Chef (2014)

It’s been very exciting to watch Jon Favreau go from the up-and-coming indie director behind Swingers to a director that studios were willing to take a chance on and who would put out (mostly) quality mainstream stuff, like Elf and Iron Man. But with Chef, Favreau goes back to his indie roots, and this movie is a gosh-darn delight.

Favreau plays Carl Casper, a famous professional chef, who’s in a creative rut. This is largely because his boss, the owner of the restaurant where he works, only wants him to cook “safe” menus full of food that everyone knows and likes. But then again, Carl also chooses to stay there, so it’s at least partially his own fault. A well-known food blogger, played by Oliver Babish Platt, visits the restaurant and writes a scathing review, lamenting that this once visionary chef has lowered himself to cooking forgettable, uninspiring dishes that are not worth the exorbitant price the restaurant charges. Only he says it with a lot more meanness. And makes fun of Carl’s weight. Carl is outraged, and after his ten-year-old son teaches him how to use Twitter, gets into a flame war with the guy and basically becomes a meme. His ex-wife, who he is still close with, has been urging him to get a food truck, but he feels that’s beneath him. Until his internet infamy, that is. After getting a truck and fixing it up, he spends the summer driving across the country in it with his son and a guy who used to work for him, testing out the menu and trying new things in each new city — South Beach, New Orleans, Austin (I nearly screamed when Franklin BBQ got a huge cameo).

This is a lovely little movie about friendship, family, and creativity. I kept bracing myself for the obligatory end-of-act-2 Horrible Thing to happen, but it’s just ... nice. And positive. Which I guess makes some critics think it’s hollow, but I disagree. I love how it celebrates social media and what a huge impact that lets Carl’s son have on the business. I also just love the kid who plays his son, because he’s believable without being one of those creepy too-old-for-their-years child actors. The movie has tons of food porn, and you will probably immediately be looking for a place that sells Cubanos (Cuban sandwiches). It also has a lovely soundtrack, which is going on heavy rotation on my iPod for the summer.

It’s been out for a while, but if it’s still playing wherever you are, I highly recommend it.

Gravity (2012)

One of the classic field trips when I was a kid was to the planetarium at the Cumberland Museum. Whatever group I was with would pile in to the domed room and watch in awe as the lights went down and the museum people put on a show. But at least once in one of those trips I found out one of my big fears. There was some part of the presentation where they were showing us the view of earth from space and the view pulled back and back and back, and I got the distinct (and surprisingly unpleasant) feeling of drifting further into space. Now, I love astronomy, and I love learning about space. But I realized right then and there that I probably would not ever want to go there. Because that sensation of drifting further and further away from earth was the most scared I think I'd ever been.

So when I say I was a little afraid to see Gravity, and that even the trailers made me very anxious, to the point of shortness of breath and (with the last trailer I saw) fearful tears, I am not exaggerating. And, being the huge cinema snob that I am, I of course had to see it in the most potentially traumatizing format possible - 3D and IMAX. Of course.

If you've seen the trailers, you know most of the set-up here, but I'll expand on it a little. Sandra Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a biomedical engineer who is on her first space mission. George Clooney plays Matt Kowalski, a veteran astronaut who is on his *last* space mission. While the two of them and another crew member are on a spacewalk, debris from a satellite crashes into a space shuttle, causing a chain reaction that results in loss of communication with Mission Control in Houston, as well the deaths of the entire crew except Ryan and Kowalski. Probably the most terrifying sequence to me - the girl who got so scared at the planetarium when she was little - is Ryan tumbling out into space. Kowalski is able to reach her, and they have a plan to get out of this alive. Well, since that's the first half hour of the film, you know things aren't going to go according to plan. And that's where I'd better stop. :-)

What makes this movie so astounding is the cinematic language and the very real sense of danger. This is not a film that could have been made ten years ago - the technology simply didn't exist yet to pull off the visuals at work here. And director Alfonso Cuarón, who we haven't heard from since his wonderful 2006 film Children of Men, uses these visuals in a way that few filmmakers can. The first 13 minutes of the movie are one uninterrupted shot, and that's not something you'd necessarily notice without being told because it's not flashy or showy, except that the cinematography gives you the distinct feeling of floating in space. What it does is put you right where the characters are, and when shit starts going down, you absolutely feel the terror.

