STARRING Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher, Joel Edgerton, Callan McAuliffe, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki
WRITTEN BY Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce, based on some book nobody’s ever heard of by F. Scott Fitzgerald called The Great Gatsby
PRODUCED BY Baz Luhrmann, Douglas Wick, Lucy Fisher, Catherine Martin, Catherine Knapman
DIRECTED BY Baz Luhrmann

SHOT BY Simon Duggan
PRODUCTION DESIGN BY Catherine Martin
EDITED BY Matt Villa, Jason Ballantine, Jonathan Redmond
MUSIC BY Craig Armstrong
DISTRIBUTED BY Warner Bros. Pictures

Screened 2013-05-07

Baz Luhrmann’s extravagant adaptation of The Great Gatsby is a fairy tale about money. Much of it feels like an amusement park ride, an ostentatious Broadway musical, a coloring book, a histrionic orgasm – and like Peter Jackson’s recent Hobbit film, represents another literary adaptation no thinking man could conceive costing so much. I have no particular allegiance to Fitzgerald’s tale of hollow opportunism, and nothing against it (the auteur knew how to turn a phrase), and unlike half of the general readers who graduated from American high schools, I do not list the book in my top ten ever. Prior to this screening I was somewhat shocked to see a theater packed with flappers and scumbags, until I realized that American media junkies live for the delectation of nostalgia and, laterally, dressup. I have sympathy all over the place for similar vices, but I wish these fans could fixate on less shallow Golden Ages.

Leonard DiCaprio is Jay Gatsby, as we all know quite well thanks to the film’s relentlessly ubiquitous marketing campaign. To no surprise, he provides a characteristically consummate performance, though I am beginning to wonder what DiCaprio wants; with such star power at his disposal, it’s a let-down to see him pandering to the kiddy cash machines. The story is narrated in flashback by the “morbidly alcoholic” (I did like that touch) Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire, clearly typecast as the doey-eyed innocent after his turn in Raimi’s own paint-by-the-numbers, tween-aimed spectaculars. Is it any coincidence that the faces of Leo and Tobey (real life old sports) are inherently youthful, cast in a film reliant on the ambitious intoxications of youth? I find Maguire so much more interesting when I see him playing a complete bastard, like he did in the never, ever mentioned (for good reason) Good German, or as that moral eel James Leer in everybody’s favorite (for good reason), Wonder Boys. I always expected Carraway’s role to be quite underplayed in this story – maybe it’s the character’s modest decency which makes him slip into the cracks between words – but Maguire receives plenty of screen time, and fulfills his role adequately enough. But it isn’t like any acting awards will be handed out.

It’s a film that allows no room for observation, subtlety, intuition, it takes your hand and whisks you along like it’s a Supermarket Sweep. The first 45 minutes of the film are an exhausting, endless cacophony of revelry and edits which last no longer than one second apiece. Jay-Z’s soundtrack is comprised of modern pop tunes that will be obsolete in one year, throbbing with subwoofed bass and schizophrenic digital editing, designed to intoxicate the audience like Mr. Carraway is intoxicated (though nobody seems to care that Carraway’s intoxication is wholly superficial in nature) – but hey, he’s making big fucking dollars, so who’s counting? After the initial orgiastic, deafening setup the film becomes vaguely watchable, specifically in its two (count them: two) extended scenes which could involve the audience: Gatsby’s first meeting with Daisy on a rainy day in Carraway’s fantasy cottage located next door to New York’s Neuschwanstein (Gatsby’s manor), and the high rise hotel hell confrontation between Gatsby and Mr. Daisy. At times the film feels so contrived, melodramatic and hokey that it plays like a parody of itself, a version of a soulless blockbuster you’d see a sinister Simpsons character creating, and never moreso than in Gatsby’s death scene. Strangely enough, that tonal mindless hoo-hah basically ebbs and peters out as the film progresses, and by the end scenes play out in a conventional, linear manner. Oh, and I bet nobody notices this: in the scene with Meyer Wolfsheim, his eyes are dilated.

Is it worthless? Perhaps not. It could’ve been worse, there is something there, and I could’ve said a nice thing or two. But the impulse has died in me to give any credit to something so commercial and so hollow, no matter how hard anybody worked on it. This is not what we need right now. This is the end of Rome. And they’re peddling it to your children.

written by David Ashley

The post Film review: The Great Gatsby (2013) appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

STARRING Dennis Quaid, Zac Efron, Kim Dickens, Heather Graham, Clancy Brown, Maika Monroe
WRITTEN BY Ramin Bahrani, Hallie Elizabeth Newton
PRODUCED BY Teddy Schwarzman, Justin Nappi, Kevin Turen, Christine Vachon, Ramin Bahrani, Pamela Koffler
DIRECTED BY Ramin Bahrani

SHOT BY Michael Simmonds
EDITED BY Affonso Gonçalves
MUSIC BY Dickon Hinchliffe
DISTRIBUTED BY Sony Pictures Classics

Screened 2013-04-02

Dennis Quaid plays the ambitious and emotionally crushed Henry Whipple, an Iowa patriarch struggling to keep his family farm prosperous in the cutthroat environment of Big Agro. This is made considerably more difficult by his firebrand son Dean, played by the (shucks) smoldering Zac Efron, a young man resentful of his status as Crop Heir and whose desire to speed out of the middle of nowhere has led to an obsession with racing in NASCAR. Dean represents Henry’s last hope of passing on his business legacy as first son Grant shews no indication of settling down from his globetrotting adventures, witnessed by the Whipple family through Grant’s sporadically dropped postcards of exotic locales scarcely imaginable from a cornfield. Dean shows no interest, anti-interest, in Henry’s troubles; Dean’s only concerns are the upkeep of his racecar (legally or not) and finding the prettiest bucolic blonde he can to bang therein – he is a 17 year old boy. First it’s Cadence (Maika Monroe), the easygoing teenage stray who Henry takes under his wing, and who shows more brains and morals than most other characters in the film. Then it’s Meredith (Heather Graham), homewrecker extraordinaire who, regrettably, also happens to be banging Whipple the Elder. One of the film’s two unifying events occurs midway, as Dean is given the opportunity to graduate from ARCA’s amateur dirt plots to the terrifying terminal velocity of NASCAR asphalt. When the frenetic pace overwhelms him there are a number of quick shots where we see Dean desperately looking over to find the human face in the other car, unprepared for competition this exponentially advanced.

