Brad's Status (2017) * * *

Directed by:  Mike White

Starring:  Ben Stiller, Austin Abrams, Jenna Fischer, Michael Sheen, Luke Wilson, Mike White, Jemaine Clement, Shazi Raja

Brad's Status is a study about some of the most irrational and irritating aspects of human nature.    From an outsider's perspective, Brad Sloan (Stiller) has a lot to be thankful for, including a nice home, a loving wife, and a son who may be able to get into Harvard, or at the very least Tufts.    But for Brad, this is not enough.    He feels as if he has not accomplished anything, especially when he compares himself to his college buddies, all of whom have more money and prestige than Brad.    Most people would envy Brad, but Brad spends a great deal of the movie envying his friends from afar.   

Brad's angst is so profound he asks his wife (Fischer) how much money they stand to inherit should her parents keel over.    She is reasonably perturbed at the question, but has to get up for work in the morning so Brad should try and get some sleep.    The bulk of Brad's Status occurs when Brad accompanies his 17-year-old son Troy (Abrams) to interviews at Harvard and Tufts.    Troy is a quiet kid with a love for music, someone Brad is proud of, but also lives vicariously through.    He has fantasies of his son's future success, but mostly because it will give him ammunition against his irrational feelings of worthlessness.     He says to others, "My son is interviewing at Harvard," as a way of saying, "See, I've done something worthwhile, too,"    Brad's tales of woe floor others, who think as we do that Brad has a life many others wish they had.  

The movie isn't about what Brad has, but what he feels he doesn't.    His images of the lives of his college friends:  a famed political mind who appears on TV often (Sheen), a movie director (White), a billionaire with his own private jet (Wilson), and a dot.com founder who sold his business and is retired and living in Hawaii with two gorgeous women (Clement), are not based in reality, but idealism.     He sees them as he wants to because it fuels his envy.   Never mind the fact that the politico is a condescending creep, the billionaire is facing criminal charges and may lose his company, and the dot.com founder has drug issues; Brad sees their wealth and power as the way to keep score and he is losing the game.

The typical Ben Stiller comic performance is that of a guy spending the majority of the movie in a slow burn until he explodes.    Stiller here is more subdued as he seethes and the release doesn't come in the form of a meltdown, but in a moment of clarity and understanding.    He thinks he is helping his son (and himself) when something goes wrong at Harvard and he pulls a few strings to make it right, but Troy subtly explains his embarrassment.     The very fact that Troy is so mature and well-adjusted should be all of the accomplishment Brad needs, but of course he doesn't see it, much to other's (and our) befuddlement.  

Brad's Status more or less unfolds predictably, but the satisfaction comes with the journey, not the destination.    It is similar to movies like 10 (1979), which starred Dudley Moore as a guy with a mid-life crisis who chases an unattainable woman.    He thinks if he lands the woman his life would suddenly be happy again, but he is ultimately disappointed when he meets the woman and realizes she isn't as perfect as he idealized.    In Brad's Status, Brad doesn't pursue a woman, but something equally unattainable for him, which is wealth and power.     He feels a certain degree of power by being able to pull strings to help his son out, but is he doing it for his son or himself?    By the end, Brad is able to answer that question.     What is frustrating to everyone else is the fact that he is even confounded by such questions. 

mother! (2017) 1/2 of *

Directed by:  Darren Aronofsky

Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kristen Wiig

You know you've had a bad movie week when IT was the only the second-worst movie you saw.     I thought after a while mother! was a goof; an extreme satire of horror films in which the protagonists' home is a.) a conduit to hell or b.) hell itself.    But, no, I believe this finished product is serious.    It is the kind of film you see in the movies which causes studio executives to sit in dumbfound silence, wondering just what exactly the heck they are watching.    In the movies, the exec would angrily order the director to be fired.    In the case of this film, it seems the director was encouraged to keep it up, whatever it was he was trying to do. 

Where do I begin?  Writing this review is like sifting through the ashes of a massive explosion trying to determine what caused it.    The frustrating thing about mother! (yes, that is how I'm supposed to write the title) is that for the first half-hour or so, there is generated suspense even though the opening scenes of the movie pretty much foreshadow the ending.    I read how the characters don't have names, which I absolutely detest in any movie.    Why can't the wife (Lawrence) have a first name?   Why can't the husband/poet (Bardem)?   How do they go through an entire movie without mentioning each other by name?   How do the creepy houseguests (Harris and Pfeiffer) descend on Lawrence's tranquil home without ever being asked their names?   

