The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Posted on December 24, 2013 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some crude comments, language and action violence
Profanity:	Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness:	Action-style peril, no one seriously hurt, references to sad parental death
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 25, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	April 15, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00H7KJTCG

We all know what it feels like to be Walter Mitty, imagining ourselves as achievers and darers far beyond our normal lives. The original short story by James Thurber is about a middle-aged, hen-pecked man who daydreams about dashing adventures as he is out running errands with his wife. In this version, directed and starring Ben Stiller, Walter runs the photo library for LIFE Magazine. (For you young people out there–this is not a metaphor. There actually was a photojournalism magazine called LIFE. From 1936-1972 it was kind of like a proto-version of Buzzfeed that came in the mail every week. Before television and the internet, it was our first chance to see what the rest of the world looked like, with gorgeous, indelible, iconic images of movie stars and ordinary people, world leaders, athletes, and military battles.)

Every day, Walter walks to work past enormous, blown-up images of LIFE covers and the magazine’s motto: “To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer,to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”

Like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Walter once planned to see the world but family obligations kept him at home. Now, he spends his days as a “negative asset manager” cataloguing images taken by the dashing photojournalist Sean O’Connell (a rugged gem of a small performance from Sean Penn). While one is risking his life, the other takes no risks at all. He can barely bring himself to touch the computer key to “wink” at a woman on a dating website. When asked to fill in the “been there, done that” space on his profile, he realizes he has not been anywhere or done anything.

She isn’t a stranger. Cheryl (Kristin Wiig) has just come to work for LIFE. If he cannot work up the nerve to cyber-wink at her, you can bet he does not know how to begin to talk to her in real life. Walter might have stayed in his quiet, safe, lonely little world forever, living through his daydreams and half-living in reality. But there comes a time when real life intrudes on dreams.

Things are coming apart at LIFE and in life. The magazine has a new boss (nicely smarmy Tony Scott) who uses a lot of smug corporate-speak like “Some of you are non-vital.” Walter’s mother (Shirley MacLaine!) is moving into assisted living. And Sean sends in a roll of film with what he says is his best image ever, with a special note for Walter. But that image is missing. And to find it, Walter will have to discover how close he can get to being the daring, adventurous hero of his dreams.

As a director, Stiller is developing a more assured visual style and there are some bracingly robust images, befitting a story about LIFE photographs, the man who takes them and the man who sorts them, the man who goes places and the man who looks at the pictures of places. The only way to find Sean’s photo is to find Sean. He takes pictures in places so remote and exotic they are not reachable by text messages or Skype. That means a journey, physical and spiritual, through rocky, icy terrain and using every kind of transportation, including helicopter and boat.

The film is filled with lovely and surprising touches. The story unfolds organically. Like a video game hero, the items Walter gathers along the way turn out to be vital in keeping him on his journey. Along the way, Walter keeps checking in by phone with the tech support guy who was supposed to fix his online dating “wink” function, as though he does not realize how his life is transforming around him. I won’t give away the surprise by naming the actor on the other end of the phone; I’ll just say that he is ideal for the part. I liked seeing Walter drew Cheryl into his search very naturally, and how Walter was able to be shy but still very capable around her and around her young son. There are moments of true exhilaration and the end has an unexpected sweetness. If you’ve been daydreaming about a great film for the family to enjoy together over the holidays, take them on a journey to see this one at your local theater.

Parents should know that this film has some sexual humor, mild language, and action-style peril, reference to sad death of parent

Family discussion: Why was it hard for Walter to take risks? Which of his real-life adventures was the scariest?

If you like this, try: “Stranger than Fiction”

American Hustle

Posted on December 19, 2013 at 6:00 pm

“Some of this actually happened,” the movie’s opening shot deadpans. It is true that the United States government both threatened and paid a con man to help them con some bigger fish and then accidentally ended up conning some of the biggest fish ever caught — six US Congressmen and a Senator. David O. Russell directed and co-wrote “American Hustle,” the story of 1970’s fraud, insanity, and betrayal, plus a lot of “what were we thinking” hair and clothes and a rockin’ soundtrack, from “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road” to “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?” and the inevitable “Horse With No Name.”

The storyline has so many layers of double-cross, lies, betrayal, grandiosity, and sheer insanity that the audience may feel they are getting lost, but in a way, that is the point, and of course, that is the decade for it. I mean, look at the home perm on Bradley Cooper, who plays the hotdog FBI agent Ricky DiMaso as something of a cross between Starsky, Hutch, and Huggie Bear.

