CERTAIN WOMAN Is Certainly A Slow Moving, Artsy Indie

Now playing at an indie art house near me:

CERTAIN WOMEN

(Dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2016)

Kelly Reichardt’s sixth full length feature begins with a long shot of a train barreling through a mountain-filled Montana landscape. It’s a shot that’s lingered on with no movement except for the train as it approaches the camera.

As many shots are lingered on throughout, this image symbolically sets the slow, thoughtful tone for this drama based on three short stories by Maile Meloy from her 2009 collection, “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.”

The first story concerns Laura Dern as a lawyer in Livingston, Montana, who is dealing with a desperate client named Fuller (Jared Harris), who has suffered a workplace injury and was screwed over his worker’s compensation. Despite that Dern’s character, also named Laura, has repeatedly told him that his former employer was legally absolved of paying him anything on top of the settlement he previously accepted, Fuller demands a second opinion. So Laura takes him to see another lawyer and because it’s a man, he accepts it when he tells Fuller the same thing she’s been telling him for eight months.

Later on the phone to her lover Ryan (James LeGros), who we briefly met in the film’s first few minutes, she laments: “It would be so lovely to think if I were a man, people would listen and say ‘okay.’”

However, Fuller isn’t through and later that night Laura is awoken by a call from the police alerting her that Fuller has taken a security guard hostage at her former place of employment. Outfitted with a bullet proof vest, she goes in to try and talk him down. Don’t expect any real suspense or action here, the situation gets pretty mundanely diffused.

The second story involves Michelle Williams, in her third film for Reichardt, as Gina, part of a married couple with a daughter (Sarah Rodier) who are camping near a plot of land on which they intent to build a house. Williams is married to LeGros’s Ryan, Laura’s aforementioned lover, but that never comes up again.

Instead the premise of this vignette revolves around the couple negotiating with Albert, an elderly gentleman (René Auberjonois, best known for the ‘80s sitcom Benson, and several Robert Altman movies) for a pile of sandstone on his property.

Gina is frustrated that Albert only regards Ryan in their request for the sandstone, but he agrees to give it to them. When they come to load it on to their truck, Gina waves to Albert who’s watching from his window but he doesn’t wave back.

Onto the third and final story, which posits a downbeat Kristen Stewart as Beth, a lawyer who is teaching a class on educational law in Belfry, Montana, that a local ranch hand named Jamie (Lily Gladstone) sits in on. Jamie happened upon the class while walking through town one night and obviously develops a crush on Beth, who obliviously fans the flames by going out to dinner with her at a nearby diner after class several times.

Jamie even brings one of her horses from her stable one night so that they can ride to the diner on it together. When Jamie learns that Beth has quit the job because of the long commute, Jamie drives to find her in Livingston. Jamie sleeps in her car overnight, then, via help from the same firm that Laura works at, tracks Beth down to her law office and approaches her in the parking lot in the film’s most awkward, cringe-inducing moment.

Although there are connections between these stories, they don’t satisfyingly intersect. We get a follow-up with what happened to Fuller in an epilogue in which Laura visits him in prison, and shots that loosely conclude the other narratives, but folks may be left wondering how or why these tales are interwoven. They indeed share the perspectives of marginalized women in the vast open spaces of Montana, but their personal connection is too abstract for proper impact.

If one embraces the slow pacing, and studies the intricacies of the acting (all the ladies work is sharp here, but newcomer Gladstone is particularly strong), they can get immersed in the subtle nuances on display – in other words, acknowledge it as a true art film – but that may take more patience and concentration than most people are willing to give.

Reichardt’s films, which include OLD JOY, WENDY AND LUCY, MEEK’S CUTOFF, and NIGHT MOVES, are all cut from the same artsy, contemplative cloth. They are character studies that offer slices of bleak life that often play to meager audiences at indie art houses. Her brand of minimalism isn’t meant for the multiplexes.

CERTAIN WOMEN is certain to baffle or bore (or both) many folks, and I myself had some issues with its length and some moments that felt off, but it’s the kind of movie that I’m glad somebody is still making. Its 16 mm look, shot by Reichardt veteran, cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, along with its parsed dialogue makes it feel more like real life than most movies.

That is both its curse and its charm.

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Woody Allen's Lightly Charming CAFÉ SOCIETY

Now playing at an indie art house near me:

CAFÉ SOCIETY (Dir. Woody Allen, 2016)

Jesse Eisenberg makes a great Woody Allen surrogate. Previously he performed the function in smaller doses in Allen’s forgettable 2012 ensemble comedy TO ROME WITH LOVE, but here he gets to carry the movie as Bobby Dorfman, a young Jewish neurotic (of course) from the Bronx.

Allen’s 47th film as writer/director is a period piece set in the late ‘30s that follows Bobby as he gets a job working for his uncle, high powered agent Phil Stern (Steve Carrell) in Hollywood, and falls in love with Phil’s secretary Vonnie (Kristen Stewart). Thing is, she’s having an affair with Phil, who’s married to a woman that we never meet (the way they talk about the wife made me think she’d have some actual presence but no dice).

