Labor Day

Posted on January 30, 2014 at 6:00 pm

On the surface, “Labor Day” feels like would-be Nicholas Sparks, a syrupy romance about two people with damaged hearts finding a healing love in a picturesque setting. But like a pretty chocolate candy with a filling that turns out to be surprisingly sour, this film based on the novel by Joyce Maynard is poisoned by Maynard’s trademark narcissism and her notion of love that never progressed beyond pulp-infused fantasies. For Maynard, the only purpose of perfect love is to be endlessly worshiped by everyone, including a hunky guy who can literally and metaphorically clean her gutters and change her oil and also bake overripe peaches into a swoon-worthy pie, no measuring cup needed.

Youch. Maynard, the empress of TMI, is a gifted writer who endlessly plumbs her favorite subject — herself. The New York Times Magazine cover story in which she attempted to define her generation at age 18 led to a book contract (Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties) and a series of fan letters from J.D. Salinger that invited her to drop out of college and move in with him. And all of that led to a series of non-fiction and thinly disguised fictional stories and books about her dysfunctional parents, her marriage, her divorce, her children, her sister who is not as close to her as she would like, her beautiful homes and wonderful cooking, more more more on her children (the three she gave birth to and two more she adopted until the adoption did not work out and she found another home for them), more on her divorce, the first breast implants, the second breast implants, the removal of the implants, many splendid pies and many not so splendid relationships including a famously reclusive author and an intense correspondence with a prisoner that was one of the inspirations for this story. The primary themes of her writing, lurking just under the surface tone of intimacy and comfort, are her fantasy of being utterly adored and the pain and never-ending sense of surprise and disappointment of discovering, over and over again, that she cannot seem to find it.

Those themes can be and have been turned into compelling stories, even literature. But that requires a level of self-awareness that is utterly beyond Maynard, or, apparently director Jason Reitman, who wrote the screenplay based on her book. Compare her novel, To Die For, based on the real-life case of the young wife who persuaded her 15-year-old lover and his friends to kill her husband, to the far superior movie starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix. Thanks to screenwriter Buck Henry (“The Graduate”) and director Gus Van Sant, one key difference is that the film version slyly tweaks her story. The film has some perspective on its clueless, narcissistic, chocolate spider of an anti-heroine (a sizzling portrayal by Kidman), while Maynard’s version seems to suggest that it sure would be nice to be so loved that you could talk someone into killing for you.

And that brings us to this story, in which Adele (a game but pasty-looking Kate Winslet), a depressed and fragile single mother, is unreservedly loved not just by her 13-year-old son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) and by Frank (Josh Brolin), the escaped prisoner who takes her hostage (but in the most gentlemanly way possible, performing all kinds of handyman chores, teaching her son manly throwing skills, being kind to a kid in a wheelchair, and making the gooey, luscious, no measuring cups allowed pie). Even (spoiler alert) the ex-husband (Clark Gregg) has to chime in as well with the ultimate fantasy of the wife left for the babysitter — a confession that the ex-wife was just too beautiful and deep and all-around fine for him to handle. The narrator is the now-adult son (Tobey Maguire), looking nostalgically back on end of the summer of 1987, when his efforts to cheer up his mother included a “Husband for a Day” coupon book. Maynard has said this was inspired by a gift from her own son. The film conveys no understanding that this might be evidence that she should be more careful about boundary issues (even worse is her sex talk) or that it is parents who should care for children, not the other way around.

Henry has outgrown his clothes, so he has to cajole Adele into a rare trip to the store. There he is sized up by Frank, bleeding and wounded, who grabs a hat and sweatshirt from the rack and tells Adele that Henry has agreed she will give him a ride. He tells her to drive him to her house, and then he tells her he will just stay until dark. But pretty soon he is literally and metaphorically oiling her hinges. Politely tying her up just to preserve her deniability in case he is found, he takes a few ingredients he finds in the kitchen and whips together a succulent chli, feeding her almost tenderly. And then a neighbor comes over to drop off some ripe peaches, and they make every attempt to do to pastry what “Ghost” did for a potter’s wheel. Unfortunately, it does to pastry what the many spoofs of the potter’s wheel scene have done instead.