And then there is the hair on Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld. It can perhaps best be described as an edifice. As the movie begins, we are treated to the painstaking assembly of his pompadoured comb-over, remarkable to witness and a dead-on detail that lets us know who we will be following for the rest of the film. He is a phony, he is all about making the surface look better than it should, and he will do whatever it takes to put forward the image that will sell whatever he is trying to sell. Ascot, check. Pinky rink, check. Briefcase full of cash, check.

Flashback. Rosenfeld is the master of at least half a dozen medium-sized scams when, at a party, across the room, he spies a beautiful woman. It is Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). They share a love of Duke Ellington and a talent for re-invention. “My dream” she tells us, “more than anything, was to become anything else than what I was.”

They cook up an almost-legal scam, taking up-front fees on the promise of using their connections to obtain loans from some vaguely defined “London connections.” All is fine until they get busted. And DiMaso, intrigued by their world of deception, persuades them to work for him to bring down some big-time criminals.

But things get complicated and messy. DiMaso’s boss (a terrific Louis C.K.) is reluctant to have federal officers engage in criminal activities, even to catch other criminals. One of the great joys of this film is when the boss keeps trying to tell DiMaso an ice-fishing story that never gets to the point because the hotheaded DiMaso keeps interrupting him. Rosenfeld is married to an unhappy, volatile wife named Rosalyn (a dazzling performance of astonishing depth and mesmerizing assurance by Jennifer Lawrence) and stepfather to her son. He has to find a way to resolve things with the FBI, the mob, and the politicians.

The unfinished ice-fishing story is the point. This is not a nice, linear explanation for what happened. This is a bunch of stories that intersect in a maze of all seven of the deadly sins plus a few that should also be on the list. Brilliant performances by everyone in the cast (including Alessandro Nivola as an FBI official and an unbilled guest star as a guy from the mob) and a witty, insightful script are what hold it together. Lawrence makes us furious at and sorry for her character at the same time, and she is sizzlingly funny.

The purpose of this film is not to illuminate the particular events of Abscam. It is to meditate on the irrepressible American enthusiasm for self-invention and the thicket of betrayal and damage that can be the result. It is about the stories we tell, even the ones like the ice fishing story that never get to make a point. Russell himself can’t resist tweaking the details, making the characters more interesting and sympathetic than they really were. But that wouldn’t be a good story.

Parents should know that this film has very strong adult material including constant bad language, explicit sexual references and situations, nudity, drinking and drug use, extensive criminal behavior and betrayal.

Family discussion: Who are the biggest con artists in this story? How do the characters determine who deserves their loyalty? Was justice done?

If you like this, try: “Flirting with Disaster,” “The Fighter,” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” from the same director

Inside Llewyn Davis

Posted on December 19, 2013 at 6:00 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language including some sexual references
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug use and drug overdose
Violence/ Scariness:	A few punches, drug overdose
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 20, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	March 10, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00DVZ414C

Oscar Isaac gives the best performance of the year as the title character in the most intimate and profound movie yet from the Coen brothers. The story is set in the New York folk music world of 1961 and the Coens insisted on filming the songs live rather than pre-recording, and one of the wonders of this film is the way that Isaac makes each song more than a musical performance — each is a part of his characterization that tells us who Davis is and where he is on a week-long journey we will see in near Sisyphian terms. The breaths and pauses are as much a part of the performance as the notes he plays and sings. When he is not singing, Davis reacts very little, and one of the great pleasures of this film is seeing Isaac convey immense conflict and sensitivity to us in the audience while those around him see only his superficial expressionlessness. In one scene, a doctor offhandedly gives him surprising news about someone else. In that one moment he says almost nothing but conveys a dozen different emotions and questions and losses. This is the story of a man who expresses himself only through his music. But he does not have the gifts to make him successful enough to support himself or achieve any sense of security and acceptance.

The Coens like to put their central characters under a lot of stress, and in this film Davis must deal with disappointment and anger all around him and his own sense of frustration in not being able to honor the songs that are his whole world by making them as important to others as they are to him. Ultimately, it becomes a larger story about the way all of us struggle to find meaning and a place for ourselves. And all of that is to the heavenly music impeccably curated by T. Bone Burnett and performed by a cast that includes Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Broadway’s Stark Sands. The Coens also like to create physical environments that reflect the internal pressure (the peeling wallpaper in “Barton Fink” was almost another character). Here, the re-creation of early 60’s Greenwich Village is relatively low-key and naturalistic, but there are still cramped corridors with impossibly acute vectors to amplify Davis’ external manifestation of the grungy world that seems to have no exit.

