Mother Mary Comes To Me, Armed: "Proud Mary"

Proud Mary
Directed by Babak Najafi

Trotted myself off to the local AMC cineplex to catch Taraji P. Henson as star and producer of Proud Mary this past weekend. Gotta say, I enjoyed myself. Now, I have to say that my enjoyment is predicated on a couple of things: I'm female, I'm relatively middle-aged, and I'm a TPH fan. So this makes me the perfect audience. Still, it's a fine film and I'm perplexed by reports that Screen Gems hasn't put the full weight of their promotion machine behind it, considering that African Americans and people of color generally make up the majority of the viewing audience. I'm also perplexed by many folks publically declaring that they plan to miss it until it shows up on cable or streaming services because it doesn't appeal to them. Certainly it's anyone's prerogative to see a film where and when they like, or even not to see it all, and I understand that some may be put off by a narrative about an African American gang moll, but the negativity, people! Give it a chance!

Here are some of my notes:

1. TPH gives a strong performance. The script allows us to see her as a hardboiled operative, but also as a conflicted woman who regrets some of her choices and wants to change her life. There is a softer side to Mary. But in order to get to that peace in the valley, she has to climb a mountain of ... dead bodies.

2. The flick may remind many of the John Cassavetes' 1980 film Gloria, starring his wife Gena Rowlands (it was remade, unnecessarily and unfortunately, by Sidney Lumet in 1999 with Sharon Stone in the title role). In it, a tough ex-gangster's moll tries to prevent the Mob from offing the sole young survivor of a gangland killing. Movies can't resist telling us that the maternal instinct will turn any woman into a supernatural Lioness. (Remember, it was thwarted motherhood that sent Beatrix Kiddo on her intercontinental killing spree in Kill Bill.)

3. I enjoyed the performance given by Jahi Di'Allo Winston as the boy Mary takes under her wing. He's engaging, handsome, and he can play both toughness and vulnerability, which was perfect for the part. (He also charmed as young Ralph Tresvant in last year's TV hit The New Edition Story.) He and Taraji had some great scenes together.

4. It could be said that the film feels a bit slow and leisurely in places. That there are holes and lapses in logic in the plot (as in telling a child not to do something is a bottom-line guarantee that he will do it, for starters). That Mary's backstory could have been pumped up a bit more to increase the pace and make us appreciate her skills and history in the underworld crew. But I was OK with the slower scenes. I find it wearisome when every single film is throwing action, info, and images off the screen at breakneck speed. Sometimes fast and furious does not equal smart and clever, but we've been conditioned by a spate of whiz-bang thrillers and superhero flicks to be bombarded. It's nice to be able to just savor a narrative. (Perhaps that's a function of my age; I grew up watching films where character, plot, and tension were allowed to build over the course of the film's running time.) Still, some of the scenes in her apartment dragged down the film's momentum.

5. The perception of drag in the movie could well be influenced by Danny Glover's labored line readings. On a recent social media thread about the flick, someone commented that this is his worst performance yet. I don't know; he isn't given much to do here. I'm a Glover fan, and I still harbor fond recollections of him as a Pomeranian-stroking underworld boss in 1991's A Rage In Harlem. But I have to acknowledge that Glover has always had a mucklemouthed delivery, like his tongue is too fat for his mouth, and his striated voice is only getting more and more rusty as he ages. I described his voice in 2014's Beyond The Lights as "incomprehensible fog." Now his vocal performance has become so distressed and hoarse that in his every scene, I wondered if his audio track was out of sync, since his words seemed to arrive at our ears several seconds after he'd wheezed them out.

6. There is plenty of action and gunfire here. Does it seem over the top? Yes. While the plot explains that underworld boss Luka and Mary's boss Benny (Glover) are rivals, the scope of their operations is never made plain. But it is serious enough for many Bostonians to die in their service.

7. I have to give props to the film's music. The score (by Fil Eisler?) is dynamic, atmospheric, taut and sensitive. While I certainly enjoyed the soundtrack of existing tracks -- including Ike & Tina Turner's version of "Proud Mary," Anthony Hamilton's "Coming From Where I'm From," and more -- the choices in some places seemed too obvious and over the top, particularly in the use of "Proud Mary" as the musical theme. The song is rousing, certainly, but didn't seem to match with Mary's motivations.

But overall, Proud Mary is about redemption. And as a theme for any screen entertainment, it still works. And it adds significantly to Taraji's expansive portfolio as a multi-talented force in films. Of this Mary, we can be proud.

(Proud Mary photo courtesy Screen Gems)

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Prepping for "Proud Mary" with Tales of Hitmen Past

I'm preparing for Taraji P. Henson's new flick Proud Mary. I don't have especially high expectations for the movie in terms of it being Oscar-worthy or anything, but as a fan of a good actioner, I'm looking forward to seeing my girl flex her guns (and her weapons, too). Why shouldn't she get to show how slick, fit, cold-blooded and butt-kicking a character she can be? We are already acquainted with Taraji's incredible capacity for fierceness, thanks to her smoking chops in Empire. Now it's her turn to get physical.

