Cinema Society Archives

Movie Day: "Inherent Vice"

December 21, 2014

Well, that was an interesting – or should I say “groovy” – screening at Cinema Society today. I’m a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous movies (“There Will Be Blood, “The Master”) and, while I’ve never been equally enthusiastic about the novels of Thomas Pynchon, I loved the idea of an LA noir tale with an A+ cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Owen Wilson, Benecio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, Eric Roberts). What could be bad?

The length of “Inherent Vice,” for one thing. Must I keep ranting about films that take over two-and-a-half hours to tell a story? Apparently so. Scenes could have been tightened up and they weren’t. On the other hand, the top critics who’ve put the movie on their Best of 2014 list praised Anderson’s ability to condense Pynchon’s novel, so what do I know?

Set in 1970, the movie begins as private eye Doc Sportello, a stoner in Santa Monica who hasn’t fully grasped that the sixties have come to an end post-Manson family, gets a visit from his ex-girlfriend who’s worried about her current boyfriend who’s gone missing. The boyfriend is a billionaire real estate developer whose wife and her stud have plotted to commit him to a looney bin and steal his money. Doc is intrigued and investigates. One trail of clues leads to another and another, and along the way we meet a recovering heroin addict-sax player (Wilson), a drug-dealing, sex-crazed dentist (Short), an LAPD detective with TV aspirations (Brolin) and many more. It’s a wild, psychedelic ride and I alternated between liking the movie and being bored by it. It didn’t help that Santa Barbara’s historic Riviera Theatre has terrible acoustics and much of the dialogue was hard to decipher.

Phoenix is wonderful as always, but Brolin stole the movie for me. He’s hilarious, truly. The movie looks great too; if Anderson doesn’t know how to shoot a film set in LA, no one does. Michael loved “Inherent Vice” and said if it hadn’t been so long it would have been his Best Film of the year. He certainly laughed a lot. Maybe he was stoned?

Movie Day: "Cake"

December 14, 2014

What good timing by our Cinema Society! Jennifer Aniston snagged both SAG and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress this week and today was our screening with Aniston in attendance for the Q&A afterwards. Now that I’ve seen the film and her performance, I can say unequivocally that her recognition is well deserved. She’s superb and will likely get an Oscar nom as well.

She plays Claire, a woman in LA who’s visibly scarred and in both physical and emotional pain. (She was in a terrible car accident.) She pops Percocet and Oxycontin like candy, gets kicked out of her support group for her bitchy behavior, has pushed away her husband and alienates just about everybody except her caregiver, Silvana, an immigrant from Mexico. She thinks about killing herself constantly and even gives suicide a couple of tries. Needless to say, this isn’t an easy movie to watch and it’s a huge departure for the normally comic Aniston.

How she fights her way back to the land of the living and functioning, how she copes with the losses she’s suffered, how she kicks her addiction are all answered in satisfying storytelling. Actually, the storytelling in itself is a great story. At the Q&A, we learned that the script came from a 49-year-old man who had entered it in a screenwriting contest. The director read it, loved it, and the rest is history.

I have nothing but praise for “Cake” – not a single critique. It was well made on every level and I applaud Aniston for taking a leap and going out of her comfort zone. She was charming at the Q&A too, very chatty with the audience and appreciative that we’d packed the theater on a Sunday morning.

Go see this movie when it comes out. You will be moved.

Movie Day: "Mommy"

December 13, 2014

Canada’s entry into the foreign film category for the Oscars this year, “Mommy” won the prestigious Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival last May and its 27-year-old director – yes, Xavier Dolan is practically a kid! – won the directorial prize. At today’s Cinema Society I could see why the film has been garnering raves. It’s riveting. Timely too. And beautifully acted by Anne Dorval.

A French language film, it’s the story of Diane, a widowed single mother who’s living day to day cleaning houses, doing odd jobs, desperately trying to make ends meet even as she’s struggling to care for her son, who’s a handful to say the least. He’s been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and becomes violent – scarily so – with seemingly little provocation. We meet mother and son as she’s picking him up from yet another juvenile facility from which he’s been kicked out, this time for setting the cafeteria on fire and injuring another boy.

Diane wants to keep him at home and does she ever try. She gets help from a neighbor with psychological problems of her own, but in the end……Well, I won’t spoil the end. But the movie begins by telling us that Canada has passed a healthcare law stating that a parent can commit a child without his or her consent.