The film’s title, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” is the also the name of a record album made by the early 1960’s folk singer played by Isaac. We first see him singing in a Greenwich Village club, performing “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” a song that “was never new and never gets old.”

The folk singers of the early 60‘s thought of themselves as truly authentic in a world where suburban materialism and conformity were idealized. A movement that presaged and in some ways helped to spark the counterculture and protest of the late 60’s was, of course, inherently inauthentic itself. Folk music is beautiful wherever it is sung, even in the kind of homogenized, commercial versions looked down on by Davis (and gently mocked in “A Mighty Wind”). But what makes it authentic is that it is music sung by folk in their community, not by professional musicians in a New York club. The essence of the struggle any artist — or any person — faces between integrity and selling out is explicit here. Davis criticizes his friend and sometime lover as “careerist” for trying to get ahead in the music business. But he himself makes a trip to an influential producer to see if he can get better bookings. And as authentic as Davis may think he is, he is contemptuous the performances by a soldier and a woman from the country, both of whom arguably have a better claim to “authenticity” than he does.

Like all Coen brothers anti-heroes, Davis is a man under pressure. He has nowhere to live, and sleeps on couches he scrounges from friends. He seems to have no sense of gratitude. He shows some sense of responsibility. He spends the night at the home of a benign Columbia professor who loves his music, stopping to play a cut from the album he made with his former partner (Isaac sings with Marcus Mumford). Then, when he is leaving, the professor’s marmelade cat slips out the apartment door just as it swings shut and locks behind him. Davis scoops up the cat and takes him on the subway, calling the professor’s office to let him know the cat is safe. He then drops the cat off at another apartment he often uses as a place to stay, the home of singing duo Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean (Isaac’s “Drive” wife, Carey Mulligan), where he finds out that Jean is (1) pregnant and (2) furious because it might be his. He again responds responsibly, if not graciously. And when Jim (of course not knowing anything about his relationship to Jean) arranges for Davis to get a quick gig as a session musician for a silly but irresistible little novelty ditty called “Please Mr. Kennedy,” he gives it his best.

We follow Davis over the course of a week, one frustrating encounter after another, with Jean, with the head of the tiny record label that produced his last record, a doctor who performs abortions, his silent father in a nursing home, his suburban sister, on a long ride to Chicago with a jazz musician (Coen brothers regular John Goodman) and his near-silent driver (Garrett Hedlund), a nerve-wracking audition with an important producer (F. Murray Abraham). In each of them, Davis is subdued. He has feelings, but he expresses them in his music. There is something in these ancient songs about death, betrayal, and injustice that touches his heart. Singing them is his deepest connection to himself. “Just exist?” he asks his sister, when she suggests he give up folk music. But even when he wants to give up, he can’t.

Davis knows that things seem hopeless for him. He tries to slide his box of remaindered LPs under a table only to find an almost-identical box of another singer’s records there already. He looks out of the car window at a highway exit that he and we know could lead to an important chance at connection and meaning. We see around Davis what he cannot. We see him make a decision as he leaves the recording studio that suits his purposes at the moment but that we know he will be bitter about forever. A young, tousled-hair singer goes on at the club and we know he will transform the world in a way Davis can not. But in a very real and very satisfying way, the Coens and Isaac have reclaimed him for us with their own story that was never new, and never gets old.

Parents should know that this film includes strong language, a fistfight, references to sex, adultery, abortion, and suicide, drinking, smoking, and drug use and overdose.

Family discussion: Why was it so hard for Llewyn to succeed? What do we learn about him from the decision not to go to Akron? From his heckling of another performer?

If you like this, try: “Don’t Look Back” and “A Mighty Wind” — and the Showtime concert featuring the music from the film, “Another Day, Another Time”

Saving Mr. Banks

Posted on December 13, 2013 at 5:17 pm

For most of this story, Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) and P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) are on opposite sides. He has been trying for twenty years to persuade her to let him make a movie based on her books about the magical nanny, Mary Poppins. She needs money, as her agent reminds her, which is why she has very reluctantly agreed to leave home and fly to Los Angeles to talk to him about it. But she cannot bear the idea of losing control of the characters who mean so much to her and she abhors everything about Disney and California, including sunshine, cheerfulness, twinkling, music, and calling people by their first names.

