Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XIII

Almost everyone living in Minneapolis and the burbs is familiar with the Convention Grill, located on Sunnyside Avenue a half-block west of France.  That establishment sets the gold standard for burgers and malts.  That section of Edina used to be called Morningside, which was a separate village created in 1920 when its residents elected to secede from neighboring Edina.  Morningside remained autonomous until 1966 when, for economic and political reasons, the denizens changed their collective minds and rejoined Edina. Nevertheless, the name "Morningside" has stuck as a neighborhood designation.

Across the street from the Convention Grill was Morningside's second famous institution, the Westgate Theater, which opened in 1937 and successfully competed with more modern, cushier, multi-screen movie houses until its owner conceded defeat in 1977 by selling the building to Edina Cleaners & Launderers.  Ask almost anyone old enough to remember the Westgate and she'll tell you that the most amazing element of its history was the unheard of one hundred fourteen consecutive weeks' run of the dark comedy, Harold & Maude.  That movie, staring the kooky Ruth Gordon and B-list actor Bud Cort, opened at the Westgate on March 22, 1972, and stayed uninterrupted at that venue for one thousand nine hundred fifty-seven showings (!) until it was finally replaced in June 1974.  I saw that movie twice at the Westgate, and remember chuckling at the main characters' hobby of crashing strangers' funerals for the sole purpose of eating the free food.  Gordon actually showed up in March 1973 to help the Westgate celebrate the one year anniversary of the movie's continuous run, and both she and Cort arrived a year later for the second year party.  Several months thereafter, the neighbors staged a good-natured protest to plead with the theater owners to bring in a different movie "for variety's sake."

You might ask, why is the old coot writing about Harold & Maude now, when it does not appear in the list below.  That is an excellent question.  The setting of the stage for the long run of Harold & Maude was accomplished by a less heralded movie which played at the Westgate from November 1970 to March 1972, The Twelve Chairs.  Prior to that movie's arrival at the Westgate, it would have been unheard of for a movie to remain at the same theater for more than, say, a month or so.  But just as was subsequently the case with Harold & Maude, many folks who attended The Twelve Chairs enjoyed it to such an extent that they were willing to pay to see it again.  Without video rental stores and boxes, Netflix or On Demand cable TV like we have today, if you missed seeing a movie in the theater (or missed seeing it more than once, if so inclined), you had no way of knowing when you'd ever see it again.  Both The Twelve Chairs and Harold & Maude benefitted from strong word-of-mouth advertising, and their respective fans made both films cult classics. (By the way, these phenomena were repeated in the same decade with Rocky Horror Picture Show.)

The Twelve Chairs stars Ron Moody (as the deposed Russian nobleman, Vorobyaninov), whose most famous career role was the lovable villain Fagin in 1968's Oliver!, and Dom DeLuise (as the unethical Father Fyodor), one of the most famous TV and movie comedians over the latter half of the twentieth century. When Vorobyaninov's mother makes a deathbed revelation that she has hidden her precious jewels in one of the twelve identical chairs of her dining room set, the impoverished Vorobyaninov immediately sets out to track down the booty.  Unfortunately for him, Father Fyodor acquires the same information while hearing the mother's confession, whereupon he attempts to beat Vorobyaninov to the prize.  Both men find out that the twelve chairs comprising the dining room set have not stayed together; they are spread all over Russia. Craziness and laughs ensue.     

Here are the movies I've watched on the idiot lantern at the Quentin Estates over the past three months.

