Tag Archives: drama

by

Hugo

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo might be the single sweetest movie he has ever made.  In a world where various special interest factions – conservatives, hippies, whomever – complain about the filth and chum in Hollywood, too often family entertainment is merely content with being innocuous and uninterested with actually being worth seeing.  Obviously, Pixar has made a great living providing that combination of quality and wholesomeness, thus sticking out like a sore thumb in this entertainment wasteland – while by contrast this has not been Scorsese’s usual beat.  That said, this is the greatest living American filmmaker we are talking about – so that he accomplishes so much when he puts his stamp on a family film and special effects fantasy, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in Paris of the 1930s, helping fix and run the clocks at the train station that his uncle is in charge of.  His father, seen in flashback and rather incredibly resembling Jude Law (just Jude Law as someone’s dad – come on now), also had the fixing stuff bug, and prior to his death was working on reviving an automaton he had got from a museum.  Since his father’s death, Hugo has evaded being sent to an orphanage – in particular by the dogged Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) – by living in the walls and sneaking about.  Hugo subsists by stealing, and by the movies.

The train station, and Scorsese’s Paris is a masterwork of the imagination.  The film filters and the way it is shot – this is not an animated film and these are actual actors, but somehow the filming has a certain heightened reality more akin to a movie like The Polar Express.  Into this hyperreality, Scorsese peoples his Paris with characters such as the aforementioned Inspector, the shopkeeper Lisette (Emily Mortimer), and the grumpy guy Georges Meiles who runs the toy store (Ben Kingsley).  Meiles in particular makes things difficult for Hugo as he puts Hugo to work fixing stuff at his store.

Meiles is a grumpy guy, but not one without a heart.  He and his wife have taken in their goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), and when Hugo meets Isabelle, she shows him the wonder of the library while he shows her the wonder of movies.  Little does Hugo know of course, that Georges Meiles (both here and the real one) is one of the earliest directors of cinema – you have probably seen is silent short about a trip the moon.  And indeed there are secrets abound which bind these characters together – as the movie evolves from a wondrous fantasy into a celebration of the very building blocks of movies themselves.

I would not dream of spoiling the plot much further aside from pointing out how carefully Scorsese reveals the extent of the Kingsley character’s complexity, and how particular Scorsese and Cohen are with the Inspector.  He is not a villain in any sort of way – just a guy with a particular sense of order. He thinks he is doing the orphans a favor.  What we get at the end of the day is one of Scorsese’s very best films right at the time when we might not have been expecting one.  I was surprised how affected I was by the ending, when some justice and redemption are handed out.  Will kids like this plot, especially as it gets into the cinema part?  I don’t know – I’d think so, but to paraphrase Cohen when he was promoting this film, Scorsese is not one who is focus testing these movies.  He continues to be among the rare directors who is trying to dare greatness every time out.

by

The Dark Knight Rises (SPOILERS POSSIBLE)

The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final installment of Christopher Nolan’s remarkable re-imagining of the Batman series, is pretty clearly the least of the three films.  At the same time however, any negative portrayal of this film has to be tempered.  If this is a series nadir, it is a Return of the Jedi or The Last Crusade (wait, there was a fourth movie??!!) – not an atrocity like The Matrix Revoluitons.  Yes, the movie is too long, and the villain is remarkably uninteresting, and Nolan seems to have built his screenplay with a shopping cart full from the Used Movie Parts Emporium.  However, it is a testament to the character of Batman, the strength of the characters and actors that we have so much invested in, that the film works and is effective despite how bloated it is.  In some sense, we can’t be surprised.  The Dark Knight aimed so high, and asked such big questions that the movie – hell, any movie – is fairly ill equipped to satisfactorily tackle them.  What is left is a very well made picture in the genre – and one which is a worthy piece of the canon.

As the trailers have pointed out – when we open the movie, Batman is out of business and Bruce Wayne (Bale) has faded into reclusive hermititude.  Seen only by Alfred (the invaluable Michael Caine), Wayne is moping after the loss of Rachel Dawes, and facing a city that thinks Batman killed Gotham hero Harvey Dent.  To be fair, Dent’s memory has driven a lot of reforms which have made Gotham safer and attacked organized crime while removing many aspects of due process and silly things like rights.  But there is safety and that has been enough for Commissioner Gordon.  However, things are brewing underneath the city – as in the sewers live a bunch of thugs serving Bane, a menace wearing a low-rent Darth Vader mask. He rants against oligopoly and the oppression of those under the mega rich like the Waynes.  An early encounter with Gordon knocks Gordon out and puts him in the hospital.  The city suddenly needs Batman again, and away we go.

