Inside Out

In my notes on Terminator:Genisys, I wrote that I’ve lost interest in big budget, yet empty, animation festivals.

Inside Out is a big budget, yet rich, animation festival.  I loved it.

This is an amazingly ambitious picture, bringing together contemporary psychology theory, brilliant storytelling, and cutting edge animation to take us inside the mind, perhaps even the soul, of an 11-year-old girl struggling with a cross-country move and all the uncertainty that can bring.

Of course, this sounds like the type of thing you may recall from elementary school films, but we’re talking about a Pixar movie here.  This is the studio that sold us on the concept of paying rats to prepare our meals.  Inside Out makes us care about his girl and – I don’t quite know how to write this – the component parts of her psyche in a way that not only captures our imagination, but improves our understanding of ourselves and of those around us.

I love Inside Out.  I love everything about it.  It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

Terminator: Genisys

Oh, my goodness.  What a big, goofy, internally inconsistent, dumb, fun movie.  That left me flat anyway. 

Terminator: Genisys is a great movie for the casual fan of the Terminator franchise.  If you have a vague memory of the first two films and general feeling of goodwill toward the concept of time-travelling killer androids, this is just the picture to fire up when you’re sitting in Coach on Hour 6 of a 10-hour plane ride.

Here’s the premise: we start some minutes before the beginning of The Terminator. John Connor is about to send some meatball (who is supposed to be what Michael Biehn might have looked like if he’d gotten into steroids instead of whiskey) back in time to rescue his mom from young Arnold Schwarzenegger.  So far, so good, but …

SPOILERS AHOY.  NOT THE BIGGEST SPOILERS, BECAUSE THEY TAKE PLACE IN THE FIRST 5 MINUTES OF THE FILM.  STILL, IT’S A TWIST.  YOU CAN ALWAYS STOP HERE.  YOU ALREADY KNOW WHETHER YOU’RE GOING TO CATCH THIS ON VIDEO.

… oh, no!  The Terminators have infiltrated the Resistance!  One of them’s attacking John just as Not-Biehn is transporting!

And away we go.  And this is all fine.  We have a reasonably clever script, we have a woefully underused television star in a supporting role when he’d have brought so much more than a killer recipe for protein shakes to the not-Biehn role, and we have Arnold shooting guns and pulling faces.  It’s fun, but it’s missing something.  It took me a long time to put my finger on it, but it finally came together during a stunt sequence set on the Golden Gate Bridge.

See, there’s a bit where a school bus flips end over end, then rolls for a while, then flies through a fireball, etc.  Sarah Connor’s wearing a seatbelt, at least, but not Meatball.  There were two things wrong with this bit.  First, the crash was not survivable – seat belt or not.  If you’re making a movie about killer androids from the future, you need to get the little lies right in order to help your audience swallow the big lie.  Second, while the sequence used some practical effects, its climax –with the bus coming at the viewer while a fireball explodes- just doesn’t look real.  This would have been fine a year ago, when all the big action movies looked like this.  But this was the summer of the superlative Mad Max: FuryRoad, where a shot of a truck smashing into some obstacles, wiping out, and generating chaos was a shot of a real truck actually smashing into real obstacles, wiping out, and generating (real, though carefully planned) chaos.

For that matter, This movie never felt real.  I never feared for any of the leads’ lives.  I was disappointed that the brilliant Matt Smith was given so little to do.  I just- well, Terminator: Genisys offered a couple of hours of nostalgia and ‘splosions, and that ain’t bad.  But that doesn’t really cut it any more.  Give me a $5M movie about Thai or Malaysian stuntmen fighting each other over a MacGuffin.  I’ll take that – a little movie with actual people executing difficult stunt sequences – over a big budget, yet empty, animation festival.

The Equalizer; Into the Woods; Going Clear

The Equalizer

Lone superman eliminates the entire Russian Mafia in Boston.  I don’t get it – it’s not like they killed his dog.

Yes, The Equalizer is basically John Wick with Denzel Washington.  I’m actually ok with that, because I liked John Wick and I like Denzel Washington.  I liked The Equalizer, but I didn’t love it for two reasons.  First, it was so bleak that I felt depressed while it was on.  Second, the fight choreography and photography weren’t particularly compelling.

If I were the kind of guy who gave scores, I’d add bonus points for the Chloë Grace Moretz's turn as an actress affirming that, yes, she is the next Jodie Foster.  Further, I’d add points for casting Marton Csokas as the villain.  He’s kind of a stock Russian baddie, but he was in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  And I really love Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Into the Woods

About halfway through Into the Woods, I paused it checked to IMDB to learn whether the guy who wrote the music is the same guy who wrote Cats.  I hate Cats.

