Jim the Rebel (1955)

 

Note to those enamored of foregone eras, Jim the Rebel (1955) did indeed have a cause, despite the film's title.

His cause was fierce opposition to those in whom he'd lost trust -- authority figures, especially parents, who knew little and understood less about young people and seemed unwilling to really acknowledge their cluelessness.

The rebels' anger, obstinance and destructiveness -- and their generosity, devotion and compassion for beloved peers -- were tools of defiance.

Young people's distrust boiled over into rebellion, which, of course, ended badly for them because nothing wounds adults more deeply than being told by their children they're unfit. But it won't move them to self-correction. Rather, they will turn their guns on their own offspring before admitting they're wrong.

While adults claim to be ready to do anything for young people, that assurance does not seem to include self-reflection.

Pols, take note!

Dishonesty does nothing for today's young people who are schooled by social media in openness and who are disgusted with old folks' contentiousness.

I fear the coming years will be rocked with even more youthful discontent, much like the decades that immediately followed Rebel Without a Cause.

Tár

 

Todd Field's riveting character study Tár takes international headlines about sexual misconduct in the world of classical music and gives them a twist by making the predator in this case the world's most famous female composer-conductor.

As played by the ever-masterful Cate Blanchett, Lydia Tár is a demanding, perfectionistic germaphobe who is the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, wife to the orchestra's concertmistress (Nina Hoss) and parent to a troubled young daughter. Tár is also a dismissive and abusive taskmaster who uses her position and power to intimidate and seduce, remove those who would challenge her and annihilate her enemies.

She is haunted by a past relationship with a young protege, whom she continues to ignore, using her dutiful assistant (Noémie Merlant) as a buffer.

An early scene in the film involving an anxious Julliard student (played by Zethphan D. Smith-Gneist) reveals, with writerly brilliance, how the maestra eviscerates -- incisively, leaving her victim desaguinated and demoralized, and in the case of young Max fuming with bitter indignation. And Tár could not care less.

In this way Field -- who has directed only one other major release, 2001's In The Bedroom -- introduces the audience to a fascinating woman's peculiar sociopathy. And he uses the rest of the film to explore the breadth and depth of her pathology, with some suggestion that madness might be lurking just under the surface.

Blanchett is as wonderful as the critics say, moving effortlessly through the emotional array Field has written -- stoniness, fragility, defensiveness and tenderness -- in both English and German. She seems possessed by both her love of music and her inaccessibility. Combined they blind her to her profound weaknesses.

Tár is an outstanding cinematic achievement that offers abundant insight and humanity in its depiction of a trampling monster trying to outrun her past.

I Used To Be Famous

 

British writer / director Eddie Sternberg's debut feature film, I Used to Be Famous (streaming on Netflix), is a "love and music heal all wounds" picture about a luckless former boy-band singer named Vince (played by Ed Skrein) who befriends a talented, young autistic drummer named Stevie, the terrific Leo Long, who is an actual neurodiverse performer.

Vince meets Stevie one day as he's noodling with his keyboards on the street, trying to finish a song that he hopes will turn his life around. He doesn't at first realize Stevie is autistic and presses him to join him on a tour of local open-mic venues. Vince is turned away by the boy's protective mother Amber (Eleanor Matsuura) but both Vince and Stevie persist.

The plotting is pretty familiar, i.e., Vince learns important life lessons through his friendship with Stevie, and Stevie's mother begins to see the man her son is determined to become.

It all culminates with a crisis that could change Vince's future but sever his friendship with his young mate. Along the way, the audience is treated to some nifty songs performed by Vince and Stevie, dubbed The Tin Men, and other cast members.

Reviewers have noted with admiration the authenticity of casting a neurodiverse actor in the role of Stevie. Long's performance is strong; his character is the "heartbeat" of this tender film.

Till

 

To describe director Chinonye Chukwu's Till as simply provocative would diminish the power of its narrative, central performance and messaging -- and, perhaps, assign to Chukwu cheap propagandistic or dogmatic motives.

The elegance of the film's immaculate construction -- it is evocative of classic Hollywood cinema in its staging, art direction and costuming -- strongly suggests Chukwu's intention was to make a serious motion picture -- not social justice agitprop. She wanted to meet the demands of both the industry and the story, which, in Chukwu's telling is about a mother's unflagging love.

The 1955 lynching of Chicago youth Emmett Till while he was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, after being accused of getting fresh with a white woman is American history and America's history. So is Till's mother's response to her son's brutal kidnapping and murder.

Mamie Bradley chose to hold an open casket viewing of her son's corpse so that all of America might see what was done to him. Photographs of Emmett's unrecognizable face were run in the Black and mainstream press all over the country. And Bradley's decision ignited the fight for federal Civil Rights legislations.

