02/08/10 2:43 PM
'Eyes Wide Open': Religion and Sexuality Collide
For several weeks the selection of films has been very meager, but the drought appears to have ended. I read favorable reviews of a half-dozen pictures that opened over the weekend. Although I often disagree with the comments of many reviewers, believing they are too soft and too accepting of movies, I concurred with A. O. Scott's Times review of "Eyes Wide Open." He wrote:
"The three principal actors are remarkably adept at signaling nuances of longing, tenderness and uncertainty without betraying the fundamental reticence of their characters, who can barely speak about what is happening to them."
He also wrote, "And its scrupulous, humane sympathy gives this small, sorrowful film a glow of insight and a pulse of genuine, openhearted curiosity. It moves slowly and patiently through the ordeal of a single soul, illuminating in the process a cosmos of intense and hidden feeling."
While waiting to enter the theater, I asked a few people leaving an earlier show what they thought of the film. The men and women I approached were middle-aged and, I'm guessing, some were straight and some were gay. They responded, "excellent," "very good," "touching," and "sensitive." One woman said, "I loved it, and I'm Roman Catholic."
Interestingly, this week President Obama, who is now involved in seeking to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule in the armed forces, attended the National Prayer Breakfast with the usual politicos who go each year to the event. According to The New York Times, the guests were embarrassed to learn that:
"The National Prayer Breakfast, which has been held for the last half-century in Washington, drew criticism by some liberal groups because the sponsor, an evangelical Christian network called the Fellowship, is allegedly tied to proposed legislation in Uganda that calls for the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals."
The President and others attended anyway denouncing, of course, the Ugandan law. I believe it was a mistake for anyone to go. They should have attended the alternate prayer breakfast provided by gay and lesbian supporters. No politician today would attend a function at a golf club that prohibited the attendance of blacks, Jews, or women, let alone advocating their execution.
But now to the film, which takes place in Jerusalem in an old section of the city known as Mea Shearim where extremely pious Jews live. (They used to throw stones at cars that entered the area on the Sabbath.) The story is of a butcher, Aaron (Zohar Strauss), his wife Rivka (Tinkerbel), and a young man, Ezri (Ran Danker).
One rainy day Ezri, a stranger in town, enters Aaron's store to make a phone call. Aaron, who is attracted to the young man, offers him a job in the butcher shop. A sexual relationship develops slowly between the two men while Aaron continues his intimacy with Rivka, the mother of his four children. The community becomes suspicious of the two men, and some yeshiva students in the area subject both Aaron and Ezri to public denunciation and physical assault. How the situation is resolved is enthralling. The film deserves the comments made to me by those I met at the Cinema Village.
The gay sex scenes are tepid, more symbolic than erotic. Those interested in viewing a lifestyle they never knew--that of the pious gay--while the acceptance of homosexuality is an issue around the world, will be enlightened by this film.
Henry Stern said: "The title derives from Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film, "Eyes Wide Shut," but it had little to do with the movie. There is incredible sadness in the seduction of a family man by a handsome itinerant. They pray daily in the yeshiva, but they follow their impulses in the bedroom. Ezri should go to the city where he can find brothers and live in peace. A tightly-knit theocratic neighborhood is no place for a gay man, but in a free country like Israel, he can find places where he can be accepted, serve in the army, and even be elected to the Knesset (Uzi Even, a chemistry professor, in 2002). The picture is well made, and Jew, gay, both or neither, you will earn something if you see it."
Frozen is a tour de force, not because of exceptional performances by the actors, but rather the outstanding directing of Adam Green, who also wrote the script. The script gave Green a limited area within which to work, and he carried it off superbly.
Three friends who appear to be in their 20s or early 30s--Parker (Emma Bell), Joe (Shawn Ashmore), and Dan (Kevin Zegers)--go skiing for a weekend at a New England resort. When the slope is about to close due to inclement weather, they convince the chair-lift operator to allow them to take one more ride. He agrees, and the three begin their ascent up the mountain.
On the way up the slope, the lift stops running. The groundskeeper has changed, and not knowing the three are on the lift. The new attendant has turned off the power. Now the tour de force. The director was able to captivate the audience while the three young people are, in effect, held prisoner one hundred feet above the ground while a wolf pack below waits for them to fall.
Apparently, this is not a film for everyone. At the 3:30 p.m. show that I attended two days after the movie opened, there were only six people in the audience. However, I would recommend this picture to you. I was riveted to the screen as these three foolish people suffered the consequences of their behavior. In her New York Times review, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote: "A minimalist setup delivers maximum fright in 'Frozen,' a nifty little chiller that balances its cold terrain with an unexpectedly warm heart."
Photo courtesy of Anchor Bay Films
At the end of Edge of Darkness, one of my movie companions said, "This is one of the ten worst films I have ever sat through." I agreed with his conclusion. Surprisingly, the Daily News reviewer gave this picture three stars.
