A Winning Horse and Two Marriages on the Edge

Making movies based on historical events is tricky enough, but filming a suspenseful history story is really difficult, especially when it's a well-known sports event. Last year's SECRETARIAT is no exception. We already know that Big Red was the wonder horse who won the Grand Slam of racing back in 1972 and holds incredible records. This film tackles these challenges by sharing the focus with believable characters played by fine actors. Chief among these are Diane Lane as Penney Chenery, who takes over her father's horse farm after her mother's death and his being incapacitated, naturally against incredible odds (her family is in Denver, not, Virginia; she's a woman in a man's world; the farm is in serious financial trouble). Lane brings a caring warmth to the part that eventually turns to grit as she proves she can deal with the best of the men in the racing business. As her eccentric trainer, John Malkovich adds humor and grace to the proceedings. All the stereotypes of the sports film are here: impossible goals and odds, swelling music, gorgeous dawn and dusk shots of Virginia and Kentucky blue grass, a boatload of typical sidekicks. Plus, a gospel version of "Oh, Happy Day" keys up when inspiration is called for. Somehow it all works beautifully. SECRETARIAT is even better than SEABISCUIT, which attempted to be a story of national unity and personal redemption, filmed with such "importance" that it was hard to relate to. This is one horse who goes the distance.

Another more recent dvd edition is the Oscar-nominated BLUE VALENTINE, a somber and achingly sad examination of a couple falling apart. Acted with unspairing and often painfully real power by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, the film freely moves in time to show the highs and lows of the couple's relationship. He is a high school drop-out who moves furniture and she a pre-med student when they meet. By the time they break up, they have a loving daughter, she has a career, and he is the same boy he was when they met. Gosling has a great ability to exhibit natural charm, incendiary fury, and heartfelt regret. And Phillips never makes a false emotional note. If you can take this one, it's worth it. A suitable companion piece is the emotional drama RABBIT HOLE starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, and Dianne Wiest. It is a stark portrayal of a marriage on the edge after the accidental death of their four year old son. All of the actors bring strong conviction to their roles, and an intelligent script and smart direction make this worth watching. CAUTION: Don't watch these two together!

Weddings and such

The hoopla has faded and the happy pair has flown off to nestle in obscurity before Kate really becomes the target of cameras again. Some spent last week sneering at the pomp and ceremony and citing the many crises that have befallen the world this year. An article in UTNE Magazine dismissed the royal wedding as the pinnacle of anglophilia and pointed out the myriad tacky souvenirs flooding the market as well as the stained history of the current royal family.

But such carping does little to deflate one of the loveliest days I have ever seen on television. We fortunately chose the PBS coverage (via BBC) and let the dvr work while we slept. At nine we toasted our English muffins and brewed our coffee (sorry, no tea for breakfast) and settled down with a neighbor to wallow in everything royal--the luxury limos, thousands of fluttering union jacks, bad hats (Fergie's daughters!!), Camilla actually looking happy, trees growing in Westminster Abbey, and Kate and William! And did we mention her dress? No, but everybody else did, and even Joan Rivers and the Fashion Police loved it.

Yes, lowly peons and high-placed nobles alike, most of us reveled in the royalty. So, to the block for anglophobes everywhere!

Sidney Lumet and the Art of Being Relevant

Sidney Lumet, a director of stage, tv, and especially film, died recently at the age of 86. He never made a TRANSFORMERS movie or dealt with terminators, aliens, or hobbits. Instead he explored life in cities, especially New York, life that invigorates, pushes, demoralizes, and kills. But Lumet infused his work with realism and occasionally sharp satire. He was especially interested in police corruption as seen in two of his best films: SERPICO(1973) with Al Pacino and PRINCE OF THE CITY(1981). Although he never won an Oscar as Best Director, he drew bravura performances from individual actors and group ensembles as well. Lumet could plumb the depths of Eugene O'Neill's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT(1962) with its harrowing portrait of the ultimate dysfunctional family as seen in the ravaged faces of Katherine Hepburn, Jason Robards, Jr. and Ralph Richardson. Or he could foresee the effects of the coming women's movements in his version of THE GROUP(1996), an entertaining take on Mary McCarthy's acid-laced satire.