Angelina Jolie had her outings hefting guns bigger than her in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Salt, and the forgotten 2008 thriller Wanted. Charlize Theron has been a badass in last year's Atomic Blonde, Mad Max: Fury Road, the Aeon Flux series, and even 1996's 2 Days in the Valley, where she had an epic girlfight with Teri Hatcher. Uma Thurman was not only The Bride in Kill Bill, but Emma Peel in the New Avengers, a superhero in the comedy My Super Ex Girlfriend, and Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin.

Taraji's entry no doubt follows in the mold of numerous blaxploitation sheroes of the 70s, like Pam Grier, Teresa Graves, Gloria Hendry, Vonetta McGee, Tamara Dobson and the like. But unlike many of these ladies, whose characters were usually motivated by revenge or justice, the Proud Mary character appears to do what she does for money alone. Will have to actually watch the movie to understand her motivations and payoffs. After all, the movie is called "Proud Mary." What makes her proud?

Proud Mary looks to be part of a long list of movies about what filmmakers imagine to be the fast-paced, high stakes, high-paying, and stylish yet lonely, complicated, desensitizing world of professional killers who must face life-and-death decisions every single day. The risks and morality of their profession make them the perfect character studies.

Aside from the more recent The Hitman's Bodyguard, which I didn't see (should I?), here are a handful of relatively recent yarns about tortured hit men that I found interesting:

1. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
A hilarious and simultaneously violent movie that manages to skewer politics, corporate career advancement, the American dream, and suburban values while asking questions about life, love, and one's taste in music. Grosse Pointe Blank follows Martin Blank (fast-talking John Cusack), a 30something hitman undergoing a mid-career crisis. On what he plans as his last assignment, he travels back home to the Michigan city of the title where he must execute a target (only identified in a sealed dossier he delays opening) before a pair of Federal agents stops him or a team of freelance assassins led by Grocer (Dan Aykroyd) kills Blank and hits the target themselves. In the meantime, Blank decides to attend his ten-year high school reunion and resume courtship of the sweetheart (Minnie Driver) he abandoned just before prom. Throughout the film Blank has a back and forth with himself and those around him about doing what he does. "If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there," he explains to his terrified therapist (Alan Arkin). "It's not me! Why does everybody think it's me?" he grouses for the millionth time about the impersonal nature of his job, while violence and mayhem rain down around him. "No, no, no, psychopaths kill for no reason, I kill for money, it's a job!" he tries explain to his horrified girl. The jokes, jibes, and spot-on notes about modern life fly as fast as the bullets, all powered by an amiable New Wave soundtrack. One of my favorite flicks.

2. Killing Them Softly (2009)
Few people saw this elegiac crime noir starring Brad Pitt as Jackie Cogan, a Boston-based fixer charged with taking down the palookas who foolishly robbed a Mob-connected poker game. Jackie prefers to take out his victims from a distance with no warning, thus "killing them softly." He dispatches one of the robbers himself, but since he's personally acquainted with the other marks, he decides to sub-contract the gig to Mickey Fallon, an old-school hitman played by the late, great James Gandolfini in an incredible performance that nearly derails the whole film. Unfortunately Mickey is a wreck: A drunken, overweight parole violator just out of stir who precedes the job with drugs, alcohol and hookers and ultimately can't perform, leaving Jackie to do what must be done. It's a slow, atmospheric film with a lingering sense of dread enhanced by constant peeks at televised news bulletins and 2008's presidential debates showing the grim realities of economics in America. The story has the same leisurely pace, affection for its characters, and Boston Irish accent as the much earlier The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and indeed, both films were adapted from novels by George V. Higgins (1974's "Cogan's Trade" in this instance). The story ends with Jackie in a bar haggling over what he's been paid for the three hits. "F--k you, pay me!" he demands, echoing what he feels America is really all about.

3. The Professional (aka Léon) (1995)
Jean Reno plays Léon, a taciturn, illiterate and lonely hitman living in a tiny apartment in Harlem. His daily routine consists of drinking milk, exercising, cleaning his guns, and waiting for his next assignment in between executing hits around the city, while his fees are pocketed by his Little Italy-based boss "for safekeeping." But when the family of Matilda, the precocious 12-year-old girl next door (Natalie Portman) is wiped out by a crooked, sadistic DEA lieutenant (Gary Oldman) over stolen drug money, Léon finds himself the reluctant guardian and mentor for this orphaned Lolita. As their relationship unfolds, Matilda teaches him more about life and familial love and he teaches her the tricks of his trade as a "cleaner." Intent on avenging the deaths of her family, specifically her innocent young brother, Matilda is no match for Oldman until Léon lends a hand, dispatching bad guys in spectacular fashion.

