Category: Drama

THE KARATE KID (1984)

By Marc S. Sanders

Though it may feel like an After School Special at times, there’s always been a charming quality about The Karate Kid, and that stems from the relationship between Daniel LaRouso (Ralph Macchio) and his elderly Asian mentor from Okinawa, Mr. Miyagi (Oscar nominee Pat Morita).

John G. Avildsen, director of Rocky, is harsh in the expository bullying that Daniel endures when he moves from Newark, NJ to California. The Kobra Kai kids led by William Zabka (your go to bully for 1980s films) are brutal in their fighting skills as they use Daniel as a means to exercise their Sensei’s philosophy of “No Mercy!” The Sensei is played very frighteningly by Martin Kove.

What’s hard for me to digest with The Karate Kid is that Macchio is not very good in the role. He kind of comes off as a kid I’d never want to hang out with. He tries too hard to be cool, but he doesn’t look cool. His sense of humor is really never funny. It’s too hokey really when he puts the charms on his crush Alli (Elisabeth Shue). While Shue is fine her in her sweetness, Macchio is really why I never found any chemistry between the two actors. He comes off like Shue’s little brother more than a high school crush. He’s a twerp. What saves me from giving up on Daniel, or Macchio in the role, is the maintenance man who steps in to rescue Daniel from another beating.

Pat Morita is excellent as Mr. Miyagi and has truly created one of the most pop culturally significant characters in film from the last forty years. There’s an authenticity to his role. Most importantly, he’s a veteran of World War II who suffered loss. A great scene occurs mid way through the film where Daniel finds a drunken Miyagi commemorating the death of his wife and newborn both lost due to complications in childbirth while he was away in service. Screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen brought a depth to the Miyagi role. Along with Morita’s performance, he allowed a likability in Daniel that eventually catches my interest. Daniel eventually appreciates the elderly man beyond his devotion of karate. When Macchio is responding to Morita, I like him. When he’s responding to any other character in the film, I don’t like him.

The centerpiece of the film is the mundane training that Daniel endures. “Wax on. Wax off,” and so on. It’s hardly forgettable but it’s also a little slow moving. Still, I like the lesson. Miyagi demonstrates that the best way to learn karate is ironically when you have no inkling that you’re learning karate. Use the fundamentals of any skill and apply it to the art of karate. Karate doesn’t stem from an urge of violence. It comes from something more intrinsic. Karen’s script with Avildsen’s direction never forgets that.

The payoff moment is when it dawns upon the very naive Daniel of what Miyagi was teaching him all along. Daniel might be painting the house and sanding the floor and waxing the cars on Miyagi’s property, but is that all he’s doing? Soon we discover the significance of this drawn out sequence. Morita opens your eyes when he throws punches and kicks at a frustrated Daniel, and it dawns on the kid that he suddenly knows how to defend himself. Avlidsen films a hair raising scene at this moment. Its like when the frail Yoda uses the Force to lift Luke’s X-Wing fighter out of the swamp. It’s another layer revealed in the Miyagi character.

So, without Mr. Miyagi The Karate Kid plays like a cheesy home room, early 80s lesson film. When a scene includes Morita, the wow factor is front and center. Often I talk about the best characters are the multi dimensional ones. Mr. Miyagi is the perfect example. We see him as the quiet maintenance man, then he’s the master fighter, then he’s the guy with a healing skill, then he’s the guy who’s got the secret crane technique for delivering a kick, and then he’s the guy with a sorrowful past and finally he’s the mentor and most importantly, he’s the friend. All of this crammed into one little old man from Okinawa. Pat Morita is the reason to watch The Karate Kid.

LEAN ON ME

By Marc S. Sanders

The career of director John G. Avildsen is best defined by his inspirational stories of athletic prowess for the underdog, particularly The Karate Kid from 1984, and the Oscar winning Best Picture sensation, Rocky.  Both films follow similar formulas once the exposition phase is completed.  Music montages fill the screen with endless training with the protagonists giving it their all.  Avildsen’s film, Lean On Me, teeters on these conventions and it tells me one thing.  Training montages belong in the field of physical activities, not with tests of intelligence and academics.

Morgan Freeman portrays Joe Clark, or Crazy Joe Clark with the baseball bat, who singlehandedly (at least according to the film) turned around the Eastside High School of Paterson, New Jersey from a hell hole of violence, drugs and terror into a respectable institution of education.  Eastside, where the actual film was shot, is depicted as the absolute worst.  You can’t even tell the original paint colors of walls because they are covered in so much graffiti.  Early in the film, a teacher’s head is bashed into a puddle of his own blood while trying to break up a fight among the students.  Drugs are exchanged out in the open.  This is a dangerous place. How dangerous?  “Welcome To The Jungle” by Guns N Roses is playing over all of this footage. 

Worst of all, however, seems to be the last place ranking of the school’s score on state’s standardized test for basic education.  After all that I saw in the first ten minutes of the film, that is the biggest concern? 

Joe seems to be the one and only candidate to get in there and clean this mess up.  His tough exterior and reputation for not getting along with his superiors or his peers is a gamble but what other choice does the mayor have at this point.  The first move that Joe carries out is to have all the drug pushers and criminals explicated from the school immediately.  His second move is to chain every door in the school to keep this riff raff out, which only ticks off the fire marshal and a firebrand activist mother who wants Clark terminated.  While I thought the mother was needlessly a pain in the ass, only to serve as a poorly written antagonist, I can’t help but empathize with the fire marshal; cuz, yeah, what would happen if there was an actual fire?