When Henry Whipple isn’t failing to connect with his wife or child he’s out peddling genetically-modified seed for the leviathan corporate machine known as Liberty (undeniably a proxy Monsanto), being berated by his monstrous father (Red West), or sitting perched in his air-conditioned mega tractor, pinging his smartphone like a social media addict for updates on the global market. Due to the mercenary tactics Henry feels he must apply to stay ahead, his neighbor and longtime friend (veteran Chelcie Ross) is forced to implicate Henry in an investigation by Liberty into the illegal cleaning and reuse of their patented seed, and this investigation could imaginably topple the precarious Whipple fiefdom. Henry, Dean and wife Irene (Kim Dickens) are cornered, and their subsequent actions affect and diminish the entire community. It is a prescient allegory and a warning to us all: there was a reason that salesman died. Quaid gives a strong performance of a man who has been on a moral lunch break for too long, whose energy comes from desperation and who is ultimately confounded. When his father levies this heartless chastisement, “First Decatur, now Grant. You lost ‘em, Henry! You never shoulda let ‘em go!”, the baffled, wounded look on Henry’s face is crushing.

At Any Price is director Ramin Bahrani’s dramatized extrapolation of the consequences of Henry’s moral compromises, Henry being a pitiable victim of corporate greed. Director Bahrani would spend months with farmers in the American midwest and said that, without exception, they all recited these two circulating maxims to him: “Expand or die,” and “Get big or get out.” These statements were branded into the minds of those involved with the film, and fuel its surprisingly grim undercurrent. This is not some wistful film that views farmers as noble in their pursuits, getting their hands dirty, the “true” American “folks” – it is a look at the human cost of bottom-line mentality and the way an inherently competitive system can force once loving neighbors to fear, mistrust and despise each another. One of my first impressions of Henry was that he harps on about loyalty to the point of alienating his audience – but by the film’s end, it is perfectly clear why this is his mantra.

Thankfully, the combination of Hallie Elizabeth Newton’s script and Bahrani’s direction do not demonize any character, even the ones who seem to be directly threatening to the Whipple family. Clancy Brown plays Jim Johnson, Whipple’s chief rival in a constant feud for the control of counties, yet when Henry instinctively celebrates Johnson’s bad fortune, we understand that these men should never have been in conflict, and that Johnson is a human, a father and a breadwinner just like Whipple, who happens to be unluckier. In fact, by the end it is actually the Whipple family who can be arguably described as the vicious ones in town. They were not born this way – ruin descended on them. All film events lead to the Whipple Customer Appreciation Day, a bittersweet accomplishment to we who have seen the cost of maintaining their family business. Redemption for the Whipples is not beyond possibility, but it would require a paradigm shift, an entirely new story. If the progress of phenomenal corporate megagreed is any indication, that story is aways in coming.

written by David Ashley

Links:
Film’s site
Trailer
My interview with Ramin Bahrani and Dennis Quaid

The post Film review: At Any Price appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

The Ramin Bahrani and Dennis Quaid Interview
for At Any Price

I have a few minutes in the lounge of the Waldorf Astoria Chicago and take in the curious combination of Minas Tirith marble and horrorshow modern art – the rich remain ever enigmatic to we mortals. In a suite on the 25th floor, Ramin Bahrani is absolutely ready for me and all those like me – maybe it’s because this is his first major film with name actors and a budget to speak of, but he’s extremely lucid, courteous, grateful, thoughtful… like an ambitious and responsible grad, actually. He insists that myself or my press peer eat one of the birthday confections prepared for Mr. Quaid and I abstain, refusing to break my David Frost discipline. Dennis Quaid enters from a side room in jeans and a black v-neck tee and the first thing (well, second thing) I notice is his leathery hide, tanned, weathered, seasoned (I’ve seen a similar hide on Sly). During the interview he puffs on an e-cigarette, and I retrospectively groan for not working in some fraternal aside about my own grudging relationship with the gadgets. The clock ticks, and away we go.

Rock ‘n Roll Ghost: In 2009 Roger Ebert called you “the new great American director.” Can I get reactions from either of you about his death?

Ramin Bahrani: We were very close. It’s a huge loss for the cinema, and a personal one. I was to see him today, in fact, this morning. He elevated cinema, he made us think about it as a critical art form, something that can talked about and imagined. And he had a way of talking about any movie, no matter how complex it was, in a way that anyone could understand. And he had a way of getting to the heart of it very quickly and very simply… which is very hard to do. Personally I think he gave me courage to keep making films.

Dennis Quaid: One of the last great critics. What can you say? He was also so much a part of film – not separate from it, as a critic. He started so many careers, for directors and actors, for the attention he gave. The art of critical faculty was definitely alive in him.

RB: I don’t think we’d actually be here talking if it wasn’t for him. Most people in America know about my films because of him. I don’t think Dennis would’ve ever heard about my films, or agents would’ve got the script to him… It was in huge part due to him.

RRG: You were very much inspired by the slogans you encountered numerous times, “Get Big or Get Out” and “Expand or Die.” You were quoted to say, “It seems like a metaphor for American society, for the values that have led us to disaster.” Could you expand on this notion of ‘disaster?’

