Uncut Gems - Review

Every new plan is another final last stand
December 27, 2019

The first thing you want to know is, does Adam Sandler really pull this off? Be prepared: This role is tailored so tightly to him that no one else could fit, and we are seeing him if not naked then stripped of protective layering for the first time. His zany comic madness heightens the stress level of what is already a frenetic situation. This man is a hustler, a hawker, who never stops talking his way out. Yes, another talent could have played Howard Ratner, but Howard then would have been an altogether different person, and I can't find a better way to commend Sandler than that.

The question I keep asking myself, though, is different. But we'll get to that later. More important is to praise Uncut Gems as a fine achievement that centers not just on Sandler's performance but also on incisive writing and rapid dialogue. Plenty of films squeeze their protagonists under deadline pressure; rarely is it so keenly felt. Howard's ordeal takes place over several days, yet his and others' effusions make even the zwanzig Minuten of Lola Rennt seem longer in comparison.

Howard runs a New York jewelry store. He's the kind of hopelessly lost, manic gambler who will pawn Kevin Garnett's championship ring for the loan to make another bet, which, if won, would allow him to pay back the goons he owes.

Dolemite is My Name - Review

The 'Ghetto Expressionist', energetically and artfully honored
December 23, 2019

The real Rudy Ray Moore often attended church with his mother and even spoke there to the congregation sometimes. We see no churches in this film, nor his mother, but I share this biographical bit to get at this: If that seems inconsistent with the vulgar, pimping Dolemite character he assumed on stage, remember Moore's overall attitude toward it. Because the film does, and splendidly.

"I don't want to be referred to as a dirty old man," Moore said, "but rather a ghetto expressionist." Here is a man who loves show business, wants stardom so much that he would do anything to succeed. He doesn't start with filth. He isn't filthy outside of his Dolemite persona. Struggling as a Los Angeles nightclub emcee and record shop salesman, he decided he would dive into the raunchiest material to make a name for himself. In the process he painted life within those "five blocks in every city in America" and gave them the entertainment he knew they wanted.

21 Bridges - Review

Long night for NYC, not for us
December 16, 2019

A grey haze sets in over the Manhattan skyline. We see it in the opening shots. Tonight will be a long night shrouded in a fog, left behind by two cop killers, that Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman) must sift through in order to bring them to justice.

They've left eight NYPD officers dead in Brooklyn after a robbery gone sour. (Robberies always go sour for somebody, though.) Detective Davis shows up and quickly is on their tail. The suspects are hiding in midtown; the FBI wants to wrest control of the search from him if they cross state lines. So he decides to do what we're here to see---close the 21 bridges as well as the ferries and tunnels out of Manhattan and fence in the Bad Boys.

Marriage Story - Review

A Masterful Elegy for a Marriage
December 14, 2019

What God has joined, let no man put asunder. I learned in my upbringing and believe today that two bodies become one, one body and one life, in marriage. And so it takes that kind of divine effort, herculean and otherworldly, for its participants to tear apart a life so joined. Formidable too is depicting that deconstruction as flawlessly as Noah Baumbach has here. He has created a masterful elegy for Nicole and Charlie's love story that includes as much joy and pain as their marriage did.

Where did it even go wrong? Neither can begin to articulate it at first. We open to the best love-story montage since Up, in which we hear the tender essays they've written each other at the behest of their marriage counselor. It's only for our ears, however. When Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) simply won't read hers aloud, as was the deal, it's the beginning of many agreements that retroactively become mere discussions, and the first indication that she may be the driving force behind the separation.

The montage will be the most editing Baumbach does for the rest of the picture. There may not be a more real depiction of everyday life in any film ever, from the real way Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole talk to each other, to the naturalness of his lighting, to the way logistics affect them and the divorce proceedings, to Charlie's acting troupe's background conversations, to the new awkwardness felt in familiar situations. Scenes flow freely. Baumbach gives them the immediacy of theatre, but without so much self-reverence as to make scenes one long take. Characters will walk out of the shot, continue talking, come back. We are making sense of uncertainty like our couple is. And as for the dialogue---sanctus statim is another thing I learned in Catholic school. That translates, give it the Oscar now.

