Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Courtesy Sony Pictures)
It’s officially spring, but the weather is looking cool and breezy this weekend, so here’s what’s on tap in movie theaters around Memphis.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Following up on Ghostbusters: Afterlife, this one reunites the cast of Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and Carrie Coon as the Spengler family who leaves Oklahoma to return to the old firehouse HQ in NYC. They arrive just in time to battle a new supernatural threat that will literally freeze the world with fear.
Kung Fu Panda 4
Jack Black is back as Po, the Dragon Warrior who is ready to ascend to a higher plane of existence, according to his master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). He takes on a new sidekick Zhen the fox (Awkwafina) to help defeat Chameleon (Viola Davis), the shape-shifting sorceress, and her army of lizards. You can tell she’s bad because she says, “We are not so different, you and I,” to the hero.
Immaculate
Sydney Sweeney stars as Cecilia, a nun sent to a new convent where something is clearly amiss. When she becomes pregnant, although still a virgin, Father Sal Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte) reveals that the real purpose of this convent is to breed a new Jesus from cloned tissue recovered from one of the nails that pierced the savior’s flesh. What could possibly go wrong?
A lot. A lot of stuff could go wrong.
Dune: Part Two
But half a billion dollars worth of Frank Herbert fans can’t be wrong! Paul (Timothée Chalamet) fights against his fate alongside his lover Chani (Zendaya) as they battle the Harkonnens’ occupation of Dune, led by the psychotic Feyd (Austin Butler). Denis Villeneuve’s sand wormy sequel is the best sci fi film since Mad Max: Fury Road.
Paul Reubens passed away last summer, but Pee-wee Herman is immortal. Sunday morning at 11 a.m. you can have brunch with Pee-wee at Black Lodge. Breakfast, mimosas, and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure will get your day off to a rollicking start. To get you hyped, here’s one of the greatest scenes Tim Burton ever directed.
Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in All the President's Men.
In my semi-regular Never Seen It column, I find an interesting person and sit down with them to watch a classic (or sometimes, not-so-classic) film they have missed. This pairing of subject and object may be the most perfect one ever. Jesse Davis recently took over the reins of the Memphis Flyer from his semi-retiring predecessor Bruce VanWyngarden. Davis had never seen the greatest film about journalism ever made, the 1976 political epic All The President’s Men. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Chris McCoy: Jesse Davis, what do you know about All the President’s Men?
Jesse Davis: Almost nothing. I know it’s based on a book of the same title by Woodward and Bernstein, and that it’s about their investigation into the break-in at the Watergate hotel. And that’s it.
138 minutes later…
CM: We’re on the record with Memphis Flyer editor, Jesse Davis. You are now a man who has seen All The President’s Men. What did you think?
JD: I really enjoyed it. It was absolutely excellent. It was a great story. I know Watergate and Nixon is one of those areas of U.S. history that attracts a lot of people, and for some of them, I’m sure, it’s because they have seen this movie. But it has struck me as something that was kind of like JFK’s assassination. There were a few events that are understandably interesting, but some of the people who are really, really, really into them do not … um … do not emit an aura of being really well put together.
CM: That’s diplomatic.
JD: I mean, like I said, I can understand the interest, but …
CM: They’re obsessions of the dirtbag left, is what you’re trying to say.
JD: That might be one way of putting it.
CM: Guilty as charged.
JD: You know, there are some things where most of the people who are interested in it, you’re like, “Oh God, are you guys okay?” I think some of my first contact with people who were really obsessed with Watergate was like that. But not everyone. I mean, it’s notably interesting. The whole truth and power and accountability dynamic is just as important today as it was in ’72. So, I mean, it’s understandable why folks would be interested. But I say all that to say that I never dove really deep. I’ve not read the book. It’s absolutely interesting to see them follow the trail.
CM: It’s a journalism procedural story, which you don’t see a lot of now. I mean, procedurals are like three hours on CBS every night, but it’s always law enforcement. It’s never journalists anymore. One of the things that’s interesting to me about this film is that journalists are the protagonist. You know, Superman was a journalist. Then there’s My Girl Friday, and lots of others. Wasn’t Mary Tyler Moore a journalist for a news station? But you don’t really see that much anymore. There was Spotlight a few years ago, which was great. Maybe part of it is that it’s just people sitting around in rooms talking.