As I said, the acting is truly superb. Dorval is a force of nature as Diane, who drinks and smokes too much, yells and screams and creates drama even without her unstable son. The cinematography is interesting too as director Dolan presents some of the film in square boxes, as when the characters are feeling hemmed in and troubled, and in wide screen when they’re liberated.

The story is a brave one – how many other films would dare to take on this subject? – and made me think of young men like Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza and his mother. What do you do with a son like that? A thorny issue indeed and a very good film.

Movie Day: "American Sniper"

December 7, 2014

I wasn’t looking forward to two war movies back to back after yesterday’s “Unbroken,” but “American Sniper” is a winner. A serious winner. At 84, Clint Eastwood has directed one of his best films yet and Bradley Cooper, not one of my favorite actors, delivers a performance worthy of an Oscar nom.

A bulked up Cooper (he gained 40 pounds for the role) stars as U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history with over 160 “kills” on his wartime resume during four harrowing tours of duty in Iraq. A Texan who was raised to protect his own, no matter what the odds, Kyle’s pinpoint accuracy as a shooter saves countless lives on the battlefield and, as stories of his courageous exploits spread, he earns the nickname “Legend.” His reputation is a double-edged sword though as he becomes a target of the insurgents. Back at home, his wife Taya (a dark-haired Sienna Miller) notices how reluctant he is to talk about his experiences and is confused by his behavior. “Even when you’re here, you’re not here,” she says. It isn’t until late in the story that Kyle gets his equilibrium back from helping disabled veterans – only to suffer a tragic fate himself (a tragedy that Eastwood wisely chose not to reenact on screen).

Eastwood’s battle scenes are intense and expertly shot, and I got the sense as I did with “The Hurt Locker” that I was really seeing what combat is like for these soldiers. I would like to have had a better sense of his marriage and Miller doesn’t have much to work with in her role as the wife, but I appreciated that this was a story about war, not love. I also appreciated that Eastwood kept politics off the screen; there’s no moralizing for any particular position but rather a quiet portrayal of patriotism as well as the complexities of war. Highly recommended.

Movie Day: "Wild"

November 16, 2014

OK, let me say upfront that I was not a fan of the book. I know, I know. It’s been a bestseller forever and Cheryl Strayed is a brave woman for not only baring the not-so-pretty parts of her life but also getting out there and surviving that PCT, but to me it was “Eat Pray Love” without the self-deprecating humor or appreciation for the pleasures of life. The movie, which screened today at Cinema Society and opens in theaters next month, sticks very much to the structure and voice of the book. In other words, there’s a lot of hiking.

Reese Witherspoon plays Strayed, whose life took a dark turn after the death of her beloved mother and the dissolution of her marriage thanks to her own reckless, destructive behavior (numerous infidelities, heroin use, you name it). Having lost hope for her own redemption, she decides to hike more than 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail – by herself and with absolutely no experience. We follow her on the trail – for two hours. Occasionally, she meets up with strangers, some of whom are friendly, some of whom are threatening. She copes with horrible heat and impassable snows and drenching rains. She learns how to operate her camping gear and ration her food and water. Through it all, we become familiar with her back story through many, many flashbacks. There are so many flashbacks, in fact, that it was often easy to lose the thread of her present situation. We meet her mother (an always wonderful Laura Dern), her brother, her husband, her best friend. We see glimpses of her one-night stands and drug use. And we see the determined jawline of Reese Witherspoon, who, though vulnerable, is right at home playing a character who’s determined to make it to the finish line and show her mother she’s the woman Mom raised her to be. By the closing credits, she’s healed. The End.

Maybe some of my detachment toward the material comes from projection – i.e. I can’t imagine myself trying to heal from grief by hiking the PCT. And maybe it’s because I found Strayed and, in the movie, Witherspoon, lacking in any sense of irony or wit, nor does she take a moment to step back and gaze at the gorgeous scenery with awe and wonder; she seems so singularly about herself and her problems. On the positive side, I do admire Strayed’s courage and her unwavering survival skills. I’d be such a chicken in her position, so kudos to her for not only getting through it all in one piece but for writing a book about it and serving as a role model for other women who’ve lost their way.

