Art, yes, but what about the hot water?

 

  Director Kelly Reichardt specializes in slow-moving movies that encourage viewers to linger. Put another way, you don't just watch Reichardt's movies (First Cow, Wendy and Lucy, and Meek's Cutoff), you live in and with them. 

  Employing minimal editing, no manipulative music, or startling plot twists, Reichardt allows viewers to inhabit the worlds she creates.

  In Showing up, Reichardt introduces us to a ceramicist (Michelle Williams) who makes miniature female figures, often in contorted poses that invite interpretation. 

  Williams's Lizzy might be the mopiest figure to appear in a movie this year. She’s alternately depressed or annoyed about being part of a dysfunctional artistic family while dealing with the pressures of preparing for a show.

  Separated from Mom, Dad (Judd Hirsch) makes functional pottery. Mom (Maryann Plunkett) runs the art school where Lizzy works, and Lizzy’s mentally ill brother (John Magaro) is tolerated by a family that considers him a genius.

   The family members all live in close proximity to one another.

   Reichardt effectively takes us inside this loose-knit community. But her approach raises an inevitable question: What’s to be gained from being there? 

  Sans emotional peaks, Showing Up can feel as mopey as Lizzy, a non-celebration of art-making in which a commendable lack of manipulation sometimes results in a kind of aesthetic inertia.

    While bringing Lizzy's family dynamics to light, the movie makes room for another artist, a sculptor played by Hong Chau, recently seen in The Menu and The Whale.

     Chau’s Jo also happens to be Lizzy’s landlord. Jo drags her feet about fixing Lizzy's broken hot-water heater, creating a source of constant aggravation for Lizzy. Jo’s also busy getting ready for her own art opening.

      As a retired potter, Hirsch's Bill can't resist ingratiating himself with a gallery owner who attends Lizzy’s opening at the behest of its reigning artist in residence (Heather Lawless).

     Amid the flow of daily life, a metaphor seems to arise. Early on, Lizzy’s cat maims a pigeon that has flown into Lizzy's home. Lizzy removes the bird from the house. It's later recovered by Jo, who assumes responsibility for the bird -- sort of.

    Jo often leaves the recuperating pigeon with Lizzy who carries it around in a cardboard box, another burden. The point? Artists suffer the same small torments as the rest of us while simultaneously trying to persevere in their work. 

    Wounds. Healing. Recovery. These, I suppose, are the metaphoric implications suggested by the bird.

      No one talks much about art or anything else for that matter. A sense of the ordinary pervades almost every scene and Reichardt dwells on Lizzy's statuettes as if they were creations of art historical importance. They were made for the film by ceramicist Cynthia Lahti. 

     We get to know Lizzy at a specific moment in her life, an achievement to be sure. But for me, Showing Up is hampered by an unrelenting insularity that can make its characters seem limited and even uninteresting.

    A narrow-gauge effort can be piercing. Sometimes, though, it's just narrow.

      

Stevel Spielberg, movie love and family trouble

     

    
    Why hold back? Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest storytellers ever to make movies.

      Few directors pace a movie better. Few are as unerring when it comes to camera placement. And although he knows how to create stirring images, Spielberg also has gotten amazing performances during the course of what has become a long career. 

    Think Robert Shaw in Jaws. Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can. Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln.

    You get the idea. Spielberg not only makes movies but, as a friend once said, he knows how to make movies.

      For the most part, Spielberg also knows what makes a good story.

      But does that mean that a movie based on Spielberg's life makes for a compelling tale? 

      That's the question that I kept asking myself while watching The Fabelmans, a quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age movie about an aspiring filmmaker and his sometimes troubled family.

      The answer to the question isn't a simple “yes” or “no.” 

     At nearly two-and-a-half hours in length, The Fabelmans is a collection of hits and misses that ultimately tells us that its main character has had a life-long love of movies, that making films has helped him digest difficult experiences, and (not to be too schmaltzy) that true artists never allow themselves to be dissuaded.

        Taken from a script Spielberg co-wrote with Tony Kushner, The Fabelmans probably shouldn't be taken as a definitive version of Spielberg's youthful life. It is, after all, a movie.

       The story begins when Sammy Fabelman, the stand-in for Spielberg, is taken by his parents (Paul Dano and Michelle Williams) to his first movie. Once inside the theater, young Sammy (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) becomes captivated by the train wreck he sees in Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth.

