Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

In 1969, Hollywood legend Judy Garland died of an accidental barbiturate overdose. With her death and with Midnight Cowboy soon becoming the first X-rated film to win Best Picture, it was the end of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood and the birth of a new, less innocent era. A new, edgier actor named Al Pacino, who appears in this film as a Hollywood agent, made his debut that same year. And Sharon Tate, the actress and model who was married to Roman Polanski, was murdered (along with her unborn baby and guests) in her home by the Charles Manson gang.

This is the setting for the newest film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It is quite unlike his previous films. Controversial and a little goofy, sure, but fantastically acted and more or less engaging.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are the two main stars here, and they are the best part. DiCaprio is Rick Dalton, a fictitious actor going through a bit of a midlife crisis as he realizes he might have peaked and his acting talent might actually be minimal. He's got a slick leather jacket and a cool necklace, but he's a mess, constantly drinking, smoking, and married to the idea that he's a has-been. Pitt is Cliff Booth, his stunt double who these days essentially makes his living by driving Dalton around and taking care of his other errands. While they live in different economic worlds, they rely on each other and have tremendous loyalty. Their stories essentially split into two as Dalton goes to film a guest appearance on a pilot as the heavy opposite real-life James Stacey, who is played here by Timothy Olyphant. In this sequence, which some might find superfluous, DiCaprio screams, weeps, and seems to be having as much fun as he ever has had as an actor.

While Rick is busy filming, his old buddy Cliff is roaming around the streets of Hollywood, where he runs across a young cohort of followers of the real-lie Charles Manson, who appears briefly here stumbling on Polanski's property. (Manson is played by Australian actor Damon Herriman.) This real-life event--the murders at the hands of the Manson Gang--looms large over the entire story, though the film itself is essentially Tarantino's love letter to the movie business.

One undeniably positive aspect of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is the cast. DiCaprio and Pitt are fantastic together. They both essentially came of cinematic age around the same time, and it's nice that they work so well together. Accents are not DiCaprio's strong suit, but it doesn't matter. His work here is among his finest. Robbie hits all the right notes as Tate, although there has been considerable criticism about her lack of screen time and how much she is given to do. The appearances of veterans like Pacino, Bruce Dern, and Kurt Russell are also enjoyable. But the breakout star is Mike Moh, who portrays Bruce Lee. Lee is rather braggadocios on set, and Cliff, who finally gets some work as a stunt man on the set, is not impressed in the slightest. A fight breaks out between the two, and it's one of the best parts of the film. (It should be noted, however, that Lee's daughter has strongly objected to the way her father was portrayed.)

Other conflicts appear throughout, particularly in what is likely its most notable (and perhaps controversial) scene. It shoots out of nowhere and feels like Tarantino being Tarantino but for all the wrong reasons. But it is Tanatino, and it's also a fairy tale, one that drags on too long. It's his first post-Weinstein film, and part of the deal he negotiated with Sony was to have final cut over the finished product. That was unfortunate, because a lot of what's included has no place being there. We've seen a lot of this stuff before from this director; do we really need to see it all again?

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The Revenant

“Pain is temporary, film is forever.” That quote is from Leonardo DiCaprio in a recent interview. The viewer witnesses in the new film The Revannt just how much DiCaprio apparently believes in this. You could argue that after more than 20 years, he truly wants that Oscar, a prize that has shockingly been denied from him over and over again. DiCaprio earns it here—there's no question about that. In The Revenant, directed by Aalejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who won three Oscars for Birdman, he plays real-life figure Hugh Glass, who, in 1823, was attached by a bear and left for dead yet crawled back and survived.

This movie is simultaneously a story of survival and a story of revenge. The revenge elements are unfortunately fairly uninspiring. The survival scenes, however, are unlike just about any other you've ever seen. Film critic Patrick Bromley mentioned on his podcast how he sometimes wakes up with neck pain if he sleeps incorrectly on his Swedish mattress. His point was that compared to most people of the mid-19^th century, most of us from the present would be long gone if we had to survive in the wilderness of what was then the Dakota Territory. Everyone back then appeared to be horribly malicious, at least from what occurs in this film, and Glass' colleague John Fitzgerald, who was scalped by Indians and therefore deeply hates Glass partly because of his half-Indian son (Forrest Goodluck), particularly so. Fitzgerald is played by Tom Hardy, who had quite a year, having also appeared in the acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road. Watching Hardy throughout his career, I usually am annoyed by his accents, regardless of what it is; whatever role he plays, it tends to require subtitles. Here, however, he's quite good. It's an intimidating performance; with one single, slow turn of his head, he says more than he needs to throughout the rest of the film.