1. Georgy Girl (1966 comedy; Lynn Redgrave is a  plain Jane with a roommate from hell, Charlotte Rampling, a geriatric suitor, James Mason, and a philandering friend, Alan Bates)  B+

2. 42 (2012 sports bio; Chadwick Boseman is Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League baseball, and Harrison Ford is Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers' President who signed him to a contract) B

3. Middle Of The Night (1959 drama; Fifty-six year old widower Fredrick March, a small business owner, falls in love with twenty-four year old divorcee Kim Novak, his receptionist) C+

4. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1969 drama; Maggie Smith is an independent-minded teacher in a girls' middle school who does things her own way, to the chagrin of principal Celia Johnson) A-

5. Ride The High Country (1962 western; Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are retired law men who are hired to transport gold from a mountain mining camp to the bank, two days' journey through the mountains) B+

6. Shoot The Piano Player (1960 drama; Charles Aznavour, a shy world class pianist employed in a saloon, has an older brother who involves him in serious trouble with gangsters) B+

7. Town Without Pity (1961 drama; Kirk Douglas defends four GIs accused of rape in post-war Germany) C+

8. The Twelve Chairs (1970 comedy; Deposed Russian nobleman Ron Moody goes on a frantic search to find the one chair in a twelve chair set in which his mother has hidden a fortune in jewels from the revolutionaries) B 

Movie Review: "Prisoners"

"Prisoners": B.  When two families' little girls, Anna and Joy, go missing after wandering off from a holiday dinner, the case is assigned to Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal).  We learn that Loki has solved all of his previous cases, so there is every reason to believe that the string will continue.  If only Anna's father, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), would let the Conyers, Pennsylvania Police Department do its job.  He doesn't.

The girls were last seen by their older siblings playing by an RV parked down the street from their houses. Loki successfully tracks down the RV, and when its driver, the mentally challenged Alex (Paul Dano), crashes his vehicle in a foolish attempt to flee, it looks like Loki has his man.  However, the forensic analysts find no traces of the girls' presence in the RV, and there is no other evidence to tie Alex to the kidnapping. So, after the maximum forty-eight hour hold which is permitted by law in those instances when the detained suspect is not charged, the cops release Alex with instructions not to leave the Commonwealth.  This does not sit well with Keller, who apparently has never seen detective shows on TV, where the forty-eight hour rule is a staple.  But Keller has, instead, become familiar with the vigilante tactics employed in old Charles Bronson movies, e.g., 1974's Death Wish.

Keller confronts Alex outside the courthouse and, as the two of them are tangling, is the only one who hears Alex mutter a sentence which seemingly implicates Alex in the girls' kidnapping.  Keller is not going to let some flimsy legal technicalities get in the way of finding his daughter and her friend, so the next day he decides to beat the information out of Alex.  A too-large portion of the story pertains to the extreme methods used by Keller in this endeavor, and the eventual reluctant involvement of Joys' parents, Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis, two actors who have been getting a lot of work lately).

Meanwhile, Loki continues with the investigation, unaware of what Keller is up to vis-a-vis Alex.  Loki does not believe Alex has the mental capacity to pull off a perfect crime; someone else has to be the perpetrator. He interviews Alex's grandmother, Holly (Melissa Leo), who raised Alex and allows him to live in his RV which he parks on her property. Later, Loki pays a visit to a drunken priest who unwittingly provides an important clue which comes into play in the last act.  Loki is also on the trail of a mysterious young man whom he first encounters from a distance at a candlelight vigil which the townsfolk are holding for the missing girls.  Things get really weird when Keller's wife, Grace (Maria Bello), reports that someone has snuck into her house and escaped through Anna's bedroom window.  Once Loki finds out Alex is also missing, things start to congeal, although there are still many twists and turns yet to come.

There are so many crime procedural shows on television that a movie script in that genre needs to be extraordinary to make it worth the price of admission.  After all, the TV shows are free.  Although Prisoners has won many accolades from the critics, there are too many nits, i.e., minor objections, for me to classify the script as extraordinary.  When Character A opts to drive to Character B's house to deliver a message which could much more easily have been communicated via phone, especially when Character A is on his cell phone all the time, that is what's commonly referred to as a "contrivance."  In other words, the script writers need the two characters to be face to face in order to pull off something else (besides a conversation) which could not occur if Character A had simply opted for the phone call.  This sort of contrivance is heavily relied upon in this movie's denouement.  A second nit occurs when Loki bangs on the front door of a "person of interest."  If you were that person, would you answer the door and put on your most innocent face, or would you ignore the knocking and go ahead with the perpetration of your evil intention just a few feet away inside the house?  I also had a hard time buying into the involvement of Joy's parents, especially the mom, in the vigilante criminalities of Keller.  There are a few other nits (e.g., Keller deciding to park his car in an adjacent liquor store lot instead of his usual parking spot in front of an abandoned apartment building), but you get the point.