RB: Economic crisis, which is also a social and moral crisis. The idea that one should keep expanding – endlessly. There’s this weird motto, “Growth and Stability” [likely a reference to the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact (GSP)]… they just don’t go together. With every farmer I visited, and I lived with farmers for months – in Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina – all of them said “Expand or Die.” I didn’t make it up, they all said it. All of them. “Get Big or Get Out” and “Expand or Die.” Just think about that: in “expand or die’ somebody has to die. And capitalism is an economic system that works, it works better than any system we’ve managed to come up with – so far – and I think it does work. That’s what De Tocqueville talked about when he came to America, he noticed that pragmatism in America is “what’s good for me is good for you” – and maybe just a little bit better for me. Now it’s “what’s good for me should be bad for you – and endlessly good for me.”

Now we’re getting into CEOs for major banks, we’re talking about Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank running regulatory offices in DC, we’re talking about former heads of Tyson and Monsanto also in Washington, running the FDA – it just doesn’t make any sense. When those people have that much money and power, they create systems where they can just have more money and power – and a result people like Henry Whipple [Dennis Quaid’s character in At Any Price] has to potentially resort to corruption just to hold onto things. And it also creates a feeling that he must also keep expanding, or he will die. Now this can be connected to anyone – mom and pop’s competing with Walmart, it could be… critics, like the two of you [blushes] competing against John Smith in Miami who writes one lousy review that gets put into a hundred magazines and newspapers across the country but nobody knows why (because nobody wants to support local newspapers anymore). This pressure is being felt across the board.

I felt that when I interviewed farmers, they were so welcoming of me. “Come live in our home!” I lived with them, I didn’t stay in any hotels. “Come make your movie here!” They love their neighbors. At the same time they were prepared to cut them out to survive. I don’t think it’s because they’re bad people. I don’t think Henry Whipple is a bad guy… he’s quite nasty in the beginning of the film, unlikeable in fact, but by the time the movie ends, I hope we can say, “God, I can empathize with this character. I hope it won’t be so.”

RRG: That’s one thing I particularly liked about the film, now that you mention it: even the bad guys – the quote-unquote “bad guys” – were human. You felt a lot of empathy for Jim Johnson (Clancy Brown), I thought that was really great. It seemed to be a pretty balanced look at that way of life.

RB: Yeah, I love the scenes so much between Dennis and Clancy Brown in a diner. It’s like two giants of acting… that’s when you learn as a director, “How are we going to film this?” You just get a couple of over-the-shoulders, and singles, and get the hell out of the way and just let them do it! What I particularly liked about that scene is that [Henry] wants to say something. But [Jim] keeps saying, “Business is business.”

RRG: He’s resigned to it.

RB: [Henry] is like, “Please tell me there’s something more,” but [Jim] just says, “See you at the next meeting.” I think there’s both lost in a fog of money, and wanting to have more.

RRG: This is really too much to go into, but… do you think the problem, in itself, is capitalism? Do you think that this narrative has revealed some sort of inevitable wall that exists?

RB: No, I don’t think so necessarily. My imagination doesn’t go far enough in terms of economic and social systems to think of anything better. I think it’s about the mass, 99%, finding some way to force things to change. How that’s going to happen I don’t know, but I think it can. In fact, I actually read Joseph Stiglitz and conception of the idea of 99%, and of Occupy Wall Street, I think did change the election. Romney and Mother Jones, revealing that tape – the 47% comment – I think that really did change the election. So a bunch of kids in Zuccotti Park didn’t really know what they wanted to say – but that didn’t matter that they did or didn’t know. Who cares if they had a great policy? They had an emotional undercurrent that was correct. Kind of like a movie – a movie is an emotional thing. And Occupy, etc, was an emotion – it wasn’t an economic policy. I’m not going to sit there and be moved by an economic policy. I’m going to be moved by that emotion – and that’s what a movie is supposed to do.

DQ: I think that we, as a society, things have just been moving quicker, and quicker, and quicker. Technology that is out there, and the way the economic system works, I think we’re losing the humanity between each other. Our enemy in this film, in a way… it’s Wall Street out in a cornfield, the only things missing are office buildings and skyscrapers. It used to be about neighbor helping neighbor, now it’s about neighbor squeezing out other neighbor. There’s only so much land and… get big or get out! That’s the philosophy, and everybody follows behind it.

RRG: There were two things that happened in the film which united the cast: the singing of the National Anthem at the race, and the church at the end.

RB: Yes.

RRG: I could be totally nuts, but… when you were shooting the National Anthem, I actually thought it was kind of funny to watch, based on the way it was shot. I just sort of got the impression that everybody was going through the motions – you see Clancy Brown just muttering the words mechanically. It was a unifying event, but I just wondered if there was any humor intended – or maybe irony.

RB: Well, irony would be better than humor. I shot the whole thing because I think we should respect it. It’s the National Anthem, we shouldn’t cut it off.

RRG: Yes, I noticed that it was played in full.

RB: It was full, the whole thing is there. From beginning to end, it’s there. I don’t think I should cut it out because it’s disrespectful. I thought there was storytelling happening. As far as irony, I was thinking more of Altman. It was when we were shooting the first scene in a cemetery that I realized this movie would have a zoom lens, which I didn’t know. Once the zoom lens comes in you think about Altman, and there’s something so American about this film you think about Altman, and there’s something (I hope) subversive about this film that makes you think about Altman. So… that day I found my courage with the producers. They asked me, “Why are you shooting this scene over, and over, and over again when we have huge things to do?” I said, “Robert Altman, I think, might do it..”

The Lord’s Prayer, in editing, gets you thinking about Coppola, you think about the ending of Godfather – how can I connect so many things in this ending? Again, I thought the whole thing should be there. We worked a lot with the sound department – Tom Efinger and Abigail Savage, who did all my films – about bringing certain voices up to highlight certain emotional moments. When, in the Lord’s Prayer, is Kim Dickens’ character (Irene) starting to realize that maybe [Henry] and [Dean] are involved. And the editing and the sound of the picture would elevate her voice.

RRG: You must’ve been thrilled that Obama signed the “Monsanto Protection Act last week.”

RB: Yeah… (chuckle)

RRG: Where do you think the Whipple family is headed? Personally, I am not optimistic.

DQ: Well, I can see how you’d feel that way.

RRG: Particularly [spoiler].

