A Lot Of A GHOST, Not Much STORY

Opening today at a few theaters near me:

A GHOST STORY (Dir. David Lowery, 2017)

I walked out of this extremely weird movie in a daze. I wasn’t sure what the hell it was that I just watched. I mean it’s a movie about a ghost who appears as a guy in a children’s Halloween costume - that is, seriously, a white bed sheet with eye holes.

Let me backtrack - the film begins with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as a couple living in a house in semi-rural Texas who appear to be preparing to move. Affleck gets killed in an automobile accident and we cut to Mara identifying his body at the hospital. After she places the sheet back over his head and leaves, Affleck sits up and then walks through the building’s halls unseen by anybody because, you know, he’s a ghost now.

He makes the journey back to their house and stands there motionless watching Mara as she mourns. He watches her eat a pie. A whole pie. This scene feels like it goes on forever. Mara eats until she goes to the bathroom to throw up in the background.

Time passes and the ghost stands motionless watching Mara pack up and move away. A new family made up of a single mother and her two kids move in and he watches them. One night in a fit of anger (I guess) he throws and smashes dishes in the kitchen which scares them and they move out shortly after.

Then the house appears to be taken over by hipsters who have impromptu parties with pretentious discussions. Singer/songwriter, and friend of director Lowery, Will Oldham delivers a speech about mortality and the futility of time (I think) that perhaps spells out the movie’s meaning but I dunno.

At some point, the ghost waves to another ghost (identical bed sheet situation) through the window of the house next door and they speak in subtitles with no sound (the ghosts get subtitles but the Spanish-speaking mother and her kids don’t). The other ghost says he’s waiting for someone, but he forgets who. All through this, Affleck’s ghost scratches at one of the walls trying to retrieve a tiny note that Mara’s character wrote and left in a crack.

More time passes, and the house gets demolished by bulldozers, and a shiny, modern building is built in its place where the ghost stalks the glass halls. Then we go back in time two hundred years to when European settlers were taking over the land. He stands and watches as history repeats and ends up watching Affleck and Mara again, then he watches as Affleck becomes a ghost, who he watches from behind.

I wonder how much Affleck actually visited the set because for the bulk of the movie it could’ve been anybody under that sheet. Especially since you can’t see eyes behind the holes – just darkness.

The self conscious artsiness of this film, which is all told in long, stationary shots in a square aspect ratio, makes me think that Lowery is trying to get as far away from the commerciality of his last project, PETE’S DRAGON, as he possibly can. Horror fans will likely be baffled by it because, except for the moment the bulldozer comes crashing through the wall, it’s not a scary experience. Haunting is more what Lowery was going for, but while it does indeed have some effective eeriness, it just goes on and on without a truly meaningful point to be made.

There’s maybe a good 20-minute or so short film that could’ve been made with these elements that would spare us all the existential tedium. The only story here is the passing of time, and that wasn’t enough to keep me engaged.

But it is a gutsy move for A24 to release a film such as A GHOST STORY during the overcrowded dog days of summer - I admire that - but I can only recommend this picture to people who like being weirded out – very slowly.

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Casey Affleck Carefully Carries The Moving MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Now playing at an art house or multiplex that's probably in your vicinity: 

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

(Dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)

Honestly, Casey Affleck never really made much of an impression on me before. He’s done some solid work in a bunch of films, especially as the lead in his brother Ben’s GONE BABY GONE, but I never really thought of him as one of the better actors of his generation or anything.

His impressive performance in writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s third film, MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, definitely changes that, and helps me to understand fully why there’s major Oscar buzz brewing.

Affleck plays Lee Chandler, a sullen janitor for an apartment complex in Quincy, Massachusetts, who we meet as he does his rounds. We get his daily routine – he takes shit from tenants, he gets shit about his attitude from his boss, and he ends the day getting shit-faced and starting fights at his neighborhood dive bar.

Then one day, Lee gets a call that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, playing a guy with his same last name - deal with it) had a heart attack and is in the hospital, and he immediately jumps in his truck and travels to Manchester by the Sea, the small seaside town where Lee previously lived we learn from flashbacks.

Lee gets to the hospital to find that his brother has died, and that he needs to see about taking care of arrangements which includes looking after his 16-year old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges).

At a meeting with his brother’s lawyer (Josh Hamilton) about the will, Lee is stunned to find out that he’s been made Patrick’s legal guardian, and we are even more stunned to see Lee’s flashbacks to the tragic incident that killed his two daughters, and destroyed his marriage to his devastated wife, Randi (Michelle Williams).