JD: Or talking on the phone!
CM: But also, part of it is, there was a shift where people don’t trust journalists absolutely anymore. Watching it this time, I think it’s interesting that a lot of what they were doing seemed to be responding to a narrative that the Washington Post and other papers were creating together at the same time. It struck me that a lot of what the disinformation plague does is to destroy the possibility of a central narrative. So you don’t have to prove that you didn’t lie. You just have to make it so the truth is not actually knowable. That’s a big question that’s hanging over this movie: Is the truth knowable? Or are these people, in fact, like you said, “not very well put together”? Bernstein is clearly not very well put together.
JD: This is true. He’s smoking cigarettes constantly — in a restaurant, in other people’s homes, in other people’s cars, in the elevator …
CM: The elevator smoking is funny. It’s the only time anyone comments on it.
JD: Whoever the cinematographer is, [ed note: Gordon Willis] is doing things to make shots of people talking on the phone visually interesting. Maybe that’s one of the main differences, but I’m sure a lot of law enforcement is actually pretty boring.
CM: Those procedurals on CBS every night, they’re just mostly people talking in rooms, too. But every now and then, they run around and wave guns at each other.
A split diopter shot from All The President’s Men. Notice the blurry region between Redford in the foreground and the group gathered around the TV in the background.
CM: I pointed out a couple of split diopter shots, which is a thing you put on the front of a lens that has two tinier lenses with different focal lengths. There was the one shot where Woodward’s on the phone in the foreground, and I guess they’re watching some kind of sports match in the background. There’s two different planes of focus in the same shot. This is not done in post-production. It was done in-camera, live. Right when Woodward gets the information he’s looking for, the people in the background cheer. It’s real subtle. You just don’t see that anymore.
JD: It was set up under the sign for the national news desk, which I thought was nice. There’s whatever game was on the TV, and then there’s this national game going on, and Robert Redford just scored.
JD: Another thing I noticed is, when Redford’s going into the parking garage, and when they’re at work, you see all of this space around them. They’re lost in all this, whether it’s the architecture of the parking garage or the columns in the newsroom, and trying to find their way out. We know that they’re the figures we’re supposed to be paying attention to, but you see all of the Washington Post newsroom, or all of the parking garage, or a big part of the D.C. skyline. At one point, I think it was Robert Redford, maybe, walking with the Washington Monuments behind him. They’re these huge buildings, and he’s just this tiny little figure. I loved that repetition, and the difference in scales.
CM: There’s very much a sense of millions of people going on with their lives who have no idea that what this guy is doing is going to change history. It’s going to bring down the president.
Woodward meeting “Deep Throat” in a parking garage.
JD: A line I love, early on, is when their editor says about the story, “It may just be crazy Cubans.” The idea of someone saying that about this story! As an editor, that’s a pratfall. You just don’t know. There may not be a story.
CM: That was going to be my next question. You’ve been editor of the Memphis Flyer for what …
JD: Six weeks now.
CM: Ben Bradlee, who was Jason Robards, is just an absolute legend in the industry. What were you thinking about when you were watching him?
Jason Robards as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee
JD: In the beginning, everything is set up to make you feel like he is maybe one of the forces who wants to kill the story, for whatever reason. Then there’s a scene where they talked about how it could put them in legal trouble. And for all you know, it could. There’s a little while before he has this moment where he tells them about a time he screwed up, but he got the story right. But it’s a while before we get to that point, and all of his concerns are completely justified. He’s just like, look, you’ve got to have multiple sources, especially if these people aren’t letting us name them. You have to corroborate this. But we can’t know if that is really his justification, and it’s all in service of good reporting. If so, that’s great, but there’s a little bit of tension there — especially the more you start to think, “OK, there are some layers of conspiracy going on. How do I know that they didn’t get to him?” When [White House spokesman Ken W. Clawson] calls him panicking and says, “I got a wife and a family and a dog and a cat,” he’s on a first name basis with [Bradlee]. And you’re like, he’s editor of a big paper. Maybe pressure has been put on him. But then, once he gets to the point where he’s satisfied, he puts out his statement: “We stand by the story.” I’m going to keep these guys on it.
