Tag: Paul Dano

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Batman

Robert Pattinson is the Batman in The Batman.

Batman is the most capitalist of superheroes. Superman is an immigrant, raised by farmers, who moved to the big city to become a journalist. Spider-Man is from the urban working class, the first in his family to go to college, who struggles to pay the rent. Bruce Wayne is the scion of a billionaire family who never had to work a day in his life. He lives in a city plagued by squalor and poverty, but when he is personally affected by street crime, he doesn’t pledge a part of his vast fortune to improve the lives of the most wretched, but instead decides to spend a mint on weapons, dress like a bat, sneak around at night, and beat up people. 

This is not a new criticism of the most popular superhero of the last 30 years. In Watchmen, Alan Moore made his antihero Rorschach the mirror of Batman in every respect except one: He’s dog-food-eating poor. Stripped of Batman’s playboy persona and big house, Rorschach’s secret identity Walter Kovacs is a violent, paranoid vigilante obsessed with right-wing media. Bruce Wayne is not a hero — he’s a traumatized psychotic with messianic delusions whose violent tendencies are enabled by his great wealth. That’s not really the sympathetic framing you want for your comic book hero, especially now, when the pandemic has laid bare the oligarchs’ inhuman greed.

Director Matt Reeves does attempt to address that less than generous framing in The Batman. His Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) is a rich heir who lives in a Trumpian tower penthouse, but early in the film, Alfred (Andy Serkis) tries to get him to meet with the Wayne Corp accountants, who are apoplectic because of Bruce’s excessive spending and neglect of the core businesses. Bruce isn’t really into that capitalism stuff. He wants to be left alone to use his tactical bat gear and jet car to fight crime. Like Rorschach — and another psycho vigilante, Travis Bickle — we hear Bruce’s thoughts through his journal entries. 

Jeffrey Wright as Lieutenant Gordon, the last good cop in Gotham.

Gotham is plagued by a serial killer who is targeting the rich and powerful, beginning with the mayor. When Batman is called in to assist with the investigation by Lieutenant Gordon (Jeffery Wright) to investigate, Reeves teases out the Sherlock Holmes in the character’s DNA and lets Bats do some actual detecting. It seems the mysterious Riddler (Paul Dano) is leaving greeting cards addressed “To The Batman” at each crime scene. Bruce’s investigation leads him to Selena Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), a waitress braving crappy electronic music to work in a sprawling warehouse nightclub run by the Penguin (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell). “You have a lot of cats,” says the guy dressed as a bat when he breaks into her apartment. 

Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman confronts the Bat-guy.

Turns out, Selena is plotting elaborate revenge on the crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro). Is everyone in Gotham some kind of costumed maniac? Only the ones who aren’t cops on the take. The bat and the cat team up with Gordon to take down both a web of corrupt city officials (which included Bruce’s beloved dead father), The Riddler, and Falcone’s criminal syndicate. 

You might think that’s a lot to fit in a movie, but this one is 176 minutes long, so there’s plenty of time for too many bad guys, multiple false endings, and loving close ups of the Batmobile. Much of it works when taken on its own terms. Pattinson smears his eyeliner and broods with the best of them. The new Batmobile looks cool. Wright and Turturro own the screen. Dano is the best psychotic bat-villain since Jack Nicholson put on the Joker paint in 1989. 

But none of it can overcome the fact that this is yet another gritty reboot of Batman. Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne was an emotionally crippled PTSD case during the first Bush administration. His chemistry with Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman was electric. But instead of dripping weaponized sexuality, a chaste Kravitz Kubrick-stares her way through repetitive set pieces. How can you cast two of the sexiest people on the planet as forbidden lovers and create not a single spark on screen — even when one of them is armed with a taser? 

There’s a good two-hour film buried in this bladder-busting, three-hour mess. If it had climaxed with the crackerjack scene where Batman confronts an incarcerated Riddler, I’d be singing a different tune. Instead, The Batman cops out and goes on for another 45 minutes of generic henchmen punching. “Maybe this is the end of the Batman,” muses a disillusioned Bruce Wayne. We should be so lucky. 