This, the film’s central sequence, is heart wrenching to endure, but extremely necessary as afterwards the strong sense of what tortures Lee can be felt in every Affleck affectation. Lee’s reluctance, or fear, to be a father figure to Patrick makes for some awkward moments between them, but they are real feeling portrayals of tension between family members dealing with a difficult transition.

As Affleck’s Lee is the dominating protagonist, Williams’ Randi gets a lot less screen-time, but the actress does a lot with it. Randi, now remarried and pregnant, calls Lee to ask if it’s okay if she goes to Joe’s funeral. Lee says it’s fine, and they hug when they encounter each other at the ceremony. They also run into each other later, but it would be a Spoiler to touch on that any further.

Anyway, Lee and Patrick argue over where they’re going to live as Lee doesn’t like the idea of relocating from Quincy so the film last act deals with how these people come up with a plan to go forward.

At one point, Patrick wants to go live with his mother (Gretchen Mol), a recovering alcoholic gone devout Christian who’s now living in the suburbs with new hubby Rodney (Matthew Broderick), but after an uncomfortable dinner scene, that doesn’t seem to be an option.

The unpretentious, and moving MANCHESTER BY THE SEA takes its time getting to its moments of insight, but it’s never boring along the way. It’s a well paced, lovingly detailed portrait of people trying to move forward even when they have no clue as to how.

Affleck’s carefully measured performance is indeed Oscar worthy. I may be realizing now that what he does may be so subtle that I’ve just never seen it before.

Williams also inhabits her part with conviction and the appropriate pathos. It may be a glorified sideline role, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she scored a Supporting Actress nomination as other brief but potent performances have garnered the same (see Beatrice Straight in NETWORK, and Viola Davis in DOUBT).

In addition, Hedges succeeds in being a not too self conscious representation of a modern teenager - which is no mean feat. 

In general, the excellent work that Lonergan, the cast, cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes, and composer Lesley Barber have all done here deserves all the accolades and Academy Awards it will likely get.

Now, I must note that there’s controversy surrounding a sexual harassment case against Affleck over alleged behavior on the set of I’M NOT HERE, his odd 2010 mockumentary with Joaquin Phoenix, that threatens to derail his Oscar chances.

Since it’s been settled, I doubt this film will have the same sad fate as BIRTH OF A NATION, because Affleck’s offences are less extreme than Nate Parker’s, and because the idea that Affleck’s character here is a damaged soul plodding forward after a horrible mistake is what makes this the intensely relatable, realistic experience that it is.

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TRIPLE 9: A Serviceable Off Season Heist Thriller

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

TRIPLE 9 (Dir. John Hillcoat, 2016)

A “triple 9” is slang for the police code 999, which means “officer down.” In this heavy on the grit heist thriller, it’s what a group of corrupt cops and a few criminal partners are counting on in order to pull off a dangerous job involving breaking into a heavily guarded government facility.

Sure, it sounds like a pretty standard issue premise for the February dumping ground (especially to be released on Oscar weekend), but hear me out as I had a bit of fun with it.

We are introduced to the crime busting/crime creating crew, made up of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Clifton Collins, Jr., Aaron Paul, and Norman Reedus, in an opening sequence bank heist in downtown Atlanta. You know the drill - menacing thugs in black masks shouting at tellers, and customers to get on the ground, a look-out in a white van outside monitoring police scanners, frazzled bank manager being forced to open the vault, etc.

Yet all these routine elements are efficiently handled and there are some genuine thrills along the way as the gang’s getaway hits a snag in the form of a red smoke bomb that goes off in one of the cash bags, which leads to a freeway bridge shoot-out (you know, sort of like in DEADPOOL!).

After the smoke clears and our gang escapes scot free, they are refused payment for the bank job by the Russian mob headed by an initially unrecognizable Kate Winslet (it’s the big, brassy blonde hair that threw me off). Winslet’s Irina Vlaslov (great name) demands that the crew do the aforementioned break-in so that they can steal computer files that will get her husband released from a Russian prison.

Their plan to manufacture a 999 has a mark in good cop Casey Affleck as Mackie’s new partner. Affleck, whose presence here recalls his roles in the OCEAN’S ELEVEN movies, and TOWER HEIST, and also brings to mind his brother’s THE TOWN, is the nephew of the detective (Woody Harrelson) investigating the first robbery, so he may be able to figure out who the bad apples on the force are before he’s targeted.

