RIP Robin

(Note:This is the last Robin Williams film that I watched. He will be greatly missed.RIP Robin.)

If the truth be known, the character played by Robin Williams in the film “World’s Greatest Dad”(2009) is like many fathers. 

He plays a single father with unfulfilled dreams and a son who he dislikes but at the same time loves.

Williams is a high school poetry teacher who has written five books and numerous articles and has been rejected by publishers everytime.

His teenage son is a loner and sexual freak who hates his father and masturbates constantly. Williams does his best to be close to his son but is rejected by him constantly.

An event happens in their life that profoundly changes him and those around him.

The film is an interesting look into love, fame, and rejection. It once again shows Robin Williams as not only a great comedian but a serious actor.

I give the film three flips flops out of five on my rating scale. 

Back story:

The film was written and directed by “Bobcat” Goldthwait who is primarily known as a comedian. He is commonly known for his energetic stage personality, his dark, acerbic black comedy, and his gruff but high-pitched voice.

The film was shot in Seattle, Washington, largely at the former F.A. McDonald School in Wallingford.Seattle resident and former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic has a wordless cameo while consoling Williams’ character at a newspaper stand (Goldthwait had previously opened for Nirvana and the cameo may be a reference to Cobain’s suicide). Bruce Hornsby appears as himself at the library dedication.

Running time: 99 min.

With:
Robin Williams, Alexie Gilmore, Daryl Sabara, Geoff Pierson, Henry Simmons, Mitzi McCall, Evan Martin, Jermaine Williams, Tony V CQ, Lorraine Nicholson, Zach Sanchez.

Dark Abyss

“The Canyons”(2013) starring Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen is an emotionless and amateurish film by director Paul Schrader.

The film opening presents the viewer with pictures of abandoned and demolished cinema houses and theaters. A visual metaphor for a decline in film?  If so, this film ably supports that thesis.

The first scene of the film introduces us to the major characters in the film. We see two couples seated in a restaurant talking about an upcoming movie and swinging.

James Deen as Christian is a movie producer and his long time companion Tara played by Lindsey Lohan are having dinner with his assistant and her boyfriend. The boyfriend has been cast in their low budget slasher movie.

The conversation is rambling and disjointed as Christian shows the group pictures on his phone of guys invited over for sexual pleasure. He freely discusses their sexual proclivities while at the same time demonstrating his arrogance and narcissism.

The movie doesn’t get any better as we learn Christian is a trust fund baby with too much time on his hands. He dabbles as a movie producer while inviting guys and couples to his house for sex.

There are some sex scenes in the film that prior to its distribution were hailed as ground breaking. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There is nudity and one dimly lit sex scene involving Deen and Lohan with a couple in a scene done many times.

The ultimate ending of the film is no real surprise. And for me,  I had no feelings for any of these characters and the actors who seemed to be merely hitting their marks. It’s largely an emotionless film with horrible dialogue and acting.

Lohan who is a co-producer for the movie and Deen are both unremarkable in their roles .Lohan may want to go back to such commercial successes as “Herbie Fully Loaded”.

I give “The Canyons” a grade of one flip flop out of five on my rating scale.

Running time: 95 min. 

Cast:
Lindsay Lohan as Tara
James Deen as Christian
Nolan Funk, Amanda Brooks, Tenille Houston, Gus Van Sant, Jarod Einsohn, Chris Zeischegg, Victor of Aquitaine, Jim Boeven, Phil Pavel, Lily Labeau, Thomas Trussel, Alex Ashbaugh, Chris Schellenger, Lauren Schacher, Diana Gitelman, Andres De La Fuente.

Crew
Directed by Paul Schrader. Screenplay, Bret Easton Ellis. Camera (color, HD, widescreen), John DeFazio; editor, Tim Silano; music, Brendan Canning; additional music, Me and John.

Do As I Say

The premise of “Compliance” (2012) is ludicrous until you discover this is based on actual events.

Ann Dowd is excellent in her role as Sandra, the manager of a Chickwich fast food restaurant.

She receives a phone call from a man who says he is a detective investigating the theft of some money by one of her employees.

He says he has her district manager on another line who has told her to comply with the investigation.

What happens after the initial call seems preposterous and unbelievable. She subjects her young employee Becky played by Dreama Walker to a humiliating body search to discover the missing money.

The progession of this as it unfolds is well done and builds to its surprising conclusion.

The film tells us a lot about our willingness to submit to authority. Reports are that scores of people walked out of this film because I suspect they believed this was absurd.

I believe if we do a little introspection we can find that we as a society are willing to comply with authority or the state.

We see it in our everyday lives with abuses by the TSA and NSA and the willing compliance by the majority of Americans.

The film is worth watching and asking questions of ourselves and society as a whole.

I give “Compliance” four flip flops out of five on my rating scale.

Back Story:

This film is based on an actual 2004 event that took place at a McDonald’s in Mount Washington, Ky. Google it and you’ll find most of the same details.

