Silver Linings Playbook (2012) * * * *

 

Directed by:  David O. Russell

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, John Ortiz, Shea Whigham, Julia Stiles, Paul Herman, Anupan Kher

I first saw and fell in love with Silver Linings Playbook in 2012.   After several viewings since then, I felt it appropriate to revisit and write an updated review.   I gave it three and a half stars in 2012, but now I'm inclined to go all the way and give it four stars.   Silver Linings Playbook is an endlessly charming romantic comedy in which square pegs like Pat Solitano Jr. (Cooper) and Tiffany Maxwell (Lawrence) find a way to fit into the round hole of life.   They were both dealt some crappy hands, but they find a way to persevere.   

We first meet Pat in a mental hospital in Baltimore, one hundred miles away or so from his home in suburban Philadelphia.   He is giving himself a pep talk before he pretends to take his meds, which he spits out on to the floor after convincing the doctors he swallowed them.   His mother Delores (Weaver) can no longer stand her son being in a hospital and signs him out against the recommendations of his doctors.   Why is Pat in the hospital?   Eight months ago, he walked in on his wife Nikki having sex with a guy and Pat nearly beat the man to death.   Pat has been trying to keep a lid on his rage ever since, but he finds this is difficult especially when he reads A Farewell to Arms and despises the ending.

Pat's father Pat Sr. (DeNiro) is happy to see his son home not only because he loves him, but because he sincerely believes his son brings positive juju when watching Eagles games.    Pat Sr. is a bookie who bets recklessly on Eagles games against his friend Randy (Herman), a Cowboys fan.    One reason DeNiro is so endearing in this role is because we sense how much he loves his family, who he'd like to act as his support system for his own OCD during Eagles games. 

Along the way, Pat Jr. meets Tiffany Maxwell, the sister of his best friend's wife whose husband recently died.   She coped with the death by having sex with everyone in her office which caused her to lose her job.   She's barely hanging on to sanity, but she finds she likes Pat Jr. and even offers to have sex with him right after they meet.   Moments later, we find she doesn't want sex as much as someone to hold and grieve with.   That person is Pat Jr.   Because Nikki has a restraining order against Pat Jr, Tiffany offers to give her Pat Jr.'s letter offering reconciliation in exchange for becoming her partner at a Philadelphia dance competition.    This is not a movie where Pat and Tiffany suddenly become Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but there is a sweet payoff involving a parlay between Pat Sr. and Randy over the results of the contest.   

Pat Jr. is drawn to Tiffany even if he won't admit it to himself.   He turns down sex with Tiffany because he still has delusions Nikki will take him back.   He thoroughly believes this, and fails to see Tiffany loves him.   But Tiffany subtly inserts herself into his head and heart.   Silver Linings Playbook is a romantic comedy with an edge.   It earned Lawrence a Best Actress Oscar, nominations for DeNiro and Weaver, and gave Cooper not only his first Best Actor nomination, but he would earn multiple nominations and awards season gravitas for years to come.  

Silver Linings Playbook, adapted from the Matthew Quick novel and directed by David O. Russell, gives us imperfect people all trying to fit their quirks into a life which satisfies them.   It charms in spite of itself.   Normally, romantic comedies are chock full of thinly drawn people who think we should be involved with them because they are trying to find love.   Silver Linings Playbook's characters are complex, edgy, and touchingly human.   Pat's and Tiffany's relationship doesn't fall easily into togetherness.   They fight it every step of the way, but that makes the payoff all the more satisfying in the end.   David O. Russell would reassemble the principals of this cast in American Hustle (2013) and Joy (2015).   Both were good movies, but they didn't approach Silver Linings Playbook in terms of how they presented desperate characters and made them lovable.    I wonder how this group would've reacted to the Eagles finally winning the Super Bowl in 2018.   

Pirate Radio (2009) * * *

 

Directed by:  Richard Curtis

Starring:  Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Tom Sturridge, Chris O'Dowd, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Davenport

Now here is a group dedicated to a cause.   In 1966 England, the BBC broadcast rock and roll for only thirty minutes a day.   The stodgy, conservative Parliament wouldn't have it any other way.  Even though The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Animals, and other British Invasion bands had already been topping the charts worldwide for years, rock and roll was still seen as immoral and a vessel leading to the decay of Britain's moral fiber.   