Most of this movie is Sandra Bullock in a one-woman show that has to be the pinnacle of her career so far. I've never been that big a fan of hers, though I know she's better than most critics give her credit for, but she's on a whole other level here. She doesn't have anyone to bounce off of (except briefly with Clooney). The movie reminded me a bit of Apollo 13, which I guess seems like an obvious comparison. Both movies are about things going terribly wrong on space missions, but in Apollo 13, we're just as much in Mission Control as we are on that shuttle. We're invested in the astronauts' survival as much because Ed Harris and his crew are invested in it as we are for our own investment in those characters. Here, there's no Mission Control, at least none that can be of any use to Ryan. It's just Ryan and her own resources and, really, her own will to get out of this alive. She gets a little help, but what ultimately happens to her is - as much as it can be, considering her circumstances - all up to her.

This movie hit me emotionally in a lot of unexpected ways, particularly as I've just passed the one-year anniversary of my father's death. I suppose that, like all artistic endeavors, you'll get from it largely what you bring to it. For my part, it's the most emotionally draining and rewarding movie I've seen in a long time.

One final note, and I probably wouldn't even have thought of this if I hadn't been revisiting The West Wing recently and renewed my obsession with it. My favorite moment, and I suspect it's a favorite for a lot of people, reminded me pretty forcibly of Delores Landingham. If you see the film and you know that name, you'll see what I mean.

Life of Pi (2012)

Right off the bat, this is perhaps the most visually stunning film of the year - of pretty much any year, in fact. I would expect no less from an Ang Lee film, and what I have seen of films that utilize Indian culture, they are some of the most vibrant, colorful experiences I have had seeing movies, period.

  Life of Pi (2012)
I have never read the novel on which this film is based, so I can't comment on how good a translation the film is. But here's at least some of the story. A man named Pi Patel is basically telling his life story to a writer. He talks at first about his early childhood and the origin of his name (which is actually Piscine, but he eventually shortened it to "Pi" because he couldn't take any more "pissing" taunts from his schoolmates). He talks about his father, who was a zookeeper, and some harsh lessons he learned about the animals they took care of, especially a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker (yes, really). He also explains how he became a follower of not only Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam, finding happiness in the variety of inspiration that these three faiths gave him.

When Pi is a teenager, his father decides to give up the zoo and take his family and the animals overseas, where he will then sell the animals and hopefully be able to better provide for his family. After a storm demolishes the ship they are traveling on, Pi's entire family and most of the animals are lost to the sea, and Pi is left alone in a lifeboat with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and Richard Parker. The use of 3D (and I cannot stress enough how much the 3D adds to the experience of this particular movie) has an unexpected effect here, as the claustrophobia of this situation is pretty intense. After a sequence of scenes that makes up some of the most horrifying few minutes of any film I've seen in recent memory, the passenger list on the lifeboat is whittled down to just Pi and Richard Parker. Most of the rest of the film deals with Pi trying to stay alive. As he says in a journal (part of the survival kit on the lifeboat), his fear of Richard Parker keeps him alert and having to keep him fed (so that the tiger won't eat him) gives him purpose.

I have seen several complaints about the framing device of this film, notably in the last ten minutes, which (in some viewers' eyes) undoes everything that came before by positing that none of it was real, that it was all some metaphor. I could not possibly see this more differently. Pi is telling his story to a couple of officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport who are trying to piece together what happened when the ship went down. They don't believe his story about the animals, so he tells them another one - essentially the same story (at least the first part of the lifeboat adventure), but with all humans - and instead of being an uplifting story of survival, it's a harrowing story of harsh conditions and lost innocence. What I took from it is that Pi's original version is absolutely true. But he tells the second story because he thinks the two men are more likely to believe it. This seems to be a case of the viewer getting from it what they bring to it, which I think is a mark of real art, not a failure in storytelling.

