THE GOODBYE GIRL

45 years and 4 months.

No, that's not how long we've all been sheltering in place. It's the length of time I've been writing for Good Times. To put it in perspective, my very first movie review (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) was published in GT in October, 1975. Which was a year and a half before I even met my Art Boy, in the spring of 1977.

We moved in together in February, 1978, and got married 7 1/2 months later. We were together for 40 years, 'til death us did part.

That was almost three years ago. And before, during, and after all that time together, I've been writing weekly film reviews for Good Times.

Until the Attack Of COVID-19, in March of 2020, when my career came to a screeching halt. I haven't set foot inside a movie theater since March 13 of last year, about four days before they all shut down.

Talk about an identity crisis!

 

I was a fresh-faced 23-year-old just out of UCSC, in my embroidered hippie overalls, when I started my stint at GT. I figured going to the movies would be a fun way to make my rent until I had to go get an actual job. (Historical note: Rents were a lot cheaper in those days.)

On the face of it, I had zero qualifications for this job. I wasn't a film scholar, had never even taken a journalism class. But I'd spent my entire childhood watching old movies on TV with my mom. In those days, you couldn't just dial up something on demand; you had to be prepared to stay up to 1 AM on a Saturday night, for instance, for the weekly movie classics on The Fabulous 52, in L. A., which began at 11:15 PM, right after the news. My mom popped the corn, and my night-owl brothers and I would settle in.

For a couple of years, the series MGM Classics played every Sunday afternoon in syndication, and another station (possibly an early PBS channel) played classic foreign movies with subtitles. Musicals, monster movies, Errol Flynn swashbucklers, even cheesy Italian gladiator movies, my mom's appetite was inexhaustible, and we watched them all!

The rest was on-the-job training. Fortunately, I was inspired by how amazingly diverse the Santa Cruz movie scene was in those days. Besides mainstream movies at the chain theaters, there was the original single-screen Nickelodeon, and the repertory-style Sash Mill Cinema for art house fare, the plucky, independently-owned Capitola Theater (which persisted in showing double-features with cartoons, and 15-cent M&Ms, well into the '80s), a thriving drive-in, even a venue for X-rated "adult" movies at the old Cinema Soquel.

So, ten years after my first byline at GT, I was still at it. Back then, I used to joke that I'd been with the paper so long, people meeting me for the first time expected me to be 80 years old.

Once, in the mid-'90s, a young writer who had recently joined our editorial pool asked around to find out how he could get some film review assignments. Somebody told him, "Lisa Jensen would have to die." (He told me this story later, and we both laughed. I never did find out which colleague made that pronouncement.)

When Siskel and Ebert were all the rage, I appeared on a similar movie review program with fellow critic, Rick Chatenever, then at the Sentinel, on local TV station KRUZ. One early evening, as I emerged from a screening at a downtown theater and started walking past the folks lined up for the next show, an older woman I didn't personally know broke into a merry grin as I went by. "It's our movie girl!" she cried.

During a few flush years, I wrote two reviews a week, and sometimes three, if this or that indulgent editor could figure out how to lay them all out on the same page. For a couple of years, early in the Millennium, when Greg Archer was our fearless leader, I also wrote a bi-weekly opinion column about any damn thing I wanted, which I loved.

True, there have been times when I flirted with the possibility of retiring from the fray. The closest I came was after my first novel was published, back in 2001. The dangling carrot of writing fiction full-time, without having to stop and expend brain cells on a movie review every week, was tempting. After all, Art Boy had given up the comic book store to pursue art full-time, and, boy was he loving it! Still, it's just as well that I didn't follow that carrot off a cliff, since it took another 13 years to get my next novel published!

Marquee de Sad: Not coming soon

 

But now that I actually am 80 years old, I find myself at a crossroads. COVID-19 has wrought havoc in all facets of the movie business: productions have been halted, release dates postponed, and movie theaters closed. New movies are being released directly into the privacy of viewers' homes, as they shelter in place. It was almost a scandal when last spring's big-ticket releases, like Disney's live-action Mulan and Christopher Nolan's mind-bending Tenet, finally went direct to streaming platforms after postponing their release dates for months. (Tenet actually played in cautiously-reopened downtown theaters for about 15 minutes until they had to shut down again.) By the time Wonder Woman 1984 came out at Christmas, direct-to-streaming had become (yet another) new normal.

And this week comes the news that the Cinema 9 in downtown Santa Cruz, smack in the middle of Pacific Avenue, is now closed for good. It has not yet been officially confirmed, but word is that Regal Cinemas, the parent chain that operates it, is pulling out; employees have been given notice, while the company reportedly is offering to transfer them to other Regal theaters. Of course, most other Regal theaters nationwide have also been shut down since October, but that the company may be abandoning the Santa Cruz venue entirely has an extra ominous ring of finality to it.

The venerable Nick and Del Mar downtown, as well as the Cinelux theaters at 41st Avenue and in Scotts Valley, also remain dark, although their websites maintain that their closures are only temporary. So far.

But after a year-plus on hiatus, what will the future of movie theaters even look like? Millennials are leery of anything that takes them out of their comfort zones, like driving (hence Google buses and Uber). They may have not yet developed the habit of congregating with their fellow humans in a public space with a big screen; they’d just as soon watch movies on their phones. 

Meanwhile, I know plenty of people in my age group (the Stone Age) who have long since given up movies in public for Netflix, et al, in the privacy of their own living rooms. Especially now that what used to be called "first-run" movies are instantly available on the home screen.

I volunteered to review movies going straight to streaming, although it seems a little superfluous to review a movie that's already beaming directly into your home. Who needs my opinion? If you don't like it, switch the channel!

But Good Times is more concerned with supporting and promoting local businesses that are still open to some degree, and available to our local readership, like restaurants, bookstores, and farmers' markets.

So is this my cue to exit, stage left?

After all these years, I had hoped to be able to leave Good Times on my own terms. But now it seems that decision is mostly out of my hands.

