MOVIE REVIEW: How to Get More Enjoyment Out of Viewing "Inherent Vice," if Not Actual Enjoyment

NO SPOILERS.  You can't spoil a plot no one can understand.

I can't recommend "Inherent Vice," but neither can I say that, on balance, I did not enjoy it.  I did; not a lot, but it passed the looking-at-my-watch test.  (That is, I didn't.)  Only a couple of the .few viewers at an early showing walked out.

The movie directed by Paul Thomas Anderson is based on a novel of the same name by Thomas Pynchon.   I suppose I could stop the review right there, because any film attempting to capture Pynchon's, shall we say, oblique approach to plot is going to face some challenges.  Interestingly, however, the novel is reputedly one of the writer's more conventional efforts.  Strange then that the movie is so baffling.

Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is a private investigator in 1970 Los Angeles.  He smokes a tremendous amount of dope, and there is scarcely a character in it that is not stoned or worse a fair amount of the time.  His former girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston) visits him to request his assistance in extracting her from a plot involving her current lover, a real estate magnate (Mickey Wolfmann, played by Eric Roberts, seen only too briefly) and his wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and her lover.  What that plot actually was, we never learn, to my ability to discern, and eventually we discover that the plot dissolved without any intervention by Doc.   Along the way, we encounter a murder, the murdered guy's widow (Belladonna), a maritime lawyer who helps Doc out (Benicio Del Toro), drug importation, a shady new-age anti-communist drug-rehab center, a mystery ship, an ex-con who seeks Doc's help in collecting some ill-gotten gains (Michael Kenneth Williams), a saxophone player who faked his death and is involved either in either communist or anti-communist activity or maybe first one and then the other (Owen Wilson), a gorgeous and buttoned-up district attorney who in real life would have nothing to do with a lowlife like Doc but who dates and drugs with him when she's not dismissing him in public (Reese Witherspoon), a beautiful Asian woman who runs a cunnilingus operation (Hong Chau [no pun intended]),  some nose-picking FBI agents, a crooked lawyer (Martin Donovan) and his wayward daughter (Sasha Pieterse) who Doc once tracked down for him, some other really bad guys (Keith Jardine and Jack Kelly), Maya Rudolph as a receptionist at the office suite where Doc has a cubicle (and which, indeed, seems to have some medical connection, which may or may not have something to do with his nickname and access to nitrous oxide), and, most prominently, an LA police detective known as Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) who either loathes Doc or loves him.  All of it narrated, unreliably, by a young woman friend of Doc and Shasta named Sortilege (Joanna Newsom), who appears in a few scenes -- or does she?

Sound like a lot of fun?  Maybe funny?  Well, try to imagine all of those items connected to a single plot in very unclear ways -- in fact, as becomes clear (the only clear thing in the show), in intentionally unclear ways.  That are not funny.

But I must say the movie did have some intrigue and enjoyable moments.  Here's a guide to having a better time at this film:

First:  Do not try to understand the plot.  Do not feel bad about yourself if you are quickly lost in the film's cannabis haze.  I got most of the connections for the first half hour, then started not getting them, and eventually realized they were irrelevant.  Plot lines are not resolved; the information conveyed in certain scenes turns out to be completely unnecessary, or at least unnecessary to the plot.  So don't even worry about what actually happens in the movie.

Second:  Fight the urge to look at the characters' eyes, as you would if you were listening to a normal human being speak.  There is a lot, I mean a lot, of mumbling in this show.  I thought I was watching a Robert Altman movie for a minute there, with this movie having the advantage of people not talking over one another too much.  (After I wrote this, I noticed that the reviewer for "The New Yorker" mensions Altman in the first paragraph of his review.)  But a lot of mumbling, and a lot of drug-addled mumbling that you will never understand if you view faces as your instinct tells you to.  Instead, look at the characters' mouths.  That will help.

Third:  Sit way back in the theater.  Anderson likes close-ups of faces, and those famous pusses fill the screen.  Makes the lip-reading easier, though.