For those who did not walk out of the movie, the viewer discovered at the end that 70 similar deceptions have occurred in the United States.

For those interested in studies regarding authority, I refer you to a famous 1960s studies by the behavioral scientist Stanley Milgram. 

He told subjects they were in control of a dial that administered electrical shocks to a person in the next room.

As he ordered them to turn the dial higher and higher, they obeyed, even though they could hear screams and pleading through the wall. Milgram, with his white laboratory coat, stethoscope and clipboard, represented authority, and a majority of his test subjects were willing to turn their dials even up into a red “danger” area.

Written and directed by Craig Zobel; director of photography, Adam Stone; edited by Jane Rizzo; music by Heather McIntosh. 

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

WITH: Ann Dowd (Sandra), Dreama Walker (Becky), Pat Healy (Officer Daniels), Bill Camp (Van), Philip Ettinger (Kevin) and James McCaffrey (Detective Neals).

Singing From The Rear

If you love music, then “Twenty Feet From Stardom” (2013) is for you. The Oscar winner for best documentary is a look at a group that gets very little notice, backup singers.

The documentary focuses on these musical talents who perform for well known singers and groups.

The documentary has interviews with lead singers as well as some of the most talented backup singers from the 60s to the present. Interviews by Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Bette Midler, and Stevie Wonder offer insights into how well respected these singers are.

The documentary has some great musical numbers performed by some of the most notable backup singers as we hear them  in studio as well as clips on stage.

The documentary has interviews with such notables as Darlene Love who aspired to be a lead singer and yet was stymied by noted record producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector.

Love had uncredited “ghosting” on recordings supposedly done by The Crystals and others. Spector kept Love under his thumb contractually and blocked her path to being a headliner.

Desolate she turned to being a housekeeper for a time before being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.

The documentary is a must see film that is both interesting and entertaining. It’s worth watching for the music alone. I give it four flip flops out of five on my rating scale.

Nazi Heist

“Monuments Men”(2014) is a movie that would have been best made as a documentary.  The film directed by and starring George Clooney is based on general historical facts.

The film tells of a group of men commissioned by Franklin Roosevelt during World War II to identify and protect historical buildings and monuments from allied bombing.

The film focuses instead on the thousands of art works stolen and taken by the Nazis.

The film stars among others Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, and Bill Murray.  The film is disjointed and plods along waiting for moments in which Clooney gives short moral lessons to the audience.

This is a movie best put on the back shelf to be watched when nothing else is available.

I give it a generous two flip flops out of five on my rating scale.  For an historical account of the real Monuments Men,  here is a link: http://www.history.com/news/the-real-life-story-behind-the-monuments-men

Skin Rash

Jonathan Glazer’s “Under The Skin” (2014) starring Scarlett Johansson is one-hundred and eight minutes long. That’s one-hundred and eight minutes of my life that I will never be able to get back. To say this film is bad is to denigrate bad films.

This film joins my special film genre category of “WTF” that includes such duds as “Upstream Color”, (2013) and “The Brown Bunny”(2004). By the way, the acronym WTF does not stand for “What The Film”.

I do like Scarlett Johansson and particularly liked her in Woody Allen’s “Match Point”(2005). However, I found her performance lacking in this film.

This science fiction film begins with a bizarre opening and then continues as we see a dead woman being stripped of her clothes by a nude Johansson who puts on her clothes.

I am not giving away much by saying Johansson is an alien who rides around in a truck in Glasgow picking up men. When men agree, she takes them to a house where the men walk into black ooze. There is only one brief scene that hints at the purpose of her picking up the men.

There is very little dialogue in the film as Johansson trolls the streets of Glasgow. The one interesting aspect of the film is that much of “Under the Skin” was shot covertly in the real world, with Johansson interacting in character with passers-by and the results captured on hidden cameras.

The film lacks any emotion as it builds to its unexciting climax. I would be interested in knowing how many people walked out of the theater well before the end of this flop. I give it one flip flop out of five on my rating scale.

Back Story

In the interest of fairness,  here are two contradictory reviews of “Under The Skin” from film critics.

Long time movie critic Rex Reed: “Don’t try to figure out anything that passes for a plot. The disturbing, solitary lady predator at the center of the action is programmed, like an iPod, without human feelings. The imagery she leaves behind is all there is to a film that is almost totally without dialogue.”

Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz says this: “I feel secure in saying that it’s going to end up on my list of the year’s best movies…. I do know that the movie’s sensibility is as distinctive as any I’ve seen. “Under the Skin” is hideously beautiful.”

Googling

OMG! Who in Hollywood came up with the “brilliant” idea that an infomercial about Google starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn would be great? “Wedding Crashers” it’s not.

“The Internship”(2013) is unfortunately a boring and predictable film written by Vaughn about two former watch salesmen who become interns at Google.

Wilson and Owen head to Google headquarters as interns hoping to compete for jobs there.

