Movie Reviews of BLUE IS THE WARMED COLOR and SAL by Howard Casner
Posted: November 6, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Abdellatif Kechiche, Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Color, Ghalia Lacroix, James Franco, Julie Maroh, Keir Dullea, Lea Seydoux, Sal, Sal Mineo, Stacey Miller, Val Lauren | 97 Comments »Oh, to be young again. To be that age when you had no idea what anything meant. Where you had no control over your emotions. Where you didn’t know the difference between love and lust, or if there was one, or if you cared. Where every day was full of the pain and awkwardness of trying to navigate where you fit into the world. I hated every single, tortuous, tension-filled moment of it. And I would give anything, anything, to return to those halcyon days of innocence.
That is what I was thinking as I was watching the intensely tense movie that everyone, just everyone, is talking about, the latest Cannes award winner, Blue is the Warmest Color (or The Life of Adele, Chapters 1 & 2—and if you’re not talking about it, what’s wrong with you). And what an experiment in intensity it is. Blue… is so intense (how intense it is?), it makes Gravity look like a “you must be this small to ride this ride” at Disneyland ride (which it may soon be, for all I know). It’s so intense, it leaves you exhausted at the fin at the end (it is French, you know, and oh, how Francé it is). It’s so intense, I’m not sure I ever want to see it again.
Blue… is written by Ghalia Lacroix and Abdellatif Kechiche, who also directed (they are long time collaborators, most recently Black Venus and The Secret of the Grain). The movie is adapted from a popular graphic novel by Julie Maroh. Its story is, in many ways, simplicity itself: girl meets girl, girl loses girl, girl…well, I won’t spoil the ending. But the emotions displayed, the emotional rollercoaster ride, the rawness of it all (including, yes, those fifteen minutes of incredibly, just this side of, graphic sex—the women were wearing fake genitalia, after all—sorry guys, that’s probably a bigger spoiler than if I had shared the ending), are anything but.
Adele, the lead, is a baby dyke still in high school who doesn’t quite know why something is missing from her life. She is played by Adele (coincidence or not, you be the judge) Exarchopoulos with the pouty lips of a Bridgette Bardot and a wisp of unruly hair constantly falling in front of her face. Lea Seydoux is Emma, the more “tomboyish” of the two, an older (well, slightly older, four years maybe) woman struggling to be an artist. They first see one another on the street as they casually pass by (their turning to look at each other reflecting an event in a book Adele is reading for literature class—the cultural references are both a tad heavy handed while making one wonder why school over there is so much more challenging than here). At first destined to become ships that pass in broad daylight, they meet up again at a bar and it’s not long before all the fireworks that Hitchcock used in To Catch a Thief and David Lean used in Summertime are going off overtime.
Both actresses are scarily superb. I don’t know how the two and the director did it (and based on the scandalous reporting that has come out afterwards, I’m not sure I want to), but working together, the three have reached depths you will probably not see in another movie this year.
Blue… is not for everyone, and I don’t just mean because of the realistic portrayal of gay sex between women. One of the main characteristics of director Kechiche is a certain, well… leisureliness to it all. Let’s just say that here, as in the movie The Secret of the Grain, he is not in a hurry, to say the least. But that’s not automatically a bad thing (unless you think Pacific Rim is a great work of art). Kechiche’s scenes are like movements in a Beethoven symphony, which also go on too long until they reach a point where you desperately wish they would never stop. And like said movements, Blue…’s scenes go on until you start asking yourself, will this never end, then continue on for so long until you start hoping they never reach a coda.
And it’s a style that leads to such incredible set pieces as a dinner party thrown by Adele for Emma and Emma’s friends. The scene takes forever to run its course. But as it goes on, in ways deep and weather sharp, in both subtle and marvelous ways, the darkness creeps in as you realize that the days of this relationship are numbered. It’s maddening, but moving. It’s long, but tense and powerful. Until the whole movie seems that way, a long, drawn out, slow moving microscopic examination of first love that you finally wish would never end.
One of the best pictures of the year. Not recommended you see it with your mother.
I could not believe what I found out while doing research on the new movie Sal (research, hah—I looked it up on IMDB—so shoot me). There are five credits for the screenplay (one for a book, four for story, and then one of those, Stacey Miller, for the screenplay itself). Five credits. Five. The reason I’m throwing such a hissy fit over this is because—Sal has no real story and has an almost worthless screenplay. And it took five people to not come up with it?
Sal is a last day in the life of story, this time about the actor Sal Mineo, most famous now for his break out (and Oscar nominated) performance in Rebel Without A Cause. The story (and I say that trying not to FOTFLOL without stopping) starts with a dinner the night before; then begins proper with his waking up the following morning; follows him during the day (including three or more car rides in which for some reason he always listens to the exact same song over and over again—it’s unclear whether this is because the song means something or the producers just didn’t have enough money to pay for the rights to another tune); spends a bit of time at the rehearsal for a production of the play P.S. Your Cat is Dead with 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Keir Dullea; until his arrival home that night and his death at the hands of a mugger.
It’s uneventful and pointless (and takes forever to be so). Even worse, it’s just plain boring. And after it was over, I still had absolutely no idea why anyone wanted to make this movie or thought that Mineo’s last day would be interesting in and of itself. The only real message I took from it was that his death at least saved the world from what appeared to be a perfectly dreadful production of a perfectly mediocre play co-starring a perfectly less than mediocre actor (and I’m not referring to Mineo).
Sal is played by Val Lauren, and though his has the same doe-eyes of innocence as Mineo, he just never remotely seems to resemble that waif-like star. Even in one of Mineo’s last performances (in the TV series Columbo), and all those years had passed, he seemed barely changed from the wispy, shy teen John “Plato” Crawford in Rebel…. Yet Lauren’s interpretation almost made me think he had never even seen Mineo before (and the film including a scene from Rebel… at the end of the movie doesn’t help the matter of comparison either).
It’s directed by James Franco (yes, the actor James Franco, and based on this movie, he shouldn’t quit his day job). And if you thought Kechiche was leisurely, he’s Michael Bay in comparison to Franco’s approach. Of course, since there’s no story, there’s not a lot to work with. At the same time, Franco’s also one of the people who gets credited with the story, so he really has no one to blame but himself.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Jim Bishop, a historian, wrote a series of books that followed the last day of a notable figure, including The Day Lincoln Was Shot, The Day Christ Died and The Day Kennedy Was Shot. The books were extremely detailed, focusing on such mundane issues as what the figure would have had for breakfast. The books may not have been great literature, but they were great reads. I thought of those books as I was watching this movie, wondering whether Miller and Franco were trying to do the same thing. Maybe, maybe not. But if so, for some reason (possibly due to the importance of the person involved), knowing what Lincoln ate for his first meal of the day had a bigger emotional impact on me than watching Lauren chug milk from a bottle and orange juice from a carton. And maybe that is where the movie began going wrong.
