The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival, part three

 This is a continuation of the previous post. I recommend you read them all in order. Here's a link to the first part.

 

Wednesday came and we had to return most of our videos, seen and unseen, to the library, but we walked away with three more big piles of DVDs. The Festival continues.

 

14. The Artist

Starring Jean duJardin and Bérénice Bejo

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Released: 2011

 This is a remarkable film. Jean duJardin plays silent film star George Valentin, a sort of Douglas Fairbanks type. When talkies come along he scoffs at the notion that they will ever be popular.

 Meanwhile, he runs into wanna-be starlet Peppy Miller, played by Bérénice Bujo, literally by accident, and he literally leaves his mark on her. It apparently is just what she needs to get ahead in Hollywood, and her star rises as his sets. When Valentin is hospitalized after a fire in his home, Miller takes him in and does all she can for him. His pride becomes an issue, an obstacle to be overcome.

 The story in this film is more about friendship than romance, and it's refreshing to see a Hollywood tale that doesn't depend on backstabbing and betrayal to be told. (You should know that the film is entirely in black-and-white, and is almost completely silent other than two brief scenes, and the almost relentless music. Do yourself a favour and watch it without closed captions.)

15. Yesterday

Starring Himesh Patel and Lily James

Directed by Danny Boyle

Released: 2019

 On a warm evening before the Pandemic, something happened. All the power in the world went off for about twelve seconds. It was right about the time that failed singer/songwriter Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) was hit by a bus and lost two teeth. Everyone else in the world lost certain memories.

 Once Jack recovers, his friends celebrate with a little get-together, at which they give him a new guitar, to replace the one destroyed in the crash. He uses it to play Yesterday, the beautiful ballad written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Except that none of his friends know the song. Turns out they have never heard of The Beatles. In fact, no one in the world seems to have ever heard of them. Only Jack. (He's also the only person who's ever heard of Coca Cola, but that doesn't figure in the story.) 

 

 When I was a kid I wanted to be John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Not one or the other, but both of them, because I found McCartney's songs too skippy-bubbly happy and Lennon's too dreary and (as we would now call it) woke; but together they worked magic, writing songs that are as fresh now as when they were new. I will hardly ever listen to Instant Karma or Silly Love Songs all the way through, but if Got to Get You Into My Life comes on the radio, I'm tuned to that station for the duration. Jack Malik got to live my dream some fifty years later.

 Jack suddenly becomes the world's most famous musician, on the strength of such songs as She Loves You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and Let It Be. He meets real celebrities, particularly Ed Sheeran (played by himself), and gets an agent and a record deal before realizing what the cost is. Wealth and fame turn out to be a double-edged sword, and Jack has to decide how he is going to deal with it. 

 I saw this film in the theater when it was new, and was frustrated by the little snippets of great music it dropped in throughout the two hours of film. But such earworms! The only complete rendition of any Beatles song in the film is over the closing credits, when we get to hear the entire (real) version of Hey, Jude. It's worth the wait if not the teasing.

16. The Good German

Starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey McGuire

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Released: 2006

 

 Nineteen-forty-five: war rages on in the Pacific, but Germany has surrendered in Europe. The allies have divvied up the capital city for occupation and are preparing to hold the Potsdam Conference to see who gets what. George Clooney plays Jake Geismer, a war correspondent posted to Berlin to cover the conference. There he runs into his old girlfriend Lena, who is now the girlfriend of Corporal Patrick Tully, the soldier assigned to be Jake's driver. It's not a coincidence.

 Things in Berlin are a mess, made messier when Corporal Tully washes up dead in Potsdam with big bucks on his body. Jake wants to investigate it but is waved away by the US Military Governor. He gets involved anyway, and it rapidly gets complicated. Too complicated for me, in fact: while I eventually figured out what was going on and why people did what they did, I don't feel like I was helped at all by the storytelling in this downbeat black-and-white film. Instead, I get the feeling that too much of real interest was left on the cutting room floor. Aspects of character are introduced that look like they're important, or are going to figure in the resolution, but they just lie there like so many gefilte fish. It's as though they started off to make a film comment on one facet of society, but then swerved to a commentary on something else, and forgot to update all the roadsigns. 

 

 By the end I didn't much care anyway. That may be the worst thing you can say about a suspense film: the audience doesn't care. Besides, I've never been much of a fan of film noir: its movie-industry practitioners seem too willing to sacrifice content for mood. This gritty movie does nothing to disabuse me of that prejudice.

