A war-time ordeal brought to the screen

     A few minutes into Czech director Vaclav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird you may think you have fallen back into the 1970s and 1980s, a time when Eastern European cinema indulged itself in stark black-and-white imagery while dipping into bowlfuls of philosophical gloom. 

     Actually, The Painted Bird is a belated adaptation of         Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel, a book initially hailed as a harrowing semi-autobiographical account of Kosinski’s war-time experiences as a child and later thought to be more a work of the author's febrile imagination.

     On film, the imagery by cinematographer Vladimir Smutny practically begs to be seen as masterpiece-level work, calling attention to its dark beauty and substantial compositional virtues. And at nearly three hours in length, The Painted Bird proves a movie with a divided soul, part horrifying war-time drama and part endurance test.

     The story involves a boy (Petr Kotlar) whose father deposits him with a neighbor when the war begins, hoping to keep the boy from perishing in German death camps. It’s clear that the boy — unnamed until nearly the movie’s end — is Jewish but Marhoul treats him as a kind of generic outsider during cascading episodes of murder, rape, torment, and even bestiality. Marhoul tells his story in segments, each titled for a character the boy encounters.

     You know you’re in for a rough ride when, early on, the boy is beaten by his anti-Semitic peers, and taken in by an aging woman named Marta (Nina Sunevic) whom he eventually discovers sitting dead in her chair.

     As the boy forges on, he encounters one horror after another.  A miller (Udo Kier) becomes insanely violent, plucking out the eyes of a man he suspects of sleeping with his wife.  
    Another character (Lech Dyblik) explains the movie’s title. With the boy watching, he paints a small bird’s wings white and then releases it. Quickly, the bird is torn apart by a flock of blackbirds, an inescapable metaphor for the savagery of bigotry that has engulfed the world.

     A seemingly kindly priest (Harvey Keitel) tries to help the boy but places him with a parishioner who sexually abuses the boy and torments him in other ways. 

     When he lands with a young woman (Julia Valentova), we initially believe that the boy finally may have found someone who will treat him kindly. No way. Among other things, the woman turns out to be so lust-ridden she has sex with goats.

     The movie’s international cast also includes Stellan Skarsgard as a German soldier who helps the boy escape. Barry Pepper turns up as a Russian soldier who takes the boy underwing.

     Although the story takes place during World War II, the boy’s encounters with Eastern European peasants seem reminiscent of the Middle Ages, a world of misery and thatched-roof hovels.

    Marhoul infuses the movie with an abundance of brutality as he vivifies the hellish impact of war and deprivation on people whose lives already were mean and insufficient.

    The Painted Bird deserves credit for diving into such deeply disturbing waters, but the line between artistry and ordeal becomes so fuzzy here that by the time the movie concluded, I no longer could distinguish between the two.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 9/20/19 -- Fantastic Fungi and Running with the Devil

If you watch a lot of movies, your consciousness often inevitably fragments to the breaking point. It’s possible, in the span of two films, to go from the generally overlooked world of fungi (yes, you read that right) to the massively over-observed (at least in movies) world of cocaine smuggling. I’m talking about Louie Schwartzberg’s documentary Fantastic Fungi and director Jason Cabell’s Running With The Devil, films that have no business being mentioned in the same breath, which is why I couldn't resist putting them together.

Let’s start with the healthy side of the ledger and a confession. What I know about mushrooms (magic or otherwise) is precisely nothing -- and, at the moment, I'm not especially fond of them. Mushrooms have mounted a late-summer invasion of my lawn, and some of them are not pleasing to the eye, protruding from the earth in a form that resembles a rotting phallus.

Of course, I’m not giving mushrooms their due -- as those who spend their time studying them, appreciating them and sometimes eating them would attest.

Narrated by Brie Larson (who occasionally speaks for the usually silent mushrooms), Fantastic Fungi includes commentary from authors such as Michael Pollan and Andrew Weil. It also focuses on the work of Paul Stamets, a mycologist who has made mushrooms his life and who runs a business cultivating, finding and selling all manner of mushrooms, which evidently come in an astonishing variety, 1.5 million species worth. Judging by the movie, it might be wise to think of Stamets as a human ambassador to the fungi world.

The movie is designed to provide information about the essential role that mycelium, part of a fungus, plays in keeping the planet balanced. Mycelium helps the earth digest decaying, carbon-based matter, keeping the earth’s life cycle — birth/decay/death/more birth —- humming.

Schwartzberg offers time-lapse views of mushroom growth and introduces us to the staggering array of mushrooms that grow in the earth’s forests. He also includes commentary from psychologists who suggest that ingesting certain kinds of mushrooms in controlled dosages can play an important role in coping with depression and dealing with other psychiatric issues.