       Given Spielberg's penchant for on-screen action, it's hardly surprising that his first influence was a devastating train wreck, a sequence Sammy tries to recreate with a toy train he receives as a Hanukah gift. Sammy films the mini-wreck with his dad's camera.

       Sammy's early striving serves to introduce one of the movie's major themes: A frustrated concert pianist and a dreamer, Mom encourages Sammy's pursuit of art. Dad, an engineer by trade, takes a far less poetic approach. He wants his son to learn how to make things people can use. He demeans Sammy’s movie obsession by calling it a hobby.

       Fortunately for the story, the Fabelmans are a peripatetic lot. The film follows the Fabelman family (Mom, Dad, Sammy, and his three sisters) as they move from New Jersey to Phoenix to Northern California during the 1950s and 1960s.

        Surprisingly, at least to me, Sammy (played by Gabriel LaBelle as an older kid) doesn't encounter antisemitism until high school.

       The school’s jocks, notably an Aryan-looking popularity king played by Sam Rechner, bully Sammy.  One of school's few Jews, Sammy is accused of being a Christ-killer and is humiliated with a schoolyard beating.

       Despite such calumnies, Sammy eventually finds a girlfriend (Chloe East), a zealous Christian who, at this point in her life, has conflated her love of Jesus with her emerging sexuality. 

      The various films that Sammy makes, including a western and a war movie, are among the film's most engaging bits. Sammy develops his directorial chops as he learns about action, editing, and acting. He's his own film school.

       Williams' Mitzi anchors the movie's pivotal reveal, which Sammy discovers while reviewing footage he shot during a family camping trip. It's an important insight: Film can record truths that otherwise might remain hidden.

         As a woman whose personality embraces playfulness, determination, resolve, and caring, Williams gives the film's most memorable performance. Dano creates a kindly fatherly figure who mostly suffers in silence. Seth Rogen signs on as Benny, Dad’s best friend, a jokester family members call Uncle Benny, even though he’s not related to them

         In the middle of all this, Spielberg drops an extended cameo from Judd Hirsch, who plays Uncle Boris, a brother of Sammy's grandmother. Her death prompts Boris's unexpected visit. 

         Something of a black sheep. Boris seems to have spent his life around the fringes of show business. He sees the artist in Sammy and encourages him (more like tough-love bullying with a Yiddish accent) not to forsake his filmmaking dreams.

         I didn't need The Fabelmans to tell me that Spielberg loves movies and the treasured big-screen lineage of which he’s such a vital part.

        Moreover, I don't think The Fablemans qualifies as a great coming-of-age movie. It's probably at least 30 minutes too long, it doesn't always display the drive that makes many Spielberg movies irresistible and it can’t help but be a trifle self-serving.  

       But because Spielberg has had such an important career, the movie probably will generate interest among his admirers. I'm glad I saw The Fabelmans, even though I didn't love it in the way I love Spielberg's best work.

       Despite some painful family disclosures, The Fabelmans doesn't feel like a tell-all tale; it’s a story in which a fledgling filmmaker, quickly wins applause. The accolades may be coming from Sammy’s Boy Scout troop, but we know that’s just the beginning of what will be a great career. Sammy will not be dissuaded.

        What did you expect? A movie in which a talented kid is condemned to carry the scars of family life into an emotionally wounded and anonymous adulthood?

        No way. That could be an Arthur Miller play. Spielberg had other plans. 