It gets far worse.    Anyhow, Mr. and Mrs. Poet have a house in the middle of absolute nowhere.    It appears there aren't even roads around.    mother! takes place entirely within the home, which is being renovated painstakingly by Lawrence as her husband deals with a severe case of writer's block.    He was once a writer of some stature, it seems, but now he can't seem to write a word.     The age difference between the spouses is noted by Pfeiffer, who shows up on the scene as a very rude, forward houseguest.     The houseguests appear out of nowhere, Harris is supposedly stranded, with Bardem welcoming them with entirely too much trust and familiarity while Lawrence very reasonably wonders what the strangers are up to.

Without going into too much mind-numbing detail, let's just say more uninvited guests show up, things get crazy, a bloody confrontation ensues, and soon Lawrence is left at home by herself where she discovers the house may be a cousin of the one in Amityville Horror.     Why she didn't take this opportunity to head for the hills is one of many, many questions left unanswered.    Anyhow, more people show up at the house and wreck the place, made worse by Bardem's acceptance of this abhorrent behavior.    Lawrence's response to watching her dream house turned into utter shambles by strangers is in the form of maddeningly meek protests.    At first, we can feel sorry for her, but her passivity soon makes us impatient and angry at her.    Will she please develop a backbone already and tell the interlopers and her hubby to hit the road?  

What is odd is how once Harris and Pfeiffer leave the scene, they are never seen again and their whole odd episode is never mentioned again.    After a few months of relative peace, Bardem sells a manuscript and before a quiet night at home, more strangers appear at the house which are welcomed by the egotistical Bardem, but not by Lawrence, and now we have Lawrence telling the strangers to get out of her room and stop jumping on the furniture 2.0.     Then, the movie really, really flies off the rails, as the gathering grows into a night of terror and madness with the dolt Lawrence sticking around way, way too long before trying to escape.    I can't imagine hell being much worse than what is depicted in mother!  

What starts as lower scale horror and suspense soon escalates into an all-out assault on the senses with a payoff that doesn't reward us for our patience.    It's as if Aronofsky was playing a cruel joke on the audience.   We think all of this has some kind of salient point, but the ending doesn't justify it.    Much, too much, is unexplained or senseless.    Characters are introduced, built up, and then forgotten in the morass of nonsense.     And don't give me the whole "Aronofsky leaves it vague so we can figure it out for ourselves" cop out.    I'm not entirely sure Aronofsky himself knows what he is trying to show.    The entire enterprise is one in which control was completely lost and we feel as if are swimming in quicksand trying to figure it out.

The film is not a highlight in the careers of the cast involved.    Lawrence is a very good actress, but she is not capable of rescuing the film from the depths, especially playing a woman so meek and passive we want to shake her to snap out of it.    The poet does not exhibit any reason whatsoever to convince us why Lawrence has such undying devotion to him.     He is a monosyllabic egomaniac who disregards his wife's feelings in favor of selfishly entertaining the guests who cater to his ego.   There is barely any conversation between them.    Something tells me if the evil guests didn't show up, these two would just stare at each other in nervous silence trying to discuss the weather.     The film is so slow to reveal its true nature, and even then we don't know if it truly does, that we simply grow impatient and frustrated.   

Aronofsky's last movie was Noah (2014), which is a Best Picture winner compared to mother!    This film is more akin to the director's Black Swan (2010), about a ballet dancer's descent into madness which won a Best Actress Oscar for Natalie Portman.   mother! is Black Swan on steroids with the wattage cranked up until we achieve sensory overload.    This is not a good thing.  mother! turns into a full-fledged disaster which runs an obscene two hours long.   During Lawrence's tour of her basement, in which she discovers blood seeping from the walls and hears a faint heartbeat within the cement, I thought of Eddie Murphy's line from his standup act where he says, "Why don't white people get out of the house when there's a ghost in the house?"    She doesn't heed Murphy's advice and pays the price.    So do we.   