As noted in the earlier paragraph, we get a LOT of cliches here.  As in the earlier movies, we get Lucius Fox (Freeman) showing Wayne the newest gadgets to be used, in the classic form of Q in Bond.  We already see the old pro coming back for a last job, but we also get the classic Bond gambit of the beauties who are not quite as they appear, as well as the city under siege, the descent into martial law, and god help me, a prison that “nobody has ever escaped”, and god help me, a Digital Readout (complete with a key speech that feels entirely too long given the time on the clock).  One of my friends who cares deeply about this sort of thing talks about it in terms of lazy plot devices and whatnot – and there is truth there, but the earlier films have been less about startling originality than brilliant execution and a mastery of tone.  That I noticed the cracks a bit now probably is a weakness.  Indeed, the plot spins later on a revelation that felt more or less totally like a cheat, though I’ll let the reader figure out where that takes place.

Another weakness is the movie’s bigger picture themes, as in this movie oligarchy and economic inequality are explored.  At the same time, themes of anarchism and mob justice are there.  The old themes of vigilante justice are there still certainly, although now it is more about class warfare more than individuals in silly costumes.  However, the movie does not do a lot with them, aside from employing a couple of useful set pieces.  (indeed the court used to try criminals is a triumph of design with a fun surprise as the judge)  We get motivation as to why the stock exchange ends up being the subject of an invasion and why that feline chick is doing what she does, but the film sort of muddles through that.  I am not sure there is a unified statement to be had in any case, but really Nolan and his team have trouble with it, especially in contrast to the very personal nature of the Joker’s exploits.  Sometimes the canvas is too big.  Like the final Matrix movie, the series set up some very big questions, but if novelists and social commentators and political scientists have not satisfactorily cracked the puzzle, why should a summer blockbuster?  Just be assured that Nolan’s work here is not nearly as lame as what the Matrix secret actually was.  This wobbly big picture view infects the villain himself.  Bane is not a particularly inspired villain, and his speaking through the mask actually creates a problem understanding him at times.  He is a badass sure, but the motivations and back story are fairly bland.  It was hard to care about him – certainly not in the way we cared about the Joker, and he lacks the elan of Scarecrow, and of course he suffers by not being Liam Neeson.

What does work though are the set pieces and performances.  When Wayne ends up holed up in a prison in a place that he surely wouldn’t escape if this wasn’t the the final movie of the series, the entire prison and the “you’ll never get out of here” – and the failed attempts therein is pretty neat.  The cliches are here, but they worked on me.  Also, Michael Caine’s performance as Alfred more or less carries the first half hour of the film.  One of Nolan’s great inspirations was to give the role to an important actor and give Alfred real weight in Bruce’s life, when Alfred speaks of his vision for Bruce’s future – it resonates and it surprisingly moving.  Joseph Gordon Leavitt is particularly good as he tries to do the right thing, and as he explains where he knew Bruce Wayne from, and Gary Oldman is terrific as he reveals the struggle between what is right and what is right for Gotham, and the sacrifices he had to make therein.  Anne Hathaway’s Selena is – on the other hand – a little less effective.  The choice of Hathaway and Nolan to make her character something of a good soul whose life has gone off the rails is a bit of a miscalculation – when something a bit more dangerous might have been in order. (it’s cliched to say something that the role is probably better envisioned as something Angelina Jolie could do, but you probably knew that)

Overall, this is a pretty good movie – and deserving to be mentioned with the other two.  Alas, it is not particularly memorable in specific ways – certainly not as sharply seen as the first two films.  But there is some closure, and it brings an end to a series which I had no clue could be this good.  After the Joel Schumacher extrusions of Batman, I never thought I’d care so much about this franchise – but Nolan made it happen.  For that to come from a summer blockbuster is amazing.