We can't know what the future will bring. Once we're all vaccinated, maybe movie theaters will stage a miraculous comeback. Maybe I'll still dabble in the occasional review, if there's something I really don't want you to miss. Maybe I'll finally have new stuff to post on my Rotten Tomatoes page!

But in the meantime, treasured readers, know this: It has been my very great pleasure to be your movie girl for all these years. This community of dedicated, opinionated, and unrepentant movie fans means the world to me.

Thanks for all your support, your encouragement, and your letters, even when you disagreed with me. My favorite, in the very early days, was the reader who objected to "the jejune jottings of Ms. Jensen." Fair enough — you can't get much more jejune than age 23! (I got better — I hope.)

But mostly, as always, thanks for reading. 

 (Top: Good Times promo, ca 1977)

(Cinema 9 photo by Shmuel Thaler, Santa Cruz Sentinel)
 

DICKENSIAN RHAPSODY

Diverse cast, soaring spirit, fuel joyous 'Personal History of David Copperfield'

 

Anglo-Indian actor Dev Patel may not be the most obvious choice to play David Copperfield, one of Charles Dickens' most beloved and most autobiographical heroes. But casting the popular Patel is but one of many inspired and audacious choices made by Armando Iannucci in his smart and highly entertaining adaptation, The Personal History of David Copperfield.

 

Director Iannucci and his co-scenarist and frequent writing partner, Simon Blackwell, are best known for sly political satires The Death of Stalin, and TV's Veep, created by Iannucci. In their hands, Dickens' classic coming-of-age tale gets and energizing makeover that is absolutely true to this spirit of the novel. While unapologetically diverse in its casting, it never feels unduly PC, and is often brilliant in the originality of its storytelling.

 

Patel as Copperfield: Noteworthy

 The movie is framed as a theatrical recitation by acclaimed author Copperfield. (A nod to the kinds of public readings Dickens himself staged for his rapt admirers throughout his career.) As he narrates his life story, beginning with his birth, it unfolds onscreen, with the adult David popping up in the shot with commentary— one of the movie's many charmingly surreal touches.

 

David's idyllic childhood with his loving young widowed mother ends abruptly when she marries grim Murdstone, who arrives with his equally sour sister (an unrecognizable Gwendoline Christie). The spirited child David (Jairaj Varsani) is banished to London to work in a grimy factory. He's a teenager (now played by Patel) when he learns his mother has died, and walks all the way to Dover to throw himself on the mercy of his only relative, the formidable Aunt Betsey Trotwood (a delightful Tilda Swinton.)

 

Swinton, Patel, Laurie, Eleazar: al fresco

 Peter Capaldi is droll and wistfully philosophical as the impecunious Micawber, and Hugh Laurie is wonderful as the mostly befuddled but sometimes gently insightful Mr. Dick, Aunt Betsey's distant relation. He and David share a love of writing things down (David obsessively records his life in notes and sketches), giving the filmmakers ample opportunity to weave Dickens' delicious prose into the fabric of the movie. Ben Whishaw is unctuously oozy as conniving Uriah Heep, although there's not enough time to convey the full menace of his crimes. Aneurin Barnard is impressively grand as Steerforth, David's elitist schoolfellow, but he seems more of a poseur than genuinely charismatic; David's attachment to him never quite feels earned.

 

Meanwhile, the narrative strides boldly forward through Dickens' busy plot, hitting most of its emotional  high notes, yet boisterously funny throughout. Quick and clever editing keeps the pictures moving with smooth dissolves and ingenious expositions. When David falls instantly in love with porcelain, childlike Dora (Morfydd Clark), daughter of the lawyer who employs him, he sees her face painted on a pub sign in the street, and her blonde curls adorning a passing cart driver. To keep the narrative moving, the filmmakers even have the nerve to write out a key character, at her request. ("I really don't fit in.") I doubt if Dickens would approve, but it's a smart way to keep the movie's tone consistent and focused.

 

The movie looks terrific, from teeming London streets to the fresh, open countryside to the seaside. Motherly Peggotty (Daisy May Cooper), David's former nurse, lives with her family under the upturned hull of a boat on the beach at Yarmouth. (A magical place vividly realized by production designer Cristina Casali.) In addition to the Micawbers, Aunt Betsey and Mr. Dick, David's surrogate family includes his aunt's tippling but well-meaning solicitor, Whitfield (Benedict Wong), and his daughter, Agnes (played with good-humored warmth by Rosalind Eleazar). 

 

Patel plays David with the right balance of open-hearted exuberance and dawning maturity. The non-traditional casting also highlights the story's core question of identity. David earns many nicknames on his journey through life — Davy, Trot, Daisy, Doady — which are more expressions of who others need him to be than who he actually is. It's a nifty little victory when this David finally discards his nicknames to proclaim himself simply David Copperfield— the hero (at last) of his own life.

 

BETA BOY

"We could've written this!"

This refrain was often heard in our kitchen (usually over a glass of bubbly) when James and I came home after a movie and started analyzing where it had gone wrong.

Maybe there was a specific turning point in the narrative that shifted the whole story in the wrong direction. Maybe a character did something so inexplicably out-of-character that the whole thing lost its credibility.

But sometimes, as we went over plot points, themes and epiphanies, it seemed like the scriptwriter simply had not made the best use of all the elements that had already been set up and established in the storyline.

If this character had done this or that in the first quarter of the movie, we reasoned, then this exposition in the third quarter would make a lot more sense. Or this action that feels completely arbitrary might have been salvaged if it was done by a different character or from a different motivation. We often found everything needed to make the story work right there in its narrative bones, but it just hadn't been put together correctly.

After we'd figured out where it had gone wrong, and worked out the fix that could have saved it, it was time to clink those glasses. "Hey, we could've written this!"

