Posted on April 23, 2017 at 9:48 pm
Here’s the Ebertfest panel on “The Handmaiden” that I moderated. (Sorry there’s a problem with the sound at first — skip ahead about five minutes and it should be all right.
Posted on April 19, 2017 at 3:23 pm
If you like behind-the-scenes-of-the-hits films like “20 Feet from Stardom,” “Muscle Shoals,” and “The Wrecking Crew,” you will enjoy “BANG! The Bert Berns Story.” Like “Wrecking Crew,” this is a love letter from a son to his father. You have not heard the name Bert Berns, but you have heard — and I am sure, you have sung — the songs he wrote or produced include “Twist and Shout,” “Brown Eyed Girl,” Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,” “Hang on Sloopy,” “I Want Candy,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Under the Boardwalk,” and many, many more.
Berns had a weak heart, the result of rheumatic fever. He knew his time was limited. And so he lived hard and fast, to get everything he could in the time he had. As a young man, he fell in love with mambo and the Latin rhythms that were popular at his local dance clubs. He brought some of that sound to the early days of rock music, creating hit after hit as songwriter and producer, working with some of the biggest stars in the business, helping many of them get there.
The film has some great interviews and details, especially some unexpected anecdotes from Berns’ best pal from the mob, who stepped in “Godfather”-style to help out now and then, dragging one singer from his sister’s funeral to make sure he didn’t miss a recording date. There are stories of rising and falling, business partnerships and betrayals, and Bert’s romance with a tough cookie of a blonde go-go dancer who became his wife. Great characters, great music — and a lot of fun to watch.
Posted on April 19, 2017 at 8:00 am
On Vulture, Kyle Buchanan has a fascinating column about three directors who took time off between blockbusters to make remarkably similar small budget films about gifted kids and their single parents. It is well worth reading in full.
Take “Gifted,” this week’s dramedy about a precocious child and the overwhelmed uncle (Chris Evans) who serves as her single parent. It’s directed by Marc Webb, who made the last two Amazing Spider-Man movies, but it’s not to be confused with June’s The Book of Henry, about another child genius and his single parent (Naomi Watts), which director Colin Trevorrow squeezed in between “Jurassic World” and his upcoming production of “Star Wars: Episode IX.” With his schedule so packed, Trevorrow had to abdicate the director’s chair on Jurassic World 2, a gig that went to spectacle-seller Juan Antonio Bayona … who just released his own precocious-child/single-parent movie, “A Monster Calls,” this past December….What’s prompting these similar small movies? To some degree, I expect the directors are treating them as penance: After you’ve neglected your family to fly around the world working on a giant blockbuster, what better way to work out your issues than with a film about a distracted parent reconnecting with a special child? That’s part of the reason that after directing two Iron Man movies, Jon Favreau made the much smaller Chef, where he stars as a single father who quits his fancy restaurant job to start paying attention to his precocious preteen. At the end of their cross-country adventure together, Favreau’s character goes back into the restaurant business a better man who’s informed by the time he’s spent with his son; so, too, has Favreau returned to tentpole filmmaking after his gap-year movie, only now he’s directing films like The Jungle Book and The Lion King that are explicitly made for families.
But I suspect there’s more to this trend than just personal catharsis. For as much as these directors think they’re trading one mode of filmmaking for another, in a way, they’re just toggling between two influential blockbusters: Instead of making Star Wars (literally, in Trevorrow’s case), they’re making E.T.
Posted on April 18, 2017 at 3:05 pm
Two films open this week that could be described as old-school, grand epics like those from the classic era of Hollywood. Both are based on true stories. “The Lost City of Z” (with Z pronounced “Zed,” as the British do), is based on the life of dashing explorer Percy Fawcett, who inspired many fictional characters, including Indiana Jones. “The Promise” stars Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale in a story inspired by the Armenian genocide in Turkey around the time of World War I.
Also this week: DisneyNature’s annual documentary for Earth Day, this one “Born in China,” featuring snow leopards, monkeys, and pandas.
Posted on April 18, 2017 at 8:00 am
“Step” documents the senior year of a girls’ high-school step dance team against the background of inner-city Baltimore. As each one tries to become the first in their families to attend college, the girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in the troubled city.