The story is repetitious of earlier films like Silkwood. In that picture, a young woman working at a nuclear processing plant seeks to expose her employer for subjecting his employees to the unsafe handling of dangerous radioactive plutonium. In this picture, a Boston police detective, Tommy Craven (Mel Gibson), is visited by his daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic), an MIT alumna who is a whistleblower at a technology company where she works. On the way home with her dad, she becomes nauseous, and we later learn that she has been poisoned by thallium. Emma is gunned down when leaving her father's house. Believing he was the intended target, Detective Craven begins a search for her killers. Along the way, Craven is visited by Darius Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), a consultant for the evil company who is himself conflicted.
The acting, with the exception of Bojana Novakovic, adds nothing to the trite plot. Although she is killed off early, she reappears from time to time. The movie is badly edited, making it difficult to follow the twists of the plot. But it really did not make a difference, because it wasn't worth following at all.
Henry Stern said: "This is not one of the ten worst films I have ever seen, but that doesn't mean it was worth seeing. It is hard for me, as a Jew, to get over Mel Gibson's virulent anti-Semitism. Despite the actor's profuse apology, in vino veritas. The film is a violent detective story, with a lot of people-good guys and bad guys-getting beaten up and shot dead. Of course the villain is corporate America, in league with the government. Shades of Avatar. There are many loose ends, but so what. You knew who was evil as soon as you saw his fat face and fine suit. I did like the Boston settings, and the fast-paced movie wasn't boring. The title had nothing to do with anything. The film would more appropriately have been called, Best Served Cold."
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
With all of its faults, The Last Station will satisfy even those only slightly familiar with the works of Leo Tolstoy and the time in which he lived.
The script, I believe, is an historical rendering of Tolstoy's last years. He was a presence in the era of the last Russian Czar, Nicholas II, and he became a symbol of freedom during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union when his house, a museum at the time, was captured and vandalized by the Nazi armies.
Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) was married to Countess Sofya Tolstoy (Helen Mirren), a much younger woman who suffered from his loss of sexual desire. Tolstoy became a cult figure as a pacifist and opponent of the church. To the consternation of Countess Sofya, the leading figure supporting that cult, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), got Tolstoy to sign over to the cult the copyrights for his monumental books, including War and Peace, depriving the Countess of enormous riches from the sale of his books. Another character in the film is Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), who became Tolstoy's secretary and a spy for Chertkov.
The first half of the movie is extremely slow, but the action escalates during the second half of the picture when, in an effort to create a new life for himself and escape the clutches of the Countess, Tolstoy leaves her. He becomes very ill while traveling on a train, and the Russian press gathers at a railroad station as he deteriorates.
There are moments in the world's history that entrance the public, and the public loves to see these moments depicted on the screen, e.g., the days of Rome, the Spanish Civil War, the troubles in Ireland, our own Civil War, the days of the Russian Czar, and the early days of the Soviet Union. This movie carefully depicts an era with great attention to detail and local color, and the performances of the actors are excellent. Those looking for another Dr. Zhivago spectacular will be disappointed. Those interested in Tolstoy's life, however, will be pleased. At 4:30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon at the Angelika Film Center, the show was almost sold out.
01/25/10 2:09 PM
Calling All Leonard Cohen Fans
Last year I went to see Leonard Cohen's sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden at $250 a ticket. I had never heard of him, but my companions extolled his art, particularly his lyrics. Those lyrics are deemed to be poetry by his followers, very much in the style of Bob Dylan. The audience couldn't get enough of him.
I did not particularly enjoy that concert and wondered if I would feel differently about Cohen and his talents if I didn't have to pay such a hefty price to see him perform. So I decided to see this documentary, Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970, which covers his 1970 concert performance on the Isle of Wight that went on for five days before an audience of 600,000. Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Kris Kristofferson also performed at that event, but their performances are not shown in the film. They are, however, interviewed on Leonard Cohen.
The difference in concert and movie ticket price did not cause me to change my mind. I found Cohen to be far better in both voice and presentation in his Garden performance than he was in 1970, but I have concluded that he has a cult following, and I am not caught up in the spell.
Joan Baez, whom I still adore after so many years, is interviewed in the documentary saying that Cohen's presentation proves that lyrics and their meaning are unimportant if he reaches you down deep as Cohen does. Maybe he does for some, but certainly not for me.
Under these circumstances, it would be unfair of me to pin a plus or minus on this film. Those who are part of his cult, should definitely see it. Those who have never seen him perform, should also see the movie so that you can judge his talents for yourselves rather than be influenced by an octogenarian who still considers Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" and Baez's "Diamonds and Rust" to be two of the greatest folk songs ever written.
The film is playing at the Cinema Village on 12th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place, one of my favorite theaters that shows offbeat films and has comfortable seats.
