Deliverance in the Dakotas

 

Reviewers have been mixed on this one, and I also have mixed feelings.

Grandma and Grandpa search for their missing Grandson, suspecting he is being abused by his father. That setup propels the story forward nicely, but where it ends up, and where it ends is a bit problematic. Is "Let Him Go" a Thriller? A Drama? A Septuagenarian re-kindled romance? It doesn't seem sure, but it sure ends with a bang. Literally.

Casting Kevin Costner and Diane Lane seems like a good idea, and these two professionals are fine in the scenes they share - primarily just the two of them. The third reel features a sort of Deliverance-style rural horror show where British Actress Lesley Manville nearly steals the show as the "Ma Barker" style Matriarch.

You want the Gramps's to escape with the kid. Spoiler Alert: they might, and they might not. Again, how things evolve from relatively slow burn menace to something out of "The Untouchables" (DePalma's film, not the milquetoast remake of the French soaper).

If you love, or even like either Costner, or Lane, or both this is a good bet. If you like Lesley Manville you kind of have to see it. Otherwise, you might must pass.

Solid Thriller with a "Thunderheart"

 

What's not to like here? Val Kilmer, who has been quite reliable for a couple of decades, in a starring role in this multi-layered "based on true events" early 90s thriller. The great Sam Shepard playing an FBI agent -- gee, where have we seen that before -- and the always fabulous Graham Greene playing a Native American. And the latter is not type-casting.

Kilmer's young, cocky FBI agent is dropped into a steaming pile of crap when he is hand-picked to investigate a murder on a Native American reservation, because he has Native blood. Yep, its about the optics, and right there, the viewer could be wading into a hornet's nest unless he or she weren't in the sure hands of writer John Fusco and seasoned director Michael Apted. Which he or she is.

Their sure hands set the stage for a great murder mystery, and as that mystery is peeled layer by layer more is certainly reveled. Politics prevail, the history of terrible treatment of Natives by the US Government is sensibly but not melodramatically inter-woven. The lucky viewer even learns more about one of the worst in a long line of tragic events for Natives, Wounded Knee.

Leaving the politics out, though, Kilmer, Shepard and Greene are first rate, as is the great Fred Ward and many Native actors and actresses. And, by the way, the South Dakota scenery nearly steals the show. Brooding, powerful, gorgeous and very well-shot by Oscar-winner Roger Deakins.

It all starts with the title: its own infinite loop

 

I should start by saying that "The Endless" blew my mind the first time I saw it. I waited to review it until I had seen it a second time. Did it blow my mind, again? No, but that is not a qualitative statement. This time, I knew what to expect from this endlessly inventive indie sci fi flick and was able to savor it like an old wine or something.

The two filmmakers, Benson and Moorhead are among the most talented working in the US today. They join a long line of personal faves, including Brit Marling, Shane Carruth and Jamin Winans. Why do I say "talented"? Because they create highly interesting, though-provoking story lines and execute them with cinematic flourish. And apparently do it for a fraction of what it costs a big Studio to make a film. This Benson and Moorhead proved in the great "Spring" and they continue to do in "The Endless", which is not only the best film they have made but one of the best to come out in years.

At one level, "The Endless" concerns two brothers living near Echo Park in LA, one of whom longs to return to the "UFO Death Cult" that they both escaped from many years earlier. What a great set up for a plot - right away you know one wants to go back, and the other does not, creating a great tension to drive the rising action of the story. But most of all you really want to know about the UFO Death Cult. Really…

Of course, they do return to said cult which is located somewhere in the mountains above San Diego. And that is right about where the conventional nature of the story, and the storytelling starts to unravel. From weird atmospheric disturbances to telling recollections about the cult-members wanting to commit mass-suicide it quickly becomes apparent that nothing is what it appears to be. Or, if you buy that a strange “presence” is living in a shallow lake and causing space and time to warp, and creating an infinite loop that some characters can’t escape, well, then everything is exactly as it appears to be.

