Tag: Bradley Cooper

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Film Features Film/TV

NOW PLAYING: Fantastical Visions

I Saw The TV Glow (Courtesy A24)

The week of May 17-23 at the movies offers lots of fun choices, including the premiere of a film I’ve been most excited about for months:

I Saw The TV Glow

Jane Schoenbrun’s psychological horror about teenage fandom is already being hailed as one of the best movies of the year. Owen (Justice Smith) bonds with Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) over their mutual love for the YA series The Pink Opaque. Years later, with adulthood’s problems pressing down, Maddy reappears in Owen’s life, telling him they can escape into the fictional world of the show — but there’s a price to pay for a permanent trip to TV land. 

IF

Young Elizabeth (Cailey Fleming) has an imaginary friend named Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) that only she can see. The catch is, she can also see other kids’ imaginary friends, including the ones whom their companions outgrew. Her neighbor Cal (Ryan Reynolds) has the same ability, and together they try to reunite the abandoned Imaginary Friends (IFs) with their former kids. This live action/animated hybrid features a huge cast of voices, including Steve Carell, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, and, in his final role, the late Louis Gossett, Jr.

Back to Black 

Marisa Abela stars in this biopic of singer Amy Winehouse, who scored major hits in the 00’s and set the record for the most Grammys won in one night. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson tries to separate the tabloid hype from the real person, who died in 2011 at age 27. 

The Blue Angels

This new documentary takes IMAX back to its roots as the biggest documentary format. The U.S. Navy’s aviation demonstration team features some of the best pilots in the world. The film gets up close and personal with them, as they get up close and personal with each other while flying F-18s at 300 mph.

Flash Gordon

The Time Warp Drive-In returns for May with the theme Weird Realms. It’s three sci-fi movies from the ’80s that feature extreme visuals unlike anything else ever filmed. In the early 1970s, after George Lucas had a major hit with American Graffiti, he wanted to do a remake of Flash Gordon, which had started as a comic strip before being adapted into one of the original sci-fi serials in the late 1930s. Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis refused to sell him the movie rights to Flash Gordon, which he had purchased on the cheap years before, so Lucas decided to do his own version. That became Star Wars, and you may have heard of it. After Lucas struck gold, De Laurentiis decided to finally exercise his option. His Flash Gordon, which featured visuals inspired by the classic comics, didn’t impress sci-fi audiences upon its 1980 release, but has proven to be hugely influential in the superhero movie era. The best parts of the film are the Queen soundtrack and Max von Sydow (who once played Jesus) chewing the scenery as Ming the Merciless. To be fair, there’s a lot of scenery to chew on.

The second film on the Time Warp bill is The Dark Crystal. Muppet master Jim Henson considered this film his masterpiece, and the puppetry work is unparalleled in film history. If you’re only familiar with the story through the Netflix prequel series (which was also excellent), this is the perfect opportunity to experience the majesty of the original.

The final Time Warp film was Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Blade Runner. Legend has it that the unicorn shots in Blade Runner were actually Scott using that film’s budget to shoot test footage for Legend. A really young Tom Cruise stars with Mia Sara in this high fantasy adventure. Again, the best part of the film is the villain. Tim Curry absolutely slays as Darkness, while sporting one of the best devil costumes ever put to film.

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Film Features Film/TV

Nightmare Alley

Bradley Cooper stars as Stan, an ambitious carny who seduces psychologist Lilith (Cate Blanchett), who just might be more dangerous than he is.

The United States won the propaganda portion of World War II by emphasizing the better angels of our nature. Our individual freedoms of expression, rule of law, and economic self-determination were superior to the dehumanizing groupthink of the fascists. Later, this same formula was successfully brought to bear on the authoritarian communists of the Soviet Union. But after the war, G.I.s who were fighting for this vision of ultimate human freedom returned home to an imperfect country of widespread economic inequality, racism, and religion-driven patriarchy, where criminals and liars prospered while good people were ground down by the brutalities of capitalism.