The Report - Review

A Sunlight Problem
December 13, 2019

Imagine a dry, plodding All the President's Men with little personality. For that matter, imagine Robert Redford bereft of his charm. What would you have left?

That is The Report, a movie about a similarly important subject. America looks at itself in the mirror and decides whether to hold itself accountable for torturing detainees in the wake of the September 11 attacks. It's monumentally important. Eating healthy is important, too. It's up to the chef to serve vegetables raw or to garnish them. Here we don't have hibachi but rather raw vegetables. It's a chore more than a pleasure.

The Ides of March (2011) - Review

A Winning Candidate
December 10, 2019

Let's start with the title. Much has been said about it. Is George Clooney reaching too far to compare the machinations in his film to those of Brutus and Cassius? I would say, well, that was the most powerful empire on earth then, and that was how the sausage was made. This is the most powerful nation on earth now, and this is how ours gets made.

Ryan Gosling plays the suave lead surrounded by juggernauts---the even suaver Clooney as Mike Morris running for the Democratic nomination and employing Stephen Meyers (Gosling) as his No. 3 behind Philip Seymour Hoffman as Paul Zara; Marisa Tomei as a voracious reporter he must feed and spar with; and Paul Giamatti managing the rival candidate's campaign. Evan Rachel Wood also turns in a fine performance that has to be both vulnerable and confidently sexy. That's a lot of big players. Acting is not going to be a liability for this film.

Ford v Ferrari - Review

Vive l'Exposition
December 7, 2019

Ford v Ferrari gets Le Mans very right. It understands the 24-hour endurance race's personality and quirks. It also gets the 1966 race's climax, its feel and its truth, spot on. That's what defends the film from its tonal equivocation and its expository dialogue. But it can't do all the heavy lifting. Like Ken Miles says, there really is more speed just yearning to break out of this picture, but not under these confines set for it. Not as a buddy-comedy that tries to transcend its genre.

Joker - Review

The rejection Arthur feels becomes the rejection Arthur expects
December 5, 2019

I should have recognized one of Joker’s main ploys for what it was at this moment. The troubled, dejected Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) had shared an elevator with pretty neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz). He had followed her around Gotham one day---stalked is the more keen word. And so now she confronts him by knocking on his apartment door. “Were you following me today?” she asks. They begin a romance.

Beautiful women do not show up at the doors of strangers who fancy them, no matter how suitors may dream of it. It turns out only the prologue is real---Arthur has imagined every subsequent, romantic encounter with her. She in fact has not supported him at the comedy club, nor at his mother’s hospital bedside, as we’ve seen. But I felt needlessly torn and misled. When he does daydream, as when he views Robert De Niro’s Late Nite Show and places himself on stage, forging a bond with the host, Todd Phillips frames it clearly. He does not with Sophie.

The Mall Trip

“Do you remember when we went to King of Prussia?” Katja asked me and laughed as she drove us home through the city of Wiesbaden. Of course I remembered.

Four of us that day had made the pilgrimage to King of Prussia, the world’s largest shopping mall. My father was much younger than I am now. Katja, my step-mother, was barely in her twenties, a college kid. And behind them, just out of sight, lurked the tykes. My brother was four. I was seven.

We left Mom’s house to spend every other weekend with them. Dad and Katja had moved from Germany into a small apartment above his new boss’s garage on a sprawling Main Line property, replete with a gated driveway and a lake covered in moss. “Don’t go near that,” Dad said that winter weekend when the lake froze over. But God created frozen lakes for kids to play hockey on, even if they don’t have skates and their father rushes out mid-game to prove with one stomp of his boot how fragile the ice is. That is what they were dealing with. They were substitute teachers trying to corral the miscreants.