Enough Said: Not Enough Have Seen This Gem of a Film.

Movie Review: Enough Said

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Reviewed: 14 September 2014

jamesintexas rating--***1/2

Enough Said covers ground well-worn: parents dealing with the empty nest as seniors prepare to leave for college; divorce in the modern age; dating and dishonesty. Yet, Nicole Holofcener's film captures its characters with new insight and grace, making a comedy of manners in a sense set against the shifting time in a parent's life. I found it to be admirable, sweet, and moving.

Julia Louis-Dreyfuss owns the film as divorced mom and masseuse Eva who struggles in her career, relationship with her daughter, and her own feelings as life prepares to move forward. A chance encounter with the divorced Albert (James Gandolfini) at a party sparks a laugh, and they form a connection that leads to a date. Albert is self-deprecating and weary, a bit sad in the eyes with the prospect of his daughter leaving for college as well; together, they are sharp and alive though not sure if they are right for each other. Holofcener, who also wrote the film, layers in the supporting characters played by Catherine Keener, Toni Collette, and Ben Falcone in believable and often hilarious ways, but to say more might ruin the charm of this film. I guarantee that there is at least one moment that is a cover-your-eyes-with-embarrassment-horror type of moment, and that's the sign that a comedy has worked its way into your brain and skin. It asks the question "How much do you want to know about a person at the beginning of a relationship?" The intrigue of what to leave mysterious in this age of total lack of privacy is thrilling, and the comedy arises from the inability of Eva to extract herself from the lives of the people around her.

There is such a warmth between Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfuss in this film. The performances are revelatory from these actors I associate mostly with their television shows. There is no doubt that I look at Gandolfini's Albert and think about it being one Gandolfini's last performances, adding an unintentionally elegiac quality to the film. Gandolfini will always be Tony Soprano, but consider his work in True Romance, Get Shorty, A Civil Action, and In The Loop as well. He delivers another fine performance here. And as for Louis-Dreyfuss, this performance feels like her cinematic debut of sorts, and she shines. I am deeply disappointing both acting performances were not Academy Award nominated. There is a tenderness and a very adult feel to the film, and I think it has been overlooked by far too many for far too long. Please see this film.

The Spectacular Now: Worth The Time.

Movie Review: The Spectacular Now

Director: James Ponsoldt

Reviewed: 14 September 2014

jamesintexas rating--***

James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now takes so many right steps that when a misstep finally occurs in the last two minutes of the film, it threatens to under the power of what came before it. A teenage romance film that eschews cliche for heart, The Spectacular Now focuses on Sutter (Miles Teller), a senior in a sort of arrested development; he's unable to plan ahead for his future, he stumbles through his life mostly drunk, and he has a painful relationship with him mom, a nonexistent one with his absent dad. When Sutter loses his girlfriend, he wakes up on a lawn without a car and to the sight of Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a girl at his school who knows him while he doesn't know her. She's delivering her paper route for her mom at 6 a.m., and Sutter tags along. A burgeoning friendship starts out, in the beginning mostly as a vehicle for Sutter to make his ex-girlfriend jealous and possibly just to rebound from that relationship. But Aimee's vulnerability and sheer loveliness make a strong impression on Sutter who simultaneously believes he isn't making her fall in love with him while doing so. The relationship has an air of second semester senior year, with the time running out of their hands as futures are planned, colleges applied to and accepted, relationships cemented or broken.

The film sharply shows the creation of a couple with its shared language and its us against the world quality. Both promise to each other to confront their parents about major events. Both struggle with figuring out their place in the world and the next step. The supporting performances are all equally strong from teachers to bosses to parents, and to say more would be a sin. Some of the surprises of the film are heart-wrenching. The film never condescends or makes things cliche with Sutter and Aimee, and its intense focus on them means ignoring the supporting cast around them to a degree. Only Sutter's ex-girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson) manages to make an impression, though never resulting in an honest conversation between her and Aimee. The film skips over major scenes and events, content with showing us the aftermath of graduation. It takes its young characters seriously, and their quests of self-discovery are often painful and poignant. I wish it took Aimee a bit more seriously and presented her life with more richness, but the director is diving deep into Sutter, so that's a limitation. Both actors work well together and create a believable chemistry. Teller's eyes depict a sadness in Sutter, a slowly dawning realization that the life of the party may not be where he wants to be.

I hope The Spectacular Now finds its audience. There are a million gross-out teenage comedies or films that showcase school and graduation in a crass, almost nasty way. This film is more interested in grabbing your heart and carrying you along with its journey. I don't believe the courage of the film and its depiction of teenage alcoholism among other things warrants complete forgiveness for the abrupt shift in the last minutes. Perhaps a studio head wanted a different ending. It feels false in a film where everything else doesn't. That's saying something, even if the film only approaches spectacular.

