Interview: Stars of “Walking With the Enemy” Jonas Armstrong, Simon Kunz, and Simon Dutton

Posted on April 25, 2014 at 7:00 am

Jonas Armstrong, Simon Kunz, and Simon Dutton talked to me about appearing in the Holocaust story “Walking with the Enemy.”

I first asked them about their accents. Two Brits and an Irishman were cast as Hungarian Jews who spoke both Hungarian and German. “We didn’t want to go to accent-land,” Armstrong said. But they did want to sound like they were all from the same place. A Hungarian coach helped them with vowel sounds. But Dutton added, “I think the idea was not to make it too strong.” They did not want to distract the audience, just give a suggestion of Eastern Europe.

Simon Kunz talked about researching the real-life character he played. “Totally it was a piece of history that I wasn’t aware of. Yeah he ran the Glass House and a little bit of Switzerland was created in Hungary, it was a neutral territory. He tried to get the Jews into Palestine by printing these passports in this print factory.”

Armstrong talked about the conflicts his character faced in knowing that for every one he saved, many more would die. “I think the thing I have to remember is it would always be better to save one person out of ten than none at all. I think he would be at sort of loggerheads with himself. In a sense, he maybe would be because he is trying to do as much as is possible but is not doing as much as he thinks is enough. But I mean you can only do so much. For him to think, ‘Oh I’m going to be able to save everybody,’ in all that’s 200,000 Jews. That would just be ridiculous! He would have some sort of sense of rationality to sort of accept that he can only do his best and sometimes his best might not be good enough for him but it is better than nothing.”

Simon Dutton’s character has to make the same trade-offs in his own way, which sometimes leads to disagreement. “We were at loggerheads.”

I asked whether it was difficult to work with the actors who were playing such evil villains. Simon Dutton laughed and pointed to Simon Kunz: “He was best mates with the guy who killed him . It was very funny.”

It is a benefit to have a friendly relationship with the other actors, Armstrong added. “Also to have that light sort of relief between the scenes helps, because they are horrible scenes. You have to be able to sort of just forget before you have to go back to the shooting and tension.”

Related Tags:

Actors Interview

The Other Woman

Posted on April 24, 2014 at 6:00 pm

C-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual references and language (on appeal from the original R rating)
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness, brief reference to marijuana
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 25, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	July 29, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00KNALRZ4

The latest in a female-centered revenge comedy genre that extends from “9 to 5” through “She-Devil,” “The Other Woman” is intended to be a merry little tale of female empowerment and grrrl power. Instead it is soggy, haphazard, poorly paced slapstick mansplained by director Nick Cassavetes from a script by Melissa Stack.

Cameron Diaz (who gave one of her best performances in Cassavetes’ soapy “My Sister’s Keeper”) plays Carly, a tough-as-nails corporate lawyer with a beautiful office overlooking Central Park. She meets handsome Mark King (“Game of Thrones'” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, utterly lost in a thankless role). For eight weeks he is thoughtful, attentive, and so hot that she has “cleared the bench” of other guys, she explains to a criminally underused Nicki Minaj as her secretary. (The movie I’d like to see is Nicki Minaj going after a man who cheated on her.) But then Carly discovers that Mark is married. To Kate (Leslie Mann, in her “I’m going to pretend I don’t know I’m pretty and act like a total klutzy ditz” mode). With a house in the Connecticut suburbs. And a very big dog.

Kate falls apart. Carly tells her to cry on on the inside “like a winner.” How long before the big dog makes a mess of Carly’s impeccable white apartment? How long before the two women are trying on clothes, discussing bikini waxes, doing each other’s hair and make-up and having a big sloppy drunk bonding moment? How long before they discover that Mark was cheating on both of them with Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover girl Kate Upton? How long before she goes running toward us on the beach in slo-mo wearing a tiny white bikini?

Except for that last one, the answer to all of the above is way, way too long. But Kate Upton does look pretty great running in the bikini.

The trio decide that Mark must be punished. So Kate gives him estrogen in his smoothie and depilatory in his shampoo and Carly puts laxative in his drink. There’s an excruciating bathroom scene. Though it is funny when the only replacement pants he can find are red skinny jeans from a hipster.