Movie Reviews of ENOUGH SAID and THE FIFTH ESTATE by Howard Casner
Posted: November 4, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ben Falcone, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Condon, Catherine Keener, Dan Stevens, Daniel Bruhl, David Thewlis, Enough Said, James Gandolfini, Josh Singer, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Moritz Bleibtrau. Laura Linney, Nicole Holocener, Peter Capaldi, Stanley Tucci, The Fifth Estate, Toni Collette, Wikileaks | 854 Comments »There is a sculpture in Chicago in front of City Hall. It’s by Picasso. It’s okay. I thought it was rather derivative and that there wasn’t anything that special about it. To be honest, what I thought when I first saw it was that Chicago paid a fortune to get the great artist to create a sculpture just for the city and all we got was…a Picasso. And I thought we deserved more.
I have now seen every one of writer/director Nicole Holocener’s movies, and I’ll definitely keep on seeking future ones out. I’ve enjoyed them well enough, and her dialog and characterizations are strong, insightful and full of empathy, something most movies seem to lack these days (though I do wish she would do something about her flat and routine visual style).
At the same time, though, I am finding myself, well, wanting more than enjoying them well enough. I find myself so wanting her to take a leap forward, so wanting her to make her Annie Hall, her Dogma, her Raising Arizona or Fargo, her Pulp Fiction, her Lost in Translation. Instead, what we’re getting here, in her new film, Enough Said, is…a Picasso. And it’s a good film, but it’s also just…a Picasso.
The basic story revolves around Eva (a perky Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), a divorced mother who makes a living as a masseuse, who meets two people at a party: the refined, somewhat snobby poet Marianne (Catherine Keener, and what movie by Holocener would be complete without Keener in it) and the less refined, teddy bear Albert (James Gandolfini in his next to last film performance, which gives the whole thing an unintended, but somewhat, whimsical sadness to it). Marianne hires Eva to massage her and the two become good friends. Albert asks Eva out and they become lovers. What Eva quickly finds out, but the others don’t know, is that Eva and Albert are bitter, bitter, bitter exes who keep telling Eva how awful a mate the other one was.
In other words, the basic set up is a farce and it’s a great idea. Unfortunately, the pacing is anything but. And after while, I found myself antsy because all I was waiting for was the big reveal. And it took what seemed a longer than necessary period of time to get there.
I’m also not sure I fully bought the relationships either. And I don’t mean the present tense ones. The more Marianne and Albert talk about each other behind each others’ backs, Eva never seems to ask the most logical question of the story: why did they ever get married in the first place? They seem to be the last two people who would ever go out on a first date, must less tie the knot.
Eva and Albert’s relationship is a bit more convincing because both Louis-Dreyfuss and Gandolfini work very hard at it and there is a sweet chemistry to the two of them. At the same time, I sometimes got the feeling they started a relationship simply because there wasn’t anyone else around. In the end, the most convincing couple in the room are Sarah and Will (Toni Collette and Ben Falcone), Eva’s best friends and comic relief. They seem so right for each other and Collette and Falcone give razor sharp performances, they’re the kind of couple who get each other even when they get on each other’s nerves.
In the end, maybe Holocener isn’t that interested in making that leap forward. That may not be the direction she wants to go in. And I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe that’s okay. And maybe it’s just a prejudice of mine that artist’s should take leaps forward. But god, I so wish she would. We have enough Picassos.
The Fifth Estate, written by Josh Singer and directed by Bill Condon, is a hi-tech espionage thriller disguised as a bromance, or a bromance disguised as a hi-tech espionage thriller. I’m not sure which. I’m not sure I want to know.
For those of you just returned from the Antarctic, The Fifth Estate is about the Private Lives relationship (you know what I mean, can’t live with, can’t live without type thing) between Julian Assange and Daniel Berg, the creators of the king of all hacker sites Wikileaks. And what a relationship it is, too. Like any good Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, they meet cute; flirt; get jealous of each others’ lovers; try to sabotage each others’ relationships; cheat on each other; have make-up sex (in the form of releasing a shocking video of the American military shooting and killing unarmed civilians and journalists—it was good for me, was it good for you, too?). The love affair metaphor here is so heavy handed that it is embarrassing and even cringe worthy at times (you almost want to yell at the screen, “get a room, already, why don’t you”). At one moment I expected Assange to say “You complete me” to Berg and Berg to say to Assange, “I wish I could quit you”. The only place it really deviates from formula is that unlike most rom coms, The Fifth Estate has an unhappy ending as Berg, like any good starter wife, gets traded in for a younger model.
If this movie had been made in the 1950’s, I would have expected it to star Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck and Zachary Scott or Fred MacMurray. Instead we have Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange (with shocking white hair as if he were an elf extra in the Lord of the Rings) and Daniel Bruhl as Berg. There’s absolutely no chemistry between the two and their characters just never come to life (though I have to say in Cumberbatch’s defense, he is stuck with imitating someone with one of the dullest speaking voices in some time).
And poor Berg. After giving some solid and satisfying performances in such films as Good Bye Lenin!, The Edukators and Inglorious Basterds, he just can’t seem to find a role that suits him. And it doesn’t help that here he can’t get any more heat going with his co-star than he could with Chris Hemsworth in Rush, another Beatrice/Benedict relationship that also couldn’t get off the ground (or out of the starting gate).
It’s all so unfortunate. Because when the film focuses on the actual Wikileaks story, it’s rather exciting. Condon’s direction just refuses to let the action lag and the whole thing is filled with a bunch of fun visuals to keep the tension, well…extremely tense. But whenever the thriller returns to the love story, the whole thing sinks like the Titanic, taking its two stars with them.
I must say, though, it does have an interesting supporting cast. Some surprising people keep popping up, like the future Dr. Who, Peter Capaldi; Mike Leigh refugee, David Thewlis; Downton Abby ex, Dan Stevens; and the wonderful Moritz Bleibtrau, one of Germany’s best actors (Run, Lola, Run; Munich; and the Baader Meinhoff Complex).