Life of Pi (2012) * * *

Directed by:  Ang Lee

Starring:  Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Gerard Depardieu, Rafe Spall

The bulk of Life of Pi occurs while Pi (Sharma) is stranded at sea for 227 days in a lifeboat accompanied by a tiger, zebra, hyena, and orangutan.    The ship carrying Pi and his family to America from India sank and now Pi must fight to survive at sea.    No, Life of Pi is not Cast Away on the open sea.    It is visually superb with seamless visual effects which display the wonder and the horrors of the ocean.    We are also engrossed in Pi's struggle, which at times may result in certain death either at the hands of nature or by the animals who managed to fall into the lifeboat.   

Does Life of Pi move slowly at times?   Yes, but not fatally.   The ocean scenes are intercut with scenes of the older Pi (Khan) telling his extraordinary tale to a writer.    Is the story exactly as Pi described it?   Were there embellishments?    Were there animals aboard or someone (or something else)?    The movie hints at many possibilities.    At first, I wondered why the movie was told in flashback, but then the idea dawned on me that Pi's tale isn't about what happened as opposed to how he remembers it happening.     We see an older Pi who has learned to accept the joys of life and gratefully embraces even the small things. 

We also witness Pi's humble beginnings in India, where he was born with the name Piscine and other kids called him "pee".   He changes his nickname to Pi and soon his family is boarding the fateful ship bound for America which will never reach its destination.    While on sea, Pi must use every ounce of courage and resourcefulness to simply stay alive one more day.    He battles storms, learns to connect and communicate with the wildlife aboard his boat (especially the tiger), and experiences temporary joys such as schools of flying fish leaping over the boat.   

Ang Lee won his second Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi and looking over his career, he is not a director who shies away from challenging material.    Life of Pi is surely the most visually stunning film he has made, while other films such as Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and Brokeback Mountain are grounded in reality and the problems people discover when they can't communicate their emotions properly.    Life of Pi presents a fantastical, extreme example of a young man cut off from communication with the outside world except for the beasts which occupy his boat with him.

IT (2017) *

Directed by:  Andy Muschietti

Starring:  Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, Bill Skarsgard, Finn Wolfhard, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Nicholas Hamilton, Chosen Jacobs

Watching this movie is a thoroughly unpleasant experience.    You don't view the movie as much as survive it.    I felt I was subjected to this vile film.    IT is Stand By Me crossed with The Goonies and relentlessly bathed in blood.    I'm capitalizing IT to differentiate the movie title with the word "it".    It was bad enough I sat through the seemingly endless slog; now I have to make special concessions in my review.     

IT is the second film adaptation of a Stephen King novel released within the last month.    The Dark Tower was silly and dreadful.     IT is simply ugly and nasty, populated by kids we don't care much about because they aren't really given much personality.     Blood spurts or pours everywhere onscreen.    At one point, an entire bathroom is covered in crimson after a sink drain upchucks blood.    The adults in the film are either absent, negligent, uncaring, or abusive.    We are treading very much on Peanuts territory here, with the kids roaming the town almost unfettered and no parents to really answer to.

The film is creepy from the start, and not in a good horror film type of way.    Circa 1988: a young boy goes out into the rain with a small cardboard boat made by his big brother.    The boat accidentally floats into a sewer grate, where the evil Pennywise the Clown (Skarsgard) awaits.    Pennywise bites off the boy's arm and then drags him into the sewer.    The boy is missing and it seems many other children in the town of Derry, Maine go missing too.     IT is nothing if not gratuitous in its violence and gore.    Things are bad enough when the boy is kidnapped, did the arm have to be bitten off also?

Months pass.    The boy is still missing and the older brother teams up with some old friends and new ones who witness harrowing, evil visions to find out what is happening in the town.     They search the sewers and the library, but the plot detours so the kids can be kids for a while, including jumping off cliffs into a lake and discovering the joys of a first crush.    A tomboyish girl joins the quasi-Goonies (Lillis), and she is the most appealing of the bunch.     She reminds me of a younger Amy Adams.    There are echoes of Stand By Me (1986), another film based on a King work in which young boys spend a weekend hiking in search of a storied dead body, but they seem out of place here.    But soon, Pennywise shows up again doing his best Freddy Krueger impression and we are back to the ugliness at hand.