01/25/10 12:23 PM
'The Girl on the Train': Not Terrible, But Not First-Rate
Manohla Dargis's favorable review of this movie in The New York Times--one of those amorphous kudos--was, in my opinion, undeserved. She wrote: "The film can be described as a character study or a fictionalized slice of terribly real life. Mostly, though, it is an inquiry into the mysteries of other people."
While not a terrible picture, this is certainly not a first-rate movie. The narrative consists of several stories and subplots, and the main characters in each are linked to one another. Those subplots, however, are not fleshed out in the style of Robert Altman's film "Short Cuts."
The main character in The Girl on the Train is Jeanne (Emilie Dequenne), who is unemployed and lives with her mother, Louise (Catherine Deneuve). On one of her skating jaunts, Jeanne meets the charming but threatening Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), and is smitten by him. We learn that Franck, who is covered with tattoos, has been in prison.
Although Jeanne has few secretarial skills, she applies for an office position with a well-regarded lawyer, Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), and his office manager, Judith (Ronit Elkabetz). Years ago, Samuel was in love with Jeanne's mother, Louise, before she married her now-deceased husband who was a close friend of Bleistein. Bleistein's son, Alex (Mathieu Demy), is divorced from Judith. Their son, Nathan (Jeremy Quaegebeur), is about to be bar mitzvahed.
Later in the movie, Jeanne, who is not Jewish, tells the police that she was attacked by Muslims (North Africans) on a train who tore off her clothes and daubed swastikas into her flesh. That incident was investigated and proven false, and in the movie we see Jeanne inflict the wounds on herself.
Manohla Dargis lovingly described this mishmash. Of its director, Andre Techine, she wrote: "He likes to linger in the spaces in between. Some of this lingering might be mistaken for narrative slackness--he repeatedly shows Jeanne rollerblading to nowhere--but these in-between moments seem as revealing as what the characters say, sometimes more so. Mr. Techine isn't pretending that he understands what people do. But by showing us what they do, the flowers they pick and the people they love, he makes us notice them more intently."
Baloney. The movie is made up of unfulfilled possibilities. Some of the scenes are interesting, but a film with a solid story it is not. (In French and Hebrew, with English subtitles.)
I saw the film at City Cinemas 1-2-3 on Third Avenue at 60th Street.
HS said: "This movie makes sense if it is a reasonable recounting of the contrived anti-Semitic incident. We don't know. If not, it is simply an entertaining slice of life picture, well photographed and acted, a plot totally unlikely to have occurred, but so what? The title is irrelevant to the plot; there are periodic shots of speeding railways cars, which I took as Freudian. 'Murder on the Orient Express,' this film is definitely not. But it is one movie that presents Jews in a favorable light, (best bar mitzvah scene since "Sunday Bloody Sunday") and we should be thankful for that."
01/19/10 10:46 AM
'The White Ribbon' Stumps Viewers
As I left the theater I asked HG, with whom I saw the film, what he thought. He replied, "That was no Hansel and Gretel story." His response was a quaint but appropriate way of saying that this picture is no walk in the park.
The story takes place before World War I in a small German village which has its own baron (Ulrich Tukur). The waving fields of grain and gardens of cabbage give the impression of a simple, idyllic environment in which to live. But strange events soon begin to occur.
While out riding one morning, the town doctor (Rainer Bock) is injured when thrown from his horse. The cause of the accident was a wire stretched across the road. Who placed it there and was he the intended victim? Other unexplained incidents occur including a fire, farm accidents, and a murder. Children are assaulted with extreme physical punishment by their fathers. The Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) also punishes his children and then makes them wear a white ribbon, a symbol of purity.
What are we witnessing? A society that on the surface appears bucolic but beneath the veneer hides child molestation, adultery and incest? Are the parents evil or are the children the real perpetrators of violence?
After the movie, a couple who had also just seen it asked me to explain it to them. I had no answer. I was as clueless as they were. My understanding of the film was further hindered because the subtitles were poorly lit and often flashed too quickly on the screen to read them. (The film is in German, Italian, Polish and Latin with English subtitles.)
Suffice it to say that I don't understand the rave reviews that this picture received, and I was not a happy camper when I left the theater. Subsequently the thought occurred to me. The message is that Peyton Place exists in every hamlet and city.
01/19/10 10:25 AM
Avoid 'The Book of Eli'
This picture is one big waste of time, including that of the actors and those in the audience who pay to see it. The star of the film, Denzel Washington, is also one of its producers. How he could have viewed this flick as a vehicle for his talents is one of the great mysteries of Hollywood. It is beyond me why so many first-rate actors agree to appear in and produce so many awful films.
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This is an emotional and delightful movie starring Morgan Freeman whose portrayal of Nelson Mandela is outstanding. Though far less impacting, Matt Damon's performance as Francois Pienaar, captain of a South African rugby team, is fine and equal to the task.
