Viggo Mortensen makes his directorial debut

    Falling, a serious, often disturbing film about a father/son relationship, marks the directorial debut of actor Viggo Mortensen.   

   Familiar to audiences for playing Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and for portraying a chauffeur who overcomes his racism in The Green Book, Mortensen drops us into rough terrain, showing what happens when an already difficult problem is made insoluble by dementia.

   The movie's son, played by Mortensen, is gay; the father, rendered in abrupt vitriolic strokes by Lance Henriksen, could serve as a poster boy for insensitivity. 

   Mortensen, who also wrote the screenplay, shifts between present and past to create a fuller picture of Willis's rueful life and its impact on his family.

   From the start, we know that Willis qualifies as a hard case: As a young father (played by Sverrir Gudnason), Willis looks at his infant son John and tells him that he's sorry he brought him into the world to die, hardly a feel-good welcome.

    The present-tense elements take place when the New York-based Willis visits California to be closer to his John and his sister, a late-appearing Laura Linney.  

    By this time, Henriksen's  Willis, a man in his 80s, has slipped into a demented fog. If Willis ever had any ability to censor his worsts impulses, they're long gone.

     John does his best to practice forbearance even as the visiting Willis crudely insults him and his husband Eric (Terry Chen). It doesn't take long to figure out why John and his sister wanted to put 2,400 miles between themselves and their father.

     Flashbacks flesh out the story of Willis's earlier days with  Hannah Gross appearing as Willis's wife. Fidelity isn't Willis's strong suit. Eventually, he leaves Gross's character for Jill (Bracken Burns), a woman he also abuses.

     To add shading, Mortensen includes scenes-- moments, really -- in which Willis shows genuine affection for his son. Both of these scenes involve hunting and provide much-needed nuance about the complexity of a bullying relationship.

     When a movie revolves around a character as caustic as Willis,  the other characters tend to be forced to the periphery. Mortensen's John, an Air Force veteran and late-blooming gay man, is raising a daughter (Gabby Velis) with his husband, but we don't learn a lot about that relationship.

       Perhaps in a bow to his work in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, Eastern Promises and A History of Violence, Mortensen casts Cronenberg as a proctologist in one of Falling's lighter moments. Take it as a comment about the movie's tone that the comic relief takes place in a proctologist's office.

     Although I appreciated much about Falling, I can't say that I totally believed in Mortensen's highly concentrated approach, mostly because Willis is so out-sized in his repugnance that it's impossible to feel anything for him. Henriksen dominates the other performances, including Mortensen's fine portrayal of a man struggling not to engage in combat with a bullying father.

     I guess, then, it's possible to look at Falling as a kind of domestic war movie in which one side only can save itself by refusing to fight.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 2/5/20 -- 'Two of Us,' 'Bliss' and 'The Right One'

Two of Us

 Barbara Sukowa and Martine Chevallier  play aging lovers in Two of Us, director Filippo Meneghetti's look at a love that struggles to shed its secrecy. The two women live in adjoining apartments. Chevallier's Madeleine, called "Mado," resists uprooting her life and moving to Rome with Sukowa's Nina. Such a move would mean announcing her gayness and changing the emotional calculus that allows her to maintain her relationship with her grown children. They don't know she's gay. Early, on Madeline tells Nina that she's willing to sell her apartment and move to Rome. But she falters when it comes to informing her children. The movie's principal development involves Madeleine's health. After Madeline suffers a stroke, her daughter Anne (Lea Drucker) takes over her care. Madeline's son (Jerome Varanfrain) grows increasingly impatient with what appears to be Nina's intrusive efforts to remain in Madeline's life. The children think their late father was the love of Madeline's life. The arrival of a caregiver (Muriel Benazeraf)  prompts Nina's  to push Benazeraf's character aside so that she can fulfill a role that reflects the reality of a long, mostly satisfying relationship. We wonder whether Madeline, who has lost the ability to speak, will play a role in deciding the outcome. The movie has as much to do with Nina's ability to function in a climate of secrecy as with the love the two women share. That makes Two of Us a touching reminder of the toxic complexities that result when secrets are kept.

