Standy By Me

Rob Reiner directs this adaptation of a Stephen King novella called “The Body.” Everybody seems to love this movie, and with good reason: it’s a touching story about four 12-year-old boys in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, in 1959. They’re at that lovely age of boyhood where girls haven’t entered the consciousness (not fully anyway), and they’re more interested in having adventures with each other than anything else in the world. These four, played by Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell, are particularly lucky children because their parents basically ignore them, thus freeing them to embark on a 20-mile hike along a railroad track, searching for the body of a missing boy. (They’re of course very unlucky in that they’re not particularly loved, but the movie uses this to its advantage to manipulate us constantly.)

It’s frustrating to feel such love for this movie, yet be nagged by the gnawing suspicion that it’s a total manipulation. Perhaps if we did not learn that one of the characters later dies tragically as an adult, the movie’s evocative depictions of childhood nostalgia and innocence wouldn’t feel so calculated. But make no bones about it: this movie is calculated. It’s just so well-done that it’s hard not to be emotionally affected. Stand By Me is genuinely enjoyable entertainment, and yet it’s somehow wickedly aware of what it’s doing to the audience.

What feels authentic are the performances, especially of River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton. Phoenix is a natural actor, channeling such powerful emotions at such a young age, and his tragic early death at the age of 23 made him a contemporary James Dean figure, enshrined in cult status. Oh that he could still be with us today, even if it meant the descent into mediocrity that befell all three of his co-stars.

Catching Up: Five Capsule Reviews

Below, you will find capsule reviews of some of the movies I neglected to write about this year. Most if not all of them are now available to rent or stream somewhere. In some cases, these are movies I felt conflicted about and as such struggled to find the words to describe them.

The Assassin. The most beautifully soporific movie experience of 2015. It’s a stunningly gorgeous picture you could hang in an art gallery, but make sure the seats are hard and uncomfortable, or the audience may find that it puts them to sleep. The director, Hou Hsaiao-Hsien, has every detail in place in recreating an 8th-century Chinese village (during the Tang Dynasty) where the people are beset by the coming assassin who’s sworn to kill her brother, one of the residents. There’s a gorgeous dance sequence, and it’s fun to behold all the little trinkets and bowls and other objects that populate this movie, but the film plods along with such deliberate languor that it feels like a punishment. Even the martial arts sequences, though well-choreographed, fail to breathe any life into The Assassin.

Clouds of Sils Maria. A slow-moving, very well-acted, beautifully made, but ultimately dull film about the emotional crisis of a respected film and stage actress named Maria Enders, played by Juliette Binoche. Enders is en route to Switzerland with her personal assistant (played by Kristin Stewart) when she learns that her mentor, a writer-director who put her on the map 20 years ago, has died. Maria is distraught, and rendered even more fragile when she’s faced with the possibility of doing a sequel to the original film, playing her character 20 years older and playing opposite a hot new actress (Chloe Grace Moretz). Binoche is terrific, and the film has a lot to say about fame and aging and relationships. But despite the great skill of director Olivier Assayas, Clouds of Sils Maria is too stilted. When Bette Davis played an actress having a nervous breakdown in All About Eve, it was delightfully entertaining. Sils Maria feels enervated. And Kristen Stewart, who’s earned some recognition for her performance, still hasn’t found any emotions to convey other than annoyance. 

Creed. I found myself enjoying this Rocky reboot despite the fact that I hate boxing movies and have never seen a single Rocky picture. Sylvester Stallone is surprisingly good, now regulated to the position of trainer. (Stallone carries himself with gracious wit; his performance is surprisingly subtle and endearing.) The trainee is Adonis “Donnie” Creed, son of Balboa’s rival-friend Apollo. Donnie is played by Michael B. Jordan, who carries the picture well. The movie isn’t particularly revolutionary, but it hits all the right beats, and director Ryan Coogler succeeds in making us care about the stakes. That’s more than I usually get out of a boxing movie. With Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad (who gets too little screen time as Donnie’s adopted mother), and Tony Bellew as Donnie’s rival.