In between all of this, Crazy Joe bullies, berates and screams at his teaching staff and administration while the students paint over the graffiti.  Some of the staff scream back or toss over desks.  Morgan Freeman is such a capable actor and you can’t take your eyes off the energy he brings to his roles, whether they are subdued like in The Shawshank Redemption or Driving Miss Daisy, or they are out of control hyper as on display here.  Yet, I didn’t feel fulfilled or inspired by his portrayal of Mr. Clark or the film as a whole.  It’s not his fault.  Rather it’s the outline of the script.

A running theme here focuses on the scores of the test.  Joe is first mad as all hell at the low score of the practice tests.  We eventually reach the actual final exam.  Much has been cleaned up at Eastside and Joe screams like a hyped-up football or wrestling coach to the entire study body about how important it is to pass the exam they are about to take within the hour.  The students clap and applaud and sing the title song in harmony.  This scene supplies the inevitable and inspiring training montage that Avildsen relies on.  You know what’s going to happen, right?  They pass of course!  Yet, how did they really pass this exam within the ninety days that the film tells us they have to study?

Lean On Me gets distracted with its other problems such as single mothers who kick out their children and drug pushers who manage to get back into the school, where Crazy Joe disarms one of them threatening with a switch blade.  Late in the film, a teenage student gets pregnant, only to have this storyline abandoned thereafter.  The debate with the erratic mother and the fire marshal takes up large portions of the film as well, and when they don’t, Joe is screaming at his band of teachers making sure they know it is their own fault that the students are failing.  All of these moments are meant to get the audience to nod and shake their heads at how much the world is falling apart, while getting tearfully inspired by the angry, tough love of Mr. Clark.  Right on Joe!!!! It’s like a bad afterschool special, really.  I’m not in denial of the endless variety of problems our schools encounter.  However, this film is less than two hours, and these kids have a test to pass, people!

I just think the wrong movie was made here.  I recall from the late 1980s, the real Joe Clark on the cover a Time Magazine defiantly holding his baseball bat.  My teenage self found the cover shocking.  Having gone to private schools full of unspoken discipline, I’d never imagine a teacher brandishing a bat to make his point.  So unusual was this to me that naturally Clark’s story should be made into a movie.  Yet, the triumph of Lean On Me depends on the passing score of the state exam.  Only, just how did these students pass this exam? 

It’s easy to compare Lean On Me to the film Stand And Deliver.  It’s also easy to see which is the better film.  The latter film focused on underprivileged and uneducated Southeast Los Angeles students who triumphantly passed the most difficult of standardized mathematic exams.  When the passing scores arrive at the end, though, I believed the truth of it all because the film focused on the inspiring teacher Jaime Escalante and his methods for teaching algebra and calculus.  Stand And Deliver showed how those students sacrificed their Saturdays to attend class and studied while working or tending to their families.  In Lean On Me, I don’t recall one student opening a single book or any teacher even writing on a blackboard.  They did learn the school song though.

I don’t disagree with anything that Avildsen’s film offers.  Joe Clark saw the importance of learning the school song to build up pride among his students.  He saw the necessity in painting over the graffiti to maintain the image of a proper institution for learning.  He went to desperate and defiant measures to protect the integrity of Eastside High School.  My problem is the means don’t justify the end.  How does chaining doors, painting over graffiti, and singing the school song, accompanied with endless screaming measure up to passing a standardized test?  Did it all just hinge on one proud moment ahead of taking the test with a beautiful and soulful rendition of the song “Lean On Me”?   I know the passing scores were all achieved in real life.  I just wish I got to see it on screen.

Note: Eastside High School is where my mom graduated from.  It did her proud to see the school recover to its original reputation.

LICORICE PIZZA (2021)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper
My Rating: 7/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 92% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The story of Alana Kane and Gary Valentine growing up, running around and going through the treacherous navigation of first love in the San Fernando Valley, 1973.


You know that old saying, “You’ll either love it or hate it”?  I’m afraid that doesn’t apply to Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, Licorice Pizza.  At least not for me.

The plot: Gary, an impossibly precocious and business-savvy 15-year-old child actor, still in high school (the movie opens with him getting his yearbook pictures taken), develops a crush on Alana, a 25-year-old production assistant, and pursues her – and pursues her and pursues her – while she wrestles with her own emotions and the fact that, dude, he’s fifteen years old.  He calls a shaky truce on his emotions so they can remain friends, and in the process they…let me see if I can remember it all…go on several auditions, help Gary’s mom with her public relations business, open their own business selling waterbeds, fly to Texas (?) and back, fall in and out of “like” with each other several times by attempting to form physical relationships with people their own age, meet an actor who is clearly meant to be William Holden, and by the end of the movie they finally seem to be mutually in love with each other.  Sort of.  Maybe.  It depends on your point of view.  But moving on…