I'm a product of American culture and history, so I know next to nothing about the American Indian tribes depicted here. I can't say how accurate its depictions are, but the days of Anthony Quinn are long gone; there are American Indians cast here, like Melaw Nakehk'o as a young Arikara woman captured by French fur trappers, and Arthur Redcloud as a Pawnee man who assists Glass in his journey home. The other actors are pretty good, too. Domhnall Gleeson (who may be the actor of the year, having also starred in Star Wars--The Force Awakens, Ex Machina, and Brooklyn) is the captain of the party. Will Poulter is also here as a young member of the trappers. who is conflicted about his complacency in what the crew (particularly Fitzgerald) has done to Glass.

 
But DiCaprio is the one everyone is talking about. DiCaprio, it should be noted, does overdo it in a scene or two, but find me a movie in which he doesn't. He almost never relies on his voice for this performance; it's like something from a silent film. Having serious damage to his larynx from the bear attack, he's mostly left to communicate in a tactile manner. This helps DiCaprio, because accents are not his thing. Watch Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and Blood Diamond and tell me those are good accents.

Inarritu is not my favorite director, but this is eons better than Birdman. He has taken his cast and crew into the deep, dangerous (and cold) wilderness of the U.S. and Canada to film some absolutely gorgeous locations. There hasn't really been a movie like this in a while, and not since The Grey in 2012 has there been a shoot that has looked so painful. Indeed, the production has come under criticism for the dangerous filming, with one member calling it a "living hell." That being said, Glass escapes death so many times that it's hard not to role one's eyes. He's clinging to death when I think most of us (well, at least me) would easily give up, but why doesn't he? Revenge. When we are pricked, do we not bleed? And when we're left for dead after a bear nearly kills us, do we not really, really want to hurt the jerks who left us?

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The Wolf of Wall Street

Greed is good. That was the unforgettable line of Oliver Stone's 1987 "Wall Street." Here, a quarter of a century later, Martin Scorsese's tweak of that infamous attitude is that greed is not just good, but really fuckin' good...and it always will be. "The Wolf of Wall Street" features arguably Leonard DiCaprio's best performance yet (and I thought the same thing of DiCaprio in "Django Unchained" the year before). He is one of those rare actors who tries to outdo himself with every performance. His portrayal of Jordan Belfort, along with the other acts of barbarism and absurdity, help make DiCaprio and Scorsese's first collaboration, "Gangs of New York," look tame.

This movie is not for the faint of heart. Remember that rumor that Jack Nicholson would snort cocaine off the rear end of a young woman in Scorsese's "The Departed" but it was left on the cutting room floor? Well, something like that exists in the opening moments of "The Wolf of Wall Street." The viewer will either think this is a small component of a larger picture of arbitrary debauchery, or be so disgusted and turn the film off. But the scenes serve a purpose--if you didn't hate Wall Street already, you will really hate it now.

The film starts with Black Monday in 1987, the year I was born. (I entered this world with the worst stock market crash since 1929, and I graduated in 2009 among the worst stock market crash since 1929.) Belfort, humbled by his experience, has to start back at the bottom. He finds a job pushing penny stocks to schmucks (the postmen, we're told; always the postmen), and they're selling garbage to garbage men. It's at this time that he meets Donnie Azoff. Azoff is played by Jonah Hill, who is quickly emerging as one of the most enjoyable actors to watch. Here, he has never been better; possibly the only performance of the year funnier was the one he gave in "This Is the End." But there is also a terrifying sense of malice to him. His monologue--explaining what he would do to the hypothetical child with disabilities he would hypothetically produce with his wife (who also happens to be his cousin)--is, believe it or not, similar to Joe Pesci's famous "funny how?" diatribe in "Goodfellas." In both cases, the intention of the dialogue is to invoke fear. These are funny wiseguys, but they're also terrifying.