Maps to the Stars. Probably the craziest movie I saw all year, starring Julianne Moore as the anti-Sils Maria Hollywood-diva-having-a-nervous-breakdown. She plays a wretched yet fragile actress whose personal assistant (Mia Wasikowska) is insane and obsessive, and once tried to kill her brother by setting their house on fire. (The assistant has some kind of psychological "connection" to her brother than drives her obsession.) This is David Cronenberg’s version of Birdman with more than a bit of David Lynch thrown in for good measure. Maps to the Stars is disturbing and weird and unsettling, and it may actually be my favorite Cronenberg movie in recent memory. But it’s not for everyone, especially when someone gets beaten to death with an Academy Award statuette. With John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, Sarah Gadon, and Elijah Bird.

The Wolfpack. A strange, at times mesmerizing, but flawed documentary about a Peruvian recluse, his American wife, and their seven children (six boys and a girl) living in isolation in their Lower East Side apartment. The director, Crystal Moselle, inadvertently discovered the boys on one of their rare outings, and became fascinated with them. Despite having almost no interactions with the outside world, the boys developed a kind of social language based on the movies they voraciously watched and then imitated. The boys are tall and skinny with long black hair, and they dress like the thugs in Reservoir Dogs. The Wolfpack is both a disturbing movie about neglect and a strangely hopeful movie about the power of movies, but Moselle’s fascination with her subject keeps her too close to the material. The movie ignores some pretty big questions about the family’s less-than-healthy existence, and left me feeling distant rather than invested. 

Chi-raq

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Spike Lee’s latest joint, Chi-Raq, the most exuberant, audacious, urgent film I’ve seen all year. Lee’s films haven’t always charmed me, despite his consistently strong work as a stylist and a social commentator. Perhaps part of the problem is that I’ve never seen them in the moment, until now. Chi-Raq is a modern-day riff on the Greek play Lysistrata, by Aristophanes. With rhyme and verse and music, Lee dramatizes the very real pain and violence rampant in the streets of Chicago, glibly renamed Chi-Raq by residents who live in their own version of terrorism right here on American soil. Spike Lee goes all in with Chi-Raq.

This film is a great big stick of dynamite, destined to offend as many people as possible; it’s both a comedy and a tragedy, a musical, a manifesto, a battle cry, and a lament. The “star” of the film (there are many characters that might share this title) is Lysistrata, played by the radiant Teyonah Parris, girlfriend of an up-and-coming hip hop artist who calls himself Chi-Raq, but without the irony. He embraces the violence, and is one of the gang leaders who live and die by the gun. Lysistrata refuses to see past the façade of fame and glory and music, until several violent attacks hit too close to home. Then she meets Miss Helen, a neighbor who spends most of her time reading. She’s a self-contained social activist just waiting for circumstances to unleash her and call her to action. Miss Helen convinces Lysistrata to do something about the violence, and Lysistrata unites the women in her community, convincing them to go on a sex strike. “No peace, no piece” is their motto, and their decision erupts across the globe as women from every tongue join in the fight against violence by denying sex to their men.

Along the way, we get Samuel L. Jackson, spruced up in colorful suits and a hat, as our emcee, narrating the film with his usual wink-and-a-smile charm and his brash, commanding presence. And we get John Cusack in an unlikely but powerful performance as a white minister of a black church, serving the community he grew up in. Cusack delivers an intense monologue-sermon-eulogy during a funeral for a 7-year-old girl. (She was killed in the midst of a recent episode of gunplay between gangs.) Cusack’s sermon is at times a grand-standing lecture on the statistics of gang violence and racial injustice, at times a riling call to action. Lee is deliberately ambiguous here: The emotionally-driven service is by turns a show-stopper and a place to mourn out in the open, in a community. 

Chi-Raq is in many ways a throwback to some of the more influential work of Luis Bunuel and Jean-Luc Godard. In Weekend (an insufferable movie), Godard often pointed the camera at people so they could rant about the evils of capitalism and other assorted topics. Lee uses his camera similarly. Chi-Raq is a really good rant of a movie, but it's more than that. In Chi-Raq, these moments of sermonizing are just part of this movie’s garish, delightful, indignant brio. Lee celebrates the various possibilities of movies, never holding his movie hostage to the constraints of realism or plotting. Some may call it uneven—and there are moments when the film doesn’t totally hang together—but Chi-Raq is ultimately a masterful piece of filmmaking. It evokes extreme emotions, and the performances are big and powerful and in your face.

