Tough women of the West

 

Set in South Dakota ranch country, East of Wall immerses itself in the lives of a real-life mother/daughter duo (Tabatha and Porshia Zamiga) whose daily routine centers on horses. Director Kate Beecroft employs a mostly untrained cast to bring authenticity to the language and hardscrabble values of her characters. Actors include Scoot McNairy as a horse trader who recognizes Tabatha’s talent and wants to buy her financially troubled ranch. Jennifer Ehle portrays Tabatha's hard-drinking. no-nonsense mother. Tabatha also provides a home for a group of unruly teenagers, all of whom are attracted to her free-spirited ways. Beecroft's somewhat scattered story touches on suicide, changing Western values and the ways in which sorrow and joy can occupy the same landscape. At times, I wondered whether East of Wall might have worked better as a documentary, but Beecroft blends fiction and non-fictional approaches for a movie that's best when dishing out local flavor — shots of the Badlands are stunning and the environment in which the story takes place feels grounded in reality. Beecroft’s movie represents the kind of independent-minded cinema that results from the passion of a filmmaker who believes in the strength of independent-minded women who live through hardship without shedding too many tears.  

Bob's Cinema Diary: 8/6/21 -- 'Nine Days' and 'John and the Hole'

 Both Nine Days and John and the Hole demonstrate what can happen when filmmakers attempt to say a lot with what appear to be fairly limited resources. Each film has a sense of minimalism that creates a feeling concentrated sparsity. And, each relies heavily on the performances of relatively small casts. In my view, neither film can be considered entirely successful. Both, however, contain elements of interest with Nine Days emerging as the better film.

Nine Days

No one likely will fault Nine Days for lack of ambition. It may take a while to figure out what's happening, but it eventually becomes apparent that director Edson Oda has created a  world in which souls compete to decide which one will  be born. The souls, each represented by the movie’s characters, are evaluated by Will (Winston Duke), an even-tempered man who lives in a modest house in the middle of an arid landscape. Will, we learn, once was alive but has been consigned to the role of selector. Assigned by whom? The movie never says. The catch: The unselected souls return to the oblivion from which they emerged. Will doesn’t live in a high-tech world: He tracks his choices on banks of old-fashioned televisions equipped with VCRs. Generally unflappable, Will nonetheless is shaken when one of his choices --  a promising young violinist -- commits suicide. Does her death prove that Bill is fallible? Bill operates alone, but has a friend (Benedict Wong) who provides advice -- not all of it welcome. The story revolves around the souls that show up for evaluation. They include Alexander (Tony Hale), a guy for whom life would mean one long chill session, punctuated by beer and buddies.  Other souls display confidence (Bill Skarsgard), loneliness (Arianna Ortiz), and doubt (Mike Rysdahl). The main drama unfolds between Will and Emma (Zazie Beetz), a free-spirited woman who seems like Will's best option. Perhaps because of the early-picture suicide, Will worries that Emma may not be strong enough to survive the world’s brutalities. A late-picture monologue delivered by Duke nearly justifies a movie that doesn't dot every "i” or cross every "t." In other words, Nine Days doesn't always make sense. But if you stick with it, Oda eventually delivers  a poignant conclusion about the pain of loss and what it means to be alive.

John and the Hole

First time director Pascual Sisto seems to be trying to get at something deep with John and the Hole, although I'm not sure what. Sisto tells a simple story: Thirteen-year-old John (Charlie Shotwell) drugs his parents (Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Ehle) and his sister (Taissa Farmiga). He then drags them into an abandoned, half-finished underground bunker. Too steep for them to climb out, the hole isolates the family from neighbors or passersby. Mostly expressionless, John seems like a kid who's conducting an experiment. What would life be like if he took over the household, started draining Dad's money from an ATM, and invited a friend over to play video games. John and his pal also hold one another under water in the family pool, hoping for  visions as they get close to drowning. John only intermittently provides his imprisoned family with food? A separate but apparently related story involves a girl named Lily (Samantha LeBretton) whose mom (Georgia Lyman) reads her a story called John and the Hole before telling the kid that she's on her own.  No rebel without a cause, John simply exists, a teenager who does the unthinkable because ... well ... who knows? I stuck with the movie but never really connected to a story that seems to want to explore the disconnect between adolescents and adults, but does so without offering much by way of edification. There's no faulting the actors but the movie picks up John's hollowness and, in the end, feels far too abstracted to find any real life.

Observing life on a small scale

Ira Sachs's winning Little Men chronicles a boyhood friendship in Brooklyn.

Director Ira Sachs (Love is Strange) brings a gentle but knowing touch to Little Men, a story about two boys who become friends in Brooklyn.

That may sound like the basis for an achingly ordinary feel-good story, but Sachs's movie is fueled by issues as diverse as a father's failure to become the actor he hoped to be and a family's struggle with money issues -- not to mention the disruptive consequences of urban gentrification.

At the start of the movie, 13-year-old Jake (Theo Taplitz) moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn with his parents (Greg Kennear and Jennifer Ehle).

Dad's getting a bit long in the tooth for a performer who still works in the kind of small New York productions for which the actors aren't paid. Mom, a psychotherapist, supports the family.

