The Wolf of Wall Street

       I thought I would give this film a shot on Netflix.  It is Martin Scorcese after all.

     Let me name the ways this movie disappoints.  A film about Wall Street so soon after the great recession might have alluded to the disaster, it might have made some observations about the destructive power of the financial industry, but Scorcese doesn't choose that path.  Ok then, we have a light comedy about Wall Street excess.  It runs three hours.  The main characters are shallow, greedy egotists. The few genuinely funny scenes, such as DiCaprio's drug-addled stockbroker crashing his private helicopter into his back yard, are swallowed whole in a pasty pudding of drugs, hookers and frat boy antics.  Relationships don't happen to these cartoon characters, even if it was based on a true story.

     I like a good story about excess, but there has to be a story, there has to be some character development.  DiCaprio's stockbroker is the same useless schmuck after a three hour recap of his debaucheries. There are moviegoers who are always excited to see a movie star snorting coke off a prostitute's ass, but it's old and it's weak.  And it's deeply offensive, circa 2014, to use hookers gratuitously when your film is about nothing.  If  you're going to perpetuate that stereotype, do it for a reason.


    

NYMPHOMANIAC Vol. 1              * 1/2 Subjective Stars

      Many of the reviews of Nymphomaniac note that the film's sex is clinical, not prurient, as if that somehow makes it more worthy of attention.  I would argue that believable prurient sex is harder to achieve on film than clinical sex.   Distancing sex from emotion is a kind of European art house cliche,  whereby you're allowed to watch gratuitous nudity because the detached sex signifies serious thought.  And the emotionless sex in the Nymphomaniac does begin to wear thin.   Nor is it particularly shocking, unless those scenes have been saved for Vol. 2.   The film is cannily marketed to exploit arty porno, but then delivers the arty clinical.  Despite that, it's refreshing to see a film that's genuinely willing to explore, no just exploit, sexuality.

     Von Trier obviously appreciates actors and they deliver great performances with the exception of the badly miscast, always smirking Christian Slater.  There's also a narrative disconnect in the film between the heroine as an 8-year-old who's curious about her own sexuality, who soon goes on to full blown sex addiction.  Her mother is a "cold bitch" we're told, and she joins a (feminist?) high school girl's club that seeks sex, but forbids love.   Maybe Von Trier is suggesting that nymphomania is a reaction to male domination,  but  I wasn't convinced by the character's leap from curious child to serial fornicator.  He also indulges in several overtly mystical metaphors, extended references to the Fibonnaci Sequence and trout fishing, that are initially funny, but soon lapse into repetitive tropes.

     On the upside is Nymphomaniac's sweetly dark strain of comedy.  In one of the films sharpest scenes,  Uma Thurman, as a spurned wife, slogs her young children into the nymphomaniac's apartment to show them the "whoring bed" Daddy has chosen over her own.  The tone is straight out of 1950's Joan Crawford.  And whether or not you like them,  there are bits of Wes Anderson-style animated doodles and intricate diagrams layered onto the images.  In a film that includes melodrama, very realistic sex, multimedia visuals, intellectual sparring and a deep vein of black comedy, it's hard to fault the director for lack of ambition.  I'm always grateful for the chance to watch interesting film.  In the end I felt entertained and challenged, but also disgruntled by Nymphomaniac's lack of cohesion.  Subverting genre is now it's own full blown genre, but it's not a license to run amok.

     Which may answer the question of why, as the credits roll on Vol. 1,  we are bombarded with highlights from Vol. 2.    You've just sat through a fairly demanding film and you are, in effect,  told to stay tuned for the next installment in which all the mysteries/inconsistencies will find explanation.   I'll watch Vol. 2,  but I'll be  doubly disgruntled if it turns out that the best parts of both movies could have, as I'm beginning to suspect, made one succinct film.  

Non-Stop        (**1/2 Subjective stars)

    While I bobbled along on the tide of image proliferation,  Liam Neeson fandom crept up on me on little cat feet.  Non-Stop, his current air travel thriller, did the trick.  I've seen the pretty good (Kinsey),  the outright crappy (The Grey) and the in-between  (a Star Wars vehicle, Before and After, A-Team, etc.).  He came near to getting a statuette for Schindler's List but came up against Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.  Like Clint, he's aging into a grizzled eminence that prowls the washed-up-tough-guy roles he's made his metier.

    Never mind Hollywood's constant flogging of shoddy products,  periodically they hit pay dirt. In Non-Stop,   Liam has to pick a murderer out of a motley mix of airline passengers who are being  picked off at a steady clip.  It's Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians at 30,00 feet.   Will it be the Muslim?  The mouthy black dude?  The geeky nerd? Maybe the Julianne Moore character?   Or is Liam a washed up schizophrenic?  No spoilers here, but it's hard to deny the vulnerability of a commercial jet, far over the Atlantic, with wickedness afoot.  And while there are brief interludes rigged for pathos,  I found myself glad to be watching and not flying on that particular flight.  The audience whooped at the end, partly out of sheer nervous flight fatigue and partly cuz Liam rocks it.