The search leads the group to a burned out old house that looked like a cross between the Myers residence from Halloween and the Norman Bates home in Psycho.    I wondered why such a house in an otherwise nice neighborhood would be allowed to remain standing and not razed.    So Pennywise can have a place to dwell, I guess.    Many scenes involve cheap scares and things that go bump in the night along with Pennywise, who can seemingly appear anywhere at any time and whose presence is signaled by ominous red balloons.

Some scenes don't connect to others.    Maybe they weren't tied together in the editing process, or some may only be understood by those who read the book.    I surely won't be watching the Director's Cut to find out.   The visuals are cheesy.   The film takes place in 1988-89, but it also feels like it was made in 1988-89.   Oh, and then there is the town bully who is terribly sadistic even for a movie town bully.    He beats up and terrorizes his victims with homicidal zeal and then gruesomely carves his initials into their torsos.    Maybe the guy saw Inglourious Basterds and took some pointers from Brad Pitt.     

Even the climactic scene in which the gang goes its separate ways involves a blood oath in which one kid slices the palm of all of the others and they hold hands.    The girl kisses the boy and then caresses his face with her gooey, bloody hand, leaving a smear of blood on the boy's face.    Is this supposed to be touching?     The characters deduce that Derry goes through such evil once every 27 years.    The closing credits refers to the movie as "IT: Chapter One".   Maybe they will take pity on us and subject us to Chapter Two 27 years from now.    This won't happen, of course, but I can dream, can't I?    Call me a tight ass or call me overly critical of a schlocky horror film, but please don't call me when IT: Chapter Two shows up.     

E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982) * * * *

Directed by:  Steven Spielberg

Starring:  Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote, Robert McNaughton, C. Thomas Howell

E.T. was the highest grossing film in movie history until Spielberg's own Jurassic Park (1993) surpassed it a decade later.    Both films are similar.    Both films are about strange, awe-inspiring beings threatened by humans.    Jurassic Park and its sequels were disappointing, mostly because Spielberg brings dinosaurs to life only to have them shot at and killed like monsters in a video game.   E.T. is much more touching, sweet, observant, and funny.    We see a lot of humanity in the alien in E.T., and in some instances, even more than in humans themselves. 

The E.T. of the title is a timid alien, probably a child himself, stranded on Earth after the mother ship accidentally strands him.    Alone and afraid, E.T. is discovered in the woods by the shy Elliott (Thomas), whose parents recently divorced.    Elliott takes E.T. home and hides him from his mother (Wallace), who has enough of her own issues distracting her.     Elliott's older brother (McNaughton) and younger sister (Barrymore) befriend E.T. and hide him, even in plain sight when E.T. goes out trick or treating with Elliott with everyone assuming it is the kid sister in disguise.

Elliott and E.T. meet each other and learn from each other.    They come together at a time in their lives when they need a friend the most.    However, Elliott's secret doesn't stay one for long and soon federal agents are watching the neighborhood for signs of the alien.    The story is riveting, all the more because we know how it must end.    E.T. is no longer safe on Earth and he misses his family, which causes the empathetic Elliott to build him a makeshift telephone which can somehow communicate into outer space and possibly the mother ship.  

E.T. is an alien we hadn't seen before or since, unless you count the cute lookalike in Meatballs, Part II.    Yes, I brought up Meatballs, Part II in my review of Spielberg's classic film.     He has wide eyes, wrinkles all over him, a skinny neck which can crane, and a low, calming voice.    Only an absolute curmudgeon can't love the little guy.    I can't adequately describe his shape, but he doesn't look at all like the Martians we've seen that wanted to destroy the planet in previous sci-fi films.    We love E.T. because he is gentle and has the same emotions as the rest of us.    We can identify with him even though he comes from another world.    We see him as Elliott sees him, although the feds see him for a different purpose.   

There is a revelatory scene in which one of the scientists studying E.T. (played by Peter Coyote) gives a long, edifying speech comforting Elliott about the wonder an alien like E.T. can present to humans.    How much we can learn from him if only we would allow it.    There is little doubt Spielberg made E.T. to show us all how an alien can teach us all to be a little more trusting, loving, caring, and human.    Very few directors can present us with such a film and doesn't make it manipulative, but thrilling and, of course, work the tear ducts just right.