Fourth:  Ignore publicity describing this as a comedy, or a comedy-drama.  It has almost no laughs and doesn't seem to be asking for them.  The theater was almost completely silent in the showing I attended.  More on this below.

It's long, too long, but I will concede that I was mostly engaged during its 2.5-hour running time. There were several scenes that added nothing to the plot, such as it was, and the camera lingered far too long on large faces that were not saying anything or otherwise conveying information pertinent to the proceedings.  If Clint Eastwood had directed this, it would clock in at about 17 minutes.  I will say that one of the longer unnecessary substories does give us the opportunity to enjoy Martin Short as a coke-fiend dentist who runs an organization that -- hell, I have no idea what it has to do with the plot.

The film is oddly lit, and kind of fuzzy in places.  Claustrophobic -- even the scenes in open spaces gave off a kind of suffocating vibe.

Director Anderson ("The Master," "Boogie Nights," "There Will Be Blood") also wrote the screenplay.  What is he getting at?  I've seen it written that it is an effort to portray the paranoia of that period of time.  Or its uncertainty.   Maybe -- several of the characters seem to have dual personalities, dual loyalties, dual interests.   Here's a quote from the Wikipedia page on the movie:  "Anderson has said he tried to cram as many jokes onto the screen as Pynchon squeezed onto the page and that the visual gags and gimmicks were inspired by Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker-style slapstick spoofs like Police Squad!, Top Secret!, and Airplane!  Anderson also used the underground comic strip Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers as what he described as an invaluable 'research bible' for the writing process."

Boy, did he fail.  As noted, there is scarcely a laugh in the show.  There are some ridiculous moments that stick out, that have little to do with what surrounds them.  But when you don't know if you're watching absurdist subversive dadaesque comedy or a movie made by someone who doesn't actually have a sense of humor who believes he is making a really funny movie, you're in for a struggle.

Here's what I imagine:  A director popular with actors got a bunch of those actors together, they all smoked a lot of dope in front of and behind the cameras, and let those cameras roll.  When he'd yell "cut," they'd all laugh uproariously at the hilarity they'd committed to film, and when it all got printed and edited and spliced together and they ran the whole thing, they smoked some more dope and watched it and almost passed out with laughter.   Can you believe what he just did?  Oh, man, I remember that little improv thing they did there, we just about died laughing.  This thing is going to absolutely kill! 

Then they released it to sober audiences.

But the movie does have its charms.  It's full of people we recognize and like to look at.  One of them is really cute and naked (next).  But the show is really Doc's.  I believe he is in every scene.  Joachin Phoenix is surely one of our finest actors, and he is quite good in this.  If you're going to have a quirky movie that goes on too long, I can hardly think of a gigantic face I would rather spend it with than the one belonging to Joachin Phoenix.  And the other performances are mostly very good.  I had my misgivings about Brolin's Bigfoot, but the part is overwritten and one-note and cartoonish (and not in a ha-ha cartoon way, but in a not-so-amusing cartoon way), so I don't hold him responsible.  

As Shasta, Katherine Waterston (daughter of Sam) isn't asked to do much and while she's cute in a Renee-Zellweger's-former-face-lemon-sucking kind of way, I didn't think much of her performance. She is getting notice for a spectacular nude scene which devolves into a most peculiar and topologically unconvincing voluntary deviant sexual encounter.  But we've all seen beautiful young naked women before.  If you haven't -- you're reading this on the Internet and are mere seconds away from some. That scene, the first part watchable as it may be for the male half of the audience, does not justify the fare for entering the theater.  Doubt Sam enjoyed it.

Quibbles:  The movie does not get 1970 quite right.  The cars are too old.  The National Geographic someone is reading in an office is not in the format those mags were displaying in those years -- again, too old.  The Neil Young songs played on the soundtrack, notably "Harvest," were released a couple of years later.  Quibbles.

I can't tell you to go see it, because if you go and hate it, you'll blame me.  But I do have a sneaking hunch that there are pieces of this movie that will stay with me, and I can't even say that about movies that I liked at the time.  So it's a thumb's-up, but only in the privacy of this blog.