Angela Bassett's performance emerges as possibly the best in a slew of standout performances. Bassett has such power in her voice, and she commands the screen in every scene she's in. And Teyonah Parris is like a gift from the gods. She's a stunning beauty, she's witty, and like Angela Bassett, she can part the seas with a word or a look. 

Of course, Chi-Raq isn’t for everybody, but it should be. The film's brash discussion of sexual politics and its complicated dissection of racism in America is inflammatory, but that's kind of the point. Moreover, Spike Lee doesn't enshrine his movie in moral rectitude. He's not here to play by the rules or tow any lines, which is why Chi-Raq is a gaudy, messy, blistering movie. And it's alive. So, so alive. Those who criticize Spike Lee for turning the movie into a farce in the second half are missing the point (and missing a bold and wonderful move of a talented director). The mark of a great movie is that it can hold an array of emotional experiences without losing its footing, without compromising its characters or its values. And moreover, that it takes chances where conventional movies play it safe. Chi-Raq blissfully flies too close to the sun, and what a beautiful flight it is.

Love & Mercy

Filmmakers take note: Love & Mercy is the way biopics should be made. This study of Brian Wilson, the often unheralded genius behind the unique sound of The Beach Boys, is an exuberant movie about the creative process. It’s not a happy movie—Brian Wilson lived a troubled life from the 1960s to the 1980s (the movie jumps back and forth between the two periods, sort of the beginning and the end of a particularly nightmarish chapter in Wilson’s life)—but it left me feeling giddy about how good movies can be when everything goes right. There’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to tell the sweeping history of a person’s life, but it can often turn a movie into a deadly experience. Director Bill Pohlad rightly zeroes in on a particular chapter and a particular struggle for Brian Wilson, and shapes those moments into a compelling story that feels wonderfully complete and satisfying.

Paul Dano and John Cusack share the role of Brian Wilson. Dano, with his subdued mad-genius quality, is perfect as the Brian Wilson of the 1960s, the guy who had a creative impulse he could not turn off, one which demanded that he stretch outside the admittedly lucrative formula that had served The Beach Boys so well in the first five years of their career. Cusack adds a kind of sharpened depth to the character of Brian Wilson, playing him in the late 80s, when he’s been under the dubious care of an abusive doctor who’s over-medicating him for his schizophrenia.

Love & Mercy achieves a thrilling magnificence during the scenes of Brian Wilson in the recording studio, trying to make Pet Sounds (the 1966 commercially unsuccessful, critical darling that many consider The Beach Boys’ masterpiece) while the rest of the Boys are on tour in Japan. Wilson brings in the Wrecking Crew (the uncredited studio musicians who did most of the instrumentation on The Beach Boys’ albums, as well as a multitude of other records made in the 50s and 60s), and they hammer out the unusual, quirky, rich, vibrant material that, even today, is astonishing.

When I went back and listened to Pet Sounds last fall (after suddenly deciding I wanted to get back into The Beach Boys), I was struck by how evocative this record is. It is the work of someone who’s had his heart broken and then put back together again. It is the work of someone oppressively weighed down by a creative impulse to transcend the glistening, blissfully happy pop ditties from the previous Beach Boys records. And the beautiful thing is, nothing about Pet Sounds or the film Love & Mercy diminishes those great, pure Beach Boys pop songs. If anything, these two pieces deepen that music. When we hear something like “California Girls” or “Surfin’ USA,” we’re hearing the giddy, innocent incantations of an endless summer. The music on Pet Sounds is what happens when that summer does finally end, and the reality of life smacks that previously cherry idealism in the face.