Jackie (2016) * *

Directed by:  Pablo Lorrain

Starring:  Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Gerta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt, Max Casella

There is a compelling movie within Jackie waiting to break out, but it never does.    It is too cold, too stoic, too contemplative, and ultimately too talky.    Concentrating its story to within the first few days following John F. Kennedy's assassination, Jackie deals with the former first lady's grief, confusion and whether there should be a funeral march through Washington.   I was reminded of the issues facing Queen Elizabeth II in the far superior The Queen (2006).   

Jackie has the right look and feel, but I couldn't get past Natalie Portman's performance.    On a technical level, Portman nails Jackie Kennedy's look and speech, but I knew it was a performance.    I didn't feel I knew her on anything but a superficial level.    In a way, watching Jackie is like watching Jackie Kennedy in newsreel footage and on TV.    We see her, but we only gain a rough understanding of her through our own perceptions not based on any personal knowledge.    The movie, like the performance, keeps us outside. 

We pick up Jackie shortly after Kennedy's assassination.    Jackie's pink ensemble is covered in blood, while she hurriedly washes her face of the blood and debris from the shooting.    She refuses to change her outfit, noting the hostile Dallas population and saying, "Let them see what they've done,"    She is surely in shock and processing what just happened while standing by and watching Lyndon Johnson sworn in as the 36th President aboard Air Force One.     These are potentially powerful moments which never seem to hit home.   

The business of the Cold War and the government goes on, almost coldly and relentlessly, while the first lady tries to figure out a way to tell her children of their father's death.     When daughter Caroline continues to prod after being told in the sugarcoated way, Jackie tells her the truth and somehow this scene feels muted and robbed of its power.    It is as if the movie is holding things in reserve.   

The movie is told mostly in flashback as Jackie tells her story to a magazine reporter (Crudup) and engages in a tug-of-war with him over what should or should not be included in the piece.     Jackie is looking to protect her dignity, I suppose, and present a more sanitized version of events, while the reporter is looking to sell magazines and beef up the story with good quotes.    I'm not sure this is the proper way to tell this story.    I believe a story told as it happened without the benefit of hindsight would have served the film better.    I would have preferred to see a messier story, filled with conflicting emotions and strong external battles with others like Bobby Kennedy, who as played by Peter Sarsgaard is accompanying Jackie through her grief as more of a duty than a pleasure.     We gain hints on the superficiality of their relationship, which sets up for a fascinating subplot the movie doesn't delve into.

The movie hurries to touch bases with its various subplots, including footage of the first lady's televised tour of the White House, flashbacks to happier times with John, discussions about the meaning of it all with a priest (Hurt), and songs from the musical Camelot playing on the soundtrack.    All of it adds up to a missed opportunity.    The movie knows how it should look, and certainly the film captures the look of the era correctly, but it doesn't know how it should feel about its subject. 



 

A League of Their Own (1992) * * *

Directed by:  Penny Marshall

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Lori Petty, David Strathairn, Garry Marshall, Rosie O' Donnell, Madonna, Jon Lovitz, Megan Cavanaugh, Bill Pullman

A League of Their Own is a mostly fun, sometimes sentimental movie based on a real women's professional baseball league which formed during World War II while many major leaguers were fighting overseas.     To the surprise of many, the league lasted for a few years even after the guys returned home and resumed their baseball careers.    I'm sure the film's characters are either based on composites of real people or fictionalized all together, but for the most part it works because we care about the people and we even care about the baseball too.

The beginning of the film shows the league being formed by a Chicago candy magnate (Marshall), who along with a few other owners forms the league for female ballplayers.    A wisecracking scout (Lovitz) discovers two potential league players in Oregon sisters Dottie (Davis) and Kit (Petty), both of whom play well although Dottie outshines Kit in the eyes of many including the scout.    Kit's smoldering resentment of Dottie is a recurring theme.     Alcoholic former home run king Jimmy Dugan (Hanks) is hired to manage one of the teams, but spends the bulk of the initial games passed out or hung over.    He resents that his job is managing a women's baseball team.    ("I don't have ball players, I've got girls,")

Dugan's Rockford Peaches team consists of Dottie, Kit, and others played by actresses such as Rosie O' Donnell and Madonna.    Madonna gets third billing, but has relatively little dialogue and doesn't sing at all (except for a song on the soundtrack).   At the Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony years later, it seems the only photos ever taken of any ball players all played for Rockford and none of the other teams.    The newsreel footage of the league also has this myopia, as the stories focus only on Rockford.    The other teams only exist to field players Rockford must compete against; otherwise their existence would be daily baseball practice.

