Boy, is it good

Richard Linklater filmed Boyhood over 12 years. This is what you hear when the movie is discussed, and it’s an important fact. In 2002, he cast a boy (Ellar Coltrane), his sister (Lorelei Linklater), and their mother (Patricia Arquette) and father (Ethan Hawke). Both Coltrane were eight years old at the time, thought they were playing six and seven respectively; Arquette and Hawke were both major Hollywood actors in their early thirties, playing a recently divorced couple in Texas. Then Linklater filmed them for three or four days every year until Coltrane’s character Mason graduated from high school and went to college, taking them through growing pains, stepfamilies, first loves, and the burgeoning self-awareness of adolescence. Linklater deserves a slew of awards simply for overcoming such a film’s logistical difficulties – flighty children, lengthy contracts, the ravages of time and history – but he and his actors also managed to create a film as true to the emotional journey of childhood and modern American family life as any in a generation.

Like the life that Linklater is depicting, Boyhood does not have a plot as much as it has a series of vignettes focused around key moments in Mason’s childhood. At the beginning of the film, his mother is struggling, he and his sister Samantha (the younger Linklater) are squabbling, and their father, their mother’s ex, is a somewhat listless manboy who loves his children but does not know how to be a good father. The parents fight when Mason’s mother comes home after his father had them on a day of fun and the kids have not yet done their homework; Mason and Samantha watch them argue from an upstairs window and wonder whether they’ll get back together.

A few years later, the mother brings Mason to her psychology class, where he meets her professor, who ends up becoming Mason’s first stepfather. While he has money and children Mason and Samantha’s age, it becomes quickly apparent that he is a bully and a drunk, and the mother, Mason, and Samantha are forced to flee. In a new school and a new town, Samantha is livid as a teen-agers often are, while Mason is scared, confused, and watchful. His mother overcomes abuse and poverty and his father overcomes immaturity and impossible dreams, and Mason marvels at the beauty in front of him, recording it through his camera lens.

As he grows older – through junior high, drinking with friends, trying to act older, his first job, dealing with his mother’s next husband – Mason is quiet as he observes the world around him and struggles to live up to the expectations of his parents and parental figures. When he does speak, his vocalized introspection is precocious but never seems to be written by Linklater, but rather it seems to come authentically from Mason, channeled by the brilliant young Coltrane. Like many adolescents, Mason makes pronouncements that verge on delusions of grandeur, and they are sweet and funny, but they are also utterly believable. The last scene of the film, for instance, depicts him and three new friends from his college dormitory finding enlightenment through mushrooms. They speak in the banalities of mistaken profundity, and I found it oddly glorious.

Linklater’s naturalistic direction, with which he made minor masterpieces in Dazed & Confused and the Before Sunrise trilogy, is perfect for Boyhood. The film feels like documentary, like cinéma vérité, but the emotional power of his choices in editing, of the acting he elicited from his actors both young and old (particularly Arquette, doing the best work of her career), and in the beauty of his landscapes and light is something we usually only see in finely crafted narrative films. Boyhood is not perfect – it’s long and rough in places and the plotting seems a forced at times – but it is nonetheless an extraordinary monument to the power of art, film, and family.

Boyhood
Written and Directed by Richard Linklater
Starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke
Inexplicably Rated R

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Let’s put on a show! (Or, rather, let’s make an album!)

trailer-for-once-directors-new-film-begin-again-with-mark-ruffalo

In the first scene of Begin Again, a blond Brit named Steve (James Corden) finishes his song at an open mic night in New York’s Lower East Side and coaxes his friend Greta (Keira Knightley) onto stage. She reluctantly, almost begrudgingly sings “A Step You Can’t Take Back,” which she claims is new, and the audience barely notices. There is some polite applause, which Greta rolls her eyes at. She’s already down because, as we quickly find out, she has just broken up with a boyfriend of five years, an up-and-coming rock star (Dave, played by Adam Levine). However, in the middle of the crowd is an enrapt, drunk, mussed man (Dan, played by Mark Ruffalo) in his 40s, who is in awe. Neither the audience in the club nor in the movie theater knows why; the latter audience finds out ten minutes later when we see the scene from Dan’s perspective. As he watches Greta’s perform, he imagines other instruments joining in, all played by invisible musicians. Suddenly, the song soars. And we get a lesson in music producing, which is what Dan does for a living. Or had. He was fired that morning.

