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Friday 27 October 2017

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

A few months back I wrote about Adam Sandler and Netflix and ended with how much I was looking forward to the above film which caused such a stink at Cannes for not being a 'real' movie. It has now been released on both the streaming service and in selected cinemas to generally enthusiastic reviews. I therefore feel obliged to explain why I found it something of a disappointment -- which has absolutely nothing to do with its being Netflix-financed.

For a start I really don't 'get' Noah Baumbach and I have now seen most of his films going back to his first major dysfunctional family flick "The Squid and the Whale" in 2005. The above film is largely the same again, reportedly loosely based on his own dysfunctional family history. Even with his more female-centric movies starring his squeeze Greta Gerwig I find it hard to get on his wavelength or to hail him as one of the best 'young' directors.

The Meyerowitz in question is minor artist (sculptor) Dustin Hoffman who has never received the recognition and acclaim that he believes is his due and who is now on his fourth marriage to Emma Thompson (underused and wearing a fright wig). He's a consummate failure as an artist, a husband, and a father. There are three half-siblings from his first three attempts at wedlock: eldest son Adam Sandler who has spent most of his life as a 'house-husband' and whose own marriage is disintegrating, the younger son Ben Stiller who has always been Daddy's favourite and who is mind-staggeringly successful out on the Coast, and withdrawn sister Elizabeth Marvel, who apart from one scene, is also given very little effective screen time. There follows a series of vignettes outlining the family's attempts to humour their impossibly demanding father and underlining the sibling-rivalry riffs that have grown between them. They are finally drawn together when Hoffman is hospitalised with an undisclosed but serious ailment and seems to be at death's door. However he recovers and is just as obnoxious afterwards as he was before.

Perhaps that's the biggest problem for me. I have never been much of a Hoffman fan and his characterization here is 100% off-putting; he's shallow, selfish, and completely obsessed by his very minor talent which the world has refused to acknowledge. The most that he can claim is an unexhibited piece at the Whitney Museum and his inclusion in an exhibition at Bard College where he has taught for years. The real revelation here is Sandler who proves just how good an actor he can be when reined in by a tasking director (remember "Punch-drunk Love") and not allowed his own free hand to go OTT. Stiller is less successful in what is largely a straight role and he has certainly played similar comic-tragic characters in the past; he's never really been as clownish as the worst of Sandler. Thinking about it, Sandler is really the only player in this ensemble who seems to have grown by the fraught family reunion and one admires him.

In short, despite some sharply written dialogue the movie is neither sufficiently dramatic nor comic to be completely satisfying -- it's rather a bitter slice of life that's better soon forgotten.

Friday 20 October 2017

London Film Festival - Part 2

Just two films left to review taking my overall average to three and two halves (not really the same as four) out of six:

The really good choice was to see "Lucky", the swan song of Harry Dean Stanton who died last month at 91. No one knew at the time that this would be his last movie, but this character study of an old man living out his last days in the shadow of death yet managing to celebrate each waking moment is a wonderful and heartfelt testament to one of the great character actors. I suppose how one reacts to this film rests with how one feels about Harry himself. His only previous leading role was in the unforgettable "Paris, Texas" (1984), but his weathered face and caustic manner brightened many a film and I, for one, was always happy to see him. A case in point is his two-minute role in 1999's "The Straight Story", where his face registered a potpourri of emotions on seeing his estranged brother arrive on his tractor.

"Lucky" is a character study rather than a narrative and indeed very little happens. We just observe the daily routine of a cantankerous and opinionated old man in a small desert town. Everyone there knows this old fella and have learned to accept his atheism, bolshiness, and brutal honesty and he ekes out his days smoking, walking, stopping for a coffee, and enjoying an evening drink at the local bar. The film is graced with telling cameos from Ron Livingston, Ed Begley Jr, Tom Skerritt, and his old friend David Lynch who was always glad to feature Harry in his works -- most recently of course in the Twin Peaks sequel.  A highpoint in this movie is his spontaneously singing a Spanish ballad at a local birthday fiesta -- breaking everyone's heart. We will miss the old rascal.