In short, we may not be paying enough attention to the psilocybin mushroom, which can take us on a trip without having to go through airport security. The documentary shows psilocybin being taken in pill form under supervised conditions.

A bit of a commercial for mushrooms, Fantastic Fungi nonetheless should please those who ascribe to the idea, as the film does, that nature is intelligent.

Now, for a different drug:

In the age of opioids, a movie about the cocaine trade immediately and perhaps inevitably feels passe.

Running With the Devil functions as a kind of primer about how cocaine moves from Columbia to the US market, increasing in price with each step of its illicit journey. A strong cast — led by Nicolas Cage and Laurence Fishburne — can’t do much to elevate a by-the-numbers movie steeped in the violence and debauchery surrounding the drug trade.

The characters who populate Running With the Devil all have generic names. Cage, for example, portrays The Cook, a pizza chef who supplements his income in the cocaine trade -- or maybe it's the other way around. Fishburne portrays a character called The Man, an ambitious participant in the trade who’s gotten too deeply involved in sampling the merchandise and cavorting with hookers. Barry Pepper plays The Boss, a character who needs no further explanation. Cole Hauser appears as The Executioner. Can you guess his occupation? I thought you might.

The movie eventually finds Cage and Fishburne hiking through the North American wilderness en route to their final destination.

A mostly male production, Running With the Devil does include one major female character. Leslie Bibb portrays the DEA agent who’s trying to stop the drug trade.

With big money involved betrayals can’t be far behind and the screenplay, also by Cabell, has them.

Hints of Tarantino blow through a story which includes a surprise ending that you should see coming. Looking bookish and scholarly, Cage puts on an all-business front, with traces of madness, of course. His performance contrasts to Fishburne’s display of wanton carelessness.

I can't recall seeing Fishburne play a character such as this, but Running With the Devil stumbles as it laboriously works its way through the familiar piles of white-powder crime.

When a hero becomes the goat

A terrific Jeremy Renner plays a reporter who fights to get the story and then battles with the journalistic establishment in Kill the Messenger.

Though not entirely satisfying, Kill the Messenger has enough energy and intrigue to earn its place on a list of movie's that rightly give us pause.

In yet another electric performance, a terrific Jeremy Renner plays a newspaper reporter who rose and, then, fell with his story.

Renner's portrayal of mayor Carmine Polito in American Hustle was a small classic, and he's done fine, even scary, work in such tough-minded movies as The Town (2010) and The Hurt Locker (2008).

An actor of exceptional edge, Renner creates the impression that his characters could tilt in a hundred different directions. We're never entirely sure which way they'll jump.

In Kill the Messenger, Renner plays Gary Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury who, in the 1990s, wrote a highly controversial story about Nicaraguan rebels who were smuggling drugs into the U.S. while the CIA apparently looked the other way.

Webb's story started strong and then got blurry: Major journalistic institutions -- notably The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times -- tried to poke holes in Webb's reporting. Even his own paper eventually said Webb had over-reached.

As shown in the movie, Webb persisted in his quest because he understood that the story, which tracked events that unfolded during the 1980s, had had devastating, on-the-ground impact: Drugs were being funneled into South Central Los Angeles, where a crack epidemic was ruining lives.

Director Michael Cuesta (L.I.E.) doesn't canonize Webb, who we learn had a devastating incident in his past, a tragic episode that caused him to leave the Cleveland Plain Dealer and head for California.

When Webb's story -- entitled Dark Alliance -- broke on the Internet, it pointed to a tarnished part of the recent American past and, subsequently, raised interesting questions about whether some in the journalistic establishment were being motivated by timidity and envy.

Although the movie encourages us to side with Webb, it doesn't entirely settle the issue of whether he dotted every "i'' and crossed all his "ts."

If it's a bit indecisive, pacing and intrigue keep the story humming, as does a large and powerful supporting cast.

A seductive Paz Vega plays Coral, a woman who pulls Webb into the story. Tim Blake Nelson portrays an attorney for a crack dealer (Michael Kenneth Williams) who knows the real story of how cocaine is reaching the ghetto, and Barry Pepper appears as a prosector who doesn't seem devoted to finding the truth.

We're also introduced to Webb's editors. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Webb's immediate supervisor, and Oliver Platt portrays the paper's editor. Andy Garcia has a nice, small turn as an imprisoned drug lord who becomes one of Webb's sources.

The movie supplements its main story by showing the toll Webb's work took on his family, notably on his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) and the older of his two sons (Lucas Hedges).

Unfortunately for Cuesta, this may be a case where the arc of the drama, derived from real events, diminishes its power: Triumph precedes a downward spiral. Webb's story trades victory for defeat, and winds up knocking the air out of itself.