It also has Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci as U.S. state department officers who, for some reason, always feel a tad out of sync with the rest of the movie. Part of this may be because they are too familiar of actors for their roles. But part of it may be because they give the most vibrant line readings and their platonic romance is infinitely more believable than Cumberbatch’s and Bruhl’s.
Movie Review of SEDUCED AND ABANDONED by Howard Casner
Posted: October 31, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alec Baldwin, Benh Zeitlin, Francis Ford Coppola, James Toback, Jessica Chastain, Martin McDonough, Neve Campbell, Ryan Gosling, Seduced and Abandoned, Shane Carruth, Sofia Coppola | 51 Comments »Seduced and Abandoned is not to be confused with the classic Italian film directed by Pietro Germi that came out in 1964, but I doubt you’ll be fooled after five minutes into the picture. No, this 2013 release is a movie that purports to make a statement on the state of filmmaking today. At the same time, it’s also one of those movies where the filmmakers don’t realize that the statement they are making may not actually be the statement they are making.
The basic premise of this semi-documentary revolves around director James Toback and actor Alec Baldwin taking an idea they have for a movie to the Cannes Film Festival and seeing if they can get someone to fork over $40 to $50 million to make it (and no, before you ask, they are not punking anyone; they are quite serious). When they don’t get the support they think they deserve, they then suggest that this is what is wrong with film financing today—no one is willing to take a chance and produce a work of art; they are only interested in the bottom line.
But let’s take a closer look at what is going on here. A director with a small cult following, but who really isn’t that impressive a filmmaker (for anyone who wants proof of this, watch Toback’s movie Fingers and then watch Jacque Audiard’s French remake of it, The Beat that My Heart Skipped, and one can immediately see what I mean), takes an idea (not even a completed script, but the barest of bones of a gleam in a father’s eye) that is to star Alec Baldwin and Neve Campbell (Neve Campbell? Really?) and pitches said idea to seasoned producers. The idea? (And please try not to chortle and disrupt the audience members around you as I did): Last Tango in Baghdad (I told you, no chortling), the story of two people, a war haunted U.S. agent and a liberal journalist, who meet for a series of sexual encounters in a hotel room in the war torn city.
No, I am not making this up—that’s the idea. Actually, I’m being a bit harder on it that it deserves. There’s nothing that wrong with the premise. It’s perfectly serviceable and with the right screenwriter, there’s no reason it couldn’t be a good movie. But for me, things start going off the road a bit the second they started pitching it as a Last Tango rip off. In fact, the moments with the most humor in this faux-doc are the scenes Toback shows from that once, but no longer, scandalous movie—like Brando asking Maria Schneider to stick her fingers up his ass (at least they didn’t do the “pass the butter” scene); it’s unfortunate for Toback that Last Tango… hasn’t, unlike cheese, aged that well.
The other issue is that Toback and Baldwin pitch this idea as if it were the most original and daring idea in the world, that they are going to break new sexual ground and create something really scandalous; a statement that could only be made by people who have never seen a movie like 9 Songs where you actually see, in pornographic detail, a man and woman have sex, including cum shots. Now, are Baldwin and Campbell going to break new ground here by pulling a James Deen (no, not the actor, the porn star—notice the spelling of the name) and Joanna Angel? Why do I suspect not?
So what do we have? We have a second rate filmmaker, with barely an idea for a movie (and hasn’t been written yet), and an idea that’s not that original and with a lousy pitch, to star two non-bankable actors; and yet, Toback and Baldwin are shocked, shocked (in their very best Captain Louis Renault manner) that they can’t get $40 to $50 million in financing. Hence, their conclusion that something is rotten in the state of moviemaking. Meanwhile, I’m in the audience going, Uh, guys, you do realize that the only thing you’ve proven is that the guys out there financing films can smell a lemon a mile away? In fact, rather than demonstrate that something’s gone wrong in France’s version of tinsel town, Seduced and Abandoned ironically suggests that the future of movies is in sound hands.
Which is too bad. Because I actually think that Tobac and Baldwin are right. In many ways, I agree with the basic premise presented here. I do think that producers are too interested in the bottom line with little to no regard for the art of film (a huge change since the growth of independent film in the 1990’s). It is just unfortunate that Toback and Baldwin have chosen a less than stellar example to prove it.
And they seem so behind the times. They don’t explore how many contemporary filmmakers are finding money to make their films. In fact, there are no contemporary filmmakers in the movie. They interview Francis Ford Coppola, but not his daughter Sofia, who is one of the most exciting directors in film today (and seems to have less problems finding backing for her film than her father, or Toback). They talk to Martin Scorcese, but not such up and comers as Shane Carruth, Benh Zeitlin or Martin McDonough, all of whom are making some incredible films. The only contemporary artists they talk to are actors like Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain, all of whom have insightful things to say about what it’s like to be an actor today, but nothing about how to get a movie made.
There’s just something so false about the whole thing. Not only does the movie they are promoting never seem quite real (it’s all so vague, one wonders how they ever got the time of day from any financier to pitch it), it starts out with Toback telling Campbell that she is in the movie and nothing will stop that from happening. You know this scene is there for only one reason: so that at the first opportunity, Toback can make a satirical point by telling just about the first person he negotiates with that he will gladly jettison Neve for Jessica if they can agree upon a price. But again, it feels so fake, it’s hard to take seriously.
There is one other aspect of the film that gives a lie to Toback’s premise. When they decide to scale back the film and make it about these two people meeting in New York after both have left the war zone, yet are still scarred by their experiences, and meeting for sex at that point, they suddenly get offers left and right for a $4 to $5 million dollar film. Not only does the film now sound more interesting, Toback has found a way to finance his movie. It’s not his original vision, no; but then again, his original vision wasn’t worth $40 to $50 million in the first place.
Toback may be saying that these money men know how to make a profit, but nothing about art, but to be ruthlessly honest, I think he kind of unintentionally proved they knew both.
Movie Reviews of A TOUCH OF SIN and RUSH by Howard Casner
Posted: October 27, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A Touch of Sin, Chris Helmsworth, Daniel Bruhl, James Hunt, Niki Lauda, Peter Morgan, Ron Howard, Rush, Yu Likwai, Zhangke Jia | 1 Comment »A Touch of Sin, the new movie written and directed by film and troublemaker (not necessarily in that order) Zhangke Jia, has more than a touch of a touch in it. It’s a portmanteau film revolving around four different people who end up doing violence in modern day China, all driven by the corruption and greed that is oozing its way past the Communist idealism, and all inspired by true events.