The half mark goes to 1926's "The Prince of Adventurers" a recent restoration from La Cinematheque francais. Had I read the programme more closely I should have realised that this movie is actually called "Casanova" and I have had my own copy for some years. My copy runs 132 minutes (which is long enough) but the restoration runs a bum-numbing 159 minutes including some hand-coloured sequences. Of course these were worth seeing but I probably would not have booked tickets had I realised that I already knew the film well. It's a sumptuous affair from the French producers trying to out-Hollywood Hollywood, but I must confess I am somewhat impervious to the would-be roguish charms of its lead, the Russian émigré Ivan Mosjoukine, with his narrow lipsticked cupid's-bow mouth. 

So that's it for another year. Four years ago I missed the Festival courtesy of a broken ankle. This year I managed to attend despite finding myself with a fractured wrist. I really must stop this damaging myself nonsense!

Thursday 12 October 2017

London Film Festival (so far)

I said that seven out of eight wasn't bad for FrightFest. Well I'm only batting 2 and a half out of four so far for this year's LFF. With four films seen and two to go over the weekend, I can enthuse over two of them, react kind of 'meh' over one, and admit that I really disliked the fourth.

To deal with the worst first, the audience for "Ghost Stories" seemed to be comprised largely of fans of the original stage play on which the movie is based, some of whom raised their hands to admit to having seen it multiple times. I've not see the play but both the programme blurb and the enthusiast who introduced the film promised scary thrills. I was expecting some sort of compendium movie like the old Amicus productions, but instead was given the tale of ghost-debunker Andy Nyman (one of the co-writers and co-directors and also the lead player) being asked to explain three so-called inexplicable cases of ghostly apparitions. Well -- and big SPOILER coming -- it was all a fever-dream from his hospital bed with the sickroom staff featuring in each episode. Apart from some clever sound effects there was not a single jump or shock to be found and the film-makers seemed to subscribe to the school of bad horror film-making that things shot in total blackness are scarier than well-lit frights. They weren't here. 

Next up was "Blade of the Immortal" from the prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike, who was in attendance to introduce his 100th (!) film (and he's but two years Tarantino's senior). Since there was to be no Q and A afterwards the presenter fired a few questions before the showing, one of which was to ask how many people had been killed in his movies. This was an impossible question to be answered and today's film upped the ante astronomically -- a classic samurai tale based on a famous manga series and the kind of film the director loved from Japan's cinema past. The twist here is that a witch has fed our protagonist sacred bloodworms which can heal the most horrific and life-threatening injuries, making him immortal. Seeking revenge on the bandits who murdered his adored little sister, he is joined by another youngster seeking revenge for the swordsmen who murdered her father: cue constant and extreme bloodshed in non-stop battles. This is exactly what one has come to expect from the auteur and it is masterfully presented. 

I usually try to choose silents from the Festival programme and our third selection was "Little Veronika" aka "Innocence", described as 'Austria's most beautiful silent film' from either 1929 or 1930, recently restored and hailed as a great discovery. I've read reviews by others in its praise, but could not work up any great enthusiasm for the oft-told tale of the naïve and inexperienced country girl who is corrupted when she visits the big city. The viewing was somewhat spoiled by the presenter who told us in detail exactly what we were about to see, leaving no room for any fresh reactions and who more or less told us how the film would end. I can't say that the film was particularly 'beautiful' in any way, although the location scenes of old Vienna had some historical interest. The lead actress Kathe von Nagy was actually 25 years old when the film was shot which made her a little long in the tooth to be playing a pre-Communion teenager. I was also slightly perplexed why the film was titled "A Virgin's Ordeal" with French intertitles rather than German. As I wrote above: 'meh'.

Yesterday we saw the latest movie from the masterful Guillermo del Toro which was a complete delight and which ranks right up there with his very best: "The Shape of Water". Set sometime in America's Cold War past, it tells the improbable love story between Sally Hawkins, a mute cleaner at a secret government laboratory, and  a captured aquatic creature (straight out of "The Creature from the Black Lagoon"), which is intended as some sort of secret weapon against the dangerous Russkies.. Security at the lab is being handled by the sullen-faced and cruel Michael Shannon, who fails to prevent Hawkins from escaping with her new friend, the creature, to be kept in her bathtub until she is able to return him to the sea. I don't always like Hawkins, but she was terrific in this role, as was Octavia Spencer as a fellow-cleaner, Richard Jenkins as her effete next-door neighbour, and Michael Stuhlbarg's Dimitri posing as an American scientist. The telling was a little leisurely and the sub-plot about Russian spies a little extraneous, but one so warmed to the characters (other than Shannon) that we were charmed and cheered the fantasy of this inter-species romance. 

Reviews of the remaining two movies next week....