4. Kill Bill, Vols. 1 & 2 (2003-2004)
Quentin Tarantino's epic tale of revenge undertaken by Uma Thurman's unwavering Bride (aka Beatrix Kiddo), these films give us a lot to chew on about the imagined lives of a crew of professional assassins. How all of these vindictive killers manage to stay aligned under the rule of Bill, aka The Snake Charmer, is a mystery since they all seem to be a pretty bad-tempered lot. Their Deadly Assassination Viper Squad requires them to adopt the codenames of troublesome snakes, not all of them venomous; their names seem to reflect their personalities more than their killing abilities, as the Bride becomes Black Mamba, Elle Driver is California Mountain Snake, O-Ren Ishii is Cottonmouth, Vernita Green is Copperhead, and Bill's brother Budd is Sidewinder. We learn quite a bit about the physical training in martial arts (Camp Pai Mei, anyone?), tools of the trade (swords in this day and age!), and nerves-of-steel techniques used by these killers and their adversaries. They know martial arts, knives, guns, swords, darts, spears, poisons, languages, survival techniques, espionage and more. Who can forget Vol. 2's pregnancy scene, with Karen Kim wielding that giant shotgun in an attempt to take out The Bride at the hotel? She was no joke, either. The thing is, when you hang with killers, you usually get killed. And in a revenge tale about a trained killer versus a bunch of trained killers, things are bound to get intense.

5. ShadowBoxer (2005)
The lives of contract killers don't get anymore complicated than they do in this flick. Mikey (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and his cancer-stricken stepmother Rose (Helen Mirren) are professional assassins and also lovers. Called in by a contact to kill his pregnant wife, who he suspects of cheating, the duo instead find the wife ready to give birth. They decide to help their target through labor and delivery, then spirit mother and child away to another city for safekeeping. Mikey continues to dodge the woman's husband and carry out hits as Rose gets sicker and sicker. Then comes the scene most remember. At Rose's request, Mikey takes his beloved on a picnic deep in the woods, makes love to her, and shoots her in the head. The film continues to show the unraveling consequences Mikey faces for harboring the wife and her son, but who cares. He killed Helen Mirren in an act of love! It's the hit man's way of pulling the plug. Mikey ultimately prevails to survive another day.

6. Looper (2012)
In another twisted take on the genre, this film poses the question: What is a hitman to do when the target is ... himself? In this dystopian future, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt plays Joe, a member of an elite crew of live-for-today 2044 hooligans called Loopers. This assassin ring kills crime world targets from 2074, delivered back over the years via an outlawed time machine. Unfortunately being a “looper” comes with the proviso that they only get 30 years to serve until they too get looped back for execution. All hell breaks loose when Joe from 2074 (Bruce Willis) loops himself back to kill a murdering mob boss as a baby, while young Joe tries to stop him. Complicated plot, interesting premise.

So, what will Taraji bring to the genre? Can't wait to see. (PS -- I did see it; check out my thoughts here.)

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Frosty The Snow Flick: Thinking of Some Cold Weather Films

A couple of days ago, we got hit with close to a foot of snow. While I've survived many a cold, snowy winter, it is not my favorite climate. If I get too cold, I cease to function. I've been this way for a while; as soon as I start to feel a chill I start to shut down. The worst episode was when I was a teenager. It was February with snow on the ground and my dad and I were driving back down the I-95 to the Bronx from Boston, where I'd visited some college campuses. The station wagon malfunctioned somehow, and in the days before cellphones, my dad left me in the vehicle on the side of the road while he went for help. Waiting for his return, I developed my first case of frostbite. Seeing my fingers turn from white to purple to black, then feeling the burning, searing pain when the blood finally returned to my extremities is something I have never forgotten.

So when I see films where extreme cold and snow are a factor, I physically recoil. No matter how great the storyline, no matter how temperate my surroundings while watching, I often find myself growing uncomfortable, viewing with my shoulders raised to my ears, arms crossed, hands tucked under, teeth gritted.

Here are three of the frostiest films that I can think of off the top of my head:

The Revenant (2015)
This is an Oscar-winning tale of adventure and revenge in a bitter cold West of 1823, directed by Alejandro G. Iñáritu. Leonardo diCaprio stars as Hugh Glass, a reluctant guide for a ragtag fur-trapping party, whose half Pawnee teen son comes along. The group is attacked by another tribe, and to avoid being ambushed by more natives along their journey, Glass leads them overland to Fort Kiowa. Except on the way he is horribly mauled by a bear. The group's now self-appointed leader, John Reynolds (a weaselly Tom Hardy), attempts to smother him but is caught in the act by Glass' son. Hardy stabs the son to death before Glass' helpless eyes, convinces the rest of the party that Glass is dead, and abandons him to the elements, intent on cashing in the pelts for himself. The film now becomes a grueling survival story, as Glass must endure bitter cold, dense snowfall, bone-chilling rains, ice-laden rivers, further Indian attacks, and hunger, not to mention being debilitated by his wounds, as he attempts to get to Fort Kiowa, then revenge himself on Reynolds. Their final showdown takes place in a vast snowy landscape by a frozen creek. Photographed in grim grays and dim blues, the film' cinematography is awe-inspiring as it depicts the vast and lonely vistas of snow-covered mountains, frosty meadows, and ice-covered waterways. But the film literally left me cold. While DiCaprio's endurance in portraying this long-suffering character is notable, I couldn't wait for The Revenant to be over.