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man hits theaters with quite an advance buzz. Vanity Fair said it could be the strangest movie in the history of the Sundance Film Festival. I can’t say if that’s the case or not, but it’s certainly in the running.

The film was written and directed by Daniel Scheinert and Dan Kwan, collectively known as Daniels. The duo of Daniels created the video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s megahit “Turn Down for What,” which is one of the most demented dance videos since Spike Jonze sent Christopher Walken flying through the air for Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice.” But if that’s not enough Daniels for you, the film stars another one. Yes, that’s Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, as Manny, the titular corpse whose advancing state of decomposition imbues him with strange powers.

The most senior member of the creative team not named Daniel, Paul Dano, is the other half of this epic two-hander. He stars as Hank, an everyman stranded on an unnamed Pacific island. The opening images of various bits of trash Hank has sent floating into the sea with messages like “HELP ME” lead straight into a shot of the castaway fitting his neck into a makeshift noose. It’s a brilliant little bit of visual storytelling that condenses a whole story of hope and desperation into a few seconds. Just as Hank is about to step off into oblivion, he sees Manny wash up on the shore. Thinking his rescue is at hand, Hank narrowly avoids strangling himself, only to find that his would-be savior is not only dead, but also posthumously flatulent. But Hank quickly discovers that Manny is so supernaturally flatulent that he is able to propel himself through the water, and thus does the guy who played Brian Wilson ride the corpse of the guy who played Harry Potter like a fart-powered jet ski to freedom.

Daniel Radcliff (left) and Paul Dano in a film about farts and friendship

Or so he thinks. Just getting to the mainland doesn’t solve Hank’s castaway problem. Now he’s lost in the coastal rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, with nothing but a stiff for company. But Manny turns out to be a most versatile corpse, and when Hank the castaway starts talking to him out of desperation for human companionship, Manny eventually starts responding. Having hit the functional edge of their concept, Daniels turn Swiss Army Man into a kind of Man From Mars story. Manny has no memory of his life, but he has a lot of questions, which forces Hank to try to explain concepts like love and home and bus fare. Thus, the suicidal castaway and the flatulent dead guy regain the will to live together, and along the way figure out a kind of philosophy.

Hank’s arc is something akin to Tom Hanks’ travel from despair to joie de vivre in the 1990 cult classic Joe Versus the Volcano, and Hank’s habit of creating little worlds out of trash is very Michel Gondry. Swiss Army Man is a worthy successor to the great works of 21st-century surrealist quirk like Being John Malkovich. What at first seems like a premise that’s just strange for the sake of being strange opens up into a wider exploration of what it means to be alive, punctuated with fart jokes. Swiss Army Man is not quite an allegory, but it’s at least a rich, thoughtful film that shows what comedy can be capable of.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Year in Film 2015

It’s fashionable to complain about how bad Hollywood movies have become. But from the perspective of a critic who has to watch it all go down, it’s simply not the case. At any given time in 2015, there was at least one good film in theaters in Memphis—it just may not have been the most heavily promoted one. So here’s my list of awards for a crowded, eventful year.

Worst Picture: Pixels

I watched a lot of crap this year, like the incoherent Terminator Genysis, the sociopathic San Andreas, the vomitous fanwank Furious 7, and the misbegotten Secret in Their Eyes. But those movies were just bad. Pixels not only sucked, it was mean-spirited, toxic, and ugly. Adam Sandler, it’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire.

Actually, I take that back. It hasn’t been a good run.

Most Divisive: Inherent Vice

Technically a 2014 release, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ode to the lost world of California hippiedom didn’t play in Memphis until January. Its long takes and dense dialogue spun a powerful spell. But it wasn’t for everyone. Many people responded with either a “WTF?” or a visceral hatred. Such strongly split opinions are usually a sign of artistic success; you either loved it or hated it, but you won’t forget it.

Best Performances: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room

Room is an inventive, harrowing, and beautiful work on every level, but the film’s most extraordinary element is the chemistry between Brie Larson and 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who play a mother and son held hostage by a sexual abuser. Larson’s been good in Short Term 12 and Trainwreck, but this is her real breakthrough performance. As for Tremblay, here’s hoping we’ve just gotten a taste of things to come.

