Les Misérables

Posted on December 24, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Fair warning: I seem to be impervious to the appeal of “Les Misérables.” I was not a fan of the stage show or the songs, but I understand that it is the most popular musical of all time, and I approached this movie version with an open mind. My take is that it will make the fans happy, but I am still unpersuaded.

The musical is based on Victor Hugo’s vast novel about Jean Valjean (a magnificent Hugh Jackman), who served 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family and spends the rest of his life trying to do good and to avoid the relentless pursuit of Police Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), who is trying to put him back in prison for violating his parole.

When Valjean is first set free, he is bitter and angry. He repays the kindness of a priest who tries to help him by stealing valuable silver treasures from the church. Immediately captured, he is returned to the priest (played by Colm Wilkinson, the foremost Valjean in the stage version). But the priest insists that the items were gifts, and with the police watching, he encourages Valjean to take more. Valjean is transformed by this compassion and generosity, and he vows to be as good, loving, and devoted to helping others as the man who cared for him.

Years later, Valjean, under another name, is prosperous and public-spirited. He owns a factory and he is mayor of his town. Fantine (a heart-breaking Anne Hathaway) works in his factory to support a daughter she boards with an innkeeper and his wife. She loses her job because she refuses to sleep with a foreman and is forced into prostitution. Valjean is horrified and feels responsible. As she lies dying, he promises to care for her daughter, Cosette.

Valjean rescues Cosette from the corrupt innkeeper (Sasha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham-Carter). But he has attracted the attention of Javert, and so he and Cosette must hide. Ten years later, with Paris in the upheaval of a revolution, an idealistic young man named Marius (“My Week with Marilyn’s” Eddie Redmayne) sees Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and instantly falls in love with her. In the midst of uprisings and violent reprisals, Valjean tries to keep his promise to Fantine and keep Cosette safe and happy.

Production designer Eve Stewart has done a masterful job, making the setting as vibrant and as essential to the story-telling as any of the characters. Director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”) made a critical contribution by having the actors sing their parts while they were filming, instead of pre-recording them to be played back when the movie was being shot. Since the movie is “sung-through” (all dialogue is sung rather than alternating speaking and singing), this gives the music a welcome organic quality and immediacy. Hathaway’s character is on screen for only a brief time, but her big number, the “I Dreamed a Dream” song memorably sung by Susan Boyle, is wrenching. Hooper keeps the camera on her beautiful face, like the “Nothing Compares 2 U” Sinead O’Connor video, the better to feel her anguish, and it is a stunning moment. Elsewhere, he over-does the artsy angles and sometimes assumes too much familiarity with the storyline. Crowe’s voice is not up to the task and Seyfried’s is stretched beyond its capacity. Newcomer to film Samantha Barks (from the London cast) as Eponine, the daughter of the innkeepers who also loves Marius, sings like an angel and lights up the screen.

It’s a long slog at nearly three hours, for a non-Miz-head. But I came away with more understanding of those who are.

Parents should know that this is an epic story of struggle against oppression with disturbing and graphic abuse of prisoners and others, many characters injured and killed, sad deaths (including death of a child), and a woman accused of sexual misconduct and forced into prostitution.

Family discussion: How does the priest change Jean Valjean’s notion of what he should do? Why was Javert so conflicted? Why were the rebels willing to risk their lives?

If you like this, try: the PBS concert specials saluting the 10th and 25th anniversaries of the musical and the non-musical film versions

This is 40

Posted on December 20, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Writer-director Judd Apatow has made the mistake of believing that the audience will find his wife and children and mid-life crisis as relatable and endearing as he does. And there is nothing more fatal to a movie than a gross miscalculation about the appeal of its characters. It’s fine to make a movie about unpleasant people as long as the movie knows they are unpleasant. But this movie asks us to care about the concerns of people who care very little for anything but the most superficial and selfish problems, with no sense at all of how shallow and unappealing they are.

Apatow’s mega-successful “Knocked Up” was the story of a successful professional woman who became pregnant after a one-night stand with a man who was neither successful nor professional. The pregnant woman’s sister Debbie (Apatow’s real-life spouse Leslie Mann) and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd) provided a comedic counterpoint, coping with marital stress, including two children, played by Apatow and Mann’s real-life children. In one scene, Debbie and her sister are not permitted into a club because Debbie is too old and her sister is pregnant. Debbie is devastated by the loss of this important validation. Debbie is shrill and demanding, constantly blaming her husband. In one big plot twist, it turns out that the secret he had been hiding from her was not an affair but a fantasy sports group he liked to escape to.