That said, Into the Woods does provide yet another example of why Meryl Streep is enjoying such a long and lauded career.  Frankly, it's as if she were in a different movie.  While the rest of the performers seem to be there to make one of two statements ("I may be a movie/tv star, but I can do musical theater!"  "I may be a Broadway star, but I can do movies!"), Streep is assaying an actual character.  Yes, she sings and dances, but she's alive and she brings the movie alive whenever she's onscreen.

Perhaps I'll remember Into the Woods as the move that made me think, 'Maybe I will queue up Ricki and the Flash, after all.'

Going Clear

One day, my college roommate came home with a copy of Dianetics.  I threw a fit, warned him not to get involved with that evil cult, and convinced him to toss the book.  Going Clear, a documentary exposing Scientology, proves me right nearly thirty years later.  I’m just glad my roommate listened to me way back when.

While the film lingers a bit too long on celebrity scandal for my taste, it succeeds in making its case that Scientiology is an evil, rapacious swindle.  It does so in a careful, compelling way that makes it succeed as entertainment, as well.  I recommend this one without reservation.

 

 

Casting By

Casting By, a documentary about casting directors, sheds light on the dawn of the casting director as an independent creative player in the world of film and television.  It’s interesting stuff if you’re a movie buff, but I suspect it would put a general audience to sleep.

The story takes focuses on Marion Dougherty, a brilliant New York casting director who defined the job.  Just as Dougherty was coming into her own as a casting director in New York – based network television, the studio system was coming apart in Los Angeles.  When the studios stopped keeping a roster of reliably stereotypical role players on contract and transitioned to hiring afresh for each new film, they needed someone who knew the talent pool.  They needed someone who knew how to read a script and see a certain performer or type of performer.  They needed a casting director.

Dougherty filled that role, and in so doing she garnered the respect of many of the great filmmakers of her day.  While she was at it, she trained the next generation of casting directors and shaped her profession for years to come.  Casting By tells her story with verve, and sprinkles it with interviews with such luminaries as Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese.  However, the film assumes a familiarity with the motion pictures of the late sixties and early seventies (Dougherty’s heyday) that many viewers may not share.  If you haven’t seen Midnight Cowboy, you can’t know how perfectly cast John Voight and Dustin Hoffman were in that film.  The same goes for Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, or a number of the other actors in a number of the other films Casting By expects you to have seen.

That said, Casting By taught this film buff a few things about the history of auteur-era American filmmaking, and it did so in an entertaining fashion.  If you’ve done your homework, you’ll probably enjoy Casting By.  I know I did.

The Best Offer

The Best Offer could as easily been entitled Geoffrey Rush is a Really Good Actor.  In the film, Rush plays an art and antiques valuator and auctioneer with a tightly controlled, distant life.  He is his work, and he is very little else.

Until, that is, he meets a girl.

Once he meets a girl, the plot kicks in.  It’s a perfectly fine, if heavy handed, tale, but the tale isn’t the draw of The Best Offer.  The draw of this film is the opportunity to watch Rush assay a particular kind of solitary gentleman, then to watch him develop this character into a three-dimensional man.  He really is breathtaking, even if the film he’s in begins to fade from memory mere days after its viewing.  I do enjoy Geoffrey Rush.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a melodrama set in 1920s China, the late warlord period in which various factions vied for power while Japan quietly built its strength across the sea.  It involves a young missionary woman, a crafty warlord, and the collision of idealism with the practical requirements of power.

A very young Barbara Stanwyck plays the idealistic missionary woman (more of a girl, really, but I don’t think Barbara Stanwyck was ever truly a girl – she was probably the savviest young woman in the second grade), and Nils Asther plays General Yen.  Either Stanwyck is miscast or I just can’t get over the impact of movies like Ball of Fire and Double Indemnity.  I just didn’t buy her idealism, and she can’t quite sell a religious speech on which the movie’s story hinges.  Asther makes a fine general, charming and ruthless, but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the fact that he was a made-up European guy surrounded by an Asian supporting cast.

Since I never bought into the female lead’s character, I never could quite suspend my disbelief and buy into the movie.  Yes, the photography was lovely, as were the sets and costumes.  If nothing else, Ms. Stanwyck was always a pleasure to watch.  But when the spell doesn’t work, we’re left with nothing but pictures and sound.  I wanted to love The Bitter Tea of General Yen, but it didn’t work for me.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation pits Tom Cruise and his pals against SPECTRE KAOS HYDRA SMERSH COBRA FOWL VILE SCORPIO – aw, jeez, guys.  “The Syndicate?”  You’re putting them up against “The Syndicate?”  I could come up with five better names for evil organizations right off the top of my head:  1. SPAWN (Special Project for Anarchy, War, and Nachos (seriously, those things are really bad for you)); 2. OUCH (Organization to Undermine Capitalist Hypocrisy); 4.  MTI (Moustache Twirlers International); 5. The Bay City Rollers.  Honestly, this stuff isn’t hard.