For all its faults, Licorice Pizza did keep me grinning for virtually all of its longish running time, and it also made me laugh out loud many times.  Only in a Paul Thomas Anderson – or maybe also a Tarantino movie – could you have a scene where a mixed-race couple (white husband/Asian wife) have a conversation in which the white husband speaks the most atrociously absurd, cringeworthy pidgin Japanese to his wife, and it gets an earned laugh for the sheer audacity of the scene.  Is it offensive?  Certainly, if this happened in real life, the husband would be cancelled faster than an all-Latino sitcom.  (Ba-ZING.)  But I’ve gotta be honest, that was one of the great belly-laughs in the film.  I found it funny in the same way that Robert Downey Jr. in blackface in Tropic Thunder was funny, in that the people committing the offenses are clearly dumber than sacks of sand and so have absolutely no idea they’re being morons.  But I’ll leave the Theory-of-Comedy discussion for another review…

In true P.T. Anderson fashion, the dialogue is as sharply written as anything by Sorkin or Mamet.  Not a second is wasted on unnecessary exposition or explanation.  (Although, to be fair, a LITTLE more explanation would have been preferred…more on that later.)  Each scene gets to the point, either directly or indirectly, with surgical precision.

There are some editing jumps that will keep a viewer on their toes.  The movie shows a scene of Gary testing a waterbed for the first time, then jumps to him hawking them at a “Teen Fair”, then suddenly he has his own storefront, sales reps, and a bank of telephone operators.  We can only assume that he had the capital, the licenses, and the business logistics to not only make this happen but to clearly be successful at it, at least for a while.  I mean, he is fifteen years old, so why wouldn’t he know how to do all this, right?

[Actually, now that I think about it, there IS a precedent for this plot: Rushmore, Wes Anderson’s 1998 film about another precocious 15-year-old boy who falls in love with a much older woman and spends most of the rest of the film attempting to woo her while she wrestles with her emotions and her desire for a relationship with someone who was born in the same decade as she was.  Do with that information what you will.]

When the age gap between Gary and Alana was explained very clearly at the beginning of the film, I was pretty sure the two of them could never be in a relationship, and I was taken out of the movie a little.  However, as the movie progressed, the film’s charm and effortless wit made me forget how far apart they were.  Gary behaves in such a way that I forgot just young he’s supposed to be, and I forgot just how old Alana is supposed to be.  The film expertly took me by the hand and got me rooting for them to be together, despite how – let’s not mince words – illegal it would be for them to be together.

SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

SPOILER ALERT.

So the movie does its job, that I’ll grant you.  But when the film ends, and Gary and Alana kiss and go running off screen together, and Alana finally says, “I love you, Gary”, and the credits started rolling…I stared at the screen, raised my arms in supplication to the scrolling credits, and said, “Say WHAT…?”  Because it was at that point, after the abrupt ending, that I started to have questions.  Lots and lots and LOTS of questions.

If Gary is a high school student – and he is a high school student – when did he ever go to class?  The film never shows us.  One could make the case of, well, you have to ASSUME he’s going to class.  Okay…but when?  In between auditions and plane flights to a live taping of a musical number in front of a live audience and opening not one but two small businesses where his employees seem to be composed entirely of his school-age buddies?  And one of these businesses involves him buying a large quantity of pinball machines to start an arcade.  Where is this money coming from?!  His acting paychecks?  He’s not a major star.  He’s a minor bit player, at best.  And yet, not only can he finance two small businesses on his own (he has a mother, but we only meet her twice), but the maître d’ at a local restaurant knows him by name and treats him like Hollywood royalty – he even has his own table at this place.

And let’s talk about that ending.  She says, “I love you, Gary”, and they run off screen.  What does this mean?  Does this mean she’s about to embark on a physical relationship with an underage boy?  One could say, “Well, of COURSE she’s not going to start going steady with him or anything.  She’s twenty-five and he’s fifteen!  The idea’s absurd and icky!  No, there’s no way anything like that can happen between the two of them, so this ending is just her affirming her love for him in a platonic way because that’s all they will ever be able to be to each other: devoted friends.”

Yeah, but…are we just supposed to make that assumption out of thin air?  The entire movie has been working on getting these two characters together, and it ends (quite suddenly) with that happening, and…we’re just supposed to think, “Yeah, but they’re not TOGETHER-together”?  If that’s the case, I feel there should have been a little more information to make that clearer.

I’m reminded of something I read where a college professor is teaching film students about Hal Ashby’s prescient film Being There.  MORE SPOILER ALERTS, kind of unavoidable here…but the film ends with a humble gardener with an IQ in the double-digits walking serenely out onto the surface of a lake.  The professor asks his students what this final scene means.  And the students say, well, there’s a sunken pier just out of sight under the water, or the water is quite shallow, or they even theorize that the scene isn’t really happening, it’s just in the gardener’s mind.

The professor pounds on his desk and says, “No, no, NO!  What you see is what you get.  The guy is literally walking on water.  Nothing in the film mentions a sunken pier or low water levels, and we’ve never seen any of his dreams before now.  Any explanations you’re giving for why he’s walking on water, aside from his ability to actually do it, is just you bringing something the scene that isn’t there.”

That’s what I think about the ending of Licorice Pizza.  It’s problematic because, to me, it doesn’t matter what I think happens at the end when she proclaims her love and they run off.  The movie is clearly indicating they DO wind up in a relationship.  We can infer all we want about what may have happened after the cameras cut, but we are left with what the film has presented to us.  And that left me feeling weirdly uncomfortable.