I miss those critical download sessions, especially now that I'm grappling with my own busy fictional narrative that needs to be shaped into a coherent story. After my 187 years in journalism, I can still pretty much figure out what does or doesn't work in a movie. But I'm all at sea confronted with the unwieldy text of my own next book.

Among so many other metaphorical hats that my Art Boy wore around here, he was also my most trusted beta reader. If he didn't understand a plot point, even after the long-winded explanation in Chapter 21, or he questioned why a character said or did something peculiar, and my only defense was "because the author said so," I knew it was time to go back to the keyboard.

It was also at his urging that I started reading early drafts of my manuscripts out loud to him. Okay, he just didn't want to have to slog through all those pages in a box, himself, but it turned out to be great for me. If a word or sentence or passage felt clumsy in the mouth, or sounded tinny out loud, even to me, then out it went. Or, at least, it had to be finessed.

We were partners in my literary adventures, just like we were partners in everything else. Flying solo into new terrain still feels weird to me, but I just have to start viewing my own work through the lens of James' logical common sense and healthy skepticism.

Think of all those movies we saved, I tell myself.

We can write this!


(Top: A Book Is a Wondrous Thing, by James Aschbacher)

MAIN STREAM MOVIES

Regular readers will note that I prefer watching movies on a gigantic screen, the way God intended. In the future, no doubt, movies will be digitally implanted directly into our lobes, but at this historical moment, we are somewhere in-between. Move theaters are closed thanks to COVID-19, so we're stuck watching movies on our home screens. With a zillion options, some are more worthy than others, but here are a few titles I've notice popping up on streaming platforms that might be worth your time!

THE ASSISTANT Her new job as office assistant to a famous movie mogul ought to be a dream come true for a bright young college graduate with ambitions to produce her own movies. But it's a nightmare for the conflicted protagonist who discovers enabling her boss's sexual conquests is the unspoken part of her job description in this taut, claustrophobic and entirely effective drama from filmmaker Kitty Green. The focus of her story is not on predators or their victims, but on the system of silence and complicity that allows such misconduct to happen. Julia Garner has the pale, porcelain face of a Renaissance angel, darkening with visceral anxiety over the course of her workday. (R) 87 minutes. (***) (2020) (Amazon Prime)

THE HANDMAIDEN It may seem like an odd collaboration: bad-boy Korean filmmaker Chan-wook Park, famed for the violent male revenge melodrama Oldboy, and British author Sarah Waters, whose femme-centric erotic thrillers are set in the Dickensian underworld of Victorian London. But it turns out to be a surprisingly happy match-up in Park's Asian riff on Waters' novel Fingersmith. Filmmaker and source material are both edgy in complementary ways. Gorgeously shot and composed, audacious, and full of witty visual asides, it's a sly entertainment of sex, larceny, deception, double-crosses, and female liberation. (R) 144 minutes. In Korean and Japanese with English subtitles. (***1/2) (2016) (Amazon Prime)

THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO This first feature from director Joe Talbot is remarkably assured and absorbing meditation on the mythology of the city's fabled past while its characters — two young black men born and raised in the city — reckon with the uncertainty of its present. As a semi-autobiographical version of himself, Jimmie Fails' character is obsessed with a stately Victorian-style house built by his grandfather that his family no longer possesses. Jonathan Majors offers poignant support as his best friend in this dreamy, splendidly composed mood piece about the search for home and identity in the rapidly evolving city they love. (R) 120 minutes. (***1/2) (2019) (Amazon Prime)

MILLIONS Money doesn't grow on trees, but it does fall out of the sky in this wonderful film from the ever-surprising Danny Boyle, about the comic misadventures of two young brothers in the working-class north of England when they find a mysterious suitcase stuffed with cold cash. Little Alex Eitel is terrific as the boy whose superheroes are the Catholic saints; he's up on all their biographical stats (birth, death, martyrdom), and they keep popping up in the story to help him figure out how to use the money to do good. Boyle's fresh, kinetic filmmaking style complements a touching story that's acute, funny, sophisticated, and full of imagination. Not a kids' film per se, this is a story told from a child's perspective that beguiles viewers of all ages (****) (PG) 97 minutes. (2005) (Disney Plus)

St. Peter (Alun Armstrong) (note keys and halo) instructs Alex Eitel in Millions

SONG OF THE SEA Anyone who loves seals, ancient Celtic folklore, fairy tales or mythology will be utterly charmed by this magical Irish animated feature. Directed by Tomm Moore, whose previous film was the lovely Secret of the Kells, inspired by the famed illuminated manuscript, this Oscar-nominated fable combines traditional tales of the selkies (seals who transform into humans on land) with a stunning visual palette, and an endearing tale of a young girl and her destiny. Every hand-drawn frame of this movie is ravishing — even on a small screen! (PG) 93 minutes. (****) (2014) (Netflix)

HOLD THAT (DEAD)LINE

After 40-odd years in journalism (some of them damned odd), I respect deadlines.

It's not that I grudgingly obey them, or that I've had to coach myself to accept them. I need them. I cling to them. They are the dangling carrot that propels my life forward.

Obviously, deadlines determine when I go see a movie (remember going to the movies?) in order to get my review in the paper. Sometimes, they influence which movie I see, depending on which showtimes are more favorable to making my deadline.

My entire week is orchestrated around seeing a movie on Friday, writing my review on Saturday, and sending the finished piece to my editor by Sunday afternoon — all to make my Monday morning deadline.

The entire book-publishing industry also runs on deadlines. They exist for turning in that first draft, for each new revision, for providing front and back matter, author photos, Q&A guidelines, PR material — everything depends on each successive deadline being met in a timely manner. Miss one, and the entire infrastructure stutters to a halt.

The habit has spread to every other part of my life. I pay bills according to which due date is looming next, and plan meals around which item in the fridge is most likely to rot if ignored much longer. I'm inspired to clean house when I know visitors are coming, and dress according to whatever events are going to take me out into the public eye.

But now all that's changed. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed yet another casualty: the deadline.