With this set up, the rest of the plot shouldn’t be too hard to predict. Dan persuades Greta to work with him. Dan needs to be redeemed as a producer after a drunken, depressed crash brought on by his divorce from Miriam (Catherine Keener) – which means he needs to be redeemed as a husband and father to Violet (Hailee Steinfeld), too. Greta needs to prove herself as a songwriter and performer after being relegated to being “Dave’s girlfriend,” particularly after Dave cheated on her with a record company assistant. Without any money, Dan and Greta decide to record an album entirely outside, from alley ways to rooftops. They recruit a band, pay them on the cheap, and start recording one delightful song after another. Meanwhile, they start developing a powerful, possibly romantic, friendship and work to repair their other relationships.

The plot of Begin Again is slight, using a few of the clichés of the let’s-put-on-a-show! genre and focusing on a rather simple redemption narrative in order to string together a bunch of beautifully directed musical performances. Writer-director John Carney’s last major feature, the magical Oscar-winning Once, had an even thinner story to link an Irish love story. That story was emotionally much more powerful, possibly because it snuck up on you, acted as it was by utter unknowns. Ruffalo, Knightley, Keener, and Levine are the opposite: They are huge stars and are all a bit distracting at first. Can Knightley Sing? Can Levine, an actual rock star, act? Is Ruffalo going to do that disheveled loser thing for the whole movie?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Knightley is always good, utterly convincing in both period dramas like Atonement and contemporary comedies like Bend it like Beckham. And she’s stunningly beautiful, as delicate as blown glass, and she has a sturdy charisma that standard ingénues tend to lack. With Begin Again, we discover she can also sing, with a voice something like a cross between Suzanne Vega and Lucinda Williams. Combining her emotional expressiveness and her voice makes for powerful musical numbers, particularly when she sings to Dave’s voicemail with “Like a Fool” or when she gleefully finishes the album accompanied by Violet’s guitar with “Tell Me If You Wanna Go Home.” Levine, who acts with smooth naturalism, gets the final song, however, singing the Greta-penned “Lost Stars” as a grand and gorgeous audition for the Oscars. (“Falling Slowly” from Once won Best Original Song in 2008.)

Ruffalo doesn’t sing in the movie; during the musical numbers that he is producing, he is mostly a conductor and infectious cheerleader. Dan is a stereotype of an aging music executive – his theme song is probably LCD Soundsystem’s “I’m Losing My Edge” – and Ruffalo’s performance is reminiscent of the early disheveled stoner roles that made him a star. As Dan and Greta grow closer, he becomes more believable. By the end, however, the film belongs to Knightley and Greta, who refuses to compromise, in music and in love.

Begin Again
Written and Directed by John Carney
Starring Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, and Adam Levine
Inexplicably Rated R

 

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The train to nowhere is the only train

For the last year, much of the discussion of Snowpiercer focused on the public fight between director Joon-ho Bong and Harvey Weinstein, the independent film mogul and owner of the Weinstein Company, which has the distribution rights to the film in the United States. Weinstein wanted the acclaimed version film seen overseas cut and, according to some reports, a voiceover added. This immediately caused ripples among the film community, because it was the added voiceover and happy ending to the original cut of Blade Runner that enraged so many people, particularly its director Ridley Scott. And Snowpiercer, Bong’s first English-language film and full of international stars, is considered by some to be as important a film as Scott’s 1981 masterpiece; time will tell on that end, but those fans are not crazy to make that prediction. Bong, the great Korean director of the modern classics The Host, Mother, and Memories of Murder, prevailed, and Weinstein released the original cut to select theaters. It’s an astonishing film, breathtaking in its visuals, bleak in its plot, and enraging in its refusal to do what most American audiences expect from their science fiction action films.

The film is set in 2031, 17 years after an attempt to fix global warming goes horribly wrong, freezing the planet and killing all life. All life except for those who made it onto a long, high-tech train on a constant circumnavigation of the planet. The train was built by a visionary inventor named Wilford, who predicted the environmental calamity and manages the miraculous engine that keeps the train moving and its inhabitants alive. While the train features greenhouses, a fish farm, livestock, a school, restaurants, clubs, these luxuries are available only to the riders in the front of the train.