The way the story presents Pi's loss of his family, and eventually the loss of Richard Parker, was poignant in a way that really pushed my particular buttons. In particular, Pi parting ways with Richard Parker was the most poignant for me, because it reminded me so much of how I'm affected when people drift out of my life, whether by death or (more frequently) circumstance. We're all alone, on our own journey, and though we may have company from time to time, people drift in and out of our stories constantly, because they're in stories of their own.

If you've seen the trailer, you know you're in for a visual treat. Strangely, I think the trailer actually gives away *most* of the money shots from the visual effects, but there's still a lot to feast on. As far as cast goes, we spend most of our time with one human actor, Suraj Sharma, who plays the teenage Pi. This was his film debut, and while I wouldn't say he blew me away, I was impressed in that, for a first-time film actor, it could have gone wrong in so many ways and never did. The other standout is Irrfah Khan, who plays Pi as an adult.

This is a wonderful movie, and one which kind of demands to be seen on a big screen (preferably in 3D). I can't imagine what this movie will be like in a home video format, but if this movie joins my collection, I'm thankful I have a big screen to play it on.

The Master (2012)

I first became aware of Paul Thomas Anderson with Boogie Nights, his Altman-esque ode to the waning golden age of porn in the 1970s. Subject matter aside, it was a remarkable ensemble piece that was followed up with an even more stellar film with a similar DNA, Magnolia. After getting a surprisingly layered performance from Adam Sandler in his next film, Punchdrunk Love, his work started to go in a new and more ambitious direction. As critics have said, where once he was trying to be Robert Altman, now he's trying to be Stanley Kubrick. There's no doubt in my mind that people are going to be looking back at 2007's There Will Be Blood as one of the most accomplished pieces of filmmaking ever made, but if you've seen it - perhaps out of bemused curiosity as to why everyone was suddenly talking about milkshakes back in 2007 - you might be thinking "... really?!" I hasten to add that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with that response, but this is something to keep in mind before wading into the salty waters of his newest film, The Master. Like There Will Be Blood before it, this is a film of lingering shots and slow burn storytelling. Storytelling, in fact, might be a misleading term, as the film centers more on the performances than plot.

Unlike There Will Be Blood, this movie does not have a lot of hooks for pop culture to get snagged on. I can't recall any notable "I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE" moments that can be easily lampooned or whittled down to amusing memes. Where There Will Be Blood was bombastic, The Master is more measured, with the real spirit of the film lying in it's quieter moments, some of which barely conceal much deeper and more intense emotion. You may have heard that this film is about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. That's ... sort of true. It is and it isn't. A comparison I've heard a lot from people who've seen it is that it's as much a movie about Scientology as Citizen Kane was a movie about William Randolph Hearst. I'll just leave that there, as my knowledge of the Church of Scientology is at absolute zero. For my money, it's about a guy who's a bit lost after World War II ends and eventually finds himself in a cult.

Our main character is Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix, whose face is weathered beyond his years and shows the signs of his having survived more than his share of battles, both physical and spiritual (seriously, he looks even more like Johnny Cash than he did when he played him in Walk the Line). He's a former Navy man and comes back from World War II to work a string of jobs, each of which he eventually abandons with great histrionics. He has a gift for making homemade liquor from household chemicals (e.g., paint thinner, photo developing solution), but after nearly killing another man who samples one of his concoctions, he runs away in a panic and stumbles onto a riverboat where a group of people are celebrating a wedding. He wakes up the next morning in one of the boat's bunks and is brought to meet Lancaster Dodd (whose daughter is the one getting married). Dodd (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) found the last of Freddie's most recent batch of hooch and sampled it, thoroughly impressed though still admonishing. Right away, you see an instant connection between these two men, and this movie could be characterized as a sort of non-sexual romance between them. Freddie is clearly much more drawn to Dodd than to "The Cause," and everyone around Dodd is nervous about what effect Freddie is having on him.

What draws these two men to each other? Freddie is a very crude, animalistic man. Early in the film, we see him jerk off into the ocean. When one of his fellow sailors builds a sand sculpture of a naked, supine woman, Freddie entertains everyone by feverishly humping it. In a psych test, he sees sex organs in all the inkblots. And during his first interview with Dodd, he farts and giggles at himself. Dodd, on the other hand, is very erudite and gentlemanly, almost effeminate (though he's definitely the, errr, "top" with Freddie ... she said, hoping that everyone noticed the quote marks). Freddie is drawn to Dodd's magnetism, no doubt, but I also think that, in the wake of nearly killing a man earlier in the film, he is craving direction and wants to be told what to do. Dodd, I think, is drawn to Freddie's more primal nature (even while chastising him for it). I believe it also must be a classic case of "I can change him." 

