Springsteen in a dark time

 

  Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere has a message. I don't mean to suggest that the movie spends any time moralizing on the good life. Rather, the movie's message is embedded in every scene and in its main character. It goes something like this: Rising acclaim and recognition provide no immunity from depression, a dark occupying force that can take over a life.

  Set during the period after Springsteen's 1980 hit album The River and before the release of Born in the USA, the movie focuses on Springsteen's retreat into feelings and memories that consumed his creative life while also building toward an immobilizing breakdown.

   The result was the album Nebraska (1982), which became a commercial and critical success, but initially felt like a bad bet. Prior to the album's release, many of those around Springsteen viewed the work as a major mistake, a downbeat acoustic album that strayed from hard-driving rock. Nebraska, some feared, would push Springsteen into a career-shattering detour.

   As Springsteen, Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) had a difficult job. He doesn't look like Springsteen, and much of the movie shows Springsteen thinking or recollecting about his upbringing. His Springsteen is often seen responding to the world around him, digesting images that he may not fully understand.

   Black-and-white flashbacks focus on young Springsteen (Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr.) and his relationship with his drunken, rage-prone father (Stephen Graham). Gaby Hoffman has a small turn as young Springsteen's mom, a softer counterpoint to her husband's fury.

   Jeremy Strong portrays Jon Landau, Springsteen's manager. Sympathetic to Springsteen's interior life,  Landau finds a secluded home in Colts Neck, NJ, where Springsteen is supposed to rest after a grueling tour.

    Instead, Springsteen does drop-in appearances at Asbury Park's fabled The Stone Pony. Eventually, he begins composing songs that reflect a dark, disoriented mood that resulted, at least in part, from worries that stardom would separate him from the Jersey roots that nourished his creativity. 

   During his semi-seclusion, Springsteen establishes a relationship with Faye (Odessa Young), a waitress and single mother. Too caught up in himself and too  isolated by depression, he's unable to commit to Faye. But his rejection of her doesn't seem cruel; it's more a reflection of what Springsteen has come to accept as limitations he might not overcome.

    Paul Walter Hauser portrays Mike Batlan, a Springsteen crew member, who helps The Boss record the songs that will become Nebraska on rudimentary equipment set up in the rented home.

   Springsteen resisted performing the songs he was writing with his band. He eschewed slick production values. He wanted to keep the music raw. The flaws of bargain-basement recording appealed to him; perhaps he wanted to present his pain without polish.

   Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), who based the movie's screenplay on a book by Warren Zanes, overdoes the flashbacks, which function like the echoes Springsteen incorporated in the Nebraska tunes. Some of Springsteen's influences (a fascination with Terrence Malick's Badlands and a trip to the movies with his dad to see Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter) overemphasize the dreariness that purportedly infiltrated Springsteen's soul.

   At times, Deliver Me From Nowhere feels like an idea in search of a movie; it's possible that the making of a single album by someone suffering from severe depression isn't enough to keep a picture buzzing. Imagine a movie about Van Gogh that only dealt with his making of Starry Night.  On second thought, that might make for an intriguing movie; Van Gogh was living in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum when Starry Night was painted.

    But you get my point: Deliver Me From Nowhere looks at Springsteen through a narrow lens.

   Still, Deliver Me From Nowhere strikes some resonant emotional chords. I'd put it this way: If Deliver Me From Nowhere were an album, you might say that not every song is a hit, but many are strong enough to carry the day in a story about a man teetering on the cusp of losing himself.

Strong dominates ‘The Apprentice’

 

    It's difficult to imagine a world full of people who have yet to form an opinion about Donald Trump. Few public figures have so rampantly flaunted themselves as the Queens, N.Y.-born 45th president.

    In The Apprentice, director Ali Abbasi tries to explain how Trump became what the filmmaker has called an icon of American culture. Abbasi returns to  the 1970s and 80s, focusing on what the movie regards as Trump's formative relationship with attorney Roy Cohn. 

   The Apprentice moves quickly through a bold-faced telling of its tale, playing like a highlight reel. I wouldn't call The Apprentice essential viewing, something you might expect from a movie about a man now running for president. 