Here is where I need to warn those who don’t like ambiguity, or head trips in their films to stay away from “The Endless”. On the other hand, if you love to have your mind thoroughly f-ed with, then get thee to this film ASAP.

The brothers return to the wonderfully named Camp Arcadia where the members of the un-named cult are living. Benson and Moorhead use the ordinariness of the location, and the relative normality of the camp’s residents to ground the small but eerie details that begin to throw everything off the rails. One guy seems to be, well, just smiling all the time. You want to know why. The leader of the group who keeps insisting it is “not a cult” (important safety tip: if the apparent leader of a group of people says it is not a cult, it probably is) and saying the words with an almost Manson-esque smoothness. There is an odd shack that has a lock on it that looks like it was stolen from a Final Fantasy game. Again, you really, really want to know what it is in the shack.

What seem to be manipulative plot devices create a thirst on the part of the viewer to know “what the f is really happening here”. And when one, and then both brothers set out to try to figure that out, you get the true strangeness of the third reel. A dude who is living in a shanty, with his doppelganger hanging from a noose; a drug addict chained to the wall of his house, trying to get sober (an apparent homage to an earlier film, “Resolution”), and a character described in the credits as just a “late eighteenth century man” is running into the wall of his tent, over and over again as the old timey clock in a post keeps resetting and running for the same ten seconds.

And that is not even the weird part. If you want to know more, please, please watch “The Endless”. It is available on Amazon Prime Video for a nominal rental fee – which the film-makers deserve, by the way, for squeezing so much creativity into 111 minutes.

Magic is still kind of lame

 

No offense, but magic is kind of lame.

I respect those who practice it, but if you are really (really) into Magic you probably "aren't getting much tail". Many films have tried to make it cool, and this one tries perhaps a bit too hard. Christopher Nolan's excellent "The Prestige" was just cool because it had David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla. Yep.

"Now You See Me" tries very, very hard, using overblown, swooping camera movement, breathless dialogue breathlessly spoken by a, well, breathless cast. And some seemingly clever tricks that -- spoiler alert -- get explained. And the First Rule of Magic Club is that you never, ever explain the trick.

What almost saves "Now You See Me" is a pretty clever plot which, wait for it, is kind of a magic trick itself. See how I did that? Some unseen force has brought together a group of street magicians to form a lamely named group called The Four Horseman, which is mildly micro-aggressive because one of those men is a woman, played by Isla Fisher. This group includes characters played by Jesse Eisenberg (whose young-ish, brash sleight-of-hand artist is pretty much the epitome of "no really, magic IS cool" uncool), Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco, and is slated to perform three progressively more impossible acts, culminating in a complex, Apocalyptic bit performed on the rooftop of an abandoned building in, what, Queens?

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. What further saves the film is the presence of Adults in the room, in the form of Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. Wait, weren’t they together in a couple of Christopher Nolan films? The scene in the Voodoo Shop in New Orleans where Caine and Freeman have it out is an example of what happens when two great actors have pretty good material to work with.

Look, if you love Magic, you have to see “Now You See Me”. If you don’t love Magic, you should still see it, as it is entertaining and has, as they say in the Magic world, a “Turn” and then a “Big Reveal” at the end. If all of that is just tiresome to you, then pass this one by.

Serviceable "True Life" Thriller

 

I mainly watched this because it had Josh Hartnett, who I have loved in Penny Dreadful (yes, I was a bit late to that party), and also Jim Gaffigan. Also, I have been watching the great Canuck crime drama, "Cardinal" so I am a bit obsessed with finding out how things aren't always so peaceful in the Great White North.

Main plot of this "Based on True Events" story is a poor sucker junkie gets ensnared in what is basically one of the most ludicrous cases of Entrapment in history - or at least in Canadian History. This kid is just looking to get high, and the Jim Gaffigan character convinces him to fly to Thailand to score ten kilos of "H" as they so uncooly call it. This, all financed and supported by the Canuck version of the DEA, masterminded on the Government side by a rail-thin, specter of an agent, played by Stephen McHattie (who all of you X Files fans will recognize).