Hunky as he is, we are never in thrall to Frank as Adele and Henry are. His handyman perfection and meaningful glances are just too over the top and the backstory, when it finally comes, does not satisfy our need to understand and forgive him. The entire last third of the film involves so many bad decisions — no, not just bad, catastrophically imbecilic — that we lose our sympathy for just about everyone involved.

Parents should know that there are some disturbing images of a bloody wound and a homicide and an off-camera very sad death of an infant. There are sexual references and references to adultery and non-explicit situations. Characters are in peril and there are some uncomfortable family interactions.

Family discussion: What did Frank and Adele understand about each other? What could Gerald have done to be a better father? Why did Henry want to stay with his mother?

If you like this, try: the books and movies from Nicholas Sparks and “The Bridges of Madison County”

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Men in Black 3

Posted on May 24, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Welcome back, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones.

The stars and director of one of the most creative and purely entertaining movies of the last 20 years are back for a third that does not match the original but makes up for the mangled sequel. It has some references and tributes to the first two, though it is not overly bothered about consistency with the prior stories either in the details or in the tone. This one seems balanced more toward the sci-fi action and less toward the wonderfully understated comic sensibility that made the first one so refreshing. Nothing in this film reaches the matchless “Now I’m going to have to buy the White Album again” and testing scene moments of the first one. But those black suits still fit and it is still a lot of fun.

High-spirited J (Will Smith) and craggy, taciturn K (Tommy Lee Jones) are agents for a super-secret government organization that handles immigration problems and aliens — not the kind from other countries, the kind from other planets. Some are refugees, some are tourists, but some are here to wipe out all of humanity. The Agency manages all of that and with the help of a flashing “nebulizer” the size of a pen to wipe out the memory of any human unlucky enough to experience an alien encounter.

One of the most dangerous aliens of all is Boris the Animal (“Flight of the Conchords'” Jermaine Clement), captured back in 1969 by K and now locked away in a prison on the moon. As the movie opens, an incomparably luscious lady in a tight, tight dress and high, high stilettos (no special effects needed here: it’s Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger) is bringing him a very frosty cake. As everyone but the prison guards guesses, what is in the cake makes possible Boris’ escape back to earth, where he picks up a time machine and goes back to 1969. He plans to replay his encounter with K so that instead of losing an arm and getting captured he kills K and continues with his destruction of the planet. And so J goes back in time, meets up with the K of 1969 (Josh Brolin, nailing it).

The expected fish-out-of water time travel jokes include technology (the pre-chip nebulizer is big and clunky!) and encounters with the people and events of the era. One of the best jokes in the first movie was the display of monitors that revealed that people like Al Roker, Isaac Mizrahi, director Barry Sonnenfeld, Sylvester Stallone, Dionne Warwick, Newt Gingrich, and Anthony Robbins as aliens. In this version, it seems unimaginatively on-the-nose to include Lady Gaga, but back in 1969 there is a witty twist as one of the likeliest alien suspects of the era is revealed to be an undercover Man in Black instead. Michael Stuhlbarg (“Hugo,” “A Serious Man”) is charming as a sweet-natured alien in a ski cap whose gift and curse is his ability to see every possible outcome. I am sure at least a couple of those possibilities would have been better than this movie’s conclusion, which is muddled and unsatisfying.

Parents should know that this film includes extended sci-fi action violence with chases, explosions, and aliens, some disturbing images, some strong language, and brief suggestive alien sexual references.

Family discussion: How did what J learned about his own past change him? How will K be different and why?

If you like this, try: the first “Men in Black” movie (be sure to try the DVD’s director commentary) and “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”

Trailer: Men in Black 3

Posted on December 12, 2011 at 10:53 am

The first “Men in Black” is one of my favorite films of the 1990’s. The second was a terrible disappointment and clearly hacked up before release as shown by its slim running time and unsatisfying and conclusion. I keep hoping there is some director’s cut coming some day. I’ve been worried about the third in the series because of reports of chaotic filming and rumors that there was no script and they were making it up as they went. This new trailer looks encouraging, so here’s hoping.

