Rams

When the great Sam Neill died earlier this week, film fans of all shades were likely inundated with loads of footage of his most beloved role: Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park, a role originally meant for Harrison Ford but one that Neill donned a fedora and made it his own. He would reprise this role as the famous paleontologist and reluctant father figure twice more (in Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World Dominion), and you likely saw lots of clips of those online and on TV recently, too, as well as scenes from loads of his other work, from Possession to Dead Calm to The Hunt for Red October to The Piano to Hunt for the Wilderpeople. 

Regrettably, you may have missed one of his very best performances, that of a reserved yet stoic sheep herder estranged from his brother and up against insurmountable forces of nature. It's regrettable because, although this may not be as famous as his other work, it's a master class of superb acting from him. He may not say much, but he carries so much weight in his body language and facial expressions, simultaneously communicating pages of history to his audience without being a bit didactic about it. Certain scenes here, particularly when his character, Col, is at his lowest, are among his very best.

The film is called Rams, the Australian remake directed by Jeremy Sims based on the Icelandic drama from 2015 directed by Grímur Hákonarson. Ditching the icy mountains of rural Iceland for hot, rugged Western Australia, Col raises sheep on his ranch right next to his older brother, Les (Michael Caton). Col may be a reticent (even muted) member of the community, but he's a stable presence, peacefully raising sheep descended from his family's bloodline and minding his own business. He's even part of the community's firefighting brigade and goes out for a pint with the others. Les, however, is more erratic. He may also go out, but he eats by himself. Like Col, he's reclusive but also very temperamental and prone to drink too much, even to the point where he resorts to violence against his younger brother. The thing is, something happened between the two long ago, and they now despise each other. If they need to communicate, finger-pointing will do (without looking the other in the eye); if it's absolutely necessary, they might write short notes to each other and have Col's dog, Kip (whom Les calls Flossie) rush them over. When Les receives one of these notes, he curses, crumples up the paper, and throws it away.

Things are about to become a whole lot more complicated between them. After losing to Les in a ram competition, Col notices that Les's prize ram has symptoms of Ovine John's Disease (OJD), a condition that causes the lining of the bowel to thicken and reduces the absorption of food until the sheep wastes away. The Department of Agriculture is called in, and there's no other solution but to terminate every sheep in every herd. This strains the relationship between the brothers even further (it was Col, after all, who first discovered the OJD symptoms showing on Les's ram), but it also puts a strain on the struggling rural community, who rely on these rams for a living.  

That is, unfortunately, one troubling element of the film. It's one that is harmless on the surface but rather disturbing deeper in the weeds: the lionization of farmers against pesky bureaucrats. The villain of the story, if there is one, is an employee of the Department of Agriculture played by Leon Ford who descends upon their community to collect and destroy their sheep once the outbreak occurs. His name (De Vries) is even foreign compared to the others. (Dutch Australians make up one of the largest groups of the Dutch diaspora outside of the Netherlands but are only about 1.5 percent of the Australian population.) I have no problem with the hero of the film being a local farmer—a man of the land—while the bad guy is a sniveling government employee, but given that Rams was released in 2020 during the the COVID-19 pandemic when many people around the world grew heated toward government regulations and lockdowns, the film may actually have fanned the flames or reopen old wounds for its newer viewers. 

The other discreet political ingredient that creeps into the film, however, is its powerful reminder of the devastating effects of global warming. Wildfires decimate the land Col, Les, and the others use for their farms, bringing all sorts of terrible danger. (The day after I watched the film, the wildfires of Canada and possibly Minnesota began to tarnish the air quality of Michigan, where I was visiting.) Its most terrifying moments involve a nasty wildfire engulfing the lands and pushing the community to the brink. I enjoyed last year's Oscar-nominated flick The Lost Bus, a thriller about local Californians struggling against wildfires, a lot more than practically everyone else, yet it's fair to say that Rams captures the tragedy of global warming in a more honest way.

Rams can be a little downbeat from time to time, but it has an Australian sunny disposition and joviality less prevalent in the original film, which took place in freezing rural Iceland. Audiences and critics ended up responding to it quite well, with a worldwide gross of over four million dollars, a host of nominations at the AACTA Awards (Australia's Oscars), and a Rotten Tomatoes score of ninety-one percent, one of Neill's highest. (He was nominated for Best Actor for his performance here.) Watching Rams is kind of like discovering or re-discovering treasure that much of the world is unaware of. If you've loved all those videos of him with animals on his rescue farm, you'll surely enjoy watching him care for his sheep here, calling them beautiful, washing them, keeping them safe, and trying to find some sort of internal peace along the way. Weaker actors would have had a much more difficult time trying to accomplish such a task, or at the very least they'd prefer to tell you everything the character was thinking. Not so with Sam Neill, who just has to move his eyes in a certain direction from time to time, and you've got all the information you need. He will sorely be missed.

Read More →

Taxi Driver

1975 was a difficult year for New York City. In a year the mayor called "the toughest time in the city's history," the metropolis couldn't pay its debts, so it was taken over by state-appointed agencies to manage its finances. The strike of ten thousand sanitation workers resulted in urban decay; the loss of thousands of jobs since 1969 resulted in a population dip to 1930s levels. Fear City pamphlets offered tourists nine guidelines for "survival" in the city many thought President Gerald Ford had told to "drop dead." Some of the guidelines are what one might expect (e.g., "stay off the streets after 6 P.M."), while others are a bit more interesting, like the warning to remain in Manhattan. My favorite is the second one: do not walk. "If you must leave your hotel after 6 P.M.," it says, "try not to go out alone. Summon a radio taxi by telephone, or ask the hotel doorman to call a taxi while you remain in the hotel lobby." The following year, the nation's bicentennial, couldn't have been any worse, could it?

If you're a believer in the idea that something like a city can be a major character in a work of fiction like Taxi Driver, then you have evidence in this film, one of cinema's highest-regarded works and one that celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. It's a permanent part of Americana for obvious reasons (namely that immortal line—"You talkin' to me?"), but it works because of something more fundamental: it's a collection of masters of their craft. Composer Bernard Herrmann's iconic score (often reminiscent of his earlier work in Citizen Kane), makeup artist Dick Smith's mohawk, writer Paul Schrader's metaphor of a taxi cab as loneliness, director Martin Scorsese's vision among this "bombed out" West Side, and the performances of his actors are all effective reminders that these are artists at their finest, and the results of their collaboration can be stupendous. 

Younger viewers may think the film's depiction of New York City is hyperbole; they may not recognize the NYC of old, but they will surely recognize the violence, particularly from a white man with untreated mental health issues and a chip on his shoulder. In this film, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a Vietnam War veteran struggling with insomnia and willing to drive anytime, anywhere. In diary entries, he describes himself as "God's lonely man" who has been followed by loneliness his whole life, and grievously complains of the difficult parts of his job (like cleaning semen off the seats) or his belief that a rain needs to wash all the "scum" off the streets. "All the animals come out at night," he mutters. His bitterness has frequent targets—he's anti-queer, anti-sex worker, and racist—and they all need to be washed away.

Travis is one of two deeply disturbed and disturbing protagonists suffering from delusions of grandeur and a bit of gullibility in the first half of Scorsese's career, with the other Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy (who is also played by De Niro). Both are confident in the worst ways. It's not as if Travis is not trying—there are several uncomfortable scenes of him trying and failing to flirt with women and ending up being creepy and toxic. With Betsy, a campaign worker played by Cybill Shepherd for a presidential hopeful, Travis certainly shoots his shot, and she seems to entertain the idea of a date with him, even if he comes on quite strong. "I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you," she calmly explains to him at a diner on their first date as he rambles on and on. An awkward date that is nevertheless a date is undoubtedly a win for a man like Travis, and yet it becomes increasingly difficult to sympathize with him. Their relationship is doomed once Travis makes the fatal mistake of taking Betsy to a pornographic film in what is likely their second date. Travis's desperate attempts to repair what limited relationship he had with Betsy are so painful and awkward that Scorsese felt he had no choice but to pan the camera to the right so the audience wouldn't fully experience the pain of having to watch such a scene.