Five weeks into lockdown, and my schedule is completely out the window. Movie theaters are closed and I'm taking my yoga classes on Zoom, so I'm liberated from the task of having to actually go out in public. I don't drive any more, so I'm not even shopping; kind-hearted friends are picking up my groceries and bringing them to me. Some are intrepid enough to come in the house; others do a porch drop. Most days, the only one I interact with is my cat.

Did I say "liberated?" I'm in freefall. Without deadlines, where's my motivation?

The decline was gradual. First, I stopped strapping on what I call my ID bracelets every morning, vintage Celebracelets by Faye Augustine with my book titles spelled out in tiny silver alphabet-block beads. I never used to appear in public without them, but now . . . 

Then, I stopped washing my hair every single morning, a big adjustment for someone as psycho about her hair as me. Maybe once or twice a week, if it doesn't look too hideous, I dare to let it go. Who's going to see me?

Some routines are still inviolate, in the absence of actual deadlines. I have to get dinner on the table by 7 pm in time for Jeopardy, and cleared away at least by 8:30 to have time to read before bed. Monday night is still Pizza Night, without fail — but the rest of the week, all the days tend to run together.

I don't go out, so the clothes I wear in public (you know, the ones that are still intact) stay in the closet, while my comfort outfits (sweatshirts, jeans, pom-pom slippers) get worn all day. I still wash my clothes every Saturday — even though the loads are smaller — but I'm down to washing my sheets only every other week.

I used to make jokes about Miss Havisham — until she popped up in my mirror.

Meanwhile, my living space is showing signs of — let's call it benign neglect. If those discarded slippers are littering the stairs all day, or a cobweb the size of a volleyball net is hanging from the hallway ceiling, who's going to know?

I'm starting to feel like that tree that falls in the forest. Am I still a sloth if there's no one to see me?


(Cartoon by Mick Stevens)
(Helena Bonham-Carter as Miss Havisham, Great Expectatons, 2012)

I WAKE UP STREAMING

It’s official — I’m superfluous!

With theaters shuttered (temporarily, we hope) due to the coronavirus, and no one going out to the movies, nobody needs to know my opinion of a movie they can stream from the privacy of their own couch.

It’s not like they have to pay to get in!

So my column in Good Times is suspended until further notice. If we, as a town/state/country/planet ever achieve normalcy again, I expect to be back on the job. But who knows how long that will take?

In the meantime, I encourage housebound film fans to boldly go into the archives of the product-delivery service of your choice — Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, You Tube, Viewmaster, whatever — and explore titles from over a century of vibrant cinema.

Silent films, for instance, are astonishingly creative!  Check out anything from about the turn of the last century through the 1920s, back when the pictures were first learning to move, and they were making it all up as they went along. You’ll be amazed at their ingenuity!

Then there are Errol Flynn swashbucklers, Film Noir, MGM musicals, French New Wave, Hitchcock, Fellini, the Marx Brothers; they’re all out there, just waiting to be discovered.

Be adventurous! If something doesn’t grab you in the first 20 minutes, dial up something else. There won’t be a quiz, and there isn’t anywhere else you have to be.

Me, I’ve been catching up on movies I missed the first time around. Last night it was The Greatest Showman, an utterly berserk fantasia on the imagined life if P. T. Barnum, staged like a Hollywood musical.

Famed 19th Century opera diva Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) sings a power ballad. Keala Settle as the Bearded Lady leads a chorus of Barnum’s circus sideshow attractions in an empowering Millennial-style anthem.

But, hey, in the midst of it all, there’s Hugh Jackman in the top hat and ringmaster’s outfit, singing and dancing up a storm. I’m home alone — I have to have some fun!

Sure, I’d much rather be watching movies the way God intended, on a great big theater screen. And I fervently hope all this enforced home viewing doesn’t signal the end of the neighborhood movie house down the road, by giving viewers one more excuse not to interact with each other in public.

Still, there’s something to be said for watching a move with a cat on your lap — as long as she doesn’t mind the occasional popcorn kernel bouncing off her head.

FEMME NOIR

Mayhem, matriarchy merge in entertaining Blow the Man Down

With movie theaters temporarily closed and everybody cocooning at home, the best way to see a movie right now is curled up on your own sofa. Okay, lots of us have already figured this out — there's no dress code and no assigned seating. Even better, with the rise of so many streaming platforms, there's plenty of new product out there too, just waiting to be discovered.

Just released last week on Amazon Prime, Blow The Man Down is an entertaining New England chowder of black comedy, femme-noir, and mood-making from co-writers and directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy. Set in a small fishing village on the rugged Maine seacoast (is there any other kind?), the story revolves around family legacies, deep, dark secrets, and fish — lots of fish, chopped, sliced, and pan-fried.

As the story begins, most of the denizens of Easter Cove are filling up the parlor of the Connelly sisters after the funeral of their beloved and respected mother, Mary Margaret. Now, responsible older sister, Priscilla (Sophie Lowe), and her more rebellious sibling, Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) — who's had to postpone her freshman year at college — have to figure out how to maintain the family home and fish market on their own.

After the sisters' private spat away from their guests — Mary Beth is so done with Easter Cove and wants out — the younger sib stomps off to the local bar, just looking for trouble. She finds it. But when the chips are down, it turns out, a girl's best friend is her sister.

Saylor and Lowe: Bundle up

 Life in Easter Cove is beautifully realized — you can almost smell the raw fish, and you might find yourself shivering from the snowy chill. (Better bundle up while you watch.) The mood is heightened by a chorus of grizzled fishermen singing sea shanties (like the title tune) deftly salted into the action. But it's the women who really run things; men are relegated to the (largely ornamental) police force, the bar, and the fishing boats.

