It’s taken a week for me to recover from the emotional impact of this film. The unflinching tale of a family’s tribulation and one man’s inescapable heartbreak is easily the finest film I’ve seen in 2016, showcasing not only director/writer Kenneth Lonergan‘s deft weaving of pain and memory but a powerful central performance by Casey Affleck. Affleck is Lee Chandler whose older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has suddenly died leaving Lee the sole guardian of his nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges).
For reasons we only gradually come to understand, Lee has been working as a janitor and handy man in Boston, and leaves to return to his New England hometown Manchester by the Sea to settle his brother’s estate and get his restless nephew in gear. The nephew and uncle, forced together by death, begin an awkward attempt at achieving some sort of bond, and their struggle to accept each other forms the mesmerizing heart of the film.
Lonergan’s directorial magic lies in opening the story simply, letting us very gradually fall under the spell that Affleck’s raw affect and simple gestures create. His face reveals—or conceals—a catastrophic past that defines the rest of his life. Only gradually, stitching back and forth, moving through time in the non-linear way of real life, does the film show us the source of Lee’s pain. We begin to understand why the nephew and uncle are so haunted by tragedy, and why they keep moving closer to some kind of relationship that might, just might overcome all the pain.
The film, whose plot sounds searingly downbeat, is a work of genuine incandescence. Manchester by the Sea is a beautiful piece of filmmaking. It sails easily on the simple clarity of the coastal setting, the bare and poignant winter landscape, the bits of easy humor as we watch young Patrick’s attempt to navigate his high school popularity despite his father’s death. We learn that Patrick has an estranged mother, that Lee has an estranged ex-wife, played with uneven passion by Michelle Williams. The situation grows clearer with each scene.
But it is Casey Affleck’s film. Every moment, every nuance of devastation, every implication of a personal world lost is etched on his raw face, a face equally capable of existential confusion and gentle hope. His is an effortless performance of desperation and occasionally uncontrolled rage, and the director seems to know better than to interfere. The film refuses to smooth the edges of life that happens in the way that all life does. Chance intervenes and everything changes. Nothing is ever the same. Yet life continues. An uncontrived loveletter to the pain of being human, Manchester is a film I need to see many more times. It feeds some need deeper than that for cheap laughs and fairytale endings. Go see it before the Oscars.
How wonderful to see Fantastic Beasts, and where to find them—this latest tale of magic, darkness, and colorful creatures— without ever having read or seen any of the Harry Potter films. I was in a unique position bringing no expectations or prior acquaintance with this highly lucrative genre to the new film starring Eddie Redmayne and the latest wave of breathtaking CGI.
J.K. Rowling has apparently moved beyond the cloistered realm of the HP series and sets her dark tale of magic and alternative love in the 1920s New York, where we first meet nerdy wizard Newt Scamander (Redmayne) a botanical curator of rare and magical animals who arrives from England determined to capture examples of species existing only in the new world.
Lucky for him, and us, that the awkward collector meets up with sister magicians Queenie (Alison Sudol) and Tina (Katherine Waterston) who in their astonishing ways help him in his mission. Help also arrives, against all odds, in the form of a hapless and rumpled pastry entrepreneur Kowalski (Dan Fogler) who runs into Redmayne in a bank (delicious fun!) where he (the baker) is unsuccessfully seeking a loan.
Fantastic Beasts is set in a powerful urban web being woven by the forces of both good and bad wizards, as well as crusaders against wizardry such as Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton), a sadistic evangelist who is torturing her disturbed son Credence Barebone, played with charismatic discomfort by Ezra Miller. Working to foil every least effort of our quartet of protagonists—only one of whom is a no-maj (non-magician)— is the powerful and malevolent Percival Graves played by Colin Farrell whose own magical powers unleash astonishing seismic (and time distorting) explosions and implosions afflicting the cityscape. The plot may drift in and out of credibility—this is a film about fantastic beasts and magical powers after all—but the filmmaking sweeps us away in a way can that can only be called CGI-noir.
Given my innocence of the entire Harry Potter oeuvre, I can only guess that Rowling’s previous wizardry stories deal with the same rich and predominant meta-theme as does Fantastic Beasts. It is about difference, being different, being gifted and Other in all the alternative ways of the 20th century (and of course of every other century as well). The film’s sympathies are with characters who cannot be easily identified or categorized, whose special powers mark them as social outcasts. The metaphor is not heavy-handed, although it is obvious, and the theme of social injustice threads easily through the visual dazzle of fabulous beasts and the wizards who can—occasionally—control them.