But there is one moment when, in the midst of some obvious culture clash jokes, there is a quiet moment that shows they are both on the same side. Disney tells Travers that he was in her position when someone wanted to pay him for Mickey Mouse and he simply could not bear the agony of allowing anyone else to make decisions about a character he had created. Travers says that Mary Poppins and the Bankses are her family. But in a very real way, the character these artist created are their own very souls. “We restore order with imagination,” Disney tells her. And, engagingly, throughout the film we see the process, the inspiration, the despair, the triumph, the necessity of creating art, from a father soothing his little girl with a story to songwriters puzzling out a way to show Mary Poppins’ upside down world by having the tune go up as she sings the word “down.”

We all know how it turned out. Disney’s “Mary Poppins,” celebrating its 50th anniversary next year, is one of the beloved and honored family films of all time, with five Oscars (Best Actress, Song, Special Effects, Score, and Editing) and eight more nominations. But anyone who has read the books knows that there are some major departures from the Travers version, and that the fears she expressed — as documented in tape recordings of her sessions with the screenwriter and songwriting team — were more than justified.

Some people have criticized this film as Disney’s burnishing of its own brand, with its founder portrayed as a decent man who is just trying to keep a two-decade old promise to his daughters to make a movie from one of their favorite books. Amy Nicholson writes in LA Weekly that “Saving Mr. Banks” is “a corporate, borderline-sexist spoonful of lies.” She says that Thompson’s “Travers is as unpleasant as a pine needle pillow, and she’s as far away from the actual woman as ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ is from being a real word” when in fact she was a “a feisty, stereotype-breaking bisexual.” I think this is a misreading of the film’s attitude toward Disney, Travers, “Mary Poppins” (the movie), and what it means to be a creative person in a world that is very imperfect when it comes to assigning monetary value to art (see also: “Inside Llewyn Davis”). To come to Nicholson’s conclusion, one has to assume that the movie wants us to believe that Disney somehow outsmarted Travers by improving her work. On the contrary, the movie makes it clear that the movie Mary Poppins was very different from Travers’ idea of the characters, moving them several decades earlier, for a start, and, crucially, as indicated in the title of this film, transforming an episodic storyline about children’s adventures with a magical nanny into a story about parents discovering the importance of being close to their children. It is Nicholson who underestimates Travers by suggesting she was somehow snookered. She made a decision that it was worth it to her to let that happen to get the money she needed to be as financially independent as she wished. As is shown in the very first scene, she could have made money another way — by writing more books about Mary Poppins, for a start — but she chose to consent to the movie, and then to make absolutely sure that no American would ever touch her characters again.

While the cute culture clashes and Travers’ resistance to Disney’s brand of pixie dust are featured in the movie’s trailers, the film itself devotes a substantial amount of time to Travers’ childhood, clearly taking her very seriously as a woman and an artist. We see her as a child dearly loved by the father she adored (a superb Colin Farrell), a man of great imagination and charm, but, perhaps in part due to those same qualities, not able to manage life as a banker in the far reaches of Australia. As we see him sink from manager at a bank to manager at a smaller bank to teller, fans of the Poppins books will remember her description of what Mr. Banks did at the office (it is not coincidental that he shares a name with his profession). He “made money.” Meaning that, at least in his children’s minds, he sat at his desk cutting out coins each day. Some days he was able to cut out many, and the family was quite comfortable. But other days he was not as productive, and there were fewer coins to go around.

We can see the origins of this idea and many other Mary Poppins book details in Travers’ past, a seemingly bottomless carpet bag, a crisp “spit spot” from an imposingly organized woman who arrives to put the household in order. But the most telling detail from the past is the key to the invention of Travers’ most important character: herself. Her name is not P.L. Travers at all. Nor is she Mrs. Travers, despite her insistence that Mrs. Travers is what she prefers to be called. The Australian girl who would grow up to be the ultra-English P.L. Travers is named Helen Lyndon Goff, called “Ginty” by her dad. His name was Travers Robert Goff. She took his first name as her last name and put a “Mrs.” in front of it to create the character she chose to be. This revelation, and Thompson’s brilliant portrayal of Travers show us a woman whose most important creation was the character she pretended to be — or became.

