The Great Gatsby – “Ol’ Sport!”

The Great Gatsby 

Directed by Baz Luhrmann, 2013

John:  I have read the book at least a half dozen times. It is my favorite. And to be honest I went to this, half-expecting a failure, or nice try, like the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow earlier adaption. This one is spectacular. And even taught me something about the book.

Spanky: Not really surprised, as you were a fan of Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, which gave me a headache. Toby Maguire proves an inspired choice as Nick Carroway and he gets us through the preliminary stuff, where Daisy and Gatsby are pretty much mannequins.

John: DiCaprio comes alive in the conflict with Tom Buchanan. I expected that from the book. And Carey Mulligan, as Daisy, is fine. What I didn’t expect was to be emotionally moved by expected lines, such as Gatsby’s introduction against a background of George Gershwin, his comments on the past, the conclusion of the movie (and the book).

Spanky: I agree. Luhrmann has a respect for the original that should be acknowledged. What he does with special effects heightens what is there, makes it cinegraphic, it doesn’t compete or take away from the Fitzgerald classic. On the contrary.

John: In fact there are two things which actually helped me with the book. First, the movie focuses on Gatsby’s obsession with the past―his desire to re-invent it in light of his new wealth. Nick thinks this an unbridled optimism and I have to admit on the surface, I thought it was what the Midwest had over the rich, East Coast―and the reason Nick (as Fitzgerald) goes back to Minnesota in the end. But through the movie I see, Gatsby is being almost as unreasonable as Buchanan. Which leaves us, where? On to “point two.”

Spanky: I have to say, as a dog, “point one” didn’t mean much. Live in the “here and now” people!

John: Luhrmann does change the story to the extent that he has Nick writing a book about this as part of his psychiatric treatment. In the original he is a narrator who appears only as a kind of bookend commentator. So my “second point” is, how does art (writing specifically, but movies too) bring about a catharsis of our feelings. If Caraway’s admiration of Gatsby has led him to seek mental help through writing in rehab, then we need to ask how the story should be accepted, by us, if not on its own terms. That is profound and doesn’t accept easy, one sentence answers. But it is what great art does. It’s what makes this book a classic. It’s what lifts this movie above the realm of entertainment.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

Spanky: Let me think about this some more, but on the basis of your reaction, I’d advise:

BARK, BARK, BARK (3 BARKs out of 4)

PS When John originally wrote this he was thinking of Gatsby, himself, possibly Nick Caraway, but a few days later he realized that the theme applies to all of  us. Writers really do live twice, once when they experience something, a second time when they write about it. Fitzgerald’s book allows us to internalize, personalize this message. As does the movie. That takes a certain confidence in the reader/viewer. But the payoff is the work becomes theirs, not the writer’s or the director’s. It is the genius of both the book and now the film to direct us toward that, yet let us do it. We become the artist. Or discover that we have been one all along.

ROGER EBERT – “A MILLION THUMBS UP!”

our Roger Ebert 

John: I grew up in Chicago where this guy started out with Gene Siskel on the local PBS station. Forty years later I was still watching different incarnations of the Ebert formula. In fact I had suggested to a friend that we do the same thing on the web. I said I would even write both parts if he wanted. When that didn’t fly, I did it with my dog instead—SpankyandJohnGoToTheMovies.com.

Sparky: I don’t blame the guy; you even got my name wrong. It’s Sparky, John, Sparky not Spanky!

John: Well I always liked those “Spanky and Our Gang” early shorts. But one way or another we’ve had almost 16,000 viewers from all parts of the globe (Norway, Taiwan, etc). And now we do old movies as well as new releases since many people watch Netflix or other movie options.

Sparky: So getting back to Ebert (if that really was his name), why do you think he was the best known movie critic?

John: People loved the discussion. It wasn’t just Pauline Kael telling us what to think, but two people discussing something they were participants in. It reminded me of college, arguing over Plato and the Existentialists. We felt we were a part of the dialogue—no, the best part of the dialogue. And Siskel and Ebert or Ebert and Roper demonstrated how that could be.

Sparky: So how is that different from today?

John: Now we are consumers, manipulated by the film industry. There’s big money at stake so they aren’t taking any chances. But with Ebert we were…artists, searching for meaning. Finding the memorable. Some people, like Hitchcock and Bergman, had enough confidence in their audiences to let them be players. Now, I don’t know. Roger Ebert’s time, our time, is over. Still it’s hard not to love a man who emblemized something so special.

Spanky: And we do that by keeping his spirit alive in our blog.

John: Four “Barks” out of four, my friend. Four “Barks” out of four.

Columbus Circle – “Round and round.”

Columbus Circle, Director:  George Gallo, 2012

John: Maybe I’ve been watching too much TV and my standards have gone to hell, but I found this (particularly the second half gripping and surprising. I’ll admit the ending seems a bit farfetched, but it is perfect.