There is not one bad performance in this film, and it's not simply the big heavy hitters (De Niro, Shepherd, et al), but the smaller ones, like Peter Boyle as Wizard, the seasoned expert who may or may not be able to give a troubled soul like Travis some helpful advice; Leonard Harris as Senator Charles Palatine (Star Wars buffs should be able to note the connection); and Albert Brooks in his debut film role as Tom, the campaign aide who (despite initial impressions) does have a spine. Other short yet memorable performances are provided by actors like Joe Spinell, whom you may recognize from films like Rocky, The Godfather, and The Godfather Part II. If you had to pinpoint an actor who is trying too hard, it ironically is Scorsese, who has two cameo appearances. The one that is not a blink-and-you'll-miss-it is when he plays a deranged, potentially violent passenger who claims he will kill his wife. It's an interesting yet disturbing scene, but basically the only one that features distracting acting.

After being dumped and continuing to struggle with insomnia and being angry at the city, Travis descends into madness. Moving on from Betsy, he meets a child prostitute named Iris, played by twelve-year-old Jodie Foster. Travis's new mission is to save Iris from this hellish life. To save a child from prostitution is righteous—to do so in the manner Travis does it is not. That climactic scene, however, is so iconic yet controversial. The controversy over the blood color, in fact, in which the ratings board was to deny the film a release based on how graphic the scene was, supposedly provoked Scorsese to threaten to violently destroy the film, according to the new documentary about his life this year. 

Taxi Driver was immediately a success and a lightning rod. It made nearly thirty times its budget at the box office, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for four Academy Awards—Director, Actor, Supporting Actress (Foster), and Original Score. In a year of other pessimistic films like All the President's Men and Network, they all lost to a more upbeat film in line with the hopeful optimism of the nation's bicentennial, Rocky. The film helped cement Scorsese's status as an important American filmmaker, yet it also was a film that resulted in death threats and inspiration for John Hinckley, the deranged man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan apparently in an attempt to impress Foster. 

Beyond the controversy, Taxi Driver is a remarkable movie quite unlike just about any before or since. A lot of what makes it work is what has already been mentioned—its direction by Scorsese, its story and script by Schrader, its mesmerizing score by Bernard Herrmann, and its performances (namely De Niro; Foster; Shepherd; Brooks; and Harvey Keitel as Sport, the pimp). Yet it could be argued that the fundamental aspect of this film that is so engrossing is its central character, Travis Bickle. One of those odd American Film Institute televised lists about twenty years ago was about heroes and villains. It ranked Travis the thirtieth greatest villain, dumbing the character down to an uncomplicated world which wouldn't recognize someone like Travis Bickle. The villainy is allowing a city and its inhabitants in the richest country in the world succumb to the mental health anguishes, gun violence, and child prostitution, making what should have been a shining city on a hill turn hellish. What more could you expect if those in power shrug off those troubles and suggest they drop dead?

Read More →

Scarecrow

In Scarecrow, the 1973 comedy-drama directed by Jerry Schatzberg that tied for the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the Cannes Film Festival, audiences are witness to a masterclass in acting from its two stars: Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, just as both were beginning to skyrocket. Hackman had just won the Oscar for The French Connection, and Pacino was in between the first two Godfather films. Those other films are more renowned today, but their performances here might be their most underappreciated work. 

There is a lot of physical work here right from the get-go by Hackman and Pacino, especially as the latter does some jumping jacks and acts like a monkey; the former at one point puts on a strip show in a bar to the applause of the others. It's all practically vaudevillian. Fitting neatly into the New Hollywood era of films like Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces, Hackman plays a man of ambition but bad impulses named Max; Pacino plays a wanderer named Francis (who's nicknamed "Lion"). They meet on the road waiting to hitchhike, and, despite some resistance from Max, decide to team up on Max's odyssey to Pittsburgh, where he hopes to open his own car wash. Why it has to be all the way in Pittsburgh, he won't say. 

Max does not need a narrator to describe him—he sums himself up succinctly yet accurately. According to him, he's the meanest son of a bitch alive—he doesn't trust anybody, and he doesn't love anybody. He's also a bit of a bully, "very practical but dumb." One of the few outsider observations that could be made about him is that he makes one bad decision after another and never stops to realize when he's gone too far, all the while refusing to admit the problems he finds himself in are often self-inflicted. In short, he blames everyone but himself, and he is vulnerable but overly masculine; much of this comes across in subtle looks Hackman gives. 

Lion is the polar opposite, but opposites often attract, don't they? He's boyish in the best ways but irresponsible in the worst. A former sailor, he requests a stop in Detroit so he can see his wife and child, whom he has abandoned. He hopes to present his son a lamp as a gift, which is an odd gift for a young child. These details are important—the state of Lion's hat, for example, says an awful lot about him and his socioeconomic status. It's not like the costume choices do the heavy lifting, but they augment what the two actors are trying to say about these two struggling men they're portraying. 

What is Scarecrow really about? One could argue that it spares the didacticism of counter-culture road films in favor of a simple story of male friendship. Max is aggressive, while Francis is sensitive. This dichotomy drives much of the emotional reaction of the film. There's no competition from each other; by the end of the film, it is more than obvious that they really need each other. 

The great acting, however, compensates for the film's flaws, namely how it kind of rambles, especially in the second half, before it ends with a gut punch. While one might interpret the film's meandering structure as reflecting the rootlessness of its protagonists, it ultimately feels more like a flaw than a feature, undermining the impact of these two performances. I wondered whether the two nicknames in the film (Scarecrow and Lion) had anything to do with The Wizard of Oz, yet I could not come up with any solid conclusion about such symbolism. 

On a sadder, final note, it must be said that Scarecrow serves as a potent reminder of the exceptional talent of Gene Hackman. His death in February at the age of 95 was a tragic loss for cinema.

Read More →

Take Out

Have you ever given much thought to the average deliveryman? I confess, I haven't, except if I'm frustrated when they can't find my apartment and are calling or if they didn't just leave the food at the door like I requested on the app. Delivery workers are an invisible workforce behind the convenience of food delivery apps. 

Yet, as research by Xingchen Hao shows, the work intensity of takeaway riders is extremely high. Their work is not only stressful but dangerous. Just last month, a delivery driver for a Chinese restaurant in neighboring Connecticut was shot and killed, and two years ago, an Uber Eats driver was dismembered in what police called a "demonic" murder.

These dangers and stress are thoroughly explored in the 2004 film Take Out, written and directed by Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker, about a typical-yet-untypical day in the life of a New York Chinese restaurant delivery man. It's a powerful, practically unfiltered critique of the treatment of workers and immigrants, visualizing how systemic vulnerabilities impact undocumented workers in ways few other films have done. 

Take Out takes place in New York, where it's raining a lot and probably quite humid, which might explain some of the acne flare-ups on the face of a man named Ming. Ming, played by Charles Jang, is an undocumented worker delivering take-out Chinese food to countless people in upper Manhattan. It's a dangerous job, no doubt, hustling back and forth on a bicycle through all that rain in the thick of New York City's traffic, and one's cinematic internal barometer is primed for something profoundly wrong to happen to Ming. How could it not? 

The films of writer, director, editor, and producer Baker, who made history earlier this month by becoming the first person to win four Oscars for the same movie, often focus on the powerless. In his three most recent films (Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Anora), these characters have been sex workers. With his third film, Take Out (which is more of a documentary-style work of realism), Baker and his team focus on a perfect example of those without power: undocumented workers. In this case, the protagonist has essentially no power, which explains just about every predicament he is in, every decision he makes, and every possible consequence facing him. The details of the state of Ming's cramped kitchen, which he shares with other presumably undocumented immigrants and needs repairs, provide the viewer with sufficient information about his living conditions—it's an indictment of a system that exploits workers and offers them few protections. With such a detail, the filmmakers don't need to spell out for the viewers why he is powerless against a variety of vultures; it speaks for itself.