Citing that he can’t leave his wife after 25 years of marriage, Phil breaks the relationship off with Vonnie, and Bobby, who doesn’t know that his uncle was his competition, starts pursuing Vonnie romantically.

Eisenberg and Stewart, who’s first Allen film this is, have palpable chemistry together in their courting scenes, most likely because they’ve worked together previously as love interests in ADVENTURELAND (2009) and last summer’s AMERICAN ULTRA.

Carrell, also an Allen veteran (he had a small part as Will Ferrell’s best friend in MELINDA AND MELINDA), has a juicy role as Uncle Phil, though it’s not as comical as I was expecting. Bobby’s budding romance is cut short when Phil leaves his wife and proposes to Vonnie.

Sad that Vonnie chooses Phil over him, Bobby returns to New York and opens a swanky night club called Café Society with his mobster brother Ben (Corey Stoll in a slick hairpiece). Bobby meets and marries a blonde bombshell named Veronica Hayes, played by Allen newcomer Blake Lively, but when Vonnie and Phil visit the club, emotions are again stirred up.

The love triangle starts out resembling the one in MANHATTAN, but later recalls CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. So yeah, big surprise – Allen again trots out some of his old trusty themes.

Shot by Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (LAST TANGO IN PARIS, APOCALYPSE NOW, REDS), CAFÉ SOCIETY looks gorgeous from start to finish. The glamour of golden era Los Angeles is lush, and the grittiness of Ben’s gangster world, in which people get wacked and then dumped into graves of wet cement, is splendid visually as well. It’s Storaro’s first film for Allen, and with hope not his last.

It’s an improvement over his last two films, MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT and IRRATIONAL MAN, but nowhere near the quality of BLUE JASMINE, which is one of Allen’s best later day films. Despite Bobby’s talk about all the industry talk, name dropping, and backstabbing of the “dog eats dog world” of showbiz, there’s a notable lack of stinging satire. The ritzy world of the beautiful people jet set isn’t so much commented on either. Allen appears to want to indulge in these old timey aesthetics, not skewer them.

Also Allen’s voice-over narration is really unnecessary as we can see what’s happening without him needing to tell us. Not sure why he felt it should be added.

Parker Posey, who was in Allen’s last film (IRRATIONAL MAN), and Paul Schneider play a married couple of happy socialites who befriend Bobby that I would’ve liked to see more of, as the blonde Posey lights up the screen, and Schneider just needs to be used more in movies in general.

With only intermittent flashes of wit, CAFÉ SOCIETY is only lightly comic, but its light charm made it work for me. Setting it in the post-Prohibition era may be just an excuse for Allen to again fill up a film with a jazz standard playlist – mostly Rodgers & Hart songs performed by Vince Girodano & The Nighthawks make up the movie’s wall-to-wall soundtrack – but it’s an era he obviously yearns for and one that can be fun to see him so lovingly recreate.

Sure, he did it better in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, RADIO DAYS, and SWEET AND LOWDOWN, but there's still amusement to be had here.

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A Stoner Finds Out That He's A Super Soldier In AMERICAN ULTRA

Now playing a multiplex near you (at least for a week or two):

AMERICAN ULTRA (Dir. Nima Nourizadeh, 2015)

With its hyperkinetic editing, head-banging score, and high body count I kept thinking that this amped up, noisy action comedy must be based on some graphic novel I’ve never heard of.

That its hero (anti-hero?), a shaggy stoner named Mike played by a Jesse Eisenberg, draws cartoons about a monkey astronaut also added to that impression, but no, this isn’t based on any pre-existing property of any kind. So, for a summer movie, it’s got that going for it.

The scenario that on the surface, Eisenberg’s Mike is a small town slacker convenience store clerk, but underneath he’s actually a highly-trained CIA assassin, is, as many critics have pointed out, a one-joke premise. As such, I really dug the set-up, but wasn’t so hot on the punchline.

Mike, who lives with his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart, who was also Eisenberg’s love interest in ADVENTURELAND) in the fictional burg of Liman, West Virginia, doesn’t know he’s a genetically engineered killing machine because he’s been “de-activated.”

But when two black-ops gunmen approach him in the parking lot of the Cash-N-Carry where he works, and he is able to swiftly disarm and kill them - with the help of a cup of soup and a spoon, mind you – he knows something is up.

Mike has been re-activated by Connie Britton as CIA agent Victoria Lasseter because her young assholish boss Adrian Yates (Topher Grace) has decided to end the Ultra program - the government experiment that had brainwashed Mike to begin with - and our pot-smoking protagonist is tagged for termination.

So the movie becomes a manhunt for Mike, with he and Phoebe being pursued by a bunch of Ultra operatives, including the creepy Walton Goggins and stand-out stunt woman Monique Ganderton, through a police station shoot-out, a raid at their drug dealer friend Rose’s (John Leguizamo) pad, and finally a box store climax where things get more than messy.

The bombardment of the second half’s series of shoot-outs, fight scenes, and chases got very tiresome as there have been so many movies about indestructible bad-ass with unique sets of skills, and there’s only so much of seeing Eisenberg offing attacker after attacker that I could be amused by.