'Venom': Noise and a lot more noise

 The second Venom movie has arrived. I guess that means someone, perhaps many someones, must have been waiting for it. If you're not a Marvel enthusiast, it probably helps to know that Venom began in the Spider-Man comics as an alien creature with a penchant for invading a human host and emerging as an unleashed helping of id and aggression. Personally, I've never much cared about the complex inter-related genealogy of the Marvel universe and that undoubtedly colors my approach to Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a comic-book movie directed by Andy Serkis and starring Tom Hardy. Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a San Francisco reporter whose body provides Venom with a host. Michelle Williams portrays the fiancee that kicked Eddie to the curb, and Woody Harrelson appears as Cletus Kasady, a criminal whose body becomes the host for a red "symbiotic'' beast called Carnage  -- or something like that. If you're a devotee, the movie may make more sense than it does to the uninitiated. Perhaps you won't even care whether it's coherent or not. There's mild amusement in watching Eddie argue with a creature that sprouts tentacles out of the poor man's back and occasionally emerges to stick its toothy alien face into Eddie's. Venom also does a pretty good job of wrecking Eddie's apartment, an act of colossal inconsideration in a city where rents tend to soar. Namoi Harris portrays Shriek, Kasady's love interest from a childhood in which they both were abused. Her weapon: the ability to scream so loud it can puncture eardrums. Serkis pours on the special effects and tries hard to live up tohe movie's subtitle, Let There Be Carnage. Effects dominate story: The real carnage, however, is inflicted on the screenplay. Yeah, there's noise, a few chuckles, dizzying action, and Hardy -- but one question: Where the hell is the movie to go with all that stuff?

Bob's Cinema Diary: 8/25/19 -- Jay Myself and After the Wedding

Jay Myself

Jay Maisel, now 88, has earned his reputation as of the great photographers of his time. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Maisel refused to confine himself either to commercial projects or the art world. He made an impact on both. Maisel spent most of his career living and working in a former bank building in Manhattan's Bowery, an area that since has gone upscale. Maisel bought the building with a $25,000 downpayment he earned photographing for Life magazine. When the cost of keeping his building in a gentrifying neighborhood rose to unaffordable levels, Maisel was forced to sell. Don't feel too sorry for Maisel, though. The price he got for his building: $55 million. But moving meant paying other prices, as well. After 49 years, Maisel must have felt that he was not only moving out of his studio but out of his life. At the building others called "the bank,'' he kept ("hoarded") might be the better word, a vast array of collections, many of which he used in his work. Director Stephen Wilkes, himself a photographer and an admirer of Maisel's photographs, talks with Maisel, who proves to be unsurprisingly complex: funny, grumpy, irascible and, most important, terrifically astute when discussing imagery and color. Maisel had to discard much to move into smaller digs and part of the movie's power is the sheer wonder it generates at the amount of stuff Maisel accumulated. Wilkes includes ample examples of Maisel's work, which serve as powerful reminders of why we want to spend time watching and listening to a man who claims that he doesn't take photographs. Photographs take him, he says.

After the Wedding

Director Bart Freundlich remakes Danish director Susanne Bier's 2007 drama with a fine cast and gender swaps in key roles. Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore and Billy Crudup headline a production that, despite what appear to be serious intentions, winds up feeling contrived and sudsy. The story begins in earnest when Isabel (Williams) returns to the US from India. She needs to secure funding for a school for orphans that she helps run. As it turns out, the head of a large media company (Moore) has heard about the school and wants to make a major contribution. To complicate matters, Isabel arrives in the middle of the week when Moore's Theresa is distracted by the wedding she's planned for her daughter (Abby Quinn). Theresa stalls on the donation, insisting that Isabel attend the wedding. If you're familiar with the original -- and even if you aren't -- you'll have little trouble anticipating a few of the plot twists Freundlich engineers. Freundlich's straight-on approach to material that sometimes borders on farce doesn't work consistently, even though Williams' low-key performance plays well against the brisk insensitivity Moore brings to her character. Secrets are revealed and the characters react to them, but a drama that's trying for maturity squanders an opportunity to deal with things movies too often neglect: the weight of difficult pasts and how people choose to carry it.

She feels pretty but Is she funny?

Amy Schumer's latest misses the mark.

Amy Schumer's I Feel Pretty springs from a potentially fertile comic premise. A young woman who thinks that she’s hopelessly unattractive hits her head and suddenly believes that she has become beautiful.

Filled with newfound confidence, this woman -- Schumer’s Renee -- begins behaving as she always imagined a beautiful woman would. In Schumer's hands, Renee’s behavior as a newly anointed beauty brims with comic exaggeration and border-line obnoxiousness.

Still, Renee begins to take control of her life. She aggressively flirts with a man at the dry cleaners. She goes after a less obscure job in the cosmetics company that employees her. She's having the time of her life.

So is Renee a little crazy? Not exactly. When she looks in the mirror, she sees herself as gorgeous. Everyone else, of course, sees the same old Renee.

In case you haven't already guessed, the moral is that women should be happy to be themselves. More, they should be proud to be themselves.