17. Going the Distance

Starring Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis and Christina Applegate

Directed by Nanette Burstein

Released: 2010

 This is what I want in a rom-com: a reasonably realistic relationship portrayed with reasonably realistic characters and reasonably realistic dialogue, one that actually makes me laugh out loud more than once while my heartstrings are tugged. Barrymore and Long deliver the first part; Day, Sudeikis and Applegate deliver the second and third, and everybody, including supporting actor Jim Gaffigan, contribute to the last part. This is, as a result, a fun little movie; not great art, but fun. And don't miss the deleted scenes if you're renting the DVD. I have a feeling they were ad-libs and they are funny.

 The premise is simple: she is an intern at a New York newspaper; he works in the music business. They meet shortly before she returns to school on the west coast, and fall in love. The rest of the movie chronicles their efforts to keep the relationship, which is important to both of them, going despite the distance. I had a long-distance relationship myself once, and this story rings true to me, though mine was less intense and nobody followed either of us around with a film crew. I also didn't have such an enjoyable cadre of supporters as these two people have. I need better writers in my life, I guess, though my own personal sequel did much better than the original.

18. The World's Fastest Indian

Starring Anthony Hopkins

Directed by Roger Donaldson

Released: 2005

 Anthony Hopkins, one of the world's great actors, plays an eccentric old Kiwi Burt Munro, who for years has dreamed of taking his ancient Indian motorcycle to the Bonneville salt flats and setting a world speed record. The film is based on a real person, who actually sort-of did the motorcycle-related things shown in the film, though a number of details, according to Wikipedia, are fabricated or altered, including the outcome of his trip to Bonneville.

 The World's Fastest Indian is essentially a one-man road movie. Scenes set at Munro's house in New Zealand establish his idiosyncracies, including his skill in manufacturing parts for his bike and his capacity for aggravating his neighbours, who nonetheless remain friendly toward him. (That may be the difference between "eccentric" and "crazy".) He then loads the bike onto a ship and sails to Los Angeles, where he encounters a sometimes-confusing American culture. He buys an old car, builds a trailer, and drives his motorcycle across the desert to Bonneville, leaving a trail of well-wishers in his wake. It's a heart-warming tale, even if it's not strictly true in detail. 

 On another note ... I was intrigued by the cover quote on the library's copy of this movie: "One of the year's best films," said by Jeffrey Lyons, a respectable film critic. I thought that was a stretch too far; it was a nice movie, a pleasant movie, but one of the year's best? I didn't think that could be true outside of MAGA-land; but this film came out long before there were Jewish space lasers "they" use to control the weather and make hurricanes. So I looked online to see what great movies came out in 2005 (when this film was released in New Zealand) and 2006 (when it opened in the United States). 

 

 Turns out Lyons' opinion is arguably true. There were no really good movies released in either year. It was a time dominated by franchise films like Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; Batman Begins; and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Just about the only film of those years that I've seen and could call "great" is Joe Wright's film Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly ... and I'm biassed by being a huge fan of both Jane Austen and Keira Knightly. So anyway, Lyons' tribute quote is arguably true by default. Good on him.

19. Gosford Park

Starring too many big names to list

Directed by Robert Altman

Released: 2001

 Downton Abbey meets Clue. The cover of the DVD (and the movie poster shown) lists sixteen names as stars in this film; having watched it, I think a lot of people got left out of the list 

 If you can't bring yourself to let this silly story just wash over you as you admire the words spoken and the pictures shown -- if you need some drama with your comedy -- you will likely be disappointed by this movie. You're not watching a period murder mystery, you're watching a vaudeville revue. None of the characters develop in any way, though certain things are revealed about some of the understairs staff.  

 

 A mean old tightwad invites an uncurated group of selfish people to his country house during the Great Depression. He gets murdered eventually, and the police are called in. Don't get too hung up on the plot: it's just a coat hanger for the many amusing performances in this loose talent show. (My favourite is Stephen Fry as the most clueless police inspector in film.) By the end of the movie we know who done it and why, and we've gotten some laughs and we've admired the gaudy late-Edwardian décor and hair and clothing, and we've studied the glimpses of several nice old cars (particularly the 1924 Rolls Royce that drives Maggie Smith away at the end). Let that be enough, and just be glad you only borrowed or rented the DVD, or bought it out of the bargain bin at Wal-Mart. It's worth that.

20. The Good Shepherd

Starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Robert DeNiro

Directed by Robert DeNiro

Released: 2006

 

 There was a time when this great nation left organized spying to our friends in Britain and their European frenemies. About the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we had cottoned onto the need for spies of our own, and after a few jolly ploys in imitation of Brit ways, we got our act together and set up a group of self-righteous snobs to keep tabs on our Cold-War opponents and allies. We told ourselves they were all honourable men (see Julius Caesar III.2) and left them to do their dirty work in our collective name.