In this post-Mao China, men with axes stop motorists on lonely roads for money; local enforcers extort bribes from truck drivers who want to drive through their city; and prostitution is commonplace (it has one of the most extravagant whorehouses you’re going to see on film in some time–the ladies of the evening kinkily marching out to patriotic military music in red army uniforms with short shorts and midriff revealing shirts is one of the highlights of the movie).
The film is a riveting look at how power corrupts and money corrupts even more. It’s uncompromising and shocking. Jia shows his characters great empathy, no matter how horrifying their actions, while the bleak landscape offers no sympathy for any of them (beautifully shot, if that’s the word for it, by Yu Likwai). It paints a very dark picture of Jia’s country and is apparently being released in China, but how is anybody’s guess.
Also based on true events is Rush, but oh, what a difference an ocean can make. In fact, while I was watching this movie about rival race car drivers, all I could think was, Do writer Peter Morgan and director Ron Howard realize just how bad, how really terrible, their movie is? And then I checked out the critic conglomerate called rottentomatoes.com and saw that it received a 92% rating. 92%. From the top critics, the ones with jobs at places like the Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic and The New Yorker (that earthquake you just felt was Pauline Kael turning in her grave).
So I suspect the answer to my question is, no, they don’t. But at least they have an excuse. But for the life of me, I have no idea what possible apology the critics could come up with. Rush is a big, over the top, studio type film that falls resoundingly flat, runs out of gas almost immediately, crashes and burns from the opening shot, as well as any other number of puns one can come up with to describe just how appallingly dreadful it all is (it’s a real drag, in other words).
The story revolves around a 1970’s rivalry between James Hunt (a blond-haired, blue eyed satyr) and Niki Lauda (an emotionless, stoic Austrian), Formula One drivers lusting to be world champion. To be fair, Morgan and Howard have set themselves a high bar. They have given us in these central characters two of the most unlikable people one has met on film in some time. Worse, they have given us two of the most boring people one has met on film in some time. They also give these two a rivalry based upon reasons that are so petty, it’s almost impossible to take it seriously, much less become emotionally involved in the stakes. In fact, there were times when I wondered why Morgan and Howard hadn’t made it a dark comedy; the basis of the story almost seems to demand it at times.
I don’t know how anybody can drain all excitement and interest out of a movie about racing, but Howard has somehow managed to do just that. He does little to dramatize what the races are like (the camera is more often than not kept at a distance, like a spectator who couldn’t get a good seat). He seems to have almost no interest in the thrill and passion of the racing experience or in seeing it through the eyes of the characters; instead he only seems to care about who wins what race—the exact opposite of what is interesting the audience.
He does try his best, though. Most of the time he keeps that camera moving, never letting it stop to smell the roses, with frantic tracking shots and quick edits. It does imbue the movie with some tension at times, but more often than not it just feels like a desperate attempt to hide the fact that there is no there there on the screen.
Morgan’s dialog is basically everyone explaining to everyone else how they feel and why they act the way they do. And there’s just so much of it. Even more enervating are the taunting back and forths between Hunt and Lauda that never rise about the basic “Oh, yeah?”, “Yeah”, “Oh, yeah?”, “Yeah”, “Well…yeah”. I doubt Wilde could have put it any better. And the actors (a bland, as usual, Chris Helmsworth as Hunt and a buck toothed Daniel Bruhl as Lauda) can’t seem to do much with the material either.
I’m not sure why this movie made me so angry. It certainly isn’t Morgan and Howard. They’ve both created solid and successful entertainment in the past and everybody has a failure at some point. No, I think my real anger is toward the critics who should know better. People, this movie doesn’t work and you have no excuse for not knowing that. You really need to get your act together.
Movie Reviews of BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD, KILL YOUR DARLINGS and 15 YEARS AND ONE DAY by Howard Casner
Posted: October 24, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 15 Years and One Day, Aron Piper, Austin Burn, Belen Lopez, Ben Foster, Birth of the Living Dead, Dane DeHaan, Daniel Radcliff, David Cross, Duane Jones, George A. Romero, Gracia Querejeta, Jack Huston, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Cullum, John Krokidas, Kill Your Darlings, Maribel Verdu, Michael C. Hall, Santos Mercero, Tito Valverde | 898 Comments »Birth of the Living Dead is a rather delightful little documentary about a subject that is in many ways not quite so delightful: how the classic horror film Night of the Living Dead came about. It’s tight, to the point, and has at its center the grand old man himself, George A. Romero, who comes across more like a youthful imp pulling a prank rather than the maker of a movie that reached into the core of our beings and found something new and original that scared the hell out of us.
The movie has two major through lines. One is how to make an independent film. The other is how a low budget, second rate horror film that, in a perfect world, would never have found its way out of the bottom half of a double bill at drive-ins and dive movie theaters managed to become one of the most important horror films of all time (let’s face it, from a strictly objective viewpoint, Vincent Canby of the New York Times was right at the time: it’s “a grainy little movie acted by what appear to be nonprofessional actors, who are besieged in a farm house by some other nonprofessional actors who stagger around, stiff-legged, pretending to be flesh-eating ghouls.”).
But both through lines are significant life lessons for up and coming filmmakers. As a DIY project, Romero and his fellow producers were incredibly resourceful: everybody did double duty (producers, make-up artists, even Romero himself doubled as actors and sometimes redoubled as zombies); they asked all their commercial clients to play the living dead; they knew someone who owned a meat packing plant, so they used him in the movie so they could have entrails for ghouls to feast upon; they had a local newscaster play a newscaster in the movie with the result that he wrote his own copy and got them permission to use the station helicopter to do aerial shots; they cast the host of the local, late night scare fest movie program, and he gave them free plugs and the audience weekly updates. It’s amazing and even inspiring just how resourceful Romero and the others were in taking advantage of whatever they could in order to get the film made.
But they were also very lucky. Though Romero does admit that there was always something of the movie that is a reflection of the political unrest of the time (especially the news footage of the Viet Nam War), they cast Duane Jones, a black actor, in the lead, a character that was never specifically stated to be black; they cast him because he was a strong actor. And that accidental stroke of color blind casting suddenly gave the film a much deeper resonance: now it was not just a movie that grew out of attitudes toward the war, but also out of attitudes toward the Civil Rights movement. And the fact that the movie was never rewritten to accommodate Jones’ race just made the racial aspect of it stronger.