And in case you missed the message -- obvious from the start -- the movie provides Renee with an end-of-picture speech in which she hits it directly on the nose.

To reach its foregone conclusion, the story follows the blossoming Renee as she becomes the highly-visible receptionist for her company. Predictably, Renee also offers the company CEO (Michelle Williams) advice about how to market a new “diffusion” line of products, which is supposed to help the company reach shoppers in the economy’s less affluent realms.

For me, Williams provides I Feel Pretty’s only real surprise: She's funny as an executive who can't reconcile her girlish voice with her corporate status.

The movie's formula requires that Renee also find love; it arrives in the form of an ordinary guy played by Rory Scovel. Scovel’s character acts as if he’s impressed by Renee’s unabashed boldness, displayed when she enters a bikini contest at Coney Island, adapting her street clothes for the occasion.

Renee also has gal pals (Busy Philipps and Aidy Bryant), women she treats badly once she believes that she’s acquired the looks of a model.

Not only does I Feel Pretty score low on credibility, but the writing/directing team of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein lobs a softball; I Feel Pretty has little or no bite when it comes to criticizing the cosmetics industry, media-generated standards of beauty or much else for that matter.

The super-rich also can be cheap

In All the Money in the World, director Ridley Scott tells a 1973 story in which the grandson of J. Paul Getty was kidnapped -- and grandpa refused to pay the ransom.

All the Money in the World stands as a triumph of sorts. With his film already shot, director Ridley Scott decided to replace Kevin Spacey in a principal role. Scott's 11th-hour decision qualifies as an act of cinematic bravado designed, I suppose, to stave off any focus on Spacey, the recent subject of much-publicized sexual abuse allegations.

So the first question: Do the seams show? The answer: Not really.

Although it's difficult not to be aware that Christopher Plummer was a last-minute addition to the production, Scott's skill and Plummer's canny performance as J. Paul Getty help create a spry thriller with plenty of pulse.

In 1973, J. Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation to Christopher) was snatched off the streets of Rome, where he was wandering aimlessly, a long-haired hippie without much personal direction. Paul's billionaire grandfather, the world's wealthiest man at the time, refused to pay the $17-million ransom the kidnappers demanded.

It falls to Paul's mother, Gail Harris (Michelle Williams), to try to free the boy, no easy task. Divorced from her wayward husband, J. Paul Getty II (Andrew Buchan), Harris has no money of her own and doesn't really want the help of an ex-CIA operative (Mark Wahlberg) dispatched by the elder Getty to help with any negotiations to free his grandson.

We get the sense that Getty wants Wahlberg's character to clean up a mess; perhaps Getty see the kidnapping as a nuisance that interferes with his obsessive fondling of ticker tape from the markets; Getty enjoys watching his already staggering wealth increase.

Plummer, who played Scrooge in this year's The Man Who Invented Christmas, expands on his performance as a classic miser; Plummer creates a man of great wealth whose sole devotion is to things. Unlike people, things remain unchanged by any winds of betrayal. Getty collects art on a major scale but otherwise establishes himself as a world-class cheapskate. He believes that anyone can become rich, but only a select few can "be" rich.

Plummer doesn't look particularly convincing as a younger version of Getty in a few awkwardly inserted flashbacks, but those are among the few distractions in Plummer's rendition of one of history's major skinflints, a self-absorbed tycoon. In this telling, Getty values his name more than anyone who inherited it from him. He keeps a payphone in his London estate for anyone wishing to make a call. If necessary, the butler will supply change.

Young Getty's kidnapping gives Scott a premise that plays to his strengths, propelling the movie forward and creating tension.

The kidnappers eventually "sell" Getty No. III to Calabrian mobsters who hope to succeed where the first crew faltered. More ruthless than their predecessors, these second-wave kidnappers eventually cut off one of the boy's ears and send it to an Italian newspaper, affording Scott an opportunity to create a wincingly painful scene.

One of the kidnappers -- Romain Duris' Cinquanta -- develops a relationship with young Getty. Cinquanta eventually tries to help the young man who had been summoned back to Rome by his mother after spending time with his father, who -- at the time -- was immersed in drug-fueled Moroccan escapades.