Terrifically entertaining, the film’s dark subtext leaves an imprint. The imprint clearly points to many a sequel in which we learn whether Newt and one of the lovely wizards will become lovers, or whether strangely good/bad Percival Graves will emerge in his full identity. Meanwhile, it’s a gorgeous eyeful with just enough dramatic traction to reward adult viewers as well as younger ones.
Hitting our stride now!Two Santa Cruz “Inside the Flame” events coming up. Please SAVE THE DATES! Tuesday December 6th we’ll have some dinner, some wine, and I’ll read a bit and reveal a lot @ Gabriella Cafe. Afternoon Prosecco Party at Soif, December 11th—complimentary bubbly and apps, books for sale, and a few choice tales.
Tuesday, Dec. 6 Gabriella Cafe Salon. Dinner at 6pm, followed by reading from Inside the Flame at 7:15 p.m. Come for some food and wine, and stay for some tasty Q&A. http://gabriellacafe.com/
Sunday, Dec. 11, 3-5 p.m. Soif Wine Bar Book Party. Plan to come for Prosecco, appetizers, purchase books, and savor lots of backstory (and laughs) about how it finally got written. Make reservations to join me for dinner afterwards. http://www.soifwine.com/
I look forward to sharing Inside the Flame with all of you. I’ve also listed these activities on my Facebook business page: ChristinaWatersAuthor. If you haven’t already, please give that page a like !
Since this film will be gone by the time you read this, there isn’t much point in offering an actual critique. Alliedis a film loosely structured around Brad Pitt’s ability to wear suits and Oscar-winner Marian Cotillard’s inability to spin straw into gold. The film is also a spy caper set in both Casablanca and London during WWII. To be honest, spy—yes. Caper—no.
There are questions that cry out to be answered—in addition to the most obvious and over-arching question: “Why was this film made?”—and I’m going to try to tackle them one by one.
1) Why should we believe that the French seductress and the Canadian (yes, Canadian) dullard have formed an actual nuclear family?
Because Brad Pitt’s character, a wing commander in the Canadian RAF, is carrying a baby.
2) Is it just me or does the field costume worn by Cotillard in this desert target-practice scene, doesn’t it look a whole lot like a Lara Croft super military babe outfit? (is she actually attempting to impersonate Angelina Jolie? And if so, why?) [See my final comments below.]
3) Had the previously talented director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future; Forrest Gump) taken some sort of sedative during the filming of Allied? Has he suffered some brain injury? Is he in a coma? Was he even present during the making of this movie (nevermind the complete absence of scriptwriters.).? We may never know.
4) Is this film simply a showcase for Brad Pitt’s interest in expensive clothing? Witness this casually elegant dressing gown, obviously silk, and clearly keyed to his bronze hair and tanned skin.
5) Was this film made to re-establish the flaccid love affair American filmgoers once had with the physically bodacious Mr. Pitt? There are several vigorous couplings —two of which feature the buttocks of Mr. Pitt—and which are intended (we must presume) to show us that the leading characters are really falling in love. If not for these energetic couplings, there would be absolutely no movement, facial or otherwise, shown by the aforementioned Mr. Pitt.
Let’s take another look at this image. We see here the family unit: mom (obviously French, viz. the beret), and dad (we know this because he’s carrying a child).Now look closely at Brat Pitt. See the expression on his face? That is the height of his acting ability. That’s it. A blank look of vague discomfort, plus a change of clothes intended to signal “domesticated” and a prop (the kid). This expression is Pitt’s Benedict Cumberbatch moment. Here he’s letting out all the stops. You’re looking at Pitt acting his guts out, emoting at the top of his game.
6) Perhaps Brad Pitt was the one in a coma. He is a dry husk. I’ve seen driftwood display more animation than he does in this film. Seriously. He is insanely boring. I was yawning tears and making a shopping list during the final interminable hour. Which leads me to,….
7) If this film was a gamble that some sexual friction would erupt between the two leading stars, (remember “Mr. and Mrs. Smith?”) and thus foment some fabulous behind-the-scenes gossip on the part of “E” or “People Magazine” – a quick glance at the performances would put that all to rest.
Brad Pitt appears to be either confused, or slow-witted—or both—throughout this film. I can only imagine how much fun Cotillard had running home to her actual sweetie every night after filming and regaling him with her imitations of Pitt attempting dramatic expression.