Dr. Zhivago (1965)
This David Lean-directed classic tells the story of the Russian Revolution, as seen through the eyes of an idealistic, aristocratic poet and doctor, and the troubled seamstress' daughter turned nurse with whom he has an affair. It's a long, melodramatic film on a scale as vast as Russia itself, with numerous twists and turns, a score of dynamic characters, incredible setpieces, and a soaring musical score. If you pay attention it offers new and interesting details with every successive viewing. What I most remember is Zhivago fleeing Moscow to a country estate with his wife, son, and in-laws, traveling by train through a barren landscape of endless sacked villages covered in snow, then arriving at the manse in the dead of winter by horse-drawn sleigh. Later in the film, he will take refuge here again with his lover, Lara, after the estate's lower floors have become an ice palace due to destruction by rebel forces and the elements. The cinematography and set designs are amazing and who can forget the Russian style sable and fox furs donned by the romantic pair as they survey the scene? The two almost make the snow seem cozy.

Fargo (1996)
Named for the North Dakota city where some of the film's "malfeasance" takes place, Fargo is the Coen Brothers' tragicomic story about a hapless car salesman so desperate to make a name for himself as the sole owner of a parking lot that he sells his soul -- and that of his unsuspecting wife, the daughter of a rich and controlling local tycoon -- to a pair of violent, ignorant louts. Nothing good can come from a scheme in which Jerry Lundegaard (the incredible William H. Macy) pays to have his own wife kidnaped so he can pocket the ransom and launch his business; everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and hot on his trail is a good-natured, persistent, and very pregnant police officer Marge Gunderson (a crack turn by Frances McDormand) from Minnesota's Twin Cities. Snow and cold figure prominently in the film, as characters must suit up to head out into the elements in snowboots and hats, the long featureless highway between towns is a bleak frozen tundra, a police informant so bundled up as he leans on a snow shovel that he can barely be seen, Steve Buscemi's bad guy packs snow onto his bloody jaw after being shot, then later cluelessly buries an attache case full of cash at an indistinguishable fence post among many along the snow-swept road. At the conclusion Marge chases down acerbic bad guy Peter Stormare across a frozen lake. Cold and snow are an unremarkable part of life in this part of the country. Marge lectures her quarry as she takes him to jail in a squad car traversing the snowdrifts: "There's more to life than a little money, ya know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are. And it's a beautiful day." (Emphasis mine.)

What are your standout snowy flicks? Feel free to follow this blog and post your comments below.
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P.T. & The Flash: "The Greatest Showman"

The Greatest Showman
directed by Michael Gracey
starring Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron, Zendaya

I'll say it again: I love musicals. I like watching talented people cobble together a full performance of story, song, and dance, using all of their narrative, vocal, and physical skills. I love being transported into a fully fleshed-out fantasy world. I want to be able to examine the performance, watch it from all angles, get an immersive experience.

Unfortunately many of today's musicals are so determined to break away from the older, classic Hollywood movie musicals and serve an apparently attention-deficit-disordered audience that they now offer style over substance, speed over accuracy, flash over form. I feel cheated out of a full experience by a number of now-common devices: slap dash, amateurish, or rushed storytelling; lightning-fast editing and multiple cross cuts that don't allow me to savor the fine points of choreography or even the actors' faces; simple songs voiced by unremarkable singers with insistent, multi-voiced choruses not sung with artistic intent but flung through the speakers like so many handfuls of pop-music confetti. Maybe this is because today's movie musicals seem to be targeted primarily at 14-year-old girls with the attention spans of butterfly moths and artistic discernment honed by years of playing videogames, watching animated cartoons, and wearing sequinned princess costumes.

Even the choreography now is moving away from the rigors and finesse of trailblazers like Bob Fosse, Michael Kidd, and Hermes Pan to a style that's a cross between high school cheerleading, square-dance hootenannies, and the most elementary B-boying. You should know that there is quite a bit of stomping and pointing in this film. So much stomping, in fact, that I came to see it as the characters' insistence that they have a right to exist, a right to pursue whatever goals they set for themselves, and a right to present this modest entertainment as the height of artistic excellence.

This is a major reason why The Greatest Showman was such a disappointment. There is a whole lot of style over substance in this film, perhaps the fault of first-time director Gracey, who comes to the project after directing commercials in Australia. The sets and the costumes, the makeup and the visual effects are absolutely stunning. But like a newborn who fails to adapt to breastfeeding, I never properly latched on to this glittering tale of the rags to riches story of Phineas T. Barnum. Viewers are rushed and bullied into accepting its parameters and premise with little time to orient themselves within the story.