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MOVIE REVIEW: "Noah," or You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

That's what Roy Scheider said to Robert Shaw when he stumbled back into the cabin, frightened by his first look at the gigantic Great White.  It came instantly to mind in the scene where Noah (Russell Crowe) looks out from the ark, before the rains came, and sees a tsunami of a different sort, all the creatures of the world approaching two by two.

[No significant spoilers.]

"Noah" is big, dumb, fun.  I enjoyed it.

It is visually arresting.  The world of Noah and his family is a barren, forbidding place even before God destroys it.  It is mostly desert.  One wonders where all these animals lived, as there is almost no vegetation to eat or hide in.  I thought it was beautiful.

Where are all these animal couples going to come from?  Doesn't look like God needs a flood to wipe wickedness from the face of the earth.

Of course, it bears only the most distant relationship to the Bible story.  Since I did not come to it with an understanding that I was going to see that story, and since that story is not foundational to what I believe, whatever that is, I didn't mind it a bit.  It was still a yarn that kept me watching for its running length of two hours and eighteen minutes.

The movie is, in fact, too long.  Things move along nicely until the rain comes and the ark is underway, at which point the narrative comes to a standstill while an subplot or two are played out.  I suppose those subplots were necessary to flesh out a movie, the basic plot of which will already be known to viewers.  But they were kind of dumb, with some obvious holes I won't disclose.  (The Biblical story itself has at least one of the same holes.)

Which leads to my biggest problem with the movie, which is that it was dumb.  Its "green" message is repeatedly delivered with sonorous speechifying by Noah.  (Does the director, Darren Aronofsky, intend to convey that the relative handful of humans on earth in those days – the exact era in which the film is to have taken place is unclear, despite the presence of Biblical characters – completely denuded the landscape?  And it didn't seem to hurt biodiversity any, as that ark was pretty full.)  It doesn't matter whether you agree with the message or not; its repeated and clumsy expression insults the moviegoer's ability to figure out for himself that the presence of humans will result in a world that is very different than a world lacking men and women.

It's odd in other ways.  The return of the ark to dry land – the entire reason for its existence – was completely omitted.  The people in the ark, who are having a spat at the time, feel a clunk.  The next thing you see is a few animals walking around on some barren ground, and Noah is having a conniption for some reason some distance off.  (Again, what on earth are these animals supposed to eat?)  No dramatic landing, no disembarkation of the animals. 

The acting?  Russell Crowe suffered appropriately, although, as noted, he was given some pretty preposterous things to say.  Anthony Hopkins had himself a ball playing Methuselah.  Jennifer Connelly had almost no lines at all, it seemed, until about two-thirds of the way through the film, but if you have to look at someone not talking, I'll take Jennifer Connelly.  Emma Watson gets knocked up, much to Noah's discomfiture, maybe thought God would change His mind that he was a suitable specimen to escort the two-by-two animals through the flood and himself be the sole patriarch to survive.  And keep an eye out for Nick Nolte. 

Look, when some geological formations exhibit a more impressive emotive range than do the cast, you know you're not dealing with Oscar material here.

As I said, lots of holes.  But it was an outsized cartoon, and I like cartoons.  Some cool effects, I wasn't bored, my faith wasn't shaken or even offended.  Couldn't hurt to stream it if you've got a couple of movie hours banked up.

MOVIE REVIEW: "Amour," or, A Lot Not to Love

This review contains partial spoilers, but who cares?

This site tends to be rather behind the times when it comes to movie reviews.  Heck, I still have on my list to write about the results of the presidential election.  Still, if I can warn anyone away from this movie on DVD, Netflix, Redbox (doesn't seem a likely RedBox candidate, but I'll be damned if it isn't listed on the website), cable download, or even Blockbuster on Demand, I will have performed a public service.

You have probably already read something about this movie.  It was widely praised on release.  It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and was nominated for Best Picture, Direction (Michael Haneke), Screenplay (Haneke), and Actress in a Leading Role (Emmanuelle Riva).  I don't know why it didn't get a Best Actor nod as well, except that I have never heard anyone, anywhere, try to pronounce "Trintignant." (It's something like tron teen YONT.)  It got a stratospheric 93% rating on the notoriously harsh Rotten Tomatoes.  It won many international competitions in many categories.