 This film traces the career of one particular honourable man, played by a completely mirthless Matt Damon as he goes from Yale schoolboy to CIA bigwig. It is a study in the contrast between his success as a spy and his failure as a husband and father. The story is convoluted and complex, and centers on the Bay of Pigs Invasion in the early 1960s, historically a sort of turning-point in that it marked the end (hopefully) of the uncontrolled Wild West Cowboy style of spycraft that had prevailed since the start of World War II, in favour of a more cerebral and technologically sophisticated spying that (we hope) serves us better as a nation in a complex world full of suspect friends and smiling enemies. Sort of like the student body at Yale.

 It's a good movie, full of good performances, and not too much of it was shot in the dark, so you can actually see what's going on most of the time. Angelina Jolie's character is, to my mind, unstable, but maybe it's meant to be that way. Seems to me, though, that she was unhinged from the start and just looking for someone to blame. The relationship between her and Damon's character -- wife and husband -- plays such an episodic part in the story that it seems like most of that aspect of the tale got cut out after the fact, leaving it a little confusing. If the point of it was to explicate the final resolution of the film, involving their son (played by Eddie Redmayne), it kind of misses. Still, a good movie. 

21. The Young Victoria

Starring Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

Released: 2009

 Everybody wants to know: what was Julian Fellowes doing with himself before Downton Abbey? Turns out he was writing luxuriant period pieces about titled rich people who live in big, fancy houses. Things like this film, the story of King George III's great-niece, last of the Hanovers, first of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, ancestor of the Windsors. 

 Victoria had the good fortune to reign for a long time while her nation was at its political and economic peak. Everything in the world is named for her, and as a result people think she is important in the great scheme of things. Well, certainly she was more important outside her own circle than I am outside of mine, but that's not saying much. Whether she was more important than my ancestors is a closer question, and I come down on the side of my ancestors, without whom I would be in no position to argue about anything. 

 But I digress.

 In the 21st Century we like to see Victoria as an expression of feminist virtues, whatever they may be. Like every other set of virtues, they fluctuate with the sensibilities of the viewer. In this film, she is a very rich young woman in love with a less-rich but equally well-connected young man, and the two of them are making their way, either without guidance or with too much guidance, toward a balance between her public position, his public position, and their respective private wants and needs. We know from history that they largely succeeded. The world went on around them, and because of their public positions, especially hers, their lives are extraordinarily well documented, so anybody wishing to make a point about anything that comes after Victoria can point to something she did, or something he did, or something one of them didn't do. Truth is in the eye of the beholder.

 Either way, it's a beautifully made movie, and you get a frisson of pleasure at seeing her gradually assert herself in the face of pressure from politicians and, especially, family. One wonders that the Germans are so much more attuned to things than the English.

The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival, part two

This is a continuation of the previous post. I recommend you read them all in order.

7. The American

Starring George Clooney

Directed by Anton Corbijn

released: 2010

 Our Celebrity Guest Viewer was here for the showing of this movie, but consensus was no less attainable for that: we all agreed with Sherry's assessment that the movie spent a great deal of money on eyedrops, because the performers did so much staring: either at each other, or off into space. The film is an hour and forty-five minutes, consisting of a few shootings and one chase through a charming Italian hillside town, plus about seventeen minutes of dialogue. The rest of the time, the camera watches somebody stare.

 That is, of course, an exaggeration, but it does capture the mood of the film, which may be described as pensive or suspenseful but is really just slow. Very slow. 

 It begins promisingly with "Jack" (George Clooney) and a pretty girl relaxing in post-coital bliss in a remote Swedish cabin. They go for a walk and discover tracks in the snow. Jack pulls out a gun and starts hunting snipers. ("You have a gun?" says the girl.) Jack shoots a guy, then tells the girl to go call the police. When she, dazed and confused, finally turns to go, Jack shoots her in the back of the head. Why? It's never explained, and the four of us came up with three unsatisfactory explanations. Then Jack hunts down another shooter before disappearing into the crowds of Paris, where his employer or whatever tells him to lie low in Italy. The rest of the movie is concerned with Jack's growing ambivalence about his career choices. We watch him mull things.