The humor is actually one of the things that's so surprising about "The Wolf of Wall Street." When folks heard that DiCaprio and Scorsese were teaming up for the fifth time, we all thought this would be a gritty drama. Instead, we're treated to a very funny movie, one of the funniest of the year. Here, DiCaprio's performance is that of a risk-loving lunatic with a golden toilet. The funniest scene undoubtedly is the one where both Belfort and Azoff take expired methaqualone (commonly referred to throughout the movie as "ludes"), and the drugs only kick in just as the best laid plans of Wall Street rats go terribly, terribly awry. The plan is to have all their money transported to Swiss bank accounts. Azoff screws up awfully and their pickup man ends up in jail. Belfort rushes to a pay phone to get the news (which includes an unfortunate fact that the FBI has been bugging their phones). Belfort has to drive (while essentially in a catatonic state) back to his mansion to prevent Azoff from using the phones. The trouble is that Azoff has definitely been using the phones; he calls the French banker (Jean Dujardin) to tell him that money will be late, but he's barely able to produce any of those required syllables or syntax. The result is confusion and hysteria. "You ate ze money? What do you mean you ate ze money?"

So to say that DiCaprio and Hill are worthy of Oscar nominations is an understatement. Audiences have seen DiCaprio do humorous scenes before, but they've never seen him this funny, and it's widely known that comedy more often than not is much more challenging than drama. Terrence Winter, who worked with Scorsese on "Boardwalk Empire," certainly deserves to be nominated for his exceptional screenplay. Also providing great performances are Margot Robbie as Belfort's second wife and Rob Reiner as Belfort's father, who may have just as foul a mouth as his son but at least is wiser, more cautious, and more long-term thinking. It is surely hoped that they are rewarded with nominations tomorrow.

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?"
-Pope Francis, "Evangelii Gaudium"

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Inception

Christopher Nolan's "Inception" is a film about characters who perchance to dream. There is something deeply philosophical and fascinating about man's ability to dream, to analyze and reflect on one's own dreams, one's own nightmares, that offers women and men the ability to command such creative power that would make everyone a Dante or Shakespeare, as H.F. Hedge put it, and Nolan capitalizes on this.

There seems to be a genuine dissonance between man's rationality of being awake and the insanity of dreaming, where all absurdity and surrealism is finally available. This is the case with Nolan's film, a film which almost entirely creates a perfect equilibrium between intellectualism and entertainment.

The story is likely inspired by the science and psychology of lucid dreams, that is when a dreamer recognizes and acknowledges that he or she is in a dream. Many characters have such moments in "Inception." The film toys with our own recognition of dreams in that it is difficult to recollect them; we in essence quickly forget what dreams we dreamed. Another aspect is dream incubation, or the placing of a seed in the brain, or inception.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a dream extractor who leads teams to steal secrets from people's dreams. But in this case, for a complicated and quickly-described reason, Cobb and his team are not extracting but creating an idea in someone's mind. Dreams within dreams are created, totems are used to detect whether or not the person is in a dream, and the subjects (those whom the idea is created or stolen from) possess subconscious protections against the extractors. The more dreams-within-dreams that are created, the more risk there is; usually "death" in a dream returns the dreamer to reality, but with heavy sedation (as is the case on the team's special assignment), being killed could result in actual death. To die is truly to sleep for these characters.

Like in Scorsese's "Shutter Island" from earlier this year, DiCaprio's character is a man struggling with deep guilt and alienation. It is as if he exists in a prison when he is awake, and dreaming provides him the perfect escapism. The dreams allow him to take enormous risks, regardless of the potential consequences to him and his team members.

Another wonderful aspect is the fact that Nolan has largely avoided shortchanging his actors. Aside from Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite who both have small roles, this is an ensemble piece, with DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Tom Berenger all having important roles.

With Nolan, there is a special attention to detail, and when there are elaborate and expensive CGI images, one gets the sense that Nolan, unlike so many other directions, has not forgotten that the onus is on him to make the audience believe that these images are real. Cities fold onto themselves and characters fly like acrobats in a gravity-less corridor. There are nightmares--Cotillard's near-perfect moments as practically a ghost tormenting Cobb's guilt--filled with sudden horrifying glances, a look that could kill. And then a firm grip with a broken glass, and a powerful charge. And there is the wonder of subtext with regards to psychology and even architecture, all culminating in a film inspired by obvious previous science fiction films.

But this is a film with flaws. While there certainly is a sense of wonder here, that wonder unfortunately often does not go far enough. At times it feels as if there is nothing really new here, unlike other films that have dealt with similar subjects, as varied as Wilcox's "Forbidden Planet" to Hitchcock's "Spellbound," to Kurosawa's "Dreams." This film has been called a Kubrickian masterpiece; it is not. Part of the reason is that Nolan already is one of the best directors around, so the bar is just so high every time, but that does not mean one should not see "Inception." If you can tolerate the intensity, confusion, rapid speed at which the plot is explained, the lack of details to the plot, the real-or-not jargon about our dreams, the non-stop gun fights, etc., then it is a film worth seeing. There are many reasons to see this movie: its thrills, its acting, its cinematography, its ideas and especially its visuals.