Then they go after his money. All of this requires a lot of girly support group stuff, which is bad, and a lot of slapstick, which is much worse. All but about two or three of the best moments (a relative concept) are in the trailer. Comedic setups are poised to go off, then abandoned without resolution. The woman exist for no reason except in relation to this unappealing man.

This is a movie about sisterhood and female empowerment that makes fun of Kate Upton’s character for being a dumb blonde and makes fun of Cameron Diaz for wishing she had Kate Upton’s figure. This is a comedy that lets us know we are back in New York City by playing Frank Sinatra singing “New York, New York” and lets us know the women are having fun with their revenge plan by playing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The few witty lines and funny situations are lost in a headache-inducing cacophony, emphasis on the first two syllables.

Parents should know that the theme of the movie is adultery and betrayal. It includes crude sexual references and non-explicit situations, drinking and drunkenness, smoking, drug reference, comic peril and violence, and gross potty humor.

Family discussion: Why did the women become friends? Why were they so misled by Mark?

If you like this, try: “The First Wives Club,” “She-Devil” (and the better original version, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil) and “9 to 5”

Related Tags:

Comedy Movies -- format

Finding Vivian Maier

Posted on April 24, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Vivian Maier was a Chicago-area nanny. Only the children in her care knew how much she loved taking pictures. After her death, the possessions she had in storage were auctioned off and a man named John Maloof bought some boxes of negatives, thinking he might finds some images for his research about a Chicago neighborhood. The quality of the photos surprised him. He put them online and the response was swift and passionate. Who was this photographer who captured these striking images? And why had no one ever heard of her?

Maloof bought up the rest of Maier’s negatives and anything else she left behind. She was something of a hoarder, so there were piles of ephemera as well as rolls of undeveloped film. Maier’s passion for privacy came up against someone equally obsessive about uncovering her secrets as well as her photographs. As co-producer of the film, Maloof’s own motives do not get the scrutiny they otherwise might, but it is clear that he has something to gain from promoting her work, and that he is at least aware of the moral dilemma of creating such a public persona for such a private person after she no longer has a say. Though he is clear about his purpose: “My mission is to put Vivian in the history books.”

It is very rare in this country, where fame and braggadocio are considered virtues and we put people on magazine covers who are just famous for being famous, that gifted people are also private people. Those who decide to leave the limelight — Salinger, Garbo — are a source of great curiosity for us. What are they thinking? And then there are people like Maier and another Chicagoan, Henry Darger (also the subject of a documentary), and James Hampton, who are drawn more by compulsion as well as inspiration. If there is an intended audience, it is not of this world.

People who knew her, or thought they did, describe her: paradoxical, eccentric, private, loner. And there is the inevitable snobbery: “Why is a nanny taking all these photos?” But photographers recognize one of their own. Joel Mayerowitz, the film’s most engaging voice, says she had “an authentic eye and a real savvy about human nature and photography in the street.” She has human understanding, warmth, playfulness, at least in her photos. An employer said she has “an eye for the bizarre, the grotesque, the incongruous, the folly of humanity.”

Her camera of choice was a twin-lens Rolleiflex, a “great disguise camera…to generate a moment where two presences vibrate together.” Her subjects could look her in the eye while her camera was unobtrusively at her waist. She took up nannying so that she would not have to worry about shelter and she would have an excuse to be out and about. Her charges, now grown, remember her taking them all over, always with her camera, sometimes to rather odd places, like a stockyard.

Some of her secrets are revealed, including her efforts to hide her origins. Some are only indicated. And of course the photographs tell as much about Maier as they do about the people she captured.
As we look at them, though, we realize she captured much of us as well.

Parents should know that this movie includes discussions of abuse, an auto accident, and a sad death.

Family discussion: Which of Maier’s images is your favorite and why? Should her photos be made public after her death even though she kept them secret while she was alive?

If you like this, try: Martha & Ethel and Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens and the book Vivian Maier: Street Photographer

Related Tags:

Not specified

Walking With the Enemy

Posted on April 24, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Why do we keep making movies about the Holocaust?