No actress could have fallen in love with this stiff, especially one stuck with the grinding task of acting opposite him. Cotillard has enough effervescence to light up Versailles, but even her charm and vivacity seems to bounce off Pitt’s buffed pecs and fall, lifeless, onto the soundstage floor.
The truth behind the Brangelina break-up may amount to something as simple as Jolie’s patience being pushed to the limit. Brad Pitt, never the sharpest pencil in the box, has turned into a wooden dummy incapable of impersonating a flesh and blood man, tuxedo or no tuxedo. The truth hurts.
As reviewers are writhing all over themselves in praise of Tana French’s latest mystery, The Trespasser, allow me to remove myself from the frothing queue. Still bruised by her last book, I’ve been bruised all over again by this one.
I had devoured French’s In the Woods with an almost unnatural passion. I tore through most of that novel’s 425 pages without breathing, awaiting what had to be a spectacular denouement given the harrowing, granular plot that filled this emotionally charged mystery. So it was with something like a classic case of coitus interruptus that I responded, in the end, to the shocking realization that French was actually going to refuse to tell us what frickin happened back there, in the woods. Not fair!
Nonetheless, I was willing to take another chance when I saw The Trespasser —after all, who in their right mind can resist a murder mystery featuring the foul-mouthed, short-tempered detective Antoinette Conway and her mild-mannered fellow newbie Steve Moran? Welcome to the sixth installment of French’s intimate crime capers embedded deep within the Dublin Murder Squad. Just to get close to the linguistically baroque arsenal of expletives that ripple through the average day on the Dublin streets was worth the price of the book alone.
Skanger; gob; gaff; jacks; kax; kip: tosser: bugger-all.(trans: Filthy foreigner; mouth; home; toilet; more toilet; food; upper-class fop; f-word to everybody). Crunchy crispy urban slang that features myriad alternatives for mysogynist, racist, classist, and mostly scatological proper nouns and active verbs. Bugger-all may be the cleanest of the “bugger” family, and this digression serves simply to clarify that no, The Trespasser is not the sort of book I could recommend to me mum.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not the excrement, sexual slang, or rampant anatomical argot that I mind. Au contraire. I’m as salty as the next daughter of Ireland. It’s that almost from the start, we can watch the plot being plotted. We can almost see French consulting a playlist. Hmm, have I used Conway’s uncontrollable temper outbursts in the past ten pages? Nope. Grand. I’ll throw in one of her inner asides: “If he looks at me sideways once more I’ll shove his head up his arse.” That kind of thing. Here’s another of the angry detective’s self reflections:
“I can’t wait for them all to bring it on. Danger doesn’t bother me; I’ll eat danger with a spoon. Breslin the puffed-up little tosspot, trying to twist me like a balloon animal, he made me feel like I was in a straitjacket and writhing to punch him.”
We get the picture. Conway is one tough cookie. Problem is, Conway offers these interior musings about what she’ll do to some fool of a detective frequently. Very frequently. Too frequently. It’s a go-to strategy, as if French is insisting to us, the reader, that her female detective is every bit as raw, rough, and capable as the guy detectives. French places too much reliance on the same repeating anger issues. Conway always lets us know just how much she wants to deck someone. Way too much redundant grumbling and groveling and rummaging around the lackluster ecology of the Dublin detective scene. Dashiell Hammett would be appalled.
We know that French can craft sensitively-observed descriptions. Here we meet an early informant:
She opens the door fast and wide awake. She’s short and fit, the kind of fit you get from life, not from the gym—she wears it like it’s owned, not rented. Cropped platinum hair with a long sweep of fringe falling in her face—pale face with clean quic features, smudges of last night’s mascara.
Occasionally French dives deeper and comes up with a reason to keep reading. Conway’s nemesis on the force is Breslin.
Unfortunately Tana French delivers exactly no payoff for all my wading through 500 pages of complaining, nagging, drinking of cold coffee, musings about why she has no friends on the force (she could have asked me), reflections on just how tired she is, hungry she is, sick of the other detectives she is. There is no attempt to give us a character—any character—to hang our allegiance on. Conway is a bitter, complaining stick figure. Her partner Moran is even less fleshed out. All of the heavy lifting in The Trespasser is done by a plot as transparent as Clingwrap. Red herrings abound, especially (SPOILER alert) the gratuitous guest appearance of the long lost dad. An old partner who now works undercover is called in for a house visit that goes exactly nowhere. A maybe boyfriend, another missing father, possibly gang-related clues. Or not. Clues lead down blind alleys. Dialogue goes in circles, with heavy handfuls of expletives thrown in to grease the journey and to assure us that Conway is really getting angry now.