    To use the lingo currently applied to comic-book movies, The Apprentice qualifies as an origins story -- albeit one with the involving kick of a New York tabloid.

     Known for his unflinching brutality, Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong, took Trump under wing when the future president was beginning to spread his ambitious wings By the time Trump met him, Cohn already had gained notoriety for arguing in favor of the death penalty for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and serving as Chief Counsel during the Army-McCarthy hearings.

     In a key scene, Cohn, who has been portrayed as a closeted gay man, shares three rules for life with Trump: 1. Attack. Attack. Attack. 2. Admit nothing. Deny everything. 3. No matter what happens, claim victory. Never admit defeat.

       Strong's bold performance captures Cohn's unrelenting aggression, which he carried under the shielding umbrella of extreme patriotism. It's easy to imagine that Logan Roy, the media magnate of Succession, would have been pleased if -- apart from sexuality -- his son Kendall (also played by Strong) had become more like Cohn, a flaming comet of ambition aimed at reducing foes to ashes.

     Sebastian Stan's portrayal of Trump may present a challenge for audiences. Stan gives Trump a familiar lumbering walk. He brings a tone of faux confidentiality to Trump’s speech, the illusion of an insider sharing the “real” story. He gradually enlarges the bravado of a man who believes he was blessed with winner genes.

      Stan creates a real character; he's not doing an impression. Still, I found myself asking whether I was buying Stan's portrayal, an uncertainty that speaks to the difficulty of playing a person who's inescapable to anyone who owns a TV.

       The supporting cast adds credibility. Martin Donovan convinces as Fred Trump, Donald's authoritarian father, a man who made his mark in New York real estate. Trump wanted to make his own impression. To illustrate the point, Abbasi concentrates on Trump's plan to renovate the Commodore Hotel, located near Grand Central Station. Cohn abetted Trump's efforts.

       Charlie Carrick plays Freddy, Trump's sad older brother, an airline pilot whose job embarrassed Fred Trump. "A flying bus driver,'' the elder Trump calls him. Freddy's alcoholism and suicide sound a somber note.

        Maria Bakalova comes on strong as Ivana Zelnickova, the model who'll become Ivana Trump. Trump eventually grows bored with the Czech-born Ivana, who's too eager to share the limelight with her husband.

        Abbasi doesn't skimp when showing Trump's vanity: As part of the movie's finale, Trump undergoes liposuction and hair transplants. It's a bit much; we've already seen Trump's ego at work.

         If you're searching for psychological subtext, you won't have to dig deeply. Trump sought to please and then surpass his harshly judgmental dad. 

          The Apprentice isn't exactly revelatory. Much of what's depicted has been written about elsewhere, and how audiences view the movie probably depends on how they feel about Trump and to a lesser degree Cohn, whose AIDS-related demise arrives after Trump moves on from his declining tutor.

        Those who regard Trump as a narcissistic blimp floating ominously over the American landscape will find what they want. Those who think otherwise may not bother with the film, or they may view Trump's emerging killer instinct as an asset in a kill-or-be-killed world.

        However you see it, it's difficult not to view the movie with curiosity in an election year.  I generally try not to pay too much attention to box office numbers, but I'm curious to see how many people are eager to see more of a Trump story than is already available on the nation's airways. 

       

         

            

A sixth grader learns a difficult lesson

 

   Inspired by his own New York upbringing, director James Gray returns to the 1980s to explore the trials of Paul Graff (Michael Banks Repeta), a sixth grader at PS 173 in Queens, New York. 

    Gray goes to great lengths to achieve period authenticity as he tries to deal with a big subject while telling a small story. 

     The big subject: White privilege. Paul bypasses trouble with the police, something a Black friend (Jaylin Webb) can’t do. The small story: Almost everything else in the movie.

    The movie works best when Gray keeps things episodic and loose. Early on, he establishes the environment at PS 173. Paul's teacher (Andrew Polk) conducts his class in an authoritarian fashion that none of his pupils seems to take seriously, including Paul who draws a caricature of him.

   Paul is drawn to Johnny, a Black kid who's repeating the sixth grade. Johnny intuitively understands that the system doesn't favor him. He makes no attempt to conceal his contempt for it. He wants to work for NASA but finds no encouragement for his dream.