This movie is a bit of a Rorschach test, which I'm sure is by design (I see what you did there, PT, with the inkblot test scene). There's obviously something Anderson is trying to say about faith and religion here, but it asks more questions than it answers, which might be frustrating for a lot of viewers but I think it's exactly what Anderson was trying to do (ambiguity, I mean, not frustrating the audience :P). For me, I can't help seeing The Cause as having an issue that a lot of faith-based organizations, including churches, have. They want to assimilate Freddie, to help him on their terms and not take who he is and what his issues are into account. And when Dodd's affection for Freddie lets the mission change even the slightest bit, it's seen as a threat.

A lot of critics seem to have issues with the, shall we say, malleable nature of what this film is about. I think that even the title itself is open to interpretation. Who is "the master" in this movie? The answer isn't as obvious as it might seem. But I have to love a film that makes me think about what it's really about and what it's telling me. Sometimes it's exhausting to watch a film like that, and sometimes you just want to see people slip on a banana peel or blow crap up, but films like this are essential, too.

In technical terms, this movie could not be more beautifully photographed, and if there is a theater near you showing it in 70mm (the way it was filmed), I would highly recommend seeing it that way. And Anderson uses the 70mm, not just to film landscapes and vistas, but more often to show us as much detail as possible of the spectacular performances his actors, especially Phoenix and Hoffman, who frequently appear in extreme close-up. Also of note is the period production design, which is Jack Fisk's handiwork. I always love seeing Fisk's name attached to a movie, not just because he's Mr. Sissy Spacek, but because he's been around since the 1970s and done work on some amazing films, including DePalma's Carrie (and he's pretty much responsible for his then new-ish wife auditioning for that film). In other technical news, if you liked Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood, his score for The Master is even better.

One more thing, and this may be something you find crass to focus on, but I think it's a huge part of Anderson's sensibilities, and I kind of love him for it. There are a couple of scenes that include some rather frank female nudity, one of which is a sort of hallucination (featuring several women) and the other of which is a sex scene (featuring one woman, along with a man who you of course see less of because seeing too much of a man's body takes us into NC-17 territory and don't get me started on that double standard). Both scenes feature actresses with very different kinds of bodies, none (well, almost none) of which you're used to seeing in scenes that ogle the female form. And it's kind of awesome to see women's bodies celebrated, even (or maybe especially) if they don't fit the big-boobs-on-a-stick (or sometimes two-aspirins-on-a-stick) blueprint that seems to be all Hollywood sees fit to point a camera at.

I'm curious as to where this movie will end up in the Oscar conversation. A lot of critics seem to be falling all over themselves to praise it to the skies, but it's not what you'd call a crowd-pleaser. I'd say that Phoenix and Hoffman are in the acting race for sure, though thankfully they won't have to compete with one another, since the studio is planning to push Phoenix as the lead and Hoffman in support. If the Academy likes it enough, there could be room on the movie's coattails for a nomination as well for Amy Adams, who has a small but memorable role. Ack, the Oscar stuff is starting again, isn't it? I'm not ready. :D

Maniac (1980)

It's been a long time since there's been a Final Girl Film Club, but this month we're taking on William Lustig's classic splatterfest, Maniac!




I was afraid of Maniac! even before I saw it. I'd heard about it and had seen a couple of clips, and I just didn't think I could handle it. And then there was the poster. I think it was October of last year when I finally got the nerve to watch it, and I paired it in a "creepy mannequin" double feature with Tourist Trap, another movie I'd been scared to watch. It may have been a mistake to watch both movies, especially Tourist Trap, on my big screen, because about 6 minutes into Tourist Trap - when shit gets real in a hurry - I was already broken. So after that, Maniac! was no big deal.