And it’s the amateurish, non-professionalism that makes the movie rise above what it is. It’s a bad movie in which the factors that make it bad make it not just a good movie, but a classic. The flat acting, the black and white shaky cinematography, the graininess, everything that makes it something that a studio wouldn’t touch, make it seem so realistic, it really gets under your skin and makes it very difficult to forget.
And all the while, Romero is just sitting there laughing and laughing and laughing about the absurdity of the whole enterprise.
Kill Your Darlings is a movie about a group of people who hate everything pretentious, pompous and conceited, yet whose every action and whose every utterance that pours forth from their mouth is pretentiousness, pomposity and conceitedness incarnate. The problem is that I’m not quite sure that writers Austin Burn and John Krokidas, who also directed, intended this.
The film is based upon the true story of the murder of David Kammerer by one Lucien Carr while Carr and other beat darlings Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac tried to craft a new literary vision in 1944 at Columbia College in New York City. It’s a great subject and the movie is certainly not without interest. But it also never really comes together in a very satisfactory way either. At times it feels like it’s going for the painfully nostalgic feel of the early scenes in the movie and TV mini-series Brideshead Revisited, scenes that reveled in the halcyon days of Cambridge in the 1930’s. But Burn and Krokidas can’t seem to get that tone, or even any tone, quite right. The ingredients all seem to be there (the late nights in Harlem at jazz clubs; the benzydrine and drug induced rebellions; war time New York in the overcast fall and winter; the wonderful costumes and set design; the fear of being found out gay), but Krokidas can’t quite seem to find the right rhythms and style.
Neither can Dane DeHaan in the key role as Carr. DeHaan is just never convincing enough as someone who seems to think he’s the heir to Oscar Wilde (except in the boudoir, which is, in many ways, his fatal flaw). His performance seems forced for too much of the film. And without a strong Carr, there’s little for the movie to hang itself onto.
Everyone else does a credible to excellent job. Harry Potter has put a lot of effort these last few years in making us forget he’s Harry Potter. Daniel Radcliff gives a very solid and often empathetic performance of a budding genius. There are some marvelous supporting turns here (David Cross and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Ginsberg’s parents; Broadway legend John Cullum as a curmudgeon professor who recognizes talent even when he doesn’t want to see it; Michael C. Hall as the desperate and doomed Kammerer; and Jack Huston as a Jack Kerouac with eyes that have sparks coming out of them). In the end, though, it’s Ben Foster who wins the acting honors in a witty and spot on performance as the future novelist William Burroughs.
The movie does do one interesting thing. It starts off making one character seem to be the sociopathic predator and then reveals that no, that person is really no more than a sad, pathetic wreck of a human being, while the apparently sad, pathetic wreck turns out to be the true sociopath. It’s a neat little trick and it helps make the last third of the movie the strongest and most riveting section. But in the end, it’s not really enough and the movie falls short of what it might have been.
15 Years and One Day is Spain’s entry in the 2014 Foreign Language Film Oscar category. Ostensibly it’s one of those old warhorses about an older person and a younger person finding their lives intertwined with the result that both are inevitably and forever changed. Ostensibly, I say, because if that is the point, the movie has one of the more unusual structures for such a sub-genre. The grandfather isn’t even introduced until after a third of the movie has gone by and the grandson subsequently ends up in a coma for about a third of the remainder. So just when they were supposed to have interacted in order to change each other is a bit of a mystery. There’s also some subplot about the death of a teenage bully, homophobe and sociopath in the making (an immigrant, the bad guy du jour, natch), which is never quite convincing. In other words, the film, written by Santos Mercero and Gracia Querejeta, who also directed, is what we call a bit all over the place and can’t seem to make up its mind what it wants to be about. With newcomer Aron Piper as the grandson; Maribel (Y Tu Mama Tambien) Verdu as the mother; a strong Tito Valverde as the grandfather. Also with Belen Lopez as a police officer who, for some puzzling reason, keeps shrugging off the grandson’s actions with a boys-will-be-boys attitude when the grandson is so obviously a teenage Dexter. She also seems to suggest that a gay youth who killed someone in self defense while being physically assaulted and gay bashed (and threatened with rape) is in deep do-do; that perhaps is the scariest part of the movie.
Movie Review of ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW by Howard Casner
Posted: October 14, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Elana Schuber, Escape from Tomorrow, Jack Dalton, Lucas Lee Graham, Randy Moore, Roy Abramsohn | 3 Comments »I’m not convinced the new indie, OMG why isn’t Disney suing already, film, Escape from Tomorrow, ultimately works or even holds together in any sort of satisfying manner. If truth be told, it tends to lose its way in the last third, as if the writer/director Randy Moore hadn’t quite made up his mind what he wanted to say or what it was all about, or even what the basic plot was. It just doesn’t quite feel fully thought out.
At the same time, this is the sort of film one wants to see from indie filmmakers, especially a first film, which this is. It’s clever, unique, edgy. It tries to do something different and push the envelope. It is very definitely its own thing. The filmmaker at least attempts to have a vision here, even it’s less than 20/20 some of the time.
For those of you who haven’t been watching the news lately, i.e., are not on facebook or twitter, Escape from Tomorrow is the movie filmed semi-guerilla style at Walt Disney World in Florida and the Disneyland Park in Anaheim (I say semi- because I did catch some green screen shots and some others that tried to pretend they were taking place at one of the theme parks, but obviously weren’t). Everything that was actually shot at the park was done furtively, using the regular crowds as backdrop. Because of this, though the plot is a bit of a fantasia, the movie at times achieves the realistic feeling of such movies as Rome: Open City and Little Fugitive, though not the transcendence.
The basic story revolves around a typical middle class family, about as Donna Reed/Robert Young as you can get: the father is the breadwinner with a nymphet fixation; his wife a stay at home mother and full time Xanthippe; their young son has an Oedipus Complex; and the even younger daughter has an Electra one.
When the father, Jim, gets a phone call out of the blue and is informed that he is fired for reasons that are somewhat mysterious (though possibly with a hint that Jim really should have some idea as to why), he keeps it to himself, and his family spends their last day of vacation at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. But Jim quickly becomes obsessed with two Lolitaish French teens (oh, those French; ever since we saved their asses in WWII, they just screw up everything, don’t they) and begins to suffer hallucinations that become more and more bizarre, to say the least.