To be sure, there are movies out there, acknowledged masterpieces, that depend heavily on the viewer doing some heavy lifting.  The one that comes to mind the most for me is 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film whose ending is suitably awesome and beautiful…but what in the Sam Hill does it MEAN?  Do enough reading and analysis and there are conclusions to be made that make sense and which elevate that film.

But Licorice Pizza is no 2001.  This is just not the kind of movie that lends itself to that kind of theoretical dissection.  If there are buried truths to be discovered, fair enough, but how much digging am I expected to do?  As the great man once said, “If you have to ask what something symbolizes, it doesn’t.”

First impressions are very important. And my first impression of Licorice Pizza is that, while it’s solidly acted and directed, and the dialogue is pitch perfect, the story itself leaves something to be desired.

[P.S.  A friend of mine said that if you were to switch the genders in this movie, it would never have been made.  I might agree, were it not for the fact that there have already been several films already made about that very topic, that is, an adult man in an inappropriate relationship with a much younger or underage woman.  American Beauty, Lolita, Lost in Translation, etcetera.  Maybe Lost in Translation is not the best example, as both characters are legal adults, but you get my point.  Frankly, I thought the gender switching in Licorice Pizza was kinda refreshing…up to a point.]

ARGO

By Marc S. Sanders

Ben Affleck’s third directorial effort Argo is his best. It makes me wonder why he followed this with playing Batman, a done to death cinematic character.

Argo showed promise of another great actor/director in the same vein as Orson Wells, Woody Allen, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood. I’m sure Affleck will direct again but a Batman commitment certainly sidelines you. I hope he’ll direct again. I’m a big fan of his previous films, The Town and Gone Baby Gone.

The story tells of one aspect of the Iranian hostage crisis that spanned the end of 1979 through 1980. Six employees of the riot stormed American embassy in Iran manage to escape and hide in the Canadian ambassador’s home. Slowly but surely their hideaway will be revealed and they will inevitably be taken prisoner. Affleck plays CIA operative Tony Mendez who is tasked with getting them out. His plan, with assistance from John Goodman as legendary Hollywood makeup artist, John Chambers, and Alan Arkin as producer Lester Siegel, will make up a cockamamie story about producing a fake science fiction Star Wars rip off film called, you guessed it, Argo. They will do marketing write ups, poster advertising, and even a costumed table read at the Beverly Hills Hotel, all with the intent to just appear authentic as a film studio seeking out production locales in exotic Iran. The six hostages naturally are the film’s crew.

Affleck directs two acts here with two different narratives using both masks of theatre. Namely comedy and tragedy. The pleasure comes in watching Arkin and Goodman pair up to bring the Hollywood flavor that’s necessary. It’s great fun, especially when watching Arkin (in an Oscar nominated role) shyster his way with character actor Richard Kind to buy the Hollywood script-these two guys are like Oscar and Felix. Goodman is great as the been there done that Hollywood insider. He says “You can teach a Rhesus monkey to be a director.”

The drama comes with Affleck’s talent for delivering taut tension from his directing especially but also from his own performance as well as his cast of six hostages consisting of Tate Donovan, Scoot McNairy and Kerry Bishe. Bryan Cranston is also good as Mendez’ comunica from home. Cranston is just good in anything.

The tension builds with intimidating locals screaming of their loyalty to the Ayatollah as well as the eventual airport security. It’s all very nerve racking.

The critique for the the film lies in its own admission of historical inaccuracies. The escape was not as tense as the film suggests. More importantly, the caper was really primarily pulled off by the Canadian Ambassador, Ken Taylor (great actor Victor Garber). No. Canada is not given enough credit in the film. Still, here is a rare exception where I don’t mind. I guess because the suspense Affleck offers up is at its peak. You really shake your head at it all.

Forgive the cliche but Argo is a nail biting, edge of your seat thriller. At best, I can be grateful for learning about the true story following seeing the film. It’s a story that was kept hidden for 17 years. In these times of hardship and turmoil in America, it’s fortunate that a success can finally be celebrated.

Argo was undoubtedly worthy of its Best Picture Oscar win, and Ben Affleck should have at least been nominated for Best Director.

Fun Fact: Argo is produced by two former Batmans: George Clooney and Ben Affleck.

MATEWAN (1987)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: John Sayles
Cast: Chris Cooper, Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn, James Earl Jones
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 94%

PLOT: The (mostly) true story of a West Virginia coal town where the local miners’ struggle to form a union rose to the pitch of all-out war in 1920.


A few nights ago, I watched Matewan for the first time.  I haven’t seen many of director John Sayles’ films, but I’d venture to say it’s one of his best.  With loving authenticity and a keen ear for dialogue and music, Matewan depicts a nearly forgotten chapter of American history when coal miners in 1920 West Virginia attempted to unionize, the big corporation that owned the mine attempted to suppress and intimidate the workers, and everything came to a head one fateful day on the train tracks leading in and out of town.

I can’t pin down exactly why, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this movie.  When I was watching it, I tried to stop so I could go to bed and finish it in the morning.  But when I tried to sleep, my mind wouldn’t stop racing, thinking about the film, its message, its look, the SOUND of it.  I had to get back out of bed and finish it to the end before I was finally able to sleep.

