnip to legions of hipster-garbed fanboys and swooning film critics (even the normally discerning Criterion Collection seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid).

Maybe there’s something wrong with me? Am I like the uptight brother-in-law in Field of Dreams who can’t see the baseball players? Am I wrong to feel that Plan 9 From Outer Space should be supplanted by The Aquatic Life with Steve Zissou as Worst Movie of All Time? To me, “a Wes Anderson film” is the cinematic equivalent to Wonder Bread…bland product, whimsically wrapped.

At the risk of making your head explode, I now have a second confession to make. I kind of enjoyed Anderson’s latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. A lot. I know, I know, I was just as shocked as you are right now. I can’t adequately explain what happened. The film is not dissimilar to his previous work; in that it is akin to a live action cartoon, drenched in whimsy, expressed in bold primary colors, populated by quirky characters (who would never exist outside of the strange Andersonian universe they live in) caught up in a quirky narrative with quirky twists and turns (I believe the operative word here, is “quirky”). So why did I like it? I cannot really say. My conundrum (if I may paraphrase one of my favorite lines from The Producers) would be this: “Where did he go so right?”

Perhaps it was the casting. Ralph Fiennes is a delight as the central character, Gustave H., a “legendary” concierge at the eponymous establishment, a luxurious mountain resort housed in the mythical eastern European Republic of Zubrowka. His story (the bulk of which takes place between the World Wars) is told in flashback, as recollected decades later to a young writer (Jude Law) by the hotel’s owner, the “mysterious” Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham).

Young Zero (Tony Revolori) was originally hired by Gustave as a lobby boy, but eventually becomes his protege and closest confidante. When rich eccentric Madame D. (Tilda Swinton) a longtime hotel patron who has enjoyed Gustave’s additional “special services” over the years, dies, she leaves her favorite concierge a priceless heirloom painting in her will, much to the chagrin of her greedy heirs, spurred by her unscrupulous son (Adrien Brody). Knowing that Madame D.’s family will never willingly surrender the treasure, Gustave and Zero abscond with it on a whim. Gustave is framed for murder and gets shipped off to prison, but not before striking a pact with the devoted Zero, making him his sole heir.

What ensues is part Arnold Fanck (DP Robert D. Yeoman’s beautiful cinematography cannily emulates the look of the German “mountain films” of the 1930s), part Ernst Lubitsch, and part Herge (in fact, Anderson’s film played closer to a Tintin adventure to me than Spielberg’s actual Adventures of Tintin did). The huge supporting cast is peppered by familiar faces (Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Wilkinson). Saoirse Ronan is a charmer as Zero’s love interest. I still can’t pinpoint where Anderson went so “right” (aside from instilling his story and characters with a hint of emotional resonance for once) but I’d dare say this is the most entertaining film I’ve seen so far this year (stranger things have happened). By the way…when did those ball players get here?

The 1% rundown: Child’s Pose ***1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 8, 2014)

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I’m sure you recall the “affluenza” case in Texas, in which a 16 year-old from a wealthy family received 10 year’s probation and a stint in rehab as “punishment” for killing four people in a drunk driving accident? A psychologist for the defense defined “affluenza” as an affliction unique to children of privilege; claiming that the young man’s coddled upbringing led to an inability to connect actions with consequences.

We have to assume that he said this with a straight face, because judge and jury bought it. Which begs a question: Does the world have two justice systems…one for the rich and one for the poor?

Child’s Pose, a new film from Romanian writer-director Calin Peter Netzer, would seem to reinforce that suspicion. Shooting in a unfussy, Dogme 95-styled manner, and armed with a script (co-written by Razvan Radulescu) that blends droll satire with social realism, Netzer paints a portrait of contemporary Romanian class warfare through the eyes of a haughty bourgeoisie woman named Cornelia (Luminita Gheorghiu).

We are introduced to Cornelia, a middle-aged, well-to-do architect who power-puffs every cigarette like it’s her last, as she is lamenting to her sister (Natasa Raab) about her relationship with her adult son, Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache). Why does she always have to initiate contact? He hasn’t phoned her for weeks…it must be that controlling wife of his (“That creature…she’s got him by his tail, like a little mouse.”). “Stop pestering him,” her sister says. It quickly becomes apparent that Cornelia is the one who has control issues.

Cornelia’s need to know every detail of Barbu’s life seems to go above and beyond the normal parental concerns. In a particularly telling scene, she invites her housekeeper (who she has hired to regularly clean her son’s home as well) to take a break and join her for a cup of coffee.