If it sounds implausible, it probably is, because the notes at the end confusingly indicate that maybe this all happened, maybe it didn't. Mainly, because apparently the Canadian Government has sought for years to suppress the truth. Except, the film was financed, in part, by Provencal bucks from the Government of Quebec. Oh, right, Quebec has been trying to secede from Canada for decades.

OK, back to the film. Everything here is pretty effective, pretty well-written and well-acted. Only problem is the time shift narrative only becomes apparent about a third of the way through, when you realize that you are watching a retrospective of historical events, and a current timeline of our pitiful junk getting ready to rot in a horrible Thai prison.

You'll have to watch to find out what really happens.

Forgiveness, like many things, starts with the heart

Brian Banks reminds me of another quiet, unassuming and powerful story, The Soloist. The former deals with Injustice visited on a young Black Man in Long Beach, CA and the other, Mental Illness and Homelessness on the streets of Downtown LA.

When a film says "based on a true story" I don't immediately become suspicious. But, my antennae are definitely up, realizing that Hollywood does bend the truth in service of a good story. I don't fault it for that. The story here, however truthful is quite compelling, as it involves a young Black Man in Long Beach, California who is falsely accused of rape as a teenager, and whose life is, quite literally destroyed as a result. When the film begins, Brian is watching kids playing football, and thinking about how he might have gone to the NFL had he not gone to prison instead.

The rest is worth not spoiling, but I highly recommend this soft-spoken drama, well-cast with many great actors including the always-dependable Greg Kinnear as the head of the California Innocence Project: a White Man who takes on the cause of seeking Justice for a Black Man he does not know. With no financial incentive. That's an Ally folks, or whatever you want to call it.

To the Lighthouse

For some reason I hesitated to watch this masterful of psychological thriller, perhaps because I couldn't really get into the Director Robert Eggers' other widely-praised film, "The Witch". At least, I didn't see what critics and audiences who raved about it saw.

No such issue here, and sorry I waited so long. Eggers' compact Gordian Knot of a film is pieced together with Wes Anderson-esque precision, with solid writing, bravura performances by both leads and remarkable black-and-white camerawork in 5:4 (technically, 1.19:1, if IMDB are correct) aspect ratio that both contains the growing madness of the two characters but threatens to burst, at many points.

The remarkable Willem Dafoe is in fine form as the Lighthouse Keeper and the under-appreciated Robert Pattinson is every bit his equal as his seasonal assistant. Both are, in a way, trapped on a lonely island off the coast of New England, somewhere toward the end of the 19th Century. Mainly because, a couple of weeks into their stay a fierce storm hits the island with almost Biblical force, and the promised ship can't appear to take them to shore.

While scene and setting play a major role in the film, the relationship between the two main characters is its driving force. Dafoe's character seems to be already insane, and Pattinson's seems to gradually go insane as the film moves forward. Is it isolation? Does Pattinson's character have dark secrets that only Dafoe's character's relentless prodding is going to knock loose? Is there a monster living in the top floor of the eponymous Lighthouse? Is there really a Mermaid in the waters off shore?

As one disappointed Amazon reviewer points out, none of these questions is really answered adequately. If you like ambiguity, beautifully wrought from a Cinematic standpoint you will love "The Lighthouse". If you need your Knots steadily but completely unraveled to conclude in a Big Reveal, I'm afraid Eggers' weird masterpiece is not for you.

Hello, Young (and Old) Lovers of Cinema, Wherever You Are

It is hard to say anything original about this masterpiece of the Hollywood Studio system. But, here goes.

It begins, and ends, with the spectacular Score and Book from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Although I am sure much has been said over the years that casts this inimitable pair in a more realistic light, I still find little fault in nearly anything they did. And that is coming from a Progressive Liberal who thinks "Oklahoma!", despite the complete absence of Native Americans is, still, a masterpiece.