And in the end—holy jacks!—the person who committed the crime is one we suspected in the beginning, and the poor sod they spend their time trying to convict is—as we all knew from the get-go—not guilty of anything except stupidity.
The Trespasser, written by an obviously skilled and renowned author, cries out to be read. And then it cries out to be put down. It’s one giant tease. It leads nowhere either interesting or unexpected, and yet we’ve been asked to follow the author and her slim cast of cardboard characters through a tedious loop of (very quickly) predictable jargon and stake-outs. Where are Dalziel and Pascoe when we need them?
As I emerged from a period of mourning over the recent election, I headed for what I knew would provide the perfect antidote—a matinee screening of Dr. Strange starring the elegant and resourceful Benedict Cumberbatch. The Big Screen and plenty of popcorn—it was sure to raise my spirits. Oh and it did it!
From the first moment of director Scott Derrickson’s cinematically opulent version of the Marvel classic, I was hooked, fully engaged, doors of perception flying off their hinges. The set-up is as old as Faust.
Genius neurosurgeon Stephen Strange possesses uncanny powers of dexterity (with an ego to match). Yet he hungers for more—more challenges, more conquests, more of everything.
As played by Cumby, Dr. Strange is also wickedly sexy, playful, arrogant, fanatical, and a collector of expensive timepieces. Well, here’s the deal: en route to a dressy Long Island fundraiser, checking MRI results on his Bluetooth video, his speeding car veers into an oncoming truck and tumbles over a cliff. In the fiery crash his hands are crushed.
Waking in the hospital, Strange is told by his colleague (his surgical virtuosity has gained him the esteem, and affections, of a fellow MD played by Rachel McAdams) that his hands have been reconstructed using dozens of titanium pins. Strange does not take this news well. Growling with rage he tells her that he could have done the procedure better himself.
Pacing in his loft, anguished over his trembling, scarred hands, Strange begins ransacking the world’s data banks for a cure, some way of regaining the use of his once-skilled hands. The wounded healer, e.g. Amfortas in Parsifal, is one of those Jungian archetypes impossible to resist, even in a glorified CGI-driven comic book.[See the Hands of Orlac, a 1924 German silent film starring Conrad Veidt as a brilliant concert pianist who loses his hands in a train accident. Unfortunately the newly transplanted hands he acquires belonged to a murderer, and you can see where this might lead.]
Strange’s search for a miracle eventually leads, as it must, to Katmandu, where a mysterious face emerges from the crowd. It is Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a protege of an all-powerful sorceress called The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton rocking an utterly perfect shaved head). Well, anyway, this sorceress possesses the means to reshape space and travel through time. She agrees to accept Strange as a pupil, with Mordo as his mentor.
From the start, the movie lets us know that we are in for some fun, as well as astonishing visuals. As Strange is shown to his monastic cell, Mordo gives him a piece of paper on which is written the word shambala. “What is this, my mantra?” Strange sneers. “No,” replies Mordo, “it’s the wifi password. . . . We’re not savages.” And so Strange begins his training. Multi-dimensional martial arts, creation of wormholes using hands as shape-shifting wands, and learning to create fiery spheres that unzip one reality into another. Strange is deeply intrigued, but still cocky.
The film winks at us, announcing that however deep and metaphysical its pretext— the arrogant physician learning the secrets of true wisdom in the mystic East—it’s still having fun in much the way that the first Ironman refused to take itself too seriously. Both the Ironman films and Dr. Strange soar on the multi-faceted gifts of their lead stars. Robert Downey Jr and Cumberbatch both blend attractively odd looks and split-second comic timing. They are ace physical actors who can nonetheless convince us of their anguish and rage. In short, here are leading men we will follow anywhere.
What Dr. Strangedoes take seriously are its eye-popping visuals which owe a huge debt to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Cityscapes fold and twist like geisha fans. Spatial dimensions splinter and multiply like kaleidoscopic glass. Write it off as CGI kid’s stuff if you will, but these effects are gorgeous, inventive, and neuron-thrillingly psychedelic. In a word, awesome.