DQ: And the wife, too. [spoiler] They’re all kind of living… in that world… that Henry’s created.

RRG: Purgatory?

Dennis declines to answer.

written by David Ashley

The post Interview: Ramin Bahrani and Dennis Quaid for At Any Price appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

STARRING Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz
WRITTEN BY Terrence Malick
PRODUCED BY Nicolas Gonda, Sarah Green
DIRECTED BY Terrence Malick

SHOT BY Emmanuel Lubezki
PRODUCTION DESIGN BY Jack Fisk
EDITED BY A.J. Edwards, Keith Fraase, Shane Hazen, Christopher Roldan, Mark Yoshikawa
MUSIC BY Hanan Townshend
DISTRIBUTED BY Magnolia Pictures

Screened 2013-04-05

This marks the Malick tipping point. Existing members of the Cult of Malick may rejoice: he has risen, returned to you. He will have four new projects released in the next two years – this to complement the four films he previously made over 30+ years – and now the name Malick will spread with the fatalistic momentum of a zombie apocalypse. None will be spared. My enjoyment of To the Wonder, I would like to think, largely results from a complete divorce from the hype machine surrounding the man and his works.

Ben Affleck plays our virtually silent protagonist Neil, who, to the best of my knowledge, is a surveyor for suburban housing tracts (cursory investigation informs me he is an environmental inspector, a lateral move in terms of vagueness). While vacationing in France he meets Marina, played by Olga Kurylenko, and the two fall in love at Normandy’s Wonder of the West, the splendorous Mont Saint Michel – and so Marina decides to take her daughter, Tatiana, from the throngs and urban corridors of Paris to begin a new life with Neil in Oklahoma. At first the two lovers create a happy home for Tatiana and one another, but in the moments when Marina is left alone she gradually seems to endure emotional or spiritual atrophy. Why is this happening to her? Is it specific to Marina, or is this any healthy person’s reaction to life in America? Marina’s relationship to Neil seems to naturally expire at the same time as her visa – so Marina takes Tatiana back to Paris, leaving Neil no choice but to fall in love with his old grade school acquaintance Jane, played by Rachel McAdams. Jane seems to be a more appropriate match for Neil, so it’s with mild reluctance that we accept Marina back into the picture when she decides that life in Paris is somehow more empty than it had been with Neil. The old demons return, seemingly manifested in Marina’s spiteful new Spanish acquaintance who has a solution to everything American, and who infects Marina with this egoistic vitriol. And finally, placed into the film’s empty spaces with very little relevance to the rest, we occasionally follow the faithless and tortured Father Quintana, played by Javier Bardem, another man infected by emptiness, at war with emptiness, and a lost expatriate soul to which Marina can connect – or could connect, had that footage not been excised (Bardem needn’t despair because we’re told that Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain, Michael Sheen, Amanda Peet and Barry Pepper all had roles which were completely cut from the final product). Without the footage Quintana appears as just another ill man on the plain. He visits hopeless drug addicts, prisoners, all forms of the indigent, the wretched – wretched souls which, bafflingly to him, seem to have a better grasp of faith than himself. Their need outweighs his.

Every country has its peculiar charms, and it is easy for we Americans to lose sight of those qualities which can at once seem intoxicating to foreigners; Marina’s first impressions of the rolling Midwestern fields and extensively demarcated suburban boxes are, really, quite filled with wonder: “A land so calm. Honest. Rich.” The film left me with a number of feelings about this America we share; notably that it was and is still The West, the land where towns are reinvented from the ground up, and importantly a land of vast expanses – between property and between people. Even inside Neil’s home, in a suburban housing development, the atmosphere is made to feel extremely alienating. Malick’s camera focuses much attention on blank walls, blank corridors, spacious rooms that somehow feel like cells – huge, empty houses filled with huge, empty spaces. Perhaps it is just my own current bent, but at the heart of To the Wonder I saw a film about American Emptiness, a possible critique of a way of life which naturally alienates its citizens from one another. It is Malick’s first film set in modern times, and this little theory of mine will be tested by his three upcoming features.

Neil is the center of the film, but he does not have a ‘will’ as such – we, like the female characters, are briefly drawn into his orbit to see what happens. He seems very sweet but is positively elusive – there’s one point where Jane says, “I know that strong feelings make you uneasy,” and this is news to us, or prompts a nod with, “Ah, right. Of course he is. That fits.” Like all of Malick’s films, To the Wonder is interspersed with the narration of an inner monologue from a deeply spiritual protagonist who is usually engaged in an attempted dialectic with Our Maker – in this case, from Marina. This narration is always spoken softly, meekly, that of an innocent, inquisitive soul overwhelmed by the feeling of Being, and all knowingly elusive to the viewer.

Mr. Malick inspires because of his disciplined and moral approach to all things; I lump Mr. Malick into the same ballpark as Tolstoy and Mike Leigh, born moralizers, seemingly only concerned with the Al-Sirat – ‘the path.’ Malick doesn’t script his films, but, according to Kurylenko, “Paints in the editing room. The production process is just him getting his colors. He gets the full palette of the story.” I admire Malick’s humility, a trait that seems to be diminishing in inverse proportion to that which collective narcissism grows. I would speculate that what most inspires others about Mr. Malick is his depth of appreciation – what else is the purpose of art, after all, and of religion? One could argue that religion makes capable the highest possible level of aesthetic appreciation – and Tolstoy would be the one to eventually argue that all art which is not in service of deistic appreciation is decadent and thereby sinful.