This subtle tweaking of gender expectations gives the movie its own lively viewpoint. As the entwined dramas and dueling mysteries play out, one character notes, "Lotta people underestimate young women. That's why they get away with a lot." Women of all ages emerge as a collective force to be reckoned with in this diverting fish story of a movie.
(Read more)

COMEDY AND CONSEQUENCE

Austen's ferocious wit fuels savvy, stylish Emma

You never think of a Jane Austen novel as excoriating. Hers is a genteel world of flimsy, gossamer gowns, impeccable breeding, and humorous observation of delicate romantic complications, or so we believe.

But her fourth novel, Emma, while set in the same milieu of tasteful gentility, and written with Austen's familiar ironic asperity, also bristles with savage social satire on upper-class idleness and the damage their thoughtless antics inflict on the people in whose lives they meddle.

The new movie adaptation of Emma, combines a savvy script from Eleanor Catton with a scrupulously assembled visual narrative from music video director Autumn de Wilde, in her impressive feature debut.

It's a more overtly comic version of Austen than usual — a pack of boarding school girls march in and out of scenes like a flock of giggling birds; eyes dart from side to side, or pop wide open in elaborate double-takes; baleful servants perform increasing complex choreography in long-suffering silence on the periphery of the action.

Taylor-Joy and Nighy: idle amusement

But when the filmmakers zero in on the machinations of their heroine, Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy), they are unsparing in their critique of her folly.

The rich don't get much more idle than the Woodhouses, landed gentry with a country estate in the small village of Highbury. At 21, Emma has led a privileged life "with very little to vex her,” living with her widower father, Henry (the always welcome Bill Nighy).

Having just seen her former companion married off to an eligible widower to whom Emma had introduced her, Emma decides that arranging matches for others "is the greatest amusement in the world!" Although resistance to Emma's plans is never less than discreet (if utterly futile), we feel just how devastating the consequences can be for those unwillingly caught up in them.

Emma is not always likable in her wrong-headedness. But Taylor-Joy gradually earns our sympathy by giving Emma the grace to feel ashamed of her mistakes and outgrow them — especially after one of her attempted witticisms lands with such cruelty, it's as horrifying as any act of physical violence in Game Of Thrones.

De Wilde directs the well-heeled 1%

 Alexandra Byrne's outstanding costumes, male as well as female, are not only stunning to look at, their intricate layers — and the complicated ritual of getting in and out of them — also mirror the armor of social graces each character must assume every day in polite society. And Kave Quinn's lavish production design conveys just how well-heeled the Highbury 1% really is. Kudos all around for a very smart and stylish production.
(Read more)

THE LEGEND OF MONDAY NIGHT PIZZA

Pizza Boy to the rescue!

Blame it on Good Times.

When I first met James in his comic book store, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I had already been writing for Good Times for two years. Six months later when we moved in together, we only had one rule as we made up our freestyle new life: every Monday night, I had to do the (dreaded) Film Guide.

The Film Guide was the section in the paper that listed every movie theater in town, what new movies would be opening at each one that week, and all their showtimes. There was no iMDB in those days, so TV and newsprint ads were all I  had to go on when it came to blurbing new titles.

But the gnarly part was getting those showtimes. Way before there were personal computers (certainly not in our house), let alone FAX machines, I had to call each theater manager on the phone and scribble down (usually in pencil) every single showtime for every single movie in the course of the week — daily schedule, weekend schedule, holiday matinees, midnight movies, the works. Then I typed them on a typewriter (look it up, kids) into my master list, three pages of hard copy I delivered by hand to the GT office first thing Tuesday morning, deadline day.

With me on the phone for hours, Mondays were a little hectic around our house, especially at dinner time. One theater manager in particular never decided what he was going to play on any given week, until he knew what everybody else had booked. Some nights, I wouldn't get off the damn phone before 8 pm — by which time, I was In. No. Mood.

The yeast goes on: why mess with a good thing?

But trust my Sweetie to step into the breach! Even though he had not yet discovered the cooking gene within himself, he knew how to bake a frozen pizza. While I was stewing on the phone, he'd be in the kitchen chopping up real food — green onions, red peppers, black olives, mushrooms — and grating extra cheese.

His next move was to pop a tape into the VCR and record Jeopardy — my favorite way to chill — at 7 pm. As soon as I could finally hang up and finish typing, he would assemble his pizza, stick it in the oven, and pop a cork. (Okay, he usually didn't wait around for me for that part!)

Et Voila! Whenever I was finally ready to sit down and eat, we had hot pizza, cold bubbly, and Jeopardy! Pizza, champagne, and Jeopardy was our Monday night ritual for years — even after theaters started faxing their info to GT and I was liberated from the Film Guide. The tradition continued through the rest of our married life, and continues for me to this day. Why mess with a good thing?

It wasn't until years later that we started making our own pizzas from scratch. (Well, almost, thanks to Trader Joe's pizza dough balls.) I wouldn't have remembered how many years, except that I found the top photo above of our very first home-made pizza! It's dated November, 2003! Notice how shiny and silvery the pizza screen is. It's completely black now, untold thousands of pizzas later — and, yes, I still use it!

ADVENTURES IN DOLLYWOOD

Hey folks, it’s all over but the shouting (and the squeals of gobsmacked surprise) at this year’s Oscars.

Who knew that Parasite would sweep four of the six categories it was nominated in, including Best Director (okay, I knew that one!), Best Picture and Best International Film (quite a double-header), as well as Best Original Screenplay. (It only lost in the Production Design and Editing categories.)

Anyway, I’m awarding myself a half point for suggesting Parasite was the likeliest spoiler in the Original Screenplay category, bringing my total to 7 1/2 correct predictions out of 10.

But even though the hoopla has died down a bit, we all know it wouldn’t be the Oscars without  — The Return of the (Dreaded) Oscar Barbies!

The Best Actress nominees in period costumes are always my favorites, so this year I decided not to even fool around with the nominees in boring modern dress.  Renee Zellweger’s mid-60s Judy (as in Garland) is just retro enough to make the cut. Besides, I knew she was going to win, so I positioned her snuggling up to the man in gold himself.

