WHILE WE'RE YOUNG: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at an indie art house near me:

WHILE WE'RE YOUNG

(Dir. Noah Baumbach, 2015)

“We were just 25. I mean, we weren’t, but you know,” 44-year old Josh (Ben Stiller) says to his 43-year old wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) when she asks why he suddenly wants to hang out with a couple of 25-year olds.

In writer/director Noah Baumbach’s (THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, FRANCES HA) eighth film, WHILE WE'RE YOUNG, these aging Brooklynites find themselves attracted to the hipster lifestyles of Jamie (Adam Driver from the HBO show Girls), and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). This is after it’s been well established that Josh and Cornelia’s decision not to have children alienates them from their new-parent friends Fletcher (Adam Horowitz aka Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys) and Marina (Maria Dizzia).

Josh, a documentary filmmaker of little renown, is initially approached by Jamie and Darby after a class Josh teaches on filmmaking for a continuing education program. Jamie, an aspiring documentarian himself, tells Josh he loves his work (he bought an obscure VHS copy of Josh’s only film on eBay), and before you know it, Jamie and Darby are schmoozing it up with Josh and Cornelia.

An amusing montage displays how the older couple depends on their modern devices (iPhones, iPods, laptops, etc,) while the young ones revel in the retro (vinyl, VHS, typewriters, etc.). We also see Josh shopping for vintage threads with Jamie, while Cornelia bonds with Darby, whose thing is making organic artisanal ice-cream, over a hip hop dance class.

Dining with Fletcher and Marina, Josh and Cornelia rave about their new friends. Cornelia describes Jamie and Darby’s apartment as being filled with “everything we once threw out, but it looks so good the way they have it.” Josh enthusiastically adds: “you should see this guy’s record collection. It’s Jay-Z, it’s Thin Lizzy, it’s Mozart. His taste is democratic - it’s THE GOONIES and it’s CITIZEN KANE. They don't distinguish between high and low. It’s wonderful.”

Fletcher responds, “When did THE GOONIES become a good movie?” I myself have been wondering that for years.

Conflict comes when Jamie starts cozying up with Cornelia’s father, famous filmmaker Leslie Breitbart (the great, grumpy Charles Grodin), who used to mentor Josh. This makes Josh realize that his new young friend’s motivations may be questionable, as is the content of his project when it’s revealed that Jamie fudged the timeline and the Facebook angle that led to his documentary’s subject, a suicidal war veteran played by Brady Corbet.

Unfortunately this development comes off a bit contrived making the confrontational conclusion at Leslie’s memorial ceremony at Lincoln Center a bit clunky, but the overall gist of the observational humor, and drama, here is dead on.

In 2010’s GREENBURG, Baumbach and Stiller less successfully approached similar themes, but here they largely nail the unsettling feeling that fortysomething folks have coming to terms with the fact that, as Springsteen famously sang, “we ain’t so young anymore.”

Stiller, who is closer to 50 than his screen counterpart, has made a career of playing uptight characters challenged to break out of their shells, but his Josh may be the actor’s most fleshed out, and vulnerable performance. It beats the pants off of WALTER MITTY, that's for sure.

Co-stars Watts, Grodin, and Seyfried also shine, but Driver, building upon the artsy inclinations of his character on Girls, really stands out. His Jamie sharply captures the soullessness of a guy who’s spent his entire existence faking sincerity.

Such meddling millennials sure can make members of Generation X like me feel old, but Baumbach’s smart and dryly funny take on the situation in WHILE WE'RE YOUNG, helps to ease the blow.

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BIRDMAN: A Work Of Bizarre Genius That Will Blow Audiences Away

Now playing at an indie art house near me:

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)

(Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014)

 

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s much buzzed about fifth film BIRDMAN may be a comedy, but it’s as dark, layered, and intense as his dramas AMORES PERROS, 21 GRAMS, BABEL, and BIUTIFUL.

It’s a stunning, magnificent motion picture – one of the year’s best films - that’s bubbling with energy as it juggles a slew of themes, along with excellently edgy performances, and tireless camerawork.

All this and it’s also a major comeback for Michael Keaton, in his first lead role in ages, as an actor who formerly starred in a superhero franchise who’s staging a comeback – how’s that for meta for the former Batman star?

Keaton’s character, Riggan Thomson, wants to prove himself, do “something that matters,” by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway production, his adaptation of the Raymond Carver short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

The film, gorgeously shot by Emmanuel Lubezki (GRAVITY, THE TREE OF LIFE, CHILDREN OF MEN), is structured like one long take – a continuous uncut flow that immediately catches you in its sweep. You’ll really get to know the hallways, dressing rooms, and all of the backstage nooks and crannies of Broadway’s St. James Theatre where it largely takes place.