    Gray creates a working-class Jewish milieu that isn't often seen in popular entertainment. Paul's home is a scene of fractious exchanges, overheard conversations, empty bromides, worry, and casually expressed racism.

    Anne Hathaway has a nice turn as Paul's mother, who also happens to be the head of the PTA. A tightly wound Jeremy Strong plays Paul's dad, a plumber with a bad temper and little interest in his son's lofty ambitions: The kid wants to be an artist. 

    Paul's older brother (Ryan Sell) tries to torment his younger sibling. 

    The movie delivers a message of encouragement through Paul's grandfather (Anthony Hopkins), who provides the movie's moral and emotional center. One must be a mensch, which in this case means speaking out against injustice. 

     Grandpa understands Paul in a way his parents can't. He gives him a toy rocket, which the two fly together He also  provides the boy with a set of oil paints, thus endorsing Paul's arty ambitions.

    Gray unspools the rest of the family dynamics throughout. Paul's grandmother (Tovah Feldshuh) fled Ukraine, met grandpa in England, and traveled with him to the US, escaping the pogroms and antisemitism that plagued much of Eastern European Jewry.

   The big shift in Paul's young life happens when he and Johnny are caught smoking a joint in the school bathroom. Paul's outraged parents decide to enroll him in the same private school his brother attends. Paul is forbidden to see Johnny again. Grandpa picks up the tab for the new school. 

   As it turns out, the school is a favored institution of Fred Trump (John Diehl), father of … well … you know who. Trump's daughter Maryanne (Jessica Chastain), a US judge, speaks to a school assembly, serving up an easy irony: A person raised rich tells kids what it takes to succeed.

   Fed up with his home life, Paul convinces Johnny to help steal a computer from his new school so that the two can sell it and flee to Florida, a pipe dream that brings both boys into contact with the police, something that probably will ruin Johnny's already threatened future.

    Paul learns that it’s possible to encounter bigotry for being Jewish while also benefiting from societal assumptions about being white. Johnny gets no such benefit of the doubt and presumably never will.

    In one of the movie's softer exchanges, Dad explains how he got his son off the hook with the cops. He acknowledges that Johnny will be treated unfairly. Life is unfair. That’s it. Move on with your life.

    We don't know how Paul will internalize this message and what it will mean for his life going forward. Perhaps Gray wants us to speculate but a few hints might have been helpful.

    Gray overreaches by trying to tie Paul's woes to a major shift in the country, which is about to enter the Regan years, a rightward triumph that helps push the door open for today’s roiled climate. 

    Those familiar with Gray's work (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, Two Lovers, We Own the Night, and The Immigrant) won't be surprised to learn that the director avoids nostalgic indulgence, opting instead to allow rough edges to show.

    Gray bravely tackles the inadequacies and limitations of his characters but the resultant film also feels somewhat limited, a narrow gauged personal tale. Rough edges don't always add up to a larger truth.

      Oddly, I found myself more interested in Paul’s emotionally stunted father than in either of his sons. Strong’s character seemed a more intriguing embodiment of the painful contradictions Gray lays out than anything we learn about one more kid who aspires to be an artist. 

      And Johnny's story? That could be a whole other film. 

       

When absurdity becomes very serious

 

     The 1969 Trial of the Chicago 7 was an early piece of real-life political theater, a warped legal proceeding staged against a backdrop of roiling protest against the Vietnam War. 

      In The Trial of the Chicago 7, writer/director Aaron Sorkin mixes the account of an absurd courtroom drama with a slightly dimmed appreciation of the American spirit as embodied in the "radical" defendants and their rebellious lawyer.

     In addition to the seven white defendants, Bobby Seale, a member of the Black Panthers, was attached to the proceedings as a kind of sidecar on the countercultural rollercoaster. 

      And rollercoaster it was: Sorkin zips his way through scene-after-scene as he dramatizes portions of a trial that lasted five months. Flashbacks enable him to abandon the confines of the courtroom. The organizers seek permits for the demonstrations. The police fire tear gas. A female FBI agent tries to cozy up to Jerry Rubin.