It was taboo to talk openly about such things during the triumphal postwar era, but beginning in 1944 with Double Indemnity, the discontents coalesced into a new kind of crime film. For Hollywood, centering the criminal was nothing new; Jimmy Cagney had made a career out of playing charismatic psychopaths in the 1930s. But this movement, which the French dubbed film noir, was something different. Cagney’s gangsters were self-made men, but film noir rejects the idea that we are masters of our own fate. The noir antihero is not empowered by his dreams, but rather brought low by his ambition. The land of opportunity is full of tricksters and confidence men, but the one mark you can never fleece is the mark within.

William Lindsay Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley was first adapted for film in 1947, during the height of the noir movement. Set in the world of cheap carnivals and spiritualist swindlers, it’s an atypical noir. There’s no tough-guy detective, and the femme fatale doesn’t show her cards until the climax. But its spooky world-building and uncompromisingly bleak vision of humanity resonated with director Guillermo del Toro, who adapted the story as his follow-up to his 2017 Best Picture winner The Shape of Water.

The director has said this is his first film without a monster, but that’s not true. The monster wears the face of Bradley Cooper as Stan, a down-on-his-luck drifter who finds work at a traveling carnival, run by Clem (Willem Dafoe). He is befriended by Pete (David Strathairn), a hard-drinking carny who takes pity on the penniless stranger, and whom Stan instantly betrays by sleeping with his wife Zeena (Toni Collette). Pete and Zeena’s spiritualist act once made them the toast of Europe, but now Zeena fleeces the rubes as a psychic and tarot reader while trying to keep Pete from drinking himself to death. Stan hectors Pete into teaching him the secrets of cold-reading a mark. When Pete finally succumbs to alcoholism, Stan steals his book of tricks and absconds with cute fellow carny Molly (Rooney Mara).

We catch up with the couple in New York, where they’re selling out fancy nightclubs every night with a mix of fake mind-reading and mumbo jumbo. When Stan is presented with a particularly rich mark in the person of gangster Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), he seduces psychologist Lilith (Cate Blanchett) into divulging her client’s deepest secrets.

Cooper, playing a part originated by the great Tyrone Power, is perfect. You might think, because he gets the most close-ups, that he’s the hero, but Stan is under no such delusions. He tells Lilith that he’s attracted to her because “You’re no good, just like me.” The genius of the story is how every step down Stan’s path to damnation is just a slight escalation from his last lie. Blanchett plays the Hitchcockian ice queen you always knew she had in her, while Collette is a Cassandra whose warnings of the ruin caused by misusing the tools of a perfectly respectable con are ignored. Also great are Willem Dafoe having the time of his life as a sleazy but articulate carny and Mary Steenburgen as a grieving mother taken in by Stan’s rackets.

Veering from the grubby midway to the resplendent art deco interior of Lilith’s office, Nightmare Alley is visually ravishing. It had the misfortune of being buried at the box office by Spider-Man: No Way Home and Omicron, but hopefully its well-deserved Best Picture nomination will help bring a new audience to this mini masterpiece of neo-noir. After all, Nightmare Alley’s dark vision of America as a utopia for confidence men and carnival barkers has never felt more relevant.
Nightmare Alley is streaming on Hulu.

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Film Features Film/TV

A Star Is Born

When David Bowie met Cameron Crowe, then an 18-year-old writer who had been assigned to interview the superstar for Rolling Stone, he had this advice: “Don’t expect to find the real me, the David Jones underneath all this.”
From the outside, Bowie had it all in 1975: He was the toast of Los Angeles, the biggest music star of the decade, who had just finished filming his first starring movie role in The Man Who Fell to Earth, and he was about to embark on a world tour. But really, he was a man on the verge of physical and psychic collapse, living on cocaine, whole milk, and red peppers (to stave off scurvy), unable to trust anyone or enjoy anything. He was hollowed out by fame.