Like a lot of movie psychos, Maniac!'s eponymous maniac Frank Zito has mommy issues. His mother was a prostitute who physically abused him for years before dying in a car crash and leaving him an orphan. He deals with all this by killing women, scalping them, and bringing their hair and clothes home to put on mannequins in his apartment. He sleeps with each mannequin for several nights, using it to have conversations with his dead mother, before eventually tiring of each mannequin and needing to acquire a new victim.

Frank becomes taken with a photographer named Anna and goes to one of her photo shoots. This scene contains perhaps the single greatest random musical moment in the history of film. There's not a good version of the actual scene from the movie, but here's the full recording of the song. Just imagine Caroline Munro taking pictures and saying encouraging things to models ("Alright ladies, it's lookin' good!").



This is a movie that really captures the skeazy New York of the late 70s and early 80s. The director, William Lustig, has some great stories about shooting this movie, notably about the scene where Tom Savini gets his head blown off under the Verrazano Bridge. Savini made a model of his own head and they fired a real shotgun to blow it to bits. And then had to flee the scene in the next 60 seconds because it's against the law and punishable by jail time to fire a gun in the city.

This is also a movie that makes heavy and sinister use of mannequins and was one of the first (thought definitely not THE first) movie to do so. Lustig was influenced by Tourist Trap, which had come out the year before. He also was inspired by a story that I've shared elsewhere before about a couple of prostitutes who were murdered in a Times Square hotel. The cops couldn't identify the bodies, so they took the bloody clothes off of the dead bodies and put them on a couple of mannequins, putting them in the windows of an NYPD kiosk in Times Square - in fact, I'm pretty sure it was this one -






And hoping that the people on the street would be able to identify the dead girls by their clothes. I think of that every time I pass that station.

This is a great splatter flick, and Frank's psychosis reminds me a lot of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs - the novel, more than the movie. It's easy to label this movie as misogynist, but it's not correct to do so, in my opinion. It's about misogyny, sure, but that's not the same thing.

In closing, I will leave you with a moment that I'd forgotten completely about from my previous viewing but which may in fact be my favorite WTF moment in the film, in which Frank "feeds" crumbs to a naked doll that he has placed in a birdcage.



"Polly want a cracker?"

One more thing. They've recently made a new version of this movie with Elijah Wood as the killer. People seem to be boggling about this, but these people have obviously never seen Elijah Wood in Sin City. It seems like much more of a POV style movie (from what little I've seen). I'm sad they didn't stick with the NYC setting, but then again NYC isn't as scary as it was in 1980. Anyway, I'm interested and plan on checking it out when it comes out (I think) later this year.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Hushpuppy, and she lived with her daddy in the Bathtub. The Bathtub was a bayou below the levy in Louisiana, and it was not what you or I would consider livable conditions by any stretch of the imagination. But for Hushpuppy and her daddy and their little community, it was home, and they wouldn't have been able to live anywhere else.

If that sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale or a myth, that's probably the best way to describe Beasts of the Southern Wild, a story about a little girl (played amazingly by a tiny little biscuit named Quvenzhané Wallis - for future reference, my best guess at pronunciation is "cue-VEN-zha-NAY") whose universe starts to fall apart when her father becomes ill.

Hushpuppy's mother left the Bathtub a while back, and Hushpuppy's father, Wink, has been trying to prepare his six-year-old child for a time when he can no longer be around to protect her. Hushpuppy has her own house, separate from Wink, where she keeps what little is left to remember her mother by. If you let yourself get overcome in pity for these characters, you might just die during a scene where Hushpuppy takes an old Michael Jordan jersey from a shrine on the wall and drapes it on a chair, where it proceeds to speak to her in her mother's voice. But what I love about this film is that it never pities its characters or their way of life. Ever. This is simply how Hushpuppy sees the world, and how her community has taught her to live. When someone dies in the Bathtub, they aren't mourned, they are celebrated, and crying is just not done. We get a nice, long look at Hushpuppy's life in the Bathtub, including what happens when a heavy rain puts it entirely underwater. And by the time the third act rolls around, you should see this place not as a den of absolute poverty and want but as something beautiful. Which is why it's so jarring and frustrating to see people from above the levy (the "normal" world) poking around and forcing the people out "for their own good."