Danielle Deadwyler's performance as Bradley is for the ages, and a remarkable feat for an actress with comparatively few film credits. Deadwyler, who has radiant beauty and regal bearing, is in nearly every scene in the film; she carries its enormous emotional weight on her back.

For example, the scene of Bradley's testimony before a hostile Mississippi judge and courtroom is impeccable -- Deadwyler's monologue about how she was able to identify her son after his body had been beaten and dropped in a river is wrenching.

Interestingly, Chukwu's film moves most of the white characters out of the frame, even though it was white men who killed Till. (They were never convicted.)

Perhaps in juxtaposition to Bradley's broken mother, Chuckwu and her co-writers elevated Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who accused Till of being fresh. Her face, set in pallid self-satisfaction, is the antithesis to Bradley defiance and indignation, and is emblematic of the region's attitude toward and fear of full citizenship for Blacks.

Till is a vital story well-told.

Hallelujah

 

Directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's lovingly crafted homage to singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his signature composition, the ubiquitous (and inscrutable) Hallelujah from his 1984 album Various Positions, is a ruminative exploration of the artist as a young and not-so-young man.

Cohen, born to a wealthy Jewish Canadian family, was a poet-turned-novelist-turned-songwriter-turned-icon, the last incarnation being a conglomeration of everything that had come before -- his incisive eye and his romantic heart.

Cohen, who died in 2016, was universally admired and loved by scores of songwriters drawn to the depth and lyrical richness of his often musically minimalistic songcraft.

Those who worked with Cohen, many interviewed in the film, describe a man on a journey of introspection and fulfillment that seemed both centering and endless.

The film focuses on Cohen's work on Hallelujah, a piece as elusive as it was, eventually, hypnotic. But Geller and Goldfine also include thoughtful passages about Cohen's nascence, his discovery, victories and disappointments and his triumphant final act.

This film will probably be enjoyed best by fans of Cohen, lovers of music, romantics, folks exasperated by the vagaries of being human in a world too often indifferent to its own soul survival. In short, everybody.

God's Country

 

In Julian Higgins' chilling God's Country, Thandie Newton plays a Black university professor in Montana, battling the cold and isolation, both environmental and human, as tensions between Newton's Sandra and local toughs (Joris Jarsky and Jefferson White) slowly escalate to an inevitable explosion.

Higgins and his co-writer Shaye Ogbonna avoid stark intemperance and violent flare ups. Rather they depict the escalation with more subtle though, to my mind, equally dramatic elements.

Two scenes are particularly important -- Sandra's encounter with one of her tormentors (Jarsky) on a Sunday in the back pew of his family church. The meeting first suggests a possible detente but suddenly shifts to something much less hopeful.

The second scene is a Christmas party for which Sandra has donned a beautiful black stappy dress, which she wears with noticeable discomfort. The dress seems out of place in the forbidding, near Arctic Northwest canyons. Is it emblematic of her displacement? Is she unaware? Trying too hard to be liked? It suggests something is going on inside that Sandra herself isn't aware of.

Newton's performance is a study in controlled rage and despair, the roots of which are revealed during the faculty Christmas party. Knowing her back story helps the audience understand why what may at first appear to be a Straw Dogs (1971) kind of town / gown dispute is potentially much more devastating and damning.

Smile

 

Sosie Bacon's unraveling Dr. Rose Cotter is in nearly every frame of Parker Finn's jolting horror flick Smile, so audiences can watch as the seemingly put-together psycho-therapist morphs from compassionate healer to crazed babbler.

After witnessing a patient's self-inflicted death, Cotter stumbles into what appears to be a series of suicides during which the victim dons a lunatic's grin.

When Cotter gets the stiff arm from her handsome fiance (Jesse T. Usher) and a less-than-helpful response from her boss (Kal Penn), she enlists the services of her police detective ex- (Kyle Gallner) and ends up chasing her own personal demons while a malevolent spirit sets its sights on her.

The nature and origin of the force is unclear, but it feeds on fear and trauma, which Cotter possesses in abundance.

Finn's Smile is not a wholly original enterprise, but it mixes a handful of solid jolts in with the spectral predator hooey.

Don't be like some folks in the screening I attended and leave the kiddies home -- blood and gore and f-bombs from start to credits.

Bros

 

I know Billy Eichner -- one half of the central duo in Nicholas Stoller's Bros -- from the Hulu series Difficult People.

In that show, Eichner played Billy, a similar character to the dyspeptic, hypercritical gay quipster Bobby of Bros. Both characters are a real handful, with Bobby being, in the end, more palatable than the chronically off-putting Billy, though not by much.