CM: And that was a crisis point in the story. That’s after they’ve been burned by their sources on purpose, to throw them off.
JD: He sensed that was what was happening.
CM: What’d you think about the actual, nuts and bolts of reporting in 1972? How does it compare to what the experience is like today?
JD: Well, first of all, Memphis Flyer is not a daily, so it’s a completely different thing.
CM: You do one layout a week. Those guys were doing layouts every day. You know, the editorial meeting scene is so fascinating to me.
JD: I love that scene. They go around, and everybody says what they’re working on, and then it’s okay, go around again. This time it’s just the really short pitch. And this is how much space you get. That was, that was great, and very different.
Hoffman, Redford, Robards, Jack Warden as Post local editor Harry M. Rosenfeld, and Martin Balsam as managing editor Howard Simons.
CM: Currently, our editorial meetings take place on Slack. But we still sit around and talk about what we’re going to put in the paper. There’s still magic in that moment, to me. There’s a romance to it, I guess.
JD: I think so, too. I mean, it’s different. They’re the Washington Post, and we’re an alt-weekly, we’re the Memphis Flyer. It’s the ’70s. It’s 2021.
CM: Not a computer in sight.
JD: When they’re going through the list of names, I thought, “Oh my God! Imagine doing this without the internet!” It’s a completely different thing. But there’s still a huge amount of talking on the phone. Now, it’s just Slack, but before the pandemic, when I was the copy editor, I walked back and forth between different parts of the office all day, every day. So there are still elements that are the same. But yeah, the editorial and layout meetings, I think are incredibly magical. They have a big enough staff that it’s like, “What things have y’all been working on that are now ready for us? What’s ripe?” There’s an element of that, but I expect you’re going to have a film review every week.
CM: There was the moment where they’ve been knocking on doors, and they haven’t produced any copy for two weeks. You know how much copy I’m expected to produce in two weeks?
JD: Oh yeah.
CM: They have an enormous amount of resources we don’t have, that barely anybody has outside of TheNew York Times or the Post or the Wall Street Journal has now.
JD: To just be able to send somebody on assignment, and tell them to keep going until you turn something up or don’t … If someone’s working on a cover story, sometimes there’s a really quick turnaround, but often, that’s something you are taking back and forth between the back burner and the hot burner until it’s scheduled to go. But it’s not like we don’t do research.
CM: Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that we don’t do research, because we absolutely do. That’s most of my time, really. But to be able to fly down to Miami, barge into the D.A.’s office, and demand they talk to me, I can’t imagine doing that and being treated with anything but contempt. It’s a great moment in the movie, because he plays this trick on the receptionist, but there’s no way I could get into the D.A.’s office, and then the D.A. does anything except have me arrested.
Hoffman, Penny Fuller as Sally Aiken, and Redford work the phones.
JD: Sometimes, you see, in a work of fiction, someone who’s a magazine writer or a newspaper writer, and they appear to have a huge budget and really flexible deadlines. And you’re just like, “Well, that’s fiction. That’s based on an old idea, a different time period.” It kind of makes me think of hard-boiled films and private detectives. How would Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade go over today? The industries are different, and the laws that have continued to grow up around policing and investigative journalism are different.
JD: One thing I noticed in two of the TV clips was, you’ve got someone talking about their sources and he uses the word “unsubstantiated.” In another, they were talking about the political leanings of the editor of the Post. First of all, just to have someone holding national office say the word “unsubstantiated,” that felt very strange, um, particularly after the last four years or so.
CM: Trump would have said, “Fake News! Enemy of the state!”
JD: Exactly. It’s the same with, “I think we can make a safe assumption about his political leanings.” I’m paraphrasing there, but that’s very different from “They’re the crooked Democrats, and we all know they want to take us down!” But it’s all of a piece …
CM: It’s the evolution of that rhetoric, which began with Nixon.