Williams leads Scott's strong cast as a self-assured woman. Her Gail Harris refuses to be intimidated by Getty. A single attribute gives her leverage: She doesn't want any Getty money. Harris' crisp manner suggests that she's not the warmest person: She may not have money, but you'd never know it from her behavior.

Fine performances and the sense that the story lifts the veil on a lifestyle few of us ever will encounter help Scott sell All the Money right up until the end.

During the film's closing scenes, Scott suggests that Getty dies just as his grandson's story reaches its conclusion. Getty actually died several years later, but Scott shows Getty as a man staggering through his cavernous mansion with only his cherished possessions, a dying titan capable of seeing the beauty in a painting of the baby Jesus but unable to find any in his own children or grandchildren.

The moment feels contrived, an all-too-pat restatement of what's already been said. All the Money may not reach as powerful a crescendo as Scott probably wished, but that doesn't mean his thriller isn't involving. In a crowded holiday field, All the Money holds its own.

Living with an unbearable past

An outstanding Casey Affleck stars in Manchester by the Sea, a sad story about guilt and loss.

We're lucky that Kenneth Longergan makes movies.

I say that not because Lonergan's films (You Can Count on Me, Margaret and now Manchester by the Sea) qualify as cinematic wonders. Lonergan's work as a writer/director won't stir you with its visual brilliance or sweep you away with its epic scale. But that's precisely why Lonergan's character-driven work must be valued: He's one of a handful of contemporary filmmakers who make movies about real people -- non-glamorous, everyday folks who are engaged in life-defining struggles.

On its surface, Manchester by the Sea (the title sounds like you might find it atop a resort brochure) is an entirely conventional movie. An emotionally wounded man returns to his hometown after the death of his older brother. Gradually, he establishes a relationship with his teen-age nephew.

In most movies, that relationship would provide the movie's protagonist with a road to redemption. Our hero would reaffirm his belief in life, and we'd leave the theater feeling better about him and maybe about ourselves.

But Lonergan isn't interested in supporting anyone's fantasies. He knows that life doesn't always produce happily-ever-afters and that some wounds remain too raw ever to scar over. Those wounds may also be connected to a kind of integrity that refuses (perhaps for good reasons) to relinquish a horrible pain.

In Manchester by the Sea, Lonergan introduces us to Lee (Casey Affleck), a brooding, angry man who works as a janitor at a Boston apartment complex. Early on, Lee receives a phone call telling him that his brother (Kyle Chandler in flashback) is dying. Lee returns to his hometown of Manchester, Mass., and discovers that his brother has died, and he has been appointed guardian of Patrick, his 16-year-old nephew (Lucas Hedges).

Returning to the place he once called home, Lee is flooded with memories, some involving his brother and some involving his former wife (Michelle Williams). Seen in flashbacks, these moments from past arrive in the movie with the suddenness of uninvited guests. We also learn that Patrick's alcoholic mother (Gretchen Mol) abandoned her family.

We know from the outset that unspeakable tragedy haunts Lee. I won't tell you what it is. You don't need to be aware of the movie's big reveal to understand that Lee's life is mired in hopelessness. Angry eruptions lead to fistfights in bars. Half the time, his gaze is downcast. He has imprisoned himself in an inescapable jail, where the bars are made of guilt and shame.

I don't want to say much more about the plot, but you should know that every performance in Manchester by the Sea feels authentic, as does the environment that Lonergan creates.

This environment and Lonergan's commitment to it allows him to add humor -- even in his depiction of the tormented Lee. The banter between Lee and his nephew can be funny in the way of two guys jockeying for position.

There's much to discover here: The relationship between Lee and his late brother; Patrick's relationship with girls; the marriages of men and women who can't always conquer their demons; the inability of Patrick to connect with his apparently reformed mother.

Much has been written about the scene in which Lee meets his former wife in the streets. Yes, it's a tearjerker. Yes, it leaves you shaken. Yes, it hurts.

But there's another scene in which Lee tells Patrick about his inability to put the past behind him that's equally heartbreaking.

In its overall effect, Manchester by the Sea is a sad movie, but its sadness stems from careful depiction of the movie's characters and their experiences. Lonergan trusts us enough not to betray either, which is precisely why his film proves so memorable.

This journey to Oz misses greatness

A prequel to the Wizard of Oz has its enchantments -- but flaws, as well..
It takes more than a little moxie to revisit the big-screen world that was so beautifully created by director Victor Fleming in The Wizard of Oz. To go "all-in" with a big-budget, 3-D extravaganza takes even more guts. So no faulting Disney or director Sam Raimi for an lack of daring.

