The first half of 2017 has given us a
dozen strongly recommended features and a ten-worst list.
#1
The only four-star film to date (a
rating connoting excellence on every level) is Aisling Walsh's "Maudie," a biopic of the Canadian
folk artist Maud Lewis reminiscent of the best of the Bill Forsyth oeuvre. Profoundly
moving without a hint of the maudlin, "Maudie" stands tall on the
shoulders of Sally Hawkins' Oscar-worthy performance, devoid of gimmickry, which
surprises and delights at every turn, bringing out all of Maud's humor and
indomitable spirit with the subtlest of physical movements and tonal
inflections. I hope, too, that Ethan Hawke's work as Maud's husband Everett
will not get lost in the shuffle. This is a daring part to take on - there's
nothing warm or fuzzy about this manimal - and Hawke does well to locate his
well-concealed humanity. Walsh captures the spirit of the north and mounts
scenes magnificently, announcing herself as an important new talent, while
Sherry White's nuanced script speaks volumes in few words. The most achingly
poignant of these come in Maud's final deathbed question to Everett, which in a
small, exceptionally lovely film is as big as any question we humans ever ask.
#2
Another biography of a woman artist,
Terence Davies' "A Quiet Passion,"
stars Cynthia Nixon in a nomination-worthy performance as Emily Dickinson,
devoted sister (to Jennifer Ehle) and daughter (to Keith Carradine). Anything
but stuffy or starchy, this is a full-bodied portrait made with wit and,
especially in the first half, laugh-out-loud humor. (Catherine Bailey enchants
as the naughty, ahead-of-her-time Miss Vryling Buffam.) As in "The Deep
Blue Sea," Davies evinces his mastery of light and darkness; where so many
directors aim for the crepuscular glow of dusk, the hours between twilight and
nightfall, when just a hint of illumination suffuses the home, belong to Davies
as to no other. Also as in that film, which made my 2012 top-ten list, you may
find yourself thinking deeper thoughts and feeling deeper emotions than you
realized lay within you. Davies makes use of the poetry itself - as read by
Nixon - as effectively as any film since 2013's "Reaching for the
Moon." What emerges is a picture of a brilliant mind that rarely failed to
get in the way of its owner's happiness.
#3
Bill Condon's live action "Beauty and the Beast," an
improvement on the animated classic of a quarter-century ago, is the year's
first certified crowd-pleaser. Funny, witty, impeccably cast, fully imagined
and movingly penned, it is eternal yet effortlessly of the moment. Emma Watson
makes a radiant and full-throated Belle, Dan Stevens brings genuine human
emotion to the Beast, and Luke Evans is sheer perfection as the narcissist
Gaston. (The part of LeFou is tailor-made for Josh Gad, and all of his laugh
lines scored big with the packed house.) The voices of the fixtures at the
Beast's castle have been chosen so thoughtfully, including Ian McKellen as
Cogsworth (his last line, in the come-to-life epilogue, will have you laughing
for days); Audra McDonald, an inspired Garderobe; and the nonpareil Emma
Thompson a worthy heir to Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts. (Don't miss the
elegantly mounted cast credits.) Condon brings out the deep feeling of the
story in a way animation cannot, reserving pride of place for the message of
seeking out others' inner beauty. This "Beauty and the Beast" will
hold up well in generations of kids' collections; it's a consummate
entertainment for smart audiences of all ages.
#4-#12
(in alphabetical order)
·
Edgar Wright's kinetic "Baby Driver," with a star-making
lead performance by Ansel Elgort as the tinnitus-suffering, iPod-blasting
personal getaway driver to Kevin Spacey. He's in love with Lily James, but has
to pull off one last heist (with teammates Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm) before they
can ride off into the sunset. Great car chases, a terrific (and almost
non-stop) soundtrack and some crackerjack dialogue add up to a summer hit that
feels throughout like the next big thing.
·
"The
Fate of the Furious" lacks the grace notes that made 2015's
"Furious 7" the apotheosis of the franchise - F. Gary Gray is no
James Wan, and the untimely death of Paul Walker gave the earlier film an
unmatchable potency and resonance - but there are still some jaw-dropping
scenes (one involves cars that start themselves and reverse from high-level
garages onto the street, another auto-piloted cars that crash into a building
in something like Tetris formation) and top-shelf stunt work.
·
Cristian Mungiu's Romanian import "Graduation" is rich with the moral
and ethical complexity of a country still shedding the corrupt skin of its
communist days. Romeo (Adrian Titieni) is a respected doctor whose bright,
accomplished daughter Eliza (Maria Dragus) is one exam away from a generous
scholarship to an English university and the bigger world that both parents
wish for her (and, regretfully, for themselves). But when she is suddenly
attacked on the day before her test, to what lengths will Romeo go to secure
for her extra test time or even an artificially high score?