 

My original intention was to give a B- to Prisoners.  That is my grade for movies which are not bad but did not live up to my expectations.  That evaluation, however, certainly does not pertain to the acting here. Jackman's portrayal of a heartbroken father seething beneath the surface, and often beyond, is brilliant. Gyllenhaal as the cool but sometimes exasperated young Detective Loki is a perfect counterbalance to Jackman's Keller.  Gyllenhaal's Loki is how I picture Virgil Flowers, a young shrewd detective who is the star of several thrillers penned by Minnesota author John Sanford. All of the supporting players make valuable contributions as well.  In summary, the acting was better than the storytelling.  So, why did I raise my original grade a notch to a B?  The final sixty seconds are very cool.

Movie Review: "The Spectacular Now"

"The Spectacular Now": B+.  Sutter (Miles Teller) is a high school senior not unlike hundreds or thousands of upperclassmen across the country.  He is the beneficiary of protection from two sources, his school and his mother.  His status as a student buys him time before he has to face the world and become a responsible adult.  His mother protects him by taking over sole responsibility for raising him after his parents split, and hiding the truth about his father.  Until such time as he is no longer afforded such protection, Sutter is going to live life to the fullest.  One of his favorite sayings is that the best thing about the "right nows" is that there's another one tomorrow.

While there's no denying Sutter is a good time, his persistent decisions not to take things seriously wear thin on his girlfriend, Cassidy (Brie Larson).  She is also a person who likes to party, but unlike Sutter, she has matured to a level enabling her to see that there will be life beyond high school.  "I want a future," she tells Sutter, "and you can't do that."  Although she'll still have a fondness for Sutter, Cassidy moves on to the class president who also happens to be a stud athlete.

Sutter's constant companion, whether on the job, driving or partying, is a jumbo cup surreptitiously filled whiskey.  His prized possession is a flask, which is never empty.  He meets Aimee (Shailene Woodley) when she discovers him passed out on the front lawn at dawn.  At first blush they make an unlikely pair, she as the responsible college-bound student, he as the inebriated goof who is flunking geometry, a course required for graduation.  The Spectacular Now is mainly the story of Sutter and Aimee's relationship.

Aimee is a smart girl, so we wonder how she could not look upon a relationship with Sutter as ill-fated.  But just as Sutter is representative of many high school senior boys, Aimee is not an atypical girl.  She is attractive in a natural way, smart but not a nerd, friendly but not a partier.  Sutter needs her help with math, yet their time together means more to her than him.  Even though we view some of Sutter's actions as callous -- even cruel -- his charm makes it tough for us to dislike him.  He works on us in the same way he affects Aimee.  Woodley's expressive eyes clearly convey her frequently changing emotions.  I thought she was exceptional in 2011's The Descendants (pre-blog rating of B), in which she plays George Clooney's daughter.  Her work in The Spectacular Now confirms my original prediction that, at the "real life" young age of 21, she is a star in the making.

The movie does have a few weaknesses.  There is one ten minute stretch where the characters utter the word "awesome" approximately a dozen times.  We expect the main characters to speak like high schoolers, but come on.  Didn't the script writers have access to a thesaurus?  And that omnipresent plastic cup of booze.  Why does no one ever suspect that Sutter's drink of choice is something a little stronger than Coke? Generally the adults in this story are either conveniently MIA, oblivious or one-dimensional.  The well drawn teen characters do, however, make up for that.

So we wonder, what will become of Sutter and Aimee when their high school days come to an end?  Do they have a future beyond graduation or are they star-crossed?  The last shot of the film will give you something to chew on.