On individual terms, Lumet's most memorable films concentrated on society's losers or victims, which he showed with compassion and unaffected irony. His first film, TWELVE ANGRY MEN(1957), skewers in-bred prejudices, as Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb brilliantly battle over the fate of a falsely accused Hispanic. A personal favorite is the electric drama DOG DAY AFTERNOON(1975), in which Al Pacino gives his finest performance as a married bi-sexual caught in a botched bank job. His character wants to pay for a sex-change operation for his boy friend. A series of tragi-comical events makes the robbery a media circus. Lumet handles all of this chaos with a caring and judicious hand, balancing comedy with pathos. His next film would be his most controversial and also one of his best: NETWORK. Perhaps the sharpest satirical comedy since DR. STRANGELOVE, this scathing comic drama seems even more prescient today than when it came out. Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar as the demented news anchor Howard Beale whose rant became part of the national discourse: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" He was matched with equally voracious and gutsy performances from Faye Dunaway (Oscar) as a career obsessed producer and William Holden (Oscar nominee) as her lover and victim. The film touches on racial unrest, world corporation control, and the decline of the media as a purveyor of facts, not propaganda. Nominated for Best Film of 1975, NETWORK lost to ROCKY, a bit of sentimental populist pap. But as the years advance, Lumet's reputation only grows in stature, and the directors of many "Best Films" are forgotten.

Matthew and Jake Are Back on Track

CONFESSION: I cannot stand Matthew McConaughey. He began well as a lawyer in A TIME TO KILL, based on John Grisham's novel, giving an intense performance that lacked the vanity of his later efforts. But the rest of his career has been spent playing shirtless slackers opposite the likes of Kate Hudson. With that said, I still enjoyed the courtroom mystery of THE LINCOLN LAWYER, in which he plays (surprise) a somewhat sleazy LA lawyer whose office is a creaky, chauffer-driven Lincoln town car. Sometimes he's smart, but sometimes he's not, putting his desires ahead of his needs. He takes on the case of a rich playboy, played with steely cold by Ryan Phillippe, who's accused of rape and battery. But as a famed Dane once said, something is rotten in this case, which takes McConaughey into the darker regions of LA low life. Marisa Tomeii plays his ex-wife, who can't quite cut the strings. The film has the noir feeling of Raymond Chandler and does not disappoint.

FINALLY BACK TO FORM: When Jake Gyllenhaal popped on the scene in films like the inspiring OCTOBER SKY (1999) and the truly strange and creepily appealing DONNIE DARKO (2001), he began a promising career that led to strong performances in ZODIAC and especially the ground-breaking BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005) opposite the late Heath Ledger. But his last two films have been major duds in which he was miscast as a medival hunk saving the day in PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME, an effects-laden swashbuckler in which he was all but lost. The other was even worse: the deplorable LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS in which he played a swinging Viagra salesman who falls for a feisty Parkinsons patient, embodied by an annoyingly perky Anne Hathaway. Naked or not, this unfortunate combo was in the poorest taste that tried to combine frat boy humor (Jake's slovenly gross brother--why is there always one of these slobs in movies today?), a serious disease, and even an orgy.

SO it is a pleasure that Gyllenhaal has bounced back in the new sci-fi thriller SOURCE CODE, in which he gets to bounce forward eight minutes in time in order to find a bomber hell-bent on blowing up Chicago. The film is smart, fast, and fun, even though it has some serious questions about terrorism and mind control. And Gyllenhaal delivers a nuanced performance that expresses charm, fear, and control.

It may be too late for McCounaghey, but Gyllenhaal has a chance of being a major leading man, depending on his film choices and the fickle taste of his public.

Last of the Legends

When I was a young teen, my brother and I shared an upstairs bedroom across from the attic. My side, often delineated by a chalk border, had its share of funny angles because of the roof's steep inclines. So, before I turned out the lights at night, I would look up at a bevy of Hollywood beauties--Ava Gardner, Marilyn, but especially Liz. Liz in a white slip-like garment, Liz in a tightly bodiced white gown in a shot from ELEPHANT WALK, and Liz in close-up with that amazing skin, those mesmerizing violet eyes, those smoldering lips. Yes, I was hooked. In 1953 I would take the bus down town, buy a bunch of Krystals, and take my seat of worship at the Strand Theater to watch a melodramatic pot boiler called ELEPHANT WALK. Liz played an innocent English girl who marries a rich plantation owner from Ceylon. In an obvious rip-off of REBECCA, Liz is haunted by the spell of her husband's domineering father who deliberately built his mansion across a traditional elephant path to water. By the end of the film, a love triangle has heated up and the elephants are on the war path. Naturally Liz is alone in the house in that little white dress as the elephants storm through. I sat through this movie five successive weekends.