The narrative is mostly from Keaton’s point of view – a sweaty, stressed out head space that’s bordering on insanity as he often hears the gravelly voice of his alter ego, Birdman, saying stuff like “You were a movie star, remember?”

Others snaking in and out of the storyline include Emma Stone as Keaton’s daughter/assistant fresh from rehab, Zach Galifianakis as Keaton’s agent/lawyer/best friend, Amy Ryan as Keaton’s ex-wife, Andrea Riseborough as Keaton’s possibly pregnant girlfriend/co-star, Naomi Watts (also currently appearing in ST. VINCENT) as the lead actress in the play, and Edward Norton as a hotshot stage actor, who’s a last minute replacement after a loose lamp injures the original lead.

The Birdman voice in Keaton’s head claims he made the light fall, because he’s not really just a Hollywood has-been, he has telekinetic powers and can fly – of course, only in his mind, but the film has a lot of fun going with this surreal mind frame.

The sequences concerning the disastrous previews of the play are amusingly nerve wracking - one stage-set scene involving Norton getting a hard on in bed with Watts is a hilarious highlight. At another performance, during the same act, Keaton gets locked out of the theater with his bathrobe caught in the door. In only his underwear, he runs through Times Square through the crowds of theatre goers, fan boys, tourists, and assorted New Yorkers and becomes a viral sensation.

It’s a funny statement on our fame obsessed culture, one that sharpens when a cruel critic (an acidic Lindsay Duncan) tells Keaton: “You’re a celebrity, not an actor.”

Duncan’s not the only one who takes Keaton down – Stone rags on her dad for being out of touch: “You hate bloggers, you mock Twitter, you don't even have a Facebook page!”

Norton’s talented yet arrogant Mike Shiner threatens to steal the show from Keaton, but the actors’ scenes together show them matching each other’s intensity – both deserve Oscar nominations, or whatever awards season action they surely will receive.

Only Keaton’s inner Birdman seems to be there to build him up.

Iñárritu, who co-wrote the film with Nicolás Giacobone, and Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., who collaborated with him on BIUTIFUL and first-time screenwriter Armando Bo keeps the visceral momentum going through the film’s two-hour running time. It never dragged or went off point, and when I wasn’t laughing, a wicked smile was curled up on my face. When Keaton’s delusional state takes over in the last third, with superhero special effects and crazy imagery such as a ginormous squawking bird-creature towering over the city, it’s a twisted Terry Gilliam-eque delight.

Keaton’s Riggan Thompson may be covered in flop sweat, but he’s got a smash on his hands here for BIRDMAN is a work of bizarre genius that will blow audiences away.

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FAIR GAME: The Film Babble Blog Review

FAIR GAME 

(Dir. Doug Liman, 2010)

The true story of former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband retired diplomat Joesph C. Wilson is told in this thriller/melodrama based on Plame's book "Fair Game: My Life As A Spy, My Betrayal By The White House."

As portrayed by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn (in their third film together) we follow them through the dense details of how their reputations were besmirched by the Bush administration in the early aughts when Wilson reported that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Plame's CIA identity was exposed in the press and Wilson's work for the government is threatened, but the film seems to stress that what was more important is that their marriage was being torn apart.

It begins with Plame recruiting her husband to travel to Africa to investigate reports that Niger has sold 50 tons of "yellowcake" uranium ore to Saddam Hussein. Of course, he finds no trace of yellowcake and files a report to that effect as well as writes an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled "What I Didn't Find In Africa."

The controversy surrounding the couple, stupidly dubbed "Plamegate", becomes extremely messy as does the movie. Many scenes are too strained and too choppy for the appropriate mood and there's an annoying inconsistent shaki-cam framing which detracts from its possible emotional power.

It's the stateside companion to Paul Greengrass's just as forced film GREEN ZONE in which army officer Matt Damon complains to an excruciating degree about not being able to find Weapons of Mass Destruction anywhere.

Penn and Watts make a convincing couple - their arguments over Plame's reluctance to go public with the facts are initially involving, but their attempts at intensity grow more and more tiresome as the film progresses to its predictable conclusion.

There is a wasted, and fictional, subplot involving an Iraqi doctor (Israeli actress Liraz Charhi) who works with Plame to find out the extent of Iraq's nuclear program. This also concerns the doctor's physicist brother in Baghdad, played by Khaled Nabawy, who Plame promises will be safely re-located if he helps out. We also get Chief of Staff Scooter Libby (David Andrews) and Senior Advisor Karl Rove (Adam LeFevre) basically just being evil as they plot to discredit the heroic couple.