Fortunately, choosing a boring moniker for the villains appears to be the only serious shortcut taken by this latest entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise.  Here’s a spy fantasy with a cleverly written script, well-shot action set pieces, cool gadgets, a beautiful heroine, and movie star’s movie star Tom Cruise busting his tukkas in one incredible stunt sequence after another.  This movie has exotic locales,  gymkata, motorcycle chases, gunfights, even a hacker character pushing a big red button – I mean, it has it all.  Best of all, it has laugh-out loud humor, a wonderful sense of fun, and absolutely world-class production values.  

While it can’t boast a sequence that tops the amazing Burj Khalifa bit from Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, this entry in the series delivers everything one could possibly hope for from this kind of film.  If you like this genre, I don’t see how you could possibly not enjoy Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Man, I just reviewed Paddington, which will probably make my yearly Top Ten.  How do you follow that?

Well, you could do worse than How to Train Your Dragon 2, a CGI action-adventure with beautiful animation, thrilling set-pieces, and touching emotional beats.

The film follows the continuing adventures of Hiccup and Toothless, a rider / dragon team, and the rest of the members of their Viking village as they seek to spread peace and love for dragonkind throughout their stylized version of Scandinavia.

Yes, there’s a villain.  And yes, there are more and bigger dragons, and yes, the stakes are (expectedly) higher in the sequel than in the original.  Ho hum.  Nevertheless, it’s all in the execution, and How to Train your Dragon 2 executes the material at the very highest level.  This is a wonderful adventure, technically awesome yet with a beating heart.

It just isn’t Paddington.  I think I should have watched a couple of episodes of Breaking Bad to cleanse my palate, because it turns out that a gentle little movie about a talking bear was one hard act to follow.

Paddington

Paddington is a carefully crafted, well intentioned, entirely adorable movie that my whole family enjoyed.  If you’re the kind of person who won’t see a kids’ movie without kids present, go make or find some and sit them down for Paddington.

Here’s the setup: Paddington is a walking, talking anthropomorphic bear who journeys from darkest Peru to modern London, there to find a family who will love him.  Upon his arrival, he meets the Browns, led by Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville (who got my wife’s attention) and Sally Hawkins (who got mine).

[A quick aside about my feelings for Sally Hawkins: I first noticed her in Happy-Go-Lucky, in which she played a willfully cheerful and optimistic woman who, even though she often exasperated those around her, raised spirits and souls through her example.  Next, I saw her in Made in Dagenham, in which she played a union organizer of uncommon wiliness and determination.  Sally Hawkins could play Hannibal Lecter, and I’d root for her to find a particularly charming Chianti.]

Mr. Brown’s not too keen on inviting a bear into his home, but Mrs. Brown overrules him and opens the door, much to the delight of their boy and horror of their girl.  What follows is a lovely story of a little bear trying to fit in, trying to find a home, and trying to elude the devilish taxidermist / commando / all-around villain Nicole Kidman.

[Another aside, this time about actors, villains, and children’s movies: You can tell a lot about an actor by how he or she approaches the role of villain in a children’s movie.  On the one hand, you look at David Cross in Alvin and the Chipmunks.  He’s clearly slumming it, holding his nose while he goes through the motions and collects the paycheck.  On the other, you admire the gold standard: Peter Dinklage in Underdog.  Dinklage understands that a serious actor can take portraying a comic villain in a children’s film seriously, hitting just the right balance of menace and harmlessness.  It is hard to do, and only the best can pull it off.]

Ms. Kidman makes for a wonderful comic villain: evil enough to give the climax real stakes, yet icily silly enough to avoid actually frightening young viewers.  She measures up to the Dinklage Standard of age-appropriate villainy, turning in her best performance since The Others.  It helps that she has the good taste to recruit, for a henchman, the wonderful Peter Capaldi (In the Loop) – another actor who absolutely nails it.

I sense a theme emerging.  Producer David Heyman lined up top talent for Paddington, from voice actors like Ben Whishaw, Imelda Staunton, and Michael Gambon, to the onscreen performers I’ve noted above.  The talent lineup, however, doesn’t stop with the cast.  Paddington the Bear, himself, is a wonder of computer animated and practical effects.  Falling somewhere between photorealistic and teddy bear, he’s like a real bear, but with the rough edges sanded down and wearing an adorable hat.  The costuming, the set design, the color palette, everything about this film is captivating, serving to create a world just real enough to keep things grounded, yet magical enough to whisk us away. 