A lot of people really, really liked this movie.

The Memsahib liked it.

I do not question the sincerity of the viewers who admired this show or the critics and judges who showered it with praise and prizes.

I just think they're wrong.

Pretty simple plot:  Elderly couple, Ann (Riva) and Georges (Trintignant).  Retired piano teachers, living in a quite large apartment (piano teaching apparently a lucrative profession in France).  She suffers a stroke, then another.  He takes care of her as best he can, but it is difficult.  She is not able to communicate, at least not well or often.  Their daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert, nice to see her again) comes to visit.  She wants to institutionalize Anne, but Georges wants to honor Anne's wishes to the contrary.  One day, while speaking to her at her bedside, reminiscing in a monologue, he suddenly grabs a pillow and suffocates her.  He then prepares her body to be found in an appealing setting, with flowers and a nice dress, and then commits suicide.

This is only a partial spoiler.  The movie begins with the arrival of firemen and paramedics to break in and find the two of them.  In fact, when I heard the title, and that it was about two elderly people, I assumed that this was going to be a murder-suicide thing because the murder was the "loving" thing to do, and his own suicide was emblematic of his feeling that he could not live with this "love."

My dislike of this movie has nothing to do with any judgment about whether Georges's actions were right or wrong.  My objections focus entirely on the movie.

And I do not object that it was gloomy and tragic.  The plot I describe above is an entirely legitimate frame upon which to hang scenes of interest and discovery.

But this movie was an endless, dreary mess.   The Mem caught me checking my watch a couple of times.

Let me give you the most annoying example.  There is a scene in the movie of a maid vacuuming the carpet.  Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum.  No one else is in the room.  No speaking.  Just vacuuming.  I don't know how long it lasted.  Not long.  But I ask anyone:  What was the point of that scene?  Was it to show the dull, mundane lives that this afflicted couple was leading?  Was it something meant to show the passage of time?  Was there symbolism in the vacuuming?  I absolutely guarantee you that the dull passage of time is something that this movie expresses in spades in almost every scene, and that it is not a show that asks you to guess at what things might mean.

Another:  Georges's preparation for the scene to be found by the police -- selecting her clothes, cutting the flowers, taping up the doors, all in complete silence -- goes on forever.

And Ann and Georges -- even when Ann was entirely possessed of her faculties, and when she wasn't entirely incapacitated -- are not very interesting people.  They don't say anything interesting.  In fact, they're not really a very appealing couple.  They show no pleasure in the company of one another or their daughter.  They are gracious to the only appealing character in the movie, an up-and-coming young pianist whose performance they had admired and who they had invited for a visit.  He disappears, and one wonders how that scene advanced anything, either.  The pianist might as well have been vacuuming.

Things heat up in "Amour"

I don't doubt that this may be an extremely realistic portrait of a couple who find themselves in the circumstances the plot sets for them.   But would you find 127 minutes -- yes, this goes on for over two hours -- of watching apartment occupants sitting, sometimes talking, vacuuming, cutting flowers, walking around, looking out the window, preparing the death scene, a good use of your time?  Much of which is shot, by the way, in frigid high-contrast low-res cinematography, adding to the distance we feel from these characters and their plight.

It manages to be claustrophobic and detached, everything held at arm's-length, at the same time.

Ultimately, my reaction to this movie arises from how I feel about storytelling.  You don't have to have explosions or CGI -- Malle's My Dinner with Andre is two guys talking over dinner, but they're interesting guys talking about interesting things.    "Amour" has a plot -- pretty  much given away in its first few minutes -- but nothing about that plot illuminates these characters, and nothing about these characters touch anything in the viewer.  I keep thinking of that quote from "Patton," where the general is told about the rumor of German "wonder weapons":  "Wonder weapons?  My God, I don't see the wonder in them.  Killing without heroics.  Nothing is glorified, nothing is reaffirmed.  No heroes, no cowards, no troops.  No generals.  Only those that are left alive and those that are left  .  .  .  dead."  This isn't a war movie, of course, but you get the point.  This is a movie without wonder, without catharsis, with nothing affirmed or even denied.