When we meet Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) in A Star Is Born, he isn’t that far gone yet, but he has broken the “handful of pills and gin before stage time” barrier. His dad rock stylings are still filling ampitheatres and earning him choice festival slots. But he can’t get no satisfaction, and the nagging feeling that he should be having fun makes him want to smash up a few pills with his cowboy boot and snort the powder.

Bradley Cooper (left) and Lady Gaga shine in the Cooper-directed remake of A Star Is Born.

Adrift after a successful show, he wanders into a drag bar for a nightcap and stumbles upon the find of his life. Ally (Lady Gaga) is a waitress, just off her shift, who performs with the voice and stage presence of … well, Lady Gaga. It’s pretty much love at first sight for Jackson, but Ally is wary. She’s a working-class Long Island girl who knows a spiraling drunk when she sees one.

Their long first night, which takes up at least 20 percent of A Star Is Born‘s running time, is the best part of the picture. Cooper is one of the few capital-M Movie Stars we have left here in the ruins of the 21st century, and Gaga’s secret weapon is the decade she spent in acting classes at the Lee Strasberg institute. Their chemistry is deep, and Cooper, who also directed, luxuriates on the details of their budding bad romance. After she punches a cop (it’s a hell of a first date), they write a song together in a grocery store parking lot. Then, he’s back on the road, and she’s back home with her crusty limo driver dad (Andrew Dice Clay) and her job waiting tables.

But Jackson isn’t ready to let it go, and he sends his driver to whisk her away from the restaurant floor and onto the stage at his next concert, where they sing their first duet. A Star Is Born has now been remade three times, and this sequence is the essence of the story’s appeal. A talented unknown is whisked from obscurity and elevated instantly to the height of success, without the intervening years of struggle and disappointment that Stefani Germanotta went through before becoming Lady Gaga.

The character trajectories for Ally and Jackson form a perfect X: She starts low and ends up high, while he does exactly the opposite. Cooper is at his best, subdued, subtle, without any of the mugging he sneaks into David O. Russell films. Gaga is both unmannered and layered. Like Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, she knows on some level that this is all going to end badly, but she can’t help herself. It certainly helps the progression of the story that Cooper is a passable belter at best, while Gaga sings with surgical precision.

This is high melodrama of a kind rarely seen these days, or executed this well at any time. Cooper’s direction shows an unexpectedly deft hand, even if he does linger a little too long on his own character’s final downfall. He and cinematographer Matthew Libatique have been watching a lot of Kubrick, with strict, symmetrical compositions popping up at key moments in the story. Ally is introduced in the center of a series of vanishing point shots, so she appears to have lines of pent up energy radiating from her. Later, when she and Jackson perform their first duet, they’re framed with angelic lens flare halos.

A Star Is Born is always the meta-story of fame as conceived in the time it is made. For Judy Garland in 1954, that meant success in MGM musicals. For Lady Gaga, it’s Bonnaroo, Coachella, and Red Rocks. We already know how this meta ends: Lady Gaga becomes a superstar. What the woman who achieved immortality by bungee jumping into the Super Bowl understands is that her fans (represented here by the drag performers she started out with) want to see the “real person” beneath the meat dress. And so she puts on an uncanny front of vulnerability in her first starring role. I suspect Stefani Germanotta and David Jones would have had some very interesting conversations.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Avengers: Infinity War

Doctor Who premiered November 22, 1963. It was an immediate hit, and over the years the hokey show about a time-traveling weirdo became a cultural touchstone. By 1983, the production team was at the height of its powers. The lead role was in the hands of the young and charismatic Peter Davidson, and the budgets were bigger than ever. In the post-Star Wars afterglow, the show finally made the jump to America. The BBC decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary with the greatest crossover event in television history: They would bring together all the actors who had ever played the Doctor for one universe-shattering adventure. After months of hype, “The Five Doctors” premiered on November 23, 1983. It was a disaster.

Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), newly minted beardo Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and supersoldier in perpetual distress Bucky Barns (Sebastian Sam) defend Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity Wars.

Getting the giant cast together was a nightmare of bruised egos and diva behavior. The most important actor, Tom Baker, pulled out late in the process, so writer Terrance Dicks had to rewrite around some clips of Baker salvaged from a scrapped episode. The ratings were good, but not significantly better than a normal week’s viewership.

Worst of all, “The Five Doctors” exposed the weaknesses that the show’s fanbase had learned to overlook. There were still great moments to come—in 1984, the series produced “The Caves of Androzani”, now regarded as an all time high—but viewership faltered, and before the decade was out, Doctor Who was cancelled. In the internet comment board fever swamps, this is what’s known as “jumping the shark.”

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) get lost in space.

Picking up where Thor: Ragnarok left off, Avengers: Infinity Wars gets off to a strong start. Spaceships full of refugees from destroyed Asgard are intercepted by Thanos (Josh Brolin), who slaughters them and extracts the Infinity Stone from the Tesseract held by Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) narrowly escapes the destruction and rides the Rainbow Bridge, opened by Heimdal (Idris Elba) to Earth, where he warns Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Tony Stark (Robert Downy, Jr.) of Thanos’ plan to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of immense power that control Mind, Soul, Space, Time, Power, and Reality, and use them to destroy half of all life in the universe.

One thing Infinity War has going for it that other superhero movies have struggled with is a compelling villain. Brolin’s Thanos, until now a barely glimpsed, purple skinned mound of muscle, turns out to be surprisingly complex. He gets some fine scenes with his two adoptive daughters, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gilian, who has emerged as one of the best Marvel actors). Directors Anthony and Joe Russo are at their strongest when they take time to concentrate on pairs of characters, such as the doomed romance between Vision (Paul Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), or the science/magic rivalry between Stark and Strange. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor gets paired off with Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and teenaged Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), which makes for some pleasantly goofy comedy beats. But everything else seems rushed, thin, and worst of all, calculated for maximum fan service, such as when the Guardians of the Galaxy are introduced singing along to The Spinners’ “Rubberband Man”. Our heroes make a stand in Wakanda, but the snap Ryan Coogler brought to Black Panther is missing. The potentially touching reunion of Banner and Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) is completely botched.

Thanos (James Brolin) seeks radical glove improvement. Also, genocide.

What ultimately sinks Infinity War is the unsolvable problem that sank “The Five Doctors”—the need to fit in references to 19 other Marvel movies. This is a film designed for superfans, and it could please many. But there inevitably comes a moment in long, episodic serials when the audience realizes that the catharsis they seek will never come. The demands of capitalism means there can never be a satisfying ending, and each installment of the story is reduced to a commercial for the next one. One way to read the ending of Infinity War is as a bold departure from formula. Another, more accurate way to read the ending is the plot equivalent of the moment in A Christmas Story when Ralphie uses his new Little Orphan Annie decoder ring to discover that the secret message is “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”. It’s the moment when all of the superheroes team up to collectively jump the biggest, most expensive shark of all time.

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Film Features Film/TV

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 never gets better than its opening sequence. To bring Vol. 1 to a successful conclusion, Groot, the mono-phrased, living tree-man portrayed, as far as it goes, by Vin Diesel, had to sacrifice himself. But, since he’s a tree, he budded and was replanted by his platonic life partner Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) — now known simply as Rocket, because apparently it’s okay to have a talking raccoon heavy weapons specialist in your movie, but using the word “Raccoon” in his name is just a step too far for the Disney marketing department.

Anyway, Groot has now grown enough to walk, and when you’re traveling in Star-Lord’s company, you’re going to get into some weird scrapes. The camera follows Baby Groot through a battle with a rando glitter octopod, introducing the perpetually bickering Guardians of the Galaxy in turn: the giant, blue Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), green-skinned daughter of Thanos Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and the self-appointed Star-Lord, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). Like most of the rest of the movie, it’s practically all computer animated, but director James Gunn and the Marvel team simulate an Alfonso Cuaron-style, single take tracking shot focusing on what all the laser-fueled mayhem looks like to the sapling Groot.