Movie Night: "The Theory of Everything"

November 16, 2014

A shoo-in. That’s what this movie is for a Best Picture Oscar nomination if not the actual hardware. And there’s no doubt that Eddie Redmayne, who gets Stephen Hawking’s every facial and body movement precisely right, and Felicity Jones, who charms as Hawking’s former wife and helpmate Jane, will be serious contenders for acting prizes. This biopic of their marriage was designed for Academy members, which is not a knock on it by any means. It’s a glorious film, beautifully shot in grand, tasteful Masterpiece Theater style. It leaves out much of what Hawking is about – namely, the scientific theory that put him on the map – but science is a tricky business for film and I doubt I would have understood it if it had been explained to me.

The story begins at Cambridge, where a young Hawking is a boy genius, well liked by his classmates and professors but awkward around girls….until he sees Jane at a party and knows she’s The One. Just as their courtship is in full bloom, Hawking, who has become “clumsy,” falls headfirst on the pavement and lands in the hospital where he’s diagnosed with ALS at age 21 with a prognosis of two years to live. At first he hunkers down in his dorm room, refuses to see or speak to anyone, but Jane is persistent and pledges to marry him, illness or not. The movie, which is based on Jane’s memoirs, tracks their marriage, the birth of their children, the deterioration of his body but never his mind and eventually their relationships with other partners (Jane falls in love with a choirmaster, Stephen with his nurse).

Redmayne and Jones, who came for our Q&A following the film, were gracious and articulate and very humbled by our standing ovation. They described their preparation for their roles – Redmaybe spent many days with ALS patients and their families, for example – and their reactions to meeting Stephen and Jane. They work as a team in the movie, each playing off the other, and there’s genuine chemistry between them. They seem like the two most likable actors ever, and I could have listened to them for hours.

Movie Day: "A Most Violent Year"

November 15, 2014

Writer-director J.C. Chandor scored an Oscar nomination with his first movie and one I enjoyed, “Margin Call,” and won critical praise if not box office love for his second, the Robert Redford sailing film “All Is Lost,” which I couldn’t stand. I found myself somewhere in between the two with today’s Cinema Society screening, “A Most Violent Year,” which will be released at the end of December.

I wanted to love it. It’s set in a gritty New York City during the crime-ridden winter of ’81 and harkens back to Sidney Lumet-type thrillers of the 1970s – the sort of movie Al Pacino would have made his own or, later, a tightly coiled Richard Gere. It’s an interesting story about an immigrant played by “Llewelyn Davis'” Oscar Isaac who’s climbed his way up the chain of the heating oil business. Now he runs his own company, has a beautiful wife (Jessica Chastain) and two young kids, drives a Mercedes and wears fabulous suits and a camel coat. But all is not going well. Just as he’s about to acquire valuable land to solidify his empire, the cops are closing in with an investigation into his company, his drivers are being attacked on their routes to delivering the oil and his wife, the daughter of a gangster, is threatening to bring in her family members to make all the problems go away. But Isaac’s character wants to “do the right thing” and he persists in resisting the violence around him.

Everybody at the screening loved the movie and I seemed to be the lone dissenter. There were many things to love about it, the chase scenes among them, and the acting was superb. But I kept waiting for Isaac to show some emotion and he rarely did. At the Q&A, Chandor said that the character’s quiet, steely demeanor was the whole point and that he deliberately avoided putting him in explosive shouting matches. The result for me was an unbelievability – i.e. nobody stays calm in the face of what this guy has to deal. The payoff at the end just wasn’t enough for me either; I wanted to see more of a character arc. And the pace of the movie was slow and deliberate – it really takes its time getting started after a terrific opening scene.

I have a feeling “A Most Violent Year” will get terrific reviews and I’ll feel like an idiot for not joining in the chorus, but it is what it is. I’ll take “Birdman” over this one any day.

Movie Night: "Birdman"

November 10, 2014

Finally, a 2014 Oscar contender I can unequivocally say I loved. LOVED. “Birdman” may not be for everyone – it’s experimental in form and structure and cinematography – but this writer with her short attention span wasn’t bored for a single second. It was riveting. I literally don’t think I took a deep breath during our two-hour Cinema Society screening.