Cornelia masterfully turns the chit-chat into an intelligence-gathering session. How is their place…”messy as usual”? When she dusted Barbu’s nightstand, did she happen to notice which book was there? Is it the one she recently sent, she wonders? Cornelia casually offers the maid a 200 Euro pair of shoes she found whilst cleaning out her closet; a payoff, disguised as an act of noblesse oblige.

One evening, Cornelia is attending an opera recital when she is suddenly torn away by her sister, who has bad news. Barbu is down at the police station; he has been involved in a car accident. He’s okay, but he has struck and killed a teenage boy. The look on Cornelia’s face speaks volumes. There’s none of the expected shock, or sense of panic. Rather, you can see all the gears turning.

This is it. This is her “in”. Barbu is in trouble. Big trouble. But mama can help. Mama has her connections. She knows what to kiss, and when. She knows how the system works. She’s already formulating an action plan…not necessarily out of a maternal drive to “save” her son from jail, but to get him back under her thumb, where he belongs (Gheorghiu telegraphs all of this beautifully, wordlessly).

As you watch Cornelia serpentine her way though Bucharest like a preying viper, playing the cops, witnesses, and the victim’s working-class family like violins, it almost becomes a moot point that her spoiled, ne’er do well son is guilty as hell of negligent homicide.

That’s because you’re so gob smacked by Cornelia’s gumption that you develop a morbid fascination with whether or not she is actually going to pull all this off. Of course, there would have to be some enabling factors involving the inherent corruption within “The System” as well, and Netzer doesn’t spare any barbs there either.

While some viewers may be put off by the deliberate pacing (I’ll confess it took me about 20 minutes to get in tune with what the film was even going to be about) those with patience will be rewarded. Gheorghiu’s performance is the most compelling reason to stick with it; she’s the most conniving, insufferably narcissistic maternal nightmare you’ll love to hate this side of Livia Drusilla .

It would be easy to say that the film’s message is “money talks, justice walks”, but the ambiguous denouement gives me pause. It seems that no victory that’s bought and paid for comes without a hidden cost. I’m not a religious man (had to look this up on Mr. Google) but how does that quote go…“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul”? Erm, amen to that.

WW 2, the B-sides: The Wind Rises ***1/2 & Generation War **1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 1, 2014)

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Jiro dreams of Zeros: The Wind Rises

If I understand Hayao Miyazaki’s take on the life of Jiro Horikoshi correctly, he was sort of the Temple Grandin of Japanese aviation; a photo-realistic visual thinker who lived, breathed, and even dreamed about elegant aircraft designs from childhood onward.

The fact that his most famous creation, the Zero, became one of the most indelible icons of Japanese aggression during WW2 is incidental. As I was hitherto blissfully unaware of Horikoshi prior to viewing the venerable director’s new (and purportedly, final) anime, The Wind Rises, I’m giving Miyazaki-san benefit of the doubt; though I also must assume that Miyazaki’s beautifully woven cinematic tapestry involved…a bit of creative license?

Those who have followed Miyazaki’s work over the past several decades may be surprised (perhaps even mildly disappointed) to learn that the director’s swan song is a relatively straightforward biopic, containing virtually none of the fantasy elements that have become the director’s stock-in-trade. Still, he makes his fans feel at home right out of the starting gate with a dream sequence…about flying (a signature theme that recurs throughout Miyazaki’s oeuvre).

The young Jiro has nightly dreams about meeting his hero, the Italian aircraft designer Caproni, who gives him tours of fantastical flying machines that spark his imagination and creativity. Too nearsighted to become a pilot himself, Jiro finds solace in his natural gifts for engineering and design. As he follows Jiro into adulthood, Miyazaki gives us a crash course in Japanese history between the wars. Also along the way, Jiro meets the love of his life, a young woman named Nahoko.

Miyazaki largely maintains an apolitical tone (and leapfrogs over the war years to go straight to the denouement), although there is some implied conflict of conscience in a scene where Jiro laments how the military just wants to subvert the aesthetics of his elegant designs into weapons of destruction (I suppose you could argue that one can’t fault Einstein for coming up with an elegant equation that was subverted into a mushroom cloud of death).

At the end of the day, The Wind Rises is an old-fashioned love story and elegiac look at prewar Japan. And there is no denying the sheer artistry on display (a recreation of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 is the most epic and technically brilliant sequence I have ever seen in the realm of cel animation). Incidentally, Miyazaki has “retired” at least once before. I hope he doesn’t mean it…again.