The plot is nothing new, at least in broad strokes.  Small town locals take on corporate America and show them what for.  Seen it once, seen it a hundred times.  But for some reason, when this film showed scenes of company men evicting miners from their homes, or humiliating dinner guests at the boarding house where they’re staying, or spreading lies about union organizers, even employing a spy…I got mad.  I wasn’t just upset at the bad guys in a knee-jerk way, like disliking Nazis in a World War II film.  I was genuinely angry.  And I stayed angry for days whenever I thought about the movie.

Maybe it’s the thought of this particular kind of injustice depicted in Matewan that fueled my anger.  Here are people, poor people, desperate people, who lost their land, their homes, their dignity, and their lives so other men hundreds or thousands of miles away could report a six percent increase in profits at the next stockholder’s meeting.

There’s a powerful but terrible scene when the mining boss is introducing a group of new employees to the mine and its rules.  They are presented with tools…but they’re loans from the company, and their cost will be deducted from their first paycheck.  Miners can sharpen the tools with the company’s tool sharpeners…for a monthly fee.  The company provides a doctor…for a monthly fee.  The train ride to the mine was provided by the company…cost to be deducted.  The men are paid in company “script”, redeemable only at the company store.  Purchase any items available at the company store from an outside merchant…and you’re fired.

I remember thinking, this is literally slave labor.  How could anyone live like that, day after day, going down into a hole in the earth where the very real possibility of death, sudden or protracted, loomed over you every moment you’re down there?  And then to hear that the company could make conditions safer, but it’s just too expensive?  No WONDER they wanted to unionize.

Anyway.  Like I said.  It stuck with me.

Leaving aside the story, the film is extremely well made, especially considering the filmmakers were working within an extremely limited budget.  They employed the services of Haskell Wexler, one of the gods of movie cinematography, whose credits include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).  He employed a lot of low-light and natural-light photography, and as a result, even though Matewan was released in 1987, the movie looks and feels like a classic ‘70s movie.  It’s so precisely of a particular time and place that it’s a little jarring to see contemporary actors like Chris Cooper and Mary McDonnell in scenes that look like something out of Barry Lyndon or McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

The music choices are also out of this world, especially in a scene where musicians from three separate ethnic communities start riffing on each other’s music.  It’s an eloquent symbol of the kind of community and camaraderie that was needed for the miners to succeed in their task.

The story moves onward.  The miners first rally around Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), who came to town with the specific goal of unionizing the mine.  Then things go sour when company enforcers arrive.  The local sheriff (David Strathairn) makes a bad first impression, but later reveals his true nature in immensely satisfying style.  Guns are fired.  Lives are lost.  A spy is discovered.  And everything leads to a final showdown between powerful men with the might of corporate America backing them up and a few desperate miners who just want to be treated like men instead of so much dry goods.

If you’re anything like me, Matewan will stay with you long after it’s over.  Maybe not for the same reasons, but its memory will definitely linger.

ROSETTA (1999, Belgium)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Directors: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Cast: Émilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Olivier Gourmet
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 90%

PLOT: A poor young woman, teetering on the edge of desperation, struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother.


The word “neo-realist” is used several times in other reviews or movie blogs where this little Belgian film is discussed. I’m not a film scholar, so I can’t claim to know precisely what that term describes. Without searching for the dictionary definition, I think it refers to a film in which the predominant theme or tone is that of real life, happening to real people. A favorite method of creating this tone is to use non-professional actors in all the key roles, so one never gets a sense of acting from a performance, only reality.

If I got that right, then Rosetta is definitely a neo-realist film, and I typically do not like neo-realist films. I have seen Bicycle Thieves (1948) a couple of times, and while I acknowledge its place in cinema history and its craftsmanship, the appeal of the film (commonly called a masterpiece of Italian neo-realism) eludes me. It’s not my favorite genre and/or time period.

But Rosetta undercut my preconceived notions of the genre and had me riveted from its opening moments to its severely unconventional ending, ninety short minutes later.

The determining factor is the camerawork, at least at first. We immediately follow this young girl, Rosetta (a gutsy, award-winning performance by Émilie Dequenne), maybe 16 or 17 years old, who is walking briskly through a factory floor, though we’re not sure why at first. As she walks, the camera follows her, hand-held, unsteady, very queasy-cam, but it lends a sense of immediacy to the shot. The camera is almost running just to keep up with Rosetta, and I was instantly curious. Where is she going? Why is she walking so fast? Is she about to punch someone out?

But no, she’s about to be fired for being late, and when her boss intercepts her, she refuses to go quietly, to a point where security has to be called and chases her through the entire building. Why so desperate? Aren’t there other jobs to be had for someone her age out there?

Apparently not. This will be a theme throughout the film: her constant hustle to get a paying job. At one point, someone offers to hire her and pay her under the table, but she refuses: “I want a real job.”

Wherever she goes, the handheld camera follows right behind her, like a paparazzo who won’t give up. We only get a handful of long shots, like when she crosses a busy street after getting off a bus. Virtually every other shot is right behind her or right next to her. The effect creates the idea that Rosetta’s life is composed mostly of sleep and hustling to make that next dollar, or franc. In between, she maintains her trailer home with her alcoholic mother, a woman who is so pitifully down the road of addiction that she demeans herself with the landlord of their trailer park to pay for their water, just so she can keep the money to pay for more liquor. Rosetta ruthlessly tries to keep her mother in check, constantly berating her for her behavior, their familial positions clearly reversed.