What's more, while I find Hugh Jackman an attractive and able performer, in all honesty, his voice is not that special. It's not transporting, sonorous, inspiring, or even imbued with personality. His singing voice is simply serviceable. Perhaps this is a function of the songs, which are robust and cleverly composed and produced to the outer limits of modern studio technocraft, but, being entirely contemporary and anachronistic to the time period in which the story takes place, are bombastic and forgettable. The most unique and interesting voice in the entire film belongs to a woman with a full beard and mustache (Keala Settle in full makeup), but her quivering earnestness and bouncing bosoms almost turn her into a cartoon laughing stock (indeed, it's hard not to think that she is mere seconds from an explosive costume malfunction during her energetic dance routines).

So let's talk about the cast of characters. PT Barnum's wife (Michelle Williams with her usual Mona Lisa smile) and daughters are as cute as cute can be. We get to see them, get to know them as adorable, unendingly supportive, and humanizing elements for the character of Barnum himself, whose motivations (get even with his rich father in law, exploit the downtrodden both inside and outside his tent) are entirely suspect. The cast of misfits, oddities, and physically challenged performers Barnum drafts into his service get embarrassingly short shrift. For most, other than Tom Thumb, we barely even learn their names, histories or the true nature of their gifts or get to enjoy their acts. Former Disney star Zendaya is cast as a beautiful young aerialist, and she gets to emote and sing, but her character is only barely sketched out. In her star-crossed romance with Barnum partner Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron), I wasn't sure if the impediment to their happy future was her perceived undesirable status as a circus freak or a person of color or both. And the whole Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) storyline, though historically apt, failed in one respect: Lind was the Swedish Nightingale of that era, but the songs she was given to sing in the movie did little -- in my estimation -- to earn her that title. Further, for a film mostly set in New York City -- Barnum's American Museum was located in the Wall Street area -- the exterior sets seem to resemble some fantasy metropolis in a foreign land.

I'm not even going to get into the discussion of the real P.T. Barnum's exploitation and abuse of people of color, the physically and mentally challenged, and even the wildlife he retained in his museum and live shows. You can read about that here. Only rarely do film entertainments, least of all musicals, adhere to the facts of their subjects.

This is one of the very few instances in a film where I feel that a character needed to be designated as a narrator -- and I'm not really a big fan of narrators. Think of The Age of Innocence, how the unseen narrator was able to put a lot of the story, and the feelings of the characters, into context. Granted, the narration was adapted straight from Edith Wharton's novel. But if Tom Thumb, or even Zendaya's aerialist partner, had told the story of Barnum through their eyes, explaining his rise and fall and why the performers came to feel like family (at least in this telling), it would have enhanced the story significantly, as would a static camera during the large production numbers.

I actually enjoyed the music of The Greatest Showman, and I appreciate the effort and talent it took to produce this film. But as a whole, it left me unmoved. And that's OK. It seems entirely fitting that a big screen musical about a razzle-dazzle showman who said "There's a sucker born every minute" should be at the center of this piece of cotton candy fluff.

Femme Fatales, Dizzy Dames & the Sad '70s Saps Who Rescue Them: "The Nice Guys" & "Inherent Vice"

The Nice Guys (2016)
Inherent Vice (2014)

The Nice Guys came on cable again recently. It reminded me anew of how the time-worn themes of the femme fatale and the damsel in distress are played out, again and again, even in contemporary cinema.

Mysterious, unknowable, sexually enticing, and often speaking in riddles, the femme fatale traditionally uses her allure -- knowingly or unknowingly -- to draw the male lead into a mystery, trap, or caper of some kind. As moviemaking has evolved with the culture over the decades, a twist on the femme fatale trope has emerged: That of the ditzy female, usually blonde, whose blithe ignorance gets her into hot water that she must be rescued from, usually by a man who appoints himself her savior. For both the Dizzy Dames and the Femme Fatales, the man endures all manner of humiliation, deprivation, danger and bodily harm to safeguard the clueless woman. The dizzy dame plot and its variations have most often fueled any number of screen comedies (Who’s That Girl, Desperately Seeking Susan, Butterflies Are Free, Something Wild, The Seven-Year Itch, Splash, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Born Yesterday, etc.), but they can be the centerpiece of dramas as well.

Set in 1977 Los Angeles, with all the attendant bellbottoms and disco beats, the story of Nice Guys follows the entangled paths of Jackson Healy, an enforcer for hire played by Russell Crowe, and failing private investigator Holland March, played by Ryan Gosling, who’s got a mortgage and a wanna-be-grown pre-teen daughter. The two men cross paths “cute” – Healy is hired to bang up March at his L.A. hilltop bungalow to warn him off a case – and they reluctantly join forces to locate a porn star who may or may not have died in a car crash, which leads them to the trail of the missing daughter of a local Justice Department official. In the process, the two heroes squabble like Felix and Oscar, ride around a sun-drenched Hollywood in a convertible Cadillac (I would swear that Gosling drives the same Caddy in La La Land), trade blows with bad guys, and stumble through a decadent Hollywood Hills party in search of film footage with the potential to bring down a struggling automaker.