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Dedicated followers of fascists: Generation War

German filmmakers step into a PC minefield whenever they tackle a WW2 narrative from the perspective of German characters; it’s a classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum. If you present your protagonists in too much of a sympathetic light, you’re a revisionist, or (at worst) an apologist. If you go too much in the opposite direction, you’re feeding the stereotype that every German who was alive during Hitler’s regime was an evil Nazi. Okay, a lot of Germans were party members, and the Nazis were evil, but that’s beside the point. The politics of war are seldom black and white; there’s plenty of gray area for an astute dramatist to navigate.

The most well-known example of successfully navigating that gray area is Lewis Milestone’s 1930 WW1 drama, All Quiet on the Western Front, which follows a group of young Germans as they transform from fresh-faced, idealistic recruits into shell-shocked combat veterans with 1000-yard stares (well, those who survive). The humanistic approach gives the story a universal appeal; it’s a moot point that the protagonists happen to be “the enemy” (war is the great equalizer). While less-celebrated, I would rank Masaki Kobayashi’s 1959 epic The Human Condition as the greatest achievement in this arena (9 hours…but I’d still recommend it).

Falling somewhere in the middle (epic in length but somewhat tepid in narrative) is Generation War, a 5-hour German mini-series hit that has now been repackaged as a 2-part theatrical presentation. Directed by Philipp Kadelback and written by Stefan Kolditz, the film is sort of a German version of The Big Red One, with echoes of the Paul Verhoeven films Soldier of Orange and Black Book.

The film opens with five close friends enjoying a going-away party on the eve of Operation Barbarossa (which will change all their lives…forevah). Actually, only three of them are “going away”. Wilhelm (Volker Bruch), an officer in the Wehrmacht, and his younger brother Friedhelm (Tom Schilling) will be off to the Eastern Front, and Charlotte (Miriam Stein) hopes to lend her nursing skills to the Red Cross. Greta (Katherina Schuttler), an aspiring chanteuse and her verboten Jewish lover Viktor (Ludwig Trepte) will hold down the home front. After much drinking and dancing, there’s consensus that the war should wrap by Christmas.

Of course, the war doesn’t wrap up by Christmas (besides, as the audience, we’ve still got 4 ½ hours left on the meter at this point). Unfortunately, what ensues is more cliché than bullet-ridden, and the film itself becomes as much of an arduous slog as Wilhelm and Friedhelm’s 3-year trudge toward Moscow (with Wilhelm’s interstitial voice overs excerpting Deep Thoughts from his war journals to serve as the Greek Chorus). The five leads give it their best with commendable performances, but (with the exception of one or two scenes) are handed barely-above-soap opera level material to work with. Also, there is one too many “Of all the gin joints of all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine” moments.

To give credit where credit is due, there is one eminently quotable epiphany, via one of Wilhelm’s journal entries. It arrives too late in the film to fully redeem the lulls in the preceding several hours, but it bears repeating: “To start with, on the battlefield, you fight for your country. Later, when doubt sets in, you fight for your  comrades…whom you can’t leave in the lurch. But when nobody else is left, when you’re alone, and the only one you can deceive is yourself? What do you fight for then?” Granted, that may just be a long-winded variation on  “War isn’t about who is right, but who is left”…but as far as rhetorical questions go? It’s a doozy.

Girls just wanna play 7th flat 9th chords: The Girls in the Band *** (& a Top 5 List)

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 15, 2014)

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“I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Contextual to a curiously overlooked component within the annals of American jazz music, it’s tempting to extrapolate on Dr. King’s dream. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a nation where one is not only primarily judged by content of character, but can also be judged on the merits of creativity, or the pure aesthetics of artistic expression, as opposed to being judged solely by the color of one’s skin…or perhaps gender? At the end of the day, what is a “black”, or a “female” jazz musician? Why is it that a Dave Brubeck is never referred to as a “white” or “male” jazz musician?

Of course, in these (allegedly) enlightened times, these might be considered trite questions. But there was a time, not so long ago, in a galaxy pretty close by, when these questions would be considered heresy by some. For example, back in 1938, the venerable (and otherwise progressively-minded) music magazine Down Beat ran an article entitled “Why Women Musicians Are Inferior”.

That is but one of the eye-openers in an overall eye-opening documentary by Judy Chaikin called The Girls in the Band, which aims to chronicle the largely unsung contributions that female jazz musicians have made (and continue to make) to this highly influential American art form.