JD: You could say it’s based on logic, and maybe it is. Now, we have mutated or evolved this line of defense so it is just the quickest and most direct route to an emotional reaction: I’m under attack by these people, and you should — to use the phrase they used in the movie — circle the wagons. I’m going to protect my president from these rats.
CM: You got the sense that the people who were in Nixon’s inner circle, the Republicans he was ordering to take these illegal actions had a lot more autonomy back then. The give and take in this part of the drama is, are they going to do their duty to the country and the Constitution, or are they going to put party first? You know what they’re going to do now.
JD: Oh, well, of course!
CM: They’re going to put party first. Donald Rumsfeld died today, the day we’re recording this. Back in the Rumsfeld era, the ’00s, after 9/11, I used to sometimes read this blogger — it was the blogger era, too — called The War Nerd. One of the things he liked to say was, the more organized side is the one who usually wins. He also used to say, “The end of the world is what you call it when your tribe loses.” I feel like what we’re seeing today is like the evolution of that thinking, which is, frankly, pure fascism. That’s the definition of fascism: I have loyalty to this narrow in-group, right or wrong, rather than loyalty to the Constitution, or to the greater good, or to the nation. My faction is what’s more important. And I felt like it was really obvious from this film how far we’ve sunk.
JD: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s without question.
CM: And yet, in the Trump years, or so far, anyway, the same systems held that held against Nixon, pretty much. It just felt like a much closer thing this time.
JD: Yeah, I think so, too.
CM: Did it make you reflect on what your duty is as an editor of a paper?
JD: Well, first of all, I gotta get a good “shut the hell up” look.
CM: You gotta get that.
JD: That’s important. I’ve got to stay cool under pressure, and then know when it’s time to start dropping F-bombs, and just say, “Well, it’s only the fate of democracy and free speech. Don’t fuck it up, or I’ll get mad.” His responsibility to the truth, and to getting the reporting right, seemed to be the highest ideal. Obviously, how that affects our paper and our image is incredibly important. Everything flows from telling the story accurately. That seems to be his primary action in the film. So that first day you’re not reporting it well enough, I gotta tell you to dig deeper, and then recognize that we’re now in hot water. I will stand up. I’m with you guys. You’re showing up at my door. It’s late at night. You’re saying it’s not safe to come inside.
CM: I’m telling you we’re being bugged by the CIA. Do you believe me?
JD: Okay, let’s have this conversation on the lawn. I like to think that if any of our writers show up at my house and tell me that, I’m glad it’s the CIA! I’ll say, “God, we’ve got an amazing story here.”
CM: I’d say, “You’re aware you work for the Memphis Flyer, right?”
JD: In some ways, they lucked into things because of having people just take calls, which doesn’t happen now. Someone got into the rhythm of answering questions and said something they shouldn’t have. I don’t know that we’re necessarily going to get that as frequently as they did just by cold-calling people. Then there’s their little routine of casually dropping a piece of information that we want confirmed.
CM: We’ll pretend we already know it.
JD: Yeah, exactly. Or, we’ll argue about the details of something that we think we know, but we’re not sure we know. And then, if there’s no issue from your interview subject about the thing in question, it’s like, okay, now we really are talking about it.
CM: I actually had an opportunity several years ago to pull the “I’m going to give you some initials, and I want you to say yes or no” gag. I felt like such a badass! But the only reason I knew to do it was because of this movie. So would you recommend All the President’s Men to people?
JD: Oh, wholeheartedly. I think if you walk away from it feeling like, “This was a David and Goliath story, and I believe that can happen because it did happen and they were successful,” then that’s great. If you walk away from it thinking, “Those were some cool shots,” that’s great, too. If you walk away from it with “The truth matters and I want to help tell it,” well, that’s even better.