Then there's a cameo by Sam Shepherd as Plame's wise father that's so badly shot that we can barely see it's him until halfway through the scene. With it's speechifying and constantly interspersed ominous shots of Washington locations (the White House, the Capital, the Pentagon, etc.) FAIR GAME has noble intentions, but its the cinematic equivalent of listening to hours of the liberal radio network Air America. 

Hearing the hosts bitching non-stop about how we were lied to in order to justify the Iraq war - even if you agreed with them - was painful and a large part of why that network failed. And it's the main reason this film fails too.

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YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER: The Film Babble Blog Review

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER (Dir. Woody Allen, 2010)

Another year, another Woody Allen movie. Another one set in London, but hey! No Scarlett Johansson – so that’s saying something.

This ensemble comedy with Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, and Josh Brolin as the principles reminds me of Juliette Lewis in Allen’s 1992 dramedy HUSBANDS AND WIVES telling her professor (played by Allen) her impressions of his long gestating novel:

“You make suffering so funny. All the lost souls running around.”

There’s plenty of lost souls, but suffering though isn’t so funny here – it’s not even that affecting.

To break it down – we start with Gemma Jones as the estranged wife of Hopkins visiting a fortune teller (Pauline Collins) for advice about how to move on. She’s despondent and in need of drink which could define every character on display.

Jones’ daughter, Watts, is in a frustrating marriage to Brolin who is struggling with writing a new novel. Brolin pines for a woman (Frieda Pinto from "Slumdog Millionaire") he sees through his flat’s adjacent window.

Watts, meanwhile pines for her new boss (Antonio Banderas) at the art gallery where she just got a new job as an assistant.

In one of the most clichéd premises of a mid life crises I’ve ever seen Hopkins introduces his new fiancée (Lucy Punch) to Watts and Brolin over dinner and the extremely unnecessary narrator (Zak Orth) tells us that he’s not telling the whole truth about her.

Punch is a ditzy call girl who Hopkins woos into matrimony with promises of minks and money you see and so, of course, it’s a doomed relationship.

Meanwhile Brolin, jealous of a friend’s manuscript, goes to the dark side after finding out that his friend is dead after an automobile accident. He steals the book and his publisher loves it, but the catch is that is that his friend isn’t dead – he’s in a coma and doctors say there’s a chance he could recover at any time.

Brolin courts Pinto causing her to call off her engagement while Watts finds out her boss is seeing somebody else on the side from his wife and Hopkins is cuck-holded by Punch who also runs up quite a tab on his dime.

Jones, with the help of Collins, seeks spiritual comfort as well as companionship, but might find both in the form of, no, not a tall dark stranger, a short fat one portrayed by Roger Ashton-Griffiths who owns an occult bookshop and pines for his deceased wife.

The same tired themes of spirituality verses common sense are trotted out – it’s a treatise on whatever works to get one through life – like say in Allen’s last film “Whatever Works” – and the emptiness that the characters try to overcome weighs down the film in a wretched way.

Still, Brolin’s dilemma is compelling stuff even if it doesn’t come to a satisfying resolution (or any resolution really).

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER is a close to middling film with one juicy story thread (Brolin’s literary nightmare) amid warmed over Woody Allen thematic material that he has done to death.

Somebody not so fluent with the Woodman’s work may get more out of it, but would such a person really be interested in seeing it?

Brolin’s scenerio made me think that’s there’s still enough there for Allen to keep making movies, but maybe not so often as a film a year like his current record.

That’s not gonna happen however. Allen has another project already in the works (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS) so maybe I should be thankful at this late date that at least some shred of quality still remains.

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Seven Years Later, Does MULHOLLAND DRIVE Make Any More Sense?

Short answer: Maybe a little.

Long Answer: Last Friday night as part of a series on film noir, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh had a screening of David Lynch’s twisted surreal drama MULHOLLAND DRIVE. The film was introduced by Independent Weekly Arts Editor David Fellerath who considers the film a masterpiece and one of the greatest of the last 10 years. 

Fellerath asked how many folks were seeing the film for the first time and a surprisingly huge amount of hands were raised. After some background and an attempt at plot summary, he assured the almost full room that 95% of the film holds up to “logical scrutiny.” I’m not so sure about that, but the film did seem to gain levels of coherence that it lacked for me back in 2001. Fellerath had also stated that if anybody still had problems with the film’s meaning afterwards - “there’s lots on the internet.”

There sure is lots on the internet, starting with one of the lengthiest Wikipedia entries for a film that I’ve ever seen with content headings like "Interpretations and Allusions," detailed character breakdowns, and long intricate paragraphs on the style and critical reception. 