by

The Dark Knight

(Note: As I giddily anticipate seeing “The Dark Knight Rises” at the Air and Space Museum tomorrow, I suddenly realized that (rather criminally) this corner of the interwebs had said nothing about the first two films of this series.  As we lead to the third film, a look back)

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight takes the foundations of the superb first film, and totally obliterates the gameboard.  Instead of an advancement of the superhero genre, we get a film that descends into tragedy, about wounded people and a wounded city – and asking big questions about the roles of heroes themselves.  It stands as the most realistic superhero movie of all time, taking very seriously the questions raised when some dude decides to put on a bat costume and exacts justice by his own extralegal forms of justice.  While Batman Begins endures as one of my very favorite movies and the favorite of the genre, The Dark Knight is playing with bigger stakes, and is a subtle meditation on the “national security state” and exactly how far will we go in order to keep things under wraps.  Never has a superhero movie ended without anybody being able to claim victory.  It’s answers are bleak and fairly hopeless – I’m not sure the word “enjoy” really applies. I was totally drained after experiencing this film – it is quite an experience.

Of course, as we open – you’d want to think that saving Gotham City might be enough to have earned Batman some brownie points.  Alas, he is largely blamed for the death of cops and civilians (and indeed this is not precisely wrong), and of course a silly costume can only inspire copycats who are making it hard for the grownups to keep order around the city.  It is into this morass that we get the Joker.  Of course we have seen the Joker in several incarnations previous, but Heath Ledger imbues him with real wounds.  The makeup is not as clean as we’ve seen before.  This is not a slick costume, but a broken soul hiding the wounds of a child.  His schemes are truly genius – as he forces Batman, Harvey Dent and Lieutenant Gordon to make Sophie’s Choice decisions, such as when he gets Dent and Rachel Dawes in separate buildings.  In the film’s climax, he forces citizens in two boats to make the most impossible of decisions.

Superimposed on this is the development of Christian Bale’s Batman/Wayne.  It has been a hallmark of this series, almost alone in the genre, of giving the hero full treatment, showing his pain and loneliness.  He is in this to save the city, not so much out of altruism so much as that this is all that he has left to live for.  We are once again returned with the rich supporting cast with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman that give texture to the story and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, in both Dent’s beginning and demise – is always convincing.  (and nothing needs to be said of the change from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gylenhaal)

I think looking at the above paragraphs that I have described a great film.  It deserved the myriad of Oscar nominations that it received for sure.  It elevates the genre and really becomes less a superhero movie than a superior crime drama exploring the nature of violence and whether surveillance and vigilante justice can really get us where we need to be as a people.  There are no heroes, even as the Joker meets his demise.  This is a considerable achievement, and tremendously affecting.  At the same time, the film lacks the rewatchability of the first movie.  It almost has to – the intensity and bleak vision of this movie is very hard to experience.  It is not my favorite of the three, but that it is the best film of the series is definitely arguable and probably accurate.

 

by

Batman Begins

(Note: As I giddily anticipate seeing “The Dark Knight Rises” at the Air and Space Museum tomorrow, I suddenly realized that (rather criminally) this corner of the interwebs had said nothing about the first two films of this series.  As we lead to the third film, a look back)

Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins may not be the best modern superhero movie – but it might be the genre’s most important.  With all the taste memories people have of the film’s phenomenally successful successor, combined with the poignancy of Heath Ledger’s final performance, it is easy to forget just what a thrill it was to see THIS film, after the atrocity that Joel Schumacher had made of the franchise.  This film and Spiderman 2 both substantially raised the bar for the genre – from a disposable summer cliche to films with some weight and some basic curiosity about its hero.  Obviously everything that goes on in Gotham is preposterous – but Nolan and his actors take this material seriously – and for a couple of hours it was spellbinding.  The Dark Knight has captured history’s heart I suppose, but the first film still endures as my favorite – sheer filmmaking taking a genre picture and raising the stakes in a way that was unrecognizable until then.

It is not that dark, atmospheric superhero movies had NEVER been done.  Hell, The Crow was a particularly notable entry – and Tim Burton’s attempts at Batman the first time around were ambitious even if the movies were ultimately fairly forgettable.  But too often we had video games or movies that seemed like pure kitsch.  So what a surprise when we see Christopher Nolan taking his time with building the story up, with the League of Shadows stuff.  As is well known, this was new material, but plundering the depths of martial arts movie lore was genius.  We get heft behind Bruce Wayne’s aloneness – his development of powers, and ultimately the forces that would drive Wayne to go home, and put on a mask and cape, plus a drop-in by Ken Watanabe to boot.