The other half of Bros' romantic pairing is Aaron, a handsome estate attorney played by Luke Macfarlane, a familiar featured player on network and cable television (Brothers & Sisters).

As a semi-closeted, circumspect, gym rat whose elusiveness hides an unexpressed desire for greater fulfillment and grounded normalcy, Aaron is yin to Bobby's yang.

Bobby is an unfiltered podcasting gadfly who is also the director of a newly established LGBTQ+ museum on the upper West Side of New York. He's trying to land a big donor so that the museum can open on time but his emotional myopia and lack of graciousness with his board and potential contributors hobble his efforts.

Aaron and Bobby meet cute in a bar, fall into customary casual intimacy and quickly recognize there is more than just physical attraction at work. But, alas, they are so unfamiliar with this territory that their next steps are awkward and confusing.

Stoller and Eichner's screenplay of queer romance is frequently trenchant and hilarious, but it is also loaded with transgressive, paradoxical truths that are universal.

The most emphatic comes three-quarters of the way through the film and is not offered by the irritatingly loquacious Bobby but by the more subdued Aaron: "My story is not your story."

Surprisingly, as spoken this is not as much a declaration of immutable differences as it is an invitation to honest and open exchange.

A timely and needed message for lovers and other strangers.

Amsterdam

 

Low marks on a David O. Russell film doesn't mean it's a bad picture.

Russell, a director who takes his time, doesn't really make bad pictures. His movies are good and better, unconventional and challenging.

Though he is of the generation of filmmakers that includes Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, Russell shares stylistic sensibilities with younger directors Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson.

He's an auteur who directs narratively dense material with socially and politically charged themes. Frequently wacked out stories with huge casts. Russell doesn't seem to be drawn to the intimate and the confessional.

Critics may be spoiled by Russell's strong track record -- American Hustle, Silver Lining Playbook, Three Kings-- and by the enormous respect he's garnered (well-earned, IMO) from Hollywood A-listers who want to work with him.

Russell's latest film, Amsterdam, is a cinematic gem of a Great Depression-era period piece that is packed with familiar faces -- Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, among them -- in a story that tracks along with some historical events while making pointed remarks on current affairs.

Amsterdam involves internecine schemes involving WWI veterans, corporate interests and a fringe cabal trying to undermine democracy. Some of the film's language and swagger feel anachronistic in places but not distractingly so.

Much is going on in Amsterdam, much is on Russell's mind, and audiences will be asked to juggle a lot. That shouldn't be a bad thing.

Those attending too closely to negative responses to Amsterdam's twisty devices might recall that The Big Sleep (1946) was generally panned by critics for similar reasons but has since been reassessed as masterful moviemaking.

Perhaps in that way Amsterdam is one of those rare events in this highly disposable entertainment age-- a film that has been made to be savored over time.

The Hanging Garden (19

 

I watched Canadian writer / director / actor Thom Fitzgerald's observant but little-seen debut film The Hanging Garden (1997) the other night and was touched by its emotional currency.

The film is a darkly comedic but also troubling tale of family dysfunction and individual survival. It presents to viewers the private hell of a young man named Sweet William (many of the film's characters are named after flowers or herbs) who returns to his rural Nova Scotia home for his older sister's wedding.

William (played as an adult by Chris Leavins) returns much changed. A slender, handsome 25-year-old, William left 10 years before when he weighed 350 pounds (Troy Veinotte). He was glumly resigned to beatings from his alcoholic gardening father called Poppy (Peter MacNeill). He was numb to the diffidence of his mother, Iris, (Seana McKenna) and the raving strictures of his Catholic grandmother, Grace (Joan Orenstein). His only champion was his foul-mouthed / firebrand sister, Rosemary, played as an adult by Kerry Fox and as a teen by Sarah Polley. When he comes back he discovers a new addition to the family: the tomboyish 10-year-old Violet (Christine Dunsworth), introduced to him as his sister.

The film's mise-en-scène is a rustic, multi-storied house and its neighboring garden that Poppy tends assiduously and forces young William to care for with the same attention or be beaten. The other family members are spared this treatment but are battered by Poppy's profanity and self-pity.

When he's 15, William discovers mutual attraction to a neighbor boy (played by Joel Keller). When grandmother Grace sees him and young Fletcher in the garden, Iris arranges for William to spend some time with a local prostitute (Martha Irving) to set the boy back on the right path. She waits outside the bedroom during the exchange. All of this ends disastrously.

Impressively, Fitzgerald interweaves past and present, reality and fantasy in this story of regret and repression. The movie has a lot to say about the hollowing out effect of physical and emotion abuse that happens in an insular world dominated by a tyrant.