Still, I wouldn't dismiss Kill the Messenger. We may not always be able to find our moorings in this complicated tale, but two things seem clear: Major institutions -- the government and the press -- can be tainted by self-interest. And no matter where you look, heroes probably will be in short supply.

'Broken City' touches familiar bases

A thriller that may be OK for January, but isn't as good as its cast..

A justice-seeking cop takes matters into this own hands. A long-time New York City mayor works the system and might on occasion dip into his hand into vats of corruption. An opposition candidate says he wants to bring the fresh air of reform to the city. These are some of the ingredients in Broken City, a thriller steeped in so much urban malfeasance that it feels like the recurrence of a chronic disease. To moviegoers, the symptoms are drearily familiar.

Starring Mark Wahlberg as a former NYPD lieutenant who has taken up work as a private investigator, the movie's strong supporting cast includes Russell Crowe (as the reigning New York City mayor); Catherine Zeta-Jones (as his wife); Jeffrey Wright (as New York's police commissioner) and Barry Pepper (as a reform candidate who's opposing what appears to be the mayor's umpteenth run for office).

In this outing, director Allen Hughes (Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and The Book of Eli) makes his first solo effort, operating without his brother, Albert, with whom he usually collaborates. Like the screenplay by Brian Tucker, Hughes's direction isn't always vice-tight, and although his movie qualifies as decent January fare, its characters and observations seem to have fallen off the library shelf marked "Urban Rot."

Wahlberg is the kind of actor who can occupy the center of a movie with an ordinary-guy vibe, and he does that here. His Billy Taggert is a hot-headed ex-cop and struggling alcoholic who left the police force after being acquitted of murder. A court ruled that Billy acted in self-defense, but an unexpected development threatened to cloud the waters, and Billy was forced to take one for the team.

Seven years after leaving the force, Billy has been reduced to taking surreptitious photos of philandering spouses, and trying to collect back fees from deadbeat clients.

Billy returns to mainstream action when Crowe's Mayor Hostetler hires him for a hush-hush job. Billy's told the city's First Lady is having an affair. The mayor wants to know who's poaching on his territory -- and that's only the beginning of what turns into a festival of back-stabbing.

A plump-looking, pumpkin-faced Crowe doesn't quite conquer a New York accent, but he tries to jam as much color as possible into an off-the-rack urban character. Zeta-Jones brings cool beauty and intelligence to her role; and Wright, always good for an off-balance performance, makes the police commissioner difficult to pin down.

Alona Tal impresses as Billy's sassy secretary, and Natalie Martinez appears as Billy's actress girlfriend. Martinez finds herself at the heart of a mostly unnecessary script detour.

The plot can feel as dense as New York traffic, and at one, point, Hughes even tries his hand at a New York City car chase. Let's just say it doesn't measure up to the standard set by William Friedkin in the French Connection.

If you sit through the end credits, you'll notice that some of the movie was filmed in New Orleans. Whether this had anything to do with a nagging sense that something's missing from this New York City-based drama is anybody's guess. Broken City tries hard to be gritty and savvy, but we've seen enough movies to already know what it spends considerable energy discovering.

The rise and fall of a super-lobbyist

If you've seen Casino Jack and the United States of Money, director Alex Gibney's detailed look at the rise and fall of super lobbyist Jack Abramoff, you probably have no compelling reason to follow up with the late George Hickenlooper's dramatized take on the same basic story. * Still, Hickenlooper, who died in Denver just prior to the start of the 33rd Starz Denver Film Festival, may have made his best non-documentary feature with Casino Jack, a boldly conceived look at the ways in which Abramoff and his cohorts played the legislative system to great monetary advantage. * As Abramoff, Kevin Spacey dominates the proceedings with slippery ease, sometimes breaking into pitch-perfect imitations of various movie stars. Hickenlooper treats Abramoff's mimicry as part of his charismatic arsenal, one weapon in his defense against scrutiny. * I won't recount the entire Ambramoff story here, but you'll get a reasonable gloss on it from Casino Jack. * Interesting work can be found around the movie's fringes from Barry Pepper, as the avidly amoral Michael Scanlon; Jon Lovitz, as Adam Kidan, a small-time businessman with mob connections, and the late Maury Chaykin as a gluttonous mobster, Jabba the racketeer. * A near-cartoonish buoyancy keeps the movie entertaining, but if you've seen the real Jack Abramoff, you may have difficulty accepting Spacey as a combination political operative, hustler and Orthodox Jew. I did. * But even if you don't totally buy Spacey as Abramoff, Casino Jack remains watchable, and stands as one of Hickenlooper's most engaging works. How sad that his journey ended so soon. He was 46.