·
Trey Edward Shults' "It Comes at Night" is lean, economical, no-frills genre
moviemaking, yet this young director (who debuted with last year's
Cassavetes-esque "Krisha") continues to amaze with his command of technique
and now his versatility. In the near future, a virulent, Plague-like disease
has wiped out almost all of humankind. Paul (Joel Edgerton) has a few
inviolable rules for his wife and teenage son: only go out of the house in
pairs, always wear your gas masks outside, and never ever unlock the red door. When
an intruder offers much-needed provisions if they'll take in him and his wife
and young son, Paul's comfortable pattern yields to an outwardly friendly but
inwardly uneasy entente. "It Comes at Night" gives the lie to so much
of the current cinema, proving all you need to create thrilling entertainment
is a compelling scenario, a first-rate cast and a director with a vision and
the talent to see it through.
·
Paolo Virzi's Italian import "Like Crazy" stars Valeria Bruni
Tedeschi in a hilarious, nomination-worthy performance as Beatrice, a patient
at a laughably "progressive" psychiatric clinic who claims to be a
mega-rich aristocrat on a first-name basis with the president. When Donatella
(Micaela Ramazzotti), an inked-up and head-down troubled case, joins the
community, Beatrice snaps her up and the two hijack the clinic's van into town
for a series of amusing adventures. The Italians can do psychiatric comedy like
nobody else; if you haven't seen Roberto Benigni's 1996 "Il Mostro"
("The Monster"), do yourself a favor. Here, Virzi sustains the comic
tone throughout.
·
"Norman:
The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer," about an
endlessly insinuating, small-time wheeler-dealer who finally makes it big after
buying a pair of expensive shoes for the right Israeli politician, is elevated
by the performance of Richard Gere and especially by the witty direction of
Joseph Cedar, who in 2012's "Footnote" turned Talmudic philology into
the stuff of high suspense. This guy really knows how to direct a movie.
·
"Personal
Shopper," Olivier Assayas' second consecutive collaboration with
actress Kristen Stewart, never achieves the profundity of 2015's "Clouds
of Sils Maria," but holds the viewer's interest with its unabashedly outré
story of a wealthy socialite's clothes buyer who's also a medium desperate to
connect with her late brother, who died of the rare genetic heart defect they
shared. Assayas perfectly captures the world of the wealthy and famous; as in
"Clouds," there's an iPad display of a famous name wearing different
outfits that makes most directors' use of technology look totally fake.
·
The Spanish import "Truman," about a divorced actor recently diagnosed with cancer
and his childhood friend, now a married teacher in Canada, who reunite in
Madrid for a few days of nostalgia and new experiences, exemplifies the
difference between Hollywood and foreign film. In Hollywood, this picture would
be (if ever made) mawkish and false; "Truman" is soft-spoken,
unforced and true.
·
Stéphane Brizé follows up his brilliantly
naturalistic, contemporary "The Measure of a Man" (which cracked the
top half of my 2016 top-ten list) with the 19th-century character study "A Woman's Life," featuring a deeply
felt performance by Judith Chemla as Jeanne, whose youthful marriage to a
viscount proves to be a trap from which she struggles all her life to extricate
herself. Her husband Julien, whose title does not come with a commensurate
fortune, cheats on her and saddles her with responsibility for a profligate son
who bleeds her dry financially and emotionally. Brizé is perhaps the current
director best attuned to the outsize importance of money matters.
The
Worst Ten (in alphabetical order)
·
I slept soundly through Michal Marczak's Polish
import "All These Sleepless Nights,"
in which we spend 100 minutes watching two twenty-something best friends party,
dance and jabber meaninglessly across Warsaw.
·
Colin Trevorrow's howler "The Book of Henry," about a child
genius (yawn) who looks after his perpetually distracted waitress mother and
younger brother, takes place in an alternate universe of phoniness and fraudulence.
When Henry bites the big one from a brain tumor, he leaves Mom detailed
instructions on how to kill their police-chief neighbor, who's (rather
obliquely, from what we're shown) abusing his stepdaughter. Mom's reaction? Sounds
great to her! She goes through with it, all the while listening to Henry's
cassette tape, in which he guides her second by second, anticipating every
detour she takes. The level of contrivance and coincidence in this movie is, to
borrow a line from "The Golden Girls," like being struck by lightning
in a house you won from Ed McMahon.
·
Dave Eggers' book "The Circle" might have worked on the printed page; on the big
screen, its ideas about the online world infiltrating and taking over our lives
and minds come crashing down around real-world places, situations and dialogue
that couldn't sound phonier if they'd tried. Emma Watson is all wrong for the
lead, while Tom Hanks continues to cement his status as a sure-fire indicator
of a huge flop. Every member of Hanks' vast workforce laughs at every laugh
line and aside in every speech. I rolled my eyes, then grumbled aloud, then
walked out.