The story begins with the murder of an old lady, but focuses on her acrophobic neighbor across the hall. The dynamics are between her and a new couple who move into the dead woman’s apartment. The plot presents different stereotypes and then shows things are not what they seem. I don’t want to give too much away, but I think Hitchcock would be proud of this one.

GO, GO, GO, (3 GOs out of 4)

Spanky: You’ve got to be kidding. You can spot what is going to happen miles away. I did like the ending line, and it was good they could find a role for Beau Bridges. He makes us want to trust him and appearances. Big mistake.

John: But that’s a foreshadowing of the other character reversals. This is a poker game in which the director is playing, not the cards, but the audience.

Spanky: John, I’ve got a great Brooklyn Bridge to sell you. Or maybe a NY condo, cheap.

BARK (1 BARK out of 4)

 

Skyfall – “Resurrection”

Skyfall, Director:  Sam Mendes, 2012

 

John: What is it like to live your life in parallel to a fictional character? Oh, often it mayb be misplaced wish fulfillment and played by different actors…, but aren’t we different people at different stages of our lives and doesn’t fantasy give us clues as to who we really are?

This is the one Bond film (and I’ve seen them all) that makes us think about him and about our lives watching him. But it doesn’t skimp on the essentials either. The title sequence is spectacular; and I challenge any 007 fan not to have chills run down your spine when our hero unearths his old Austin Martin and the theme pounds in your ears.

The payoff isn’t this film, but the new beginning it promises…all of us.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

Sparky: I don’t know if any of the other Bonds could have pulled this off. Craig, Judi Dench and Bardem are such fine actors, allowed by a super-thoughtful script to do just that. Sure the special effects are spectacular, but so are the settings, such as Shanghai.

And the theme of resurrection—so welcome to older guys like you, John—is also one that applies to movies. This one shows them how.

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKs out of 4)

Life of Pi – “Movies are changed forever.”

Life of Pi, 2012, Ang Lee, director

John: It’s Sunday night, hardly anyone is in the movie theater. I place plastic glasses over my regular ones. I love 3-D. Even the dimensional previews–Oz, The Hobbit. It makes movies become what they once were, magic. This feature starts out much more seriously than screen gimmicks. It is about religion, about God. It is the Life of Pi. Not just his survival of a shipwreck on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, but his life. Scenes of the boy underwater viewing the sunken ship, a whale becoming a constellation of stars, the tiger are spectacular—you have never seen anything like them before. But it is Lee’s not wasting these effects, conveying a story that will have you thinking about it for a weeks after that is so amazing. It is watching the final credits naming 1,400 people involved it the production of this vision that is so incredible. Movies will never be the same.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

Spanky: I agree. Movies are suddenly new again. The introductory structure (Pi telling his story to a writer) seems stiff and clunky at first, but its payoff is in the unexpected conclusion. And isn’t all religion two stories—one literal, the more important one figurative? At times, when this just seemed a survival epic, I started to get antsy. Where is it going? How could there be anything more than finding another ship or land. I’ve read other reviews that focus on the special effects and dismiss the story. But that is what haunts you. This is also an emotionally moving story.

John: And have you ever tried crying wearing two pairs of glasses?

Spanky: Life of Pi is why you need to set aside a night to go to a theater instead of watching TV. It does what no iPad will ever do. It involves you in a way I thought technology would never involve me. I haven’t seen a movie, I have seen the future. And it is more moving, more spiritual, more full of real wonder than I expected it could ever be.

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKs out of 4)

 

 

Match Point – “Still in the Game”

Match Point, 2005, Woody Allen, director

John: Two things stand out for me: 1) early in the movie the central character’s reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment;and, 2, the look in his eyes in the final shot. Luck has given him freedom, but he is doomed to a life of remembering. The movie doesn’t tell us this, it shows it in ways that are subtle and profound and real—Crime and Punishment. This is masterfully done from the title, to the complex plot, to the final resolution. And it is better (or at least less distracting) not having Allen, himself, in the film. Scarlet Johansen is appealing, demanding and insistent in a way that drives this story forward.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

Spanky: Watching the DVD I thought what a pleasure it is to be walked through London by Woody Allen at the same unhurried pace that he’s taken through Manhattan all these years. Instead of Gershwin, we have opera to accompany us, the soundtrack packed with plaintive arias. There are a few characteristic scenes: people talking while walking down the street together and encounters in an art gallery (The Tate). But, like the main character, we in the audience are hooked into little decisions that end up big ones (reminds me of Patricia Strangers on the Train Highsmith). This is one of Woody’s classics, but, unless you have severe short time memory problems, I wouldn’t watch it too close to Crimes and Misdemeanors.

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKs out of 4)

Fargo – “Coen Brothers Masterpiece”

Fargo  – Joel Coen, director, 1996

JOHN: Dead-pan familiarity and frigid winter plus those Minnesota accents. “You betcha.” Roger Ebert said, “The movie rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I’ve ever seen.” He then states that films like Fargo are why he loves movies. I feel that way too. I’ve seen this film at least six or seven times and it is always tense, though-provoking and fresh.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: John and I recently watched it on DVD and here are the ten things I remembered about it from before and looked forward to seeing again:

1.    Marge, with murder in the back of her squad car, driving through white snow and fog saying “And it’s such a beautiful day.”