 The American is very nicely photographed and edited, and the performances are for the most part capably done, with a special shout-out to Paolo Bonacelli as the town's priest. He deserved better lines. When Jack grabs a scooter and chases down another would-be assassin, we feel hope that things will pick up; they don't. When Jack meets a gun-buying customer in a restaurant, we think there'll be some action now, boy! There isn't. And when Jack proves that brain beats brawn in the penultimate shooting of the film, we are surprised, but then we knew it'd happen like that, because, you know, Jack is the Good Guy here and it has to. And then comes the final shootout of the movie, between the Good Guy and the Bad Guy. Nobody wins.

 

 I feel like I should say more, but there's really nothing else to say.

8. Becoming Jane

Starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy

Directed by Julian Jarrold

Released: 2007

 I suspect this film was chosen for the Third Annual Havasu Film Festival because it includes a small-ish though vital performance by Maggie Smith as the crusty Lady Gresham, who believes herself entitled to order a preacher's daughter to marry her heir. She has maybe three scenes in the film; it is possible to watch this beautiful movie from start to finish, admiring the glorious countryside (it was shot in Ireland, re-labeled as England), the elegant costumes and props and manners, the clever dialogue and the magnificent script, and remember only Maggie Smith's bitchy character informing Reverend Austen that she will not be attending church that day. 

 Maggie Smith is undeniably that good, but the film is about the relationship between the two main characters. Anne Hathaway (an American! Horrors!) and James McAvoy (a Scot playing an Irishman ... well, that's okay, apparently. He is known for his skill with accents.) portray Jane Austen and Tom leFroy, both real people. She's becoming the world-famous author, he's becoming a successful lawyer. They meet and fall in love. (History does not record most details of Jane Austen's private life, so this stuff is all made up. Go with it.) You really don't need to be told more than that. One of the nice things about our factual ignorance of what went on in Jane Austen's life when scholars weren't looking is that we can make her anything we want to. The makers of this film wanted to make her a hero for 21st-Century romantics, and they have succeeded. As a romantic myself (though really more of a 20th-Century version), I recommend this movie.

 

9. Notes on a Scandal

Starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett

Directed by Richard Eyre

Released: 2007

 

 Which is worse: an attractive thirty-something teacher who cheats on her older husband with a fifteen-year-old student, or the wizened old crone who blackmails her about it? The woman who is driven to madness, or the madwoman who pushes her down that road?

 In this case, the wizened old crone is Barbara, played by Judi Dench, a grumpy history teacher at an English school who has lost patience with newfangled methods and soft post-modern jargon. She has not a kind word to say about anyone or anything, and leaves no thought unexpressed, even if it's only expressed in her diary. She starts off criticizing, in voice-over, Sheba, the new arts teacher, played by Cate Blanchett. At first she seems only judgmental, a kind of crochety grandmother who, one suspects, has a lining of silver in the storm cloud of her thoughts. But after Sheba demonstrates a willingness to be friendly, Barbara latches onto her and attempts to supplant the younger woman's own family in her affections. She becomes the increasingly demanding friend who won't go away. 

 

 But once the old woman witnesses the arts teacher's indiscretion with a student, she realizes the hold she has over the younger woman. Her view of their relationship takes on an increasingly creepy cast, and we begin to feel a relative sympathy for Sheba, despite the culture of moral outrage that we feel bound to apply to her actions. Is Barbara jealous, and if so, is she jealous of Sheba's attractiveness or of her happiness? Does she want Sheba as a friend, a companion, or a lover? In the end, the two women destroy each other and I doubt that anyone would admit to feeling either's destruction is undeserved. We are voyeurs of the process; it's thrilling to watch through their windows and see how it's done.

 

 

 10. American Animals

Starring Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson
Directed by Bart Layton

released 2018

 The most remarkable thing about this "true-crime thriller" is that all four of the people who actually attempted the real-world heist came on camera to talk aboout their view of the scheme. They don't agree on the details, but the film handles the disagreements with shrewd juxtapositions, leaving the viewer to decide (a) if the variances matter, and (b) who's probably telling the truth. 

 The heist involves the theft of millions of dollars' worth of rare books from a Kentucky university library. We watch the conspiracy progress from wild idea to careful scheme, then watch it disintegrate into a briefly-successful farce. I felt no sympathy for any of the bone-headed conspirators: not the art student who let himself get sucked into a harebrained scheme; not the stoner student athlete who is the driver of the scheme; not the fastidious young man who is willing to help as long as he doesn't have to actually do anything; not the straight-laced young man who is recruited as a getaway driver. 