Such was the power of Elizabeth Taylor for me as a teen, but it grew, along with my awareness that she could do a lot better than ELEPHANT WALK. And she already had, especially in one of her best films, George Stevens' classic social/romantic drama A PLACE IN THE SUN, based on Theodore Drieser's AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY. Taylor plays a wealthy capitalist princess who falls in love with a distant relative who works in her father's factory. Their love is doomed because he has made another worker pregnant and is eventually accused of her drowning death. Montgomery Clift plays George Eastman and the love scenes between Taylor and Clift are among the most memorable in movie history, especially their sudden realization of passion in the middle of a crowded dance floor. Angela Vickers pulls George out to the patio, and Stevens' camera frames them as closely as possible, their gorgeous features filling the screen.

As Angela offers to see George after work each day, she coos, "you'll be my pick up."
George: "I am the happiest person in the world."
Angela: "The second happiest."
George: (filled with guilt and repression) "Oh, Angela, if I could only tell you how much I love you. If I could only tell you all.."
Angela: (comforting him with a breath-taking closeness, pulling him into her as the camera swoops in) "Tell Mama. Tell Mama, All." FADE OUT.

Elizabeth Taylor, who died this week at the age of 79, managed to pull that special magic in many other movies, with many men in her personal life, and with her public. Yes, she made some truly terrible movies. THE SANDPIPER, 1965, features Taylor as a free spirit living at Big Sur and seducing a doubting Episcopal priest to the tune of "The Windmills of Your Mind." And it gets much, much worse (or better, depending on what you are into). But the next year she won her second Oscar as Martha, the foul-mouthed harpy in Edward Albee's scathing drama WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. Mike Nichols' direction of Taylor and Richard Burton as her husband was brilliant as were the performances of the cast. Playing radically against type and adding weight and age, Taylor transformed herself into Martha, giving heart-rending, often hilarious pathos to the character.

Taylor's "private" life was always more news than her movies, but to see her worth as an actress one needs to look back at her Maggie in Tennessee Williams' CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF or her face-off with Katherine Hepburn in the sinister SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER to know that beauty is not her only asset. Her innocent but compelling early beauty in films like FATHER OF THE BRIDE and especially IVANHOE, in which she bewitched both Robert Taylor and George Sanders, show not only her beauty but her humanity.

As the post-mortems pile up, they emphasize Taylor's lust for life, her husbands, her medical traumas, and her beauty. They haven't caught the full life. Elizabeth Taylor was too much for such a paltry pigeon hole. She was Elizabeth Taylor and she knew it.

When movies make a difference

No one can argue that movies are made to entertain and to make money. Often the latter goal cancels out the former. Just look at some the dreadfully bloated or uninspired movies of recent days. THE TOURIST promises fireworks between Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, but the movie is a boring dud, unlike its inspiration, the sparkling Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn comic romantic thriller CHARADE.

We know that entertaining films can be thoughtful and even change opinions, even lives. Consider the big Oscar winner THE KING'S SPEECH, a small tale of courage and an unusual friendship. Or Spielberg's moving SCHINDLER'S LIST, a movie that put the Holocaust in the spotlight for new generations as well as old. Very few viewers were able to maintain a blase cool while watching the horrors and heroism depicted in stark black and white with John Williams' magnificent score illuminating the darkness.

I have been thinking back over some of the films I used in my Cinema and English classes over the years. Obviously, films like PAN'S LABYRINTH, CHILDREN OF MEN, and THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI are films that have important messages that are conveyed with imagination and power. I can honestly say that in each of these films I found ideas of profound depth about war, despotism, loyalty, and love.