Jimmy eventually gets serious about managing his ball club, while Dottie acts as if baseball is just a way of passing the time until her husband comes home from the war.    We know better that she loves the game despite her protests to the contrary.    One particularly well-done scene involves one of the players receiving word of her husband's death right before a big game, which injects a dose of reality.     A League of Their Own ends, as all sports movies do, with The Big Game and the game is fairly exciting with some nice touches, including a chance for Kit to finally outshine her big sister for once.   

The ending is touching, with some players still alive while we learn some of the others passed on.    The song which becomes sort of the anthem for the league is sung three times in the movie.    Once was enough.    Because the movie is fictional anyway, it would have been nice to have some closure with the Jimmy/Dottie friendship years later.    But, it doesn't happen, although it would have been fun to see Jimmy again years after he quit drinking and learned to respect the women as great ballplayers.   

Awakenings (1990) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Penny Marshall

 

Starring:  Robert DeNiro, Robin Williams, John Heard, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, Max von Sydow, Penelope Ann Miller

 

Awakenings tells the true story of a group of catatonic patients who, with help of a sympathetic doctor and a drug called L-DOPA, briefly sprung them from their catatonia in the summer of 1969.   The doctor is Malcolm Sayer (Williams), based on Dr. Oliver Sacks who wrote the book on which the film is based.   He had zero experience working with live patients during his medical career before 1969, but he brought a special outsiders' perspective and a lack of cynicism which seemed to permeate the ward which housed the patients.   

 

Sayer is intrigued by Leonard Lowe (DeNiro), a 40ish patient who had been hospitalized since he was a boy.    He was a normal seven year old one day and then he suddenly lost all muscular function leaving him in catatonia without the ability to move.    Yet, one day Dr. Sayer accidentally drops something near Leonard and Leonard instinctively catches it.     He experiments on other patients who can catch baseballs thrown their way, but seemingly out of instinct and reflex.   Sayer takes his findings to his superiors, who dismiss them.   One weakness of Awakenings is how Sayer's superiors are portrayed.   They are so over-the-top skeptical and cold that they come across as movie villains which Dr. Sayer has to defeat in order to help his patients.   

 

Sayer soon seeks counsel of a top neurologist (von Sydow), who suggests the "frozen" people can not be thinking or feeling anything because "the implications would be unthinkable,"    But Sayer persists, forming his theory that the paralyzed patients may be suffering from a rare form of Parkinson's disease in which the patients' tremors are so severe the muscles appear to be not moving at all.    Sayer secures the drug L-DOPA and uses Leonard as his test patient.    One night, Leonard "awakens" and moves around on his own for the first time in years.     The other patients soon awaken and experience freedom from their imprisonment in their own bodies.     Awakenings compassionately deals with the emotions of the patients, which range from joy to relief to anger and for Leonard his first crush on the daughter of another hospital patient (Miller).   

 

The newfound freedom comes with a price, which includes harsh side effects of the medication and a possible recession into catatonia again.     Leonard is at first childlike and happy as he attempts to process the world around him, but soon the medication makes him angry and paranoid.    His devoted mother (Nelson) is astonished at his behavior.    Sayer himself throws himself into his work while forsaking a personal life.    He doesn't seem to notice the attentions of a nurse (Kavner), who clearly has a crush on him.     As Leonard angrily battles to avoid receding into his former state, he tells Sayer, "You're not alive.  I was asleep.   What's your excuse?"

 

Awakenings contains moments of genuine power and sadness which are anchored by the strong performances.     Robin Williams plays against type as the reticent and timid Sayer who learns to be a doctor and more so how to deal with his own life.     It is a wonderful performance, which showed a different side to Williams in which his manic standup comic persona took a back seat.     DeNiro (Oscar nominated here) provides Leonard with depth, emotion, and subtle humor, plus it's a superior physical performance.    I also liked the range displayed by Nelson, who visits her son every day and fears losing him again, either to the disease or to the fact that she is not the only woman in her son's life now.