The casting in Love & Mercy is pretty brilliant, too. Not just the casting of Dano and Cusack, who are both terrific and moving in their own distinct ways, but also that of Elizabeth Banks and the guys playing Dennis and Carl Wilson and Mike Love and Al Jardine (Kenny Wormald, Brett Davern, Jake Abel, and Graham Rogers, respectively). Banks plays Melinda Ledbetter, Brian's eventual second wife and the woman who helped rescue Wilson from the clutches of the nutty, controlling Dr. Landy, played to almost too-brilliant perfection by Paul Giamatti. He’s as vile and hate-worthy as the awful jazz conductor in Whiplash played by J.K. Simmons. That kind of voluminous asshole is almost too easy for guys like Giamatti. So you admire it, sure, but you also have to keep in mind the much more challenging subtlety of Banks’s performance, or Dano's or Cusack's. When Dr. Landy is screaming at Melinda through an office door, she just stands there with a smile of superiority, knowing she has gotten him to reveal his true, ugly colors. “Are you okay?” her boss asks, after Landy storms out of the office. “What are you going to do now?” She responds: “I’m going to sell some cars.” What a moment.

Pohlad also keeps a healthy perspective on The Beach Boys’ music and what it represents. There’s a knowing humor throughout the film that their music—especially the early stuff—represented a kind of square, all-American, blissfully-ignorant-of-world-events mindset. There's also the element of savvy, blatantly false marketing attached to the Beach Boys' image. Dennis was the only good-looking Beach Boy. (The rest of them were chubby or balding or just generally not the hunky blond sex idols they were purported to be.) Dennis was also the only one of them who actually surfed. Dennis Wilson was the Beach Boy who actually lived the life of a Beach Boy, only he eschewed the all-American squareness of their early songs for the LSD and sexual liberation that the later half of the 60s provided him so readily. In the movie, Mike Love—or maybe it was Carl—remarks, “Real surfers don’t even like our music!” Brian Wilson never actually surfed until 1976, and only then out of obligation for a piece of reporting being done on him. But even when some of The Beach Boys’ music is pure fluff, it’s incredibly well-done fluff, and those harmonies are heavenly. Love & Mercy gets this complexity: it honors the beauty of music that is essentially pop. It understands that pop music can be complex, and that this music and these lives mattered. This is a story worth telling.

Written by Michael Alan Lerner and Oren Moverman. Based somewhat on the book Heroes and Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys, by Steven Gaines. 

Grand Piano

Grand Piano is a simple, elegant little thriller about a celebrated classical pianist named Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) who is terrorized by a madman (John Cusack) when he makes a comeback five years after freezing on stage. The hot young musician sits down at the piano before a packed house and unfolds his sheet music only to discover a threat: "Play one wrong note and you die." Soon there are more directions via an ear-piece that's been planted for Tom. The taunting would-be killer is after something (I won't reveal what), and is willing to murder Tom in front of the entire audience to get it. He also threatens the life of Tom's wife, herself a famous singer, who's sitting in one of the boxes during the show.

There's not much to Grand Piano, which is why I enjoyed it. The director, Eugenio Mira, exhibits the same kind of lush, sensationalistic style as Brian De Palma did in the 70s and 80s. Mira is obviously happy to show us a good time without any self-serious subtext. I don't want to suggest that we completely ditch character development and depth in movies, but it's certainly a welcome sight when a film comes along that just wants to be a simple thriller. And it's also true that the film is deceptively simple: Wood gives a credible performance, both as a brilliant musician and as a tormented one. But viewers may be disappointed with Grand Piano just because of its simplicity. We're so used to big plot twists and complicated explanations for the villain's motive that I began anticipating surprise endings myself. But thankfully, Grand Piano knows when to quit, and also knows not to pander to the expectations of the audience. It's much better than that.

Mira's camera--the cinematography is by Unax Mendía--makes this an exciting, visually fluid film, never jerky or ADD the way so many films are these days, but certainly not stagnant, as though this were a real concert being filmed for posterity. The camera swirls around the lavish concert hall, giving us a sense of tense, nail-biting pleasure as we watch poor Elijah Wood playing as though his life depended upon it. (And indeed it does.) The music is lovely and intensifies the film, and the voice of the increasingly hostile John Cusack pounds away at Selznick, quickly sounding like the inner-critic of any nervous performer, shouting myriad accusations of incompetence and prophesies of impending failure. It's in moments like these--where what's happening on screen becomes analogous with more internal artistic struggles--that Grand Piano really succeeds.

With Kerry Bishé as Tom's wife, Alex Winter as Cusack's henchman, and Tamsin Egerton and Allen Leech as a befuddled friend attending the concert.