2.    The scene where her old friend tries to get it on with the pregnant sheriff.

3.    William Macy driving out of the car lot after saying he was going to do a “lot” inventory.

4.    Body being stuffed in the wood chipper.

5.    Steve Buschemi’s wound after he’s been shot in the face.

6.    The Paul Bunyan statue.

7.    The value of the 3 cent stamp, where Marge’s husband’s drawing will appear.

8.    The two murders watching the Tonight Show after banging some prostitutes.

9.    Guys on the street talking about winter weather.

10. The intractable father pulling a gun and getting shot.

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKs out of 4)

 

Brothers Bloom – “Game within a Game within…”

 Brothers Bloom – Rian Johnson, director, 2009

“Pick a con, any con.”

JOHN: When I watched this DVD I had no intimation that the same director had done Looper (recently reviewed here).Spanky thought that film, “frantic and confounding.” This one has a bit more structure, though and the overall effect was designed to freak out audiences of all ages. Though that playing with our expectations—con within a con—is what I find most annoying. Adrian Brody is perfect, the settings in other countries— spectacular, and the ending, though predictable, discussion provoking (What is the nature of the relationship of brothers in a scripted or unscripted life?). I think it could have ended sooner and been a little less self-explanatory.

GO, GO (2 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: This sounds weird but a deciding factor for me was one of those special features on the DVD called “In Bloom.” I am amazed how much work goes into shooting a single scene. We, in the audience, take so much for granted. And if it is edited together and doesn’t quite make it plot wise, it is incredible that emotionally this film does work. Part Wes Anderson, Part Terry Gilliam this contrived film is unique, but less would have been more.

BARK, BARK (2 BARKs out of 4)          

 

THE MASTER– “Crazy Cult”

The Master – Paul Thomas Anderson, director

” Dianetics’? I sort of like ‘The Cause’ better.”

JOHN: This is a hard one. Not because of the Scientology connection (that is marginal at best) but because of the performances of the two male stars and a plot that let’s us draw our own conclusions. Joaquin Phoenix is crazy. And I don’t mean he is acting the role of a character who is crazy. I mean he’s crazy. And a drunk…and angry. The problem is he is the outsider through which we are to glimpse the cult thing that probably got us into the theater in the first place. And Philip Seymour Hoffman reminds me of Orson Welles in his declining years, not playing a character, but trying to play himself (there is one rowdy scene of him cavorting around singing that seems right out of the early part of Citizen Kane). Yes, there’s incredible  intensity between them (one reviewer called it “the dueling Brandos), but I think you can get it all just watching a close-up of Tom Cruise’s face on Entertainment Tonight.

GO, GO, (2 GOs out of 4)

SPANKY: I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to sit through this long movie again, I forgot the ending as soon as I left the theater and Joaquin Phoenix turned into a kind of Peter Falk Colombo at the end, but…it could have been terrible, and instead proved thought-provoking. Granted the ultimate transition for the Phoenix character was the rather sentimental loss of a young girlfriend he had during the war. However, the homophobic connection with the L. Ron Hubbard character digs beneath the surface of what each man wants from the other. And the single-take interrogation sequence and other exotic processes are all the more intriguing because we, in the audience, are trying to interpret their significance to the film. How often to directors put those kind of matters in our hands? That alone is worth experiencing this.

BARK, BARK, BARK (3 BARKs out of 4)

MOONRISE KINGDOM – “Go There!”

MoonRISE Kingdom – Wes Anderson, director, 2012

JOHN: There’s a recent New Yorker review of Nathan Lane as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh that makes an interesting distinction between a performer and an actor. In this film we see the difference between actor and celebrity. It starts with a cozy, perhaps claustrophobic, interior of an old island house in which young kids are listening to a record of Benjamin Britten’s The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra. But, in contrast this is a movie about children not playing together.

Edward Norton as the surreal boy scout leader is right, right, right. He is an actor in the defining role of his life. But a movie is also about how the audience gets caught up in it. We empathize with the young boy and girl―and the adults searching for their own Moonlight Kingdom―and recall our own dreams of what we thought life would be.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOS out of 4)

SPANKY: And, John, you are probably going to say celebrities like Bruce Willis (because he treated Demi and the kids so well after she took up with that younger guy) and Francis Fargo Woman, who always seems realm, if not fallible, and Bill Murray, forever trading on his angry looser temperament, bring these identities ready-made to the movie so Wes Anderson can concentrate on the marriage of two twelve year olds. Or so we think. As the bits and pieces come together we realize, in the very last minute of the very last scene, that this is an allegory. Like a good poem, it sends us back to the beginning (and title) and we, in the audience have something to ponder beyond a movie. Stunning!

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKs out of 4)