Network: The Future is Now.

Movie Review: Network

Director: Sydney Lumet

Reviewed: 13 September 2014

jamesintexas rating--****

Network is a film that I knew the famous scene from far before I ever watched it. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" has entered the pop culture lexicon, and Network's Peter Finch, bedraggled and soaked with rain, often shows up in montages at the Academy Awards. I would place it in the category of science fiction almost, as it presents a future that mirrors the world that we live in today. It stands among films like The Social Network and The Truman Show for its prescience and its close look at the modern media world. I found it upsetting and a brilliant work of art.

When Howard Beale (Peter Finch) an aging news anchor announces that he's going to kill himself on the air in one week's time, the network gets the best ratings it has ever had. Network executive Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) allows himself to be convinced by voracious producer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) that airing the angry, ranting old commentator in an unfiltered, raw way will turn the audiences towards them. Beale is part Old Testament prophet, part cultural critic; think comedian Lewis Black in the modern era but more abrasive and shocking. Beale's friend and producer Max Schumacher (William Holden) finds himself embroiled in keeping his friend on the air, contemplating the effects of his on air mental breakdown, and his own midlife crisis when confronted by Diana. Everything comes together as Christensen attempts to use real life crime footage to spur a television series, a preview of some of the lunacy currently presented on today's networks.

The film offers a unique look into the creation of the television show and schedule with ruthless board meetings and over the top satire of how far the media will go for ratings. Dunaway's character stops at nothing and uses everything in her power to acquire media success. Finch's performance of a man losing his grip seems appropriately wide-eyed and cagey. I liked William Holden's performance quite a bit as a producer whose life spirals out of control with the events of the story. Lumet's work as a director here is so incredibly focused: he lets his actors have long scenes; we see the inner workings of the television studio instead of just the glossy lights; and the ruthlessness of the upper echelons of power inside of a corporation are chilling. I think the film has a relevance to our world today besides being deeply, often acidly funny.

We live in Network's world, and as for being mad as hell? Perhaps we have enough channels and Howard Beales to finally satiate us? Highly recommended.

Butter Scraped Over Too Much Bread: Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Movie Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Director: Peter Jackson

Reviewed: 10 September 2014

jamesintexas rating--**

"I feel like butter scraped over too much bread," utters a haunted Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings trilogy before bestowing the one ring to rule them all to his nephew Frodo Baggins. It is a sentiment that I kept coming back to as I watched the second part of the second trilogy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. With its slender but satisfying source material, Jackson has disappeared down the rabbit hole of his own hubris, following George Lucas before him as an artist whose tinkering has led to diminishing returns. The dragon not withstanding, this film offers little joy, humor, or wonder, and I am left with a sense of an inflated story which is still not finished. But, oh, that dragon!

The story picks up quickly with Bilbo carrying the ring (Martin Freeman), its excessive dwarves who cannot seem to be killed, and stoic Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). They are being chased by CGI bad guys with oozing deformations. An early sequence through the Mirkwood leads to some exciting spider fights, but again, nothing compared to the slow burn and reveal of Shelob in The Return of The King. As the hobbits ride barrels, make friendships, and claw their way to Erebor and the Misty Mountain, another story opens up with a thread about elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom with digitally enhanced eyes) and possible love interest Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). And Gandalf (Ian McKellen) seeks out the Necromancer in shadowy places, setting up the inevitable conflict in the third film. The touchstones of the book are all here: the locating of the secret door, the mountains of shimmering gold, Smaug himself, and the town not far from his door. Yet, very little of it is compelling or interesting. The film is at its worst in the nearby town with its thin characterizations.

What does work is the incredible cavernous halls of gold occupied by the glowing, pensive Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch). The conversations between Smaug and Bilbo here are the highlight, albeit not as much fun as the riddling and wordplay between Gollum and Bilbo in the first film. But it does say something if Jackson manages to make those conversations the highlights in both films. Smaug's body and silky voice captivate, though there are so many opportunities to barbecue a hobbit or dwarf that one wonders if the film would not have been better sacrificing one or two of its leads. To see Smaug launch to the sky in search of ruin is a marvel, and the abruptness of the final cut means I will see the third film, but I was left, again, with the sense that one amazing film of an amazing book has been stretched out to cover seven or more hours of storytelling. On some level, it stinks of making more money from an audience, and on another level, it is just butter scraped over too much bread.