I had the good fortune to see a smaller scale but still wonderful stage version of “The King and I” in New York several years ago. Again, the music and lyrics really drive the piece, so it matters little whether it is on a small, or large stage: the musical still, well, sings is the best way I can put it. And, against the breathtaking canvas of CinemaScope this film version is one for the ages.

It continues with the two leads who are perhaps two of the best that could have ever been chosen: Academy Award-winner Yul Brynner and the splendid Deborah Kerr. Brynner was really a giant of the silver screen, although unfortunately he didn’t appear in as many films as we might have wanted to him to. If he had only ever done King, with his commanding presence tempered by a heart of gold, that would have been enough. And Englishwoman Kerr did so many great American films with a perfectly straight American accent it is a relief to hear her speak and sing with her English accent and diction. It, as the saying goes, classes the joint up a bit. Am I right?

Much has probably been written about whether “The King and I” is a culturally sensitive depiction of 19th Century “Siam” (today known as Cambodia) or whether it celebrates or fails to take account of the destructive power of British Imperialism. That is perhaps not important in a basic Amazon film review. Nonetheless, the film-makers tried to get much right about the Siam of the 1800s, from the brief location photography in the opening to the exquisite set piece of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” set to classic Cambodian- style, Kabuki-esque theater. The latter, alone, is worth the price of admission. And of course the costumes. Oh, man, the costumes!

One final comment. If you love great music, then admire the late, great Arthur Newman’s masterful adaptation of the musical’s timeless score – listed as “orchestrations” in the credits but really much, much more than that. It won Newman – one of the titans of Hollywood film scoring – one of his several Academy Awards. The astonishing opening melody sends shivers up my spine, it is so good.

Watched on Amazon Prime Video. The print and transfer seemed to be of very high quality.

Dark, indeed

Although this "ripped from the headlines" story has a decided anti-big business bent to it, it is nonetheless a gripping, slow-burn thriller about one man's campaign to see justice done.

Mark Ruffalo is superb as a big city lawyer who takes on a small town class action lawsuit against Dow Chemical - jeopardizing his job, his marriage and even potentially his life. Supporting cast includes Tim Robbins and Anne Hathaway, but Ruffalo's restrained performance is the main event, here.

Reminds me of another finely etched role about a David fighting a Goliath, Michael Mann's excellent "The Insider" with Russell Crowe. Or, the similarly solid "A Civil Action" with John Travolta, and, of course the nearly peerless "Erin Brokovich" which won Julia Roberts her one and only Academy Award.

Hollywood loves it its David or Davida vs. Goliath stories, don't it?

Sheer Cinematic Genius

It would not be a complete exaggeration to say that "Great Expectations" is a nearly perfect film. There are of course many other films that deserve this rating that are its equal, if not its superior. Anything by Truffaut or many things by Bergman. Hitchcock's Vertigo comes to my mind. But David Lean's 1946 masterpiece just has way too much going for it not to be considered one of the truly great works of the British film industry. It starts with Lean who, like Stanley Kubrick hardly ever made a film that one could just call "good". His body of work was of so consistently a high caliber that his loving adaptation of his countryman’s finest novel is like a small, beautiful miniature (Wes Anderson much?) to the later grand Epics like Lawrence of Arabia that cemented his reputation.

It continues with the source material. Like Michael Crichton, or maybe Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens wrote novels that are either easy to adapt into film, or so well loved that great directors and screen writers work hard to get them right. Dickens’ own body of work is so vast, and impressive that it is easy to say that Great Expectations is merely one of three or four true masterpieces – Nicholas Nickleby, any one? Bleak House, my pet? – that the great pop culture author produced.