In addition to being visually thrilling, the shot immediately establishes Baby Groot as the audience surrogate and sets the tone for what we’re about to see: spectacular scenes of stylized, bloodless battle delivered with a wink and nudge.

Science fiction started out in the 1800s as a fairly serious-minded enterprise. Then in the early 1900s, it devolved into lurid stories for pulp magazines. Since then, sci-fi books and movies have either embraced the pulp tradition or pushed against it — is it better to be respectable, or is it better to be fun? It seems weird that Arrival and Barbarella are in the same genre, but they represent its two extremes. Star Wars straddled the line between serious and silly by mapping pulp tropes onto a mythological framework. Perhaps because its source material is the descendant of the pulp magazine, comic books, Guardians of the Galaxy sees no need to feign seriousness. Gunn and company just go for whatever feels good from moment to moment. They’ve got jetpacks, and they’re not afraid to use them.

And I’ll have to say, it’s pretty refreshing. We live in, as Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, the Dark Times. We need escapism. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is providing exactly what Hollywood has historically done best: cinematic comfort food.

The Character Formerly Known As Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel).

Zoe Saldana as Gamora

Besides, Kurt Russell is in it. He plays Ego, the Living Planet, who is pretty self explanatory. The question of whether or not Ego is Star-Lord’s long-lost father provides the plot-like structure to prop up one eye-popping space action sequence after another from Disney’s golden hoard of digital artists. It’s a tribute to Chris Pratt’s charisma that he can share scene after scene with Russell and not be overwhelmed by the actor’s epic facial hair.

The other bit of silly alchemy that continues to work for the Guardians franchise is marrying 1970s cheese rock with insane space action. Both Star Trek: Beyond and Doctor Strange tried the same trick, only to fall flat. Guardians nails it repeatedly. Sure, he’s got a knack for snappy dialog and endearing character beats, but Gunn’s unerring ear is his secret weapon.

It’s cool to be back in these characters’ colorful, crazy world, but the story seems like a thin, disjointed collection of leftover ideas. The swashbuckling is first rate, but the scale of the violence and the casualness with which it is dispatched by our heroes is occasionally icky. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may not be a masterpiece, but it’s a movie that knows exactly what it’s trying to accomplish. Sometimes, that’s enough.

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Film Features Film/TV

Joy

Film is the most collaborative of media. There’s a tendency to give all the credit or the blame to the director, and, as the person conducting the orchestra, direction can make or break a movie. But, as much as they’d sometimes like to, directors can not do everything themselves, so they must find collaborators they trust. The business of filmmaking being what it is, it is a rare thing when a director can gather a trusted band of collaborators for more than one film. In the case of those who can, like Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson, their films become more like albums from a rock band. There are perfect albums, on which every song is a hit, and then there are the records with a few good songs and some filler.

Over the course of his last three films, David O. Russell has found a band who can play the music he writes. There’s longtime sideman and occasional writing partner Bradley Cooper, soul survivor Robert De Niro, and his lead singer and muse, Jennifer Lawrence. The band’s first film together, 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook, crackled with life and promise. Their second, American Hustle, shows a band who has worked out their chemistry and gained the confidence to explore new territory. Their third film, Joy, has a few good songs and a lot of filler.

Jennifer Lawrence in Joy

As it begins, Joy tells you it is “Inspired by the stories of daring women. One in particular.” Lawrence plays Joy Mangano, who, when we meet her, is a single mother juggling two children, a neurotic mother, Terry (Virginia Madsen), and an ex-husband, Tony (Édgar Ramírez), who is still living in her basement. Into this volatile mix drops her father Rudy (De Niro), who needs a place to stay because his current girlfriend is kicking him out.