PS - For a funny take on Liam Neeson, or Neesons, as they call him, check out Key and Peele's sketch:

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/4494cb/key-and-peele-what-about--non-stop---though-



Next Up:  Nymphomaniac

The Grand Budapest Hotel  (two subjective stars) 

      Intricately conceived from writing to acting, from painstaking set design to camerawork, The Grand Budapest Hotel is total Wes Anderson immersion.  No matter my frustrations with his preciousness,  he's due credit his for commitment to detail.  Motifs and clever details abound.  In one recurring bit, his characters are given to spontaneous readings of windy romantic poetry at humorously inappropriate junctures.  

        
     The camera work is formal and severely two dimensional.  Repeating tracking shots slide parallel to the screen and most of the shots and effects are used to flatten, not deepen, the view.  Straight lines abound and when the camera passes through multiple doors in a long hallway it doesn't convey space, it compresses.   Some of the shots are clear quotes from the silent films of Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin, when camera movement was technically restricted. Anderson's films also remind me visually of Punch and Judy puppet shows and the shoebox dioramas we made in 4th grade.  

       As in much of his work, the acting here is mannered.  There are bon mots and zingers delivered precisely,  there's no illusion of improv, but rather of an eccentric version of staged screwball comedy.  When Harvey Keitel made his appearance,  I did a double take, expecting method acting to suddenly derail the whole precarious contraption.  

        
      Which brings me to the glue that holds this film together, Ralph Fiennes' luscious performance as M. Gustav, a dowager-screwing dandy with a conscience.  My peeve with Anderson's work is its lack of emotional depth.  I'm a fan of his surreal vision, but his dedication to style at the cost of substance often leaves me cold and bored.  In the character of Gustav, and Fiennes' lovely rendering of him, Anderson brings humanity to a film that is clearly a technical marvel.  I didn't love the film, but I loved much of it and I'm excited to see what comes next.  What more can you ask of an artist?

American Hustle

 American Hustle's charms are numerous, from lavish comb-overs and 70's Cadillacs to striving DA's and con artists.  Everyone's on the make, highborn or low.  The actors seem to be having so much fun, I wanted to throw on some polyester and join them.  That's the good and the bad.  The movie is fun, but ultimately you remember the wigs, not the plot.   David Russell's film makes a halfhearted point about American's striving and hubris, but it doesn't commit.  The mood is too frothy for pathos or satire and you're left just chuckling at the clothes and the shenanigans.

And the acting.  Christian Bale's pudgy Bronx conman in wide lapels and cravat is sumptuous, as is Jennifer Lawrence as his hot, layabout, drama queen wife.  Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper have nice turns, but I particularly like Jeremy Renner's big hearted Mayor of Camden. The comedian Louis CK plays the only seemingly normal character in the film and is cudgeled for his trouble.

One thing that's beginning to irritate me about Russell's films, at least this one and The Fighter, is a  tendency to be voyeuristically looking at lower-middle and middle class characters.  Almost as if the director were winking at us as we laugh at the poor striving schmucks.  It's less of a problem here because the mood is so light, but I found it deeply unpleasant in The Fighter.

Blind Detective

                                                           (3 subjective stars)


Yippee Ki Yay for the 14th San Diego Asian Film Festival.   An awesome variety of styles and content stretching from the Phillipines to India.

 Film trailers often, and often purposefully,  obscure the nature of a film by cherry picking the best scenes.  The trailer for Blind Detective describes a straightforward thriller, but this mad concoction comes from Hong Kong where they excel at mashing genres.  Sharply directed by Hong Kong mainstay Johnny To, Blind Detective delivers an irresistible hybrid of slapstick, screwball comedy, thriller and supernatural mystery.   The closest thing in Hollywood are tongue-in-cheek Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis films, but those offer an anemic version of Hong Kong flavor for US cineplex audiences.  Blind Detective takes delight in it's sharp turns of tone,  contrasting ghostly flashbacks with romantic bickering, interspersed with slapstick and real bloodletting.  

While both leads are superb, Sammi Cheng, as a kung fu-fighting, lovestruck Dr. Watson to the eponymous Blind Detective (Andy Lau) constantly amazes with lightning-quick changes between melodrama, comedy and outright tomfoolery.  A lovely, bemused sense of humor hovers over the film and the writing crew is due credit for the wit and restraint, as is the masterly direction.   Oddly, the cinematography varies from excellent interiors to some drab location shooting.  A tiny bit long at 150 minutes,  Blind Detective is still wildly entertaining and much of that credit is due the editor. 

If Hong Kong filmmaking in all it's riot of fusion appeals to you,  you'll savor Blind Detective.

The Counselor

First, a disclaimer.  I viewed this film under duress, not as a first on my list.  Hope to put  up  something more interesting soon.  SD Asian Film Festival begins early in November and includes the promising Hong Kong thriller Blind Detective.

The script for The Counselor is direct from Cormac McCarthy and many of the tropes from No Country For Old Men resurface.  Fate and Greed trudge mercilessly through the film.  I guess No Country worked because McCarthy wrote the book, but the Coens wrote the script and the pretensions were minimized.   The Counselor is sharp in fits, but the rhythm stutters badly as the actors choke on portentous sawdust.  I'm also going to mark McCarthy an old school sexist, whose female characters hew to the virginal or the viperous.   Cameron Diaz, wearing overtly sinister makeup,  gets the unpleasant task of embodying the highly sexual and (coincidentally) scheming female lead.  Javier Bardem as a mellow, reflective drug dealer achieves the only human, and humorous characterization in the film.  Michael Fassbender is sadly wasted.  Wait for Netflix and then be sure to be multitasking.