That is not to say Dickens is easy to adapt. His characters are some of the most vividly imagined, his dialogue and description some of the richest ever put to paper. Don’t get me started on plotting, as Dickens can drive even his loyal readers mad with his positively…Dickensian (yes, I went there) story lines. Small wonder Lean himself, along with four others penned the screenplay. And what a screenplay it is, condensing Dickens medium-length novel into a relatively crisp 118 minute running time. I don’t believe all the couple of dozen main characters from the novel made the cut, but the main ones, and the primary story lines survive.

And, what a story it is.

Young Orphan “Pip” is raised in the 19th century by the saintly Joe Gargery – deftly and tear-jerkingly played by Bernard Miles – when he encounters an escaped convict out on the moors. A kind gesture from Pip would seem to go unnoticed. I won’t spoil the Big Reveal for you and say that, fast forward a few years, and one heartbreak, and Pip is living with his good friend in London when a Benefactor blesses him with a fortune. Plots and fates intertwine until the grand Denouement. That is all the needs to be said because you really need to see how it all plays out so skillfully in Dickens’ plotting.

The film won the Best Oscar for Art Direction (now called Production Design, I think) and Cinematography. Both are of course superb. Look at the detail in just one set piece, the nearly Biblical destruction of Miss Havisham’s Great Hall about 1/3 of the way through the film. I was amazed at how dust was flying from the table and furniture. Dust which had to be put in place to resemble dust that would have gathered for decades.

But what it really boils down to is the Cast, and the acting. As would be expected from the Brits – especially during this era – every single actor and actress is superb. From a young Alec Guiness as Pip’s young adult pal Herbert Pocket and the legendary John Mills as an “adult” Pip, to a youthful Jean Simmons as the devilish Estella and of course Martita Hunt in the scene-chewing role as Miss Havisham. I could go on and on, but I need not, because this constellation of characters is ably played by a galaxy of fine British A and B players.

The end result is, as I have said, sheer cinematic magic. And, by the way, the print and transfer on Amazon Prime are both superb. So, no reason not to rent, or buy (as I did) this treasure. It is a worthy addition to any true film lover’s library.

Matthew McConaughey's "American Hustle" moment

If you don't know the amazing real-life story that inspired "Gold" you should check it out. It is one of those clear examples of "truth is stranger than fiction". A Filipino Engineer, Michael de Guzman perpetrated what was at the time the largest fraud ever attempted in the Mining industry. He may (or may not) have gotten away with tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains. Or, he may have fallen -- or been pushed -- out of the window of a Helicopter, hundreds of feet above an Indonesian rain forest.

You literally cannot make this stuff up.

What "Gold" does, somewhat successfully, is tell that story by dressing it up, re-locating the main North American action, adding and subtracting characters, etc. If you want your films to be true to the "inspired by true events" moniker then "Gold" is not for you. It takes significant creative license with the facts. But, if you want your stories entertaining and fairly well made, then this is your kind of film.

"Gold" has one main guilty pleasure, and that is Matthew McConaughey chewing the scenery as the fictional character, based on the real-life Calgary Mining investor, David Walsh. As Christian Bale was transformed for the much better “inspired by true events” “American Hustle”, McConaughey dons a bald/wig, probably gained real weight and is sporting one of the most obscene sets of false teeth perhaps ever attempted in a major motion picture.

The results could have been a disaster, but in the hands of an Oscar-winning actor they are splendid. Since his character in the film is mostly fabricated, it is not possible to say he becomes David Walsh, but he does become something interesting: watching him nearly lose everything, make a wild bet on a Filipino engineer and trudge through the jungles of Borneo, all the while contracting Malaria and driving up the value of his company’s stock is a sight to behold.

The rest of “Gold” is, to some extent, window dressing. Actor/director Edgar Ramirez is passable as the film’s version of de Guzman: if it is possible to “un-foreground” a character, “Gold” does that with deGuzman. The location photography is very good and the overall technique of Stephen Gaghan’s direction builds good tension by jumping from Reno, NV to Borneo to Wall Street.

But again, come for the story – which, even if it is mostly made-up, is still good – but stay for McConaughey. You will not regret it.