I know what you’re thinking. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington…they’ve had plenty of press over the years, right? Yes, they have. But (and not to denigrate those jazz giants) there is an important distinction…they are vocalists. Traditionally, as Chaikin points out in her film, that was a woman’s most accepted “place” in jazz. Piano? Sure, that was “allowed” (Hazel Scott, Jane Jarvis, Dorothy Donegan were early pioneers), but drums, vibes, guitar, horns, sax…fuhgettaboutit. Those take a man’s strength and stamina! But it turns out that female players have been acing it all along, having no problem keeping it (as my friend’s dad, a veteran jazz pianist, was fond of saying) “in the pocket”.

Utilizing rare archival footage and interviews with veteran and contemporary players, Chaikin has assembled an absorbing, poignant, and celebratory piece. Among the veteran interviewees, 88 year-old saxophonist Roz Cron gives the most fascinating perspective regarding the double roadblock of sexism and racism that she and her contemporaries bumped up against time and again (and not just from their male counterparts, who at times out-and-out mutinied against band leaders who invited female players to join or even merely sit in).

As the only white musician in the all-female outfit, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, she experienced some Kafkaesque moments, especially while touring the deep South. Thanks to the pretzel logic of then extant Jim Crow “laws”, Cron was once arrested and jailed on a charge of “associating with Negroes”.

While things have since obviously (and thankfully) loosened up on the “judging by gender” front, some of the old prejudices die hard. One interviewee, composer/band leader Maria Schneider recounts one experience with an interviewer, who opened with “So, what’s it like to be a woman composer?” To which she replied “What’s it like to be a male journalist?” But there is optimism as well. As Schneider offers later in the film “I hope we get to the day soon where it’s not something people think about, and categorize.” I suppose you could say that Maria Schneider also has a dream…and it is a good dream.

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In keeping with the spirit of jazz, I thought I would improvise a bit on tonight’s theme and offer all you hep cats and kittens my righteous picks for the Top 5 jazz movies. Dig:

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All Night Long– Directed by Basil Deardon (The League of Gentlemen, The Assassination Bureau) this 1962 UK film stars Patrick McGoohan (still a couple years shy of achieving international fame as TV’s Secret Agent Man) chewing all the available scenery as an ambitious, conniving jazz drummer. Nel King and Paul Jarrico based their screenplay on Shakespeare’s Othello, with the action taking place in an upscale London jazz club over the course of one evening. While it’s quite entertaining on its own merits, the film’s rep is bolstered by the then-contemporary jazz heavyweights who appear onscreen (most notably, Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus). Richard Attenborough and Betsy Blair are also on board, and McGoohan proves that he isn’t half bad on the skins!

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Jazz on a Summer’s Day– Bert Stern’s groundbreaking documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival is not so much a “concert film” as it is a pristine, richly colorful time capsule of late 50s American life. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of gorgeously filmed numbers spotlighting the formidable chops of Thelonius Monk, Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, etc., but the film is equally captivating whenever cameras turn away from the artists and casually linger on the audience or the environs (like showing sailboats lazily puffing past the festival grounds), while the music continues in the background.

The effect truly is like “being there” in 1958 Newport on a languid summer’s day, because if you’ve ever attended an outdoor music festival, half the fun is people-watching; rarely do you affix your gaze on the stage the entire time. In fact, Stern is breaking with film making conventions of the era; you are witnessing the genesis of the cinema verite music documentary, which wouldn’t flower until nearly a decade later with films like Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Gimme Shelter.

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Let’s Get Lost– The life of horn player/vocalist Chet Baker is a tragedian’s dream; a classic tale of a talented artist who peaked early, then promptly set about self-destructing. Sort of the Montgomery Clift of jazz, he was graced by the gods with an otherworldly physical beauty and a gift for expressing his art. By age 24 he had already gigged with Stan Getz, Charlie Parker and Gerry Mulligan. He began chasing the dragon in the 1950s, leading to jail time and a career slide.

There are conflicting versions of the circumstances that led to a brutal beating in 1968, but the resultant injuries to his mouth impaired his playing abilities. While he never kicked the substance abuse, he eventually got his mojo back, and enjoyed a resurgence of his career in his final decade (he was only 58 when he died).

The nodded-out Chet Baker we see in Bruce Weber’s extraordinary warts-and-all 1988 documentary (beautifully shot in B&W) is a man who appears several decades older than his chronological age (and sadly, as it turned out, has about a year left to live). Still, there are amazing (if fleeting) moments of clarity, where we get a glimpse of the genius that still burned within this tortured soul.