But I've already said too much. This is a stunning movie, and Quvenzhané Wallis capably carries it on her itty bitty shoulders with a performance that doesn't seem possible from one so young. It's only out in a few cities at the moment, but I'm sure it will get a wider release once it starts picking up awards momentum, which it is bound to do. Keep an eye out for it. It's a rare beauty of a film.

Oscars Post-Mortem

I know everyone else has done this already and the Oscars are officially Over, but I was asleep most of the day so this is the first chance I've gotten to do the "morning after" thing.

I really enjoyed the show this year. It was much more enjoyable, and much more in-character for the Oscars, than last year. I don't know what the producers and Tom Sherak have taken away from the experience, but I was glad they stopped caring - for this year, at least - about courting the young demographic (and even poked fun at it). Seriously, aside from the Justin Bieber cameo in the opening, I think there was only one presenter under the age of 30 - Emma Stone, who I'll get to below.

[pic removed]

Best Dressed - Jessica Chastain. I also really loved Ellie Kemper (another redhead who made an awesome color choice) and Gwyneth Paltrow (that cape!). I was not completely sold on Viola Davis's dress, though I loved that she came in her natural hair.

Best Presenter - Emma Stone with Ben Stiller. After all of Stiller's outlandish appearances in year's past (going back to 2001's Best Costume Design gag when he was trussed up as Gimli while Owen Wilson was much more understated in Hogwarts robes), I loved that they poked fun at that and had him be the straight man to Emma's hilarious overexuberance.

- Also loved the Bridesmaids gals. I seriously think no one has told Martin Scorsese about the drinking game, which if I remember correctly came from the SAG awards, and I don't think he attended those. His "what's going on?" reaction was hilarious.

Best Acceptance Speech - Octavia Spencer, who seemed so genuinely overwhelmed at not only the award but the standing ovation.

Obligatory Cirque du Soleil Comment - This is something that I'll bet played really well to the room but just didn't quite translate on television. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. This night is for the people in that room; my entertainment is secondary.

Captain Von Trapp, For the Win - At 82, Christopher Plummer is now the oldest recipient of a competitive Oscar. Previous record-holder was Jessica Tandy, who won for Driving Miss Daisy when she was 80.

Oh, THAT's What That Was - I was boggling at the women in tiny outfits passing out popcorn, but it seems to have been part of the "old movie house" theme of the year. Very fitting, given the unofficial Best Picture theme of "nostlagia."

Minor Disappointment - I was not wild about the opening medley. There were parts of it that were great, like the "Amore" thing with Scorsese. But there were misses. For example, I thought it was weird to dedicate basically the entire Moneyball section to the fact that Jonah Hill lost weight.

Not-So-Minor Disappointment - Don't get me wrong. I loved seeing Meryl Streep win last night. But I felt so sad for Viola Davis. Having said that, I agree with a comment I saw on Twitter and would like it a lot more to see Davis win for playing someone who is not a maid. And it helps to know that she and Meryl are friends and would be horrified to think that people are getting upset and creating stories about some rivalry.

Other Stuff
People were amazed that Best Actor was presented before Best Actress, as if it was somehow a Big Moment for women, to have been deferred to the more dramatic next-to-last award. But in actual fact, they usually alternate the order of those awards.

People are also offended by Billy Crystal's Sammy Davis, Jr. impression, and while I get that a bit like that is no longer really acceptable, Crystal has been doing that gag for years.  And he's been doing it at the Oscars since at least 1996.  I think the outrage should be accompanied by acknowledgement that it wasn't that long ago when that was an acceptable impression.

Controversy aside, I thought Billy Crystal rocked, for the most part. Yeah, it was "safe" comedy and felt a bit like filler and going through the motions, but look - the Oscars (again, in my opinion) are not meant to be Great Television. They usually turn out to be something close to it, because they're live and they're all about seeing our favorite actors in their own skin, as it were. Lame jokes and poignant clip reels are meant to help nominees and presenters relax on what must be the most stressful night of many of their lives. The first priority of the show should be to play to the room, which is why it was never going to fly to have the Muppets host. Sorry, Kermit.

One final note...
[pics removed]
They gotta be related somehow.