Chewbacca

Best Performance By A Nonhuman: Chewbacca

Star Wars: The Force Awakens returned the Mother of All Franchises to cultural prominence after years in the prequel wilderness. Newcomers like Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver joined the returned cast of the Orig Trig Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in turning in good performances. Lawrence Kasdan’s script gave Chewbacca a lot more to do, and Peter Mayhew rose to the occasion with a surprisingly expressive performance. Let the Wookiee win.

Best Memphis Movie: The Keepers

Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s film about the people who keep the Memphis Zoo running ran away with Indie Memphis this year, selling out multiple shows and winning Best Hometowner Feature. Four years in the making, it’s a rarity in 21st century film: a patient verité portrait whose only agenda is compassion and wonder.

Best Conversation Starter: But for the Grace

In 2001, Memphis welcomed Sudanese refugee Emmanuel A. Amido. This year, he rewarded our hospitality with But for the Grace. The thoughtful film is a frank examination of race relations in America seen through the lens of religion. The Indie Memphis Audience Award winner sparked an intense Q&A session after its premiere screening that followed the filmmaker out into the lobby. It’s a timely reminder of the power of film to illuminate social change.

Best Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows

What happens when a group of vampire roommates stop being polite and start getting real? Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement and Eagle vs Shark‘s Taika Waititi codirected this deadpan masterpiece that applied the This Is Spinal Tap formula to the Twilight set. Their stellar cast’s enthusiasm and commitment to the gags made for the most biting comedy of the year.

Best Animation: Inside Out

The strongest Pixar film since Wall-E had heavy competition in the form of the Irish lullaby Song of the Sea, but ultimately, Inside Out was the year’s emotional favorite. It wasn’t just the combination of voice talent Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith with the outstanding character design of Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness that made director Pete Docter’s film crackle, it was the way the entire carefully crafted package came together to deliver a message of acceptance and understanding for kids and adults who are wrestling with their feelings in a hard and changing world.

It Follows

Best Horror: It Follows

The best horror films are the ones that do a lot with a little, and It Follows is a sterling example of the breed. Director David Robert Mitchell’s second feature is a model of economy that sets up its simple premise with a single opening shot that tracks a desperate young woman running from an invisible tormentor. But there’s no escaping from the past here, only delaying the inevitable by spreading the curse of sex and death.

Teenage Dreams: Dope and The Diary of a Teenage Girl

2015 saw a pair of excellent coming-of-age films. Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, introduced actor Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a hapless nerd who learns to stand up for himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Somewhere between Risky Business and Do the Right Thing, it brought the teen comedy into the multicultural moment.

Similarly, Marielle Heller’s graphic novel adaptation The Diary of a Teenage Girl introduced British actress Bel Powley to American audiences, and took a completely different course than Dope. It’s a frank, sometimes painful exploration of teenage sexual awakening that cuts the harrowing plot with moments of magical realist reverie provided by a beautiful mix of animation and live action.

Immortal Music: Straight Outta Compton and Love & Mercy

The two best musical biopics of the year couldn’t have been more different. Straight Outta Compton was director F. Gary Gray’s straightforward story of N.W.A., depending on the performances of Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father, Ice Cube, for its explosive impact. That it was a huge hit with audiences proved that this was the epic hip-hop movie the nation has been waiting for.

Director Bill Pohlad’s dreamlike Love & Mercy, on the other hand, used innovative structure and intricate sound design to tell the story of Brian Wilson’s rise to greatness and subsequent fall into insanity. In a better world, Paul Dano and John Cusack would share a Best Actor nomination for their tag-team portrayal of the Beach Boys resident genius.

Sicario

Best Cinematography: Sicario

From Benicio del Toro’s chilling stare to the twisty, timely screenplay, everything about director Denis Villeneuve’s drug-war epic crackles with life. But it’s Roger Deakins’ transcendent cinematography that cements its greatness. Deakins paints the bleak landscapes of the Southwest with subtle variations of color, and films an entire sequence in infrared with more beauty than most shooters can manage in visible light. If you want to see a master at the top of his game, look no further.

He’s Still Got It: Bridge of Spies

While marvelling about Bridge of Spies‘ performances, composition, and general artistic unity, I said “Why can’t all films be this well put together?”