The staff of DJ's aboard Radio Rock think differently and broadcast rock and roll 24/7 from a ship anchored in the North Sea with transmitters powerful enough to blast The Who, Procol Harum, etc. all over the British isles.   People loved not only the music, but how Radio Rock stuck it to the establishment.   Listening in was an act of defiance.  

Quentin (Nighy), the station manager, is forever trying to keep the music playing and his eclectic cast of characters happy.   The crew and DJ's are all men, with the exception of one woman who is a lesbian, so Quentin boats in female companionship every few weeks to keep morale high.   For guys like The Count (Hoffman), the lone American on board, the rocking and rolling supersedes everything in life except perhaps breathing.   When the British government enacts legislation to snuff out Radio Rock from legally transmitting the tunes, The Count would be the guy to literally and figuratively go down with the ship.

Pirate Radio may have a few too many characters populating the ship, but it has an infectious, anarchic quality.   These are mostly young people (but some older guys as well) for whom music is a calling.    On the flip side is Alistair Dormandy (Branagh), the Parliament member who has made it his life's mission to shut down Radio Rock because he is one of the hateful fuddy-duddies mentioned in the first paragraph.  The horse is already out of the barn, but men like Dormandy still want to shut the door.   It would've been satisfying, since Pirate Radio is based on a fictional ship (although there were real ships performing such "illegal" transmissions), to see Dormandy get a comeuppance.  

Instead, the ship gets its own comeuppance at the worst possible time, and we see just how much it means to this group to keep the music playing for as long as physically possible.   The Count leads the way and the rest of the movie follows.   Pirate Radio, like the music featured in it, is a throwback to a bygone era...and a lot of fun.  

The Mauritanian (2021) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Kevin MacDonald

Starring:  Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch, Shailene Woodley, Zachary Levi

The Mauritanian tells the true story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, who languished in Guantanamo Bay for fourteen years after being arrested for alleged ties to the 9/11 Al-Qaeda plot.   Salahi was never charged with a crime, but was imprisoned, tortured, and tormented by U.S. government officials and prison guards.   The evidence against him was thin at best.   After enduring months of physical and psychological torture, Salahi signed a confession but after that ordeal he would have signed a paper confessing he was Bin Laden's father and responsible for Pearl Harbor.

After being arrested in November 2001 in his home country of Mauritania, The Mauritanian shifts to 2005 when his case is brought to the attention of crusading attorney Nancy Hollander (Foster).   The Supreme Court recently reinstituted habeas corpus for Guantanamo Bay prisoners.   Hollander and her associate Teri Duncan (Woodley) take the case and visit Salahi, who maintains his innocence but has grown cynical for good reason.    Hollander's opponent is Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch (Cumberbatch), who is seeking the death penalty in a case even he has doubts about.

Does The Mauritanian end with a trial showdown?   No, but instead the principals learn through court and prison documents the extent of Salahi's suffering.   Salahi initially won his case, but shamefully the Obama administration appealed the outcome and Salahi wouldn't be freed until 2015.   One of President Obama's promises was to close Guantanamo Bay prison, but as of this writing it is still open for business.   Why would Obama's administration appeal a case of a Guantanamo prisoner when he wanted the prison closed anyway for reasons exactly like these?

On to the movie itself, which never rises to the level of outrage the story requires.   Rahim gives us a humanizing portrait of Salahi, with whom anyone can sympathize, but none of the legal wrangling and aghast expressions when reading the documents leads to a substantial payoff.   Salahi published a book shortly after his release and we see footage of a happily married father who smiles a great deal these days.   But the whole movie is rather dry in its depiction of Salahi and his legal ordeal.   The depth of Foster and Woodley's scenes with Rahim consist of prison visits.   These begin to feel repetitive.   

After an attack of moral indignation, Woodley disappears from the movie only to be awkwardly reinserted without a word of explanation.   Still, The Mauritanian has its periods where it is compelling, but as a whole it is lacking.  