Now yes, the villains were not as good as the Joker – but the gangster scheme hatched by the Scarecrow is a pretty slick scheme as far as these things go, and Cillian Murphy delivered menace quite effectively.  And as we know with his recent films highlighting his ability to fight furry woodland creatures, Liam Neeson is one serious opponent.  The villains are effectively villainous here, and the battles – with the brilliant non CGI effects – have humanity in them, the feeling of people hitting each other and performing in a plausible world.

This plausibility extends to the mystery of Batman himself.  Instead of Alfred merely being a butler, Michael Caine gives him weight – he becomes a man who takes the Wayne legacy seriously and cares about both that and Bruce with equal intensity.  He is much more of a father figure here.  Morgan Freeman as Lucious Fox, a sort of Q of this series – imbues his role with his usual dignity, and it allows a throwaway role to have more going for it.  Even Katie Holmes – though replaced by the vastly superior Maggie Gylenhaal – is effective enough.

I guess the first Batman Begins at the end of the day lacks the big questions and serious commentary on heroes and vigilantes and society that The Dark Knight poses.  But it is also a lot more fun, and a superior example of the genre.  It does not lack gravitas and excitement, and really sets the table for the remainder of the trilogy.  It is a great film in its own right, and the easiest one to turn to when you want to get a great thriller on your television.

 

by

There Will Be Blood

Oh I remember seeing There Will Be Blood in the theater back in 2007 with a couple of my friends back in ye olde bachelor days.  In the theater, the movie has a pretty staggering impact, as the story of Daniel Plainville is told against a backdrop of large big screen sized canvases – beautiful poetic images that are almost dialogue free at times, and superb cinematography.  What was interesting seeing it in the convenience of my living room was how little there was underneath the film.  Folks remember the Daniel Day Lewis performance and Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction no doubt – but the movie seen today exists more as a series of set pieces without any real insights into its hero.

Yes, Lewis’ performance is extraordinary.  From the time we see him arrive from God knows where, Plainview is captivating.  Speaking with a quirky, perhaps Eastern sort of accent, he is a shark, an oil acquiring machine.  He learns of the Sunday ranch in California, and then convinces Old Man Sunday to sell him the drilling rights at a cheap price (as opposed to selling it to Standard for instance).  Alas, one of Old Man Sunday’s kids Eli is a burgeoning preacher and wants to build a church.  This creates a lifelong tension as Eli and Plainview are trying to gain control of which way the community is headed.

We remember the moments here.  There is a lovely scene where there is an accident that renders Plainview’s son deaf.  The burning derricks and the view of the community trying to put the fire out is breathtaking cinematography, all playing in silence.  Later, when the need to confess and be reborn in Church (for completely Machiavellian images) appears for Plainview, his confession about his sins against his son is another staggering scene.  We also remember the final scene with the famous milkshake quote,  What is interesting is how beautifully this is all shot, and the intensity of Lewis’ performance, but what is Thomas’ goal?  The movie lacks introspection about Plainview’s own attitude about things.  He doesn’t have regrets – or for that matter any real dimension, though the movie successfully fools us into thinking he does.  Indeed, there is little sense when Plainview is lying there in the bowling alley that he actually learned anything – or that we learned anything.

Seeing the movie 5 years later a second time, it does not hold up as well.  Without any moral thrust behind it, and without anything really to say about Plainview or the situation, Anderson leaves this as largely an exercise in style and an excuse for Lewis to go nuts.  As a technical and acting exercise, it is actually very well done, but it holds us at arm’s length.  It’s just a character study, but the character shows no real complexity – just some evidence that he MIGHT be complex.  There Will Be Blood was a striking film in 2007, but now it tends to disappear into thin air.