The Butler

Surely we all know that the words "inspired by a true story" are themselves a kind of fiction when it comes to the movies. And yet many of us take things in movies as though they were courtroom documents, or "as trustworthy as the world almanac," to quote Bette Davis's character in All About Eve. Movies, of course, are master manipulators. That's one of their basic charms, and I generally don't hold their fudging against them in the slightest. But Hollywood's penchant for revising history does mean that viewers have to be able to separate fact from fiction, and it's rather bewildering that some people continue to accept movies as reliable sources. When it comes to details, they usually aren't. They're product designed to elicit emotions from our hearts and minds and money from our wallets. But in terms of getting the mood of a period and having it register in our minds, movies can be quite powerful and accurate. It is in this way that I think The Butler generally succeeds, especially where it lacks in getting certain details right. (This is to say that the screenwriters of The Butler deliberately altered things for their own dramatic purposes; not that they were bad historians.)

The Butler is hugely entertaining for what it is: a big movie with big emotions that tells a sweeping narrative of the last fifty years of American public life, looking specifically at the Civil Rights movement and a humble butler who serves seven U.S. presidents. His name in the movie is Cecil Gaines (the real man was named Eugene Allen), and he's played by Forest Whitaker. Whitaker plays Cecil with grace and patience. Enough grace and patience that his son sort of rebels, joining with the ranks of Martin Luther King and then later the Black Panthers because he feels that immediate action--not quiet reserve--is needed to facilitate cultural change.

Just a few mythbusters and then I'll move away from my "based on a true story" rant. Eugene Allen had one son, not two, and his son was neither a civil rights activist like the elder son in the movie nor a Vietnam vet like the younger one. Allen also started working at the Whitehouse earlier than the movie claims (but not as a butler, and not as head butler until 1981, five years before his retirement in 1986, which is one of the few correct claims the movie makes.) One of the most calculating changes that the filmmakers make comes in the son, Louis, who happens to be present during virtually every significant moment in the Civil Rights movement, including the Freedom Riders bus ride through Alabama (the one where they're attacked by a seething mob of KKK and non-KKK racist nutjobs) and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Then he even becomes a Black Panther (briefly). It seemed too Forrest Gump-ish to me. (Forrest, you remember, seemed to witness an incredulous number of cultural and historical moments.)

The film very obviously tries to juxtapose Cecil Gaines--who does what is expected of him very well, and considers this a subtle contribution to the march for equality--and his son Louis--who's fed up with being subservient to snooty white racists and wants change. It allows the movie to have some kick to it, even if this kind of plotting feels too convenient. Moreover, the differences between the two men really put Forest Whitaker in the background of his own movie. His is not the face I see as I think about The Butler. I see Louis, I see the cartoonish representations of the U.S. Presidents (from Eisenhower to Reagan, but skipping Ford and Carter), and I see Oprah.  (There is, however, real passion and command inside of Forest Whitaker, and he's able to get some of that out in the second half of the movie.) Given the film's colorful array of characters, it's really an unfair disadvantage.

Those presidents are something else. Robin Williams plays Eisenhower; James Marsden, JFK; Liev Schreiber, LBJ, John Cusack, Nixon; and Alan Rickman, Reagan. (Jane Fonda also makes a cameo appearance as Nancy Reagan.) They're quite an impressive group of actors, and even if their impressions don't always work, they're fascinatingly gauche and/or dead-on. Marsden is surprisingly good as JFK; Rickman really nails Reagan; and Cusack is creepily off-kilter yet somehow right as Nixon. (There's also the added pleasure of seeing LBJ scream at his subjects while on the toilet, with the bathroom door wide open.)

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the performance of Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines, Cecil's devoted wife. Oprah's performance is wonderful, and makes you wish she did more movies. Gloria is a boozing but still loving wife, and Oprah's performance brings a lot of humor to the movie that it desperately needs. The Butler isn't a downer (although it's infuriating at times to see how awful black people were treated at this time, and may still be treated today in certain circles), but it is more than a bit self-important. Oprah, who often comes off as self-important when she's giving away free cars to every person in her audience, here appears grounded and real in a way that is vital to the success of this movie. She's also a great balance to the measured, polite character of Cecil. Gloria doesn't care about pleasing people. Yet she's not brash or obnoxious, and her support of her husband is quite touching at times.