But how rude of me – surely you’ve grown weary of watching one million young white men fellate Mr. Malick. I know I have! Where do my criticisms lie? Here’s one: it’s officially getting old to watch free girls spin around and giggle in open fields. You’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it a thousand times – like birds in flight. Another: I realize that auteurs basically do one thing, but I wouldn’t mind a little irony, a little humor – somewhere. Anywhere. And for the hat trick: some lines of the now cliched Malickian narration are more successful than others. “What is this love that loves us? From nowhere. From all around. You, cloud. You love me too.” If your heart happens to be tuned to the same frequency as Malick’s this may have special meaning, but I’m sure you all know some person whose eyes would roll, agonized. One final criticism will be directed not at Malick but the MPAA: since Olga’s tits are briefly visible in one single shot, this film is rated R. Yet again, the decision-makers at the MPAA have demonstrated to us that they are cowardly, sniveling infants who clearly are incapable of functioning in any real world that the most of us inhabit. For shame! Desecrating this beautiful film from Terrence Malick!

A final note: my screening of To the Wonder took place in Chicago’s old faithful, the Lake Street screening room, where Roger Ebert spent a great, great deal of time. This, the morning after, found his once reserved seat bearing flowers and found the room more bustling than I imagine it has ever been. Ebert’s last review was for To the Wonder, having received a screener disc in advance. Many would argue that if you’ve got to go, then going out on a Malick film wouldn’t be a bad way to do it.

written by David Ashley

The post Film review: To the Wonder appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

STARRING Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Richard Jenkins, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott, Jackie Evancho, Brendan Gleeson, Terrence Howard, Anna Kendrick, Brit Marling, Chris Cooper, Stephen Root, Lochlyn Munro
WRITTEN BY Lem Dobbs (screenplay), based on “The Company You Keep” by Neil Gordon
PRODUCED BY Nicolas Chartier, Robert Redford, Bill Holderman, Voltage Pictures
DIRECTED BY Robert Redford

SHOT BY Adriano Goldman
EDITED BY Mark Day
MUSIC BY Cliff Martinez
DISTRIBUTED BY Sony Pictures Classics

Screened 2013-04-01

“Retired and Extremely Dangerous”

Robert Redford (76) plays a man who has been living under a false identity for three decades who, using his connections with a pack of morally righteous misfits, sets off on an adventure to regain his identity by clearing his name with the FBI. If this accurate description of Redford’s most recent work, The Company You Keep, sounds familiar that is because it’s also the plot to 1992′s Redford-helmed Sneakers (a lengthier yet considerably lighter and more palatable film). 1994′s Quiz Show is an excellent film and I’ve been cutting Redford breaks ever since – but The Company You Keep really ranks at the bottom of his oeuvre, impressively lower than his last two sleepers Lions for Lambs and The Conspirator. Alas, alas. I will not write the man off, though, if for no other reason than because it is interesting to pay attention to the efforts of an accomplished activist and philanthropist. I’ll be back.

Redford plays Nick Sloan, a former Weather Underground member (a non-violent one we can support sans compunction) who has been living under a manufactured identity and practicing law in Albany for the past thirty years. When former comrade-in-arms is arrested (Susan Sarandon, 66), an old school Albany beat reporter (LaBeouf, somehow still only 26) launches a recklessly ambitious investigation into the WU and outs Mr. Sloan to the media. Sloan, out of options, unloads his eleven year old daughter with brother Chris Cooper (a spry 61) and embarks on an under-the-radar journey westward to track down the one person who can clear his name, Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie, 71). To find her, Sloan must unearth his WU rolodex and see how his old comrades are faring in their ‘straight’ guises: there’s the New England organic farmer played by Stephen Root (61), the grizzled lumber-dealing Milwaukeean played by Nick Nolte (72), the Chicago professor played by Richard Jenkins (65), the Big Sur pot smuggling couple of Sam Elliot (68) and Christie – and Brendan Gleeson (58), who spends his time in a yacht club. I don’t recall what he ‘does.’ Truth be told that with a cast this large, you begin to stop paying attention after the 10th textbook scene of [surprised introduction], [schmoozy rekindled fondness], [expository catchup], [earnest favor entreaty], [reluctant banter], [inevitable assistance] – all of which delivered with Redford’s eternal smart, smug, snappiness: “We both know that at the core I’m right, so let’s stop bullshitting and go to work, OK?” It’s only as an afterthought that I realize I am obligated to mention the slight roles of Terrence Howard (44), the FBI agent leading the Sloanhunt, Anna Kendrick (remarkably older than LaBeouf at 27) as the reporter’s FBI “in,” and Stanley Tucci (52) as the Albany Sun-Times editor, the Giamatti-like non-leading-man we love to see in the role of an endearing authority figure. Jesus Christ – AND indy star Brit Marling (29) who, like LaBeouf, represents the generation to whom Redford gallants passes his torch, and whose relevant character is introduced well into the second act. What a ridiculous film to explain.

Please forgive this minor digression… The film begins with old newsreel footage to give the uninitiated viewer perspective on the Weather Underground, and it was during this footage when something quite obvious occurred to me with renewed clarity: it is the lack of a draft which allows our government to conduct wars that its populace does not support. There would be enormous dissent and protest for the US’s multiple ongoing wars if more people we knew personally were fighting in them. I do wonder to what extent this is truly polarizing our population; just think about the “two” Americas we often hear indelicate Republicans mentioning; I would venture that a chief requisite in belonging to that “real” America is being directly connected to somebody in combat. Digression over.

I see a tremendous amount of squandered potential in this narrative. I see what could’ve been one of those panoramic American films: an epic road trip westward where we’d encounter the panoply of American perspective, meet those fucking “folks” who make up This Great Land; a long-game look at American dissent and its consequences over the course of multiple generations; and of course the sobering realization by LaBeouf’s character that the WU’s ideologies are just as relevant as they’ve ever been – tempered, of course, by the rational optimism of an aged retainer and his old dogs. As it stands, The Company You Keep is little more than an episodic reunion tour of faces that have been actively in the public sphere for years. Mr. Dobbs, I am particularly surprised at you. Mr. Martinez, I caught you recycling some tropes from your [admittedly super] Contagion soundtrack. Mr. Redford, I find it especially difficult to believe that after your character is inevitably exonerated for his crimes (belated spoiler alert), nobody seems to mind that he has been practicing law for three decades under a manufactured identity. Surely this must be way, way illegal.