There is a funny thread about Mike trying to pick the right time to propose to Phoebe amid all the chaos (Eisenberg sells this sort of neurotic, lovesick stuff much better than the killing machine material unsurprisingly), and a batch of good lines sprinkled throughout (like “They had guns and knives and they were being total dicks!”), but there’s not enough of a spark of real inspiration to make this a truly memorable experience.

Screenwriter Max Landis may have thought that the love story part of it would give the rest the gas to power it on through, but I really wasn’t buying Stewart’s role particularly when it came to the big reveal about why she’d stay in a long term relationship with such a deadbeat.

AMERICAN ULTRA is an ultra violent mash-up of THE BOURNE IDENTITY and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, with a fair amount of the comic carnage of KICK-ASS (minus the superhero angle) mixed in as well. It has its moments, but I wish Max Landis’ screenplay took more chances, and didn’t just stick to a done to death formula. The idea that a stoner comes to find out that he’s a super soldier in secret is a good one; if only they had one or two more good ideas for it to rub up against.

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STILL ALICE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at art houses, and a few multiplexes near me:

STILL ALICE (Dirs. Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland, 2014)

Julianne Moore is a front runner to win the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Alice Howland, a Columbia University linguistics professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, in this touching, emotionally stirring drama opening today at an indie art house near you. 

As this is Moore's fifth Academy Award nomination, it does indeed feel like it’s her time, but she really deserves it as this the best work I’ve ever witnessed yet from the actress who hails from my home state.

We first meet Moore’s Alice, her research scientist hubby John (Alec Baldwin), and some of their family - their doctor son Tom (Hunter Parrish), lawyer daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth), and her nice-guy husband Charlie (Shane McRae) - as they are celebrating her 50th birthday at a posh New York restaurant. Except for a brief instance of confusion, Moore appears vibrant and happy among her loving spouse and grown-up, well to do children.

Then we see her giving a speech as a guest lecturer at UCLA, in which she blanks on a certain word. After she returns home, she panics because gets lost during her routine run around an area that’s normally well known to her, the Columbia campus.

These lapses of memory disturb Alice so fearing she has a brain tumor, she visits her Neurologist in serene scene that captures Alice in an unbroken close-up answering her unseen doctor’s questions. He asks her to have a loved one, her husband or a close relative accompany her the next time she comes in, but she doesn’t feel this is necessary when she returns.

The neurologist, now seen as Stephen Kunken (THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, The Affair), tells her that after tests, including a PET Scan, the symptoms sadly corroborate that she has early-onset Alzheimers, and the news hits Alice and her husband hard.

The shaken couple gather together their son and daughters, which also includes Kristen Stewart as the youngest, an aspiring Los Angeles-based actress, to tell them about their mother’s diagnosis, and to let them know that there’s a 50 percent chance that each of them could inherit the gene.

From there we experience Alice’s devastating progression into what she calls “hell” – “It feels like my brain is fucking dying!” A painful subplot has her recording an iBook video for her future self to find in which she gives instructions to swallow a bottle of pills in order to commit suicide.

A large portion of the film concerns the relationship between Moore’s Alice and Stewart’s Lydia. Now, I understand there’s lots of hate out there for Stewart, but having no bias myself (largely, I bet, from not having seen any of the TWILIGHT movies), I thought she did a really good, genuinely affective job here.

Early in the film it is established that Alice disapproves of her daughter’s decision to pursue acting. Later, when the mother’s mind is failing, she attends a play Lydia is performing in and when the family meets up after, Alice has forgotten that this woman she watched on stage is her daughter. Moore’s reaction, along with Stewart’s processing of what’s happening, when Bosworth informs her mother who she’s talking to is one of the most moving moments I’ve seen this last year on screen.

In another affecting scene, Alice tries to explain her ordeal to Lydia: “I’ve always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation, and now sometimes I can see the words hanging in front of me and I can’t reach them and I don’t know who I am and I don’t know what I’m going to lose next.”

Based on the bestselling debut novel by Lisa Genova, STILL ALICE is not to be confused with any sort of Lifetime disease of the week TV movie melodrama. Directors/writers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s sharply written screenplay features a tightly crafted narrative with an intensely real feeling tone; there’s no schmaltzy sentiment, nor any pandering creepiness. Even Ilan Eshkeri’s spare score, mostly made of quiet piano tinkling, is tastefully unobtrusive.

Moore and Baldwin have displayed great chemistry as a couple before on Tina Fey's NBC sitcom 30 Rock, but they are real, fully fleshed out people here not those comic concoctions, and they are as convincing as can be. Baldwin braces himself for the worst with his wife’s predicament, with none of his trademark smugness present. It’s a soft spoken, and affectionate performance, that ranks with his best, albeit in a small sideline role to the tour de force that Moore delivers.

Although this year has other worthy candidates, including Marion Cotillard for TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT and Reese Witherspoon for WILD, for what Moore pulls off in STILL ALICE, put me down for pulling for her to win.

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