The early scenes where we meet the family—which also include Joy’s grandmother, Mimi (Diane Ladd), who narrates the story from beyond the grave—are filled with swooping camera moves and juicy, emotional moments for the actors to chew on. The family has no problems expressing themselves, but there’s a big question as to whether their confidence translates into success or even competence. It’s invigorating at first, but as the screenplay piles on character after character and woe upon Joy, it starts to lose focus.

In a flashback inspired by tea with her best friend, Jackie (Dascha Polanco), we see how Joy’s life lost focus after she was high school valedictorian who had to turn down a college scholarship to care for her soap opera-obsessed mother. The parodic soap scenes Russell creates with the help of daytime television legend Susan Lucci and a truckload of hairspray start to seep into the dreams of the overwhelmed Joy. After enduring an embarrassing outing on a boat owned by her father’s new girlfriend, Trudy (Isabella Rossellini), Joy has a dream inspired by expired children’s cough syrup and comes up with the idea that will change her life: the Miracle Mop. Her invention of “the last mop you’ll ever need” leads her to the Pennsylvania headquarters of QVC, the pioneering home-shopping channel where Joan Rivers (played uncannily by her daughter Melissa Rivers) hawks cheap jewelry to housewives from gaudy rotating sets. QVC VP Neil (Cooper) takes her under his wing and discovers that no one can sell the Miracle Mop like its creator.

The scene where Joy makes her television debut is an epic slow burn that ranks amongst the best work Lawrence has ever done, but it’s a strong song on a weak album. The screenplay, which was also written by Russell, collapses into a jumbled mess under the weight of flashbacks and failed structural experiments. Lawrence earned a Golden Globe for her performance and is nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, and she’s fantastic. Even though most of the performances are solid, particularly De Niro and Rossellini, Russell is not able to conjure the same synergy he tapped in Silver Linings Playbook or American Hustle. Hopefully, the next album by Russell’s crack band will prove to be a comeback.

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Film Features Film/TV

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp

When I first watched the 2001 film Wet Hot American Summer, I only responded to the unexpected pang in Michael Showalter’s romantic plot and the non-sequitur trip-to-town sequence. But my 25 subsequent viewings had a Lebowski-ian effect. Everything bloomed with dry confidence. Mundane teen movie staples turned first from deadpan parody into casual emotional violence, then into reassuring absurdity. The charm was in how the movie knew when and when not to try. There were “rake gags,” where a bit went on so long it became hilariously absurd. There were moments where a key prop, stunt, or exit was left out or drastically undercut, which called attention to the ridiculousness of the actors’ histrionics. (In the update, for example, a toxic waste spill is represented by a Day-Glo green puddle.) There was also the comedic freedom of unrestrained expression without consequence. Horniness, despair, and aggression were deployed for comedic effect and then forgotten a minute later. In addition to playing with tropes, writer Showalter and director David Wain were arguing that human emotions are mechanical, that they come along regardless of whether or not there is a prop or plot to excuse their expression. Teens (and the adults playing them) flail and scream because their conditioning tells them to, then rationalize a grandiose reason later.

Postmodern prequel with an all-star cast

Fourteen years later, as a Netflix series, Wet Hot is very successful at mimicking the beats and rhythms of the original, from the bright grass greens to the absurdist, Brechtian schtick. It is a prequel, set on the first day of the camp, whereas the first one took place on the last day. Showalter, now conspicuously overweight, bewigged, and 45, is playing an even younger teenager, whose lovelorn crushes are even more about entitlement and possession. He is specifically labeled “a nice guy” who can’t deal with the fact his quasi-girlfriend (Lake Bell) wants to sleep with a visiting Israeli (Wain), who has wonderful patter: “The tongue in the mouth, it can mean so many things … This is the true meaning of community, of kibbutz.”