Viewers are likely to walk away from The Butler with a sugar-coated lie in their heads. Now that we've got a black president, it's all good. Racism against black people in America is over. (The movie doesn't do anything to counter this.) And what's more, The Butler has spent two hours showing us the general failings of U.S. presidents, only to rejoice in a kind of enchanted, unrealistic way at the election of a black one. President Obama's election was a big deal, of course, in a symbolic way, but the reality of being a president is a lot more complicated and unflattering for anyone who's tasked with the job. (And for the record, it's always been this way. Presidents rarely get something done quickly, for better or worse.) The Butler isn't interested in showing us that. I'm content with the movie as it is, but I worry that some of its sloppiness will eventually be used in classrooms as pure fact.

Sixteen Candles

For my first review of 2012, I wanted to revisit one of my favorite 80s movies, Sixteen Candles (1984). It's basically Cinderella turned into an 80s high school melodrama. The movie is utterly unreal, and that's where its charm lies. Molly Ringwald plays Samantha, a girl who exists in the middle--she's not popular, but she's also not unpopular. The movie takes place over a 24-hour period, wherein Samantha's entire family forgets her sweet 16, and she falls for the high school prom king, Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), who's already dating the "perfect" girl (Haviland Morris).

In addition to her own personal problems, Samantha must deal with the advances of a determined geek named Ted (Anthony Michael Hall), who hides his insecurities behind a facade of mock-macho-self-aggrandizement. Hall's performance is terrific, and so is Ringwald's. Writer-director John Hughes had an incredible talent for casting young actors and eliciting believable performances from them that deepened the characters and made them endearing to the audience. So, while Sixteen Candles is a completely unreal fairy tale of a movie, its characters feel nuanced. They're fleshed out beyond their stereotypes, and become people you care about.

The humor is at times unsustained, but overall Sixteen Candles feels like a wonderfully fun late night: it breezes along without taking itself too seriously (like Hughes's follow-up, The Breakfast Club, did). Movies that take place in virtually 24 hours must have a vitality to them in order to be convincing. Sixteen Candles works, despite its shortcomings. 

Paul Dooley co-stars as Samantha's dad. He's probably my favorite onscreen dad because of his performances in this movie and in Breaking Away. With Gedde Watanabe, Carlin Glynn, John Cusack, Justin Henry, Edward Andrews, Billie Bird, Max Showalter, Carole Cook, Liane Curtis, Blanche Baker, Joan Cusack, Jami Gertz.

Hot Tub Time Machine

As someone with a fondness for all things 80s, the premise of Hot Tub Time Machine appealed to me: three middle-aged losers (John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry), in an effort to relive their glory days, take off to a ski resort they visited in 1986. Time has not been kind to them or the resort, which is now a dilapidated relic bearing only a faint reminder of happier, more irresponsible days a quarter of a century earlier. Then something strange happens with the help of a hot tub that is apparently a time portal, and the guys (along with Cusack's nerdy 20-year-old nephew) are transported back to that fateful weekend of 1986. The mirror reveals that their youthful appearances have returned (except for the nephew, who technically isn't even born yet). Okay, I laughed out loud a lot during this retro comedy, but as I think back with a more critical mindset, I'm struck by the fact that much of the movie spends its time documenting arguments where Corddry, the biggest loser of the group, makes himself look less and less credible as a human being. Cusack, who is the most recognizable face among the main characters (as well as the only one to have been acting in the 80s), is expected to carry the film but his character isn't anymore well-defined than the others. Hot Tub is typical of today's comedy: it takes refuge in its pop culture references, and forgets that having a compelling and ironic story of its own is the heart of any movie, regardless of the genre. Chevy Chase is wasted in a stupid role as  a mysterious repairman who seems to be aware of the group's time traveling woes, and talks in pseudo-Buddhist jargon (not unlike his character in Caddyshack). Crispin Glover (he played Michael J. Fox's dad in the Back to the Future movies) has one of the funniest parts, as a bellman whose arm--missing in 2010 but intact in 1986--provides a running gag. ★½