There’s not a lot to Affleck’s character, but the sweaty, boozing Harrelson, in a part that’s shaky, where his True Detective persona was smooth, may be the film’s saving grace. He certainly steals the movie with lines like “be careful what you insta-face-tweet,” and (to Affleck) “your job is to out-monster the monster and make it home at the end of the night.”

Winslet, who’s up for an Oscar on Sunday night for STEVE JOBS, also stands out with her not bad Russian accent, garish outfits, and big hair. It’s way against type but she successfully disappears into the evil Irina. It would be fascinating to see what Cate Blanchett, who was originally cast in the part, would do with it, but I’m glad Winslet got this chance to show us yet another layer.

Despite their underwritten roles, Mackie deftly proves he can be a dark dude when not dolled up in a Marvel suit, Ejiofor gets some steely stoical moments in, and Paul, of course echoing Breaking Bad’s Jesse, basically just goes through the movie as if he’s on a really bad trip.

TRIPLE 9 is a serviceable off season thriller. Its workmanlike screenplay by first-timer Matt Cook holds it back somewhat, but its committed cast, and its flashes of craft by director Hillcoat ensure that it’s at least a notch above the generic genre exercise that most critics will accuse it of being.

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I'M STILL HERE: The Film Babble Blog Review

I'M STILL HERE (Dir. Casey Affleck, 2010)



The question – is this a hoax or a real depiction of an artist’s very public breakdown has been circling this film since a certain appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman in 2009.

A bearded shaggy haired Joaquin Phoenix donned a black suit and baffled everybody especially the host (“I don’t come to your house and chew gum”) with what seemed like a drugged mumble distracted from the spotlight and oblivious to the audience’s laughter.

“Joaquin, I’m sorry you couldn’t be here tonight” Letterman quipped as the segment ended and within minutes the clip was a viral sensation with folks all over the internets asking “WTF?”

The answer some clung to was that it was all a prank – Phoenix was pretending to abandon acting and become a rapper and his brother in law Casey Affleck was going to film this transition for a “mockumentary”, right? Well, sort of. 

“I’m Still Here” follows Phoenix around as he goes through misguided motions and we get so little insight into him that whether it’s a prank or not doesn’t matter. He’s a mess and so is this film.

See Oscar nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix snort cocaine! See him surf the internet! See him chew out an assistant for selling information to a tabloid! See him awkwardly try to talk Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs into producing his awful rap songs! See him fall off the stage! See him diss Danny DeVito! See him vomit! See him…you get the idea.

One thing that’s odd, in a movie of numbing oddness, is that there are often subtitles for scenes with possibly inaudible dialogue, but there’s not for any of Phoenix’s rapping performances which are often intelligible.

At first I thought we may benefit by reading what’s he’s rapping, but now I think the film makers may be doing us a favor. It’s a pointless rambling documentary but what’s worse is that it’s not funny.

If Affleck and Phoenix are pulling a prank, they don’t seem to be having any fun with it. So much of it seems to be about Phoenix’s suffering and not knowing what to do next.

Apparently now Phoenix is up for some new roles and is not retiring from acting, but I believe that at one point he was sincere about quitting. He seems to have taken the idea of an alternate career – rapper – seriously too. Years from now this poorly made boring documentary (not a “mockumentary” mind you – it’s not clever enough for that) will be thought of as an odd unwatchable side note and Phoenix will be back in the spotlight as an actor.

I’m glad Joaquin Phoenix is here, but next time I hope he plays to his strengths – that is his impeccable acting skills and we’ll forget this dismal diversion.

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New Release Drama DVD Round-Up

When it comes to Netflix I'm what is considered "a heavy user". I view many DVDs and often send them back the same day I get them writing about them as I go. Since I realized that most of what I've seen lately have been dramas I decided to round 'em up for this post. I also noticed that all of these movies have funerals in them but that would make for a pretty depressing blog post title so I'm going with the drama angle. Okay! Let's get to 'em:

GONE BABY GONE (Dir. Ben Affleck, 2007)



Ben Affleck's directorial debut is everything his run aspiring to A-list leading man status (in such blockbuster wannabes as PEARL HARBOR, PAYCHECK, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS and DAREDEVIL) wasn't - it's assured, multi-layered and extremely entertaining. 

Affleck doesn't appear on camera here *, which is surprising considering his many bit cameos throughout the years, and yes it would be easy to take a pot shot by commending him for that alone but the weight and power of his Boston based crime drama cancels that immediately out. 