She’s flanked by Saoirse Ronan, as budding writer, Jo, in Little Women, and Cynthia Erivo as intrepid Civil War slave liberator, Harriet.

And, yes, it’s all about the props!

ONCE UPON A TIME

Whose Hollywood fairy tales will come true at this year's Academy Awards?

You want Oscar predictions? How's this: when the Academy Awards are handed out this Sunday, winners in the top categories, excluding Actress nominees, will be white men.

Sure, some random female co-producers might swarm up in the production team accepting the Best Picture award. But (aside from Amy Pascal, solo producer of Little Women) you have to rappel down to the Screenplay categories before you even find another female nominee. And if not for this year's Korean phenom, Parasite, there would be few top nominees at all of any ethnicity other than Caucasian male.

(Just take a look at the posters for this year’s nine Best Picture nominees. Four feature only white men, two contain subordinate women alongside the men, and only two — Little Women (natch) and Marriage Story — feature women prominently. Only the Parasite poster bucks the trend, with three non-Caucasian men and two women — although one of the latter, appears to be, um, dead.)

Movies are being made from more diverse viewpoints — Us, Harriet, The Farewell, Hustlers, Waves — but the Academy has still hasn't gotten the memo. Can #OscarsSoWhiteMale be far off?

Of the movies that are anointed with Oscar nominations this year, the most hotly contested races are in the top two categories, Best Picture and Best Director. By contrast, all four acting winners are pretty much locked-in, after unanimous victories at all the other awards galas, so let's start with those.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS Laura Dern, Marriage Story. Dern has a lifetime of sterling film and TV credits, she plays a tough LA divorce lawyer (a character familiar to most Academy members), and is likely to score her first win with this, her third Oscar nomination.

SUPPORTING ACTOR Brad Pitt, Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood. Who doesn't want to see Pitt deliver another one of the droll acceptance speeches he's already given for this performance in this awards season?

BEST ACTRESS Renee Zellweger, Judy. Her gutsy performance is so close to the truth of Judy Garland's persona — wry wit, nervous mannerisms, and all — and Garland's effect on her fans, that we can forgive Zellweger doing her own singing. (Not bad, just not Judy.)

BEST ACTOR Joaquin Phoenix, Joker. He's already won everything else. It's chilling that Phoenix has tapped into some kind of grim cultural zeitgeist in this origin story of the pathetic failed comic fueled by psychosis to become the creepiest supervillain in the DC Comics universe. (Talk about art imitating life.) In a just, less traumatized world, the gold would go to Antonio Banderas in Pain And Glory, the performance of the year.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon A Time     . . . In Hollywood. Of the four nominees also contending for Best Picture, Hollywood has the snappiest dialogue, coupled with a typically nervy Tarantino wish-fulfillment plot. But don't rule out Parasite, whose savage satire on wealth and class makes it the likeliest spoiler of the evening.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Greta Gerwig, Little Women. In this notably guy-oriented field (The Irishman, The Two Popes, Joker, Jojo Rabbit), the Academy might offer Gerwig an olive branch after failing to nominate her for Best Director.

BEST DIRECTOR/BEST PICTURE These two categories used to be joined at the hip. But there have been recent upsets, now that there are so many more nominated films (nine, this year, each of which Academy voters are required to rate in order of preference), diffusing the likelihood of a clear front-runner. There are still only five directing nominees, however, encouraging more focused voting. (That's how Alfonso Cuaron won for directing Roma, last year, but the affable Green Book got more likes for Best Picture.)

So. Narrowing down the movies to the five with nominated directors, Todd Phillips' Joker is perceived as more of an actor's showcase, Hollywood will pick up its awards in other categories, and Martin Scorsese's The Irishman has lost its pre-season buzz. That leaves Sam Mendes' visually daring WWI epic, 1917 (constructed to look like it was shot in one, long take), and the upstart Parasite.

All in the family: Parasite

  1917 is sure to win in the Best Cinematography category for veteran lensman Roger Deakins. Just as certainly, Parasite will clinch the prize for Best International (formerly Foreign Language) Feature. But here's my prediction for the main event:

BEST PICTURE 1917. BEST DIRECTOR Bong Joon Ho, Parasite.

(The 92nd Academy Awards will be broadcast live, Sunday, February 9, 5pm, on ABC. Tune in to find out just how wrong I can be!)

IT'S A WRAP: MOVIES of 2019

For whatever reason, I fell behind on my movie viewing in 2019. I missed a lot of the most lauded mainstream movies, and I'm still too cranky to settle for watching big movies that barely appear in theaters at all on a home screen.


However, among the often small, weird and/or esoteric movies I did see, I have a few favorites. I wasn't quite able to stretch my list into the traditional Top Ten, and I certainly can't claim that these were in any way the Best of 2019. But if you're looking for something to stream on a cold winter's night, here are a few suggestions!


(FUN FACT: Five out of my eight favorites were directed by women! Wouldn't it be nice to see any of them appear among this year's Oscar nominees when they're announced tomorrow? If only. . . )



PAIN AND GLORY Pedro Almodovar directs this wonderful, semi-autobiographical movie about a Spanish filmmaker, looking back on his own life and career, and the people and events that shaped and inspired him. It's my favorite movie of the year! It may not look like much plot-wise, but the experience of watching this movie unfold onscreen is rapturous. And star Antonio Banderas is riveting in every single frame — you can’t take your eyes off him!

 
YESTERDAY In Danny Boyle's audacious what-if movie, The Beatles have disappeared from the collective memory of everyone except a struggling singer-songwriter named Jack (an engaging Himesh Patel) who finds himself poised to plunder their entire song catalogue. Detractors complain the movie misunderstands what made the Beatles popular, claiming as false “meritocracy” the notion that the songwriting would be hugely successful on its own, separated from the context of the band’s individual personalities and their era.