The scope widens to include spies and undercover reporters, but it’s basically the same as other work by Showalter and Wain, like Wainy Days and Stella. The huge cast (Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, H. Jon Benjamin) is supported by ringers (Michael Cera, Jon Hamm). The core players from comedy troupe The State are true to form, if less fresh-faced. They still make familiar Hollywood devices feel dumb and unnatural, while grounding them in feelings of longing, rejection, and the sense of otherness.

On first viewing, it’s a little too dry. Comedy that comes from character more than unbridled absurdity is better. I enjoyed another recent online show involving idiots yelling, Other Space, more for this reason. Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp is a fine example of a postmodern prequel, but it’s still a prequel, with all the expectations and emotional baggage that entails.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (January 22, 2015)

CREDIT: Carrienelson1 | Dreamstime.com

I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think I may be trending. I’m not 100 percent sure what trending really is, but I feel fairly certain that it’s a real word and that I’m doing it. Well, I’m not 100 percent sure if trending is something you actually do or if it’s something that happens to you and you are just lucky to be the recipient of it, but, by damn, I better be trending.

See, in my new role at work of being a social media poster, I’ve taken it upon myself to learn how to do it for myself first before I totally screw up the social media posting for my job. I figure if I screw up my own personal social media posts, it won’t really matter because who the hell cares? Right? Oh, I guess I could probably offend someone by accident or post something that comes across in a way that I didn’t mean for it to come across or I could just appear to be really stupid and inept, but, as it relates to me personally, I really couldn’t care less because I so rarely do anything in my personal life that requires me to leave the sanctity of my own home and interact with others, with the exception of traveling, and even then I try to keep to myself and mind my own business.

But even that can prove to be difficult when you’re packed into a small aircraft and forced to sit so close to someone that you can’t avoid physical contact with them. I was recently on a flight from Charlotte to Florida, and the woman packed into the seat beside me was breaking up with her apparently longtime significant other in a conversation on her cell phone. And she was the one who made the call. It would have been one thing if she had answered her phone and the conversation ended up being that kind of a phone call, but no, she initiated the argument herself, seated so close to me that our elbows were unavoidably rubbing against each other.

And she was not holding anything back, from what I could tell. It was along the lines of, “You are such a f–king piece of s–t! And you’re not getting custody of the f–king dog! I used to really love you, but you f–king ruined all that! Your cooking tastes like s–t! I’m hanging up now!”

But she wouldn’t hang up. She kept railing on and reaming the person out and every third or fourth sentence was, “I’m hanging up now!” Finally, the flight attendant said that all cell phones must be turned off for takeoff. But she still didn’t hang up and kept repeating, “You’re not getting custody of the f–king dog!”

But I digress. The thing about trending is that I could have secretly videotaped this woman’s conversation and put it on YouTube and gotten, say, 4 million hits and could have been invited to the “Orange Room” on the Today Show as someone who was trending. I’m not 100 percent sure how many hits one has to have to be trending, but I’m pretty sure it would have trended.

A few weeks back, when I decided to embrace Facebook on my own personal page that has been dormant since 2009, I posted a question. I’d received a menacing message from someone I didn’t really recall and with whom I was certainly not Facebook friends, harassing me about something that happened TWO DECADES AGO when I was the first editor of this newspaper. He was still mad because I wouldn’t publish some piece of crap he had written that he thought was very clever. So I asked people on Facebook if I should be worried about this guy and his inability to let go of this grudge.

I got a lot of responses, including several from people I don’t even know, with suggestions ranging from call the cops to invite him to meet me in a dark alley and kick his ass to publish his name and warn others about him. It was awesome to read all the remarks, like them, comment on them, and share them. I’m 100 percent sure I was trending with that one.

Oh, and I finally figured out who the guy was. I won’t mention his name here, but I do sort of recall that he was a rather unattractive (not his fault, of course, and I’m no hottie) exhibitionist who made my skin crawl. I didn’t report him because I didn’t know who to report him to, but I blocked him and felt very empowered.