But these are obvious choices. I want to go back to several films that changed my attitude or reminded me of what I had forgotten about life. The first is the Bette Davis classic weeper NOW, VOYAGER, in which a repressed young woman suffers a breakdown at the hands of her domineering mother. After her recovery, she makes a life for herself and finally faces her mother's tyranny. The mother threatens to cut her out of her sizable will, but suddenly Charlotte Vale sits back and realizes "I'm not afraid any more." Naturally she has the aid of strings and a voice-over to back her up, but somehow this scene had a special resonance for me at a critical time, and I found myself repeating the same mantra: "I'm not afraid any more."

The other night I watched another Warner Brothers classic, KINGS' ROW, 1942, on Turner Classic Movies. Though filled with soap operatic flourishes, the film succeeds on the strength of its narrative drive and a magnificent ensemble cast. An idealistic Parris Mitchell lives in a lovely mid-western Victorian town, which naturally seethes with dark secrets such as child abuse and even incest. The town has two doctors, one a brilliant recluse and father of his first love, and the other, a sadistic quack who often performs unnecessary surgeries, including amputating the legs of Parris's best friend Drake McHugh (played by Ronald Reagan). The doctors are played by two of the best character actors in the Warner stable, Claude Rains and Charles Coburn. While Parris is learning psychotherapy in Vienna, Drake suffers a terrible accident, which causes him to need the services of his enemy, the surgery-happy doctor. Knowing that his daughter is madly in love with Drake, he ruthlessly cuts the young man's legs off. When Drake wakes up, he utters the film's and Reagan's most famous line: "Where's the rest of me?!"(personal caveat: I've always wondered that as well) Parris proves to be the best possible friend and helps Drake and his wife with financial and psychological support. In the climactic scene Parris forces Drake to face the truth that his surgery was an act of malice, not real medicine. At this moment, the film approaches a fundamental truth that also has meaning for me. One has to accept the reality of his situation and either give up or move on in life, despite the difficulties.

In both NOW, VOYAGER and KINGS ROW, dramatic situations illustrate well-known maxims about life, ones we know but forget. They may seem melodramatic but they have a reality that rings true for all of us. And that's a lot more than most movies offer today.

RANGO rings them in...UNKNOWN, almost

In the rather empty theaters following the rush of good films competing for Oscars, there hasn't been much of worth to watch. Several weeks ago we saw Liam Neeson facing off against amnesia, world hunger, and terrorism, with a lot of help from German beauty Dianne Krueger as a cab-crashing illegal. UNKNOWN is Neeson's follow-up to his surprise action thriller TAKEN from 2009 and follows its formula. A big, hard-hitting but quiet man goes ballistic when he or his are threatened. In TAKEN, his daughter was kidnapped by international nasties. And in UNKNOWN Neeson's memory is wiped out after his cab plunges into the river. The film features a shaky plot, something about curing hunger as a cover for terrorism, but it clips along quickly until it reaches its rather absurd conclusion. It's fun, but not particularly logical.

A definite step-up in quality is the new Matt Damon thriller THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, a trendy blend of old-time romance, chase, and science fiction. Fortunately, the romance triumphs over the rest. Damon convincingly plays a fiery senatorial candidate who falls over sexy and smart Emily Blunt. This doesn't conform to the PLAN of the Guardians (who may be angels but certainly believe in pre-destination).
According to their plans, Damon will eventually become president and change the course of history. Sounds too heavy? Don't worry, there are enough twists and turns and savvy dialogue to keep the philosophical jargon in check. And Damon and Blunt are dynamite together.

But the top choice in this group is the animated RANGO, which features the voice of Johnny Depp as a fast-talking lizard who gets trapped in the wild west and must save a town called Dirt. What follows is a series of clever allusions to classic westerns such as HIGH NOON (several shoot-outs in the dusty main street with no help in sight), THE SEARCHERS, and many others. But the biggest send-up is CHINATOWN, the classic noir directed by Roman Polanski, in which the nasty Noah Cross declares, "The man who controls the water for LA is the man who controls everything!"
As in CHINATOWN, the hoarding of city water for profit is the dirty secret in Dirt. Surrounded by an hilarious crowd of animated desert inhabitants, Rango acts as detective and hero in this clever, adult-tinged farce. See this one.