The Bank Job (2008) * * *

 

Directed by: Roger Donaldson

Starring:  Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Daniel Mays, Stephen Campbell Moore, James Faulkner, Michael Jibson, Peter De Jersey

Not to be confused with The Italian Job (2003), which co-starred Jason Statham, The Bank Job is "based on a true story" about a 1971 London bank heist in which millions of pounds were stolen from safety deposit boxes, but also other little secrets to be used for blackmail.   As The Bank Job opens, we see a threesome involving a high-ranking member of the royal family and a snoop taking incriminating photos of the acts.   The existence of the pictures came to the attention of the British government, who then ordered the bank where the photos were hidden to be robbed.   The thieves could keep the riches, the government just wanted the photos in safe hands.    If you realize the government could cause media coverage of the crime to cease within days of the robbery, then you might wonder why it would go through the trouble of staging a robbery.    Just go into the bank with a warrant of some kind and empty out the contents of the box in question.   No muss, no fuss, but likely no movie either.

The setup of The Bank Job wasn't promising.   Besides a London auto dealership owner named Terry Leather (Statham) being asked by a former flame (Burrows) to rob the bank, we meet a militant Trini named Michael X (De Jersey) who took the photos and will soon blackmail the royal family, members of espionage organizations, dirty cops, a sleazy porno king, and government officials who like to visit S & M brothels.   There is a lot to keep track of, and I worried The Bank Job would slip while trying to keep track of all of these pieces to juggle.    Once the caper gets going, The Bank Job steadies itself into a suspenseful story.   How much of the "based on a true story" part is real and how much is fiction we may never know.

Director Roger Donaldson is no stranger to making solid thrillers (No Way Out, Thirteen Days) and he does so here as well.    A refreshing aspect of The Bank Job is how Statham's character is a true amateur at this bank robbing stuff.   He is a petty criminal at best, someone who wasn't conceived as a master criminal in the womb.   Terry's plan to rent a store two doors down from the bank and burrow under a fast food restaurant using a jackhammer is one which begs he and his crew to get caught.   The vibrations from the jackhammer cause beat cops to stop by.   The group's radio transmissions are picked up on a ham frequency.   A listener calls the police attempting to thwart the theft and Terry narrowly avoids capture. 

The heist is over mid-movie, but Terry now has to evade other parties with secrets of their own hidden in the boxes.   Members of Terry's crew are captured, tortured, or killed and Terry will be next unless he can think his way out of this mess.    The Bank Job doesn't always run like clockwork, but when it does it is an effective caper film with Statham as a steady center.  

Nomadland (2021) * *

 

Directed by:  Chloe Zhao

Starring:  Frances McDormand, David Strathairn

The prologue of Nomadland tells of a mine in northern Nevada which closed in 2011 and months later the entire ZIP code of the town where the mine was located was discontinued.   The residents of the mining town picked up and left once the mine closed, or lost everything beforehand.    Some, like Fern (McDormand) traveled in her van looking for work and living out of the van.   Fern would work during the Christmas season at Amazon and once the seasonal work is over, she would hit the road again.   Fern refurbished the inside of the van to seem more like a home to her.   She runs into friends at a store who offer her a place to stay, but Fern proudly refuses.   "I'm houseless, not homeless," she tells the daughter of her friend.  

Nomadland is being lauded for including non-actors playing themselves as nomads in the same predicament as Fern.   I find this is the biggest issue with Nomadland.   When Fern is interacting with the real nomads, it feels like movie star McDormand is invading their world instead of inhabiting it.  As great an actor as McDormand is, we are witnessing worlds collide on screen and the magic is lost.    It's as if McDormand is guest-starring in a documentary about nomads.    We are consistently aware that McDormand is a professional actor and the real nomads are not.   David Strathairn also appears in a subplot as a nomad who tires of life on the road and settles down with his son and newborn grandchild.  Fern can't abide this type of lifestyle and after a brief visit, she lights out for life on the highway.   

We learn about this unique phenomenon but are hardly engrossed by it.   The nomadic lifestyle provides a certain degree of freedom, but the RV's and vans have to be filled up with gas and people have to eat and perform bodily functions.   We are witness to Fern excreting into a bucket.   Nomadland is akin to 2012's Beasts of the Southern Wild, which covered the lives of the poverty-stricken people impacted by Hurricane Katrina.   That movie was more stark and realistic, partly because it was full of non-professional actors and unknowns who inhabited that world more convincingly.  

I can't fault the performances of McDormand or Strathairn except to say they are at the service of the wrong movie.    Nomadland should've been either a documentary about the nomadic lifestyle or a scripted drama featuring mostly actors in the nomad roles.   The combination of both is distracting.  