 

Directed by Penny Marshall, Awakenings (like Marshall's previous film Big) mines the extraordinary situation for all of the humor and humanity it can muster.      There are laughs and sad moments, all of which aren't cheap payoffs, but richly earned.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Man on the Moon (1999) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Milos Forman

Starring:  Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito, Courtney Love, Paul Giamatti, Jerry "The King" Lawler

Andy Kaufman didn't necessarily perform for audiences as much as performed for himself.    His act was a high-wire mish mosh of bad jokes, eccentricity, and performance art.    He didn't want to make audiences laugh as much as he wanted to keep them guessing.    Is he putting them on?   Where is the joke?   Are they the joke?     There hasn't been anyone quite like Andy Kaufman since his untimely death in 1984 from lung cancer.     In a cruel twist of fate which Andy himself may have found amusing, he never smoked but still died from lung cancer at the age of 35.   Maybe the universe decided to make Andy the butt of its cosmic joke. 

Jim Carrey doesn't play Andy as much as embodies his wacky spirit.   You would think such a role would give Carrey the license to run amok, but director Forman (Amadeus, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest) wisely reins him in.    We don't witness Carrey playing Andy.    We witness Carrey be Andy, which is crucial to the film's success.     Man on the Moon follows the biopic formula as we see Andy grow from peculiar kid to peculiar adult.    He was born to be on stage, although doing what we don't exactly know.    He starts out in the LA comedy scene, is discovered by agent George Shapiro (DeVito), and rises to stardom as Latka Gavras on Taxi.   

Not content with mere TV stardom, Andy pushes boundaries and his audience's finite patience with his odd stand up act.    He takes on like-minded comic partner Bob Zmuda (Giamatti) and the two engage in elaborate hoaxes and pranks which amuse mostly themselves.     We picture them cracking themselves up as they plot and execute these jokes on whichever hapless sap has the misfortune of being the victim.    Shapiro spends most of his time putting out Andy's fires as he burns one showbiz bridge after another.     Andy turns his attention to a stint in Memphis wrestling and a feud with icon Jerry "The King" Lawler (playing himself) which culminates in a Letterman appearance in which The King smacked Andy (attired with a neck brace from a recent match with Lawler) across the face.    Very hard I might add.   

Man on the Moon plays loose with some facts, which comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen a biopic.   In the film, he meets future fiancée Lynne Margulies (Love) on a TV talk show promoting his wrestling angle, while in real life they met on the set of Kaufman's My Breakfast with Blassie long after his famed match with Lawler.    The concert at Carnegie Hall was held during Kaufman's heyday and not as a comeback of sorts in this film.    Even if it plays loose with facts, it remains true to Kaufman's anarchic spirit.    I can't say Andy Kaufman was funny, but his ability to keep you watching made him just as fascinating all the same.    I admire his ability to gain heat from the crowd during his Memphis run.    Most celebrities involved in wrestling in any way at the time were supportive of babyfaces, so as not to tarnish their image.    Kaufman did what he always did, which was to go against the norm and play a great heel.    It took a certain amount of nerve to do that, just as Man on the Moon has the nerve to not romanticize its subject, but to observe him and allow us to decide whether he was funny and what exactly he was up to this time.

Baywatch (2017) * 1/2

Directed by:  Seth Gordon

Starring:  Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddrio, Kelly Rohrbach. Pamela Anderson, David Hasselhoff, Priyanka Chopra, Ilfenesh Hadera, Rob Huebel, Hannibal Burress, Jon Bass

Based on the 1990's TV series, Baywatch is yet another movie adaptation of an old TV show no one was clamoring to be made.    CHIPs was released earlier this year and didn't register much.    It had a few chuckles mostly due to the likable actors and then just vanished from my memory and from theaters.    Baywatch makes CHIPs seem like an AFI Top 100 list movie by comparison.    