The story is based on a book written by John Carlin entitled "Playing the Enemy." Whether or not it is entirely accurate, I don't know, but it rings true and is in accord with what the public knows about Nelson Mandela who served 27 years in prison for conviction as a terrorist. He was released in 1990, and in 1994 when blacks were allowed to vote for the first time, he was elected president of South Africa.
As president, Mandela respected the rights of his former enemies and oppressors. Indeed, he believed that if South Africa was to succeed as a country, it was necessary to keep the whites - English and Boers - from fleeing the country. Had he not been successful in pursuit of that ideal, which his successors followed, South Africa would not be the great country it is today. I regret that to date I have not visited that nation.
Invictus focuses on one small way in which Mandela pursued his objective. Rugby and soccer are popular sports in South Africa. Mandela acknowledges that when he was in prison, rather than support the nation's Springbok rugby team, a symbol of oppression and apartheid, he supported its opponents.
When Mandela was president, the Springbok team consisted of only one black member. Mandela's black colleagues in government wanted to dismantle the team, but knowing that it represented the spirit of the Afrikaners (Boers), he refused to do so. Not only did he want to keep the team, he decided to do all that he could to help it win the World Cup. How he accomplishes that goal by contacting and working with the team's captain, Francois (Matt Damon), makes up the story which consists of a well-written script, beautiful scenery and exciting rugby games. Mandela is a unique human being; indeed, he is the George Washington of South Africa who inspired millions of blacks to end their feelings of revenge in order to create a great, new country. Morgan Freeman's portrayal of Nelson Mandela creates a superb moment in time on the movie screen.
The story is based on a book written by John Carlin entitled "Playing the Enemy." Whether or not it is entirely accurate, I don't know, but it rings true and is in accord with what the public knows about Nelson Mandela who served 27 years in prison for conviction as a terrorist. He was released in 1990, and in 1994 when blacks were allowed to vote for the first time, he was elected president of South Africa.
As president, Mandela respected the rights of his former enemies and oppressors. Indeed, he believed that if South Africa was to succeed as a country, it was necessary to keep the whites - English and Boers - from fleeing the country. Had he not been successful in pursuit of that ideal, which his successors followed, South Africa would not be the great country it is today. I regret that to date I have not visited that nation.
Invictus focuses on one small way in which Mandela pursued his objective. Rugby and soccer are popular sports in South Africa. Mandela acknowledges that when he was in prison, rather than support the nation's Springbok rugby team, a symbol of oppression and apartheid, he supported its opponents.
When Mandela was president, the Springbok team consisted of only one black member. Mandela's black colleagues in government wanted to dismantle the team, but knowing that it represented the spirit of the Afrikaners (Boers), he refused to do so. Not only did he want to keep the team, he decided to do all that he could to help it win the World Cup. How he accomplishes that goal by contacting and working with the team's captain, Francois (Matt Damon), makes up the story which consists of a well-written script, beautiful scenery and exciting rugby games. Mandela is a unique human being; indeed, he is the George Washington of South Africa who inspired millions of blacks to end their feelings of revenge in order to create a great, new country. Morgan Freeman's portrayal of Nelson Mandela creates a superb moment in time on the movie screen.
This film is a lovely rendering of Queen Victoria's life before she ascended to the throne at the age of 18.
Victoria is portrayed by Emily Blunt. Her childless uncle, King William (Jim Broadbent), has chosen her as his heir. Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), and her chief adviser, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), want a regency to rule for Victoria until she reaches the age of 25. Another uncle, King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann), plots to have Victoria marry her first cousin, Albert (Rupert Friend). Albert's efforts to get Victoria to fall in love with him are amusing.
All in all, the acting is fine, and while the plot is somewhat stale and very slow in taking shape, it is never boring. Those who like opulent movies in dress and scenery will love this movie. Regrettably, they will also soon forget it after they leave the theater. When I saw the film at the AMC Lowes Village 7 theater, located at the corner of Third Avenue and 11th Street, the show was nearly sold out.
Victoria is portrayed by Emily Blunt. Her childless uncle, King William (Jim Broadbent), has chosen her as his heir. Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), and her chief adviser, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), want a regency to rule for Victoria until she reaches the age of 25. Another uncle, King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann), plots to have Victoria marry her first cousin, Albert (Rupert Friend). Albert's efforts to get Victoria to fall in love with him are amusing.
All in all, the acting is fine, and while the plot is somewhat stale and very slow in taking shape, it is never boring. Those who like opulent movies in dress and scenery will love this movie. Regrettably, they will also soon forget it after they leave the theater. When I saw the film at the AMC Lowes Village 7 theater, located at the corner of Third Avenue and 11th Street, the show was nearly sold out.