It’s a given that men are dogs and pigs, but, my God, the description of Harvey Weinstein’s conduct was shocking to me — then I talked to my wife. In my naivete, I never realized this ugly conduct happens all the time. Melody was and is an attractive woman, which means that since she was 16, practically every man she’s ever known has hit on her, including a cop and a former teacher. She’s seen it all — flashers, gropers, masturbaters, heavy breathers, and aggressive advances from acquaintances and co-workers both young and old.
And her female friends said these encounters are common with them, as well. Everyone had a tale to tell. Some of Melody’s stories were too harrowing to repeat. Fortunately, she escaped these incidences unharmed. The 30 women who accused Weinstein of sexual abuse over 20 years weren’t so lucky. Weinstein’s victims include a Who’s Who of Hollywood actresses — Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie — and Rose McGowan, who refused a $1 million hush-money offer and called out Hollywood talent agencies as being “guilty of human trafficking.” It only took one brave woman telling her story to The New York Times to open Pandora’s Box, so to speak.
Weinstein initially denied engaging in nonconsensual sex, but his unspeakable behavior was common knowledge at Miramax, the company he founded. Weinstein has reached seven settlements with other victims.
Weinstein’s predatory conduct was appalling because it was so disgusting. He invited women to his quarters and reappeared in a bathrobe, exposing himself. Ashley Judd was asked to watch him shower. Other unassuming targets were told that watching him masturbate would help their careers. Weinstein has been accused of giving alcohol to a minor, rape, and assault.
The bloated, bearded swine blamed his behavior on coming of age in the 1960s, when the rules were different. No they weren’t. Only in Hollywood could a dirtbag feel so entitled and powerful that women would surrender to his nascent charm. He had the power to make or break an actress’ career, and if rebuffed, he would go out of his way to punish them. After the Weinstein allegations, 59 more men in politics and entertainment have been accused of abhorrent sexual behavior, and the list is growing every day.
Denis Makarenko | Dreamstime
Harvey Weinstein
For 20 years, viewers spent their mornings with Matt Lauer. After learning that he had a button under his desk to lock women in his office and pull the old Harvey Weinstein bathrobe routine, I feel duped. It’s like if Dick Van Dyke were arrested in a child pornography sting. Same goes for Charlie Rose, fired by CBS, PBS, and Bloomberg for making lewd phone calls and incidences of groping. Thoughtful and soft-spoken political analyst Mark Halperin, co-author of Game Change, masturbated behind his desk while meeting with a female colleague. The hot comic Louis C.K., writer and director of the classic movie Pootie Tang, did bits about masturbation in his stand-up act. Now we know he wasn’t kidding. Accused of exposing himself and asking women to watch him masturbate, his upcoming comedy special and a new movie release have been cancelled.
The list goes on: Kevin Spacey, Jeffrey Tambor, Dustin Hoffman, Garrison Keillor (!) for God’s sake. Bill O’Reilly paid out $13 million to five women. Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson successfully sued Fox Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes for $20 million for “unwanted sexual advances.” Ailes took the easy way out and died earlier this year. Of course, there’s accused child predator and our probable new Senator from Alabama, Roy Moore, cruising teen hangouts to make new friends. He claims all of his accusers are lying.
We have obviously reached a tipping point in male-female relationships. The old dinosaurs are going down, and the push is finally on for women to be believed. But must we blindly believe all women? Case in point is Senator Al Franken and his accuser, radio personality Leeann Tweeden. On a 2006 USO tour in Afghanistan, when Franken was still a comedian, Tweeden said Franken forcibly kissed and groped her. She later wrote Franken, “grabbed my breasts while I was sleeping and had someone take a photo of you doing it, knowing I would see it later and be ashamed.” Franken immediately apologized and called for an ethics investigation on himself, which was smart, because it could force Tweeden to testify under oath. The photo mentioned was childish and sophomoric but contradicts Tweeden’s account. She is asleep in a cargo plane wearing a flack jacket while Franken’s hands are hovering over her chest while he smiles for the camera — obviously a joke — a stupid one, but a joke just the same. Tweeden was a regular on Sean Hannity’s nightly propaganda broadcast, and a Trump supporter. Sounds like a hit job to me, yet some are demanding his resignation. Which brings us to the most blatantly hypocritical pot-and-kettle dilemma. Over the past two decades, taxpayers have paid $17 million for hush money and to settle Congressional sexual harassment charges for 264 Congressional staffers and other legislative employees. One other question remains: When is Donald Trump going to sue those 20 women who accused him of predatory sexual behavior, like he promised?