     The period was chaotic and so, at times, is the movie, a series of sketches that bump up against one another, sometimes without great finesse. And for all its tumult, the movie offers little by way of game-changing overviews either of the period or of trial.

     Limitations aside, the greatest allure of Sorkin's entertaining effort involves the work of a strong cast, an ensemble of gifted actors who walk us down the movie's countercultural memory lane.

     Standouts include Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman and Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society. Hoffman and Hayden shared common goals but disagreed on how to attain their goals.

     Hoffman, who was very funny, relished theatrics; Hayden approached protest with high-stakes seriousness. Their disagreements and ultimate rapprochement underlies Sorkin's recreation of the trial. 

      The defendants weren't the only stars of the proceedings. A fine Mark Rylance portrays William Kunstler, the radical  attorney who defended the seven. 

     Yahya Abdul-Mateen II makes a formidable Seal, the Black Panther who, along with the others, was charged with conspiracy to cross state lines to incite a riot. But unlike his co-defendants, Seal wasn't involved in planning the event and had been in Chicago for only two days during the 1o68 convention.

    The so-called riot that's at the heart of the case took place in Chicago's Grant Park during the Democratic convention at which Hubert Humphrey was nominated to run against Richard Nixon. 

      In an introduction to the movie, Sorkin uses real footage in which the esteemed Walter Cronkite sets the stage: "The Democratic convention is about to begin in a police state. There just doesn't seem to be any other way to say it." 

     The defendants ran a gamut of personalities, but the size of the cast forces Sorkin into sketching rather than painting detailed portraits. David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) serves as a conventional guy with deep political convictions and Jeremy Strong portrays Jerry Rubin, who plays a kind of goofy second fiddle to Hoffman.

     And, yes, Cohen gets pretty close to capturing Hoffman's Massachusetts accent and comedic instincts.

    Hoffman and Rubin were Yippies; i.e., members of the Youth International Party, a group that flew a sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll banner over its protests.

    Every trial needs a judge and this one had a particularly incapable one. Frank Langella's Julius Hoffman makes ridiculous decisions without ever really sensing the absurdity that threatens to overwhelm him.

    Perhaps Hoffman's greatest faux pas occurred when he had the disruptive Seal, who eventually asked to defend himself, bound and gagged in the courtroom. The judge made Seal an advertisement for the oppressive nature of the trial. Charges against Seal were dropped before the trial finished.

     Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the prosecutor, a decent enough fellow who, nonetheless, approaches his job seriously. John Mitchell (John Doman) -- Nixon's Attorney General -- personally assigned Gordon-Levitt's character to the trial for reasons that had more to do with what he thought the seven represented than with anything they did.

    Michael Keaton does effective cameo duty as Ramsey Clark, the attorney general under Lyndon Johnson, who became a witness for the defense in the trial.

    It may be difficult for those who weren't alive during the '60s to grasp just how incendiary the times were. The trial may have had a disembodied theatrical quality, but Americans and Vietnamese people were dying in a senseless war that awoke a generation of protest.

     When the chips are down, Sorkin turns earnest and I wondered how another director might have lit  the match that needed to be thrown onto this political gas can of a movie. 

     Still, the performances and byplay (a Sorkin specialty) give the movie plenty of burn. 

Cast lifts familiar British gangster movie

Director Guy Ritchie may not be breaking new ground in The Gentlemen, but his actors provide the movie with some juice.

If the year were 1999 instead of 2020, director Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen might have seemed more inventive. Ritchie, you'll recall, made his cinematic bones with 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a fresh-feeling foray into a netherworld occupied by British gangsters.

In this outing, Ritchie again goes gangster but the verve that once defined Ritchie's style now feels a little proforma, something on the order of the difference between an arranged marriage and a spontaneous love affair.

After striking out with King Arthur (2017), it’s not surprising that Ritchie sought comfortable ground — and, to be fair, The Gentlemen derives a fair measure of entertainment from a spot-on cast.

Notable among a large ensemble is Hugh Grant, playing a sleazy, gay private detective with traces of cockney in his accent. Colin Farrell adds more color as Coach, a character who trains boxers and occasionally dips into the dark arts required to settle matters in the criminal world.