*********************************************************************

P.S.  You like Cystic Fibrosis?  Then don’t click on this link raising money to cure it.

by

Mad Men: Season 4 (SPOILERS!!) and a Li’l Husslin’

Before we dive into a season of Mad Men, where everybody ends up – well, frankly kind of happy basically – some cause pimpin from the real world.  A Canadian former classmate of mine is doing her annual thingy to fight Cystic Fibrosis.  Obviously this is a good cause – and if you are watching the resplendent NHL playoffs or have eaten poutine (and let’s face it playoff hockey AND poutine together would be a combination that makes American football look like paint drying), you realize how worthy any Canadian folks are of your support.  Hell, even if you just think Dave Foley makes a good looking chick.  Anyway, click and toss some virtual shekels here.  And if the sprit of giving has not dissipated after your encounter with CF, I find Global Giving a good outlet myself.

*************************************************************************

So, four seasons into AMC’s remarkable Mad Men, the patience that was required to navigate the early episodes where it looked like nothing much was going on, has long since passed.  As Jon Hamm himself pointed out in his recent appearance on the Nerdist, weirdly everybody is in a relatively good place by the time the season is over.  Now, don’t get me wrong, by happy it does not mean that things aren’t wobbly – “happily ever after” would be too neat a cliche for a show with the richness of good fiction to fall into.  Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Price is not precisely doing well, but it seems like they are not going to go belly up.  Don has found if not happiness, something akin to a decent cut at it, and the others are similarly – tentatively positioned in places where they are looking for firm ground (even Lane, despite some horrible steps in the middle).  Even Betty, the wobbliest of the them all, has a husband she is happy enough with.  Sure her daughter is a pain in the ass – but such are daughters for mothers throughout history.

Some observations from Season 4 (Season One, Season Two, Season Three are all here … no spoiler alert needed now I guess):

  1. One of the interesting sly shifts of the four seasons has been how the mystery of Don Draper has evolved.  In Season One, I would have probably been flogged (rightly so) for revealing Don’s secret.  It was pretty shocking – but at this point, the Dick Whitman story has sort of faded into the background.  Sure, it haunts him – but so does his unhappy childhood – but is more fitting in the suite of “trauma from the past” than anything.  Indeed when he reveals the secret now to Dr. Miller, she is surprisingly understanding – and shockingly, well, unshocked.  The real focus of Don’s season is just on life after marriage – and how his life, which in some ways did not differ from what he had been doing while married – started to go off the rails.
  2. Of course when his life did bottom out, his reaction was – well, it seems to indicate a guy who still doesn’t really know what it going to bring him real fulfillment.  While we get a sense of his comfort in California, it is not like he checks in there regularly.  We’ve seen him with Beats, a really young girlfriend, a regular lady, a schoolmarm.  His fling with Dr. Miller the market researcher actually showed great promise.  She certainly was more of a “grown-up” (and by no means a step down for Don given the catches he has had).  But her awkwardness with kids seemed to paralyze him.  His decisions at the end of the season in this area were obviously rash – but if you look at part of Don coming up from rock bottom as him regaining control of all of this affairs – that being a “proper father” be high on the list is sensible.  Yeah his read of who is good for his children or whatever was gauche, but it made sense for the character.  As Dr. Miller noted, he does love “the beginning of things”.
  3. We know that it’s 1965 roughly, and the ground is shifting.  The “I Have a Dream” speech has happened, and the notion that women can be more than a womb with legs has started to take hold in force.  What is interesting is where the characters are in terms of just understanding change.  Joan is going to have a baby, but that does not imply domesticity by any indication while Peggy continues to work up the ladder.  Indeed, one of the fun parts of the season is seeing Peggy explore the world of trying to be a professional in the city – including encounters with counterculture, and being help up at work.  She and Joan’s exchange after a pretty darn harassing cartoon of Joan encapsulate the tension of being a woman in a workplace that is still relevant right now.
  4. The funny thing about the changing world is where the characters are with dealing with change.  We know Pete gets it – but his idea of seeing black people as customers does not click at all.  On the other hand, Sterling and Cooper themselves – it’s still dames and “his girl” and traditional old world chauvenism.  In particular, it is hard to see what Roger brings to the table anymore, especially losing the big account.  He is happy I suppose, but definitely searching for the next chapter (and not just his memoir).
by

Breaking Bad – Season 1

As the curtain goes up on Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad on AMC, we see a middle aged man in his underwear driving an RV frantically with a passed out partner, both in gas masks.  The RV hits a ditch, the man gets out takes out his camera, doffs his mask and we see a desperate message.  Is it a confession?  Is it a suicide note?  The desperation, the pace has been set up.  Yeah, we’re not sure why we are here, but the moment is gripping.  Hell yeah, THIS is a freakin’ television show.