Rosetta is not a happy film. How can it be? It simply follows this girl’s life from one crisis to another. But I was totally engrossed in a way that reminded me, for some reason, of another movie, Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, which was also shot and filmed in such a way that the actors (most of them recognizable and famous) didn’t feel like actors, and as such felt more real than many other films.

So…what is the takeaway from this movie? Is Rosetta a good person? She has noble intentions, I believe, but she is forced to be strong and calculating as a way of keeping her and her mother afloat. At one point, she meets a young man, might even like him, but at one point, on the shore of a small lake, he falls in and appears to be drowning…and Rosetta takes an awfully long time to decide whether to help him or not. After all, if he dies…she might be able to take his place at work.

I just watched a video essay on Netflix about how it’s not always necessary for you to like a character in a movie in order for it to be enjoyable. Overall, I’d agree with that assessment, especially with Rosetta (though What About Bob? is the CLEAR exception). This film was both dazzling and simple, a neat trick, involving a character I didn’t always agree with, but who I believed made the only choices she could make in her situation. I found myself asking what I would do in her place. Left to fend for myself with no steady job and an alcoholic parent, how would I fare in this world? How would you? Rosetta answers that question in a way that makes sense for the lead character. Her answers may differ from yours. Discuss.

THE CANDIDATE

By Marc S. Sanders

A politician’s career isn’t being elected. A politician’s career is getting elected. Once it is all over, what does the politician do now?

I’m not sure I understand why Jeremy Larner’s script won the Oscar in 1972; only because I didn’t gather much from this Robert Redford star vehicle. What exactly was the point of what I was watching? Redford plays Bill McKay, an idealistic lawyer recruited to run for the California senate on a Democratic ticket.

He’s sure to lose and I guess he’s okay with that because it’s acknowledged that way early on, and yet he just follows through with the campaign. He’s a kid compared to his seasoned Republican incumbent opponent. So he’s got that to deal with, and he’s remorsefully living in the unwanted shadow of his father, a former good ol’ boy governor. He also occasionally brushes past a girl that follows his campaign. Bill is happily married. Sounds like a good set up, right? Maybe it is. Yet I’m not sure any of this is the set up of the film. There is rarely any conversations in The Candidate. Hardly any dramatic pauses occur either. Nary a scene with his wife. The televised debate midway through is generic cliche really. One good moment occurs when the Republican candidate steps on Bill’s toes during a threatening brush fire. Now here’s some conflict. Now we’re cooking. Except…we’re not. The film returns to its established theme from earlier. For some reason in the last half of the film, it throws two or three punchlines at you, and…well, I guess it’s a comedy now.

The Candidate fills a majority of its two hours with McKay doing a lot of handshaking, baby holding, celebrity meets (Hi Natalie Wood!) and autograph signing. When that’s not happening, we are treated to repetitive close ups of members of his campaign and voters. I felt like I should have known these people. Did I fall asleep during their big introduction in the film, or were those scenes deleted from the finished product? Bill doesn’t say much except to make generic statements that no voter would ever disagree with. That’s okay, I guess, yet really it’s just boring. None of this packs any punch.

Larner was a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and Redford recruited him to write and tailor this script for him to produce and star, in response to his own dismay with the political climate at the time. Maybe The Candidate is supposed to be narrated in a documentarian sense but even if that’s the case, it fell short for me. Scenes here seem about as interesting as someone who unwraps a stick of gum and chews it.

Perhaps the Oscar was merited due to the political climate at the time. Redford’s character told audiences what they wanted to hear and magically Larner’s screenplay is now brilliant. If that’s the case, then I guess The Candidate is now dated. There’s no way this film outshines other political films like Wag The Dog, Primary Colors, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, or from what I hear Bulworth (never saw it).

The Candidate carries no drama, no comedy, no shock value. I’d say no message either, but the unexpected ending (unexpected only because I didn’t know the end scene was actually the end scene) finally told me something that I laboriously waited a long two hours for. The wait wasn’t worth it.

HOUSE OF GUCCI (2021)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Salma Hayek
My Rating: 5/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 61%

PLOT: An outsider marries into the Gucci family, and her unbridled ambition triggers a downward spiral of betrayal, revenge, and violence.


Watching Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci was a curious experience.  I could see glimmers of a great entertainment through bars of slow pacing, a meandering story, and unanswered questions.  The performances are top-notch, no question, but they are at the service of a movie that doesn’t seem interested in meeting their level of passion.

Inspired by true events, the movie tells the story of Patrizia Reggiani, a young woman from humble beginnings who meets and eventually marries Maurizio (Adam Driver), one of the heirs to the Gucci fashion empire.  Patrizia is played with fury and fire by Lady Gaga, who seems destined for another Oscar nomination.  Her character is portrayed as a latter-day Lady Macbeth, someone who sees through the deceptions of her new husband’s business associates and manipulates people and events for her family’s benefit.  In true tragic form, her ambitions threaten to derail everything she loves.