But here's why I (still) believe in Yesterday: It's not that the songs themselves are supposed to be the best ever written (although you could certainly make a case for some of them), but that there are so many of them, in so many diverse styles, that Jack is able to produce on the spot. The movie creates its own context for Jack’s popularity, a modest young person of color who produces song after song after song, seemingly out of the blue. That’s how he captures the public imagination — in much the same way the working-class lads from industrial Liverpool did with their cheeky attitude and funny haircuts, once upon a time. Boyle turns it into a sly morality play about fame, honor, and sacrifice, with a 4/4 beat and a larky sense of fun.

HARRIET Maybe the times have finally caught up to the amazing life of Harriet Tubman, a real-life superhero who fought for justice and won major victories in her lifelong battle to end slavery in the American South. An escaped slave herself, she led many others to freedom in the North, via the Underground Railroad, armed with little more than raw courage, and a flintlock pistol. Filmmaker Kasi Lemmons explores the woman behind the historical footnote, played with bristly moral conviction by Cynthia Erivo.

SWORD OF TRUST An aging hipster confronts the dark heart of extreme Southern yahooism in Lynn Shelton's very funny culture-clash comedy. Marc Maron is all dry wit and scruffy sarcasm as a pawn shop owner tasked to sell a Civil War sword that supposedly "proves" the Confederacy won the war. The twisty little surprises of the plot are delicious to discover along the way, and the sharp, funny conversations (largely improvised) had me laughing out loud.

THE MUSTANG Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre spins a tale of wild horses, regret, and redemption set in a high-security prison complex out in the middle of the Nevada desert. As part of their rehab, certain inmates are chosen to break and train wild mustangs for auction, and Matthias Schoenaerts delivers a towering, if taciturn performance (it's all in his eyes) as a prisoner who learns tenderness by bonding with his animal.

RAISE HELL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MOLLY IVINS Unusual enough as a progressive in Texas, smart, savagely funny political journalist Molly Ivins stood six feet tall. Not gifted with conventional proportions, she felt entitled to hold outsized opinions expressed with outsized gusto. There's plenty to laugh at — and get riled up over — in this Janice Engel documentary, celebrating all the hell Ivins raised as a pioneering woman in a world and profession run by good ole boys. Through documentary footage, Ivins tells much of her own story in her own words, and it's the particular zing of her voice that makes this movie so irresistible.

WAVES This gripping domestic drama from Trey Edward Shults encompasses euphoria, tragedy, and every conceivable emotion in between depicting a middle-class black family in South Florida sliding in and out of crisis. Some incidents seem torn from screaming headlines, yet Shults humanizes everything with careful attention to the personal relationships that guide our lives — between parents and children, between siblings, and between couples, both young and long-established.

LITTLE WOMEN In her entertaining, feminist update of the beloved novel, filmmaker Greta Gerwig combines the adventures of Louisa May Alcott's fictional March sisters with the journey of Alcott herself in getting her story published. Through Alcott's surrogate, Jo (Saoirse Ronan, who is absolutely wonderful), Gerwig inserts the author's early writing career and her tribulations with her patronizing male publisher. Timothée Chalamet is coltish, handsome, and mischievous as Laurie, and if the elliptical time frame becomes confusing toward the end, the movie exudes exuberant and heartfelt goodwill, building to a satisfying girl-power crescendo that surely would have pleased Alcott herself.

HIS REIGN IN SPAIN

Banderas and Almodovar, team up for rapturous memoir, Pain And Glory

In Pain And Glory, Antonio Banderas plays a famous Spanish director working on a new film project. "Is it a comedy or a tragedy?" someone asks him. Banderas gazes back. "I don't know," he replies, with thoughtful sincerity.

You might as well ask the same question about life, and get the same answer — at least, life as portrayed in all its tenderness, irony, disappointments, and absurdity in this wonderful new movie from Pedro Almodovar. As the filmmaker onscreen looks back on his own life and work in this semi-autobiographical story, so does Almodovar, behind the camera, examine the people and events that shaped and inspired him as a creative artist — and as a human being.

Of course, a filmmaker tells a story about a filmmaker, and you think Fellini and 81/2. But Pain and Glory is less about what sparks artistic imagination than about the ways we find to get through life, day by day. Almodovar offers very little action, but plenty of talk and lingering close-ups, resonant with feeling.

It may not look like much, plot-wise, but the experience of watching this movie unfold onscreen is rapturous.

Etxiandia and Banderas: mellowed animosity

Bandera's stars as Salvador Mallow, a Spanish filmmaker with an international reputation. His most famous movie is being honored on the 30th anniversary of its release, and Salvador is invited to speak at a special screening in Madrid, along with the film's star, Alberto Cresco (Asier Etxeandia).

When Salvador visits Alberto to discuss it, he gets a cool reception, having publicly denounced Alberto's performance back in the day, but time has mellowed their animosity (if not Salvador's opinion), and they decide to do the appearance.

But time has been less benevolent to Salvador in other ways. His body is in decline from a variety of chronic ailments (laid out for the viewer in a series of jazzy graphics of human anatomy, spinal formation, blood vessels, and neuro pathways), to the point that he's in more constant pain than his daily cocktail of painkillers can relieve.

Cruz: salt of the earth

Something he's not yet tried is Alberto's favorite painkiller — heroin — and the few moments of pain-free bliss it provides quickly adds addiction to Salvador's list of maladies.

But this isn't a movie about drugs. Salvador's heroin reveries are another excuse for flashbacks to Salvador's childhood in the countryside with the salt-of-the-earth mother he adored, Jacinta (Penelope Cruz, marvelous, as always). Stoic and subdued by pain for so long that he's been unable to work, Salvador's memories finally uncork his creative drive and he starts writing again.


When Alberto finds and performs a monologue Salvador has written about his youth, an old flame (possibly the love of his life), Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), arrives on his doorstep for a brief, bittersweet reunion. And there are some lovely scenes of the elderly Jacinta (longtime Almodovar stalwart Julieta Serrano), living in Salvador's posh flat toward the end of her life, gently confessing to her devoted son her disappointment over some of the choices he's made.