It’s the story of Riggan Thomson, a comic book action hero of the “Batman” variety (the casting of former “Batman” Michael Keaton was inspired and perfect), who, after turning down yet another fatuous sequel, has suffered a career crash. He’s washed up, no longer relevant – not to his once-adoring public or his ex-wife (a terrific Amy Ryan) or his angry just-out-of-rehab daughter (Emma Stone as we’ve never seen her). His only friend is his lawyer and now producing partner (Zach Galifianakis, who more than holds his own) in an all-or-nothing venture on Broadway that Riggan is writing, directing and starring in – all in an effort to prove he’s not just his feathered movie character but rather a serious actor. Stuff happens, to say the least, and I won’t give any of it away.

Alejandro Inarritu, who directed “Babel,” one of my favorite movies of the last few years, managed to shoot “Birdman” in what appears to be one long continuous take – and in a mere 29 days, we learned at the Q&A. What he didn’t have in budget he made up for in creativity. The setting is the cramped quarters of the St. James Theatre on Broadway and we see Keaton moving from stage to dressing room back to stage in one swooping motion. Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, who, along with Keaton and the others, worked for scale, are great as actors Riggan casts for his play.

I could blab on and on about this movie – whether Riggan lives or dies at the end, whether he gets his act together, whether he stops hearing the Birdman voice in his head, what it means to be a celebrity versus what it means to be an actor – but I just hope the Academy voters recognize the brilliance in it all. It’s probably too edgy for a Best Picture statue but Keaton is about as close to a lock for Best Actor as it gets.

And just as a P.S., there was a reception for him after the screening and he was as accessible and friendly as could be. I like when that happens.

Movie Day: "Mr. Turner"

November 2, 2014

Today’s Cinema Society screening was a must-see in terms of the visual beauty of the film, which explores the last 25 years in the life of controversial, extremely eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner, who died in 1851. It’s also a must-see for the performance by Timothy Spall as Turner, but more on that in a second. Director by Mike Leigh has managed to capture landscapes, seascapes, human faces in the way that Turner must have viewed them because nearly every scene is like a work of art. The detail, the colors, the breadth of the shots are spectacular.

Turner couldn’t have been an easy part to play. He’s miserable to everyone close to him except his father. He treats his long-suffering housekeeper like a doormat and occasional sex toy. He’s not only dismissive of a former mistress with whom he had two daughters but denies their existence. And he takes pleasure in poking members of the Royal Academy of Arts with whom he socializes. It isn’t until he meets the landlady of a seaside rooming house where he stays while painting nautical settings that we see any real humanity in him. Enter Mike Leigh regular Timothy Spall, who, with his smashed-in face and stubby body, isn’t anybody’s idea of a leading man. But lead the cast he does in “Mr. Turner.” He fully inhabits the character and will undoubtedly be mentioned at Oscar time.

All that said, the film, which clocks in at two-and-a-half hours, is insufferably and unnecessarily long. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way at the screening (the man in front of me was asleep for most of it, nodding off within the first half-hour). The reviews so far have been rapturous, but I thought many of the scenes dragged on and on without leading us anywhere. When Turner was on his deathbed, I leaned over and whispered to Michael, “Let him die already.” Yeah, it was too long. For me anyway. My other gripe is that I couldn’t understand much of the dialogue. Whether it was due to the poor acoustics of the old theater where it screened or the thick accents of the characters (probably both), I had to strain to make out what was being said.

But again, the acting and the visuals are there. For sure.

Movie Day: "The Imitation Game"

October 25, 2014

Our Cinema Society screening today was the much-heralded film that’s not only getting Best Actor buzz for Benedict Cumberbatch but Best Picture buzz. Winner of the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival, it’s the type of movie Oscar voters love – a veddy veddy British period piece based on a true story with terrific acting, a beautiful score and a stirring screenplay.

Cumberbatch is brilliant as Alan Turing, the obsessive, socially inept (with Asperger’s, most likely) mathematician who cracked the German Enigma Code that helped the Allies win WWII. Moving back and forth in time, the movie begins as Turing is being interrogated by a policeman after his home is burgled, creating a suspenseful opening to the story. We see Turing as a young prodigy at boarding school who’s bullied by the other boys because he’s such an outsider/nerd. We see him talking his way into a top-secret job with the Government Code and Cipher School where he doesn’t get along with his superiors or co-workers but does manage to impress an MI6 agent played by the always compelling Mark Strong. We see him invent a machine that ultimately breaks the code used by the Nazis to encode all military radio transmissions. And we see him recruit a female mathematician (Keira Knightley) with whom he forges a friendship but not a romance. Turing is a closeted gay man and homosexuality is illegal in Britain, and his story does not have a happy ending. In the closing credits we learn that Turing, who committed suicide two years after being arrested for indecency, was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth in 2009 and is now considered the hero he was.