But of course, there’s got to be a villain in all of this astral ambience. And for that there’s the deliciously psychotic Mads Mikkelson, playing a time jumper named Kaecilius, who’s out to thwart the serene balance of the Ancient One’s multi-verse by stealing one of the mystical keys to immortality.
Cumby throws on a cape, a carefully manicured goatee, and the film soars to a final insanely explosive confrontation. Oh and there’s much more, all of it juicy, but I won’t spoil it. I will tell you to stay for the credits, in which a little scenario pops up that pretty much guarantees a sequel. Yummy!
There are three strands in play in Dr. Strange. The ensemble acting, led by the gracefully innovative Cumberbatch. The special effects dazzle, pushing us to the edge of what we’ve ever seen before and pinning us there. And best of all the glee of fully suspending disbelief for two hours while we’re being taken for a ripping great ride.
For reasons we only gradually come to understand, Lee has been working as a janitor and handy man in Boston, and leaves to return to his New England hometown Manchester by the Sea to settle his brother’s estate and get his restless nephew in gear. The nephew and uncle, forced together by death, begin an awkward attempt at achieving some sort of bond, and their struggle to accept each other forms the mesmerizing heart of the film.
The film, whose plot sounds searingly downbeat, is a work of genuine incandescence. Manchester by the Sea is a beautiful piece of filmmaking. It sails easily on the simple clarity of the coastal setting, the bare and poignant winter landscape, the bits of easy humor as we watch young Patrick’s attempt to navigate his high school popularity despite his father’s death. We learn that Patrick has an estranged mother, that Lee has an estranged ex-wife, played with uneven passion by Michelle Williams. The situation grows clearer with each scene.
But it is Casey Affleck’s film. Every moment, every nuance of devastation, every implication of a personal world lost is etched on his raw face, a face equally capable of existential confusion and gentle hope. His is an effortless performance of desperation and occasionally uncontrolled rage, and the director seems to know better than to interfere. The film refuses to smooth the edges of life that happens in the way that all life does. Chance intervenes and everything changes. Nothing is ever the same. Yet life continues. An uncontrived loveletter to the pain of being human, Manchester is a film I need to see many more times. It feeds some need deeper than that for cheap laughs and fairytale endings. Go see it before the Oscars.
Lucky for him, and us, that the awkward collector meets up with sister magicians Queenie (Alison Sudol) and Tina (Katherine Waterston) who in their astonishing ways help him in his mission. Help also arrives, against all odds, in the form of a hapless and rumpled pastry entrepreneur Kowalski (Dan Fogler) who runs into Redmayne in a bank (delicious fun!) where he (the baker) is unsuccessfully seeking a loan.
3) Had the previously talented director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future; Forrest Gump) taken some sort of sedative during the filming of Allied? Has he suffered some brain injury? Is he in a coma? Was he even present during the making of this movie (nevermind the complete absence of scriptwriters.).? We may never know.
Brad Pitt appears to be either confused, or slow-witted—or both—throughout this film. I can only imagine how much fun Cotillard had running home to her actual sweetie every night after filming and regaling him with her imitations of Pitt attempting dramatic expression.
Genius neurosurgeon Stephen Strange possesses uncanny powers of dexterity (with an ego to match). Yet he hungers for more—more challenges, more conquests, more of everything.
Pacing in his loft, anguished over his trembling, scarred hands, Strange begins ransacking the world’s data banks for a cure, some way of regaining the use of his once-skilled hands. The wounded healer, e.g. Amfortas in Parsifal, is one of those Jungian archetypes impossible to resist, even in a glorified CGI-driven comic book.[See the Hands of Orlac, a 1924 German silent film starring Conrad Veidt as a brilliant concert pianist who loses his hands in a train accident. Unfortunately the newly transplanted hands he acquires belonged to a murderer, and you can see where this might lead.]
Strange’s search for a miracle eventually leads, as it must, to Katmandu, where a mysterious face emerges from the crowd. It is Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a protege of an all-powerful sorceress called The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton rocking an utterly perfect shaved head). Well, anyway, this sorceress possesses the means to reshape space and travel through time. She agrees to accept Strange as a pupil, with Mordo as his mentor.
Cumby throws on a cape, a carefully manicured goatee, and the film soars to a final insanely explosive confrontation. Oh and there’s much more, all of it juicy, but I won’t spoil it. I will tell you to stay for the credits, in which a little scenario pops up that pretty much guarantees a sequel. Yummy!