To which the Flyer‘s Chris Davis replied, “Are you really asking why all directors can’t be as good as Steven Spielberg?”

Well, yeah, I am.

Hot Topic: Journalism

Journalism was the subject of four films this year, two good and two not so much. True Story saw Jonah Hill and James Franco get serious, but it was a dud. Truth told the story of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ fall from the top-of-the-TV-news tower, but its commitment to truth was questionable. The End of the Tour was a compelling portrait of the late author David Foster Wallace through the eyes of a scribe assigned to profile him. But the best of the bunch was Spotlight, the story of how the Boston Catholic pedophile priest scandal was uncovered, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing Spotlight all over the Oscars this year.

Had To Be There: The Walk

Robert Zemeckis’ film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who tightrope-walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, was a hot mess. But the extended sequence of the feat itself was among the best uses of 3-D I’ve ever seen. The film flopped, and its real power simply won’t translate to home video, no matter how big your screen is, but on the big screen at the Paradiso, it was a stunning experience.

MVP: Samuel L. Jackson

First, he came back from the grave as Nick Fury to anchor Joss Whedon’s underrated Avengers: Age of Ultron. Then he channeled Rufus Thomas to provide a one-man Greek chorus for Spike Lee’s wild musical polemic Chi-Raq. He rounds out the year with a powerhouse performance in Quentin Tarantino’s widescreen western The Hateful Eight. Is it too late for him to run for president?

Best Documentary: Best of Enemies

Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon teamed up with Twenty Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to create this intellectual epic. With masterful editing of copious archival footage, they make a compelling case that the 1968 televised debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal laid out the political battleground for the next 40 years and changed television news forever. In a year full of good documentaries, none were more well-executed or important than this historic tour de force.

Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road

From the time the first trailers hit, it was obvious that 2015 would belong to one film. I’m not talking about The Force Awakens. I’m talking about Mad Max: Fury Road. Rarely has a single film rocked the body while engaging the mind like George Miller’s supreme symphony of crashing cars and heavy metal guitars. Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa will go down in history next to Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Sigourney Weaver in Alien as one of the greatest action turns of all time. The scene where she meets Max, played by Tom Hardy, may be the single best fight scene in cinema history. Miller worked on this film for 17 years, and it shows in every lovingly detailed frame. Destined to be studied for decades, Fury Road rides immortal, shiny, and chrome.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Youth

About three-quarters of the way through Italian writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and his best friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) watch a totally nude Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea) slowly enter a hot tub. “Who is THAT?” Fred says.

“God,” Mick says.

Waiting to meet God is the primary theme of Youth, which recently took home Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor for Caine at the European Film Awards. When we meet Fred, the retired composer is meeting with a representative of Queen Elizabeth, who is offering him knighthood if he will only agree to come out of retirement and conduct his composition “Simple Songs” in a command performance. He refuses, citing “personal reasons.” He and Mick are staying at an ultra posh resort in the Swiss Alps that cinematographer Luca Bigazzi has a grand old time filming. But the constantly excellent food, happy-ending massages, and mediocre entertainment somehow only add to the funereal atmosphere. The name of the sculpture in the hotel lobby says it all: Alpine Prison. Fred has lost his hunger for creation, and thus his will to live.

Harvey Keitel, and Michael Caine in Youth

Mick, on the other hand, is at the hotel with a staff of writers creating his next film, which he calls “my testament.” His love of creation is intact, and that keeps his mind young, even if he can’t get it up for the fetching young prostitute who haunts the lobby.

Beside the ace cinematography, Caine and Keitel’s buddy routine is the best thing about Youth. Mick tries to puncture Fred’s growing cynicism and apathy, while Fred works hard at doing absolutely nothing. Sorrentino’s screenplay bounces the pair off of an unlikely group of well-heeled hotel guests, none of whom seem to be having any fun whatsoever. Fred’s daughter, Lena (Rachel Weisz), endures the dissolution of her marriage. Actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) is sullenly preparing for a role in a historical drama that, when revealed, gets the film’s biggest laugh. The once-youthful superstar footballer Maradona (Roly Serrano) is now morbidly obese, but still mobbed by fans. Veteran actress Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda) arrives late in the action to drop some plot bombshells and throw the most epic fit of the 2015 film season.