Raimi -- perhaps best known for his contributions to the Spider Man series -- attempts to serve up a visually ambitious prequel to the 1939 classic, a movie that still attracts viewers when its shown on TV and which still scares adults and kids some 76 years after its 1939 release, thanks mostly to those hideous flying monkeys.

Moxie aside, Oz the Great and Powerful turns out to be a hit-and-miss affair with some serious drawbacks, not the least of which revolves around James Franco, the likable actor who begins the movie as a two-bit carnival magician named Oscar Diggs.

Franco flashes a toothy grin to convey the phony sincerity of a small-time con man, but doesn't do much more with his character. Early on, Diggs is swept by a tornado from Kansas to the magical world of Oz. There, he's greeted as the living fulfillment of a prophecy that calls for a wizard to save Oz from tyranny.

But Franco's performance isn't the only issue. There's also a notable lack of characters to provide the level of entertainment associated with The Tin Man (Jack Haley), the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) and the Cowardly Lion (Burt Lahr).

I know. That's an awfully high bar, but what's the point of flying off to Oz without trying to match or jump over it? On top of that, Dorothy (Judy Garland) was a more interesting and involving character than a crackpot magician who must kill a wicked witch in order to save Oz and, not incidentally, gain access to its piles of golden treasure.

Having said all that, I don't want to leave you with the impression that Oz the Great and Powerful is a total disaster. It's a medium-grade helping of fantasy enhanced by some skillful animation, a few spectacular sets, some decent set pieces and dollops of humor.

Raimi wisely begins by following in the footsteps of the original with a black-and-white prologue that's presented in the old-fashioned 1:33 aspect ratio. When the story reaches Oz, Raimi expands to wide-screen and color.

Look, it's clear that Raimi (and a vast special effects team) was trying for a feeling of sustained enchantment, and when Franco's character discovers the land of Oz or gets his first glimpse of the Emerald City, Raimi seems to be on the right track.

The new movie gives the emerging wizard some new companions, a flying monkey named Finley (voiced by Zach Braff) and a China Doll -- she's called China Girl -- voiced by Joey King. Finley, who's dressed as a bellhop, becomes a beast of burden, carting the faux wizard's bag all over Oz. Although he manages some cuteness and humor, Finley simply doesn't have either the weight or memorability of any character from the original.

And China Girl might have been more affecting had the character been played a real girl instead of a CGI stand-in.

All of those flaws might have receded into obscurity had the witches (there are three in this edition) provided more kick. Mila Kunis portrays Theodora, a young woman who begins as a good and trusting witch but transforms into the Wicked Witch of the West. Michelle Williams appears as Glinda, the irrevocably good witch, and Rachel Weisz plays Evanora, the witch responsible for handling much of the movie's villainy.

None of them are as frightening or as commanding as the great Margaret Hamilton, the original (and in reality the "only") credible Wicked Witch of the West. Raimi and screenwriters David Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell Kapner pay brief homage to Hamilton and try to create a variety of other (mostly minor) connections to the best-known big-screen adaptation of L. Frank Baum's classic story.

Now, about those flying monkeys. This version offers a more obviously fearsome version of the airborne simians, but employs them to lesser effect. These razor-toothed creatures fly at the audience, generating more by way of jolts than creepiness. The monkeys may be emblematic of the way Raimi employs 3-D throughout, more for thrill-ride impact than for the subtlety and depth that has marked the best recent 3-D, notably Life of Pi.

The mix of live-action and effects isn't always convincing, either. Too often, we're aware that animation is being employed, although some of it is beautifully colored and alluring.

I appreciated the gargantuan effort that went into Oz the Great and Powerful, and the movie may please younger audience while giving them a few scary kicks in the pants.

But "not bad" is not what we expect from a movie of this magnitude and with this lineage.

Oh, and by the way, Oz the Great and Powerful makes room for Munchkins, but not for Toto or any other dog. Pity.

She's unsure what she wants

Can a marriage crumble gently? Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz suggests the answer is "yes."