The opening  scene in particular, where Weber holds a close up of Baker’s ravaged road map of a face while he croons a plaintive rendition of Elvis Costello’s “Almost Blue”, has to be one of the most naked, heartbreaking vocal performances ever captured on film. Haunting and one-of-a-kind, this is a must-see documentary.

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‘Round Midnight– Legendary sax player Dexter Gordon gives a knockout performance in Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 drama (set in the late 1950s) about an American jazz musician who is invited to Paris for an extended engagement. Gordon’s character, Dale Turner, has been fighting a losing battle with the bottle, which has led to a dearth of gigs stateside. Turner is initially taken aback, but soon bolstered by his apparent cachet among the French (it’s no secret that African-American musicians were held in higher regard and treated with more respect abroad in those days that they were back home). Still, every day is a struggle for an addict, and as they say, “Wherever you go-there you are.” Excellent performances and magnificent playing from Gordon make this film a winner.

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The Warped Ones– The protagonist in this New Wave-influenced offering from director Koreyoshi Kurahara may not be a musician, but the film itself is permeated by a  jazz soundtrack, and assaults the senses like the atonal screeches in an improvisational sax solo. Tamio Kawachi gives a surly and unpredictable turn as Akira, a jazz-obsessed young hood who bilks tourists at the seedy jazz club he hangs out at with his hooker girlfriend (Noriko Matsumoto).

A nosy reporter narks him out and he does a stint in jail. After Akira gets out, he and his girlfriend are tooling around one of their favorite beach haunts in a stolen car when they happen upon said reporter, strolling with his fiancée. On the spur of the moment, Akira runs the reporter down and kidnaps his fiancée; launching a spree of uninhibitedly  anti-social behavior by this rebel without a cause. Not for all tastes (the film lives up to its title) but a prime sample of Japan’s unique take on the late 50s/early 60s youth rebellion genre.

…and here’s the “next five” that I’d recommend for your queue: Bird, The Gene Krupa Story, A Man Called Adam, Pete Kelly’s Blues, Sweet and Lowdown.

Vermeer to eternity: The Monuments Men ***

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 8, 2014)

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Saviors of the lost art: Clooney & co. in The Monuments Men

My late Uncle Irv was an even-keeled man; kindhearted, easy going, and always up for a good laugh over coffee and a bagel. In all the years I knew him, I have no particular memories of ever seeing him angry or vitriolic. Except for one occasion.

A few years before he passed, he took me aside and showed me his modest collection of personal WW2 memorabilia. I knew that he had flown  bombing missions over Germany as a navigator on a B-17; but I had never pressed him for details. He was showing me the weathered photographs, uniform patches, mission plans and such, when he paused and quietly hissed, “Those fuckin’ Nazis.” It was so out-of-character that it took me aback for a moment. But I got it. He and I lost  many of our mutual relatives in the concentration camps.

And when it comes to war movies, we all “get it” why Nazis are depicted as the ultimate villains. Because they were. Are. Will remain…until the end of recorded time. And you would think by now, Hollywood would have collated and dramatized all the empirical data that has led to a general consensus among decent human beings that the Third Reich was, overall, a terrible idea.

Believe it not, however, there are yet additional historically documented reasons why the Nazis are the ultimate villains (as if the mass genocide, the incursions and the wanton destruction wasn’t enough). Specifically, they looted. And they hoarded. Big time. Especially when it came to Europe’s treasure trove of great art.

Toward the end of the war, thanks to Hitler’s scorched earth directives, countless sculptures and paintings by (then) contemporary artists (like Picasso) were destroyed for not being “collectible” enough (Worst. Art. Critics. Ever.) Luckily, there was a U.S. Cavalry (of sorts) that rode in and saved the day.

The story of this little-known mission to rescue Europe’s plundered art and return it to its rightful owners has been dramatized in a  The Monuments Men. Directed by George Clooney, with a script he adapted with his  Grant Heslov from a non-fiction book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, the story takes place during the waning days of the war as the Allies close in on Germany from all fronts.

Clooney casts himself as museum curator Frank Stokes, assigned by FDR to hand-pick a team of qualified experts to take a crash-course in basic training and then head to the front with two directives: 1) Advise the advancing Allies about known locations containing renowned art so it is not inadvertently destroyed, and 2) Pinpoint the Nazi stashes. The resultant platoon of not-quite-ready-for-combat players is like The Dirty Dozen…with art degrees.

