And So It Goes

Posted on July 24, 2014 at 6:00 pm

12 June 2013 Photo by Clay Enos – © 2013 ASIG Productions LLC

A second marriage is, as Samuel Johnson famously said, “The triumph of hope over experience.” And as lyricist Sammy Cahn wrote in the song Bing Crosby sang in “High Time,” “Love is lovelier the second time around.” In this slight but endearing new film, director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Mark Andrus (“As Good as it Gets”) bring us an autumn-years love story. Oscar-winners Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton play two characters with little in common but the experience of great loss, the knowledge that love carries great risks, and the fear that there may not be another chance.

Douglas is Oren, a successful realtor and even more successful misanthrope. He insults people. He is bitter. He shoots a dog with a paintball gun. He does not like anyone and no one likes him, with the exception of his longtime colleague played by the invaluable Frances Sternhagen. Keaton plays Leah, a widow experimenting with singing at a restaurant. She is universally beloved, especially by her neighbors in a fourplex and her loyal accompanist (played by the director himself). Oren lives in the fourplex, too, ironically named “Little Shangri-La,” and is revealed early on to be the owner as well. He hopes for one last big-ticket house sale so he can retire and move away and never deal with anyone ever again.

But life has a way of entangling those who most try to rid themselves of obligations and relationships — at least in movies. Oren’s long-estranged son arrives to inform his father that (1) he is no longer a drug addict, (2) he has a daughter, and (3) he needs Oren to care for her while he serves a prison term.

Oren refuses, saying “I already tried to raise a kid and it didn’t work out.” So Leah steps in and says the girl can stay with her. She is Sarah (Sterling Jerins). And anyone who has ever seen a movie (or read “Heidi”) knows that the girl will charm her grandfather and open the hurting hearts of both Oren and Leah to her and to each other. Oren finally admits to Leah, “I like you and I don’t like anyone.”

Despite contemporary references like “Duck Dynasty” and “Hoarders,” this film has a musty, retro feel, like a script that has been sitting in a drawer for a couple of decades. The plot is predictable and creaky. An attempt to return Sarah to her mother goes exactly the way you think. The caterpillar Sarah collects is exactly the metaphor you think. The pregnant neighbor provides exactly the opportunity for Oren’s showing what he is capable of that you thought but hoped you could avoid. The racial humor is painfully out of date, so you didn’t predict it, but that does not make it a good surprise. Far from it.

What the movie does have, though, is Douglas and Keaton, and they triumph over the limitations of the material, making us believe that the greatest love in our lives may still be waiting for us.

Parents should know that this film includes sexual references, some crude, childbirth scene, some strong language, some racial insults, drinking, drug abuse, references to sad deaths

Family discussion: Why was it so hard for Oren to be nice to people? How did Leah make Sarah feel at home?

If you like this, try: “As Good as It Gets” and “Something’s Gotta Give”

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Trailer: Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas in “And So It Goes”

Posted on May 16, 2014 at 8:00 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qis-xhFeszs

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Behind the Candelabra: The Real Story of Liberace and Scott Thorson

Posted on May 24, 2013 at 3:50 pm

Behind the Candelabra premieres this weekend on HBO. It is based on the hard to believe but true story of one of the most popular and flamboyant stars of the 1950’s and 60’s, who went by just one name: Liberace.

Wladziu Valentino Liberace was an American of Polish/Italian heritage, a gifted classical pianist, a masterful showman, and a pioneer in the art of celebrity branding and marketing. He was multi-platform before the term was invented For decades he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world. He had record albums, endorsements, and movie and television appearances and his own series, but it was his live stage show that was what people loved most. He never tried for a career as a serious classical musician, performing with orchestras in concert halls. He liked to play what he called “classical music with the boring parts left out.” And the show was as important as the music, from the flashy pianos to costumes Lady Gaga would envy. Ermine capes. Crystal-encrusted tuxes. Feather boas. Chandeliers and of course candelabras. Excess was not enough.

It was a different era. Liberace was not openly gay. On the contrary, when a British newspaper called him “a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love,” he sued under their notoriously strict libel laws. testified under oath that he was not a homosexual, and won.

In the late 70’s, Liberace met a handsome teenager named Scott Thorson. They were together for five years, and after they broke up (and Thorson was “fired” as Liberace’s chauffeur), Thorson sued him for “palimony.” It was settled out of court. Thorson is now in jail, charged with identity theft. He has had removed the plastic surgery prosthetic Liberace paid for so that Thorson would look more like an idealized version of himself when young. Thorson’s book, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, tells the story of their love affair and the unimaginable excesses of their life together and is the inspiration for this film. It is in competition at Cannes and will be released theatrically overseas, but in the US no studio would back it, so it is on HBO.