written by David Ashley

The post Film review: The Company You Keep appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

SHOT BY Sean Bobbitt
EDITED BY Jim Helton, Ron Patane
MUSIC BY Mike Patton
DISTRIBUTED BY Focus Features

Screened 2013-03-29

In the uninterrupted opening shot of The Place Beyond the Pines, Mr. Gosling walks a lengthy distance through a carnival into a tent containing the “ball of death,” a metal sphere in which three dirt bikers will zoom around and astound us by not dying horrifically bloody deaths. Mr. Gosling gets onto a dirt bike just like the other two men, drives into the cage and performs, impressing us all. The shot is designed to prove to us that Gosling’s character is a biker of unparalleled skill – but anybody who saw Drive (which is everybody who’s seeing this film) already knows that Gosling is fearless driver and thrill seeker (it is worth noting that Cianfrance experienced serendipity during pre-production when Gosling admitted to him that one thrill he had not sought was robbing a bank). Now Gosling publicly says he wishes to “take a break from himself,” curtailing a profound ego trip before it goes sour (probably wise) and to the dismay of many media-injecting starfuckers who’ve been reveling in the vicarious experience. Is it a coincidence that this introspective announcement follows his work with the priest-like Terrence Malick, a man whose cult reputation among cineastes dwarfs Clooney, Refn, and the rest of the Hollywood machine? Just look at what happened to Tom Cruise after reaching the highest peak of cinema and reputation (his work with Stanley Kubrick). Did Cruise ever work as hard again? Or did he work to extend his ego trip into infinity? With luck, our man Gosling has been questioning his own exhibitionism. No offense, Mr. Gosling, I’ve been enjoying you nearly as much as you’ve been enjoying yourself. What will you do next? Will the next Gosling news bite we are fed represent his next effort to astound us, perhaps in another venue/medium? Examining his CV, it occurs to me that Gosling has really not made too many films – lots of indy works and a few dynamic bravura performances. His career trajectory has been breakneck. And – this is never mentioned – he is Canadian. Is there another Canadian so sought, so sexy, so celebrated? He is a year older than me (here comes the waterworks).

That being said, I have considerable issues with Cianfrance’s work. The Place Beyond the Pines (the Mohawk name for Schenectady, NY, the film’s setting) is like a sloppier, longer version of Haneke’s The White Ribbon, about how actions have consequences and how sin does not exist in a void, but actively infects each new generation. In a role which can only be considered a cakewalk after what we’ve seen, Gosling plays “Luke,” one of Cianfrance’s many fuck-ups, a “man who works around metal” (red flag!) and whose only desire is to do right by the child he unthinkingly created a year ago after blasting off into the womb of a local waitress played by Eva Mendes. Mr. Bad News brilliantly decides that robbing banks will be the best way to accomplish this and succeeds in his inevitable crime spree until he is cornered in a local house and capriciously killed by rookie cop Avery Cross (a name Tyler Perry is likely kicking himself over not having come up with first), played by Bradley Cooper. The story’s second chapter details Cross’s lingering regret over the shooting and his eventual decline into civic corruption among some inhumanly scummy cops, naturally alpha-ed by Ray Liotta. It would appear that audiences are collectively groaning over the film’s third act, taking place 15 years into the future where nobody has perceptibly aged, and where the now grown boys of “Luke” and Cross do still more horrible things to themselves and others as a consequence of their fathers’ sins.

People seem to like Cianfrance’s films because they attempt to capture the cadences of “ordinary folks,” though this largely results in hammed up performances of a great deal of schmoozy banter. The script allegedly went through 37 ungodly drafts, helping to explain why it’s so bloody long (nobody wanted his ideas tossed) and why it seems to be so disjointedly contrived. We’re expected to sort of morally write off every poor decision and moral compromise, as if these inherited sins absolve us of responsibility. But why does Cross, whose father is a judge, blackmail his superior into a promotion? (there was a line from Adaptation which, unbidden, came to mind more than once: “On top of that, you explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person. See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this.”) What motivates the frantic actions of Luke’s son (played by the talented Dane DaHaan) who was raised by caring parents? Every kid gets spiteful at some point – but stealing a gun, breaking into a house and pistol whipping your peer, then kidnapping his father, going into the forest and preparing to execute him?? Precisely what world are we inhabiting here? It is not fun to watch horrible things happen to horrible people who do horrible things to each other. It is a hundred and forty humorless minutes of fuck-ups fucking up, the only emotion it stirs is pity, and it takes itself as seriously as a Nolan film. I will grant Cianfrance this much: I smiled once. It was when they played a Suicide song preceding Luke’s first robbery. That was a great twenty seconds!

written by David Ashley

The post Film review: The Place Beyond the Pines appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

PRODUCED BY P. David Ebersole, Todd Hughes, Tim Kirk
DIRECTED BY Rodney Ascher
EDITED BY Rodney Ascher
MUSIC BY William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes
DISTRIBUTED BY IFC Midnight

Screened 2013-03-26

“The Number 23(7)”

Only a few days ago I quite arbitrarily wound up on a few websites dedicated to the occult symbolism in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and naturally those pointed to similar YouTube videos: there’s the one about how Full Metal Jacket was positively infused with insinuations about the JFK assassination and the second gunman; the one detailing the Illuminati calling cards subliminally tucked into almost every shot of Eyes Wide Shut; the fatuous yarn which posits that Kubrick’s extensive research into the accuracy of 2001 led NASA to hire him to shoot the Apollo 11 moon landing footage at soundstage 237, and that The Shining is, among other things, Stanley’s left-handed indictment against those who engineered this deceit. Room 237 is, essentially, a YouTube video with abnormally high production values. We are only ever shown clips of The Shining and other works from Stan’s oeuvre, and from other relevant films, but never a single human face to put to the disembodied voices of five individuals who espouse their theories about the myriad hidden meanings and symbols seen (and imagined) in The Shining. Are these experts speaking..? Certainly so on this esoteric topic, each having written articles or books detailing their respective theories at length.