But it cannot be gainsaid that people absolutely loved this movie.  Me, it seemed to me to be the kind of self-consciously arty, cold, faux-sophisticated filmmaking that I thought had gone out of style in the Sixties.  I said above that I don't doubt the sincerity of people who like it.  I wonder, though, what percentage of those who do like it do so because they think they should.  Because it's about old people.  Because it's tough to be so excruciatingly bored struggling with a disabled person.  Because it's French.  It's OK with me to like a movie for these reasons.  They just don't add up to a story, and when I go to the flicks, I want a story.

When I see stuff like "Amour," though, I'm thinking that maybe I'm the one who went out of style in the Sixties.  So maybe I learned something after all.

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MOVIE REVIEW: "Philomena" or Who Says There Aren't Any Juicy Roles for Women of a Certain Age? -- Part 1

The first time I ever saw Dame Judi Dench she was naked.

Or nearly so.  She appeared as a concupiscent Titainia, Queen of the Fairies, opposite Ian Richardson as King Oberon, in Peter Hall's shimmering, perfect 1968 film adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."    Now that was a movie.  Believe I first saw it in Alvin Kernan's Shakespeare course when I was a sophomore at Yale.

But today I am here to discuss her fine work in the first of our thumbs'-up films, "Philomena."  Her co-star, Steve Coogan, co-wrote and co-produced the film.  Dame Judi plays Philomena Lee, who enlists former Labour Government advisor Martin Sixsmith (Coogan) to assist in finding an illegitimate son, Anthony to whom she gave birth at a convent.  The nuns of the convent permitted his adoption -- for a handsome fee, it is suggested -- to a couple who had come in to adopt a little girl but ended up taking Anthony, the little girl's best friend, as well.

The movie is the story of their search, what they find, and, of course, there's the "getting to know you" angle between the buttoned-down and cynical Martin and the hopeful and spunky Philomena.  I won't say any more than that.  Needless to say, Martin finds something, and it is really all quite genuinely moving.

There has been some talk that the movie is anti-Catholic.  Mmm, not sure about that.  To be absolutely certain, those nuns of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Roscrea, county Tipperary, Ireland, oh, they do not come across well at all.  In addition to selling kids out from under their unfortunate unwed mothers, they are terrible liars.  I have read that that Order says no, it didn't happen that way, and we're not going to settle it in this review.  At least one crucial scene was fabricated.  But yeah, you don't have a real good feeling about dogma when the movie is over.

But "Philomena" is not about whether the worldly punishment of sexual immorality is good or bad.  It is about the great undiminished love of a mother for her boy across the years and miles and choices.

Some minor misgivings:

Coogan's performance is understated almost to the point of invisibility.  He goes through the film with a faintly uncomfortable look on his face, perplexed by Philomena.  Never really snaps out of it, even as matters approach their climax.  While there's plainly supposed to be some kind of cathartic connection of this unlikely pair as the truth gradually emerges, it is not reflected in Coogan's performance.

Dench is one of those iconic actors who can barely be criticized ever about anything (although see next review).  And there's no fault to be found here, either.  The problem is that the film isn't quite sure who she is.  Sometimes she's a dotty, oblivious consumer of tacky romance novels; the next she's speaking knowledgeably about the range of contemporary sexual preferences.  Sometimes she's helpless, lost without Martin; other times she shows him up with her determination and spunk.  Not a dreadful fault -- just makes the thing seem just a little less than serious.

But, then and now -- what a Dame.

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MOVIE REVIEW: "Enough Said," or, You Can Say That Again

SPOILER NOTICE:  Most people will come to this movie knowing the basic plot outline, which is revealed in almost all reviews of it.  I will mention it here.  There is a plot twist in the middle of the movie that I will not reveal.