What could have been!

Life Itself: A look at the life of the unbroken legend Roger Ebert.

Movie Review: Life Itself

Director: Steve James

Reviewed: 16 August 2014

jamesintexas rating--****

Roger Ebert would not have approved of me waiting over two weeks to write this movie review.

I meant to see his film in Houston on the big screen, possibly with some of the middle school students from Denver Harbor who met him with me in June of 2004 (impossibly, those same students are now in their twenties: some in college, and some with families). However, it seemed right to watch it in Elmhurst, a suburb of Chicago, where I grew up as a kid, although the experiencing of seeing a new movie on the television is still one I have to get used to. My parents were there on the couches and chairs next to me, and my wife who also met Roger Ebert on that trip over ten years ago was at my side. The spirit of family, community, and place swirled about me most fittingly as I watched Steve James's new documentary Life Itself, among the very people who would purchase the Sunday Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday to start going through it the night before. That Sunday Sun-Times featured essays and interviews conducted by Roger Ebert and in late December every year, it featured his best movies of the year. Those lists and his myriad books dominated my consciousness and still do, beckoning me to try new directors, genres, and expand my canon. I have no doubt that Roger Ebert helped steer my parents towards films such as Glory, Goodfellas, and The Crying Game during 1991-1993, and they mentored me by showing me my first real works of cinematic art at a formative time in my life. My Friday morning ritual in high school was to run the two mile loop up Myrtle Ave to the train tracks, train tracks down to York Road, stop somewhere downtown with my 85 cents in hand to purchase a Friday Tribune and a Friday Sun-Times for Siskel and Ebert's written movie reviews, and then jog back home with the papers in hand, usually passing Nu-Time Video with an alluring movie poster beckoning from beside the front door. I would read the movie reviews first--before sports, the front page, and any sort of world news. They were that important to me. Ebert's writing was voluminous and profound: lengthy treatises with literary analysis, rich in film history, but always written with his unique and approachable voice. His television persona to me was not as strong, but I saw Siskel & Ebert whenever I could, and I always found it to be illuminating. Two smart guys on television talking about movies! And not always agreeing! About two weeks after graduating college, I met Ebert at the Harold Washington Library where he read e.e. cummings's poetry aloud and signed a copy of his book to me. Later that first year as a teacher, Ebert emailed back and forth with me about teaching the very course at that Houston school that would lead me to being able to meet him three years later. He was a champion of film and of life, and Steve James expertly captures that in this film, the best of the year so far.

Clearly, as a Roger Ebert fan, Steve James's film worked for me on multiple levels, but as I watched James unfold the debilitating and devastating medical diagnoses that Ebert receives and lives with as does his wife Chaz juxtaposed against the wilder, raucous years of the Pulitzer Prize winning writer's life, I found the core of the film through the title. Life itself. Roger Ebert was so much more than just an attitude or a persona. His life itself was about finding what defined his life, and the search for truth never goes simply or smoothly. Ebert has described movies as being "empathy machines" because of their transformative and evocative power to take us inside worlds in surprising ways. Movies connect and allow us to, as Atticus Finch would say, "put yourself in someone else's shoes and walk around for a little bit," to paraphrase the familiar line. We walk in Ebert's shoes in this film as James skillfully weaves from his childhood and rise to prominence as a critic as well as a television personality, and then again, we walk with him through painful years of alcoholism and in physical therapy as a battered but unbroken Ebert fights to regain control of his body. We walk with Chaz, the love of his life, and the woman whose life for Ebert defines the film and him. His success, James makes me think, would have been merely empty laurels without the love of Chaz and the joy he felt when with her and their family together. Home video clips punctuate this feeling.

I knew I would love the old Siskel & Ebert clips and out takes, some particularly vicious and petulant. I knew the talking heads aspects of the film would work for me, hearing tales of old Chicago and old newspaper business. The film shows an imperfect man adrift in a successful life who found love, and that love anchored him in a way nothing else ever could. Instead of canonizing or lionizing the beloved Ebert, James aims at presenting a more balanced, more honest portrait. Friend Martin Scorsese discusses their friendship and the pain of a negative review for The Color of Money. Gene Siskel's widow recounts their bickering, professional jealousy, and at times, awfulness to each other. Chaz shows the grace and grief of a partner turned caretaker when the simple act of walking up the stairs can become a trying ordeal of shaken heads, upset hands, and even rage. Throughout it all, James's focus on Ebert analyzing his life and considering his own mortality allows us a shockingly intimate and hopeful picture of what it means to live and what it means to die.