Roy Abramsohn plays Jim and Elana Schuber plays wife Emily. Both give solid, down to earth performances (though they do have one scene where they both seem to seriously flounder as they argue over whether to stay at the park or return to the hotel). However, the real standout may be Jack Dalton as their son; he has deep black pools of eyes that seriously creep you out (I mean, seriously, bro), as if he was auditioning for a remake of The Omen.
In the end, it’s the technical aspects of the film that draw you in. Shot in bright black and white by cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham and smartly directed by Moore, there are some remarkably staged scenes, especially one that takes place in race cars that must have required a number of trips around on that ride alone. Each scene at the theme parks had to be a single take since one couldn’t film multiple times and edit it all together, not with a constant changing background. From a directing standpoint, Moore has acquitted himself well.
But as a writer, he may have a way to go. The structure is a bit clunky at times (Jim’s first hallucination is not finessed well at all). Though the suggestion is that the whole story is suppose to be from Jim’s POV and that the hallucinatory aspects are only what he is experiencing, the screenplay does something odd at times, like have a scene with a nurse that ends with Jim out of the room (so he couldn’t possibly have seen her final breakdown) and then have his wife have an hallucinatory moment herself. And there’s a jump in time shot where Jim blacks out and wakes up in a woman’s hotel room that really doesn’t make much sense either. At first, these oddities are intriguing. But as the movie gets more and more fantastic, the whole thing starts crumbling. And the movie takes too long to end, probably because the plot seems to stop going anywhere clear as Moore seems to lose control of the story.
Movie Reviews of GRAVITY and THE DIRTIES by Howard Casner
Posted: October 11, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alfonso Cuaron, Evan Morgan, George Clooney, Gravity, Jonas Cuaron, Matthew Wilson, Owen Williams, Sandra Bullock, The Dirties | 235 Comments »Gravity, the new outer space movie written by Jonas and Alfonso Cuaron and directed by the latter, is a movie that is driven by plot and not characterizations (the film may be 3D, but the personas on screen are a mite less) and gets away with it (sort of like Star Wars, though I can understand if that might seem a stretch of a comparison). Three people are floating around in the void repairing a space station when some debris zooms by and kills one, strands two (don’t you just hate when that happens). They’re not particularly interesting people, per se, but they are still people, so it would be heartless not to care, no matter how slight in personality they may seem.
And when a plot is this focused and tight and when the circumstances are so dire and the solution to their problem so clearly stated (it requires the use of both a Russian and Chinese space station, possibly symbolic of the death of the Cold War, though the Chinese station ultimately saves the situation, possibly demonstrating where movie money is coming from these days—after all, this is a 3D IMAX movie and those are just about the only kinds of theaters they are building over there; or it could be mere coincidence), it would also be a bit cavalier, not to mention just plain impolite, to not sit on the edge of your seat, pulse raising, heart pounding, dying to know how it all turns out.
Gravity, if nothing else, is a thrill ride enriched by some of the most amazing CGI effects you’ll see in some time. Though there are many who have now leaped upon the bandwagon and pointed out all the unrealistic aspects of the film (and I also did wonder why the heroine’s hair didn’t float around in zero G, but assumed that poetic license was employed so it wouldn’t distract by looking like Cameron Diaz’s coiffure in There’s Something About Mary), at the same time, whether it is or not, Gravity feels like one of the most realistic fictional movies about space I’ve ever seen.
In fact, the real question might be: it’s riveting, but is it sci-fi? It’s not a commentary on modern times through the smoke screen of a fake future or anything like that. It’s a pretty straight forward thriller that seems incredibly factual. But then again, does it matter? Well, probably only to the producers who might be able to use the it’s-a-non-sci-fi/sci-fi movie in order to get it the Oscar for Best Pic this year.
But as was pointed out, it’s by no means a perfect movie. While one gladly sits through all the beautiful SFX while biting ones nails through all the near death climaxes, there is that dialog. Uninteresting, cutesy, forced, it doesn’t really add much to the situation, and it does at time fall on cringed ears (there’s also an odd reaction at one point when they are told that a missile destroyed a satellite and everyone treated it as if it were an everyday occurrence—I was freaking, a bit, myself).
At the same time, it’s no Harrison Ford, “You can type this shit, but you can’t say it” screenplay either. It gets the job done. And the stars, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, both excellent and just the sort of people you would want to get stuck with in outer space if you were facing imminent death (Clooney can charm the panic out of a herd of rogue elephants), play against the banal talky talk by giving somewhat flat, down to earth (oh, the irony) line readings to it all.
Gravity isn’t about much. It tries to drum up some sort of character arc silliness of Bullock being symbolically reborn after having lost her child (yeah, I didn’t buy it either and it all sounded a bit too cheesy Save the Cat to take seriously), but in the end, it’s probably best to look at Gravity as one of those movies that doesn’t really do anything, but does it very, very well. And with Clooney’s blue eyes and Bullock in her short shorts to cap it off.
Meanwhile, back on terra firma, in the film The Dirties, Matt and Owen (played by Matthew Wilson and Owen Williams—get it, get it, they’re using their real names) are having their own life and death struggles. They are high school students who are being bullied, often ruthlessly so (the strongest scenes in the movie are the viciousness of the various attacks). The basic idea is that, for a class project, they make a film about getting revenge on the group that is harassing them (the title characters), but then one of them starts taking the idea a bit too seriously.
I wanted to like this film more than I did. I actually just wanted to like it, but it wasn’t until the second half that I felt something was going on that was intriguing and new. But since the first half is filled with Matt and Owen, two of the most obnoxious and annoying people one could hope to avoid, but can’t, since they are the stars of the movie, it was more than a bit of hard going. And the scenes about bullying are pretty much the same scenes you’ve seen about bullying since bullying began being dramatized. The movie offers little new and takes so long not to offer it, that it’s a real chore to get through these early sections.
The second half then takes a turn that brings new life to this sub-genre. Owen discovers that he might actually be able to get accepted into the popular group, mainly because he was once friends with one of the alpha-females who hangs out with the Dirties and who may still have some lingering feelings for him. At this point, Matt begins to freak out as he sees his delicate relationship with Owen being threatened (it even leads to an odd scene that basically blames Matt for all the bullying—Owen tells him that he’s such a freak, he invites what happens to him). And so Matt’s joking-but-not-really desire to take revenge on the bullies becomes a really-no-I-mean-really actuality. If this complication had happened thirty minutes early, then the movie might have been more interesting and involving.