Today, as neofascist candidate Donald Trump prepares to accept the Republican nomination, I’m beginning a new series on the Film/TV/Etc blog. Politics And The Movies will run approximately weekly until the election on November 8. I’ll be examining films whose subject or themes are explicitly political in an effort to relate them to the moment where we now find ourselves.
Dustin Hoffman, Penny Fuller, and Robert Redford in All The President’s Men
All The President’s Men was released in the election year of 1976, when Republican Gerald Ford, the only American president to ascend to the office having never received a single vote for either it or the vice presidency, faced Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter, a Naval nuclear engineer from Georgia. Ford took office upon the resignation of Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate affair, which was uncovered by the reporting of Carl Bernstien and Bob Woodward. One of director Alan J. Pakula’s best touches is the way he uses the constant drum of TV news reports of the 1972 presidential election as a counterpoint to increasingly paranoid plots taking place inside the newsroom of the Washington Post. Although the media environment of the mid-70s seems completely tame compared to the ravages of the 24 hour news cycle, the jarring tonal differences between the upbeat but sober reporting of Walter Cronkite and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman)’s journalistic cloak and dagger shenanigans struck a chord with the filmgoing audience. Not only was it nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four, but it also made an impressive $70 million on an $8 million budget.
All The President’ Men is a story about the inevitable intertwining of politics and media.Watching it today, the first thing that jumps out at you is the complete lack of computers on the desks of the Post newsroom. Our heroes spend much of the film on the phone, including an incredible extended take where Woodward wakes up a White House official in the middle of the night and tricks him into incriminating himself. Redford’s words are controlled and flat, but his body language and subtle facial expressions steadily ramps up the tension. Hoffman is similarly superb, rendering Bernstein as a neurotic ball of energy held together with nicotine and coffee.
The film leans heavily on its ripped from the headlines context. Nixon had only resigned eighteen months before, so events that Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman mention in passing carried much more weight in 1976 than they do 40 years later. But the movie left indelible impressions on film history. The X-Files ripped off its scenes with mysterious informant Deep Throat wholesale, with Mulder frequently meeting his exposition partner Mr. X in shadowed car garages. 2015’s Best Picture winner Spotlight is practically a remake, substituting rapist priests for crooked politicos.
Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat.
But I think the greatest contribution to political discourse is it introduction of the term “ratfucker”. Bernstein tracks down Donald Segretti, played by Robert Walden, who was the head of dirty tricks for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Over coffee and cigs, Segretti admits that any underhanded tactic was in play against the hated Democrats, but defends himself by saying that he and his colleagues only did things with “a little wit”.
Politics And The Movies 1: All The President’s Men
The ratfuckers got fatally caught in the Watergate scandal, but the culture of dirty tricks and demonizing the opposition thrived in the Republican party for decades. From the October Surprise to the Brooks Brothers Riot to Dan Rather’s forged poison pill, ratfucking has been at the heart of right wing electoral success for the last half century. We take it for granted now, but All The President’s Men shows that the amoral, win-at-all-costs philosophy that brought us candidate Donald Trump was once so shocking that it cost a president his job. The film’s commentary on the power of the press to create and destroy leaders rings just as true today is it did in 1976, but its faith in the basic decency of the Fourth Estate and the Americans who follow it seems like a rosy anachronism.
It’s a good time to be an animation fan. Television is filled with cutting-edge work, from Adventure Time to Adult Swim. In theaters, the reign of Pixar has produced a string of masterpieces, the latest of which was last year’s Inside Out. Even though it’s been overshadowed by Pixar, and still extruding corporate product like Rise of the Guardians, DreamWorks Animation has stepped up its game after years of floundering in the Shrek doldrums, led by a panda who does kung fu.