The film, directed by Shane Black, is supposed to be a neo-noir thriller, but its overarching sunniness and toothless sense of danger play more like an original ‘70s episode of Starsky & Hutch than anything approaching Chinatown.

Gosling’s shambling loser character, Holland March, gets a veneer of sympathy for the “cute” relationship he has with his daughter, whom he’s raising alone. But with the two heroes already chest deep in doo-doo chasing after a nudie star and a hippy activist, he loses points in my eyes for cluing in his precocious 13-year-old daughter to all the details of the case as though she’s an adult, leading her to take an active role in their investigation with dire – and comic -- consequences. This is a movie that thinks everything little (white) girls do – no matter how clueless, ill-timed, illogical, or useless, whether they’re 12 or 22 – is somehow just adorable, even as it puts them and everyone around them in peril and requires incredible feats of human endurance to rescue them from.

The plot is overly complicated and somewhat silly, and somehow we the audience are supposed to take a liking to these two endearing, bumbling mercenaries—Nice Guys!-- who just want to do the right thing – for the right price. It’s a pleasant enough romp with some great nostalgic 70s music (the soundtrack boasts Kool & the Gang, EWF, the Bee Gees, America, Kiss, Al Green and more). But it’s hard to drum up enough sympathy for the two leading men or the fallen angels they’re trying to find. While Crowe and Gosling – who reportedly took the roles so that they could work together – seem to be having a rip-roaring good time, It’s no mystery why Nice Guys flopped at the box office.

Nice Guys reminded me of a movie I’d gone to the theater to see a couple of years ago, 2014’s Inherent Vice, adapted from a novel by Thomas Pynchon – an author whose work has previously been dubbed unfilmable. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, known for difficult, somewhat obtuse material such as There Will Be Blood and The Master, takes a stab at it.

Also set in the Southern California of the early ‘70s, and also about an addled private eye trying to track down a missing person, the flick stars Joaquin Phoenix as Doc, who spends most of his time getting stoned in the beachfront Malibu home he’s barely holding on to. When his beautifully mysterious hippy ex-girlfriend shows up asking for help locating her boyfriend, a wealthy married real estate developer, Doc decides to take the case out of nostalgia for their lost relationship. The result is a labyrinthine and damn near incomprehensible journey throughout the length and breadth of Los Angeles County, as Doc agrees to take on two more equally perplexing missing person cases that confuse and confound him – not to mention the viewing audience.

Along the way Doc encounters a brutal police captain (Josh Brolin), an eccentric attorney (Benicio del Toro), Chinese massage parlor hookers, a bizarre sanitarium, the misuse of laughing gas, fatal speedballs, an Asian ghost ship, and enough weed smoke for three Cheech & Chong movies. The plot is almost too internecine to be followed and begs multiple viewings. Indeed, the title should be "Incoherent Vice." Also billed as a neo-noir dramedy, Inherent Vice combines some kooky characters with a wacked-out atmosphere and a loose-limbed sense of the absurd.

Still, it’s kind of fun to see Joaquin Phoenix disappear completely into yet another oddball character in his filmography (as he did with Paul Anderson’s The Master), and the unique narrative is helped along by the brilliantly zany Josh Brolin and the ever-quirky Benicio del Toro, along with appearances by Reese Witherspoon, Maya Rudolph, Eric Roberts, Owen Wilson, and others.

His Doc is a Dude without much philosophy of his own and way more of a marijuana haze than a series of White Russians can impart. As a result, Inherent Vice can be viewed as a study in murky moods and how actors embody challenging roles. It’s the sort of film that will give you a hangover.

Lost In The Sauce: "Roman J. Israel, Esq."

Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Directed by Dan Gilroy
Starring Denzel Washington

Our fast-paced technological culture speeds along with new information, innovations, and tech-enabled practices at a rate that some of us can scarcely wrap our minds around. Further, this culture shames, ridicules, and writes off anyone who can't keep up. Those people are a. Lazy, b. stupid, c. useless, and d. stuck in the past. So say the culture gurus, the tech entrepreneurs, and the millennial wiz kids. Get with the program or get left behind. Except some of us spent a lot of time and energy getting good--indeed, expert-- at things that may now be considered obsolete. Faced with radical change, some of us have trouble adapting. Some may be forced to start over and may not adapt at all. Some adapt, always running a step behind. And some, faced with the eradication of a world they once knew well and forced to navigate a landscape where they feel lost and uncomfortable, grow bitter and disillusioned. Not everyone is cut out to be cutting edge.

These are some of the thoughts I had watching Roman J. Israel, Esq., the new film starring Oscar winner Denzel Washington.

Roman is a socially maladjusted, stuck-in-the-1970s legal wizard who is relegated to the back room of a Los Angeles law practice to do extensive research and legal strategy, while his universally admired law partner pleads the cases in public. Deeply committed to justice, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law and a dogged sense of persistence, Roman seems to have made his peace with his role as the power behind the throne. Subsisting on peanut butter, engulfed in the sounds of classic soul and jazz recordings, and reliving his own halcyon days as a committed advocate of grassroots organizing for political change at a time when the Black Panthers were news, Roman has turned his tumbledown Koreatown apartment and his cluttered downtown office into a well-fortified, protective bubble against modern times. Until the day the bubble bursts, and Roman discovers that the throne was really just a rickety chair.