Take This Waltz -- a new movie from director Sarah Polley -- hits, misses and sometimes seems to be searching for a point as it follows the emotionally inconclusive life of Margot (Michelle Williams), a woman who's slipping into the final stages of a crumbling marriage. Although there are good scenes in Take This Waltz, which Polley also wrote, the movie doesn't amount to as much as you might hope, particularly considering that Polley's debut feature -- Away From Her -- was a restrained and quietly moving story about a couple dealing with the onset of the wife's Alzheimer's. The story in Take This Waltz is driven by Margot's long and not always intriguing flirtation with one of her neighbors (Luke Kirby). Kirby's Daniel is an artist who supports himself by pulling a rickshaw around Toronto. Very quaint. Margot's husband Lou (a surprisingly credible Seth Rogen) spends most of his time experimenting in the couple's kitchen. He's writing a cookbook about the many ways in which chicken can be prepared. Polley may have wanted to bring Margot to a point at which she's able to free herself from both the intoxicating pull of new romance and loyalty to her husband of five years. At times, it feels as if Polley drops story obligations to say something that she thinks needs addressing. A nude shower scene at a local pool, for example, seems calculated to show how women's bodies look when they're not being portrayed from an erotically charged male perspective. And in what amounts to a reach, Polley casts comic Sarah Silverman as Lou's sister; Silverman proves interesting enough as a recovering alcoholic who's as acerbic as she is self-aware. Nothing about Take This Waltz made me less respectful of Polley's talent. She's a nervy director who's willing to take chances, and she shows a real flair for casual interaction. I liked what I liked about Take This Waltz, ignored the rest and look forward to seeing where Polley, still best known as an actress, goes next.

Maybe a week with Marilyn wasn't enough

Michelle Williams does nice work in My Week With Marilyn, but the movie comes up short.

The main reason you might want to see My Week With Marilyn -- which is a bit of an anecdote passing as a feature-length movie -- centers on the work of Michelle Williams. Williams offers a mixture of fully realized performance and unrestrained glamor as Marilyn Monroe, capturing the Hollywood sex goddess during days in England when she was filming The Prince and the Showgirl under the direction of the esteemed Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh).

Here's how we know what went on: An avid film enthusiast named Colin Clark (a real person) worked as a third assistant director (read lackey) on the production. Clark evidently developed a week-long relationship with Monroe in which she both relied on him and toyed with his affections. Clark, who went on to become a documentary filmmaker, wrote a couple of books about his experiences tagging after Monroe.

If Williams makes a convincing Monroe, the same can't be said for Branagh, who suggests Olivier (the cast of the mouth, the delivery of lines), but obviously can't manage to look like him. And, yes, it bothered me because the movie's make-up people went to great lengths to turn Williams into a Monroe look-alike.

Director Simon Curtis, working from a script by Adrian Hodges, brings too little interpretive savvy to the proceedings, and Eddie Redmayne (through no fault of his own) can't make a memorable character out of a star-struck young man who's in love with the movies. On screen, Clark comes off as a bit of a cliche, a wide-eyed kid who has run away to join the show-business circus.

Some of the supporting performances are good. The always impressive Judi Dench gives a nicely shaded performance as the kindly Dame Sybil Thorndike, and it's nice to see Emma Watson (of Harry Potter fame) given a chance to do something other than react to special effects. She has a small role as a young woman working in wardrobe. Watson's Lucy clearly would make a more suitable companion for Clark than Monroe, who at the time was married to playwright Arthur Miller, played here by Dougray Scott.

And I particularly enjoyed Zoe Wanamaker as Paula Strasberg, Monroe's Method-oriented acting coach who contributed mightily to Olivier's massive frustration. Olivier didn't want to Monroe to plumb the depths of her character; he simply wanted her to get on with it.

A film about Monroe -- a complicated and often troubled woman who may have been both oppressed and nourished by her status as a sex symbol -- would have been most welcome, and the gifted Williams clearly was up to the task.

But My Week With Marilyn sums up what's interesting about itself in one very incisive line of dialogue: Monroe was a star who wanted to be taken seriously as an actor; and Olivier (who also starred in Prince and the Showgirl) was a revered actor who wanted to be a star. They couldn't help but clash.

That's a revealing observation, but insufficient to sustain an entire movie. My Week With Marilyn simply isn't big enough to accommodate a star of Monroe's magnitude

A marriage gone hopelessly wrong

Director Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine is fueled by raw emotion.