“This is 40” continues the story of Pete and Debbie. She is still shrill and demanding, still constantly blaming her husband, and still pretty much on board with the idea that her self-worth depends on being attractive to strangers in hot clubs. In the opening scene, the week of both Pete’s and Debbie’s 40th birthdays, they are having very enthusiastic sex in the shower when he reveals that his performance has been enhanced with medication. Instead of expressing concern or sympathy or support, she interprets this as evidence that she is no longer as attractive as she was when she was younger. She whines to her personal trainer (Apatow regular Jason Segal) that she is failing to arouse men and he consoles her by saying that she arouses him.

Debbie insists that she and Pete embark on a course of self-improvement that involves graphic depictions of a mammogram and a colonoscopy, and a lot of resolutions about eating better and unplugging the kids from the internet. It does not, however, involve any expressions of generosity, humility, compassion, responsibility, or maturity. Pete and Debbie are aggrieved by the remoteness (her) and dependence (his) of their fathers, but they are not doing much better as parents. I have a sinking feeling that there will a a future sequel for the girls to work out their issues with their parents.

The movie is overlong and saggy, swooping almost randomly from set-piece scene to set-piece scene, and yet it is all supposed to take place in about one week. This continually undercuts any sense of forward momentum and Apatow stuffs his films with so many of his friends that we keep having to be reminded of who all the characters are. And then when we are reminded, we are disappointed all over again. Segal, Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids”), Lena Dunham (“Girls”), Charlene Yi and Melissa McCarthy (“Bridesmaids”) are all trotted out for short bits and some are quite funny (be sure to stay for McCarthy’s outtakes during the credits). And Megan Fox is a standout as an impossibly hot and possibly larcenous employee in Debbie’s boutique. This is Fox’s second top-notch performance this year, following “Friends With Kids” — take that, Michael Bay. There is even an occasional flash of understanding of the challenges of marriage and getting older, as when Pete and Debbie try (but not very hard) to use obviously therapy-inspired tactics for expressing their complaints and disappointments.

But that is not enough to make up for the inert plotline and unappealing characters. For a guy who seems to think about nothing more than the travails of self-absorbed people suffering from arrested development, Apatow has failed to learn that the issue is not growing old — it is growing up.

Parents should know that this film includes extremely graphic and explicit sexual references and situations including fertility issues and an “escort,” constant very strong language, drinking, marijuana, some mild violence (no one badly hurt), family stress, and stealing.

Family discussion: What do we learn about Pete and Debbie from their relationships with their fathers? Why was staying young so important to Debbie?

If you like this, try: “Knocked Up” (featuring the same characters) and “The 40 Year Old Virgin”

Hyde Park on Hudson

Posted on December 13, 2012 at 5:50 pm

When Franklin Roosevelt’s sixth cousin Margaret “Daisy” Suckley (pronounced “sook-lee”) died at age 99, a cache of letters was found in a suitcase under her bed. Everyone knew she had spent years working near Roosevelt, and most thought he had kindly provided for her by allowing her to act as his cataloger and librarian. But the letters revealed a close and tender friendship and implied that there was more. And so, in this fact-based story of the first visit to the United States by a British monarch, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (and Franklin’s redoutable mother) welcomed King George V (that’s “The King’s Speech” king, no longer looking like Colin Firth but recognizable by his stutter) and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, the parents of the current about-to-become-a-great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II to the Roosevelt’s summer home in New York State. And fed them hot dogs.

So there are really two movies here. Bill Murray is superb as Roosevelt, famously described by Oliver Wendell Holmes as having “a second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.” Murray gives a beautifully subtle, complex and fully immersed performance as the patrician President whose polio-induced paralysis gave him a deeper understanding and sense of purpose. The scene where he has an impromptu late-night meeting with the young king is one of the best of the year.

But the movie gets soapy and uncomfortably speculative when it focuses on the relationship between Daisy and the President. Is it a romance? Is it a story about Daisy’s spirit enlarging as she goes from adolescent crush to a sort of sister-wife support group with the other women in FDR’s harem, including his secretary and, of course, his wife Eleanor, beautifully played with asperity and an endearing sense of rebellion by Murray’s “Rushmore” co-star Olivia Williams. But the film wavers uncertainly between geopolitics illuminated by personality (well handled) and the schoolgirl longings and skeezy predation of his relationship with Daisy.

Parents should know that this film has frank sexual references and situations (one briefly explicit) including approving depiction of adultery, some strong language, and social drinking as well as a positive portrayal of characters with disabilities.

Family discussion: Why do the women forgive Roosevelt? What did the King learn from his conversation with Roosevelt? What did they have in common?