Bliss

Owen Wilson joins Salma Hayek in a story in which two  down-and-out Los Angelenos  enter an alternate reality that resembles the ultimate vacation destination. Or maybe that alternate reality is the real thing. Or maybe you won't care which is which. The story begins by introducing us to Wilson's befuddled Greg,  a man who messes up at work, accidentally kills his boss and then takes to the streets of Los Angeles. Divorced and at loose-ends, Greg seems unable to connect with his daughter (Nesta Cooper), a young woman who keeps trying to salvage her relationship with Dad. Initially, Hayek's Rita charges into the movie, telling Greg that she can free him from any suspicion that he may have murdered his boss. Rita's powers to tinker with reality apparently stem from crystals that she ingests and which she eventually shares with Wilson's Greg.  Rita explains the movie's various developments to Greg, but director Mike Cahill's movie never makes much sense and winds up as a ragged, lunging attempt to engage questions about the nature of reality and meaning that have been better addressed in other movies. Matrix enthusiasts can rest easy.

The Right One

If there's anything to be discovered by watching The Right One, it's that actress Cleopatra Coleman has the requisite humor and charm to hold a movie together. Of course, romcoms aren't solitary affairs: It takes two to tango. The second part of director Ken Mok's  ostentatiously quirky romcom revolves around Nick Thune, who's stuck playing Godfrey, a shape-shifting character who assumes various poses throughout the movie: a singing cowboy, an effete art critic, or a hard-rocking DJ. For reasons that aren't clear, Coleman's Sarah is attracted to Godfrey and pursues him without even knowing his real name. She's a writer and aren't all writers fascinated by oddballs? Godfrey reluctantly becomes involved with Sarah, allowing her to visit the many characters he plays. The plot strains to tell us why Godfrey can't simply be himself. All of this amounts to little, aside from providing each actor with an opportunity to showcase something: Thune, versatility; Coleman, snappy charm. But both are stranded by an implausible story that, rather than reaching a crescendo of love and acceptance,  sticks a flat ending. With Iliza Schlesinger as Sarah's obnoxiously self-absorbed editor.

A great house and a battling couple

 

   There's something so arty and insular about Malcolm & Marie that I found it nearly impossible to forget that I was watching a movie. 

   Director Sam Levinson has made a two-hander about a battling couple played by John David Washington and Zendaya. 

   The movie may remind you of other battling couples, notably Edward Albee's George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a movie that also was shot in black-and-white.

    I'll get to the couple -- a filmmaker and his muse -- in a moment. 

     First, though, a word about architecture. If a movie is to take place almost entirely within one house, the house better be interesting and evocative. Levinson has chosen the Caterpillar House in Carmel, Ca. 

     Set mostly at night, we're keenly aware of the vast glass walls of the living room, the sense of West Coast openness and the self-conscious modernity of a house that seems as much a statement as a home.

   Of course, I digress. So let me say that inside the house we find an uneven mixture of battling, rants and emotional exposure -- or, just another day in the life of a young couple.

   Washington plays Malcolm, a filmmaker who's returning to a home that has been provided by his production company. His new film has just had its premiere.

    Zendaya's Marie is the lover and partner Malcolm forgot to acknowledge in his thank-you speech after the movie, a bit of neglect sets off the fireworks. 

     A former drug addict, Marie also believes that Malcolm appropriated events from her life without bothering either to credit her or cast her in his movie.

   Initially, Malcolm rides an adrenalin-fueled wave of triumph as he dances through the living room. It seems as if his movie will give him career-making credibility. He's like a person who has learned he's just won the lottery -- only, in this case, his triumph has been earned.

     While Malcolm enthuses about himself or rants on other matters, Marie makes a bowl of mac and cheese -- from a box no-less. If this is an act of ego deflation, what to make of the fact that Malcolm eats it?

    Marie slowly pulls the rug out from under the joyous Malcolm and, in the process, raises questions about creativity, ethics, and self-image.

    Even when they're interesting or amusing, battling couples can get on your nerves. If you'd have been in the presence of Malcolm and Marie during their long evening of ire, it wouldn't take long before you began looking for the exits.

    This is not to fault the acting. Zendaya punches well in the emotional clinches. Washington finds a groove, at one point delivering a rapid-fire monologue about being pigeon-holed as a black filmmaker by a critic. Ironically, the same critic also called his film a "master work."

    The lengthy soliloquy is impressive if only for Washington's ability to sustain the energy and powers of elocution required to deliver it.

    Levinson inches the characters toward sexual intimacy and then retreats; he primes us for deep revelation but none seems to be forthcoming. Sometimes rant substitutes for dialogue. 

    The total effect is oddly unsettling. By the time the movie ended, I felt as I'd been watching a skillful simulation of an art movie rather than the real thing.

     Put another way, Malcolm & Marie requires too much effort for too little reward.