Ming is a worker who finds himself in several exceptionalities, not simply related to his economic or immigration status. Ming owes a lot of money to those who smuggled him out of China and into the United States. Invading his home, they assault him, take a thousand dollars, and demand that he pay the remaining eight hundred by the end of the day. Ming has no other choice but to work like hell at work that day, and fortunately for him, his charismatic co-worker Young (Jeng-Hua) has offered to let him take most of the deliveries for the day so he can collect most of the tip money. He never seems to thank those who help him financially, perhaps because he's embarrassed. He also can't understand the chit-chat (or complaints) the customers are providing as they pay.

Most of the customers exhibit different shades of rudeness. One of them is frequent-Baker collaborator Karren Karagulian, who has been in all of Baker's films since then, in a role as an insolent customer whose name in the credits is "Chicken or beef." (It's worth also pointing out now that Jang, who is actually of Korean descent but learned Chinese while studying in Taiwan and is not a professional actor—he was working for Google at the time—appeared in last year's Anora as the Las Vegas casino manager whom Mark Eydelshteyn berates.) One can tell that much of the dialogue is not scripted, like just about all of the lines belonging to Wang-Thye Lee, who is the manager and cashier of the restaurant and the mother figure for the men working at the shop. The background noise of the workers in restaurant, her banter with the customers, and the camera work all elevate the feeling of organized chaos in this world, and the handheld camera helps us feel like we're flies on the greasy walls. According to a New York Times article, the restaurant where Take Out was filmed was closed not long after filming had completed, and the filmmakers weren't able to find Ms. Lee afterward. 

Films like Tangerine and Anora may be more fun than Take Out, but the latter's documentary-like realism removes any narrative artifice, plunging the viewer into Ming's plight without excessive melodrama. Likewise, the editing is a lot more simplistic than in something like Anora (one of the categories for which Baker won an Oscar), and the repetitious nature of Ming's deliveries may feel taxing to the average viewer, but imagine how laborious it feels for Ming? 

What is most noteworthy about the film is how Tsou and Baker are able to efficiently utilize a budget of only $3,000 and present a potent case for why (at the very least), workers in this kind of economy deserve an immense level of respect, safety protocols, protection, and fair wages than practically any other sort of medium could. I hope I will heed what surely is their intent by at the very least not getting irritated if my food is delayed. Take Out is not simply about the day of your average delivery worker—it's a critical illumination of labor injustices and why audiences should be outraged by them.

Read More →

A Complete Unknown

"I bargained for salvation, and she gave me a lethal dose."
-Bob Dylan ("Shelter from the Storm")

Modern-day biographical films about musicians often embrace a "great man theory" of music. That is, like the great man theory approach to history, in which some believe we can understand who we are through the examination of "great men" (powerful, transformational individuals—usually men—who were immensely talented), in biographical films, music can be understood by the contributions of a few exceptionally talented and famous individuals. Unfortunately, this great man approach has become hackneyed. Yes, it's impressive to watch Joaquin Phoenix become Johnny Cash or Jamie Foxx become Ray Charles, but both films (though fine) were so predictable that they became low-hanging fruit for a parody like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. 

Some films (like Love and Mercy or Rocketman) have tried to be slightly different to avoid those pitfalls, and they mostly worked (though neither are great films), which brings me to A Complete Unknown, the James Mangold-directed film about the early years of Bob Dylan's career. A Complete Unknown doesn't try to rock the boat, though it simultaneously evades a check-the-box approach to these kinds of stories. We do see the story of young Bob Dylan, a great man of music (arguably the greatest—no other musician has an Oscar, ten Grammys, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Pulitzer, and even the Nobel Prize), and we see Timothée Chalamet deliver yet another fantastic performance in which he looks and sounds just like him. Yet fortunately for us (and perhaps mainly because it's Bob Dylan and not a musician whose life was a little more destructive), there are no scenes of him struggling with drug addiction, no scene where he gets so rich and famous that he abuses people, and no inevitable fall and glorious comeback. The biggest conflict in this movie seems to be him wanting to play an electric guitar at a folk festival.

That moment, of course, is not a simple footnote (for some reason) but a moment contentious enough that it has its own Wikipedia page and has frequently been cited as one of the most controversial music moments in history. Mangold is a talented enough director that he keeps these moments intriguing, even if you know what's coming, and with an active camera that flies up and back to show us the practically rabid folk fans throwing things at Dylan and calling him Judas, all the while he's unfazed by it in the most Bob Dylan way, Mangold and his cinematographer Phedon Papamichael would make Martin Scorsese proud.

It's not simply Mangold and Papamichael who deserve credit for such a feat. Much of A Complete Unknown is a compelling watch because of its actors, especially Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and of course Chalamet as Dylan. Chalamat in particular seems to be perfectly incapable of bad acting; in just this past year, he was the star of both A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part II, and the two films collectively have thirteen Oscar nominations this year. The last time Chalamet was nominated was seven years ago for Call Me by Your Name, and one could certainly make an argument that he should have won then. (He lost to a much more theatrical and make-up-intense Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour.) 

Anyway, in A Complete Unknown, Chalamet, Norton, and Barbaro are all worthy of their nominations due to their very impressive singing and instrumental skills. Chalamet in particular gets that unique sound of Dylan's (what Jason Kelly described as a pinched Okie sound that mimicked Woody Guthrie's) and makes it all look easy. When he sings to a hospitalized Guthrie (played in the film by Scoot McNairy), it's moving in a sentimental way when someone meets their hero and it goes just the way it should; when he plays in the studio, his voice varies between reserved and liberated (based on the character's growing comfort and musical evolution). And maybe it was all in my head, but given that he's smoking in virtually every scene, it seems like he was able to incorporate the impact smoking has on the human voice in a way that doesn't come across as painfully obvious and forced (like Bradley Cooper was as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro). But Barbaro and Norton sure can sing, too, and the most charming scene in the film (or at least the one that doesn't involve Bob Dylan) is when Norton as Seeger leads his audience in a joyful rendition of "Wimoweh." 

Based on Elijah Wald's 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, A Complete Unknown avoids some of the aforementioned pitfalls of the typical biographical film about the great men of music by just focusing on Dylan's rise from 1961 to 1965. It's all a very romantic view of a struggling musician; when we first meet Dylan, he's crossing over into New York from New Jersey in the back of a stranger's car, jotting away in his notebook some notes for songs. He does it again the morning after spending a night in the home of folk hero Pete Seeger's home. Heavily promoted by Seeger as the man who can bring folk music to the masses, Dylan struggles to break through, but once he does, the rest is history. He sings at the 1963 March on Washington, courts Joan Baez (Barbaro), becomes the voice of a generation, and struggles with accepting his new-found fame.

Dylan enthusiasts whose favorite Dylan period is those early years will likely be thrilled with what they hear. A lot of those beloved tunes are included: "Highway 61 Revisited," "Mr. Tambourine Man," Girl from the North Country," "Blowin' in the Wind," "It Ain't Me, Babe," "Maggie's Farm," "Song to Woody," "Like a Rolling Stone," and others are all there. Whether or not this film has much appeal to audience members who are not Dylan fans or musicologists or anything like that is something I'm not sure I can answer. Still, it has grossed about $100 million since it was released last December, and it has eight Oscar nominations, though (despite a superb performance by Chalamet) it is the underdog in just about all of them. One way or the other, it is a recommendable watch.

My favorite Bob Dylan songs:

Note: This list was compiled in 2020 during the pandemic. I suspect the order would be slightly different if I were to devote more time to reorganizing it these days.