Brother Casey Affleck does the protagonist duty as a small scale private detective who works with his girlfriend (Michelle Monaghan) out of a tiny Boston apartment. When the young daughter of some neighborhood low-lifes goes missing and a media circus ensues, they are hired by the girl's Aunt (Amy Madigan) to help find her. 

The police (particularly Ed Harris as a police detective) are skeptical of the inexperienced but intrepid couple and the dangerous battered barfolk they encounter when they go snooping are little help as well but C. 

Affleck and Monaghan plug away. Morgan Freeman as a police Captain lends his reliable folksy demeanor (glad he's not narrating for once) also talks down to our heroes - indeed it is often pointed out how young and green Casey Affleck appears: "he just looks young" Monaghan remarks to Freeman's scolding. 

As you should know by now I'll give no further spoilers but I bet you can see how the couple gets in other their head in a world where nobody can be trusted - Man, that ought to be the tagline!                                    

Hate to call them twists because they are displayed with more class than in many standard thrillers but the turns of the second act are surprisingly successful because of the refreshing lack of gloss or flash. A tad high in melodrama maybe but GONE BABY GONE doesn't overreach. 

The supporting cast all bring it - Harris and Madigan (who are husband and wife in real life) both have some standout scenes and John Ashton (who many will remember as a cop in the BEVERLY HILLS COP series) gets in some good gruff gestures. Amy Ryan as the lost girl's mother plays a messed up "skeezer", as one drug dealer character calls her, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and she's pretty dead on but some of her line readings seem a bit forced so I'll be pretty shocked if she wins it. 

Casey Affleck really should have been nominated for this performance over his part in THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES..., as much as I liked him in that flick, because he really gets it right in his manner and tone here. On the cinematic chopping block MYSTIC RIVER comparisons are inevitable but Ben Affleck's moving film makes a case that Clint Eastwood doesn't own the terrain - I believe a new up and coming director dog has just marked his territory. * Actually Affleck can be seen moving through a shot in a dark bar but you could blink and miss him. On the DVD commentary co-writer Aaron Stockard calls it his "Hitchcock moment." 

WE OWN THE NIGHT (Dir. James Gray, 2007)



The opening with black and white archive photos (by still photographer Leonard Fried) of '80s era New York cops brings to mind the grainy real-life riot footage that opened THE DEPARTED.

Scorsese's Best Picture winning crime classic again rears its head as once again we have a premise resembling a good cop/bad cop scenario and Mark Wahlberg as the blunt good cop doesn’t call foul on such accusations. But let's get past that and see what we've really got here in James Gray's period-piece police Vs. Russian mobsters flick that slipped through the cracks in its release last Fall. 

With Wahlberg we've got Joaquin Phoenix as his druggie nightclub managing brother and Robert Duvall as their grizzled police chief father trying to recruit Phoenix to be a mole. Duvall is one of the few actors that can convincingly pull off such a cliched line as "Sooner or later, either you're gonna be with us or you're gonna be with the drug dealers."

Phoenix is indifferent to his Pop’s war on drugs plight as he posits himself as a future “king of New York”. His club El Caribe is obviously modeled on Studio 54 with its clientele selected by bouncers, scantily clad dancing girls on the bar, and non-stop Blondie blaring on the sound system. When Wahlberg gets shot and Duvall's life is threatened by the drug running gangsters, Phoenix changes his tune and starts singing like a canary. He even agrees to be wired in order to lead the cops to the bad guy's lair. 

Phoenix's girlfriend (Eva Mendes - looking like a supermodel in a magazine photo spread) is a possible target too but she is disapproving of Phoenix's new law enforcement involvement. The dialogue is repetitive and too often spells out every action. The story is full of predictable rote elements and the villains appear to be sent by central casting. 

It is set in the '80s not for any interesting premise reasons like the opening implies but possibly because the filmmakers knew they were unable to write any cool modern cellphone trickery plotpoints. Which once again brings up the inferiority of this to Marty's previously mentioned movie. So yeah, when it comes right down to it - skip this slickly produced pap and watch THE DEPARTED again.

ROMANCE & CIGARETTES
(Dir. John Turturro, 2005)



This is a very odd movie.

Co-produced by the Coen brothers, and made 3 years ago, but only now making it to DVD, (perhaps because the studio didn't know how to handle it), Turturro’s “down and dirty musical comedy,” (as he calls it) is certainly ballsy, but it’s more often baffling.

James Gandolfini is an adulterous NYC construction worker whose wife (Susan Sarandon) knows about his mistress (Kate Winslet). They have three daughters (who all look too old to be believable as Gandolfini and Sarandon's offspring) - Mary-Louise Parker, Mandy Moore, and Aida Turturro who have a riot grrl punk band and are constantly banging away for their piece of the soundtrack. 