Adam Driver plays Maurizio as a rather slow fellow who disinherits himself so he can marry Patrizia but finds a way back into the fold via his uncle, Aldo (Al Pacino), who sees Maurizio as a good substitute for his own disappointing son, Paolo.  Paolo is played by Jared Leto, in another of the film’s performances destined for Oscar recognition.  Buried underneath flawless makeup and a skin cap, Leto portrays Paolo as a self-deluded buffoon whose fashion designs aren’t so much daring as unfortunate.  (Apparently, pastels and brown were never meant to mix…who knew?)

I mention the performances because they are the sole highlights of the film.  For two-and-a-half hours, these performances play against a backdrop of one dreary scene after another. Sure, the performances are fun to watch, but at the end of the day, if they don’t have anything interesting to say, it gets a little boring.  We get behind-the-scenes intrigues and betrayals that seem to owe more than a little to earlier crime epics by Scorsese and Coppola, but there was nothing to get really excited about.  Nothing grabbed me.

Ridley Scott’s films are normally way more imaginative than this.  They look better.  The cinematography is usually more inspired.  I’m not talking about his action or sci-fi epics, either.  I mean his small-scale triumphs like Matchstick Men or Thelma & Louise.  What happened here?  Was he not inspired by the story?  There is great material here, more than enough back-stabbing and lying and cheating to go around.  Yet everything is subdued, and plods, and inspires more yawns than anything else.  I didn’t experience any kind of excitement or passion one way or the other for any of the characters, or for the story.  It just didn’t make me care.

By the time House of Gucci is over, we’ve seen betrayals, marital infidelity, divorce, back-stabbing business deals, sex, and murder.  I have a friend who wrote a stage play that has almost all of those things, and it was WAY more entertaining than this film.

LA LA LAND (2016)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 91% Certified Fresh

PLOT: While navigating their careers in Los Angeles, a jazz pianist (Gosling) and an actress (Stone) fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future.


SPOILER ALERTS! MULTIPLE SPOILER ALERTS!


La La Land was greeted by the American public in one of two ways.  There was no middle of the road.  You either loved it or hated it.

Critics loved it.  It broke records at the Golden Globes that year and was the odds-on favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars (Moonlight took the prize instead, and deservedly so).

When it came to the viewing public, people were immediately divided into opposing camps, with each trying to convince the other they were wrong.  “It’s homage!” cried one camp.  “It’s derivative and sad!” cried the other.

Me?  I’m part of the “loved-it” camp.  And after re-watching it tonight, for the first time since seeing it in theatres, I have no plans to change my mind.

I once wrote that there is no movie more in love with “old Hollywood” than The Artist.  Well, La La Land is more in love with classic movie musicals, specifically, than any other modern movie in recent memory.  It opens with an astonishing musical number, “Another Day of Sun”, set on a Los Angeles overpass.  In a breathtaking feat of choreography and cinematography, scores of dancers perform nifty moves in and around a traffic jam, incorporating a live band inside what looks like a UPS truck, in one single take…or at least what LOOKS like one single take.  Could be some CG in there.  Who cares?  It’s awesome, and it sets the tone right away: this will be like one of those old musicals where people break into song and dance without warning.  You can stay where you are or you can leave now, but this is what’s happening.

After that, we settle in to a tried and true story of boy (Sebastian [Ryan Gosling], a jazz pianist who wants to start his own jazz club) meets girl (Mia [Emma Stone], an aspiring actress looking for a break).  This part of the story was old when Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did it in countless other films, so yeah, I get it.  I can see why some folks called it derivative.

But that criticism neatly dismisses the underlying subplot about the Old vs. the New.  Sebastian desperately wants to start a jazz club that plays the greats – Monk, Coltrane, Davis – because, as he says in a passionate speech to Mia, jazz is dying.  Nobody wants to hear it anymore.  It’s old.  (He decries a nearby club that combines jazz, samba, and tapas, or some such nonsense.)  “They worship everything and value nothing,” he laments.

But Keith, a fellow musician (played by John Legend) tries to get him to see sense.  (“How are you gonna be a revolutionary if you’re such a traditionalist?”)  History is written by the people who strike out in a new direction.  Sebastian himself uses this philosophy with Mia, who has gotten tired of auditioning for the same teachers and doctors and coroners over and over again.  He tells her to do something different if you’re tired of the same old/same old.  She takes his advice and starts writing a one-woman play about her life.

And here’s where it gets cool.  While the characters in the movie are urging each other to embrace new concepts, La La Land still has one foot firmly in the past, i.e., the grand musical traditions of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, etcetera.  Two later numbers stick out in my mind.  One is a twilight duet between Sebastian and Mia, shot on location in the Hollywood Hills when the sky is that perfect shade of somewhere-between-pink-and-purple.  They sing a little and then they do a beautiful dance together, but they’ve just met, so they’re careful to dance ALONE together…watch it and you’ll see what I mean.  Right out of Vincente Minnelli.  (Let’s be clear…Gosling and Stone are not exactly Fred and Ginger, but they do a damn sight better than I could do myself, so I give them props.)