Money being an obvious problem, the family is relieved to move into a Brooklyn apartment that Kenner's character inherits from his recently deceased father.

The apartment sits atop a store that comes with the building. The store is occupied by Leonor (Paulina Garcia of Chile's Gloria), a seamstress who never paid market value for her shop. Jake's aging father evidently welcomed Leonor's company, and adopted a casual attitude toward collecting the rent.

Pressed for money, Jake and his sister (Talia Balsam) believe they're justified in asking for a reasonable rent increase. Leonor thinks otherwise.

Leonor's tough-cookie recalcitrance is further complicated by the fact that Jake and Leonor's son (Michael Barbieri) become fast friends.

An infectiously likable kid who wants to be an actor, Barbieri's Antonio perfectly complements Jake's shyness. The friendship between Jake and Tony gives Sachs an opportunity to celebrate the freedom of city life for a couple of 13-year-olds.

Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias develop a carefully balanced drama that revels in the delights of boyhood, understands the psychological complexities of the adult relationships and isn't out to slam anyone ever the head.

Credit Sachs with taking us deep into the lives of people whose struggles may not be epic, but never feel anything less than real. In a time of unashamed movie preposterousness and bloat, Sachs's movie reminds us that observing life on a small scale beats not observing it at all.

'Fifty Shades' reaches the screen

Sleek sets, sadomasochism, a few spankings and an overall blandness.

Well, I didn't hate it.

That, I suppose, constitutes a small triumph for a movie such as Fifty Shades of Grey, the eagerly awaited adaptation of the first of three novels by E.L. James.

And, no, I haven't read James's enormously successful but widely panned trilogy. For me, reading time is too precious to waste on junk. Besides, my junk cravings mostly are satisfied at the movies.

That's not to say that I knew nothing about James's inescapable novels. I've read reviews and stories about the Fifty Shades phenomenon, and joined those who wonder why legions of readers have succumbed to the soft-core call of a story built around bondage, discipline and sadomasochism (BDSM, for short).

On screen, Fifty Shades turns out to be a bland romance between two more or less uninteresting characters, one of whom happens to be a Dominant who wants to persuade his new love interest to be his Submissive.

I was hoping for a movie that enthusiastically embraced the trashiness of its conceits, which include ridiculous dialogue, minimal characterization and -- of course -- the sexual silliness that happens in a room that the male partner in this unlikely duo refers to as his Playroom; i.e., a room full of crops, ropes and other paraphernalia for which I lack the requisite vocabulary. And, yes, in this case, I'm drawing the line on more research.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson keeps the proceedings slick and perhaps even understated, which -- devoted trash fans -- may decide is precisely the wrong approach. Fans of the novel may find Taylor-Johnson's work suitably respectful.

Dakota Johnson plays Ana, the college senior who opens the movie by doing a favor for her sick roommate (Eloise Mumford).

Ana agrees to interview Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) for the school paper. Grey, a 27-year-old billionaire, is giving the school's commencement address.

During the interview, a nervous Ana is (in theory, if not on screen) overwhelmed by Grey's sexual magnetism. From that point on, Ana's fate is sealed. She's going to wind up in that Playroom, although not without first being relieved of her virginity by an obligingly considerate Grey.

As a wealthy and tightly wound businessman, Grey insists that Ana sign a contract that specifies and details the nature of their relationship. All sex. No hearts and flowers.

Eventually, the contract is negotiated. Exercising what passes for common sense in this movie, Ana, says "yes" to ropes and "no" to vaginal clamps. Still, she doesn't sign the contract.

Therein lies whatever tension the story harbors. Can Ana protect her humanity in this situation? Can she break through the control-freak obsessions of a wealthy man and touch his heart? Who, in the end, is the Dominant and who, the Submissive?

The definitive answers, one presumes, will be found in the next two installments.

Of course, we shouldn't dismiss Grey's seductive wealth. He has plenty to offer Ana besides spankings -- a new car, a ride in his private helicopter and later in a glider and a bedroom in his monotonously modern Seattle apartment, which exudes a designer sleekness that infiltrates most of the movie.

I don't know how much humor Taylor-Johnson hoped to include, but a good deal of laughter punctuated a preview screening. I found that heartening. The mostly female audience seemed to be having a good time. I enjoyed their enjoyment.

Of the two actors, Johnson steals the show. She tempers Ana's awkwardness and vulnerability with a sense of an emerging emotional life. Dornan proves a bit of a weak link as a handsome young man with stalker impulses and a gift for playing moody classical music on the grand piano in his apartment, which boasts many polished surfaces.

If there are supposed to be fifty shades to Mr. Grey, it's not easy to identify more than two, and the movie's ending ... well ... it either can be regarded as a tease or a cheat. Take your pick.

Those who think that the elusive link between pain and pleasure is a subject worthy of exploration needn't bother with Fifty Shades, which (you'll pardon the expression) is strictly a skin-deep affair.

And that returns me to this review's starting point. The best I can say is that the movie bred no serious contempt in me. Of course, I can't say that it prompted the opposite reaction, something on the order of appreciative interest, either.