50. Jokerman
49. With God on Our Side

48. Bob Dylan's 115th Dream

47. Song to Woody

46. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

45. Heart of Mine

44. Saved

43. Billy 1

42. Love Minus Zero/No Limit

41. Mozambique

40. Main Title Theme (Billy) 

39. Tangled Up in Blue

38. Shelter from the Storm

37. House of the Risin' Sun

36. Outlaw Blues

35. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down

34. Ballad of Hollis Brown

33. I Want You

32. Maggie's Farm

31. Buckets of Rain

30. Shot of Love

29. All I Really Want to Do

28. Queen Jane Approximately

27. From a Buick 6

26. Masters of War

25. Wigwam

24. Girl from a North Country

23. Subterranean Homesick Blues

22. Ballad of a Thing Man

21. Visions of Johanna

20. Forever Young

19. Things Have Changed

18. The Man in Me

17. If Not for You

16. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

15. Hurricane

14. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Lot to Cry

13. Highway 61 Revisited 

12. Desolation Row

11. Tombstone Blues

10. It Ain't Me, Babe

9. Mr. Tambourine Man

8. Blowin' in the Wind

7. The Mighty Quinn

6. Lay, Lady, Lay

5. All Along the Watchtower 

4. Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35

3. Knockin' on Heaven's Door

2. Like a Rolling Stone

1. The Times They Are A-Changin' 

Honorable Mentions: Chimes of Freedom, Emotionally Yours, Make You Feel My Love, Tweeter and the Monkey Man, Highlands, When the Deal Goes Down, Black Rider

Read More →

Dìdi

ChatGPT is less than two years old, and yet it feels like it's already a feature of everyday life, especially for teenagers who might be using it to cheat on homework assignments. But there is also evidence that the platform can be used to help young people navigate life. How do I know? I asked it, of course, and it provided me with a list of things the site claims to help with, like providing educational assistance, career guidance, life skills, and emotional and mental support. "So," I asked, "what would you say if a teenager told you he didn't have any friends?" I won't write the response verbatim, but it started by saying, "I'm really sorry to hear you're feeling this way. Not having friends can be isolating, but you're definitely not alone in experiencing this. A lot of people, especially during their teenage years, go through periods of feeling disconnected from others, even if it seems like everyone else in their social circles figured out." It goes on to talk about friendship and activities and all that stuff. The internet has come a long way since the days of SmarterChild.

I'm definitely on the team that says AI cannot replace humans in things like making sure young people's mental health needs are being met, especially as they figure out their identities and their place in this confusing world. But Chris Wang, a thirteen-year-old in 2008 California who is discovering his talent at using the camera while trying to figure out who he is, doesn't (or won't or can't) seek the guidance of his older family members, and the closest thing he has to ChatGPT is SmarterChild, the chatbot available on AOL Instant Messenger (both of which are now, obviously, defunct). Chris, when he's at his lowest and feels his decisions have isolated everyone from himself, tells SmarterChild that he has no friends. SmarterChild responds that it is Chris's friend. How could it not give a response like that? The programming of SmarterChild all those years ago meant that it would give rudimentary, limiting answers; any follow-up question would've confused it. Chris does not seem relieved, and he is just as lost as ever.

Dìdi, the Chinese word for younger brother, stars Izaac Wang as Chris. He and his sister (Shirley Chen) fight constantly before she goes off to college. They're being raised by their mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen). She's not a single mother, but her husband is constantly away in Taiwan as the family's breadwinner. The other adult in the home is her mother-in-law (played by the great Chang Li Hua, an untrained actor who is director Sean Wang's real-life grandmother and was featured in his Oscar-nominated short this year). When Chris is not at home, his life is pretty normal, which means its enormously complicated. He watches YouTube videos on how to kiss, gets into fights, gains and loses friends, and begins to explore his talents as a filmmaker, in this case filming older kids skateboarding in parking lots.

Dìdi, Sean Wang's feature-length directorial debut, explores many aspects of teenage life, particularly for boys—both good and bad. Our protagonist seems like a kind boy who tries his best and means well, but he makes one bad choice after another, like virtually any other child. Let's face it: Chris can be a bit annoying—especially around his male friends, who are even more so. Exploding an older person's mailbox may be rebelliously invigorating as a teenager; no adult watching it, however, would be amused. I'm sure if Adult Chris found the YouTube video he made of it, he would regret what he had done. Yet it's not simply his boyhood antics that may cause audiences to cringe. For example, brother-sister rivalries and feuds can be nasty, but this one is epically horrifying. The way he and his sister treat each other is regrettable, but unfortunately, things like that happen in families. The most heartbreaking, though, is the relationship with his mother, like when he shows disinterest in her artwork. The pain in her eyes says it all.

Part of what makes those family scenes work so effectively is the acting of Izaac Wang and Joan Chen. (You may recognize Wang from his performance in Good Boys and Chen for her roles in The Last Emperor, Twin Peaks, and others.) Chen's performance as the matriarch of the family is the latest to provide a vivid portrait of an Asian parent traversing East and West in middle-class USA, joining stellar performances like Collin Chou in The Half of It, Steven Yuen and Han Ye-ri in Minari, and Diana Lin and Tzi Ma in The Farewell. For Chen, the pressure on her is great: raising her children while her husband is away while simultaneously competing with other Asian parents whose children seem to be excelling above what her own children are. The constant criticism from her mother-in-law is not helping. All the while, her dreams of being an artist slip away with each passing day. It's a tearjerking performance, one that I hope is rewarded next winter. 

Dìdi more or less captures the essence of being a teenage boy, especially in that era. For those who were around that age in 2008, the film will (likely) hit some nostalgic notes, depending on how old you were back then. (That being said, I was surprised to learn that AOL Instant Messenger was still around in 2008—I was kind of late to that party and only used it for a short while during my freshman year in high school in 2001, so my extremely dorky AOL name was cooliomhs2001. I was a tad late to the Facebook party, too, joining my freshman year of university in 2005, but I confess I never had a MySpace page.) Even if you weren't a teenager in the late Aughts, the themes and memories are probably universal, with the immaturity and the desperation to be seen in an ideal light, even if it means lying to impress others (especially crushes and best friends), and the awkwardness of navigating everything are the most obvious examples. 

My main complaint about the film may seem trivial, but it's valid (in my opinion): there's a sophomorically excessive amount of bathroom humor in this film. Compounding this issue, the film feels a lot longer than its roughly ninety-minute runtime. Many, however, will not be bothered by the toilet humor, and they may or may not agree with me that the film overstays its welcome. As a coming-of-age story, it works better as a drama than as a comedy, but one way or the other, director Wang has shown his talents are sufficient enough that one waits in great anticipation for his next tale (whether in a documentary or not).  

To conclude, it's worth noting that the final part of ChatGPT's advice to a hypothetical teenager feeling lonely, guilty, isolated, and friendless was the following: "Most importantly, be kind to yourself. Friendships often come when you least expect them, and feeling confident in who you are helps attract others who value you for you." Chris Wang's confidence will take him far, but his kindness to himself, his appreciation of his racial identity, and especially to his family will help seal the deal.  

Read More →

Nobody Knows

Japan may have earned new fans of its cinema recently with its successful night at last month's Academy Awards in Hollywood. The Boy and the Heron won Animated Feature Film, and Godzilla Minus One took home the big win for Visual Effects, the first Oscar in the franchise's seventy-year history. Japan was also nominated in the International Feature category for Perfect Days, a somber film yet one that celebrates the hard work of the every man while making a strong case for minimalism. All three are (more or less) happy films. 

Nobody Knows, a 2004 drama written, directed, produced, and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda, is not. This is a film that pivots away from an all's-well-that-ends-well conclusion of many famous Japanese motion pictures in favor of the bitter reality of the human condition. How could it not? The film is, very regrettably, inspired by a true story known as the Sugamo child-abandonment case. I also wish I could say that child abandonment is incredibly rare, but it is obviously not. There are no monsters here, but real-life consequences when normal people do discreet yet cruel things. In the first scene of this film, the young boy who serves as the main character has longish hair and a tattered shirt; this will serve as a reminder throughout much of the film's two hours and twenty minutes that these children are in for the long haul of waiting for a provider who will never show up.

In the film, Yuya Yagira plays the young boy named Akira. At the beginning of the story, Akira and his mother, Keiko (You), seem to be a normal mother-and-son pair, delighting their landlord and landlady with a gift upon their first meeting. The landlord mentions it's good that Akira is in middle school, because a lot of the other tenants complain about too many noisy young children running around the building. No problem, according to Keiko. Well, there is a problem: three other children. Two have been hidden in their luggage that soon arrives via delivery. Their names are Shigeru (Hiei Kimura), the youngest boy, and Yuki (Momoko Shimizu), the youngest girl, who is only five. Akira later goes out to pick up his other younger sister, Kyōko (Ayu Kitaura), the second oldest in the family, at the train station. Between the two of them, they handle most of the responsibilities when their mother is away. There is no father figure in the family; all of the four children have different fathers.