In short, Paddington is a wonderful, wonderful film.  Bravo to director Paul King and everyone who came together to make this gem.  I loved it.

Ant-Man

Walking out of Ant-Man, my oldest engaged me in the following conversation:

“Whadja think, Dad?”

“It was fine.”

“Why didn’t you like it?”

“I did like it.  It was fine.”

“But not good.  What was wrong with it?”

“Nothing.  It was fine.”

It really was fine.  It starred Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd, both of whom are always welcome presences.  It featured solid supporting work from Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, and especially Michael Peña.  I laughed at the jokes.  I grooved to the visuals.  I lost track of time.

However, Ant-Man never entirely captured my imagination.  It set itself up as a caper movie, then paid off the caper at the end of the second act and segued into just another superhero fistfight picture.  Granted, Ant-Man has some fun with this trope by setting the fight on a toy train (the combatants are ant-sized, after all).  However, this just led me to wonder why the villain’s laser beams blow up the train set’s wooden models, as opposed to simply burning holes through them.  Were the models filled with gunpowder and gasoline?  Who makes toys like that?  And at what point were we supposed to find dog-sized (relative to the protagonist) ants charming, instead of revolting and scary?

Perhaps I’m tiring of the genre for the same reason I never got into superhero comics in the first place.  The outfits and motivations may change from title to title, but they all seem to boil down to the same thing: men in silly costumes punching one another.  I’d just as soon watch one of the better Rocky movies.

That said, the actors *are* fun to watch.  The jokes *do* land.  The visuals *are* cool.  I really did lose track of time.  Ant Man is by no means a bad movie.  It’s pleasant.  It’s fun.

I liked it.

It was fine.

Jupiter Ascending

There are two kinds of people in the world:  those who can get behind a wonderful, over-the-top inheritor of the Flash Gordon mantle such as Jupiter Ascending, and those without an ember of joy in their cold, dead hearts.

Here’s a story straight from the Pulp Age of Science Fiction: a peasant learns of a royal heritage, endures a wobbly period of uncertainty and disorientation, then finds his courage, saves the world, and gets the girl.  However, there’s a modern twist: the peasant’s a woman.  She gets the boy.
Beyond that, Jupiter Ascending is pretty standard stuff.  You’ve got your evil, decadent overlords bent on no good.  You’ve got your knight errant.  You’ve got your fantastical creature designs, thoughtfully designed alien landscapes & technologies, and fate of the world-type stuff hanging in the balance.

 

That said, Jupiter Ascending is *good* standard stuff.  Eddie Redmayne goes well over the top as a villain in the finest tradition of Ming the Merciless.  Channing Tatum is up for anything as the knight errant, imbuing the hokiest science fiction exposition with urgency and color.  And Mila Kunis, as the peasant girl with royal blood in her veins, does a marvelous job of showing us her character’s arc from dissatisfied nobody (But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!) to resolute somebody (You’re up to no good, Villain.  And I’m going to stop you!).

So the question to ask yourself is this: do you enjoy pulpy, goofy sci-fi adventure crafted with love and an eye toward fun?  If so, expect to start smiling very early in this film, then keep smiling right up to the credits.  Jupiter Ascending is a pleasant surprise.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

If you enjoyed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I have good news for you.  The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel offers another ninety minutes with the first film’s delightful cast.  These ninety minutes are warm, they’re cozy, and they offer more than a few opportunities to wipe your eyes.

The story picks up perhaps a year after the close of the first film.  Your favorite regulars remain at the hotel, and Sonny & Sunaina are preparing for their impending marriage.  There’s a primary story involving a hoped-for acquisition of a second property and the threat of a rival for Sunaina’s affections, but the magic of The Second Exotic Marigold Hotel happens around the periphery of that story, as the hotel’s pensioners and assorted guest stars live their own small dramas.

So, the question to ask yourself is simple:  Did you enjoy spending time with Judy Dench & Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith & Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup & Diana Hardcastle, and assorted other stars familiar to those who spend a lot of time watching PBS and BBCA during The Exotic Marigold Hotel?  I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending another ninety minutes with them.  I look forward to The Third Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Minions

We’re 2/3 of the way through Minions.  Nobody’s laughing.  Families have walked out.  My 8-year-old is reading his popcorn box.  My wife leans over and whispers, “Will this movie never end?”  I whisper back, “Two words: catastrophic failure.”