Change arrives in the form of a slick-suited corporate attorney named George Pierce (Colin Farrell), named by Roman's law partner and his family to liquidate the company now that the partner has had a heart attack. George quickly shatters Roman's illusions. The firm was in debt. The crusading law partner he so admired was engaged in kickbacks. And the partner's largesse, keeping Roman on the payroll but out of sight for years, has made him not just unfit to run the firm on his own, but damn near unemployable anywhere else. Despite Roman's efforts to get hired on elsewhere, he is forced to take the pity position George holds out to him at his fancy schmancy, high-cost, high-rise law firm where Roman's musty wide-lapel suits, puffed out fro, and no-filter pronouncements just don't fit in.

Roman's attempts to get with the program and prove that he can lawyer with the best of them lead him to make a major gaffe on a murder case that could attract a malpractice suit to his new firm. He presents his pet project, a long-labored-over bill to reduce plea bargaining and excessive sentencing, to George and is rejected. Then his attempt to give a presentation to a group of young, potential activists breaks down over gender politics. He's discomfited by the interest and admiration of Maya, a non-profit organizer he's met during his job search. Tired of being wrong, even as he tries to do what's right, and tired of being last while others seem to go first, Roman makes an illegal grab for a gold ring so that he can get a taste of the high life. Even as he regrets the move and attempts to right it, he is doomed by his decision.

Denzel does his usual bang-up job giving us a convincing portrait of a character we don't see every day. But while autism is hinted at, we never find out exactly what Roman has been diagnosed with or its specific effect on his life, other than spouting unedited phrases like "enemas of sunshine" (which I'm going to adopt in place of "bullshit", lol) and eating Jif every night. His law partner, painted as an eminent civil rights hero, is never shown on screen. And in scenes where he consults with the suspects in a grocery store killing, Roman doesn't have any problems communicating. While his character is being pressured on all sides, the choice that he makes to trade privileged information for reward money seems to come out of nowhere. Elsewhere in the film, Farrell's George Pierce can't decide if he is a cold-hearted corporate villain or a touchy-feely mentor. And Carmen Ejogo tries to give the character of Maya a committed center, but her attraction to Roman seems unrealistic as well.

It's far from a perfect film. But I think it's worth seeing. It made me think about how our culture leaves little room for people with differences, and how the desperation of being caught up in changing circumstances can tempt us, under pressure, to move the needle on our own moral compasses. Hold tight to your convictions, people. We're moving faster than ever, but don't lose your grip on your soul.

5 Tips to Watch a Movie Like A Pro!

I was coming out of the theater after watching Denzel Washington and Viola Davis give bravura performances in Washington’s screen adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Fences. A person walking ahead of me said to his companion, “God, that was awful.” The companion agreed: “Worst Denzel movie ever.”

I was stunned. What film were they watching? Further, what film had they been expecting that they judged this so harshly? Yes, the subject matter was occasionally grim. Denzel’s character was not a classic hero. However, a film’s subject can be troubling, sad, thought-provoking, and harsh and be an excellent film with powerful acting and incredible insight in dealing with its themes.

It occurred to me once again that most people go to the movies to be entertained on a level that only speaks to their own life experience. Blockbusters and horror movies do well because they offer thrills that people don’t often get in real life; quieter films that focus on character and dialogue require more work from the audience and often struggle to make back their investments.

Rarely do most people view a film from a larger perspective, which considers all the arts and crafts of filmmaking. But once you open your eyes to other aspects of the film beyond the story and the cast, or how you personally relate to them, you can evaluate what you’re watching and appreciate it on a whole new level. You won’t just like or dislike a flick, you’ll understand what the creative team actually did to make you like or dislike the film – like standing behind the curtain with the Great And Powerful Oz understanding what levers and buttons were pushed while the film was made to produce the overall project. Once you get a glimpse at that, it’s hard to watch a movie any other way.

Here are five underrated tips for watching a movie:

1. Know your film genres.
There’s westerns, psychological thrillers, romantic comedies, crime dramas, satires, war films, adventures, historical dramas, period dramas, science fiction, and coming-of-age films, to name just a few. These longstanding genres have defined conventions, a standard map for how the story proceeds. Romances usually follow the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl formula, embellished with complications. Adventures usually involve a hero’s journey, a race against time and opposing forces to achieve a goal. Westerns usually have a lone character arriving in a frontier town of the past and must fight against a personal or societal wrong. Whatever the genre, the main character must undergo some kind of change by the end: they finally go home/leave, they win/lose the fight, they fall in/out of love, they alter their beliefs/lifestyle/income/moral standards.
Today, most films combine or twist the genres to create something new. How well a film fulfills, expands, or breaks with the expected tropes of its particular genre-defying audience expectations -- is another measure of its success. One example is “Get Out,” which adds a layer of racial prejudice and paranoia along with an African American hero to create a contemporary and shocking story. Some stories add irony whereby, despite all that has happened, a character does not change by the end of the film though everyone around him/her does. Ask yourself what genre does the film you’re watching fit into? How does it compare with other films in the genre?