Steven Soderbergh (“Oceans 11,” “Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich”) directed and it stars Michael Douglas as Liberace, Matt Damon as Thorson, and Debbie Reynolds, who knew Liberace, as his mother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqAC1yiIROw

Haywire

Posted on January 19, 2012 at 6:08 pm

A little bit “Rambo,” a little bit “Kill Bill” and more than a little bit “La Femme Nikita” and its imitation, “Alias,” this film can best be summarized as follows: a private contractor operative employed by the United States kicks butt in many locations, taking time off in the middle to have her hair put in cornrows, with a slight storyline attached to keep us on her side.

Mixed martial arts champion Gina “Conviction” Carano has a strong screen presence as Mallory, a former Marine turned free-lancer working for a one-time boyfriend named Kenneth (Ewan McGregor). After the government client insists that she be assigned to a new mission in Dublin, Kenneth pushes her to go, assuring her that it will be simple and that her role will be secondary. She meets up with her handsome British counterpart (Michael Fassbender) and they pose as a married couple at a glamorous party. But Mallory’s approach is always the Reaganesque “trust but verify.” She is always on the alert, and so when it turns out that she is in danger, she is prepared. The rest of the movie is her single-mindedly knocking the lights out of anyone foolish enough to have done her wrong, less out of anger than sheer ruthless efficiency. She has a firm sense of justice but does not waste any energy on distractions like emotion. She works the odds and she works the problem.

The fight scenes are the reason for the film and they are well-staged in a variety of settings that allow Carano to show what she can dish out and what she can take. Director Steven Soderbergh wisely unravels the story a piece at a time to hold our interest in the sifting locales and allegiances. He lightly touches on some issues with contemporary resonance without taking us more than a few minutes away from the next beat-down. Mallory tells her story to the poor kid whose car she had to take on an escape and we see flashbacks of missions and encounters and it becomes clear why she is telling all of this to a random civilian. Soderbergh wisely surrounds his first-time leading lady with supremely capable actors including McGregor, Fassbender, Michael Douglas as a government official with an enormous American flag at his elbow, Michael Angarano as the guy who provides her getaway car and some on-the-move first-aid, and Bill Paxton as Mallory’s father. If Mallory’s confident, husky voice is in part due to electronic tweaking, it sounds natural and in character. Even in the midst fighting off a battalion of protective-gear-clad law enforcement officers, Carano has a businesslike confidence. And even when she is choking a man with her thighs or being chased through the woods, it is in aid of making the world a little less haywire.

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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Posted on December 14, 2010 at 10:00 am

Is greed still good? Does greed still, for want of a better word, work?
Twenty-three years later, Gordon Gekko is back, still played by Oscar-winner Michael Douglas and now running short on money and even shorter on what he realizes is an even more valuable commodity: time. We see him being released from prison, his personal effects including a gold money clip (empty) and his old cellular phone (the size of a shoebox). He walks out into the sunlight toward a sleek black limo only to see that it is there for someone else, the also-departing rap star.
Balzac famously said that behind every great fortune is a crime. That is literally true in Gekko’s case; he traded on inside information. But it is also true in a larger sense because the real reason for Gekko’s wealth is a fierce and unquenchable passion not for money but for winning. He has had a long time in prison to watch and think and plan his comeback. And so he leverages his notoriety into television and in-person appearances to promote his book.
The sequel is so close to the same framework as the original that at times it feels like a remake. Again there is a bright, ambitious and essentially honest young man with a lower-income parent exemplifying the current financial upheavals who gets drawn by Gekko’s gravitational pull. It’s Jake (Shia LaBeouf), who has the added complication of being engaged to Gekko’s estranged daughter (“An Education’s” Carey Mulligan, LeBeouf’s real-life love). And there is another big-time financier like the one played by Terence Stamp in the first film, Bretton James, played by Josh Brolin. Once again, there is an old guy who is the movie’s repository of wisdom and integrity (a fine Eli Wallach). Once again, the young man thinks he can hold on to his values and once again he will find Wall Street is more treacherous than he thought.
In his brilliant book on the financial meltdown, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis muses that his first expose of the wild world of Wall Street excess, Liar’s Poker was instead viewed “as a how-to manual.” The same is true for the first “Wall Street.” As the costume designer noted, the wardrobe from the first movie was selected for dramatic impact, not authenticity. But it was adopted by the real Wall Streeters, who were as thrilled with Gekko’s look as they were with his bravado, and his wealth.
While Douglas continues to be enough to make the entire movie worth watching, there is little chemistry with LeBoeuf or between LeBoeuf and Mulligan. The first film was an intriguing look at a hidden world. But today, with business news on the front pages and the editorial pages, on 24/7 news channels and thousands of websites, Wall Streeters are less often seen as dashing buccaneers than as the people most responsible for bringing the United States to the brink of economic destruction. The movie itself seems as though it cannot make up its mind what it wants from Gekko.

(more…)

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