Why did they move? Apparently, Shigeru was too boisterous, and it's implied that they were evicted or their lease wasn't renewed. Hence, hiding two children inside pieces of luggage and sending a third by herself on the train to catch up is their solution. Are Japanese children too noisy, and are Japanese adults too intolerant towards them? I lived in Japan for thirteen months, and I wouldn't say Japanese children are any more or less energetic than their counterparts in other nations. I also can't speak as to whether or not Japanese people detest loud children, but I do know that there is a website detailing the noise of children in Japanese neighborhoods, warning others of children who play too noisily or scream, and that four children is not normal in Japan, with the country recently seeing a record low birthrate of 1.26 children per family, continuing a downward trend. In recent years, the Japanese government has tried to remedy this by investing $25 billion dollars to support families who may want children. But this bill was passed late last year—surely there was less of a concern back in 2004, the year of the film's release. Unlikely, because the total fertility rate in the country then was 1.29, only slightly higher than what it currently is. What about in 1988, the year in which the terrible incident that inspired this film took place? 1.66. 

It would be important to note here that Kore-eda does not make films that judge others. As he did in later films like After the Storm, the Palme d'Or-winning Shoplifters, and last year's Monster, his stories are of ordinary people caught up not necessarily in unordinary situations but those that one wishes simply did not exist. It might be impossible not to be angry at a person like Keiko, who not only later abandons her four children but in the early part of the film doesn't seem to be in much of a rush to actually get her two youngest ones out of the luggage that they themselves describe as "super hot." Not much information is explicitly revealed about her. Instead, the dialogue, how the children react around her, and You's performance fill in the gaps. 

You seems to inflect an exaggerated, childish tone and pitch to her character's voice, suggesting that Keiko was never going to be mature enough to take care of four children. The children characters, though, often are tolerant towards her, perhaps because she rarely scolds them or makes them eat vegetables (or even go to school), with only two instances of them losing patience with her: when Kyōko whispers to Akira that she reeks of alcohol and when Akira finally confronts her for being selfish and not looking after them or letting them go to school. Thus, they all have to grow up very quickly. Akira, in particular, becomes the father figure, budgeting on the spot while shopping and cooking curry for the three younger ones while teaching himself math at night. One morning, though, there is a note that their mother has gone away for a while. Now, the growth of his parenting skills really needs to accelerate. 

The four actors portraying the children (as well as Hanae Kan as a young school girl who frequently skips class to hang out with them) all give remarkably naturalistic performances in a way that film companies, casting directors, and directors should take note. One would be very hard-pressed to find a director who can work as well with children as Kore-eda does. Using discreetly placed cameras and providing minimal specific directions, he was able to capture the four of them naturally going about their business as any young child would. This is especially evident in the performances of Kimura and Shimizu. Yagira's performance is especially praise-worthy. For his role in the film, he became the youngest winner of the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in the festival's history. He was unable to attend, however—he was back home studying for exams.

If there is to be a message in the film, it may be a condemnation towards the conditions that resulted in such a tragedy, namely of adults' making. It's not simply the mother figure who abdicated her responsibilities, but a whole host of others who may be at fault: a child welfare system that separates siblings, a government that can't or won't help families who are financially struggling, absentee fathers, and well-meaning adults who simply look the other way. It's enough to depress the viewer, especially if they've seen the three aforementioned films from Japan, ones that celebrate the nation's abundance of color, spirit, and even superior toilets. In Nobody Knows, Kore-eda is not interested in such fairytales; it's as if his film screams in the opposite direction that things are not as perfect as they seem. But as Roger Ebert once said, no good movie is depressing; all bad movies are depressing. Nobody Knows is certainly worth a watch on its twentieth anniversary, especially for its extraordinary acting.

Read More →

The Man With the Golden Arm

In 1955, three titans of 20th-century art (Otto Preminger, Elmer Bernstein, and Frank Sinatra) united to adapt Nelson Algren's novel The Man with the Golden Arm into a motion picture. A critically acclaimed hit at the time, it remains a powerful (albeit adulterated) look at substance abuse from a time when depictions of such things were considered far more controversial. It is not a perfect film. However, while the film can grow tiring at times, the acting of Sinatra is wonderful.

In one of his most famous performances, Sinatra plays Frankie Machine, an aspiring musician and ex-convict who "kicked" a nasty drug addiction to heroin. Now, he has arms of pure gold and dreams of a second chance. "Everything's gonna be all right," he says. In the beginning of the film, he walks into a bar where he meets his old pal Sparrow (Arnold Stang), a conman and precursor to Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. Sparrow is a comic relief character (though not a particularly funny one). Frankie then goes home, where a sign that says "WELLCOME HOME, FRANKIE" awaits him. Presumably, this was written by his wife, Sophia (or "Zosh," as he calls her), played by Eleanor Parker, the "woman of a thousand faces." Zosh often uses a whistle to calm herself down and recalibrate, and she requires a wheelchair. There does not appear to be much love in their relationship, especially because Frankie seems to be falling for an old fling played by Kim Novak. 

Despite Frankie's desire to start over and start clean, other acquaintances of his have more menacing plans for him. Schwiefka (Robert Strauss), with a thick mustache and a cigar he frequently chews, attempts to recruit him again to deal for his illegal card game, while the dapper yet sinister Louie (Darren McGavin) tries to seduce Frankie into using again. "Seduce" is an appropriate term, for there are obvious homoerotic moments between Frankie and Louie, as the latter consistently preys on the former. (Apparently, the homoeroticism between the two exists in the novel as well.) Between Schwiefka's insistence that Frankie is the best dealer in town, Louie's insistence that Frankie needs the drugs again, and Zosh's insistence that he really isn't a good enough drummer to get a job, Frankie's chances for success appear slim.

The Man with the Golden Arm is not nearly as overly melodramatic as the Best Picture-winning The Lost Weekend from about a decade. before, in which the main character's alcoholism resulted in hallucinations of bats. Frankie's situation is desperate, and. yet Preminger, Sinatra, Bernstein, and the other members of the team present it to the audience in much more powerful yet subtle ways than The Lost Weekend did. This is often done through the camera's focus on Frankie's eyes, an act that reveals his continued drug use to the other characters and the hopelessness he finds himself in. There are no imaginary bats here. 

Part of what makes this successful is Bernstein's music. Given its setting in Chicago, it makes perfect sense to use a jazz theme. But the way he uses crescendos and an urgent brass to punctuate the drama will send chills down your spine. Bernstein, who was 33 years old at the time, was nominated for Best Original Score. Set designers Joseph C. Wright and Darrell Silvera (who were also nominated) are also worthy of the praise they received. The 1950s were a decade that featured lots of favorable economic conditions to many Americans; the economy grew by almost 40 percent, and unemployment was lower than 5 percent. Yet everything appears dilapidated and dystopic in this film thanks in large part to the set design.

The Man with the Golden Arm is a remarkably patient film, taking its time in providing the viewers information about these characters and details related to the plot. It is thirty minutes into the film before we get some information on why everything is as it appears. However, that is also the weakest aspect of this film, as its pace becomes taxing, frequently shifting from intensity to apathy. When the film "tells us" what Frankie is experiencing instead of showing us, the experience is also damaged. We already know that Frankie's addiction is destroying him; we don't need him to awkwardly tell Zosh that there's an allegorical monkey on his back. Some trimming really could have helped the film. Much of the screenplay, written for the screen by Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer, and an uncredited Ben Hecht, works, but in typical 1950s fashion, much of the original source material (particularly the climactic scene) was diluted to be more palatable for audiences of the conservative era. This also hurts the film, though the numerous surprises toward the end help it recover, especially as we get to see Parker and McGavin deliver their best moments. Parker and McGavin are best known today for their roles in family-friend movies of the past: Parker as Baroness Elsa von Schraeder in The Sound of Music and McGavin as the father in A Christmas Story. You won't recognize either of them in The Man with the Golden Arm; that's how fantastic their acting is.