 As one of the real-world thieves puts it, "I was torn between the desire to keep the adventure going and waiting for the insurmountable obstacle that would stop everything in its tracks and return things to normal." But the obstacle never arrives: each difficulty is dealt with by these halfwits in what seems to them a logical way. The scheme comes together, and in the end they believe they can actually accomplish their heist. The movie chronicles the development of their plan and their ludicrous attempt to execute it. The result is a kind of testosterone-fuelled farce, entertaining on one level, laughable on another.

 

11. All is Bright

Starring Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd

Directed by Phil Morrison

Released: 2013

 Dennis has just been paroled from prison in Canada after four years. He arrives home to learn that his wife told their daughter he was dead. "I just couldn't take it anymore," she explains. She expects to marry René as soon as he gets a divorce. 

 In this black comedy, Dennis (Paul Giamatti) and René (Paul Rudd) go off to make their fortune, such as it is, legally by selling a truckload of Christmas trees in New York City. Unlikely colleagues, they endure adversity -- often of their own making -- and find a sort of resolution in a most unlikely way. 

 I enjoy movies where characters show real growth; this is one such film. Interesting, even amusing at times, but not funny. And even though Giamatti tends to get on my nerves as an actor -- I don't know why, he just does; it's something to do with the shape of his face -- and I find René's reactions not really credible all the time, I would recommend this movie as a nice little Christmas film if you don't really want a Miracle on 34th Street kind of vibe.

12. Allied

Starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Released: 2017

 A love story set in Britain in World War II. Pitt plays Max Vaten, a Canadian officer who speaks French, albeit with a Quebecois accent. Sent to Casablanca as a spy after the fall of France, he is assigned to play the husband of Marianne Beauséjour, a Resistance agent there (Marion Cotillard). They fall in love while accomplishing their assignment (try not to think about the likelihood of such an arrangement in real life), and Max succeeds in getting Marianne back to London, where they marry and start a family in north London. 

 Difficulties arise. Information has been received indicating that the real Beauséjour was killed some time before in France, and a substitute put in her place. Max is called in to be informed, and instructed about how to behave while the authorities execute a plan to make a definitive determination. The scene where these instructions are delivered seems raw and out of place, as though Pitt never got to rehearse it; as though it was written, or re-written, just before being filmed. In any case, starting with that scene, Max demonstrates phenomenally bad judgment at every opportunity, gets one courier killed, royally fucks up another courier drop for his own purposes, endangers a number of French operatives in the process (and implicitly kills a number of unseen French girls as well), and tries to steal a British airplane. Just before that, we learn that his wife's judgment is every bit as bad as his own. 

 This movie is just over two hours long. There is plenty of action throughout, and I enjoyed the portrayal of that era, as always. I also enjoyed the twists of the plot to some extent, but I have to admit that the set-up phase of the story took way longer than necessary. It seems to me it could have been done in ten or twelve minutes, but was given 46: long enough for me to start noticing the flaws in the story. It would, I think, have been better to devote most of that time to building the characters, including supporting characters, in the part of the story that takes place in London. Or they could have devoted more time to the two tasteful sex scenes. I spent the first one wondering how anyone could have accomplished that in the tiny little coupe they were driving. The second was less distracting and all too brief.

13. Hook

Starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts and Bob Hoskins

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Released:1991

 When Maggie Smith died, most of the tributes I found on the web site Imgur.com referenced her role in this film, so it's no wonder I was surprised to discover that it's a small part, bookends really: a couple of scenes near the start, then one at the end. She does it very well, of course, made up to look much older than her actual age at the time, but considering the breadth of her career, this was hardly a major performance by her. 

 And more surprising to me, it wasn't a great performance by Robin Williams. He is at his best when he goes off the leash, ad-libbing and extemporizing while others stand around and admire the talent. He didn't do that at all in this movie, and the result is a kind of flat, whine-y performance as Peter Banning, né Pan, rediscovering his heritage.

 Dustin Hoffman is much more the consummate performer as Hook. His kiddie-film villain is right on the mark. Is he scary to little kids? If he is, he can't be too scary. He's a fun villian.

 The real surprise is that Spielberg could produce such a sadly dated movie. I suspect that people who came of age in the 90s -- people who post on Imgur.com, I guess -- look on this bit of fluff as a seminal influence in their development, much as I see the British Invasion or The Graduate. (I've tried to think of some kiddie film from the mid-to-late 60s for comparison, but nothing comes to mind; I must not have had a childhood.) Hook is full of giant cellphones and skateboards, and Never-Neverland is done in those awful primary-color palettes. How was this movie nominated for Best Visual Effects? It must've been just on the strength of the names associated with it, because the reality was unimpressive so long after Star Wars Episode Four.