B-movie maneuvers with an A-list cast

    A thriller that evokes memories of other movies about cops and serial killers, The Little Things traffics in downbeat atmospherics with a thriller set in 1990s. 

   Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto star in a story that has been vamped on and recycled so many times, it's difficult to see the movie as more than another genre exercise.

    Looking paunchy, exhausted and gray, Denzel Washington plays Joe "Deke" Deacon, a Northern California deputy sent to LA to retrieve a piece of evidence.  As it turns out, Joe once worked in LA, a city he couldn't escape without tarnishing his reputation.

    Once in LA, Joe teams with Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek), an LA detective with a starched personality and a talent for getting himself on the news. Jimmy asks Joe to join him in trying to solve a string of murders, prostitutes who have been mutilated.

   Enter Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), an LA refrigerator repairman who lives on the margins, walks with a waddle and has enough smarts to make for a tough interview when the cops haul him in for questioning. 

     With long hair that looks as if it hasn't been washed for weeks and a taste for strip clubs, Albert has prime suspect written all over him.

     Washington has an uncanny ability to make us believe that any character he plays knows more than anyone else. He and Malek make a decent enough team, mismatched at first but increasingly on the same page.

     The screenplay creates a predictable thematic link between Joe and Jimmy, building a connection around each's capacity for moral compromise. Joe was suspended from the LA force because he became obsessed with a case that shattered his marriage and put him in the hospital for triple bypass surgery.

     Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) turns out a police procedural that peeks into the darkest corners of cop and criminal behavior -- not so much because it's curious but because the atmospherics demand it. 

     Even worse, the story falls short during the final act which finds Jimmy behaving  in ways that defy credibility. 

     The Little Things fulfills many of the requirements of a gritty genre piece, moving its characters through a world from which no one escapes uncorrupted, sort of a B-movie with an A-list cast and noir shading.

       But with three Oscar winners in the principal roles, it's not unfair to have expected something more.

      

Terror In a hotel without check-out

 

    The most frightening things often go unseen. Considering that, it always surprises me that most horror films focus on the visible impact of one form of mayhem or another.

   Night, a film about an Iranian couple living in Los Angeles, takes a different approach. Although we hear threatening sounds and see eerie sights, the movie relies heavily on the potent power of suggestion.

    Born and raised in Tehran and now living in Los Angeles, director Kourosh Ahari introduces us to several affluent Iranian couples living the good life in LA. 

     Initially, The Night looks as if it's going to be a well-observed movie in which the problems of these couples slowly emerge.

     But Ahari quickly switches gears. One couple (Shahab Hosseini and Niousha Noor) leave the party. He's had a bit too much to drink. She says they ought to return to the party and sleep at the host's house. He refuses but eventually agrees to suspend a wobbly drive so that they can spend the night at a hotel: husband, wife, and their infant daughter.

      It won't surprise you to learn that the hotel's receptionist (George Maguire) is creepy -- in a dry way that might not mean anything or might mean a lot. 

      The hotel seems to be empty of other guests. Strange noises begin to go ... you'll pardon the expression ... bump in the night.

     As it turns out, both Hosseini's Babak and Noor's Neda have kept secrets from each other. Gradually emerging secrets create a no-exit dynamic: The couple can't move on unless they accept truths about themselves. They can't leave the hotel.

    The Night is haunting, even if it  suffers a bit from a problem that's endemic to all such movies: The buildup isn't quite matched by the finale -- although, in this case, it's not for lack of trying.

     Still, Ahari proves himself a master of dread and threat and Night follows a Farsi-speaking couple into a night in which their  defenses begin to unravel.

A couple on a journey toward the end

    Recently, it seems as if I've been watching nothing but movies about death and dying. That impression probably isn't entirely true and may stem from reading daily news reports about the pandemic and its ghastly mortality rate.

   Supernova, which stars Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as  long-time lovers is a death movie with a double whammy. Tucci's Tusker, a novelist by trade, has an increasingly encompassing case of dementia. 

   This means that he's destined to disappear before he actually dies. Firth's Sam decides that they should take one last trip before Tusker's memory completely disintegrates and he no longer even recognizes Sam.

   The two pile into a van and travel through the English north country with a stop at Sam's sister's home. 

    Tusker takes medication meant to slow his decline, but he leaves it at home, a clue that the journey has a different final destination than the one Sam, a pianist, anticipates.

    Tucci and Firth convincingly create a couple with behavior patterns, endearments, and gentle squabbles that have evolved  over many years. 