Initially, while I was watching the obligatory “We’re getting the band back together!” montage, I thought “Please, don’t let this be an in-jokey ancillary to the Ocean’s Eleven franchise” (especially when I noted that Matt Damon was on board) but those fears were dissipated as I got pulled into the story. In fact, Clooney and Heslov have fashioned a highly entertaining old-school WW2 adventure yarn, in the tradition of Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone.

Granted, you’re not going to see this team of art historians and professors scaling cliffs and blowing stuff up real good, but this is nonetheless an absorbing tale of courage and personal sacrifice, topped off by a fine ensemble including Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, and Hugh Bonneville (channeling Jack Hawkins). Look for a cameo by Clooney’s dad Nick. Alexandre Desplat’s rousing score keeps things rolling along.

It’s refreshing to see a WW2 angle that hasn’t been done to death. The only previous example I can think of is John Frankenheimer’s  1964 drama The Train (also set in 1944, it stars Burt Lancaster as a railroad stationmaster recruited by the French Resistance to prevent a trainload of stolen French masterpieces from reaching Germany). It’s also refreshing to see a true rarity these days: an unabashedly patriotic “rah-rah for the good guys” war movie that doesn’t ultimately involve Navy Seals blowing someone’s shit away.

When someone is trying to take over the world (pretty much Hitler’s goal), there are many things at stake. The preservation of innocent lives, of course is paramount, and the preservation of freedom. But the preservation of culture is crucial as well. As Clooney’s character says in the film “[Art] is our history. It is not to be stolen or destroyed. It’s to be held up and admired.” And worth fighting and dying for? I’ll bet if my Uncle Irv was here, he would say, “Yes.”

Nest of intrigue: Flight of the Storks ***

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 18, 2014)

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Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Roger Corman’s The Raven aside, I can’t name too many mystery thrillers with an ornithological twist (no, The Maltese Falcon doesn’t count, because as Sidney Greenstreet once pointed out, “It’s fake! It’s a phony!”). So how do you feel about storks? I’m a little ambivalent about them myself; haven’t given them much thought. I do appreciate that they deliver the babies, but between you, me, and the fence post…I have long harbored a suspicion that it might be some kind of an urban myth.

Nonetheless, storks do figure prominently in a thriller called (wait for it) Flight of the Storks. The 2012 French made-for-television film, directed by Jan Koun and co-adapted by Jean-Christophe (from his own 1994 novel) and Denis McGrath, is migraged around the U.S. as a 3-hour theatrical presentation. A bit tough to, erm, pigeonhole; it is an oddball cross between Winged Migration and The Boys from Brazil.

Harry Treadaway stars as Jonathan, a young English researcher working as an assistant to a self-styled amateur ornithologist named Max (Danny Keogh) who is conducting a study on the migratory habits of storks who fly from Switzerland to Africa and back. It seems that the number of returnees has been dwindling; Max wants to literally follow the storks along their route and see if he can figure out why. Unfortunately, he’ll never get a chance to solve that mystery, because within the opening five minutes of the film, Jonathan discovers Max’s partially devoured body atop a stork’s nest at his home. Jonathan decides to carry on with Max’s planned journey solo, after reluctantly promising to keep an oddly creepy Swiss detective (Clemens Schick) apprised of his location at all times.

Jonathan’s itinerary seems to follow the migratory habits of 007, as opposed to the storks. One day he’s partying in a nightclub in Bulgaria, a few days later he’s traipsing around Istanbul, next thing we know he’s bedding down with a hot Israeli babe on a kibbutz. Then, it’s off to the Congo. Oh, and along the way, he’s shadowed by assorted shady characters trying to kill him, usually not long after he discovers yet another one of Max’s associates has turned up dead. The closer Jonathan gets to the Congo (where he lived as a child with his late parents, who were both doctors) the more he begins to ponder some mysteries regarding his own past. I can say no more .

While the plot feels gratuitously byzantine, I was hooked until the end by the central mystery. Treadaway gives a compelling performance; as does the lovely photography and exotic locales. It was an unexpected treat to see Rutger Hauer pop up late in the film (where the hell has he been?). I have to a bone to pick regarding the lack of subtitles, which I found mildly irritating. The dialog is predominately in English, but there are several exchanges (in several different languages) that I felt were lengthy enough to warrant them. That aside…you could do worse with 3 hours of your time.