There are some great lines of dialogue that stem from Turing’s outsider-ness, but there’s too much “speechifying” for me. Characters often talk in sayings of the type that appear on bumper stickers and the cast should have been allowed to act out those moments rather than tell us what we’re supposed to be thinking. But the use of historical footage (Hitler, Churchill, wartime Britain) is very effective and the overall feel of the film is Big Oscar Picture in the same way that “King’s Speech” was. And Cumberbatch and Knightley deserve all the acclaim they’re getting; they’re wonderful to watch. Which is to say I liked “The Imitation Game” a lot, I really did. It just didn’t get to me in that way that generates the sentiment: “This is the best movie I’ve seen this year.”

Movie Day: "Fury"

October 11, 2014

Cinema Society showed a screening this morning of the new WWII movie starring Brad Pitt, and I actually skipped it.

I know, right? A Brad Pitt movie that I didn’t care much about seeing? It was hard for me to believe too, but there it is. I’m not a huge fan of war movies, not because of the violence but because they can be too straight-forward and simplistic, in the same way that cop movies can, and the reviews I read for “Fury” only confirmed my thinking.

Michael went though and reported the following: “Good call on your part. You didn’t miss much.”

Yes, Brad was excellent, he said, but there was nothing special about the story, which I’ll let the studio describe:

April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) commands a Sherman tank and her five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.

I feel a little guilty about missing the screening because the writer-director, David Ayer, had come for the Q&A session afterward, but hey. I got a lot of writing done during those two hours. I’m learning that I don’t have to sit through every movie or read every book, and the notion is liberating. That said, our Cinema Society has some fabulous films coming up and I can’t wait to go to those screenings. We’re getting such festival darlings as “Birdman,” “The Theory of Everything,” “The Imitation Game” and “Mr. Turner.” And that’s just between now and Thanksgiving. December is a big month for Oscar contenders too.

Meanwhile, here’s the trailer for “Fury.” Good cast. Reasonable premise. But if I’m seeing a WWII movie, I’ll take “Inglourious Basterds” and its dark humor any day.

Movie Day: "Whiplash"

September 22, 2014

It’s officially Fall and that means it’s officially our Cinema Society’s prime season. Now begins the cavalcade of Oscar-worthy movies fresh from festivals in Venice, Sundance, Telluride and Toronto. And what a crop this year’s entries appear to be. I keep reading about the films and their performances and can’t wait to see them all.

In the meantime, I got an early look yesterday at the Sundance Audience Award winner: “Whiplash.” If you asked me if I was keen to see a movie about a young jazz drummer and his taskmaster teacher, I’d probably pass. Soooo glad I didn’t. This one’s a winner.

From the studio:

Andrew Neyman is an ambitious young jazz drummer, single-minded in his pursuit to rise to the top of his elite east coast music conservatory. Plagued by the failed writing career of his father, Andrew hungers day and night to become one of the greats. Terence Fletcher, an instructor equally known for his teaching talents as for his terrifying methods, leads the top jazz ensemble in the school. Fletcher discovers Andrew and transfers the aspiring drummer into his band, forever changing the young man’s life. Andrew’s passion to achieve perfection quickly spirals into obsession, as his ruthless teacher continues to push him to the brink of both his ability-and his sanity.

That’s a simplistic summary of the story and makes it sound like “Black Swan,” substituting jazz music for ballet. It’s not over-the-top-horror like “Black Swan.” It’s a suspenseful, almost thriller-like tale with a performance by J.K. Simmons that astounds. Everybody knows Simmons as the cuddly, laid-back dad in “Juno” or the bland pitchman in the State Farm commercials. Apparently, he was a bad guy on the now-canceled TV show “Oz,” but I never saw that so watching him in “Whiplash” was a revelation. If he doesn’t get into the Supporting Actor race, I’ll be gobsmacked. Miles Teller, who plays the kid, is very good too. According to writer-director Damien Chazelle, who came for a Q&A and reception after the film, said that the young actor did have drumming experience but was coached in certain techniques for the film and ended up being so adept that they only used the stunt double sparingly. The drumming sequences in the film are worth the price of admission, so kudos to Teller.