William survives his abuse by leaving, a departure that is acted out in startling metaphor in the hanging scene that gives the picture its name.

But he discovers old wounds never fully heal -- they get covered by joy and contentment.

Cinema Paradiso

 

Giuseppe Tornatore's classic film Cinema Paradiso (1988) is credited with reinvigorating not just Italy's moribund motion picture industry but the love of movies among the general public around the world.

Cinema Paradiso is the loving story of the friendship between an aging Sicilian projectionist, Alfredo, and a young, fatherless boy, Salvatore, in the years after the Second World War.

Salvatore learns the job of the theater projectionist from his older friend and inherits it after Alfredo is blinded in an accident. Fearing the boy's future as a filmmaker will be squandered if he stays in the small village, Alfredo urges him to leave, and Salvatore does. Returning only upon learning of his friend's death.

The film, which won a slew of industry awards in 1989, is widely available for purchase and streaming.

I was reminded of this picture when I read that the Labor Department is projecting much better than average growth between now and 2031 among motion picture projectionists (40 percent increase.) The agency is also expecting 41 percent growth in front-of-house staffing -- ushers / attendants and ticket-tearers.

I was surprised by this; it seemed counter-intuitive as streaming services continue to be a growth industry, some experts forecasting as much as $150 billion revenue increase in the next two years. That news, coupled with AMC Entertainment's struggles, did not appear to me to be a formula for a bright movie theater future.

But the folks at the Labor Department, whose yearly outlook report I consult regularly, have found some reason to say folks will be venturing from their homes in the coming years. Perhaps the cost of multiple streaming services will eventually become too much for movie-lovers to bear, even if the services offer reduced subscriptions in ad-supported streaming.

Whatever the reason, I welcomed the news that those of us who love movies won't be living The Last Picture Show quite yet.

Time and Words

 

The average person speaks conversationally at a rate of 120 - 160 words a minute.

That's between 7,200 and 9,600 words in an hour, if one was to speak non-stop.

If one were to split the time with one other person, that would be 3,600 - 4,800 words exchanged, provided there were no pauses or silences, meaningful or otherwise.

A group of four? About 1,800 words. Maybe fewer if the four were gathered for dinner or canasta. Fewer still if alcohol was involved.

This got me reflecting on how I choose to spend those words. I don't think I use as much forethought in my speech as I do in choosing what I eat or read. I would imagine I waste a lot of time and words.

I suspect I'm not alone. The number of words in the cybersphere alone is daunting. Add to that the wooing, coaxing, scolding and scheming going on in F2F exchanges and the number becomes incalculable.

Maybe all of these words are by-products of the attention economy -- where being heard, regardless of the message, is the goal. Dunno.

Wouldn't it be something if we were all allotted a set number of words to speak in a 24-hour period and going over would mean having to pay a word waste tax?

I wonder if we would be more careful in what we say and to whom?

Foxy Friends

 

I'm not the first to compare Fox News broadcasts to excrement or the network as a whole to a zoo.

I know pretty smart folks who don't buy any of what Foxy Friends are selling but monitor the smelly programs anyway.

Maybe they do it for the same reason some people keep track of what their diabetic grandma is eating, going through her cupboards and checking out her freezer for Ho Hos and Ben & Jerry's and urging her to do better.

Some might listen to Hannity so they can anticipate the next day's heated water-cooler or Twitter exchanges.

Some might listen to Carlson for the same reason I like to walk through forgotten neighborhoods in big cities, i.e., to get a glimpse into a different world.

And still others might do it to scratch some anthropological itch, trying to figure out what kind of creatures these are behind the glass.

Whatever the case, I don't think there's a reason compelling enough for me to watch Fox's highly paid "naked apes" take a dump, smear themselves with the product, and fling it at the audience.

What waste!

Self Harm

 

The mental health community tells us that self-harming behavior grows out of a number of different scenarios -- trauma, abuse, emotional disruption, uprooting, stress, isolation and lack of sufficient coping skills.

More cases have been documented about girls and young women than boys and young men but the latter group might be better at hiding their scars, we're told.

We're also told self harming includes making decisions that might put oneself in danger or other forms of self-sabotage that support the sufferer's feelings of negativity and worthlessness.

Parents are urged not to confuse self-harming with attention-seeking or clumsiness. Cutting and bruising and repeated falls and scrapes and breaks could be cries for help.

Self-harm is not the same as suicidal ideation but, we're told, if underlying stresses and feelings of worthlessness are not addressed the harming might escalate.

I think just as people can be self-harming, so can communities. They might collectivity self-harm by making poor choices about leadership, use of their resources, setting their priorities, protecting children and elders and ensuring the environment is safe.

Why would a community, state or region do this? Because they feel no one expects better from them.