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The Memsahib and I should see more movies.  If we did, maybe I'd get to see more monster shows and violent revenge movies and jaw-dropping special effects stuff and naughty frat-boy comedies and possibly even naked women on the big screen.  (With the get-all-the-movies option on DirectTV, those kind of movies are eventually beamed into our home -- gathered in from outer space by our dish, which I actually have never seen, somewhere on our roof they tell me -- where I don't watch them, either.)   Instead, our movie choices tend to be dominated by the kind of things that the Mem will enjoy, since I'm very likely to enjoy them, too, and she is not going to enjoy the monster/frat/naked movies.  I am a loving and prudent husband, and I play the percentages.

The Mem is interested in seeing what we refer to as "relationship movies."  These are dramas or comedies that explore the relationships between family members or men and women.  Sometimes they are not slow and long.

"Enough Said" was an enjoyable relationship movie.  It was, however, slow and long.  I checked my watch twice.  (The current recordholder is "Amour," where I was checking my watch almost constantly, partly to attempt to determine when that particular torture might conclude, and partly because what was happening on my watch face was more interesting than what was happening on the screen.)   I recommend it.  I didn't love it, it won't make any of my personal top-twenty lists, but it was a pleasant night at the flicks with some very agreeable people.

Those agreeable people are mostly Eva, a divorced freelance masseuse(Julia Louis-Dreyfus); Albert , a TV archivist with whom she has an affair (James Gandolfini in his final feature role); and Marianne, a famous and weirdly well-off poet  who becomes Eva's client and eventually a friend and confidant (Catherine Keener).  

Left to right:  James Gandolfini, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

The good things about this movie are:  The general agreeability of the two people who get the most screen time.  Their familiarity to us from popular TV shows.  The fact that they get together.  The fact that, since we know this is a romantic comedy, they will probably end up together.  There are some amusing scenes.  There are some amusing lines.  There is a plot twist that adds some interest.

But -- you knew there had to be a "but" -- I did end up looking at my watch:

This was a talk movie.  Very little happens.  I'm not looking for car chases or monsters or even those naked women (although there is a lot of suggested James-on-Julia coupling, an image that somewhat compromises the romantic halo of this particular pairing), but it's pretty much a bunch of set pieces where people talk.  The big plot point doesn't occur near on to the beginning, where it might have propelled some interesting situations for the balance of the movie, but some ways into the show, where it doesn't.

There were some very odd subplots.   They did not seem to serve any larger message or illuminate the main plot; they felt like they belonged in another movie.  The strangest -- almost creepy -- was the relationship between Eva and her high-school daughter's friend.  Eva more-or-less adopted this girl into her household, much to her daughter's discomfiture and the well-deserved scorn of the girl's mother.   No apparent point.

Then there was the obligatory married-couple-who-observe-and-comment-on-their-friend's-romance-while-modeling-"love-is-difficult"-behavior-of-their-own subplot featuring Sarah (Toni Collette) and Will (Ben Falcone).  And they had their own sub-subplot relating to a maid who was either either indispensable or intolerable, who seemed to put objects away in inappropriate places, or maybe she didn't.  Point indiscernible.

Catherine Keener's famous rich poet Marianne was the finest performance in the film, her words sounding like she was making them up as she went along, a beautiful natural reading.   But her character couldn't exist:   poets do not publish serial best-sellers unless it's some kind of pop-culture stuff (not even then -- can you think of even one?), and we're asked to believe that she is a famous serious poet, an artist, yet recognized on the street by stout giggling women.   Nah:  Even the most famous poets today don't make a living from selling their poetry; even the best of them supplement their meager residuals by teaching somewhere, or perhaps lecturing.  But not Marianne -- she lives a life of exquisitely tasteful leisure while being recognized on the street for her books of poetry by stout women.  And able to afford a masseuse on a regular basis.  I can't think of a single poet in America who lives a life like that.