Desperation is what crackles throughout the abbreviated first season of Breaking Bad.  There is the desperation of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the old man we left off in the ditch back in the first paragraph.  He is a chemistry teacher in his 50s, in a loving marriage, but with a lot of bills stacking up.  As he gets a dicey cancer diagnosis, he looks at his chemistry background and access to chemicals, sees the bonanza from crystal meth – even has a DEA agent brother-in law to give him a ride to do some research, and suddenly voila!  A job opportunity.  At this stage in the game, Walter gives off a man just beaten up by life – between his bills, his family stresses and his own disease.

Desperation also oozes out of Jesse, Walter’s old student who has been put out of the meth business by the DEA.  Or at least he was, until Walter finds him and makes the offer.  One of the great pleasures of the show is the humor in their exchanges.  There is a definite comedy team sort of chemistry going on, but the comedy comes as they stumble from desperate position into another.  It is one thing to start the meth business game, but how do you find customers?  Jesse can do that, but it involves dangerous folks – folks who could rough Jesse up good.  Suddenly Walter is in with these thugs who are trying to steal his formula – or even worse, kill him.  So there is another desperate situation.  But what if this gets resolved – what next?  Bodies don’t just disappear, do they?  Like any good thriller, these sorts of conflicts are dealt with at the most elemental, ground level.  We see the decisions Walter and Jesse make, and they all make sense – I am not sure I could be a meth dealer, but if I were …

The desperation is at home too.  Skylar, Walter’s wife, loves him and wants to take care of him.  But he runs off for hours at a time.  What can she do?  The family is running low on funds.  She has to worry about him and a son with Cerebral Palsy.  She is desperate too – and the family interactions are true and tense.  Everybody here loves each other, but the equipment to communicate it just isn’t there – but how hard they try.  Even Jesse is desperate, trying to reconcile with his parents, and trying to at least show something for his little brother to mentor.

This show does even more than I’ve hinted though.  We see the desperation certainly, but we also see Walter dealing with it, and working his way around both his domestic life and his newfound criminal one.  How would we deal with his situation?  Would we be able to make correct moral decisions?  Would the moral compass shift?  It’s easy to see Vito Corleone as a good man when you are just in his shoes after all.  Right now, clearly the groundwork is being laid, but especially towards the end of the season – we maybe see the birth of a man who is not exactly where Walter saw this story headed.  This is the sort of show that bursts with life and energy – something Scorsese would have directed perhaps … it is just a lot of fun.

 

by

Mad Men: Season 1 (SPOILERS!!!)

As Season 1 – the season that earned the first of four consecutive Emmy awards – of Mad Men closes, we see Don Draper sitting on the landing of the stairway in his Westchester County home, wondering where things are headed.  At this point, we know that Draper has a complicated, difficult past which he has been trying to put behind him but with only limited success.  The mystery hinted at in the third episode when his own co-worker noted that nobody knows much of his past, have started to crack open, yet when I finished with the first season, Don’s mystery is far less interesting than the show’s portrayal of the challenges for women and feminism in the 1960s.

As everyone knows by this point, AMC’s flagship series covers the exploits and goings-on at Sterling and Cooper, an advertising agency trying to compete in the very competitive environs of Madison Avenue.  Draper (Jon Hamm) is the creative head.  The agency of course, is the sort of boys club that seems entirely typical of a not-particularly-reformed-yet era.  The women in the secretarial pool are doing the archetypal secretarial things such as takings calls telling people “Mr. Campbell, call on line 2″ and whatever – but also are looked at by the account executives as frankly no more than skirts.  We know during this era, feminism and civil rights will start to rise – but we’re not there yet – and so what is left is this paradigm.  The show is particularly stark and hurtful in the things that some of the guys say – when critics accuse the show of misogyny, I can’t say I do not understand the criticism – but it so clearly sees the pickle the ladies are in.  Against this backdrop the show gives us three examples of women relating to this world – one who exploits the system, one who is trying to transcend the system, and one who is being crushed by it.