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True Grit

Posted on December 22, 2010 at 8:05 am

In a remake of the John Wayne classic that is truer to the Charles Portis book, the Coen brothers have made their most sincere film yet, a western as spare and yet majestic as its unspoiled landscapes. Like all great westerns, it is a meditation about the forces that shaped the American spirit, the determination, resilience, passion for justice, and most of all the mingled pragmatism and idealism.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s previous films have had a preciousness and remove from their often-grotesque characters, a frequent feeling of ironic air quotes in their picaresque speech patterns and fantastic, even mythic plot twists. This time, they give us a sincere and appreciative portrayal of a steely 14-year-old heroine (remarkable newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) who wants to find and kill the man who murdered her father.
Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, a girl whose tight braids demonstrate her no-nonsense determination. She crisply negotiates the disposition of her father’s body with the undertaker and then demonstrates her mastery of horse-trading by selling back to the local broker the horses her father had come to town to buy, and, with a little extra leverage from a threatened lawsuit, getting some cash and a pony out of the deal. And so when she sets her mind to hiring the top tracker in town to find Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who killed her father, you know she is going to be successful.
That tracker is Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a man who may too old and infirm (he has an eye patch and a drinking problem) and possibly be too quick to kill (he can’t or won’t recall under oath the details of some of the men he’s killed) to do the job. It turns out someone else is looking for Chaney, a Texas Ranger named LeBoeuf (Matt Damon). The two men have no interest in working together and even less in bringing along a 14-year-old girl, but their mutual determination and stubbornness has them soon on the trail together.
The first version, directed by Henry Hathaway, was a bit of a miss-match and a more than a bit meta, with Wayne playing and playing off of his screen persona, pop singer Glen Campbell as LeBoeuf, and Kim Darby, then in her 20’s, playing Mattie. In this film, the actors are far better matched to each other and their roles. Bridges, whose most memorable role may be in the Coens’ “The Big Lebowski,” fully commits to the character, not caricature, of Rooster Cogburn. The asperity and resolve of the young girl are well matched by the man who may be undisciplined and ungovernable but who is also in his own terms honorable. It is these two, both who must continue after dire physical sacrifice, who represent the forging of a social construct that will support frontier society.
The landscape, spare, magnificent, and challenging, is stunningly photographed by the Coen brothers favorite cinematographer, Roger Deakins. Production designer Jess Gonchor makes every shot look like a painting somewhere between Thomas Eakins and Grant Wood. Each shot is meticulously framed to add a transcendent dignity and seriousness of purpose to the story.

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Jonah Hex

Posted on October 12, 2010 at 8:00 am

Josh Brolin plays Jonah Hex, a man transformed by loss in a fantasy western set just after the Civil War, based on the series of comics and graphic novels. The war is over in the United States, but it continues to haunt Hex, who rides the West as a gun for hire still wearing his Confederate Uniform.

Hex has no friends, at least not any who are alive. He has one enemy, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), who made Hex watch as he ordered his men to make Hex suffer as he had, to watch as he loses everything he loves and has to live on, scarred inside and out. After Turnbull burns down Hex’s home with his wife and child inside, he orders his men to apply a fiery brand to Hex’s face, burning through the skin to the jawbone. “Every day that mark will remind you of the man who took everything you had.”

But that physically and psychologically searing experience gave Hex something, too. “It left me with the curse of talking to the other side,” he tells us. And so he rides, feeling nothing but vengeance, a gunman for hire, haunted by the dead and answerable to no one but himself.

Turnbull steals the most powerful weapon ever made, a sort of pre-industrial age H-bomb, And President Grant (Aidan Quinn) orders Lieutenant Grass (Will Arnett) to get Hex to find Turnbull and stop his plan to bring down the United States government as it reaches its 100th birthday.

It has a trim just-over-80 minutes running time, so I’m guessing there will be a future DVD release with a lot of deleted scenes. But the lean story-telling works well for its taciturn characters and spare settings, beautifully presented by cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, and well scored by Marco Beltrami and John Powell with assistance from Mastodon. The blend of history and fantasy, both tweaking and saluting the conventions of both genres, works better than the clumsy references to current concerns like terrorism and tea party anti-government sentiment. Brolin is as at home in the role as he is in the saddle. As (of course) a prostitute with a mean right hook and, at least for Hex, a heart of gold, Megan Fox has to learn that a husky voice and a smoldering look are not enough to create a character. On the other hand, in that wasp-waisted corset (reportedly a Scarlett O’Hara-size 18 inches in diameter) she should get an award for staying upright.