Catherine Keener in Artistic Poet Hat

But the main problem with this movie is that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is in every single scene.  This may not be a problem for some people, maybe most people who go to this movie to see her.  She's as appealing as you remember from "Seinfeld" and "New Adventures of Old Christine," but her bag of tricks is limited and she uses those tricks many times in the course of this movie.  Interestingly, director Nicole Holofcener  does nothing to glam her up.  (I guessed a woman director and writer before I learned her identity -- this is not a movie interested in the male point of view, which is a legitimate artistic choice and not particularly offensive, but just so you know going in.)  Her makeup is minimal, she's dark, a middle-aged woman presented as attractive, no longer "cute" in the young-chick sense, not trying too hard to be beautiful.  But one might think a woman of her years and presumed experience would be smarter than she seems to be, and more interesting.  And as funny as the story presents her as being, which she isn't.

That reminds me.  This pair is supposed to be attracted to one another because each finds the other amusing.  Here's the capstone example for this script, repeated several times:

      --  Albert says something about his life.
      --  Eva says: "Really?"
      --  Albert smiles and says:  "No."
      --  Eva convulses in laughter (see photo above).

Neither one of these people is very funny, certainly not as clever or as amusing as Ms. Holofcener seems to think.  It's not a very funny script.  "Light," I think the word is; "light comedy."  It's that.

We see much less of James Gandolfini than of Ms. Louis-Dreyfus, but still a lot.  When he's onscreen, the movie warms up considerably, although he is presented as unattractive in many ways.  He underplays his big scenes to excellent effect.

I can't discuss the unsatisfactory ending of the movie without giving away the plot point.  I'll only say that the movie doesn't give us any reason for the characters to do what they finally do.  They just do it, plot resolved, screen goes black.  

But having grumbled, I have to say that I enjoyed the movie because we actually do like these characters, ordinary though they may be.  We want them to be happy, and they pretty much are, most of the time and ultimately, so our expectations are fed.   The Mem liked it too (although her first words as the credits began to roll were:  "Well, it was slow.")  So there you go.

Two thumbs at about ten o'clock -- nah, make it 10:30.

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MOVIE REVIEW: "The Help"

At first I did not care to see "The Help."  It was, I assumed, a "relationship movie," being a movie that doesn't have much comedy or killing or special effects or monsters or Western gunfighters. But my impression was that this one was all relationships, and all-female ones at that, with not much good to say about men.

In fact, I liked the movie. I can recommend it with almost no reservations. Relationships, after all, are important.

The movie is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962-63. It explores the relationship between white Junior Leaguers and the black maids who raised them, and who now work for them -- a pattern that had held for generations but upon which the civil rights struggles of the Sixties were placing new and unaccustomed strains.

Emma Stone plays Skeeter Phelan, a young woman who aspires to a journalism career, and who was largely raised by a black maid (Constantine, played by Cicely Tyson in a small but memorable turn). She has the idea of writing a book (which becomes "The Help") about these relationships from the standpoint of the maids. She enlists her fellow Junior Leaguers' maids, the submissive but perceptive Aibileen (Viola Daivs) and, eventually, the much less pliable Minny (Octavia Spencer) to tell her their stories.  Skeeter's growing interest in the maids' stories places her in conflict with Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard's daughter), the head of the Junior League, a woman dedicated to The Way Things Have Always Been between Southern whites and their servants.   Hilly fires Minny and blackballs her from getting any other maid positions among the society whites, but Minny eventually catches on with a cheerful wealthy outcast (Celia, played by Jessica Chastain) who does not have the proper Jackson pedigree, but who has had the good fortune to have married well and who seems to have very little racial consciousness in enlisting Minny to assist her (without her husband's knowledge) in managing the large estate that (until the end, unseen) husband has entrusted to her care.


Viola Davis

Skeeter's interest in the maids' histories is not entirely altruistic.  I mentioned her ambitions -- she wants to be published, and this motive is not glossed over in the movie.  Skeeter is in constant touch with a New York publisher (Jane Alexander).   As the film progresses, however, she identifies more closely with these tough, gifted women.  It is to the movie's credit that it does not focus overmuch on this transformation; yet we feel it through Ms. Stone's fine performance. 