As for Chazelle, he’s not one of those ultra-arty young filmmakers who has to shoot everything with a hand-held camera, thank God. He’s a student of classic films and it shows. His closeups and angles are terrific. I talked to him at the party and he’s a really humble and down-to-earth too.

Bottom line: I highly recommend this one.

Movie Night: "Boyhood"

August 8, 2014

I missed our Cinema Society screening of this while I was away in Connecticut, as well as the Q&A and reception with writer-director Richard Linklater and star Patricia Arquette, so I was eager to make time (and it does take a leisurely three hours to see this film) for it when I got home. Last night was that time. The verdict? I agree with the 99% of the critics who loved the movie. (The guy from the LA Times seems to be the lone dissenter, along with Husband Michael, though I’m sure there are others.)

The conceit of the film – or “gimmick” to the dissenters – is that Linklater shot the same core of actors over a 12 year period, so when we see them age we literally see them age. No fat suits. No add-on wrinkles. Just the real thing. And the effect is to make it feel as if you’re watching family members at different stages of their lives – pages of a scrapbook.

The kid, who becomes a college freshman by the end of “Boyhood,” is terrific – as natural an actor as I’ve seen in a long time. When we first meet him as Mason Junior, his mom, Arquette, is trying to get her life together after splitting with her ex, Ethan Hawke, a Linklater regular from the “Midnight” trilogy with Julie Delpy. Mason’s older sister Samantha, played by Linklater’s daughter Lorelei, also slips easily into her demanding role. The kids are forced to roll with Mom’s poor choices in men (next comes the raging alcoholic, then the strict ex-military man) and their own growing pains. Not a lot happens in terms of the plot, but it’s life, full of friendships and breakups and rites of passage like graduations and birthdays, and it all feels so…so…authentic.

For Michael, “Boyhood” was just too long and talky. He didn’t like the “Midnight” films either where Delpy and Hawke rattled on in an improvisational way about the meaning of life and love. There’s some of that here, though only from a teenage boy’s point of view. I guess you either like that stuff or you don’t. I did and I do. I’d recommend “Boyhood” as a truly unique and thoroughly satisfying experience. Loved the soundtrack too.

Movie Day: "Calvary"

August 2, 2014

Now that I’m back in CA, it’s Cinema Society time again and if today’s screening was any indication we’re off to a very exciting Oscar season. Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, whose first feature was the highly praised “The Guard,” this one tackles the Roman Catholic Church, sexual abuse, adultery, suicide and alcoholism, among other sins, and yet it’s darkly funny as only Irish humor can be.

The brilliant Brendan Gleeson plays Father James, a good, decent priest and widower who sincerely wants to help the members of his small parish. But from the film’s first scene, we learn that not everyone is happy with him. As the story moves along, we discover that he’s facing obstacles from many sides – obstacles that could result in his murder. Through it all, he continues to comfort his flock as well as his fragile daughter (an excellent Kelly Reilly) even as begins to wonder if he’ll have the courage to face his own personal demons.

“Calvary” is that rare movie that isn’t shy about dealing with big moral issues but treats them with such a delicate touch that it makes for riveting entertainment in the form of a mystery. If Gleeson doesn’t get an Oscar nom (I know, it’s early), I’ll be surprised. Chris O’Dowd is always terrific whether he’s doing comedy or drama and his work here is no exception. Nobody in the theater left before the Q&A and I felt privileged to chat with Gleeson at the reception for him and the director afterwards. He said the role took him a long time to recover from but that now he’s enjoying the glowing reviews. And why not. He earned them.

P.S. I watched “Chef” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” on the plane coming home yesterday and liked them both. Well, let me qualify. I liked “Chef.” It’s a sweet movie about food with a feel-good ending, so what’s not to like? I adored “Grand Budapest.” I was a big fan of Wes Anderson’s last one, “Moonrise Kingdom,” but the new one is even more ambitious and inventive. It’s on my Best list for sure.