Has there been a more obvious-only-in-hindsight film premise in recent memory than Kung Fu Panda? Once those three words were spoken in the DreamWorks executive suite sometime in the middle of the last decade, it was inevitable that they would be followed by “Get me Jack Black!” Po, the dumpling-obsessed, orphan panda turned dragon warrior, is the perfect conduit for Black’s hyperkinetic charisma. It would be hard to imagine the franchise banking a billion and a half bucks without Black providing Po’s animus.
But this installment of the panda’s adventures in the stylized feudal Chinese setting of the Valley of Peace has more going for it than just Black. It seems to be one of those rare bits of corporate synergy where the right players were assembled, beginning with director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, a 43-year old Korean American whose work on Kung Fu Panda 2 made her the highest-grossing female director of all time. For this installment, Nelson shares the big chair with longtime DreamWorks animator Alessandro Carloni, and their direction keeps Kung Fu Panda 3 nimble and assured.
The film opens in the spirit realm, where Grand Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), having achieved ultimate enlightenment, is chilling on a Roger Dean-inspired floating rock, when he is attacked by his old enemy Kai (J.K. Simmons). The immortal bull-being wants to collect Oogway’s qi, or spiritual energy, and use it not to conquer at Scrabble (where qi is valuable because it is a “q” word you can play without a “u” in your rack, and also because its alternate spellings “ki” and “chi” are legal words), but to bring the entire world under his hoof. Any movie that starts off with a bull and turtle battling through the astral plane with magical, zero-G kung fu has my attention.
Meanwhile, back in the land of the mortal anthropomorphic animals, Po’s teacher Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is retiring and appointing Po as his successor at the Jade Temple kung fu school, just in time for our hero to fight off an onslaught by Kai and his pop-up army of jade zombies. Po’s worldview is further shattered by the arrival of his long-lost father, Li Shan (Bryan Cranston), who offers to take him home to the secret, Shangri-la-like village of pandas to perfect his knowledge of qi (which will get you 33 points on a Triple Word Score). Po’s adopted father Mr. Ping (legendary character actor James Hong, who achieved immortality as Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China) is suspicious, and tags along for the journey, leaving Po’s sidekicks the Furious Five to fight a rear-guard action against the rampaging Kai.
Flowing freely between styles inspired by anime, Pixar, and Asian woodcuts, Kung Fu Panda 3 is easily the most visually lush film DreamWorks has ever produced. The combination of the over-the-top aesthetic of Chinese wuxia films with the Western animated tradition, where animals like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny assume human traits, has produced a cool, original cross-cultural mashup. Like the work of Jackie Chan (whose Master Monkey is all but neglected in this film), the meticulously choreographed fight sequences are played for slapstick. The basic concepts and iconography, while they may sound confusing in a review, are easily grasped by kids raised on Dragon Ball Z. Po’s journey of self-acceptance lacks the psychological insight of Inside Out, but what it lacks in sophistication it makes up for in good-spiritedness. Kung Fu Panda 3 may be empty calories, but it tastes pretty good going down.
That Eli Roth’s cannibal film The Green Inferno played as a trailer to Chef appeared to be a good omen, but Jon Favreau’s foodie film, of which he serves as writer, director, and star, is a chain restaurant movie — serving up fare that is reliable, if not spectacular.
The story revolves around Carl Casper, a chef anointed the biggest thing going in the L.A. food scene, but that was 10 years ago, and where Casper sees beauty in the greens of a bundle of beets, his boss, Riva (Dustin Hoffman), sees it in the greens of a bundle of money brought in by customers who’ve been coming back for the same decade-old menu.
A visit by an important critic finds Casper and Riva at odds. Casper wants to try something new and exciting, Riva wants to play it safe by serving the same old scallops and lava cake. The chef gets slammed by the critic, and what follows is a violent confrontation (one that is filmed and goes viral) that leaves Casper without a job and doubtful about his future. Thrown in the mix is the relationship Casper has with his 10-year-old son, who yearns to spend more time with his dad.