The film was written by Johnson and Evan Morgan and directed by Johnson; it’s a first feature for both, I believe. Everybody tries hard and there’s a ton of energy here. And for a low budget film, it has a lot of solid production values.
But it also has more than it’s share of clichés. It’s filmed with that ultimate of recent movie and TV conceits—we see it all unfold through the eyes of a third party who films everything with a hand held camera. Like the first half of the film, this doesn’t bring anything new to the story and feels, well, just so unimaginative, somewhat of a letdown.
And it also raises more questions than it answers: not only is this person never identified (we only know whoever he or she is, they aren’t a student because Matt has to sneak him into the building at the climax), this person doesn’t try to stop Matt from his horrifying crime. And since this camera operator has so carefully filmed so many of the acts of bullying, has recorded events that any ambulance chaser would salivate over, it waters down the effectiveness of Matt’s actions—makes them seem less like something his character would do, rather than a neat way for the writer/director to end the story.
Movie Reviews of OUT IN THE DARK and SALINGER by Howard Casner
Posted: October 7, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Michael Aloni, Michael Myer, Nicholas Jacob, Out in the Dark, Salinger, Shane Salerno, Yael Shafrir | 127 Comments »I feel as if I must begin this review with an apology. I recently saw two movies that for some reason I kept putting off and which have now left the theaters (at least in L.A.). And I feel that both are far more worthy of seeing than many of the more praised films that have opened as of late (Prisoners, Short Term 12, In A World…, etc.), movies whose popularity and good reviews have totally and completely escaped me.
The first, Out in the Dark, is a new Israeli drama written by Yael Shafrir and Michael Myer and directed by Myer. It covers the same basic premise of Gale Uchovsky and Eytan Fox’s The Bubble, a story about two men who become romantically involved with each other, one a Palestinian man trying to avoid the consequences of his family’s terrorist connections, the other an Israeli man just out of the army.
But in spite of having some plot similarities, Out in the Dark has it’s own voice and approach to the subject matter. While The Bubble is a powerful and ambitious updating of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (perhaps one of the most brilliant of such updatings of classic works), Out in the Dark is an espionage thriller that would be worthy of John Le Carré.
Shafrir and Myer’s drama is about a young male Palestinian, Nimr, who is given a student visa to study at Tel Aviv. He strives to be apolitical long enough to get out of the area altogether and study at someplace like Cambridge. But he also begins an affair with a male Israeli lawyer, Roy. Things take a nasty turn when the Israeli secret service approach Nimr and tell him that if he won’t spy for them and infiltrate various campus organizations, and on top of that, betray his brother who they suspect (correctly) of being involved with terrorist activities, they will cancel his student visa and tell his family that he is gay, which in this context is a death sentence. Nimr refuses.
The screenplay is first rate, a taught and emotionally fraught thriller. The story is riveting and cleverly done. The direction keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. The acting, especially by Nicholas Jacob as Nimr (his first film role) and Michael Aloni as Roy, is subtle and sincerely felt. And the ambiguous ending is deeply moving.
The reason I’m so late with a review of Out in the Dark is because it played for a shamefully short period of time. I put off seeing Shane Salerno’s documentary Salinger because it was severely trashed by the critics. But after seeing it, I have to say, I have no idea what it was that made everyone hate this movie so. I found it gripping and quite emotionally involving.
I even went to rottentomatoes.com to see what I could find out and though I didn’t read in detail all the reviews there, the basic consensus was that the movie was shallow, didn’t dig deep enough into its subject matter, and was as “phony” as the hero of Salinger’s greatest work, The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield, thought the world to be. But when I walked out, I had to double check and make sure we hadn’t seen two totally different movies. In fact, in thinking back on it, I really can’t figure out what more the critics could possibly have wanted from the film (except actual appearances and interviews with J.D. himself, which he never gave, so that’s sort of that).
First, I must participate in full disclosure (actually, I don’t think this exactly counts as the ole FD, but it’s kind of the same thing). I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school. I enjoyed the book and thought the prose was lovely. I was always entertained by it. At the same time, when I finished reading it, my first thought was, “Wow, Holden has some serious mental issues”.
This echoes an anecdote in the movie that tells of the first publisher that offered to take on the, now, ubiquitous book. An editor told Caulfield his company wanted to publish it, but the editor hadn’t shown it to the firm’s owner yet. When the owner read it, he called in Salinger and told him they would have to do extensive rewrites because the central character was obviously mentally ill. Salinger ran fleeing from the building, devastated at the reaction. And after watching this documentary, I’m not so sure that I and the owner were that far off.
At any rate, I offer all that to suggest that I am not as enamored of the book as others, all of whom have found it to have had a profound affected on their lives.
But I still found the documentary to be quite riveting, for the most part. There were some slow moments and I still have issues at times with using documentary footage that feels taken from archives and have little or nothing to do with the topic at hand, but more seems like it’s there as filler, to give the audience something, anything to look at as people talk, as if the subject matter wasn’t interesting enough in itself. And for some reason I can’t quite explain, I never could take seriously the appearance of celebrities like Edward Norton, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Martin Sheen (they’re not experts on the book, just on how they felt about it upon reading it; but how they felt seemed at times like they were reading political talking points instead of really telling us what it meant to them).
But I suggest that this faux background material wasn’t that necessary and that the material was strong enough to stand on its own. The most riveting moments are the extensive monologues people give who encountered Salinger, not just, but especially, Jean Miller and Joyce Maynard, both of whom were romantically involved with this recluse. Here the camera does little but focus on the faces of these people and let them speak; and what tales they tell, stories of a troubled soul with demons they could never understand and Salinger wouldn’t share.
The documentary feels incredibly well researched and is filled with rich detail. I knew nothing about Salinger’s life before this, but I feel as if I know just about everything I need to know now about this somewhat oddball character (though Jewish, he married an ex-member of the Nazi party in Germany just before his return—the marriage was annulled not longer after). The film is well written, well told and well directed. If anyone wants to know about Salinger, this is the movie for it.
And it ends on a powerful and upbeat note. Though Salinger is no longer with us, his writings still are. And not just the books already published. Apparently there is a large body of writing that he set up to be published after his death, starting in 2015. That means more of the Glass family and more of Holden Caulfield as well.