The references for the entry site 82 articles with such titles as “Nice Film If You Can Get It: Understanding Mulholland Drive” (The Guardian) and Salon.com’s “Everything You Were Afraid To Ask About Mulholland Drive” (which Roger Ebert considers “the best explanation”). 

Another worthwhile read is Anthony Kusich’s “Mulholland Drive…Explained” which deals which the 10 clues that Lynch included in the notes for the original DVD release. The existence of the clues is curious because Lynch was quoted in the New York Times a few years later as saying that DVD extras can “demystify” a film. 

Perhaps what Lynch and many critics have proposed is the most sensible way to take MULHOLLAND DRIVE – not to try and make sense of it. Just absorb the mood and visual tones winding through the various narrative strands. Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring are either friends turned lovers named Betty and Rita in a dream or the former lovers now estranged Diane and Camilla in reality or vice versa. 

It appears that Justin Theroux is one of the only constant characters – an arrogant film director who is pressured by Mafioso types, to cast Camilla in his newest film. In one of the most memorably amusing scenes has Theroux meet a cryptic character called “The Cowboy” (Lafayette Montgomery) who tells him: “A man’s attitude goes some ways. The way his life will be.” 

When The Cowboy can be seen passing through the background of a party scene later on it is impossible not to take as intensely comical.

A turning point comes when Betty and Rita doing some detective work because Rita has lost her memory (she took her name from a Rita Hayworth movie poster) locate a woman’s dead body.

Identities then blend (the Igmar Bergman-esque screen capture above says a lot about the merging of identities I believe) with Rita donning a blonde wig and then they shatter completely with the aid of a shiny blue box (that of course appears with no explanation) and then reassemble or emerge from a dream - as when The Cowboy says: “Hey, pretty girl, time to wake up.”

Many elements familiar to fans of Lynch fill the frames throughout - among them the darkened old fashioned back room of the mysterious movie studio string puller Mr. Rogue (Michael J. Anderson) wouldn’t have been out of place in the dreams of Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) on Twin Peaks and the creepy Club Silencio that Betty and Rita attend one fateful night is somewhere you would expect to see Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) from BLUE VELVET lounging around in.

Writting before about the “love/WTF?” relationship I’ve had with the films of David Lynch (“Inland Empire Burlesque” and “Hey, I Finally Saw...ERASERHEAD”) I had decided to let go of the idea of determining definitive meanings and just go with the freaky flow. 

Wading through the various analyzing articles previously mentioned of this particular film though is still extremely fascinating because many interpretations can exist side by side, none more valid or more convincing than the other. 

Maybe MULHOLLAND DRIVE doesn’t make any more sense now than it ever did but its captivating spell has indeed grown and its perverse passion is definitely more powerful than when it was first shown in the heady distracting days shortly after 9/11. 

For those who haven't seen it before and lived with it for a while, I have to relate this - while the end credits were rolling at the Art Museum last Friday, a irrate woman who was obviously one of those who had earlier raised their hands, was heard complaining: “I’m very upset - it didn’t make any sense! Even PULP FICTION made sense! At the ending it all came together. I mean even AMERICAN BEAUTY made sense too!” 

So much for discussion, huh?

More later…

I ♥ HUCKABEES = WTF?

Now playing at an art house near you:

I ♥ HUCKABEES

(Dir. David O. Russell, 2004)

This is the ultimate WTF? movie. It's been a few days since I've seen it and I'm still trying to process. Many critics don't even try to describe the plot or premise, but I'd just say it's about a poet activist (Jason Schartzman) who hires a married couple played by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin who bill themselves as existential detectives to sort out problems with his soul.

Oh yeah, there's an overly slick spokesperson (Jude Law) for a Target/Wall Mart type chain and his flighty model wife (Naomi Watts), as well as Mark Wahlberg as a fireman who hates petroleum so much that he rides his bike to fight fires. That's as good as I can do.

The characters all run around spouting lines like "There's no such thing as nothing," and "Nobody sits like this rock sits. You rock rock. The rock just sits and is. You show us how to just sit here and that's what we need."

Some of this is fun, some of it is strained, some of it is just purely baffling. I mean at the end I was more confused than I was by the MATRIX sequels. I mean, now what am I see supposed to be reality and what isn't?

It also doesn't help that HUCKABEES seems stitched together from other movie's styles. The soundtrack by Jon Brion and the color scheme recall the work of Paul Thomas Anderson (MAGNOLIA, PUNCH DRUNK LOVE). The other Anderson, Wes Anderson, comes to mind of course from the casting of Schwartzman (RUSHMORE) and the eccentrically quirky tone.

Also, the screenplay appears to be heavily suggested by the work of Charlie Kaufman (ADAPTATION, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND). So did I like it? I didn't hate it. That's the best I can do.

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