2. Understand the difference between casting and acting.
For many audiences, acting caliber is tough to gauge. Often, characters in a film are cast with certain stars because they add built-in characteristics and appeal. We like Denzel because he looks like us or like someone we know; he’s usually badass and smooth; and while he’s a great actor, he rarely plays a character that isn’t basically … him, or who we perceive him to be. With Denzel in a role, the audience has a certain expectation that is different than what Leonardo di Caprio or Johnny Depp would bring. But actors are still not their characters. Just ask John Boyega, who played Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and recently caught flak from Star Wars fans for engaging in a little sexually suggestive West Indian “wining” at a British Carnival celebration, something they feel Finn shouldn’t do. The skill of acting is in embodying another character in such a way that we experience them as real.
When watching, ask yourself: At any moment in the film, did I forget I was watching [fill in name of actor]? How did they use their speech, facial expressions, physicality to create this character? Was I emotionally impacted by their character’s dilemma, or was I just watching events unfold?

3. Look at everything presented on the screen.
Because film is a visual medium, it uses coded images and visual cues to communicate information not spoken by the characters. From the first scenes establishing time and place, we’re going to get a lot of this non-dialogue info. In many major studio productions, color and lighting are strong indicators of relationships, moods, even foreshadowing of events. Heroes still tend to wear white or light colors, and villains still wear black or dark colors. Watch the shade of a character’s clothing change or remain static as they grapple with events: the darker their clothing, the darker their intentions, and the lighter their clothing, the more we see them as sincere or heroic. Loud colors or prints reflect a loud or scattered personality, Like-minded characters tend to wear like colors; for instance, in a romance, the closer the two leads come to becoming lovers, the more the colors of their outfits begin to coordinate. A female character who is seeking to cause trouble or set a sexual trap will wear or carry something red. Further, a character whose face appears in partial shadow (as with the stripes from venetian blinds) is likely in deep trouble or is even doomed. Many directors like to use themes or recurring images to evoke responses in the audience; for instance, in Beyond The Lights, most of pop star Noni’s stage costumes featured chains and straps, which communicated that she was basically a captive of her lifestyle. Cats are used to indicate stealth or mystery, birds to represent freedom, etc.; a shot framing the character as small in a huge landscape indicates the scale of forces arrayed against him/her or their sense of singularity or loneliness. Not all films use these tropes, but they have been in use since Hollywood began so it’s useful to look for them.

4. Listen harder to the dialogue as well as the non-dialogue.
I took acting classes for a while in LA, not to be an actor but to improve the dialogue in my writing. I learned that dialogue works best when it exists on two levels: What the character is actually saying, and what they really mean. A character can respond “Fine” to the question “how are you?” a dozen different ways, and it becomes a lot more interesting if “Fine” really means “Stop asking me, I’ll be all right,” or “I hate you but I’m trying to be civil,” or “I’m crumbling but I must appear strong,” or “I just had the most sexually stimulating night of my life but that’s not your business.” Double entendre, irony, and lies reveal who the character really is. What the character chooses not to say, fails to say, or is struggling to say is just as important as the words that do come out of their mouths.

5. Listen harder to the music.
I spend two decades writing about popular music, so how music is used in film is important to me. I’m a fan of the well-considered multi-tune soundtrack, where films use previously recorded popular music to underscore the mood or setting in a film. This works because the audience is usually already familiar with these type of tracks and the impact of that music is immediate. Most often the music supervisor and director will choose songs specifically because the lyrics perfectly communicate the feelings of the character or sum up the action. The best use of this technique that I’ve seen recently is Baby Driver; the character of Baby doesn’t speak much but his iTunes playlist communicates not only his thoughts and feelings, but the tracks dictate how he physically moves through the world. The music of O Brother Where Art Thou perfectly creates the time and place, the South in the 1930s, with new recordings of classic bluegrass, blues, and roots gospel; the tune “Man of Constant Sorrow” is an equivalent musical narrative of the lead character’s Ulysses-like quest. Straight Outta Compton didn’t just use the music of N.W.A. in telling their story, it also used hit songs from the era to establish the time and place. Film scoring is just as important, though less appreciated by the public at large. A composed score also sets time, place, and most importantly the mood of a film. Often, the score creates musical motifs or themes for each character, and can ramp up tension and excitement. Notice how music enhances the overall project.

Other points of film analysis include the cinematography, costuming, set design, location, the structure of the script, the production values, and most importantly, what is the film’s overall message or argument — but that’s for more advanced viewing. The five points above are simple ways to begin actively watching a movie that can add to your overall viewing pleasure and give you more of a critic’s eye view.

So grab your popcorn and your Junior Mints and enjoy!