The Double

      As I watched The Double,  stylistic and visual tidbits from other dystopian films hopscotched somewhere between synapses:   the famous sign outside a suburban house in A Clockwork Orange that reads 'Home',  the ominous televisions in Farenheit 451 and David Lynch's artfully creepy use of closeups.   There's also a screaming crib from Rear Window.   The references pile up and very soon you realize you're cataloguing and not watching.  

      That's unfortunate because the film delivers two very good performances by Jesse Eisenberg in the title role and some beautifully realized,  steampunk-like interiors. The Double is visually rich and full of nightmarish DOS-style computers with blank keyboards, clanging elevators, dingy apartments and gloomy lighting.    The stumbling block is the script, based on a novella by Dostoevsky about doppelgangers,  that marches  blithely off into Kafka land.  Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh and Orson Welles have trod here before with only Welles turning in a film that might be labelled successful. Richard Ayoade adds zip in the way of fresh  insight or any particular suspense to the material,  The Double clumps along, an earnest, albeit professionally produced, amateur screenplay.

   
   

Jodorowsky's Dune      ** subjective stars

      If you've seen a Jodorowsky film, there's a strong likelihood, for better or worse,  that one of the visuals is tattooed onto your visual cortex.  In my case it was dwarf sex in the Spaniard's psilocybin spaghetti western, El Topo, from 1971.  Jodorowsky movies are provocative visual spectacles and grotesques from which realism has fled.  I'm not a huge fan of his films, but I am an admirer of his chutzpah, his ability stick maniacally to his vision.

      In 1975, Jodorowsky obtained the rights to film Dune, Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic.  He attacked this project in typical style, hiring some of the best artistic talent to design the film's look and attempting to bring on a bizarre cast of stars including Orson Welles, Dali and Gloria Swanson.  He hired Pink Floyd for  the soundtrack.


     In this documentary, Jodorowsky and a few of his compatriots recount the process of designing a phantasmagorical 14 hour version of Dune. One of the films co-creators claims that Jodorowsky mesmerized him onto the production, a claim easily reconciled with the inspired raconteur we meet in this film. He's a bit like 'the most interesting man in the world' from Dos Equis beer commercials.  The crew eventually compiled a massive tome of intricate storyboards and shopped it around the major studios trying to scrape up some sorely needed cash. They'd already spent two million without shooting a frame.   Hollywood wasn't buying, but the grandeur of Jodorowsky's failure make a beautiful testament to the creative power of passion.  If you're into art making, film or otherwise, it's an engrossing ninety minutes.

Le Weekend              ** subjective stars 

     "WILL MAKE YOU FALL IN LOVE ALL OVER AGAIN" raves something called Virgin Media.

       I didn't fall in love again, sadly, but my fear that Le Weekend might be chillingly sentimental also didn't pan out.  I was warmed, and cooled evenly,  by a deftly written piece on a 60's-ish couple reassessing their marriage over a weekend in Paris.  The script is by Hanif Kureishi, who also authored My Beautiful Laundrette.

      Even if Jim Broadbent's name doesn't register, his hang dog look will be familiar from blockbusters - Harry Potter and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -  and smaller indies like Topsy Turvy (he plays Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan) and The Crying Game.  An amazing film actor, Broadbent seems to act almost solely with his eyes and he's a joy to watch.  His costar, Lindsay Duncan, is less well known in the US (HBO's Rome), but has also been working steadily for decades and is equal to Broadbent's game.  Together they evoke that crazed mix of love and loathing that defines many long lived relationships.   Add to that Jeff Goldblum's amusing rendition of a smarmy, successful American.  It's not heaviosity, not Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage, but it is well written, funny and superbly acted.

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?