At the heart of it all is Antonio Banderas, whose best movies as a young actor were his Spanish-language collaborations with Almodovar, his mentor, before Hollywood tried to typecast him as a conventional "Latin lover." Reunited with Almodovar in the excellent The Skin I Live In in 2011, Banderas is riveting in every frame of Pain and Glory, not by doing anything showy or actorish, but in his profound and wistful quiet.

Whether he's making a sly, impish remark, or expressing in his eyes alone all that's left unsaid with his former lover or his aging mother, this movie belongs to Banderas. You can't take your eyes off him.

Comedy or tragedy? You can't possibly know from one day to the next while you're living it, Almodovar suggests. At least he has the grace — not to mention the nerve — to keep exploring the question.

REALLY TRUE GRIT

American anti-slavery heroine gets her due in Harriet

She didn't wear spandex tights or bullet-repelling bracelets. But Harriet Tubman was a real-life superhero in every sense, fighting for justice and winning major victories against impossible odds in her lifelong battle to end slavery in the American South.

An escaped slave herself, she made many perilous trips back below the Mason-Dixon Line to lead other enslaved people to freedom in the North, via the Underground Railroad, armed with little more than raw courage, relentless determination, and the occasional flintlock pistol.

Although her name has become a footnote in American History books, it seems incredible that such an inspirational story has never been made into a movie — until now. In Harriet, filmmaker Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou; Talk To Me) examines the woman behind the footnote, exploring the outrage, grit, and fervor that shaped her, in a tribute that feels long overdue.

Maybe now that we're all so woke, the times have finally caught up to the amazing life of Harriet Tubman.

Erivo as Harriet: Perilous crossing

The story, co-written by Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard, begins in 1849 with the slave woman, Minty (Cynthia Erivo), who lives with her parents and siblings on the Ross family farm in Maryland.

After their master tears up their legal petition to free the family in honor of his late mother's will, Minty prays for his death, overheard by the master's odious son, Gideon (Joe Alwyn). When he plans to sell her off, she runs away; pursued by men and dogs and nearly drowned, she makes it all the way to Philadelphia.

There, she's taken in by William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), a dapper abolitionist, and Marie (Janelle Monáe), who runs a refuge for single women and finds her paid employment working in a hotel. Marie teaches Minty to shoot a pistol. William encourages her to give up her slave name; she chooses her mother's given name with the surname of the husband she's had to leave behind — Harriet Tubman.

Erivo and Odom: Conductors

Her new friends are horrified when Harriet risks recapture to return south and bring back her family. But once she's made the journey a couple of times, bringing out strangers as well as family, William introduces her to the Undeground Railroad, a covert network of operators and vehicles by which runaway slaves are spirited north to freedom — of which the fearless Harriet becomes one of the most intrepid "conductors."

Ervio as Tubman: Reel life

Erivo plays Harriet with bristly moral conviction; it's unthinkable to sit idly by, protecting her own freedom, when others are still enslaved.

The real-life Tubman was prone to seizures, which she claimed were visions from God guiding her on her journeys, and which Lemmons recreates in sepia glimpses.

These, along with the fact that she never loses one of her "passengers"— despite fierce pursuit — adds to her mythos among slaves, abolitionists, and slaveowners.

Harriet Tubman; Real life

Evocative music also plays a key role. Spirituals underline the slaves' fervent faith in a better life ahead, but when sung by slaves in the field, they also allow them to communicate with each other in a kind of code, under the overseer's notice. Many are delivered with wistful, calibrated emotion by Erivo, a Tony-winning musical theater actress.

Erivo also sings the powerful anthem, "Stand Up," over the closing credits, a song she wrote with Joshuah Campbell that sends the viewer off on a stirring note.

And a brief glimpse of foot-stompin' revival music in the slaves' little church on the farm is delivered by a boisterous Vondie Curtis-Hall as the preacher. If my grandfather, the Methodist minister, had held services like that, maybe I would have become a churchgoer.

Lemmons' melodramatic flourishes can be overdone. Gideon is written as dastardly, insinuating evil incarnate, without any shading, and the orchestral soundtrack tends to swell and crest to emphasize emotion. But Harriet's story is so important, it rises in triumph over all obstacles — like the woman herself.

POWER HOUSES

Edison vs. Westinghouse to electrify America in atmospheric The Current War

No, it's not about the latest international outrage launched by our so-called administration. But The Current War, concerns a subject every bit as cutthroat and high-stakes as any recent shenanigans out of DC: the clash of Titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse as they race against time and each other to bring the magic of electrical power to America.

The movie is powered by a few Titans of its own. Benedict Cumberbatch stars a Edison (another brusque, eccentric genius in the Sherlock/Alan Turing mode). Michael Shannon plays Westinghouse, peeking out over a formidable handlebar moustache (the era is around the turn of the last century).

Nicholas Hoult pops up as Nikola Tesla, the unsung hero of the conflict, and Matthew MacFadyen (the smoldering Mr. Darcy in Pride And Prejudice, once upon a time) plays J. P. Morgan, the fickle financier for whose funding the others compete.

The subject may be electricity, but director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon doesn't go in for a lot of flash and dazzle. His focus is on the hard work and endless trial-and-error that goes into producing a miracle like the electric light bulb — and its unexpected uses and sometimes grim consequences — and the dueling egos and private agendas of the miracle-workers who make it happen.

Gomez-Rejon and scriptwriter Michael Mitnick rely on effective storytelling, interesting characterizations, and period opulence to give the movie its charge.

The First Jedi? Hoult as Tesla powers up the World's Fair

 And pay attention to Chung-hoon Chung's often stunning cinematography and canny use of split-screen and other techniques, which remind us what the movie only hints at in its later scenes — that perhaps Edison's most enduring legacy is as a pioneer of the motion picture.
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