·
Never trust a movie by a guy named Nacho. Case
in point: Nacho Vigalondo's "Colossal,"
with Anne Hathaway as an alcoholic New York screw-up who discovers to her
horror that her movements control those of a monster marching through the
streets of Seoul. The movie fancies itself a genre-bender, but it's really just
another Comedy Without Laughs with a silly sci-fi overlay. Jason Sudeikis and
Dan Stevens vie for the title of most unpleasant movie character of the year,
the former as another robot-controller distastefully enamored of his homicidal
capabilities, the latter as Hathaway's bullying Big Apple boyfriend.
·
I also walked out (though not nearly soon
enough) of Oren Moverman's "The
Dinner." Talk about false advertising: the trailers sell this as a
Richard Gere movie about a Congressman whose son gets into criminal trouble
(with his brother's son) that imperils his latest campaign. But Gere's a
supporting player; virtually the entire movie belongs to Steve Coogan as the
most annoying, psychotic father whose kid hasn't been forcibly removed by Child
Protective Services. Rebecca Hall and Laura Linney are lamentable afterthoughts
as the respective wives in a bizarre, incoherent mess of a movie.
·
Fast on the heels of last year's
"High-Rise" (and with 2013's "Sightseers" still in memory),
Ben Wheatley's "Free Fire"
has convinced me to pull the plug on seeing his films. This is a totally
unfunny, self-obsessed single-site action comedy about a gun sale gone wrong,
with two of my least favorite working actors, the charisma-free Armie Hammer
and the fingernails-on-blackboard Sharlto Copley. That Brie Larson would choose
this film to follow up her Oscar win for "Room" defies credulity.
·
It's inevitable when you see as many movies as I
do. When you go through your list at the end of the year, you'll see a few titles
and have no recollection of them whatsoever. It happened for me at the halfway
mark with "The Last Word,"
my third and last walkout. This is - as Google reminded me - a cringe-inducing
would be comedy about a wealthy, ornery widow (Shirley MacLaine) who demands
the local paper's obituary writer (Amanda Seyfried) pen hers in advance - and
just how she wants it.
·
The wicked twist ending is the sole saving grace
for the brain-dead "Alien" ripoff "Life," a pure paycheck project for Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan
Reynolds, featuring a decidedly daffy alien menace and a gore lover's mentality
(which I do not share).
·
"Sleepless"
is perhaps the most January movie ever released in January, an actioner of
multiple laugh-out-loud plot twists and a supremely hammy lead performance by
Jamie ("Stay with me, man!") Foxx. And yet, it's the title on this
list I hate least; one might even enjoy it with a group of friends, each
pointing out different absurdities and impossibilities.
·
Much less fun is "War on Everyone," from John Michael McDonagh, the sick mind
responsible for 2014's "Calvary." He returns with this desperately
overwritten and profoundly unfunny crooked-cop comedy, with Alexander Skarsgård
and Michael Peña completely miscast as partners on the Albuquerque P.D.
Best
and Worst Documentaries
Two documentaries earned strong recommendations
in the first half of 2017:
·
Roger Sherman's "In Search of Israeli Cuisine," which treats its title quest
with appropriate academic rigor. We travel to almost every corner of Israel,
meeting restaurateurs, farmers, vintners and food writers who have given
serious thought to whether Israel is mature enough and has enough of an
identity to be said to have a cuisine. The film covers such matters as the
differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic cooking, the challenges facing Arab
restaurateurs in Israel, and the influences of Judaism on the eating habits of
a population that is 80% secular. Great food porn, too.
·
Bill Morrison's "Dawson City: Frozen Time" tells several amazing stories.
Dawson City, a Gold Rush town in Yukon that reached its highest population of 9,000
early in the 20th century, was the last stop on the line for hundreds of silent
films that Hollywood sent north, usually taking years to make their way up to
the isolated hamlet. When the studios refused to pay for their return carriage,
many of the films were thrown away on the ice floes, but over 300 ended up
salted away under an ice hockey rink - which turned out to be, for these highly
flammable and combustible nitrate films, an accidental stroke of genius. They
survived - occasionally jutting out onto the playing surface - and were
discovered in 1978, during construction of a rec hall behind "Diamond
Tooth Gertie's" casino. In virtually every case, the Dawson reel was the
only surviving copy of the picture. But the story of Dawson itself - its main
drag decimated year after year by fire, but always rebuilt - is equally
fascinating. Sid Grauman started there. So did Alexander Pantages. Fred Trump
owned a brothel! Morrison's nearly wordless film - with a moody, ambient score
by Alex Somers - casts the same eerily hypnotic glow of Guy Maddin's "My
Winnipeg." Film lovers will want to seek it out.
hmmmm
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