In the back, the riders live in squalor, surviving on blocks of mysterious, rubbery protein and subject to the violent whims of Wilford’s brutal security forces who steal the riders’ children and freeze the limbs off riders brave enough to fight back. These tail riders are plotting a revolution at the beginning of the film, with Curtis (Chris Evans), Edgar (Jamie Bell), Tanya (Octavia Spencer), and the tail riders’ de facto leader Gilliam (John Hurt) trying to find the best moment to push through to the other cars, past the security forces and their absurd, saccharine chief, Mason (Tilda Swinton). When they do, recruiting the drug-addicted engineer Namgoong (Song Kang-ho) and his daughter Yona (Go Ah-sung) to open the doors, things get very bloody, and as they pass through the various cars, very weird. As the film progresses, the critique of caste-like hierarchies and fascistic social manipulation becomes explicit and uncomfortable. Don’t expect a Hollywood resolution, since Bong has always refused happy endings.

While the plot and themes are bleak and get only bleaker, Bong’s trademark mix of humor and horror manage to make the process entertaining. The fights scenes are gorgeously shot by cinematographer Kyung-pyo Hong, if Bong’s use of slow motion violence is perhaps clichéd at this point, even when filmed with such care and skill. The art direction of the different cars – from concentration camp filth to baroque splendor – is a marvel, and Stefan Kovacik will undoubtedly find himself nominated for various awards at the end of the year. The screenplay that Bong and Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) adapted from the graphic novel of the same name is smart and unnerving, but it is not seemless, as the plot holes appear if you think about it for too long. The acting is more consistent. Evans gives a wrenching, horrific speech at the end of the film that towers over anything he’s ever done before, while Song, the star of Memories of Murder, and Go, the heart of The Host, are both thrilling in their confused desperation. Spencer, Bell, and Hurt do great character work; it’s fantastic to see Spencer, an Oscar winner for playing a vengeful maid, as an action hero. Swinton’s performance, however, is the most memorable, not only because of the mannered speech and creepy dentures, but also for her communication of banal, mercenary evil.

Snowpiercer

Directed by Bong Joon-ho
Written by Bong Joon-ho and Kelly Masterson
Starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, and Tilda Swinton
Rated R
At Reading Gaslamp and AMC La Jolla

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(Four) Seasonal affective disorder

JB

A few weeks ago, I was hanging out with one of my best friends, a musical theater composer who has impeccable and refined taste. I had mentioned that I was going to review the Jersey Boys movie and he told me that when he saw the stage musical, it was so thrilling, “I wanted to throw my panties on the stage.” The musical was directed by the brilliant Des McAnuff, who also directed The Who’s Tommy and was the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse when Jersey Boys premiered there in 2004. I never saw it on stage, but I take my friend’s word for it that the Four Seasons jukebox musical deserved the adulation and the four Tony Awards. I have to take his word because as a film, as directed by Clint Eastwood, Jersey Boys is nostalgic pabulum. Based on the film, it was hard for me even to understand why anyone would care so much about the Four Seasons, who are one of the most successful musical acts of all time, having sold more than 100 million records.

The film is a typical musical biopic, tracing the rise, peak, fall, and redemption of the band. It is narrated by the four original members of the band in succession. First is Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza), an ambitious New Jersey tough guy who claims the only way to get out of the neighborhood is join the army and probably die, join the mafia and probably die, or get famous, like Frank Sinatra. He did the latter two, and it’s his mob connections that help propel the band he conceived, played bass, and arranged vocals for onto the charts. Much of that has to do with putting his younger, unsure friend Frankie Castelluccio (John Lloyd Young) on lead vocals. Frankie, getting an ego, changes his last name to Valli before they meet the serious, wise, and absurdly talented Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen), the second narrator, who wrote or co-wrote all of the band’s hits. They meet Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle), a flamboyant producer, and with his help, release three number one hits in a row: “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” and “Walk Like a Man.”

While this is happening, the band starts fighting, partly because Tommy resents Frankie and Bob’s talent and closeness and but also because Tommy’s financial and managerial control of the band veers between incompetent and criminal. Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) takes over narration as the band falls apart because of Tommy’s ill-advised dealings with a loan shark and his accrual of $500,000 in back taxes. Finally, after Nick quits, Tommy is kicked out of the band, Bob decides only to work in the studio, Frankie is left alone on stage, earning money to pay back the band’s debt and trying to repair relations with the family he left at home while he was on the road. Somehow, there is a redemption of sorts when Frankie sings “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” which would have been a more interesting sequence if the true story of its inspiration was told: Bob Crewe came up with the lyrics while staring at his sleeping young male lover.