And in no surprise, they are the older guys competing with young computer geeks with Ivy league degrees. That’s the whole movie.

Well, not quite. Wilson manages to start up a romance with a Google exec. played by Rose Byrne while Vaughn goes awol selling motorized scooters to retirement home residents.

The film even manages some geriatric jokes involving fellatio and group sex. Is this a great film or what?

How could you not like a film with the scintillating line,  “I need you to ice my balls for me.” Classic.

And I will leave it to those who choose to watch this film to find out who wins the Google jobs.

As for me,  “The Internship” was a 404. I give it a one and a half flip flops out of five on my rating scale.

Men Are From Mars

“Venus”(2007) stars the late Peter O’Toole as an aging British actor who like many struggles with becoming old.

The film revolves around O’Toole as Maurice and a young woman named Jessie who is the niece of his best friend. Jessie is played by Jodie Whittaker in her screen debut.

Maurice who has not lost his love of women falls for Jessie. Jessie is unsophisticated and shallow compared to Maurice who shows her the theater and art. We see a world of difference between the two when in one scene Maurice quotes lines from Shakespeare which she hasn’t a clue who wrote it and she recites lines from a song which leaves him clueless.

Maurice is diagnosed with prostrate problems and subsequently undergoes an operation in which the physician tells him that there’s “a strong chance of impotence or incontinence but you won’t be dead.” Nice bedside manners.

The film shows the dichotomy between the old and youth but does so without becoming over sentimental. Maurice freely admits that his life long quest has been pleasure. As one of Maurice’s friends says to him, you are the “professor of pussy”.

The relationship between Maurice and Jessie is largely platonic although Jessie takes it a little farther in one memorable scene. O’Toole is marvelous in his role as a man who is still seeking pleasure.

The novelist Doris Lessing perhaps summarizes his state with a statement she made about old age. She said, “The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven’t changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don’t change at all.

And that, of course, causes great confusion.” The film without being didactic makes the viewer think about growing old and how we will act and view ourselves.

Maurice in one scene tells his ex-wife, “I am about to die and know nothing about myself.” O’Toole’s Oscar nomination for “Venus” marked his eighth and final Best Actor nomination over a span of forty-five years.

I give it three and a half flip flops out of five on my rating scale.

Mirror Image

“Another Earth” (2011) is a small independent science fiction film that has an interesting premise.

Brit Marling plays Rhoda, a high school student accepted to MIT who on one night of  celebrating crashes into another car killing the wife and young son of the driver who survives the accident.

The film follows her road to redemption while another larger issue looms. Another earth or planet appears in the sky that apparently is a mirror image of our own earth.

The film examines Rhoda’s efforts after being released from prison to contact the surviving victim of the crash played by William Mapother.

He was a Yale music professor who is now a recluse and has a difficult time dealing with reality. Marling and Mapother are excellent in their roles as each attempts to find peace.

And looming larger is the other earth that seems to be a backdrop for the smaller issues that we as human beings deal with everyday.

The film examines existential issues on earth as well as the issue of finding life beyond our own earth.

I give “Another Earth”  three and a half flip flops on my rating scale.

Back Story

There’s an interesting story behind this film that involves actress and co-writer Brit Marling. She worked in investment banking on Wall Street before becoming the writer and co-director of “Boxers and Ballerinas,” a Cuban documentary that “Another Earth” director Mike Cahill made in 2004.

They again worked together on this film. It arrived unheralded at Sundance 2011 and won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize as well as the Special Jury Prize.

Kick Boxing

We learn about art and most of all about love in the wonderful documentary film “Cutie and The Boxer”.(2013) This film took me by surprise by its brutal honesty.

The film examines the life of two Japanese artists living in the Soho area of New York City. Noriko and Ushio Shinohara have been married for over forty years. Ushio came to the United States from Japan and began painting his avant-garde pieces.

Ushio became famous in New York and hob nobbed with other painters like Warhol in the 60s. One of his techniques is donning boxing gloves, covering them with paint, and hitting the canvas with his jabs.

Noriko came later, met Ushio, and they married. She was twenty-one years younger than he. Ushio is now eighty and the film explores their relationship in the present and through film clips from the past. Noriko was an artist in her own right but as we see in the film she deferred to him and became his assistant.

Their relationship has not been easy and as we discover in the film, they live in poverty. Clues to why are throughout the film as there are a number of twist and turns that unfold throughout the documentary.

Noriko or Cutie as she is called seems sad but resigned to her life with Ushio. Parts of the film are tender and poignant as the viewer sees her struggling to establish her own identity.

And as difficult as their relationship is, she at the end of the film reveals a surprise regarding their marriage.

The film tells us more about love than art. And yet both are interconnected in their lives. In a revelatory statement in the film, Ushio declares, “Art is a demon which can take over your life”.

There are plenty of demons to be seen in this poignant film. It was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary. I give it four flip flops out of five on my rating scale.