    I called them lovers earlier in this review. That may be the wrong term. They're lovers, of course, but they're also an old couple who have grown entirely accustomed to each other's ways.

   Sam says he's fully prepared to spend the rest of his life caring for Tusker -- even it means going beyond the point where Tusker knows who he is. Tusker has another idea: I won't say what it is, but you probably already know. 

   The performances aren't showy and director Harry Macqueen doesn't hurry toward the end of the road for a couple engulfed in deep sorrow while still clinging to many of the routine interactions that have defined their relationship.

   Macqueen tends to be more even-handed than gut-wrenching. Supernova isn't a tear-jerker. The chemistry between the actors and the filmmakers results in a movie that's admirably respectful of the intimacy and burden a couple faces when confronting the inevitable.

    

Inspiration with Naomi Watts and a magpie

 

   The Australian movie Penguin Bloom has all the ingredients required to produce a predictable piece of inspirational fluff. 

    A young mother is paralyzed after a terrible fall during a vacation. She withdraws from her husband and kids and laments the fact that she'll never be able to surf again. Sam Bloom (Naomi Watts) feels so useless she wonders whether she even exists anymore.

     I said the movie, based on a true story, is inspirational so you know from the outset that Sam will find a way to do more than simply carry on. She'll reclaim her life and thrive, and, yes, there will be pictures of the real people during the end credits.

    The title clues an audience into how Sam's life again will take flight.  One day on the beach, one of Sam's children discovers an abandoned magpie that has fallen from its nest. 

    The parallel between Sam and the magpie -- who the kids name Penguin -- is obvious. The bird fell from its nest, and Sam fell several stories when a rotted wooden railing gave way during a family trip to Thailand.

     The movie's two notable performances are given by Watt and the bird (or birds) who play Penguin.  Sam's husband (Andrew Lincoln) and her three sons (Griffin Murray-Johnston, Felix Cameron, and Abe Clifford-Barr) are around to provide upholstery for the main story. 

     Jackie Weaver plays Sam's mother, a woman who wants to help but doesn't really know how.

    At first resistant to Penguin, Sam eventually warms to the bird Watching the bird nestle in her arms is bound to elicit oohs and awws. The various birds that play Penguin also are charged with providing comic relief, stealing teabags from cups or hopping through the family's beach home with jaunty spring.

    A final push toward recovery arrives when a kayak instructor (Rachel House) gives Sam lessons that return her to the water. We're told in a postscript that Sam eventually competed successfully in water sports. For some reason, the movie never shows us that part of the story.

    Mostly, director Glendyn Ivin plays things straight, and with a movie such as Penguin Bloom predictability is unavoidable. 

     It hardly qualifies as a spoiler to tell you that Penguin learns to fly, that Sam rediscovers her humanity, and that the family perseveres. 

    If you're looking for emotional complexity, Penguin Bloom is not for you. Even Watts can't turn Penguin Bloom into anything more than a familiar tale made more disarming by the presence of a magpie.

      I did learn one thing, though. Who knew magpies were so damn smart?

A looming death takes over many lives

      In the spring of 2015, Esquire published what would become a prize-winning article by journalist Matthew Teague. Teague took an unusual approach to the subject of dying, opting for vivid descriptions of the assaults on his wife's cancer-riddled body.

     "We don't tell each other the truth about dying, as a people. Not real dying. Real dying, regular and mundane dying, is so hard and so ugly that it becomes the worst thing of all: It's grotesque. It's undignified," Teague wrote.

     Teague's article wasn't long, but it included graphic details of what happened to Nicole Teague's body after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. 

     Another aspect of the article involved Teague's friend Dane Faucheux, a man who helped Teague and his wife in what amounted to a heroic, perhaps unexplainable act of friendship. 

     Faucheux  abandoned his life in New Orleans, moved into the Teague's Alabama home, helped care for the couple's two young daughters, and even took the family pet to the vet to be put down. Matthew was too immersed in Nicole's travails to deal with another death.

     If you read the Esquire article, it's nothing short of astonishing to think that anyone would make a movie based on Teague's story. It's difficult to imagine that audiences would want to spend a couple of hours looking at the bodily dissolutions that Teague's article dutifully reports.

     I suppose it's no surprise then that director Gabriela Cowperthwaite and screenwriter Brad Ingelsby have taken a softer approach to Teague's story in Our Friend. With Casey Affleck as Matthew, Dakota Johnson as Nicole, and Jason Segel as Dane, the movie is less about the indignities of dying than the  ways in which Nicole's dying impacts an entire family. 

    Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) has become a master of miserable, an actor who's able to incorporate gloom into his entire being. The skill obviously serves him well in Our Friend. 

     Johnson seems equally well-suited to portray a vibrant young woman with an interest in musical theater. 

     It falls to Segel to create the movie's most complicated and in some ways least understandable character, a lovable guy who's  capable of amazing generosity but incapable of sustaining romantic relationships.

     Dane first meets Nicole when the two are working in theater in New Orleans. He's smitten but learns that Nicole already is married. He stays in her life, though, becoming a good friend to Matthew and to Nicole, even as other of their friends find him weird, even a bit pathetic.

    Cowperthwaite tells the story in fragments that hopscotch through time, painting a portrait of relationships that are tested by Nicole's diagnosis, which becomes the anchoring event for a movie that flashes back and forward from that painful moment. 

    Playing with time has mixed results, pushing us into episodes in which Matthew works as a war correspondent while a frustrated Nicole holds down the home front, scenes in which Dane gives up on relationships of his own to be a helpful friend, and even a bout of marital infidelity that nearly topples the Teague marriage.

     We get just enough about the Teague daughters (Violet McGraw and Isabella Kai) to keep that aspect of the story from feeling neglected. 

    The impact of this time-scattered approach tends to rob the movie of its capacity to build, sometimes creates confusion, and  puts a heavier burden on incident than on allowing the characters to deepen. 

     Still, Cowperthwaite and her cast make you feel how inadequate we all are when it comes to facing a devastating loss -- and how improbably selfless people sometimes can be. Maybe that's enough to encourage us to overlook the movie's flaws. 

     By the way, you may well ask, is Our Friend a tearjerker? Hell, yes.

 

Bob's Cinema Diary: 1/22/21 -- 'Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself' and 'No Man's Land'

Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself

It would be unfair to call Derek DelGaudio a magician, although he does specialize in card tricks and illusions. It  would be equally unfair to call DelGaudio a storyteller, although that's part of his repertoire, as well. In the absence of a better description, it's probably best to label DelGaudio a performance artist.  Taken from several versions of DelGaudio's off-Broadway show from a couple of years back, In & Of Itself captivates with a heady mix of the abstract and the concrete. DelGaudio was filmed by director Frank Oz working in a small theater in which the audience frequently is asked to participate. DelGaudio appears before a wooden wall into which several box-like squares have been cut and which become part of the stories that DelGaudio tells. At its heart, In & Out (available on Hulu) is an exploration of identity: DelGaudio's, the members of his audience, and those who will see the film version. The movie begins with DelGaudio telling a story he claims to have heard in a bar in Spain. He sketches a tale about a man who played increasingly dangerous games of Russian roulette and acquired the name "Roulettista." Later, he talks about learning that his mother is gay. Whatever direction he charts, DelGuadio manages to create an edge that suggests that both he and the audience might be at risk. Of what? I'm not sure, but DelGaudio's deadpan delivery helps keep us off guard and allows Oz to sustain a consistent level of tension. Home movies and animation are employed to varying effect but keep In & Of Itself from feeling stagebound as DelGaudio builds toward the film's emotional (really) finale. 

No Man's Land

 

The Texas/Mexico border is dotted with areas that are south of official border crossings and north of the actual border. No Man's Land begins on a ranch located in this ambiguous territory. As evident as a cowboy hat at a stock show, the movie's purpose quickly emerges: to challenge a young Texan's idea about the immigrants who cross his family's property en route to the US. What could have been a topical gut-punch of a movie becomes an unconvincing journey about one man's redemption as he meets Mexicans who are willing to help him. The key incident in director Conor Allyn's contemporary western involves the shooting of a Mexican boy who's trying to cross the border with his father (Jorge A. Jimenez). Jake Allyn, the director's brother, plays Jackson, the son of a rancher (Frank Grillo) who's used to chasing Mexicans off the land where he lives with his wife (Andie MacDowell) and another son (Alex MacNicoll). After shooting the boy in a chaotic encounter, a guilt-ridden Jackson flees to Mexico on his trustee horse Sundance. Jimenez's character pursues him. So does a Texas Ranger (George Lopez in a deadpan but compassionate performance). Most of the movie deals with Jackson's encounters with Mexicans who feed him, shelter him and teach him that they're people, too. The movie invites us to consider questions about forgiveness and accountability (fair enough) but a persistent haze of idealization undermines credibility and creates a feeling that most of what we're seeing has been pre-programmed to deliver a message.