There’s certainly enough drama and certainly enough good songs for a stellar musical, but Clint Eastwood, known best for his no-nonsense naturalism, is a strange choice to make it. He does well with the 1950s New Jersey organized crime sections, but his staging of the songs is so, well, realistic that there’s little thrill to them. It’s felt as if I was just watching four guys singing. As usual with his movies, Jersey Boys has impeccable art direction, cinematography, and editing, but unlike with Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, or Letters from Iwo Jima, Eastwood isn’t working with brilliant film actors. (A notable exception is the slyly hilarious Christopher Walken, playing a mafia don.) John Lloyd Young constantly over-expresses his emotions, as if he were still on stage, and Vincent Piazza seems to be doing a poor imitation of Ray Liotta from Goodfellas. Michael Lomenda and Mike Doyle provide comic relief, but it’s weirdly cheesy, like much of the film. Worst of all, at the end of the film, when the band reunites for their induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, the aging make-up is gasp-worthy terrible. They’re all supposed to be in their fifties, and they look like corpses. Who’d throw their panties at that?

Jersey Boys
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice
Starring John Lloyd Young, Vincent Piazza, and Erich Bergen
Inexplicably rated R
At your local multiplex

 

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Dude, don’t say, “Dude, you’re a fag.”

22-jump-streetWhen I reviewed 21 Jump Street two years ago, I praised the broad comedy about cops going undercover in high school for being very funny. But I was unnerved by how much of the humor was firmly based in homophobia. Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are such good friends that they had to mock gay sex to make their friendship not seem too close, or inappropriately gay. I wrote that “an abnormally high – even for a vulgar, hard R comedy – percentage of the jokes in 21 Jump Street involve fear of gay sex. While Schmidt and Jenko state clearly that they don’t dislike gay people, their and the film’s extensive use of gay sexuality as something to mock and fear belies a homophobic subtext that isn’t very funny at all. The film is ultimately about male friendship, and it’s sad that the filmmakers, felt the need to basically scream ‘no homo!’ throughout the movie to make such a theme palatable to their target audience.” The movie was a big enough hit to garner a sequel, and I was worried that 22 Jump Street, in which our heroes go undercover in college, would continue the perpetuation of my sexuality as one big joke.

I was particularly concerned when Jonah Hill – who is one of the film’s stars, producers, and writers – was caught on tape by TMZ calling a paparazzo a “faggot.” However, Hill’s swift and heartfelt apology was, as celebrity apologies go, rather amazing. He seems to understand how homophobic language works: “I said the most hurtful word I could think of at that moment and, you know, I didn’t mean this in the sense of the word…I didn’t mean it in a homophobic way. And I think that doesn’t matter, you know? How you mean things doesn’t matter. Words have weight and meaning and the word I chose was grotesque and no one deserves to say and hear words like that.” It was hard to reconcile this apology with 21 Jump Street’s gay panic, and it made me wonder whether the criticism of the film had gotten to him. Maybe 22 Jump Street would be different.

And it is. In a way. 22 Jump Street is, lucky for the gays, not a two-hour mockery of gay sex. At one point, Jenko even rages at one of the bad guys for calling him what Hill called the paparazzo: “In 2014, you can’t say the word ‘faggot’!” However, 22 Jump Street is unfortunately a two-hour mockery of gay love. There are long bits focused on how Jenko and Schmidt’s fights seem like those of lovers; one is about how Jenko’s desire to investigate another man is like asking to be able to see other people and another is done in the office of a therapist who thinks they’re lovers. This mockery is not particularly cruel, and the film, like its predecessor, is a celebration of male friendship, even if that friendship seems a bit gay. It’s fumbling towards an enlightened view of masculinity, but in 2014, “even if” is unnecessary and retrograde.

All of that said, the 22 Jump Street is funny. In addition to a bunch of silly but laugh-worthy lines about sequels having bloated budgets and a dearth of ideas, both Hill and Tatum get to show off their ever-increasing movie starshine. Hill, who has now been nominated for two Oscars, bases much of his comedy on the humiliation of the needy nerd, and Schmidt is a nice encapsulation of a Hill character. (His parotic take on slam poetry is the best scene in the film.) When I saw 21 Jump Street, I thought casting Tatum as dumb jock Jenko perfect for his limited skills, but since then, I’ve come to realize he does dumb and pretty as Marilyn Monroe did – with great and underappreciated skill. Tatum is as good at being mentally clueless and physically flawless as Hill is at being schlubby and smart. They are perfect foils for each other. Maybe 23 Jump Street will jettison the homophobia and their comic pairing will become less cynical and daring. Or better, it will focus on how Schmidt and Jenko have been in love with each other the whole time. That would make all of this worthwhile.

22 Jump Street
Directed by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Written by Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman
Starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, and Ice Cube

Rated R

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