Supernova (2021) * * *

 

Directed by:  Harry Macqueen

Starring:  Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci

Sam (Firth) and Tusker (Tucci) are a longtime couple taking what will likely amount to a final road trip together.   Tusker is suffering from dementia.   He is himself most days, but has a tendency to wander off and forget things.   These are two men who have been together so long they know each other's rhythms and are beyond comfortable with each other's full being.   Tusker wants Sam, a renowned concert pianist, to perform a gig somewhere in the English countryside and renew his career.   Sam wants Tusker, a writer, to continue writing, but as the illness progresses we find this may not be possible.

Supernova documents in moving and emotional fashion the decision Tusker makes to commit suicide before he doesn't remember who he is or Sam is anymore.   He doesn't want to be a burden to Sam, while Sam fully wants to be burdened.   Or so he thinks he does.   One of the best scenes in the final act of Supernova is how Sam stumbles across Tusker's plans and how they deal with the decision honestly and with scorching truth.   Sam tries in vain to talk Tusker out of suicide, but he knows Tusker won't budge.   

Firth and Tucci are superb.   I'm tempted to say, oh heck I'll just say it...as usual.   Supernova is a basically a movie in which the leads are together nearly all the time and are constantly speaking.   In a short span, we learn their history through dialogue.   We never doubt their love for each other.   In retrospect, the first few minutes may be a mite too talky, but this establishes the comfort these men have with each other.   This makes the final moments so heartbreaking and shattering.   

Are we witnessing a premature end to their life together?   Is Tusker perhaps being too proud?   Or is Tusker being pragmatic while Sam is being romantic?    Is Tusker being selfish or selfless?   Supernova sees things from all angles and the answers can only come from Sam and Tusker.    The film, written and directed by Harry Macqueen, is roughly ninety minutes but could've shaved off about ten minutes to make it even more taut.   But no matter, because the emotional payoffs are so real they seem almost like this is happening to people we know.  

I Care A Lot (2021) * * *

 

Directed by:  J Blakeson

Starring:  Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Dianne Wiest, Alicia Witt, Eiza Gonzalez, Chris Messina

Marla Grayson (Pike) is a con artist looking to be the taker and not the taken in life.   She claims to care a lot, but she really just takes a lot.   Working with a team of like-minded lowlifes, Marla throws unwitting senior citizens into nursing homes, takes over as conservator legally in court, and then loots their assets while preventing family from seeing them.   It's a cold scheme which takes nerve, which Marla has in abundance.   One day, a doctor in on the con (Witt) proposes a well-off elderly patient named Jennifer Peterson (Wiest) to be the next victim of the scam.   Jennifer is a "cherry", meaning she has no family or heirs and has tons of dough.   Marla's eyes widen.   Jennifer is the next innocent woman to be chucked into a nursing home and locked away forever.   It doesn't take long for Marla to realize she did this to one too many seniors, especially when a Russian mobster named Roman (Dinklage) takes an interest in the case.

Roman sends his shark attorney to Marla's swanky office with a proposition.   We give you cash, you give up conservatorship of Jennifer, and maybe you'll live.  Otherwise, things will get ugly quick.  Marla refuses and soon things get ugly like the attorney promised.    How nasty things get I will leave you to discover.   One of the charms of the darkly comic I Care A Lot is seeing how far Marla will go to save her con, while seeing how far Roman will go to stop it, or at least get Jennifer out.  

Pike relishes this role and it shows in her devious smile.   Unlike Pike's most famous role to date in Gone Girl (2014), Marla gleefully displays her sociopathic tendencies for all to see.   She isn't out for revenge against anyone, just enrichment for herself and her partner/lover Frankie (Gonzalez),   If Marla has any Achilles heel, so to speak, it's her obvious love for Frankie.   Roman plays straight to that.  Dinklage and Wiest provide rich supporting performances as people who are not what they seem.   At least Marla lays her cards on the table.   She actually proposes that her way is at least more fair and quasi-legal.  

I Care A Lot almost ventures into absurdity and self-parody when Marla and Roman try to kill the other.   Instead of putting a bullet in someone's head and calling it a day, they set up elaborate plans to make the deaths look like accidents.   But then I Care A Lot rights itself with a couple of late developments you don't see coming.   In a way, Marla gets what she wants at long last...and deserves.