Octavia Spencer

The movie is ultimately satisfying for reasons I cannot relate without spoiling it for you.  Suffice it to say that the ending, while not entirely satisfying, is far from tragic.  Hey, I cry for the neglected old toys in "Toy Story" -- I wasn't similarly moved at the conclusion of "The Help," and I got the same feeling from the attendees at the show I saw, but I count that as a good thing.  The movie doesn't overtly manipulate; it tells a story that makes sense on its own terms, with goodness being only ambiguously rewarded. 
The strength of this show is its performances.  Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer are extraordinary, and Emma Stone holds her own with these two powerful black actresses.  Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly is a formidable foil, alternately hateful and comic; her black, close-set eyes blaze with racial righteousness.  Sissy Spacek, as her mother, has too few moments onscreen, but enough to remind us that we don't see enough of this wonderful actress.  Allison Janney is also marvelous as Skeeter's mother, caught between her own social ambitions and the welfare of the woman who had served her household for decades.

Emma Stone

Bryce Dallas Howard

Go see it, especially if you lived through those times, and especially if you didn't.

I mentioned some reservations.

I agree with David Denby in his favorable review in The New Yorker that the flaws in the movie really don't seem to matter much, fading as the movie progresses.  I think this is because of the intrinsic drama of the material.  I also think the viewer may also be distracted by the thought that to some degree, the frictions that were life-and-death in the Sixties continue to linger, in a far less poisonous but uneasy social dialogue between monied people and those who mow their lawns, fix their media centers, and, yes, assist them with raising their children and maintaining their households.

So my reservations are mainly quibbles.  I did not entirely buy in to the shallowness of the Junior Leaguers or the sometimes unvarnished villainy of Hilly, although goodness knows there are villains abroad when a change that needs to happen is resisted by those whom the status quo favors.  And I thought that the maids' reactions when faced with the ladies' slights were more revealing than your average Southern maid would have exhibited.

Given the dramatic subject matter and the historical fulcrum upon which both the book and the movie balance, it is somewhat surprising that both are regarded as of interest primarily to women.  It must be because the men in the movie are almost invisible, mostly afterthoughts.  The show tries to gin up a romantic story for Skeeter, but it's slight and unconvincing.  Hilly's husband is like Hilly, bad.  Celia's husband, turns out, is good.  While the period clothing and hairstyles (worth the price of admission for those of us who lived through them) serve to highlight the individuality of the women, they tend to make the men unmemorable. 

Hey, I'm glad it wasn't a movie about the way men treated The Help.

Check it out, guys.

*     *     *

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One For the Ladies

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day 
starring Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, and Ciaran Hinds

I believe I rashly promised that my next review would be of some work of art that chicks would enjoy.  I didn't have to think very long to recall this marvelous confection.  The Memsahib and I went to see this at the local art house (the wonderful Angelica in the Shops at Legacy in Plano).   The Mem doesn't care for violent action flicks, which tend to be relegated to pay-per-view at home.   I don't mind -- it's a good policy that steers us away from blockbusters and toward deserving smaller movies.  

I liked this one a lot.  Frances McDormand plays a governess terminated from her prior employ.  She is desperate for work and contrives to be assigned to bird-dog a flighty American babe played by the ubiquitous but ubiquitous-for-a-reason Amy Adams.  Ms. Adams is an American in London on the make and pursued by a variety of unacceptable gentlemen from whom Ms. McDormand seeks to protect her -- but not too vigorously.  In the meantime, Ms. McDormand's very proper Miss Pettigrew -- well, she lives for a day, and, we are led to believe, more to come.

The two principals are a delight to watch, and Ciaran Hinds steals the scenes he is in.  (He played Julius Caesar in the HBO miniseries "Rome.")  

This is not a movie that is going to make you forget the greatest chickflicks of all time, but the skill of its stars, the wit, and, to be blunt, the romance, must win over even the guy-est of the guys.  When it comes right down to it, most dudes will admit, if only to themselves, that they enjoy the game of romance.  They will indeed sit still to watch it on the screen. 

It's out of the theaters now, so rent it, download it, sit close to your honey, make sure the popcorn is buttered enough for the guy but not too much for the honey, and havs yourself a merry little evening.