Steve James was brought onto my radar by Roger Ebert in 1994 with the documentary Hoop Dreams, and Ebert's championing of that film brought it worldwide renown and an Oscar nomination for Best Editing (though none, criminally, for Best Documentary). James has continued to make fascinating films ever since, from Stevie to The Interrupters, and what a uniquely appropriate joy it would be in late February to see Steve James standing at the Academy Awards accepting an Oscar, finally, for this tribute and examination of the great Roger Ebert. To me, Life Itself, like Ebert's autobiography of the same name that provides some of the film's foundation and shape, allows an audience to ponder the deepest questions of what makes our lives worth living while retaining the joy and twinkle of the man who would have written this review much more eloquently and much more rapidly.

Innovative Documentary: The Unforgettable Cutie and The Boxer

Movie Review: Cutie and The Boxer

Director: Zach Heinzerling

Reviewed: 26 July 2014

jamesintexas rating--***1/2

Zach Heinzerling's innovative documentary Cutie and The Boxer starts out as a chronicling of the life of aged artist Ushio Shinohara, an artist know for dipping boxing gloves with sponges into paint and punching his way across a campus. However, Heinzerling subtly shifts gears and focuses in just as much on Ushio's wife Noriko, herself an artist who has had to put her career on hold to support her husband and raise their son. Set in their ramshackle but intensely beautiful apartment in New York City, the film explores the nature of artistry and what it means to support an artist. Noriko's drawings of heroine Cutie have never been revealed to an audience like her more well-known husband's paintings and sculptures. Noriko's self-definition and stepping out into the light require a recalibration of their relationship at this very late age, making for fascinating cinema.

Heinzerling captures the astonishing intimacy of the creation of the artwork, the packaging and marketing of a gallery show, as well as using animation to take us inside Noriko's drawings. The couple's shared history is documented through home movies and archival footage of them as a younger couple. I would be astonished to know if Heinzerling knew where this story would go. Cutie and The Boxer exists as a singular and unique portrait of an artistic couple growing and healing, moving forward while struggling as artists. There are many moments of unspoken pain with echo through their respective art.

The final shot achieves a quiet perfect beauty of equilibrium. I highly recommend this film.

No Country For Old Counselors: Ridley Scott's The Counselor

Movie Review: The Counselor

Director: Ridley Scott

Reviewed: 17 July 2014

jamesintexas rating--***1/2

Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors of all-time, and The Counselor pairs his first ever screenplay with the visual flair of director Ridley Scott. The result is a surprisingly haunting series of philosophical conversations between two characters punctuated by scenes of grotesque and intense violence all set against the backdrop of the modern day border between Mexico and the United States. If 1980 was the time of No Country For Old Men and Tommy Lee Jones's sheriff Ed Tom Bell realizing his impotence in the face of the growing border violence, The Counselor is its contemporary aftermath, its promise of reckoning in a world where the cartel wields unspeakable, nearly mythical power. We are left watching the criminals squabble and scurry against each other, and one wrong decision can led to the abyss.

The Counselor (Michael Fassbender) loves his fiancee Laura (Penelope Cruz), jets to Europe to buy her a diamond engagement ring, swims in the world of criminals as their lawyer, but when he finally chooses to get into the drug trafficking business with club owner Reiner (Javier Bardem), things fall apart. A drug courier goes missing; a jailed mother asks for a favor; something ferocious is set in motion that cannot be stopped. The center cannot hold. Reiner and girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) are the kinds of people who sit on blankets in the desert watching their pet cheetahs attack jackrabbits. Westray (Brad Pitt), himself a shady businessman offers his own counsel about crossing the threshold with these forces. The Counselor finds himself in over his head in every possible way.

With its talky, philosophical structure and multiple reveals, The Counselor may best reward a second viewing because it takes until the final scene to understand all that has come before. I was interested in its red and purples, its liminal states between day and night along border roads, its gallows humor regarding a cartel shipment, and its deep conversations, particularly one with the mysterious god-like Jefe (Ruben Blades) who tells the Counselor enigmatically, "You are the world that you have created." The conversation seems a natural extension of ones held by Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men. "Call it," Chigurh would have said, but the Counselor's choices have imprisoned him far beyond the reach of any form of chance or hope.

The Counselor is a brutally harsh film with a performance from Fassbender that conveys terror but also distance. There is a scientific, almost clinical dispatching of characters and violence as we watch pieces swept from the chessboard with expediency. "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed" as the Yeats states in his poem "The Second Coming," and no one can hold the floodgates back. I found its ending astonishing, as well as the multiple meanings of the title. Whose counsel does one trust?