Sinatra's acting, though, shines the most. Sinatra was nominated for Best Actor for his work here. (He lost to Marty star Ernest Borgnine, who played the rival of Sinatra's character in From Here to Eternity two years before, the movie that earned Sinatra his Oscar.) His acting sometimes dives into "most acting," an annoying habit many actors play with when they really want you to know just how much effort they're putting into it. But his showing is superior to his telling, like whenever he plays the drums or is desperate for drugs. This is most obvious in Frankie's audition scene, a tense, painful moment in which he struggles to perform while going through withdrawal after dealing cards for nearly two days. It is a very sympathetic performance during a time in which I imagine the public was less sympathetic to such characters. Indeed, this was a somewhat controversial film. Preminger and United Artists decided to release the film without a Code approval despite its topic. When the Production Code Administration denied the film a Code approval and the Motion Picture Association of America upheld the decision, UA quit the MPAA. Despite this, large theater chains agreed to show the film, paving the way for later films to tackle other taboo subjects. (After receiving a Production Code seal in 1961, the film was allowed to be broadcast on television.)  

The Man with the Golden Arm may suffer from an unjustified length and pace, but its music, themes, bravery, set design, and acting make it a recommendable film.

This article was originally published in Public Domain Film Review on August 3, 2020.

Read More →

Earth Mama

In last year's Earth Mama, directed by 2012 Olympian Savanah Leaf in her feature film debut, the main character of Gia deals a lot with exhausted, exhausting, and paternalistic state employees of the California child-welfare system. She is a pregnant woman not making ends meet, and her two young children have been separated from her. She can only see them during supervised visits; her son misses her terribly, while her daughter can sometimes be angry at her and keeps a distance. Gia is a character who faces one economic trouble after another—the balance on her phone is dwindling, her card is declined, and she misses child support payments. She asks her boss for a hundred-dollar advance at one point (it's implied that it is denied), and she steals diapers in another scene in broad daylight. There's no relief in sight for her. 

Her story is reminiscent of Malcolm X's memoir in which he painfully detailed his memories of the state separating him and his siblings from their mother. These stories are not uncommon; one in ten Black children is separated from their parents by the child-welfare system, according to a recent book by Dorothy Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, called Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families. According to Roberts, there are major cities in the U.S. in which sixty percent of Black children have had contact with child-welfare officials. (Her 1997 book, Killing the Black Body, detailing the punishment of Black women for being pregnant and using drugs, is also painfully relevant to this film.) Why is it like this? Roberts and others argue that the system is designed that way. Earth Mama, a tragic film, is a cinematic visualization of these tragic facts.

This is evident from the first moment early on in the film of her and her children, which is heartbreaking. Things understandably grow more hopeless along the way, and her frustration and how she acts upon them causes her to lose allies. Much of the imagery involves scenes (some real and some presumably fantastical or perhaps hallucinatory) of the earth, particularly the sea, trees, forests. Why? Perhaps they are what Gia longs for. At one point, she walks naked in a forest in an even more literal form of forest bathing. Why wouldn't she? The benefits of forest bathing include reduced stress, lower blood pressure, and accelerated recovery from trauma. It's an escape from the noise and chaos of the environment in which authorities are frequently knocking on her door and there are non-stop problems. The natural hues of the earth stand in stark contrast to the artificial dullness of child-welfare offices, hospitals, and her employment (a photography store) that Gia finds herself in for most of the film. 

The role of Gia is played exceptionally by rapper Tia Nomore. It's a very naturalistic performance and a very impressive one for a debut; with each scene, her performance becomes more and more engrossing. Another musician, Doechii, plays Gia's friend, Trina. The name Gia means "God is gracious," but Gia herself is irreligious. Trina, however, is quite pious. At first, one would imagine that most audience members would cheer on Trina's resilience, stamina, and encouragement. "There's a lot of people expecting us to fail," she tells Gia. (It's easy to understand what she is talking about, especially when one considers the harmful stereotype that questions the love and dedication of Black parents.) At every moment, she is motivating Gia to keep going. However, Trina's devoutness starts to wear thin, as she quotes from the Bible so much that it seems to inadvertently push Gia in the opposite direction. This effect is so profound that when another friend of Gia's tries to offer her own sense of encouragement by talking about her spiritual feelings regarding her late mother's presence, Gia is similarly turned off. 

While Earth Mama may not be as memorable as A Thousand and One (2023) or Miss Juneteenth (from 2020), which are also about Black mothers struggling to raise their children when the cards are stacked against them, and the lethargic pacing of some moments may frustrate some viewers. The writing and directing by Leaf, however, is superb. (The screenplay is based on her previous film, a documentary short called The Heart Still Hums about five new mothers trying to overcome difficult odds, that she made with Taylor Russell.) Other commendable aspects of the film include Jody Lee Lipes' cinematography, with its 16mm film format and the (as Lipes put it) "almost gritty lighting style" that gives the film a look as if it's about twenty years old, which is fitting because it is set in 2006.

Earth Mama demonstrates a tremendous amount of talent from its cast and crew, especially Leaf, Nomore, and Doechii, all of whom are relatively new to making movies. I sincerely hope they continue to make more.        

Read More →

After Yang

For centuries, I'm sure many have looked at their pets or their babies and let out a sigh of stress, wondering what was going on in their brains. In the case of After Yang, I found myself asking the same thing, but in this case it was an android. What is really going on inside his brain? What is he really thinking about? The titular character Yang (Justin H. Min) is a technosapien whom a couple named Jake and Kyra (played by Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith, respectively) bought secondhand from a certified reseller called Second Siblings. Second Siblings is a company that specializes in selling robotic children that can serve as Chinese siblings to adoptees who were born in China. This is great for their daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), who has grown up with an older brother who never bullies her and instead plays with her and offers her "Chinese fun facts" to help her appreciate her Chinese heritage. She calls him gēge (older brother), and he calls her mèimei (younger sister). All is well until Yang suddenly malfunctions and doesn't operate anymore. Mika is devastated, and Jake struggles to get him fixed. 

Almost immediately, a variety of ethical puzzles might be bouncing around your head as you watch the film. For example, could someone really know what Yang or any other android is thinking? For one, he has an awful hairstyle that I hope never catches on in the future. Does he like it? The film hints that he has feelings and even ambitions. In one scene, he even says "I wish." So, is he programmed to desire things? Additionally, I thought about things like the ethics of "owning" a synthetic android and the over-reliance of some parents on technology to keep their children occupied. I also thought about what the enormous costs of having such a robot would be, but this issue isn't really addressed. Jake is a small business owner selling tea (his life passion), and Kyra works in some kind of corporate job, so they're probably at least upper middle class. The year in which the film takes place is never mentioned, but maybe inflation really takes off in the future. 

One other topic that inevitably weighed on my mind as I watched it, particularly the beginning as we really see Mika miss her brother, is the issue of adopting a child from a different culture, ethnicity, or race. Over a quarter of a million Chinese children have been adopted out of China since the 1990s, many of them into families in the U.S. I was surprised the film suddenly dropped this element of the story in favor of particularly less interesting topics, like Jake stressing over how to fix Yang and searching through all his memories. After Yang is a neat film, but there are better sources to understand the experiences of Chinese adoptees. All of them are documentaries: Wo Ai Ni, Mommy, the 2010 documentary about a family in New York who adopted a girl from China; Meet Me on the Bridge, a BBC short about a young woman's journey back to China to meet her birth parents; and One Child Nation, about the effects of the one-child policy on China.

Sci-fi fans will likely be thinking of previous stories they've seen on the screen, like the 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Measure of a Man," both of which explore the rights and emotional well-being of androids. In other ways, After Yang might remind some of the Black Mirror episode titled "Be Right Back" from 2013, the one in which a woman played by Hayley Atwell dates a synthetic recreation of her deceased boyfriend played by Domhnall Gleeson. All of these are probably a bit more memorable than After Yang. 