Movie Reviews of DON JON and CONCUSSION by Howard Casner
Posted: October 3, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Concussion, Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julianne Moore, Robin Wiegert, Scarlett Johansson, Stacie Passon, Tony Danza | 43 Comments »John L. Sullivan: I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The problems that confront the average man!
LeBrand: But with a little sex in it.
John L. Sullivan: A little, but I don’t want to stress it.
Preston Sturges: Sullivan’s Travels
I recently saw two films written and directed by people who took some interesting and unique looks at sex and relationships in the new millennium. But though one welcomes the filmmakers’ attempts at exploring such “taboo” topics (as much as anything can really be considered “taboo” anymore), and though both at times offered bold and challenging takes on their subject matter, neither one really came together in a totally satisfying way. In fact, I suppose one could say that each ended on something of a limp note, which I suppose is appropriate for stories about pornography and prostitution.
The first, Don Jon, stars (in the title role), is written by, and is directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which seems to fit perfectly with a movie about someone who masturbates a lot. It’s obviously a labor of love (and self love) on Gordon-Levitt’s part and it’s not without its pleasures, not all of which are onanistic.
It begins by making some incredibly forceful and insightful observations about sex. It certainly offers one of the best defenses of indulging in the viewing of adult filmmaking that I’ve ever heard. It even goes so far as to suggest that Nicholas Myer type movies are no more than porn for women (and again, makes a very, even scarily so, convincing argument for it—neither are remotely realistic looks at sex and relationships, and both are pure fantasy).
It then really goes for the jugular in what it has to say about male/female relationship (perhaps the most honest, if not depressing, view I’ve heard in some time, whether you agree with it or not). Men only want women for sex (even more alarming, in this metrosexual world, men don’t even need women to cook and clean for them—a revelation that causes Don’s girlfriend, played by a dynamic and dynamically sexy Scarlett Johansson, to freak out when she finds out that Don does his own housework; she knows a threat when she hears it). Meanwhile, women, knowing this, use sex to manipulate men into doing whatever they want. And the winner is whoever is most skilled at manipulating the opposite sex (sort of a bastardization of Shaw’s theory of the life force).
There are actually very exciting ideas, worthy of debate. Worthy of being asked. And Gordon-Levitt definitely asks them, and with a certain viciousness beneath the humor. But his ultimate answer is…well, rather conventional, even unoriginal, as it all kinda goes soft as the blood flows out of the organ in the second half.
This is because of Julianne Moore, playing Esther, a character who is, well, not really a real person, but more a construct needed to resolve all the issues brought up in the first half. Now, it’s easy to overlook the fact that she is no more than a construct because Moore is so good in the role, acting in a totally different, down to earth style from everyone else (if truth be told, Gordon-Levitt, Johansson, Tony Danza-as the steroid looking dad-and the others are fun, but they do tend to push things dangerously close to becoming caricatures). Moore plays a woman who has lost both her husband and child. Fair enough. But what makes her a construct is that she also plays someone who has more insight into sex and relationships than a Ph.D. in psychology would have, speaking in calm, motherly homilies while getting Don to change his hair style (she’s just as manipulative as Johansson’s character, but is less confrontational about it).
And at this point, Gordon-Levitt as a writer starts to cheat. When Esther asks Don why he likes porn, he doesn’t give her all the cogent arguments he gave at the beginning of the film. He gives her only one. And with that, a movie that started out giving us a very convincing case as to why the missionary position is the most unfulfilling one for men, becomes a movie that embraces that position as the only one than can deliver true sexual ecstasy (there’s one scene that suggests that Don is starting to question his church’s teachings; maybe so, but he still ends up embracing its positions on, uh, well, positions?).
But I have to applaud Gordon-Levitt. He went for the trifecta in making his film and even if he didn’t get a home run, he still ended up with a movie that is handsomely produced with some fine performances and some very funny scenes, as well as a film that makes some astute observations about sex.
Even if it does peter out in the end.
Concussion, written and directed by Stacie Passon, has a different set of issues. The story is about Abby, a typical stay at home mom type with the added twist that her significant other is also a woman. Abby gets hit in the head with a ball and is rushed to the E.R. As a result, she begins questioning the rather Stepford like existence she’s been leading and finds herself drifting into the life of a prostitute.
Well, actually, that’s part of the rub. You see, the only way I would have known most of this is because I was told this before the movie began.
Concussion is one of those movies that begins in the middle of act one. We know nothing about Abby or what she’s like before the accident, so we have no context to judge what happens to her afterward (we don’t even see the accident itself). So is she a nice, lovable Donna Reed type who turns into the Wicked Witch of the West, or was she always the Wicked Witch (as she seems from the first scene) and after being beaned, she slowly begins to mellow and become nicer and more open to life as she drifts into the world’s oldest profession? I don’t know. I mean, even after half the movie had gone by and Passon seems to imply it’s what is behind Curtain No. 2, I still wasn’t sure.
And none of the other characters are any help, damn them. No one remarks that Abby is acting different in any way, which suggests, ipso facto, that there is no change. And if there isn’t, then what was the point of the accident, as well as the title?
The whole thing seems highly influenced by Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour, also about a middle-class housewife (played by the great Catherine Deneuve) who is unfulfilled and becomes a lady of the afternoon. Concussion doesn’t reach the level of Bunuel’s film (what movie could). But Passon is also not that strong with pacing and the movie is a bit slow in parts. One of the ironies is that Bunuel never really shows the sex (it’s all suggested and kept off screen), while Passon fills the screen with a series of encounters that are dwelt on in a protracted manner. But Bunuel’s film seems so wicked and erotic, while Passon’s seems listless and emotionally uninvolving.
Concussion also goes soft in the same way Don Jon does. Abby seems to find a new freedom, a new way of looking at life. She becomes her own person and finds new ways of relating to people, all of which start to look good on her (Robin Wiegert as Abby is often very appealing in the way she struggles to come to terms with how she is changing). But when the secrets seep out, suburban morality once again rears its head and Abby opts for the comfort of Cheever/Updyke normality (at least I think that’s how Concussion ends—there’s a quick flash of Abby with some of the other characters that may indicate a different ending, but it went by so fast, I couldn’t tell if it was a flashback or a flashforward).
In Concussion this return to normality is symbolized by a wrap around porch. In Don Jon, it’s symbolized by the missionary position. But a rose by any other name, I guess.
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