Because we are still trying to understand one of the most shocking, inhumane tragedies in history. Because it is the essence of heightened, dramatic storylines, with the most depraved real-life villains, the bravest heroes, and the direst moral dilemmas, the most devastating sacrifices. Because we have to ask ourselves, “What would I do?”

And because there are still stories left to tell. “Walking With the Enemy” is inspired by the true story of Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum, a Hungarian student who escaped from a labor camp to help the “Glass House” workers forging Swiss citizenship papers to get Jews out of the country. He impersonated an SS officer to rescue Jews they were about to execute.

This first movie from the brand new Liberty Studios and first-time director Mark Schmidt is a tense and exciting story of a part of the Holocaust not widely known. Because Hungary’s Regent (played by Sir Ben Kingsley) made an alliance with Germany, the Nazis did not interfere with the country or its Jewish citizens for the first years of World War II. “I aligned Hungary with what I thought was the lesser of two evils.”

But then, as Germany started to be hemmed in by the Allied forces, it took over Hungary and began to send Jews to labor camps and concentration camps. A heroic Swiss diplomat named Carl Lutz (played by William Hope) was given permission to issue 8000 passes to Hungarian Jews with family in Switzerland. He managed to get those passes to tens of thousands, who were able to escape the Nazis.

Handsome and likeable Jonas Armstrong (television’s “Robin Hood”) plays Elek Cohen, a character based on Rosenbaum. While his uncle worked with Lutz in the “Glass House” (called that because it had been a glass factory), helping to hide Jews, Elek wore a Nazi uniform to infiltrate Nazi offices and operations to free Jews about to be sent away or killed. Over and over, he takes terrible risks, knowing that even if he survives, he will fail more than he succeeds. “Why does it have to be you?” someone asks. “Because I have one thing left.”

The first-time director wisely worked with experienced filmmakers, especially cinematographer Dean Cundey (“Apollo 13,” “Jurassic Park”) and a capable cast of top British actors. The film is ably scripted, shot, and edited. The sound effects are exceptional; I don’t remember ever hearing gunshot sounds so sharp and directed. The story is very affecting. One oddly sterile note is that for a story about Jews, there is very little Jewish activity other than a blessing over a family dinner. Reminiscences of the Holocaust include many stories of Jews praying together and doing their best to observe rituals and worship, reciting the Shema as they were led to the gas chambers. Here, even those about to be shot by a firing squad do not say a prayer, an odd oversight in a story that is about those who were trying to preserve their right to maintain their religion and their community.

Parents should know that this is a WWII movie depicting events of the Holocaust. There are many scenes of wartime and anti-Semitic violence and many characters are injured and killed.

Family discussion: What was Elek’s toughest decision? Is it hard to help, knowing how much more cannot be fixed? What can we learn from Elek and Lutz? Who is most like them today?

If you like this, try: “Schindler’s List” and “Conspiracy”

Ebertfest Kicks Off With “Life Itself”

Posted on April 24, 2014 at 9:28 am

Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) presented “Life Itself,” the documentary about Roger Ebert, last night at the majestic Virginia Theater in Roger’s home town of Urbana, Illinois, where Roger watched films as a boy and as a college student at the University of Illinois. He told us he had always thought there was “a firewall between filmmakers and critics” until he read Roger’s book, which described his friendships with a very few directors. He was sorry to miss that opportunity, but thought it made him “freer” to create the candid portrait that Roger would have wanted as a critic, as a journalist, and as a man.

“Film the man, not the icon,” was the direction James got, according to Roger’s widow, Chaz Ebert. And the movie is frank about Roger’s struggles with alcohol and the transformation of his life when he finally found deep, romantic love with Chaz at age 50. It is also frank about his last days, his courage, resilience during his illness and ultimately his peace with the end of life. It is moving to see his deep engagement with movies, with his friends and family, with his longtime rival and partner Gene Siskel (the outtake footage of their show is even more hilarious than the appalling 70’s outfits and hairstyles), with his passionate romance with Chaz, with journalism as a craft and writing as an art, and his passionate online presence once he could no longer speak.

Roger always said that a film should be an empathy device to help us understand and connect to each other. While this movie shows that even the greatest film is a virtual experience compared to genuine in-person interaction, it lives up to his highest standards as a critic. The entire audience gave it thumbs up.

Related Tags:

Festivals