In Blue Valentine, director Derek Cianfrance does what director John Cassavetes sometimes did: He pushes his actors toward what feel like breaking points, putting them in emotionally charged situations and allowing them to claw their way out – or not.
This look at both the beginning and end of a blue-collar marriage contains moments so potent they seem to put the movie’s principal actors – Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling – at emotional risk. For much of the movie, Williams and Gosling are suspended in the uncharted waters of a turbulent present that neither of their characters fully comprehends.

Cianfrance does this by shattering the usual narrative flow of a story. He shows us the beginning of the relationship and its end, omitting the middle. He also avoids smooth transitions from one time period to another, allowing scenes from the past and present to bump against each other in ways that take some adjustment, and – at least in the early going – create mild confusion.

At heart, Cianfrance’s movie is about two people who enter marriage with totally different expectations. Gosling’s Dean believes it’s possible to be thunderstruck by one woman, so much so that he’ll decide he must spend the rest of his life with her.

Obstacles don’t necessarily matter to Dean. He’s working for a moving company in Brooklyn. Cindy – the woman who ignites Dean’s passion -- lives in Pennsylvania. He knows nothing about her, and she knows nothing about him. No matter; he’s got a feeling.

Besides being hopelessly naïve, Dean’s approach causes him to ignore a lot of warning signs, and puts him in an awkward position: Once he achieves his goal, there’s nothing left. He’s without aspiration.

For scenes set in the present, Gosling has trimmed his hair to create a receding hairline and put on weight. Six years into marriage, Dean is contented being a house painter. His idea of a relationship-renewing experience involves checking into a tacky motel in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, getting drunk with his wife and spending the rest of the evening having sex. He knows the motel is silly, but doesn’t care. He’s ready to enjoy the silliness.

Dean’s life plan might have worked, except for one thing. Cindy no longer shares it, if she ever did. After being charmed by Dean, who has an unashamedly goofy streak, she marries him in a moment of weakness and need, a psychological state suggested by plot details best discovered in a theater.

When we first meet them, Cindy and Dean are already on the downside of their marital arc. They live in Pennsylvania. Cindy works as a nurse for a doctor who bolsters her self-esteem. She’s beginning to wonder whether she can get more out of life. Dean plays with their daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyaka); he works; he drinks beer; he’s living his dream; Cindy’s living his nightmare.

In one of the earliest scenes, the fully clothed Dean has fallen asleep in a living room chair, where he’s presumably spent the better part of the night. Frankie is out looking for the family’s missing dog. Cindy remains in bed. Clearly, the family is not operating with the greatest possible synchronicity.

Both Williams and Gosling face difficult challenges. A movie such as Blue Valentine demands that its actors respond with what must appear to be unrehearsed immediacy. Each character has been given some history, but Williams and Gosling pretty much are disconnected from the logical supports traditional narratives provide.

This can be powerful, but it also can look strange and a touch unconvincing. When Dean courts Cindy with a ukulele, he croons a silly version of You Always Hurt the One You Love, and asks her to dance to it. They’re on the street, tucked into the entranceway of a small store in her Pennsylvania hometown. The moment has wacky charm, yes, but it’s also self-consciously dippy.

And when Dean – during another courtship segment – tries to force Cindy to tell him a secret, he climbs over the railing of a fence on the Brooklyn Bridge, presumably threatening to leap if Cindy doesn’t reveal her secret. Gosling has said that he climbed the fence, waiting anxiously for Williams to capitulate so that he could come down. Two actors challenging each other to see how far each will go generates a certain kind of theatrical excitement, but it doesn’t necessarily equate with believable behavior.

The sex scenes in Blue Valentine are explicit, and initially resulted in an NC-17 rating, since overturned to give the movie an R, which seems more in line with the content and context that Cianfrance establishes. “R” is the right rating, and Blue Valentine certainly is worth seeing – for its performances, for the nearly palpable -- if sometimes strained -- commitment to truth seeking that seems to underlie every scene and for the director’s willingness to condense the narrative in hopes that he’ll find something essential.

Maybe it’s just this: Once someone checks out of a marriage, the relationship is doomed. Cindy pretty much has given up on Dean. She’s sold her emotional stock in the relationship. Poor Dean. From that point on, all he can do is make matters worse.