Then throw in Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, and a strangely subdued Eddie Izzard and you've got a faultless cast but a weird musical mix. 

I did mention it was a musical, right? That's what makes it so odd - the cast members sometimes lip synche to classic songs and sometimes sing on top of them; rarely does the song feature the actor's voice alone. When it does have Gandolfini or Sarandon or Winslet sing by themselves it seems to be to make a particular point. I just couldn't figure out what that point was. 

I really couldn't for the life of me really get into this movie but I did appreciate quite a few moments. Gandolfini and Sarandon have a great scene, done in one take, sitting at their dinner table where he admits to her for some reason that he never liked Ethel Merman with her "foghorn of a voice."

Gandolfini excuses Ernest Borgnine's abuse of Merman in their marriage that only lasted one week back in the day by concluding "'You Can't Get A Man With A Gun' would drive any man crazy." Somehow this amounts to one of the only warm exchanges between the couple. Winslet really goes at her role with gusto especially in her introductory dancing scene wearing a scorching red dress in the window of a burning building. She and Sarandon have a ferocious cat-fight while Walken sings along in the background to Bruce Springsteen's "Red Headed Woman". See what I mean? Weird. Turturro's directional sense does comes through - a shot of cigarette butts littered all over a patch of snow is exceptional and it is obvious he has a good collaborating relationship with everybody in this movie; it may have been a mistake to cast his sister Aida though - she just ends up recalling her Sopranos character Janice. Mary Louise-Parker appears again in a movie she is barely used in - this is a shame as anybody who has seen Weeds knows, she can do better. 

At one point Gandolfini says when trying to reconcile with his wife: "Maybe I don't know how to show it like they do in the movies or in books but I love. I have love to give." Maybe Turturro doesn't know how to show it either but this film if nothing else is definitely a work of love. Just why did it have to be love of the weird variety?

SHOOT THE MOON (Dir. Alan Parker, 1981)

It’s easy to forget that in the late '70s and early '80s there was a genre that held its own against the science-fiction blockbusters that dominated that era – the divorce drama. KRAMER VS. KRAMER, of course, was the leader of the pack but close behind were such families getting torn apart tangents like AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, TWICE IN A LIFETIME, and ORDINARY PEOPLE. Long out of circulation but now newly re-issued on DVD is a pivotal player from those ranks - SHOOT THE MOON which features Albert Finney leaving wife Diane Keaton for a younger woman (Karen Allen).

As the film opens we are introduced to the couple with their four daughters (Dana Hill, Viveka Davis, Tracey Gold, and Tina Yothers) and their creaky old house on the outskirts of Marin County in California (many misty shots of the house and valley are throughout the film).

We see as acclaimed novelist Finney and his former student now wife Keaton prepare for an evening at an awards ceremony that their marriage is on the outs. Finney calls his lover and the oldest daughter (Hill) picks up the phone to eavesdrop.

On their ride there and back to the televised event their car is full of tension as we realize the gravity of what's not being said and strongly feel the giant gap between the tortured pair.

The next morning Keaton confronts Finney, while doing dishes mind you, and he responds not by owning up to his affair but by leaving with a bag that she had already packed in anticipation. The couple attempts to sort out the rubble and move on with their lives but they keep on hitting emotional roadblocks.

Finney moves in with Allen, who except for one signature scene basically has little to do but stand around looking pretty, while Keaton takes up with a contractor played with just the right tone by Peter Weller (ROBOCOP!) that she hired to put in a tennis court on her (actually legally still her and her separated husband's) property.

The film seethes with energy that explodes from underneath in a few surprisingly violent scenes. Finney is compelling as always as he stalks the screen in a manner exposing his stage roots and Keaton displays that the keen quality she can bring to dramatic roles is equal to the comedic skills she is better known for.

Dana Hill (who died in 1996 from complications due to diabetes) has perfect poise as the oldest wisest daughter who knows her parents' faults as well as their habits - she knows her mother smokes pot for example - and she has a great scene in the third act that among other things explains the movies title.

It's interesting to see Tina Yothers and Tracey Gould as sisters for as students of pop culture know they went on to be daughters in competing '80s TV sitcom families - Yothers in Family Ties and Gould in Growing Pains respectively.

A flawed but stirring drama with an absolutely shocking ending, Alan Parker's SHOOT THE MOON is an oft overlooked film that deserves a place in your Netflix queue. 

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