You probably have heard about the ending. I won't mention much, other than it will probably make you smile (or groan if you are less patient or intellectually curious), and it would be best not to dwell too much time on it.

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Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" began with the usual notes: the Rolling Stone's cool "Gimme Shelter," a favorite of Scorsese's, for it has also appeared in his "Goodfellas" and "Casino." The lyrics, about a coming storm, could certainly be seen as allegorical, but they would be more fitting here, in his "Shutter Island," because much of the film takes place during violent rain. How, though, could the Rolling Stones' music fit in this period piece set in the 1950s, a psychological thriller and mystery.

Instead, the opening notes are Ingram Marshall's "Fog Tropes." The notes are complicated but quiet, and fit not only with the ship approaching the island but also with the melancholic, dark and gloomy atmosphere of this movie. Wisely, Scorsese has opted for a soundtrack that lacks an original score but instead is one of modern classical music. Move over George Harrison, Eric Clapton and the Ronettes--here come Max Richter, John Cage, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

Scrosese's films have famously dealt with everything from gangsters, rock 'n' roll, and Jesus Christ. Here, his theme and mood is more closely aligned with "The Aviator" than it is with "The Departed" (save for the paranoia aspect). Both were made for visceral experiences in psychology, and both are spectacular. With the "Aviator," there are so many aspects of Hughes's story--his love life with many woman (and possibly men), his brief role in politics, and his giant empire. Instead, Scorsese started with Hughes as a filmmaker, and the film evolved into a story about Hughes as a psychological subject. In "Shutter Island," a similar route is chosen: it starts as a rather conventional thriller and mystery, then goes through a metamorphosis into psychological study. Psychology is an under-appreciated component of many films and never seems to get its fair share of discussion (such as the groupthink aspect of "12 Angry Men").

Leonardo DiCaprio (Howard Hughes in Scorsese's "The Aviator" and also the lead in his "Gangs of New York" and "The Departed" and probably many more to come) is Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall sent to Shutter Island off the coast of Boston to investigate the recent escape of a patient. He is there with his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), and becomes aware that everything is not as it seems. The island hosts a hospital for the criminally insane, and one of their patients, or as Teddy repeatedly calls, "prisoners," has escaped, "as if she completely vanished." The man in charge, a sympathetic and progressive psychologist (Ben Kingsley), is not providing much help, and things are not getting better, especially as a tempest of a storm is coming in. Teddy himself seems to have recovered, but not completely, from the death of his wife, and his temper is easily sparked.

The primary flaw of the film is its conclusion, which is fairly simple to guess almost immediately and not clever or original. Indeed, it even seems to hurt the film slightly above being just a simple annoyance. But it is the details that matter and which are so attractive, with a crescendo of intensity and a perfectionist's direction. There is a hint of Cold War paranoia, possible Nazi allegories and the ethics of lobotomies. There is rain--constant rain--fire, rats, disfigured faces, loud music reminiscent of the old Hollywood era, with whispers and shouts in the dark. The intensity level is so high and there are hardly any moments of rest. When it is not raining, it is snowing, but surely nothing is more peaceful than it was before. There are obvious influences here, such as Hitchcock's "Psycho" and "Vertigo," Kubrick's "The Shining," and to a lesser extent Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" and Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom." (Perhaps it would be an annoying reminder to point out that the late Powell's wife is Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's frequent editor.) This level of Scorsese being influenced is quite striking, simply because it is usually Scorsese who does the influencing (like on the works of Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino), not the one who is influenced. Regardless, being influenced is hardly ever a bad thing, and the influences are appreciated.

And unlike some directors who have recently had their actors play make-believe in front of green screens, Scorsese always brings out the best in his performers, particularly DiCaprio, who has been better and better in each Scorsese film. His other actors--Ruffalo, Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, Elias Koteas, Ted Levine and John Carroll Lynch--are all fantastic, as well.

This is a film in which the ending--that sometimes make or break moment--was not so satisfying to me, but Scorsese's craftsmanship is so perfect as it always is that I seldom thought of the ending. Instead, I remembered everything I liked about it--its thrills, its noir approach and its effect. With a director as terrific as Scorsese, who really cares about the endings? There is no buyer's remorse here.

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