And speaking of which, am I the only person in the world who believes that the hacking of Sony Pictures in regard to the movie The Interview had nothing to do with North Korean hackers? To me, it all smacked of a publicity stunt, and it’s embarrassing that it was referred to as “an act of war.”

I have every intention of trending about this at some point in my life when I figure out what trending really is. Would someone please comment on that remark, share it, and cause it to trend? I’ll check it later to see if it performs 80 percent better than my other posts this week.

I’ve also been tweeting, and ask now of the first “t” in tweeting should be capitalized. Haven’t figured that out yet. I even used a hashtag and got on John Legend’s Twitter feed or RSS feed or whatever it is. I was so impressed with myself.

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Bradley Cooper

The thing that got me thinking about all this is that I noticed earlier today that controversial filmmaker Michael Moore is on Twitter. It seems that he sent out a tweet, or Tweet, about Bradley Cooper’s new Clint Eastwood-directed film American Sniper being too “pro-war” or something like that. I haven’t seen the movie yet but my initial reaction is that Moore has sold out by being on Twitter and should make a spoof movie about the social media platform (did I just write the phrase “social media platform?”) and leave Cooper alone. I don’t like people messing with my Bradley. In fact, I’m going to tweet, or Tweet, Brad letting him know I think he’s the the best actor in the movie business right now. I wonder if that will make me trend.

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Film Features Film/TV

Silver Linings Playbook

Writer-director David O. Russell had a commercial and industry breakthrough with his last film, 2010’s The Fighter, which garnered multiple Oscar nominations and became the filmmaker’s biggest box-office hit.

Russell’s follow-up, Silver Linings Playbook, has some similarities to The Fighter. Both are city-based stories (The Fighter was Boston; Playbook is Philadelphia) about dysfunctional families. But the new film, based on a novel by Matthew Quick, is less a genre picture. Instead, it’s a fruitful return to the style of shaggy, neurotic comedy — such as Spanking the Monkey or especially Flirting With Disaster — that launched Russell’s career.

Silver Linings Playbook stars Bradley Cooper as Pat Solitano, a bipolar former high school teacher who, at the outset, is released from a mental hospital following an initially mysterious violent episode that landed him there. Pat returns to live with his parents — nervous, willfully optimistic mother Dolores (Jacki Weaver) and skeptical father Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro). Pat’s reentry is complicated when he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), the recently widowed and almost as troubled sister of Pat’s best friend’s wife, and a wary friendship-cum-courtship ensues.

What follows from there isn’t easily synopsized, and narrative is secondary to performance and social detail anyway. At its best, Silver Linings Playbook has the spirit of a classic screwball comedy, with attractive leads engaged in complicated flirtation amid crazy plot twists and colorful supporting players. But it transforms this old style into something contemporary, suffused with broken families, name-brand medications, and the National Football League.

The casting of Cooper sometimes feels a little off. While he’s more than game, he’s almost too hunky for the role. When he dons an Eagles jersey, he seems like a player, not like a high school teacher as super-fan. Lawrence, in her first major adult role after the indie breakout in Winter’s Bone and commercial breakthrough in The Hunger Games, shows a surer hand, ably balancing tough and tender. And Weaver, an Australian actress who was an Oscar nominee for the recent crime-family flick Animal Kingdom, and De Niro, giving perhaps his most purposeful performance since 2000’s Meet the Parents (and in the same gruffly comic tone) are well-matched.

At times, Silver Linings Playbook reminds me of John Cassavetes’ ostensibly more serious ’70s indie touchstone A Woman Under the Influence, where the line between those who are thought to be mentally unstable and those who are not is more a matter of official declaration than reality. That’s a difficult tightrope to walk in a screwball romance, and Russell’s film wobbles in spots. But it’s still an unusually homey and enjoyable modern Hollywood comedy.

Silver Linings Playbook

Opening Wednesday, November 21st

Ridgeway Four