Add an unflappable Charlie Hunnam to the mix. Hunnam rides shotgun to Matthew McConaughey, who plays Mickey, a pot czar who pays off fading aristocrats for the privilege of building vast underground grow houses on their property.

Now another American (Jeremy Strong) wants to buy Mickey's vast empire so that he can reap illegal gains and be ready to capitalize when marijuana goes legit. Tired of life in the fast lane, Mickey may be willing to sell.

A Chinese gangster named Dry Eye (Henry Golding) also would like to purchase Mickey’s business, an ambition that sets off fireworks, notably a raid on one of Mickey’s mammoth facilities.

To add structural pizazz, Ritchie frames the story by having Grant’s character try to extort money from Hunnam’s character, using a screenplay to convince Ray to pay up. The screenplay gambit proves a bit much, even in a movie that's not afraid to display its cinematic self-consciousness.

True to its title, The Gentlemen is mostly an all-guys affair, although the dashing Mickey has a greyhound sleek wife (Michelle Dockery) who runs a garage staffed by many female mechanics. Mickey, we're told, relies on her judgment.

It takes time to get all the characters straight and to fully appreciate The Gentlemen, you need a taste for a narrative that hopscotches through the proceedings, sometimes creating confusion. You also may find yourself wondering whether any of these characters possibly could exist outside a Guy Ritchie movie.

Still, there’s pleasure in watching actors sink into juicy roles as we wait to see who among these felons will emerge as the king of the gangster jungle. In January, that may as good as we get.

Verdict on 'The Judge:' A disappointment

It has been 42 years since Robert Duvall played the impossibly tough Lt. Col. "Bull" Meechum in The Great Santini. In that movie, Duvall set a high standard for big-screen fathers who couldn't be pleased.

Duvall, who's now 73, plays another difficult father in The Judge, an shamelessly manipulative movie that's unsure whether it wants to be a taut courtroom drama or an emotional story about a strained relationship between a father and his son (Robert Downey Jr.)

David Dobkin, who has directed such regrettable comedies as The Change-Up and Fred Claus, scatters effective dramatic moments throughout, but his movie bites off more than it should chew, and the residue dribbles down its chin, often pooling into puddles of cliche.

After so many effects-laden movies -- from Iron Man to The Avengers to Sherlock Holmes -- you'd think that Downey would be eager for a role that allows him to keep his feet planted on realistic ground.

But in playing a slick, ethically dubious big-city attorney, Downey trods familiar ground as a glib, fast-talking character -- one Hank Palmer -- who returns to his Indiana hometown to attend his mother's funeral.

There, he reunites with his two brothers -- baseball wash-out Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) and mentally challenged Dale (Jeremy Strong).

The brothers are a side trip, though: Hank's relationship with his father -- a man everyone calls The Judge -- drives the movie.

Watching a grown man try to come to grips with a hard-ass father seems like drama enough for any movie, but The Judge contrives to have Duvall's character charged with murder in what appears to have been a hit-and-run accident.

There's a corpse and incriminating blood on the bumper of The Judge's car, but Duvall's Joseph Palmer doesn't remember hitting anyone. Is he lying? Is he suffering from dementia?

Not surprisingly, Hank eventually takes over his father's defense. In the process, he rediscovers a sense of humanity that he lost in a career that has focused on defending high paying clients, most of them guilty as charged.

To add yet another unnecessary level of complexity to the movie's two hours and 20 minutes, Hank is estranged from his trophy wife, but trying to maintain a relationship with his button-cute daughter (Emma Tremblay). About midway through, she visits Hank.

Hank also tests the waters of romance with an old flame (Vera Farmiga), who now owns a local bar and grill.

When the courtroom elements kick into high gear, a stoney-faced Billy Bob Thornton shows up as prosecuting attorney Dwight Dickham.

The idea of a movie starring actors as good as Downey and Duvall must have seemed irresistible, but The Judge trips over too many of the bases it tries to touch. Moreover, the trial fails to score high in the credibility department.

The cast is too good totally to be defeated by material that seems to plead for our tears, but The Judge can't overrule the deep mediocrity of its many conceits.