The best part of the film is its acting, especially Min as Yang. One of his principal tasks is to present for the audience a performance of an android unlike any they've seen before, especially because there are no other stories in which the android is an adopted son meant to keep his adopted sister close to her culture in a way her adoptive parents will be unable to. 

After Yang is a multilayered story, but one gets the impression that if writer/director Kogonada had focused on one of its layers, the film would have been more effective. It's a family drama, a work of science fiction predicting the future, an exercise in ethics, a story of adoption, a debate about data storage. It's all of these things. But it shifts in an unpolished manner from one to the other in a way that is distracting. The family drama, for example, isn't allowed to be interesting, and it doesn't care if its audience cares or not. It tries to be all of these things at once, and it doesn't balance them well. See After Yang for its acting, and try to ignore the fact that you may have already seen similar stories that are more noteworthy. 

Read More →

Till the Clouds Roll By

It was surprising to me that when Lin-Manuel Miranda and his team decided to release Hamilton on Disney+ earlier this month, it was not a musical adaptation as is typically the case in Hollywood, but instead a filmed version of the staged show in 2016. This seems like a risky way to adapt the famous musical, but it worked. Marian Watts noted in Newsweek that the approach Hamilton took to adapt the musical for the screen was successful, whereas the 2004 film The Phantom of the Opera was not, comparing the latter to an overstuffed painting. 

Till the Clouds Roll By, the 1946 MGM musical based on the life of Broadway composer Jerome Kern, tries to take the Hamilton route, but it is much more of a Phantom. It's not a musical adaptation of anything, but its musical numbers are all staged productions of some of his most famous hits, like "How'd You Like to Spoon With Me" and "Ol' Man River," and neither the numbers nor the scenes of dialogue are particularly interesting.

Indeed, at first it seems that that's all it will be: some kind of collection of uninspiring numbers, one after the other failing to excite anyone other than music history lovers. Some of these songs are immortal, but none of them are compelling to watch in this film, directed by Richard Whorf and produced by Arthur Freed (who once exposed himself to a twelve-year-old Shirley Temple). The musical numbers are boring, even the ones featuring Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, Lena Horne, and Frank Sinatra. All the star power couldn't help this film stay afloat. 

Many critics were aware of this at the time. Bosley Crowther at the New York Times questioned why such a film should be made. "Why quibble about the story?" is how Variety put it. That's a very good question. While relatively more recent biographical films of famous musicians, like Ray or Walk the Line, may share a similar sense of being unnecessary, at least there are stakes in those films. Those musicians' stories featured real rises and falls. No such drama exists in Till the Clouds Roll By, an overly sentimental yawn that goes on and on for 132 minutes in an era in which the average full-length motion picture was between 90 and 100 minutes. With all due respect to Kern, in terms of an engaging story, he was no Ray Charles or Johnny Cash.  

Kern is played by Robert Walker. Trying to climb the musical ladder in an era when England ruled Broadway, he travels across the Atlantic, where he meets lots of English people who speak with American accents, like a lady he falls for named Eva (played by Dorothy Patrick). Walker and Patrick may have at least some chemistry, but it's the bare minimum. After some time in the middle of the film in which he respectfully woos her (except for when he tells her she's "pretty for a working girl"), the two flirt and banter and eventually marry. 

Then she more or less disappears from the film, ceding again to focus on the real relationship of the film: the songwriting partnership between Kern and James Hessler (Van Heflin), a fictional character, but their relationship isn't much more interesting. We see these two grow "a little grayer," but we're never given a reason to care. The film tries to add some element of drama by having Sally, Hessler's daughter, grow up to become a singer. Kern writes a song for her, but the producer of the show thinks the song should be sung by real-life actress Marilyn Miller (Garland). Sally, played by Lucille Bremer, is heartbroken, jealous, and disillusioned, and she's treated paternalistically by "Uncle Jerry," so much so that she runs off. A few minutes are devoted to Kern's search for her, mostly in the form of a montage of men shaking their heads "no," presumably to answer if they know her whereabouts. But she eventually shows up in unremarkable fashion. Hurray!

Till the Clouds Roll By is a disappointing and tremendously boring biographical film, one that often feels awkward and clumsy. This sort of film are almost always tedious, but this one is especially so. It doesn't help that most of the non-singing cast is not putting much effort into it. It takes about an hour and a half before Garland appears. She sings a few numbers by Vincente Minnelli, her husband at the time. Her voice is always exceptional, even if the material she is singing is not. Till the Clouds Roll By would have been much more interesting from her perspective instead of from that of Jerome Kern. 

This article was originally published at the Public Domain Film Review, found here.  

Read More →

Hit the Road

If films really are a machine for empathy, as Roger Ebert once said, then that would surely apply to the film Hit the Road from Iran written and directed by Panah Panahi, a road movie that will show many viewers that their chaotic, argumentative, sometimes fraught road trips involving fighting parents, annoying children, and a sick dog might be universal facts of life in any country. 

What kind of a road trip is it? It's a little more complicated than the average family vacation. Some viewers might find this brilliant, while others may find it frustrating, but Hit the Road is incredibly patient, particularly in its first thirty minutes. In the opening scenes, a family of four is on a road trip. Everything appears normal, although the parents seem a bit paranoid. The mother (Pantea Panahiha) scolds their mischievous young boy (Rayan Sarlak) for sneaking their father's cell phone on the trip. The boy humorously insists that he requires the phone for important phone calls he's expecting. It's such a big deal, though, that the mother has their older son (Amin Simiar) pull over so she can hide the phone on the side of the road for them to retrieve on their way back. That's a bit peculiar for a family road trip, no? At another point, she whispers that she thinks they're being followed. They are, but it's by another driver who's been trying to tell them that their car is leaking. 

So much of Hit the Road takes place in the family's car on their way to a destination that is never fully explained, certainly not to the young boy, who remains blissfully ignorant about just about everything that is happening, probably because of his constantly high energy, sucking the oxygen out of the car practically every time he opens his mouth. 

In or out of the car, the actors are fantastic. It's hard to choose a favorite performance of the four because they all act so terrifically. Simiar as the older brother has a mystery to his acting; he cleverly guards what could be described as enormous internal turmoil that is kept from the viewer for most of the film. Hassan Madjooni, as the indolent father likely wishing to make everything appear perfectly normal, submits an effortless and masterful performance. He sits there, apparently helpless as his leg is broken, muttering a few lines of morbid humor here and there and calling his boys monkeys. Did he fall? Yes, he tells someone, he "fell from grace." He has most of the funny moments in the film. Finally, I'm amazed at how Panahi got such an exceptional performance from such a young performer like Sarlak; maybe Panahi's notes were simple, like "be more annoying," but Sarlak makes it work. His performance is so naturalistic, much more than most of what we typically see in Hollywood productions. His acting here is comparable to Waad Mohammed in Wadjda, Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project, Jacob Tremblay in Room, and Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, which Tomris Laffly drew parallels to. 

And finally, there is probably my favorite performance: Panahiha, the mother. Panahiha demonstrates mastery of a variety of difficult tasks for an actor. She has to shift from so many different emotional highs and lows, and nothing, it seems, is in her control. "Nothing but lies," she finally lets out, when it's just her, the older boy, and her husband. (The young one has gone to menace passengers on a bus.)  

Panahi is the son of Iranian New Wave director Jafar Panahi, who has continued to be prohibited by the government from making films. You might have seen his documentary from 2011 called This Is Not a Film, which was smuggled out of Iran in a flash drive hidden inside a cake. As already mentioned, the younger Panahi's script (though a little too obsessed with urine) is very patient in revealing what's actually going on, and even then it's not entirely clear, though things do become more and more interesting as it progresses. Some patience is therefore required, but it's worth the ride.    

Read More →

Narc

When Ray Liotta passed away last week at the age of sixty-seven, virtually every publication labeled him as "Goodfellas star." Some of them might have also mentioned his supporting role in Field of Dreams as Shoeless Joe Jackson, but all of them mentioned Goodfellas, the iconic 1990 gangster flick directed by Martin Scorsese and co-starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci that made him a star. It got to the point that it almost immediately prompted Nick Schrager to write that "Ray Liotta was so much more than Goodfellas." 