Movie Day: "The Signal"

June 7, 2014

Today’s Cinema Society screening was….how can I put this delicately……an exercise in boredom. Admittedly, I was not the audience for it. I’m not into science fiction, nor do I have a huge connection to stories about college kids who grunt instead of talk but are really good with their computers (e.g. techies). And movies in which things explode a lot make my eyeballs bleed. I like narratives, and “The Signal” doesn’t have much of one. What it has is a young director, William Eubank, whose second feature film this is, and the “cool” factor of having premiered at Sundance in February. Herewith from the film’s publicity materials:

Three college students on a road trip across the Southwest experience a detour: the tracking of a computer genius who has already hacked into MIT and exposed security faults. The trio find themselves drawn to an eerily isolated area. Suddenly everything goes dark. When one of the students, Nic (Brenton Thwaites of “The Giver” and “Maleficent”), regains consciousness, he is in a waking nightmare.

Suffice it to say, our hero has a journey involving aliens and weird looking people and mysterious questions posed by Laurence Fishburne as the torturer in chief. I kept wondering if Fishburne has big alimony payments that forced him to take this role or if it’s just tough for actors to find work at his age.

I think the less I say about my lost afternoon in the theater the better, except that I wish I had those two hours back.

Movie Day: "Words and Pictures"

June 1, 2014

Today’s Cinema Society screening was a grownup movie. It’s about art – what a concept – and stars two of my favorite actors, Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen, neither of whom are capable of giving a bad performance.

A witty, wordy drama/comedy, “Words and Pictures” is set at a New England prep school where Clive Owen’s Jack Marcus is the honors English teacher and Juliette Binoche’s Dina Delsanto is the new art teacher. He used to be somebody – a published author/poet who once taught on the college level. But a bad “hobby” (his word) of guzzling too much vodka has derailed his career and his relationship with his son, not to mention alienated most of the other teachers and the school’s dean. Binoche’s Dina was a celebrated abstract painter who was brought low by rheumatoid arthritis, which has crippled her ability to move freely and have a normal life. The two characters clash, initially over his insistence that words are more meaningful than images and her assertion that a picture is worth a thousand words. Little by little, their sexual chemistry takes over and life becomes even more complicated for them.

It was a pleasure to see a film that celebrated language, and Owen’s character, a garrulous fellow, quotes some truly beautiful literature. And Binoche, it turns out, painted all the art we see in the movie; she’s been an artist since she was young and has had gallery showings in France.

The film’s writer, Gerald DiPego, does a nice job of bringing his lovers together, although the plot and its conclusion are as predictable as it gets. He came for the Q&A after the screening and I introduced myself because I worked at Dell when we published his first novel back in the ’70s. Having written screenplays for big studio movies over the years, he said he was thrilled to have gone the indie route with this new one. Nobody made me him rewrite – a rarity in Hollywood.

Overall, I recommend “Words and Pictures.” It’s charming, if predictable, as I said, and well worth a couple of hours.

Movie Day: "Belle"

May 3, 2014

Today’s Cinema Society screening was a film that’s been getting great buzz after playing at various festivals and opening in limited release on Friday. It’s a beautifully shot period piece about a little known piece of British history involving the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of an aristocratic admiral and her relationship with the high-born family that raises her – all against the backdrop of changing attitudes toward slavery.

From the distributor, Fox Searchlight:

BELLE is inspired by the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Raised by her aristocratic great-uncle Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson), Belle’s lineage affords her certain privileges, yet her status prevents her from the traditions of noble social standing. While her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) chases suitors for marriage, Belle is left on the sidelines wondering if she will ever find love. After meeting an idealistic young vicar’s son bent on changing society, he and Belle help shape Lord Mansfield’s role as Lord Chief Justice to end slavery in England.

I was amazed during the Q&A with the film’s director, Amma Asante, that she made the film for a mere $10 million. It has the look and feel of a big-budget Merchant-Ivory production with gorgeous castles and costumes and settings. And what a cast of actors, including newcomer Mbatha-Raw as the title character. And, of course, the story is fascinating – how aristocratic society accepted Belle because of her lineage and, after her father dies, her inheritance, but bars her from even such basic opportunities as attending dinner parties with the rest of her family. My only criticism was that there tended to be a bit of over-writing with too much information in too much detail, not to mention a lot of speechifying. But it’s definitely worth a viewing.