Caine glides through the loose collection of vignettes like some kind of ghost who hasn’t gotten around to dying yet. The slow revelation of the source of his pain is masterful and depends almost entirely on Caine’s facial control. Some of Sorrentino’s digressions work, and some of them don’t. The dialogue is occasionally clunky in an English-as-a-second-language kind of way. But as long as Caine and Keitel are around, ogling the young women and antagonizing the bored rich, Youth remains compelling.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Love & Mercy

Brian Wilson’s rise to the heights of musical genius and subsequent fall into the depths of psychosis has been ripe for a biopic for years. The transatlantic rivalry between the Beatles and the Beach Boys that pushed both bands into new creative territory is one of rock music’s greatest myths. The Fab Four’s 1965 record Rubber Soul inspired Wilson to push his studio work further with 1966’s Pet Sounds, which in turn inspired the Beatles to rip up the rule book for 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Wilson’s rejoinder was to have been an album called Smile that, Beach Boys partisans claim, would have been the greatest rock album of all time. But Wilson had a nervous breakdown in the middle of the Smile recording sessions and the rest of the band, led by Mike Love, wrested musical control away from him, ceding the field to the Liverpudlians and dooming the American band to decades of formulaic surf nostalgia.

Director Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy gives myth the film treatment it deserves, not by creating an epic clash of musical titans, but by concentrating on Brian Wilson’s point of view. Pohlad is a veteran producer whose filmography includes Brokeback Mountain, The Tree of Life, and 12 Years a Slave, so he understood that the relatively small-scale and built-in audience allowed him to take creative chances. His experiments pay off handsomely. The film shuttles back and forth between the mid 1960s and the 1980s with two different actors playing Wilson in different periods of his life. Young Brian is Paul Dano, who portrays Wilson with wide eyes and an open mind but with a stinging emotional vulnerability. Old Brian is played by John Cusack, who is as foggy and frightened as Dano is clear and focused. Using multiple actors to play a famous figure has been tried before, most notably when Todd Haynes used six actors to play Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. But here the move feels completely appropriate. Wilson has said he looks back at the time before his breakdown and can’t recognize the person he used to be.

Elizabeth Banks and John Cusack

The 1960s segments tell the story of the creation of Pet Sounds, the recording of “Good Vibrations,” and the disastrous Smile sessions. Dano is brilliant as he fights off questions from his band, including Kenny Wormald as long-suffering Dennis Wilson and Jake Abel as the ambitious Mike Love. The high point of his performance is when he sings a sweet, aching version of “God Only Knows.” But his confidence melts when confronted with his manipulative, abusive father Murry Wilson (Bill Camp).

In the 1980s, we meet Cusack’s broken, scattered, middle-aged Brian as he haltingly reaches out to Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), a glammy, Southern California Cadillac saleswoman who acts as the audience’s way into Brian’s cloistered world. Oren Moverman and Michael Lerner’s script expertly dribbles out disturbing details of the reclusive rock star lorded over by his psychiatrist, Dr. Eugene Landy, played with gleeful evil by Paul Giamatti. Cusack, who has long been trapped in his own movie star persona, digs deep into this role, nailing Wilson’s shuffling walk and his pained expressions when he tries to play piano as well as he used to. Cusack gets some of the best lines in the film, like when Brian, explaining the creative process to Melinda, says, “Every once in a while, once in a blue moon, your soul comes out to play.”

Cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman, a frequent Wes Anderson collaborator, shoots Southern California as both beautiful and alienating, as appropriate to the story. But director Pohlad’s secret weapon is his incredible sound design team, led by Eugene Gearty, who mixes snippets of Beach Boys songs with swirling, ambient sounds to reflect Wilson’s inner state. In an age where directors are content to use the unprecedented technology available in modern movie theaters just to make subwoofer “whomp” noises to telegraph dramatic moments, Pohlad and Gearty create a subtle, complex soundscape worthy of a film about a sonic genius. With a substantive story, a passionate cast and crew, and an experimental eye and ear, Pohlad has crafted one of the best movies of the year.