Dwayne Johnson, who should learn to say no occasionally, plays the David Hasselhoff role of Mitch Buchanan, the head lifeguard of Baywatch, which patrols the beaches of Emerald Bay and risks life and limb to save drowning swimmers.     Mitch is joined by the busty CJ (Rohrbach), a nerd (Bass) in love with CJ, newcomer Summer (Daddario), Stephanie (Hadera), and former Olympic gold medalist turned screwup Matt Brody (Efron).    The initial tension between Mitch and Matt follows the clichéd cop/buddy movie conventions which go in this sequence:  1.  Hostility.   2.   Guarded truce   3.   Friendship    4.  Seeming betrayal which causes temporary fracture of the new friendship   5.  Reconciliation.     Mitch doesn't much care of Matt for reasons not made clear.    If you consider the daily workload the Baywatch crew goes through, then Mitch should be thankful for the help and not give Matt a hard time.   

A nasty drug is soon infiltrating the beach and causing deaths.    Mitch and crew investigate who is behind the drug dealing, the sultry Victoria Leeds (Chopra) who in another life could be a Baywatch lifeguard herself.     The actors are appealing, but they are weighed down by a screenplay which doesn't know if the movie is a self-aware parody or a gross-out teen comedy with adults in the teen roles.     We don't care much about the plot, so the movie needs to depends on its laughs to pull through.    Too bad there are none to be had.   

So we are left with a lifeless comedy with inevitable cameos from actors who performed in the original series.     This bow to the past used to be original and welcome, but now it is trite and played out.    I admit I missed David Hasselhoff's cameo, but I don't feel the need to circle back and watch for it again. 

Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) * *

Directed by:  Joseph Ruben

Starring:  Julia Roberts, Kevin Anderson, Patrick Bergin, Elizabeth Lawrence

Sleeping with the Enemy begins to step wrong as the plot takes shape.   The first half hour is well done, but then once Roberts' character fakes her death to escape her abusive husband, the movie becomes an ordinary thriller and the husband becomes a standard slasher movie villain.    He transforms into a cliche.   

Roberts plays Laura, a twenty-something wife of rich investment banker Martin (Bergin).  They live in a cold Cape Cod glass house which screams yuppie excess and doesn't seem lived in.  No wonder.   Martin is a control freak who admonishes his wife when the towels aren't lined up just right or something is out of place.   He strikes her and practically keeps her prisoner in her home, except for the occasional parties they go to so he could show her off.     The opening scenes detail a troubled marriage peppered by psychological and physical abuse.   They hold a certain power.   Then, Laura hatches a plan to fake her death in a boat accident and light out for Iowa.   She pulls it off for a while, but soon Martin discovers the plot and tracks her down.  I didn't think the whole "flush the wedding ring down the toilet" idea was a particularly smart one.

Without such missteps, there would be no second or third act, which would have suited me just fine.   But the movie is determined to go where it leads and we follow Laura to Iowa where she lives near her ailing mother whom Laura told Martin was dead.     Her neighbor Ben (Anderson) is sweet, thoughtful, understanding, and dull as dishwater.   She resists his advances and makes it clear She Has A Troubled Past, but soon she relents and hooks up with him.   Their relationship is a prime example of two people coming together because the script says they should right about now.  There is no juice whatsoever.    Ben is simply too syrupy sweet and Laura simply too standoffish to make this a convincing love story.

As Ben and Laura dance to Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" playing on the soundtrack, Martin walks around in a long, black, conspicuous trench coat, a Kevin Kline mustache, and a crazed stare which should trigger anyone who comes in contact with him to dial 911.    He transforms into an over-the-top villain, which belies the earlier. more powerful scenes in which Martin is portrayed as person of control and precision.    He was a person of slow-burning fury whose rage lashes out after attempts at cold civility fail.     He keeps his rage measured, but in the later scenes he all but froths at the mouth.  Bergin's performance is good here, even when his characters flies off the rails and becomes an all-out stalker/killer. 

Roberts earns our sympathy as the battered wife, but when she moves to Iowa she is cold and distant perhaps due to fear of discovery or because she has symptoms of PTSD.     She is less interesting than in the earlier scenes, but by then the focus of the film clearly shifts to becoming a slasher thriller and nothing more.     It is a shame.    Sleeping with the Enemy could have been a masterpiece if it maintained the tone of the earlier story and saw it through to an unblinking, maybe even inevitable conclusion.     But, perhaps due to commercial considerations and perhaps because audiences want to see the bastard get his in the end, Sleeping with the Enemy shifts gears just when it really started to get interesting.