This is self-evident. The obituaries that did want to discuss more than Goodfellas or Field of Dreams likely mentioned motion pictures like Something Wild, Cop Land, Hannibal, Blow, Heartbreakers, Killing Them Softly, The Place Beyond the Pines, Marriage Story, and The Many Saints of Newark. Many of them mentioned Narc, as well, which is almost surprising given that it's probably the least-known of the films mentioned. Of his performance in Narc, Schrager wrote that Liotta's role was "a lead performance that remains one of his finest, full of ferocity, despair, and sorrow that so often defined his work." In Narc, Liotta was essentially as good as he had ever been in any of his more famous films. 

His Henry Oak, a lieutenant detective obsessed with finding the killers of his partner, is crass, impatient, impulsive, violent, and terrifying, making him come across as an even more maniacal Popeye Doyle, which is quite the accomplishment. Narc expectedly contains a lot of arguing, crying, swearing, and bullets flying, which means it might not be for everyone. But the most realistic scene, and the one that features both Liotta and his co-star Jason Patric's best acting in the movie, is the moment they sit and talk about their wives. There is an intensity in Narc, even from the get-go, that might feel nauseating to many. But the quiet moments between Patric and the late Liotta are superb.

The film opens with Patric's undercover narcotics officer named Nick Tellis desperately chasing a drug dealer in Detroit. Even though the criminal is shot and killed, the shootout goes awry. Despite this, Tellis is apparently good enough of a cop to be given a second chance, this time trying to solve a murder case which has run into a dead-end. The case involves another undercover cop who was murdered. The police chief (Chi McBride) promises Tellis that if he secures a conviction, he'll get him his precious desk job. (Tellis is married and has a child, and his wife, played by Krista Bridges, has had enough of worrying about him every night.) The police chief has also decided to pair Tellis with Lieutenant Oak (Ray Liotta), despite the chief's warning to Tellis that Oak is a little unhinged. 

All of the police work can feel a little berserk. The depiction of the police—whether they are to be seen as those who keep us safe or those who deliberately harm various communities—could certainly be in the eye of the beholder. Narc was released in 2002 (the same year as HBO's brilliant cop show The Wire), when public confidence in the police was at almost sixty percent; today, after years of high-profile and filmed murders by police officers, that number is under fifty percent. In 2002, one might have seen Liotta's fiendish cruelty as an accurate depiction of unchecked cops and their racist targeting of people of color. But others, particularly younger white male audience members, might have seen the stocky, bearded figure with piercing blue eyes and a menacing shotgun as a heroic figure of justice.  

The screenplay by Joe Carnahan, who also directed the film, would have likely been better suited for a series, just as The Wire was. And its engagement in twists and turns is a little beneath it. However, its realistic dialogue and attention to detail are admirable, as is its incorporation of a Rashomon-style retelling of events. But what you'll really come away from the film is the performances of Jason Patric and, of course, Ray Liotta, who left us too soon. Narc is a fine example of his immense talent and a reminder of how much we lost with his passing.  

Read More →

The Blue Kite

By the time Mao Zedong died in 1976, the communist revolutionary had left behind a controversial and complicated legacy. His defenders (to this day) cite the improvements in literacy and life expectancy rates and defeating foreign powers like Japan, thereby helping to end the Century of Humiliation. On the other side of the coin, however, his policies led to the single deadliest famine in history (killing anywhere from 15-55 million people) and unspeakable and atrocious human rights violations. 

After Zedong died, his successor (the reform-minded Deng Xiaoping) and other Communist Party leaders were in a bind: How were they to distance themselves and their country from the nightmarish horrors of the Mao era while also weaponizing his legacy for the sake of national cohesion? The answer was what remains the official government policy on the Mao era: Mao was seventy percent right and thirty percent wrong. 

From my own experience in China, everyday people (especially younger people who have no memory of him, and definitely the young nationalists—nicknamed "Little Pinks"—revere Mao, including one who told me he wept when thinking about him) may accept the seventy-thirty face-saving narrative, but they focus mainly on the positive aspects of his legacy. The Blue Kite, however, most certainly does not. From 1993 and directed by Fifth Generation filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang, The Blue Kite focuses on a family's struggles during some of the darkest days of the totalitarian Mao era of the 1950s and '60s, especially during the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution. For doing so, the film was initially banned in China, and Tian was ordered not to make another movie for ten years.

Starting in 1953 (on the day of Stalin's death), the film opens with a wedding celebration of the protagonist's parents (Pu Quanxin as his father and Lü Liping as his mother). Mao Zedong is not a character in this film, and he's hardly mentioned. Yet at the same time, his presence looms large. The newlyweds bow to his portrait during their wedding ceremony, but they are soon to embark on a life journey in which the policies of the man they just bowed to will forever change their lives in the worst ways. It will start in small ways, with their family growing disconnected ideologically, but eventually they will grow apart spatially by force, as well.    

As we see these events unfold, The Blue Kite becomes increasingly emotional, mostly provoking feelings of sadness due to what is happening to the characters and anger because of why. Eventually, the protagonist of the film is born. His name is Tietou, which translates to "iron head." Tietou is played by several different actors in this coming-of-age drama, namely Yi Tian as an infant, Zhang Wenyao as a child, and Xiaoman Chen as a teenager. All of them are naturals, providing some of the film's best acting.

Tietou is a bit on the mischievous side, though not more than the average boy. His parents, though, at times struggle with him, and they both take their anger out on him. How can they not be angry all the time? Those were trying times. The mother, though, perseveres and would rather not dig up the past. "What's past is past," she says. "No need to think about it anymore." She's in good company: China would still prefer not to talk about the Cultural Revolution. But the memories pile up, whether she wants them to or not. Acquaintances are taken away to labor camps, and soon her son will join an angry mob of teenagers cutting their principal's hair to humiliate her in front of the entire student body. This may be too simplistic to say, but even though she's only in a few scenes, the government propaganda lady who parades through the village and demands perfect loyalty to the Party may be one of cinema's nastiest villains.  

It would also be simplistic to say that Tian's filmmaking style is not as direct as a Westerner might expect, nor is it as overtly emotional. True, the characters emote; they cry, they laugh, they argue, they fight. But the film (perhaps because of the realities of making a film of such content, or perhaps because that isn't the filmmakers' style—I'm not sure) is not as preoccupied with such things, but this wouldn't hurt non-Chinese audiences' appreciation of the movie. Some audience members might be bored by it at times, or they might find it a little long-winded, but the film is essentially a humanist and universal story, one that doesn't need to be as explicitly direct in its politics. This is one of the ways in which it is noteworthy. 

Thus, The Blue Kite, written by Mao Xiao, is a beautiful yet painful coming-of-age family drama. Tian and his team create a film that reflects the instability of Tietou's life with the instability of the times in which he lives. This unflattering portrayal of how bad things were is one of the reasons why the film was initially banned in China, but the blacklist against Tian only lasted two years, and he eventually returned to film directing in 2002. Despite the initial ban, The Blue Kite won awards at film festivals in Hawaii and Tokyo, and it was nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards. Kenneth Turan and Roger Ebert both placed it on their top-ten lists for 1994, the year in which films like Pulp Fiction, Hoop Dreams, and Forrest Gump also appeared. The Blue Kite continues to be cited along with Farewell, My Concubine and To Live as one of the greatest Chinese films of the era.    

China is different these days. For one, it's an economic powerhouse and a major global power. But some things haven't changed. Films are still heavily censored. Mao is still quite popular, and the current leader, Xi Jinping (while not as totalitarian), is a something of a Mao wannabe. The Little Pinks patrol the web (at least what they're able to use if they can penetrate the Great Firewall) to battle any who criticize the government, but they're unlikely to turn their mother in for being disloyal, ending in her execution (which is something that actually happened). It is with sincere wishes when I say that I hope more films like The Blue Kite are made to help remind audiences that while China has a lot to be proud of given how far they've come and how much they've accomplished in such a short amount of time, the past is sometimes not simply past, and a cult of personality can have dire consequences.  

Read More →