Another number with classic-musical overtones is set during the first giddy months of their relationship.  With little or no singing (can’t remember which), we follow Sebastian and Mia as they tick off Los Angeles landmarks, finishing at the famous Griffith Observatory.  They enter the planetarium, and in a gloriously giddy moment of cinematic fantasy, they rise into the air and dance among the stars and galaxies before falling perfectly into their seats and sharing a kiss.  I no longer remember what I did the first time watching this movie, but this time around, I watched that whole sequence with a goofy grin on my face.  If you can’t enjoy watching people dancing in the stars, well…

At one point, Sebastian tells someone, “You say ‘romantic’ like it’s a dirty word.”  I like that.  This movie is, above all, romantic, in spite of how it ends.  It’s romantic in the sense that it revels in the unreasonable, illogical hope that everything will work out okay in the end.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still dream.  (There’s even a song about this exact thing, sung by Emma Stone in a sequence near the end that oozes romance and heartbreak.)

But all of this is nothing…nothing…compared to the emotional roller-coaster of the last thirty minutes of the movie.  It’s here that La La Land gets all serious in the middle of the fluff, because it explores the nature of success and what is necessary to achieve it.  Sebastian is touring with a band that pays well…but it’s not exactly a jazz ensemble.  Mia is just about ready to give up acting…until a casting agent gives her an opportunity to star in a movie shooting in Paris for four months.  These two characters, for whom the audience has been rooting for the previous 90 minutes, are on a downward spiral, and the only way to save their relationship would be for one or the other to completely give up on their dreams.  But neither of them would ask that of the other.  So they go their separate ways.

WHAT?  After all this they don’t wind up together?  Well…what would you have preferred?  An ending that awkwardly keeps them together, with him, say, playing jazz in a French club while she shoots a movie in Paris during the day?  Enjoying success together?  Having kids?  Sure, that kind of ending is POSSIBLE.  (In fact, in one of the many highlights of the movie, you even get a tease of what that might have been like.)  But, hey.  Isn’t that just the traditionalist way of looking at things?  Why not strike out in a different direction?  Do something no one’s doing.  End your movie where each character gets what they’ve always wanted their entire lives…even if that means they don’t get each other.

Boy, that last sentence sounds harsh.  But that’s what this movie’s about, and I think the film’s detractors simply couldn’t get past the grand tradition that demands the two leads wind up together.  They wanted Singin’ in the Rain, and instead they got the musical equivalent of The Remains of the Day.  (Maybe not quite that extreme, but I trust the point is made.)

ANYWAY.  Like I said, I just finished watching this a couple of hours ago, and I am no less convinced of its greatness.  Even though it’s a wrench watching their relationship head towards the rocks, the movie makes up for it at the end with half an hour of glorious, emotional catharsis that left me feeling wrung out, but in a good way.  It’s not quite a tragedy, but not quite a comedy.  Like life itself, it falls somewhere in between.

MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (2016)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Sam Shepard
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two men go on the run with a child in tow, pursued by federal agents and by members of a cult who believe the child has special powers.


The general concept of “mystery” in a film is a subtle art.  Not enough mystery, and people will say they’ve seen it all before.  Too much mystery, and people will wonder why they’ve spent good money to be confused for two hours.

Every now and then, though, a movie comes along that shows everyone else how it’s done.  It manages to plunge the viewer headlong into the story with little to no exposition, provides just enough clues to keep things intriguing without giving the game away, and supplies a climax that is not just satisfying, but revelatory.  Prometheus is one of those movies.  So is Freaks (2018).

And so is Midnight Special, from director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud).

This movie grabs you right from the opening minutes.  Two men appear to be holed up in a hotel room with a young boy wearing blue swim goggles.  Cardboard and duct tape cover the windows.  A news broadcast on the TV reports on the young boy’s kidnapping.  However, he does not appear to be distressed in any way.  One of the men may or may not be his father.  He goes willingly when they vacate the room and hit the road.

In another part of the country, a pastor watches the same newscast with concern.  He later leads a church service, but the scripture reading consists of non-sequiturs and random numbers.  The FBI interrupts the service and hauls each and every church member in for questioning about the missing boy.

What the deuce is going on here?  How is this church connected to the boy?  Where are the two men taking the boy?  What’s with the blue goggles?  What is so important about this boy that the two men with him would be willing to kill for him?

These are all very good questions.  Whenever the movie takes the time to answer one of the questions, two more spring up in its place.  And I may as well tell you now: not every question will get an answer.  But instead of feeling frustrated, I just got more and more involved in the film.  I felt like I was an active participant in figuring out the story, along with the characters.  There’s nothing quite like feeling involved in a movie, rather than simply watching a movie.

When the revelations arrive about where the men are headed with the boy, why they’re headed there, and why the FBI is interested, I’m not gonna lie, I was gobsmacked.  In retrospect, I suppose I should have seen some of the plot points coming a mile away.  But that’s the beauty of the screenplay and the direction.  I wasn’t interested in trying to second guess what surprises were in store.  As a result, when the surprises arrived, I was constantly in a state of jaw-dropping amazement.

I would also like to point out the great restraint used by the filmmakers when it came to the few scenes that required CGI enhancement.  There are a hundred ways these scenes could have gone wrong, resulting in a shot that completely takes you out of the movie.  They avoided all those pitfalls and instead created scenes of startling beauty, even when things seem to be going wrong…or when they at last go right.

This is a movie that deserves to be seen with as clean a slate as possible.  It didn’t exactly make a dent in the pop-culture zeitgeist, so it’s not likely you’ll see any spoilers on the internet without Googling the movie, but why would you want to do that?  Keep an open mind, don’t ask how it ends, and find a way to see this movie.  You won’t be disappointed.