If you like this, try: “The King’s Speech,” “Sunrise at Campobello,” and the book Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley by historian Geoffrey Ward

Killing Them Softly

Posted on November 29, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violence, sexual references, pervasive language, and some drug use
Profanity:	Constant very strong language with crude and explicit sexual references
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drug use and drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Very graphic and disturbing violence with disturbing images, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	November 30, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	March 26, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	https://amzn.to/30b53Do

Brad Pitt plays Jackie Cogan, a hit man who prefers to kill people “softly,” meaning with as little fuss and muss as possible. But because he is a hit man, he is constantly surrounded by messes that he is asked to clean up. Two dumb crooks (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) are recruited by a dry cleaner to rob an illegal poker game run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Since it is generally understood that Markie had arranged the robbery of one of his own games in the past, the dry cleaner figures that he will be assumed to be behind this one, too, so no one will come after them. In other words, a mess.

Time for Cogan. But Cogan knows the dry cleaner, and he prefers to kill people he doesn’t know. Not because he has scruples — it’s just because the ones who know him know why he is there and they get all upset and start crying and begging. And that is messy. So Cogan brings in some help from out of town, another hit man named Mickey (James Gandolfini). They’ve worked together well in the past, but since the last time Cogan saw him, Mickey has started to unravel. More mess.

Prosecutor-turned novelist George V. Higgins had a rich appreciation for his underworld characters and the complexity of their compromised and thuggish connections. His dialog-driven books are filled with tough talk that feels authentic and poetic at the same time. This film is based on a book published in 1974, set in Higgin’s lifelong home town of Boston. Here it is updated to the summer of 2008 and relocated to Louisiana, where the dialog is counterposed with television broadcasts of a panicked George W. Bush explaining the financial meltdown following the collapse of the subprime market and candidate Barack Obama is making speeches filled with optimism and promise. The violent scenes, with slo-mo spurts of blood, are counterposed with cheery pop songs, Petula Clark singing “Windmills of Your Mind” and Cliff “Jiminy Cricket” Edwards warbling “Paper Moon.”

(Note: “Windmills of Your Mind” was the theme song of the original “Thomas Crown Affair,” with Steve McQueen as a millionaire businessman with a sideline as a criminal mastermind.) One of those moments would be plenty. We get it, we get it, the real crooks are on Wall Street and in Washington. Balletic blood spatters juxtaposed with songs are ironic. Or something like that.

Choice moments — Gandofini’s monologues, the conversations between Cogan and his bureaucratic contact known just as “The Driver” (Richard Jenkins), and juicy talk cannot make up for the feeling that this is Mamet Lite, and just the kind of messiness Cogan is wise enough to resist.

Parents should know that this story concerns criminals and thugs including drug deals and hit-men. It includes very graphic violence with disturbing images, dead bodies, constant very strong language, explicit and crude sexual references, a prostitute, smoking, drinking, and heroin.

Family discussion: What is the point of the news broadcasts about the financial meltdown? How does this community establish their rules? What does Jackie want?

If you like this, try: Layer Cake, American Buffalo and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

Hitchcock

Posted on November 22, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Alfred Hitchcock loved to scare people and he did it very, very well. This highly entertaining story of the making of one of his most controversial (and terrifying) films stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as the portly British

He did it well because he understood fear from the inside. He was drawn to what repelled him and repelled by what attracted him. Hitchcock produced and directed film and television programs that are still, more than half a century later classics of suspense and horror. He released a series of glossy, sexy hits like “Rear Window” and “To Catch a Thief” in the 1950’s. And then he decided to do a film that was not glossy, sexy or romantic, inspired by the horrific crimes of body-snatcher/killer Ed Gein. Hitchcock had a contract with Paramount, but the studio was reluctant about the grisliness of the storyline. Hitchcock took out a mortgage and financed the production himself, using crew from his television show and shooting in black and white to save money. (He also said the film would be too gory in color.)

Hopkins is masterful as Hitchcock. He is subsumed in make-up and padding but it is a performance, not a caricature. He shows us the great director’s playfulness and wit. We see the way he struggles with his repressions and internal tortures and the way he is able to draw on them, almost clinically, to create popular movies that happen to be cinematic masterpieces. What took the world of movies so long to match Hopkins with Mirren? She is marvelous here as the wife who understands him thoroughly but sometimes wishes he would try to understand her. Scarlett Johansson is sensational as Janet Leigh, the consumate professional who is that rarest find in Hollywood, a truly nice person, and James D’Arcy nails Anthony Perkins’ tremulousness. It’s a surprisingly tender-hearted story as well as a tribute to the Hitchcocks and all those who love to make movies.

Parents should know that this film includes some strong and disturbing material and “boo”-style scares, depiction of real-life serial murderer Ed Gein and fictional killer Norman Bates, some graphic images, sexual references and situations, and partial nudity.

Family discussion: Why was it hard for Alfred to acknowledge Alma’s contributions? Why did he like to scare people? Why do people like to be scared? What should Alma have done?

If you like this, try: “Psycho” and other Hitchcock classics like “Rear Window” and “The Birds” and the books Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello and the book-length interview Hitchcock/Truffaut by Francois Truffaut.

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