Reporter Bill Blakemore published an article in 1987 about The Shining‘s genocidal undertones (the Overlook Hotel, of course), and there doesn’t seem to be anything controversial about these overt symbols. History professor Geoffrey Cocks believes The Shining is the Holocaust film Kubrick always wanted to make, and highlights Kubrick’s ‘focus’ on the number 42 (See: two times three times seven; the official year the Holocaust began; the name of the film seen on TV by Wendy and Danny; the number of pores on the tip of Kubrick’s nose; etc, et al, ad infinitum). It can be difficult to believe that Kubrick, so exacting a man, could miss certain glaring continuity errors showcased here – right? Is Jack the Minotaur at the center of the labyrinth? Is it a coincidence that Danny sports his Apollo 11 sweater as he walks to Room 237 when the moon just happens to be approximately 237,000 miles from the Earth? One commentator notes, “See, Jack left the key to Room 237 in the door. If you look closely at what’s on the key, the word ROOM is capitalized and No. is there for room number. What letter is capitalized there, the N? Now what two words can you make from those capital letters? Moon Room, maybe?” Maybe. Gleaning ‘moron’ from the letters is more sensible, ironically.

I was able to sit through Room 237 because The Shining is easily one of my all-time favorite films and Kubrick my all-time favorite filmmaker, and his now legendary cult status makes such a film, at least, endurable to the lay viewer. But it sure would’ve been nice to have some unifying thought or purpose. The film does not examine why humans develop abstruse, crackpot theories… it just sells them.

written by David Ashley

The post Film review: Room 237 appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

04-12
Just started: The Mirror Crack’d
After thoroughly enjoying Evil Under the Sun, the mystery stint continues with more Guy Hamilton.

04-12
Currently watching: Death on the Nile
Cast assembled. Bad times ho! So far the film has taken great pains to lay the clues at our feet, rather annoyingly.

04-10
Just started: Norma Rae
Cannes 1979 Best Actress. Let’s see what you’re made of.

Re-watching: Skyfall

04-01
Currently watching: The Taste of Money
Oh, come now…

Is that so?

More, you say?

The post Daily Notes 2013-04 appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

Currently watching: Shattered
One way to open your film. I’m all for investigations, but amnesia is just a shitty, shitty device. 10,000 films for every actual reported case. Just try to imagine that you are a character in a story dealing with that amnesiac – it would be the most boring experience of your life.

Berenger goes over the details of his investigation with Whalley-Kilmer – and just LOOK at the size of that television! This is 1991!!

Berenger, now the innocent, slowly learns what a monster he was. Call me crazy, but I feel like an amnesiac would still be a creep without his memories – unless we’re dealing with some convenient version of “moral amnesia.” Now that would be interesting – amnesia which wipes one’s conscience clean…

It is a movie and all, but this is really quite a fantasy of what an architect’s job is like. As if there is only one chosen every generation and he is given everything he needs to work, unencumbered…

And all of the sudden we’re in fucking Fitzcarraldo? It’s often truly astounding how much hard work from talented people goes into lousy scripts (this dynamic is summed up perfectly in Bulworth).

You expect me to believe this fucking guy carries a handkerchief? Is this 1950?

I wonder if every movie shot in San Francisco invariably ends up resembling Vertigo?

It sure does seem like you were aiming for that tree, doesn’t it?

Currently watching: Scandal.
Simply: wow. Tarantino, eat your fucking heart out. Rather in love with Whaley-Kilmer, naturally.

03-25
Just started: The Lovers on the Bridge
Binoche as we’ve never seen her before.

Currently watching: Antiviral
Melodramatic misanthropy. I fear my efforts could look similar to this. If I’m not careful…

Currently watching: Keep the Lights On
Ouch.

03-24
Currently watching: Like Someone in Love
Familiar Kiarostami territory. Calling the episodic, meandery spirit of Jarmusch to mind.

Something terribly ‘Woody Allen’ about this music and scene. Closely observed life idling along.

From now on I’m going to call him Car-ostami.

Whoops, dozed off there. What did I miss?

Currently watching: Blindness
Bizarre lil production, this one. I’m keeping an open mind but am extremely skeptical at the moment. I do not trust this director.

03-22
Just started: The Deadly Affair
After another gruesomely protracted viewed of the BBC Smiley projects (Tinker Tailor & Smiley’s People) I decide it’s damn well time to examine more cinema of John le Carré. So I find myself with a copy of 1966′s The Deadly Affair, which I pounced on because of James Mason. At the time I somehow didn’t even notice it’s director: the late Sidney Lumet. And early Lumet at that. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if there is anything about Lumet indicative of an auteur, I have yet to see it. Show me a film where you can say, “Well that’s clearly a Lumet film.” It baffles me that a man could have such a lengthy career and leave almost impression of himself behind.

We’ll begin with another great title card! Just my luck. There is this sort of mod, swinging London sex/longue music in the background, which makes me grin. Would make an excellent “on hold” theme. Take heed, you fucking corporations.

Hey, alright!

Whoa, MORE alright! Fuck yeah! Mr. Young was fresh off of a tiny little independently financed production that nobody’s ever heard of called Doctor Zhivago.

03-20
Just finished: Quatermass and the Pit
Not Quarter, but Quater – as in Quatermain.

Don’t often see end title cards like this one.

03-19
Prometheus postscript
The film is now so liked by myself that it has overtaken The Master and contends with Cosmopolis for #1 of the year. The “At the Mountains of Madness” connection has revolutionized my opinion of the film – it’s actually the best Lovecraft film ever made!

03-17
Re-watching: Prometheus
For the first time, broadcasting the same film twice in a row.

My eyes are always drawn to that picture on the wall repeated eight times. It’s an eye, a wound, a vagina, a pair of lips, a schism, an infinite number of things.

First impression of the landscape is a peak at 52,000 feet – the same as the story.