In some ways, while Hamm and Draper get the plaudits – Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson is the real hero of the first season, her story is certainly the one that evolves the most.  She starts the season as the new addition to secretarial pool and Don Draper’s secretary.  She is trying to get ahead, and to really make the most of herself – not just (if at all) trying to get her MRS degree.  She is shown the ropes by Joan Harris the buxom (only because I can’t think of a more emphatic word, her dresses are straining to hang on to her) head secretary.  Joan seems awfully sophisticated, living in the city, tagging the partner, and oscillating her hips in a way that seems more or less entirely intentional.  I am not sure if the liberated female has appeared at her doorstep – indeed her obliviousness to her roommate is a clue – but she is clearly operating within this male dominated system.  Her eyes are wide open, but her reality is a very catch-my-man-ish one.  Her advice to Peggy is almost entirely in the vein of looks and knowing her place – it would be kind of offensive in 2011, but in 1960 it is merely good pragmatism.

For Peggy, it takes a while.  Her attempts at trying to be a skirt earlier, but then her revelation that she could really be something on par with the account exec assholes who say things about her and her fellow secretaries behind their backs is one of the triumphs of the show.  She has to fight so hard, but when she has her victory at work it is one of the nicest moments of the season.  Of course as we leave the season, she has some tough decisions ahead of her, as her choice of career vs domestic is put in stark relief.

Betty Draper, Don’s wife, has made the housewife choice.  She is trying to fit into the 1960s model of a good wife, making roasts, taking care of the children, and giving up her share of the meat when the partner at her husband’s firm decides to invite himself over for dinner.  But she is not comfortable – we see this with tremors in her hands and with sudden odd releases of tension, such as her reaction to a threat to her dog from a neighbor.  January Jones’ work here is either brilliant invisible or incompetent – but she shows a wooden woman, or a woman who has been taught to not have feelings other than standing by her man.

The theme of the women go even further – as the differentiation in the male characters is very much in terms of how women serve in their lives.  We know most of the account executives are boorish, but Don Draper some how is not.  He is not without guilt, especially a couple of really grievous missteps, but he does hear Peggy’s ability to do things, and resists her overtures to be a good secretary.  Pete Campbell, a jealous account exec, is boorish, but the boorishness that comes from the frustration at being too nice a guy to be the asshole that he wants to be (if you know what I mean – it is more obvious if you watch the program).  The show covers all of this territory deftly – within the context of the 1960s patriarchal world and spectacular art direction that really makes it seem like the 1960s. (I am reminded in this respect as Far from Heaven)  Overall – definitely enough here to dive in to season 2.

by

Chop Shop

Chop Shop is probably the least of Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani’s first three films.  Of course, being the worst Bahrani feature film at this point is kind of like being the dumbest Nobel winning chemist – the company is pretty lofty.  The first paragraph of this review is probably the only bad thing I can say about the movie.  After all, between this film, Goodbye Solo and Man Push Cart - SOMEBODY had to finish last.  Even in its bronze medal status, Chop Shop is a demonstration of Bahrani’s phenomenal gift for capturing life as it is lived by people just like us – even if we would never pay them notice otherwise.  Of all American directors, he – in just three major features (major being getting proper releases – not big ones) – is turning out to be the natural, creating realism with an almost offhand sort of ease.

This film centers around Alejandro, or Ale, a 12-year old apparent orphan, working by his wits to get by.  There are no parents, just him and his 16-year old sister.  They live in a room inside a local auto mechanic’s shop.  During the day, Ale is trying to keep them afloat with various sorts of schemes.  He steals hubcaps, he resells candy on the subway.  In his own way – he could be a character out of Oliver Twist or something.  He has certainly had to grow up quickly.  Indeed, a scene where he scolds his sister for leaving bottles around is striking – it shows a toughness in the kid that belies his kid-ness.  He is the man of whatever house they have put together.  Even at this age – you get a sense of the stakes that he is facing.  He dreams of owning a taco truck – not one of the hipster food trucks I talk about incessantly, but just one of those stands you pass by in any city.