It did, however, serve as a cautionary tale for impressionable, young women. Next time a guy asks if you want to come over and play, you may want to reconsider -- either that or stock up on duct tape.

'Zero Dark Thirty,' one the year's best

Director Kathryn Bigelow takes us into a shadow world as the CIA hunts for Bin Laden.

The trouble with reviewing a movie that's already opened in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- particularly one that has generated a fair amount of controversy -- is that informed viewers already may have burned out on all the surrounding arguments. In the case of Kathryn Bigelow's riveting Zero Dark Thirty, heated discussion has centered on early picture scenes in which a prisoner is tortured in hopes that he will reveal information leading to the capture of Osama Bin Laden.

A trifecta of senators -- Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- have accused the film of being "grossly inaccurate." Others have chimed in, saying the movie wrongly suggests that waterboarding and other forms of extreme interrogation led to information vital to locating Bin Laden.

I leave it to you to decide whether the film makes an argument for the efficacy of torture. I didn't think so. The captive who's being humiliated, waterboarded and shoved in a box only begins to spill the beans when he's treated well, fed decently and not humiliated. Is this a case of good cop trumping bad cop? I don't really know. Maybe the movie doesn't, either.

If I were going to quibble with Zero Dark Thirty, which I found seriously compelling and generally provocative, I'd say that it's most vulnerable for not taking a moral stance about many of the events that it depicts.

When I first saw the movie, the absence of such a clearly defined position bothered me; I kept wondering what Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal thought about the events they were depicting in the complex narrative they've assembled with skill and finesse.

But the more I thought about it, the more I began to feel grateful that Bigelow presents the material in ways that allow us to reach our own conclusions. I certainly didn't leave the theater thinking it was commendable that the U.S. tortured people -- and, yes, waterboarding certainly looks like torture.

Remember, though, the CIA's use of waterboarding was endorsed by some pretty high level politicians in the immediate wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Maybe you even felt that extreme measures were justifiable if they helped to prevent another attack.

For my part, I viewed Zero Dark Thirty mostly as a backstage drama to history. Bigelow won an Oscar for The Hurt Locker (2008), a film about a small squad that disarmed explosive devises in Iraq. Like that movie, Zero Dark Thirty presents us with a slice of reality that remains remote for most of us. It reminds us that in our consumer-oriented, mall-driven lives, few of us pay attention to the brutal realities that preoccupy some Americans, in this case numerous CIA operatives.

The movie's credit, it doesn't lionize its main character. Jessica Chastain plays Maya, a CIA agent whose persistence -- often in the face of stiff opposition -- leads to the killing of Bin Laden. Chastain's Maya, a CIA newbie, enters the movie when she's thrust into an interrogation that's not easy to watch. The session is being led by a seasoned CIA agent (Jason Clarke), a man who seems to believe that a certain amount of "dirty" work comes along with the job, but that not everyone can (or should) try to do it.

Loose limbed and comfortably informal, Clarke's Dan maintains that no prisoner will talk until he accepts the fact that his position is entirely hopeless.

Chastain has the good sense not to turn Maya into a conventional heroine. She's often at odds with others; she's insistent when she believes she's got the goods; and she seems to have no life beyond her CIA duties.

Instead of dwelling on Maya as a character, Bigelow makes her a lynchpin in a story that hopscotches the world, prying open the lid that normally keeps CIA activities under wraps.

Throughout, Chastain receives able support from a large cast. Stand-outs include Kyle Chandler, as the head of CIA operations in Islamabad; Jennifer Ehle, as a CIA veteran who, unlike Maya, has a family and a less obsessive view of her work; and James Gandolfini, as the head of the CIA.

Boal's narrative compresses the 10 years that preceded a SEAL team's foray into Pakistan, where Bin Laden was killed. Such concision is bound to result in omissions and maybe even some misrepresentations. But both Boal and Bigelow say that the movie has been thoroughly researched. And even if Zero Dark Thirty isn't 100 percent accurate, it serves as an intriguing catalog of the complex and often-troubling responses that have developed in a post 9/11 world.

To provide context, Bigelow begins with a dark screen. We hear snippets of real phone conversations from people trapped in the World Trade Center. We don't need to see the twin towers fall to be reminded that the grief and panic that followed 9/11 helped create the atmosphere in which the rest of the movie unfolds.

Don't get me wrong. Zero Dark Thirty is no faux documentary or even a ''docudrama." It's a dramatic recreation of events that provides an involving and detailed look at how the CIA worked to find Bin Laden.

It spoils nothing to tell you that Bigelow doesn't trump up the killing for extra kick, although the raid on Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound is plenty tense. After 10 years of sleuthing, interrogating, bribery, conniving, obsession, stretched ethics and internal CIA bickering, we wind up with one guy in a body bag. It's not exactly a triumphant moment, in part because just about everybody looks smaller when they're dead.

So, you decide whether it was all worth it. You decide how you feel about this shadow world of espionage, namely what you think of some of the means employed to achieve the goal of finding Bin Laden. As I've said, Zero Dark Thirty won't tell you how to feel, but it will, I think, demand that you ask some difficult questions.