And of course Disney, too, played a character, the folksy host who was going to entertain you no matter how hard you tried to resist, and very well aware that these qualities were his best assets as a businessman. He insists on taking Travers to Disneyland (beautifully recreated as it was in 1961). Disney is persuasive enough to get Travers onto the carousel and canny enough to tell her the truth — that getting her on a ride won him a $20 bet. And he tells her a story about his childhood, showing that just because he promotes an idealized vision of the world does not mean that he is unfamiliar with its harshness and disappointments.

Thompson gives one of the best performances of the year, showing us the insecurity and humanity and wit of a woman who is far more complex than she wishes to appear. Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak as the song-writing Sherman Brothers and Paul Giamatti as the limo driver are all excellent as characters who underscore the theme of art as a path to meaning. The glimpses of the “Mary Poppins” movie are so entrancing (okay, I had to come home and watch it again and am still humming “Step in Time”) that it is easy to be temporarily distracted from the bittersweetness of the story. Hmmm, where have I heard that idea before?

Parents should know that this film includes the very sad death of a parent, substance abuse, a suicide attempt, tense confrontations, and some disturbing images.

Family discussion: What did Walt Disney and P.L.Travers have in common? What do you learn about her from her relationship with the driver? How can you take details around you and make them into a story?

If you like this, try: the Mary Poppins books by P.L. Travers and the Disney musical film and the documentary “The Boys,” about the Sherman Brothers

Out of the Furnace

Posted on December 5, 2013 at 6:00 pm

“Out of the Furnace” gets no credit for its good intentions because it collapses under the combined weight of pretentiousness and condescension. This is Hollywood’s idea of a searing drama about life in recession-era heartland, as phony as a painted backdrop. It is clearly intended to be a sympathetic portrait of two brothers betrayed by America. Russell (Christian Bale) lost his job when the steel mill closed down. His brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) went into the military and came home shattered by what he saw in four tours in Iraq. With no alternatives, their problems get worse. Rodney makes money in bare-knuckle fights, but keeps getting into trouble because he cannot bring himself to take a dive when told to do so by the fight promoter, Petty (Willem Dafoe). As their situations become more desperate, Rodney insists that Petty introduce him to meth dealer DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), so that he can make more money.

Co-writer/director Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart”) tries to convey a sense of relentless pressure, crumbling infrastructure, and ever-constricting choices that force Russell and Rodney into making decisions with catastrophic consequences. But the film could easily be used to make the opposite points. Over and over, the brothers are told not to do something — like get involved with a murderous meth dealer — and they do it anyway. Russell is losing his job because the economy is bad. But he loses the girl he loves (Zoe Saldana) because he goes to prison. He goes to prison because he goes to a bar, gets drunk, drives, and causes an accident that kills two people. He has a lot of strong feelings and sense of loyalty for his brother and he is very upset about the death of his parents and his girlfriend leaving him for another man. When it comes to the innocent people he killed, he does not seem to have a sense of responsibility. We are supposed to be on his side because he is a decent guy who loves his brother, cares for his dying father, and misses his girlfriend, who married the decent local cop while Russell was in prison. But it is hard to be sympathetic when he — and the film — make no distinction between the limits imposed on him and the bad choices he made. Indeed, the movie ultimately becomes condescending, even contemptuous, in ignoring one of the core principles of narrative, which is respecting just that distinction. We are supposed to be on Rodney’s side because something in him, some core integrity, will not allow him to lose a fight he knows he can win. The metaphor is off-base and heavy-handed.

These are all great actors, and they all work hard to give good performances, but that in itself finally seems distancing. If they understood the essential humanity of the people dealing with these circumstances, the veterans struggling with PTSD, the factory workers whose jobs are gone, they would not distance themselves with such obvious artifice. Harrelson’s over-the-top sociopath seems to be from another movie entirely. Only Dafoe and Forest Whitaker as the sympathetic policeman create characters with any sense of authenticity, with Zoe Saldana relegated to a sad girlfriend role, doubly dreary because it is so tiresomely predictable. The real Russells and Rodneys deserve better, and so does the audience.

Parents should know that this film has very strong and disturbing violence with graphic images, fatal drunk driving accident, murder, brutal fight scenes, guns, description of wartime violence, constant very strong language, substance abuse, and non-explicit sexual situations.

Family discussion: What does the title refer to? Why do the characters constantly ignore advice that will keep them out of trouble? What does this movie want to say about our economy and political system?

If you like this, try: “Killing Them Softly” and “October Country”

Related Tags:

Crime Drama Tragedy