In a way describing the plot is useless, because the triumph of this movie – much as in with Man Push Cart - is how Bahrani establishes a sense of time and place.  With shots and editing that are almost completely invisible – Bahrani effortlessly shows exactly how Ale and his cohorts get by.  We see encounters, we see how a young woman might choose to make additional income, and it all makes sense.  It’s not punched up.  We get involved in Ale’s life – not so much as a rooting interest as almost a documentary viewer.  The performances by the actors are so natural and unaffected that it feels like we are watching life unfold, and the artifice of the “movie” go away.  Yes, there is a plot and Ale’s dreams and his own approach to getting by are all challenged.  However, it never feels like plot machinery – that is always the case with Bahrani – we are looking on these lives.  It is so specific – that if we did not see the Chrysler Building in the background – it could be a documentary of another civilization.  In a sense though, it IS – a view of a world white collar world just doesn’t see.  Bahrani sees this world and these people with such clarity and love.  It is a thrill to see a filmmaker who is destined for true “people will remember him” greatness in his youth.  I can’t wait for what he will give us next.

by

The Blind Side

Oh could I list the reasons to hate The Blind Side?  First of all it’s cliched – the entire movie is predictable.  Second, it’s patronizing – one of the quaint 1950s sort of tomes of some magical white person rescuing a poor helpless black kid – Diff’rent Strokes on the big screen without the intentional jokes.  Third, it is a vanity project for a scenery chewing performance by Sandra Bullock – where the screenplay gives chances for the empty headed men in the film to look at that spunky broad.  This is the sort of thing that Julia Roberts usually corners the market on.  Fourth, it doesn’t seem like the character of Michael Oher, you know, the dude who came from homelessness to football glory, had any personality traits.  I was left with this film knowing what HE thought about what all these white folks were doing.  Fifth, it’s a sports movie, and most of those aren’t very good.  Sixth, Tim McGraw is the patriarch which reminds me of country music, and well that makes me puke in my mouth.

HOWEVER, with all the schmaltz, and all the patronizing racial values, with the knowledge that this movie is really about Sandra Bullock doing her best Erin Brockovich and telling all these people where to stick their non-belief, John Lee Hancock’s movie works.  My God, it works in the sort of way it was intended, and before I shoot myself, I have to be honest about the fact that the movie is entertaining and that I did root for Michael Oher even if he himself did not give me any reason to.  I have to be honest about the fact that Sandra Bullock’s character’s telling-off thing did get me rooting for her, despite seeing the machinery behind it.  The simplistic black is bad, white is good, rescuing poor Michael from the hood thing – the checking the box of every racial stereotype that gets shattered by the film’s self congratulatory nature – all are features that make this kind of junk.  However, the movie is effective, and I hope I have confessed my sin of taste fully.

I guess the question becomes why can this movie – with its schmaltz and hackneyed ideas work on me while a vehicle like Eat Pray Love goes right to my puke reflex.  I think perhaps that it might have much to do with the protagonists themselves.  Julia Roberts’ Elizabeth Gilbert – as the movie portrays her – does not have a visible crisis of conscience.  Aside from the opportunity to have middle age ladies hearts aflutter, her mission seems rather narcissistic.  On the other hand Leigh Anne Tuhoy, the Sandra Bullock character, is undeniably doing a good thing taking Michael Oher, an allegedly slow kid from the streets of Memphis in.  Whether it’s white guilt, some embedded racism, or the need to do good by her school – she is putting a roof over Michael’s head and clearly cares for him (at least as much as she cares for herself).  How do you not root for her – even in scenes which are fairly thinly veiled Oscar scenes for Bullock?

Another useful trait for the movie are the Tuhoys themselves.  SJ, the youngest, is played by Jae Head, who stays just on this side of being too precious.  His job is to be cute, and he does it decently enough.  The rest of the family is also kind and good folks – so good that one is skeptical whether the real family was as unconflicted as these folks were about taking in a big black guy from the street. – so they are also easily sympathetic.  The movie has no real villains – it tries haphazardly to align the teachers “against” him, but of course the teachers want him to succeed.  We want this mission to succeed – and for Michael to do well.

Now, The Blind Side is not any sort of Oscar contender – even though it was.  It is cliched nonsense, a wind up machine meant to get schmaltz out of its viewers.  However, it does a good job on those fronts.  I have not described the plot because it really is made out of parts from the used screenplay store.  If you couldn’t guess the story arc, you’ve probably never seen a movie.  However the performances and the general nature of Oher’s lifts the film into a definite “Pass” score.