As a food film, Chef never reaches the heights of 1994’s Eat Drink Man Woman, but it does capture the giddiness as seen in 2009’s Julie & Julia of creating and sharing a meal so fine that the mood is electric. And, if the film doesn’t quite make you want to be a chef, it will certainly make you want a sandwich.
It’s clear that Favreau did his homework. It’s seen in such foodie flourishes as the Lucky Peach magazine in Casper’s apartment and the appearance of culinary stars like Aaron Franklin of Austin’s Franklin Barbecue and Roy Choi of the Kogi BBQ Taco Truck in L.A. At one point, Chef becomes a road-trip movie, with Casper, his right-man, and Casper’s son driving across the country, from Miami to L.A., in a food truck. The trip serves as a primer for Casper’s son — Cuban sandwiches in Miami, beignets and muffulettas in New Orleans, and Texas barbecue in Austin. (Interestingly, there is apparently nothing noteworthy foodwise between Texas and California.)
The film is well served by its supporting cast. Scarlett Johansson is Casper’s sympathetic and (duh) sexy sounding board, while John Leguizamo adds humor and energy as Casper’s sous chef. There’s a cameo by Amy Sedaris as well, stirring up memories of the fantastic Jerri Blank as the too-tan, not-hearing-a-word publicist. The film’s biggest laughs, however, go to the brief though wonderfully weird and awkward scene with Robert Downey Jr. playing the ex-husband of Casper’s ex-wife.
It’s ironic, then, that another of these supporting roles points directly to the chief weakness of Chef. Hoffman, as the nervous restaurant owner, does not want to try anything that stretches the imagination. And while Favreau’s character fights the static, Favreau as a writer and director does not push the boundaries. There are at least three musical interludes (two too many), and the ending, while pleasing, is about as pat as they come. Ultimately, Chef feeds you just enough to be satisfied.
In recent-film pitch terms, Quartet is kind of like A Late Quartet (Christopher Walken leads a chamber group) meets The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Brit retirees — including Quartet star Maggie Smith — in India).
The directorial debut of actor Dustin Hoffman, Quartet follows four tenants, all former opera singers, at Beecham House, a “Home for Retired Musicians.” Wilf (Billy Connolly) is a bit of a lech and a dandy, spending his time flirting equally with young Dr. Cogan (Sheridan Smith) and a fellow resident, the flighty, sensual Cissy (Pauline Collins). (Wilf to Cissy: “You have the nicest tits I’ve ever seen in my life.”)
Wilf also spars good-naturedly with the more reserved Reginald (Tom Courtenay). And they’re all thrown for a loop with the arrival of the still-a-diva Jean (Smith, whose profile is up at the moment via her role in the television series Downton Abbey), a prideful former star who takes an aloof approach to her new surroundings and who has a past with Reginald. Also in the septugenarian cast is Michael Gambon as the resident eccentric.
The film’s sense of class and comfort seems designed to appeal to an older, upscale audience that’s among the most reliable strands of moviegoers. There’s a hospital stay here, and some regrets, but this film isn’t about the ravages of age. It’s a light, golden-years reverie, with nice performances and chemistry among its cast but relatively low-stakes.
Hoffman makes a risky foray into Dangerous Minds/Mr. Holland’s Opus territory in a scene where Reginald teaches music to a group of high-schoolers, comparing opera to hip-hop. (“Opera is, when a guy is stabbed in the back, instead of bleeding, he sings. In rap, when he’s stabbed in the back, instead of bleeding, he speaks.”) The scene works better than you’d expect, thanks to Courtenay’s reserve, but when his character complains about the rich taking over opera, there’s a disconnect between what the film says and what it seems to be showing.
It takes awhile for Quartet‘s “let’s put on a show” plot to get rolling, with the central intrigue whether Wilf, Cissy, and Reginald can convince a reluctant Jean to join them in singing a selection from Verdi’s Rigoletto as part of Beecham House’s annual concert. As for me, as agreeable as the lead actors are, I would have enjoyed a detour into what happened with some of the more lively background residents, like the little ladies doing Gilbert & Sullivan or the jazz guys working up a soft-shoe routine.
Denis Makarenko | Dreamstime 