03-16
Re-watching: Prometheus
At the Mountains of Madness. Truly! This really is precisely that adaptation – right now to the shoggoths and proto-shoggoth. I like this film more with every viewing.

Explorers setting up camp in Antarctica. Can’t be outside for more than two minutes without suffocating. Just look at those utterly ominous mountains looming above our stage.

A decapitation leads us into the head room.

First impression of the head of an Old One. Those look an awful lot like tentacles protruding from its mouth. Until Lovecraft’s narrator later admits: “-whatever they had been, they were men!”

And as soon as they’ve entered the Canister Room, the mountains launch a sandstorm at the mound.

03-13
Re-watching: Cape Fear (1991)
We miss you, Freddie Francis.

And let’s not kid ourselves: nobody does it like DeNiro.

2013-03-03
Re-watching: The Truman Show
It’s a very good film. There’s a great deal going on, but in this shot I’ll merely note that this chipmunk-cheeked dopey grin I’ve seen easily animated, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen pulled off correctly by an actual actor. Carrey is capable of anything, you sometimes think.

Truman effs with his radio reception. I recognize those Vitamin D pills – guess they ship those in from ‘the mainland.’

For some reason I really love the reaction of this actor/bus driver. He simply cannot start the bus. “I’m sorry, son.” Sigh. That’s it.

This is a very nice and trifling attention to detail – see that prominent boy to the left of Truman? He’s a shoe-in for the grown-up version of Truman’s best friend Marlon.

Heh. A Japanese family loves The Truman Show. I remember enough Japanese to decipher what’s on that T-shirt. It reads: “Love Love Truman Show!” Rabu rabu (love love) being the cute catch-phrase. I don’t know about the banners in the background, but I do note that they’ve mis-spelled Meryl’s name in the katakana (as Me-ri-ru).

And I’ll simply mention this because there’s no other place to say it: I recently finished the Playstation 3 game Dead Space 2 and found it to be a phenomenally frustrating shooter and just a piss-poor written game. They co-opted everything original created in the original Dead Space and found out how to destroy it, drive it into the ground, simply to make it positively uninteresting. Just flat-out senseless violence and madness without a shred of fun – just obsession over their own perceived ability to emulate the “cool” they’ve already seen performed better elsewhere: the original Dead Space, the Star Trek reboot, Event Horizon, Mass Effect, way too much from the vomitously overrated Bioshock… Dead Space 2: Fuck You.

The post Daily Notes 2013-03 appeared first on David Ashley's blog.

STARRING Gael García Bernal, Luis Gnecco, Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers, Néstor Cantillana
WRITTEN BY Pablo Larraín, Antonio Skármeta (based on his play El Plebiscito)
PRODUCED BY Jonathan King, Daniel Marc Dreifuss, Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín
DIRECTED BY Pablo Larraín

SHOT BY Sergio Armstrong
EDITED BY Andrea Chignoli
DISTRIBUTED BY Sony Pictures Classics

Screened 2012-01-08

The first Chilean film to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, No refers to the opposition campaign in the country’s 1988 plebiscite which would eventually see military dictator Augusto Pinochet replaced by democratically elected Patricio Aylwin. Gael García Bernal plays René Saavedra, a PR man whose job would appear to be cut out for him: run the television campaign against Pinochet, primarily held each evening in equally allotted 15 minute blocks for the two candidates (this may strike one as a step in the right direction for the televising of political candidates). Saavedra sees that his co-workers fully intend to fight the good fight, spotlighting the country’s pain under Pinochet’s rule – even if it seems that this may not give them the boost they need to win, as 76% of the voters are expected to abstain from Chile’s first democratic election in 15 years.

Uninspired Saavedra, who describes heartfelt political testimony as “a drag,” decides to take the campaign in a radical new direction – the direction of corporate American advertisements which, like it or not, proved intensely successful. Thusly his perverse No campaign is born, filled with commercials of pure fluff whose only goal is the inspiration of positivity, and the willful memory wipe of all traces of the negativity of the Pinochet regime. On some level it sounds perfectly sensible, until you see the commercials sensational Saavedra has made: there is no political context whatsoever, simply images of happy, smiling individuals celebrating, exercising, enjoying freedom and a generous portion of capitalism – indistinguishable from ads for soft drinks or tennis shoes. Saavedra’s peers tend to think he’s out of his mind until they witness the huge success of his campaign, and it isn’t long before Pinochet himself (seen here as lazy, slouchy, oafish) is surreptitiously speaking to Saavedra’s peer Guzman about doing a bit of double agenting for the Yes campaign.

No is shot on grainy, obsolete film stock which was used by Chilean television at the time so that when it is juxtaposed with, yes, actual 1988 commercials (some incredible) or police crackdown footage, even sensitive viewers will have difficulty discerning the difference. The film has a tone of willful and playful insouciance, seemingly mirroring how Saavedra feels. He skateboards to and from work and when he gets home finds it awfully difficult to enjoy the time he must spend with his dedicated activist wife (and occasionally absentee mother), quite aghast at his campaign. Behind the scenes of his campaign things are presented with ironic distance and absurdity, the “experts” musing, cursing, panicking, desperately brainstorming, all with space for actor improvisation. Witnessing the unholy union between politics and the spin cycle is entertaining from afar, but when it’s actually affecting your life you may look down at those monitors just like Saavedra’s cohorts do, your flesh tingling with unease at the enigmatic monster created through complicity. So many of us struggle to understand it, wonder if the pangs felt at moral compromise are just sophomore sentimentality – when faced with this question, my mind wanders to the final moments of Quiz Show.

During my screening of the film there were at least four restroom walkouts. No is solidly humorous but loses momentum as it goes on, and is a bit difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with the political context. Vibrancy is possible – probably – in a cynical political satire, but would require some tightening of the screws. Despite my cheeky judgment No succeeded in earning the Art Cinema Award at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. It will not win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film – Amour will win over the geriatric Academy throng – but the nation of Chile is, surely, proud just to have been nominated.

written by David Ashley

The post Film review: No appeared first on David Ashley's blog.