The film begins with a short history of minions, little yellow thumb-like creatures who live to serve villains.  It shows them serving a cute T-Rex, then accidentally tipping it over into boiling lava.  This is played for laughs, but nobody laughs because there’s nothing funny about falling into a pit of molten lava.  Later, it shows them serving an Egyptian pharaoh, then accidentally tipping over a carefully balanced inverted pyramid and crushing their master and his party underneath.  Again, this is played for laughs.  Nobody laughs because there’s nothing funny about being crushed to death.  Later in the film, there’s a long sequence involving hijinks in a torture chamber.  Again, nobody laughs.  With the notable exception of The Princess Bride, there’s nothing funny about torture chambers.

The whole film is filled with missteps such as these.  The bulk of the action’s set in late ‘60s / early ‘70s London, a time as alien to the average 8-year-old as medieval China.    There’s gag after gag taking the wind out of hippie culture.  There’s a Jimi Hendrix joke, complete with guitar lick, and even an “Abbey Road” cover photo joke with a complete setup, payoff, and denouement.   All this must have seemed wonderfully amusing to whatever 67-year-old executive greenlit the film, but it was lost on the young families in my theater.  I just sat there wondering who this movie was actually supposed to be for.

And yet, when the credits rolled, my 8-year-old and his friends declared that they loved it; so what do I know?  All I can say is the Minions is the worst film I, personally, have seen so far this year.

John Wick

I like Keanu Reeves.  He makes fun movies like 47 Ronin, he seems like a decent fellow, and he’s nice to Alex Winter. 

I think that Reeves’ greatest appeal as an older movie star (as opposed to his goofy early-20s persona) is his aura of detached, zen-like cool.  He seems like the embodiment of all those platitudes that show up on Facebook about being centered, and mindful, and in the moment.  Thus, it’s absolutely wonderful when, in the emotional climax of John Wick, he completely loses his cool and releases a howl of pain, rage, and vengefulness that shocks the complacent action-movie fan right out of his seat.

Here’s the setup: John Wick is the kind of unstoppable, nigh-invincible former hit man we’ve come to know and love as fans of the action genre.  Since all such characters must be either about to retire or actually in retirement, we meet him as he grieves for his recently-deceased wife and consoles himself by caring for an adorable puppy.  Then bad men come to steal his car and do mean things to his dog.  Vengeance must be had, so away we go for ninety or so minutes of fast cars, fisticuffs, and shooting people in the face.

There are lots of movies like this, but there are three things that make John Wick special.  First, there’s the aforementioned Mr. Reeves.  He’s perfect for this role, and his background in martial arts serves him well as he navigates the film’s hand-to-hand combat sequences.  Second, there’s the supporting cast, from primary antagonist Michael Nyqvist (of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) to assorted members of John Wick’s stylized underworld including the nearly-always wonderful Willem Dafoe (whom I’m willing to forgive for The Grand Budapest Hotel), The Wire’s Lance Reddick, Deadwood’s Ian McShane, Games of Thrones’ Alfie Allen, and Chef’s John Leguizamo (and really, you must see Chef).  They prove, once again, that there are no small roles.  Each of them is note-perfect, and they add a sense of seriousness to what could be a very silly film.  

The hard work behind the camera really shows, as well.  Seasoned second-unit directors and stuntmen Chad Stahelski and David Leitch know how to set up and frame action so the viewer never loses track of who’s doing what to whom, where, and why.  As photographed by Jonathan Sela and edited by Elisabet Ronalds, John Wick does something almost unheard of: it eschews the jump-cut aesthetic of so much modern action filmmaking, and instead offers us longer takes that showcase the hard work of fight choreographer Jonathan Eusebio, the principle performers, and the stunt doubles who practice and practice and practice to make every fight look real, and visceral, and exciting.

As you can tell, I enjoyed the heck out of this movie.  John Wick is a great time at the movies and the start of what should be a lucrative franchise for Keanu Reeves.  Good for all involved, and good for him.  It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Her

Her is the kind of movie that makes me love movies.  It’s a challenging piece of science fiction, a moving drama, and a piece that illuminates the human condition.  It’s brilliant.

The film, set in a washed out, near-future Los Angeles, follows an emotionally damaged man, one reeling from divorce, as he tries to reconstruct his life.  He downloads a new, artificially intelligent, operating system on his computer.  It cares about him.  It understands him.  It sounds like Scarlett Johansson.  Of course, he falls in love.

The AI, self-named Samantha seems real.  In some ways, she is real.  But she isn’t corporeally there.  She isn’t human.  What kind of a life has this man, brilliantly portrayed by Joachim Phoenix, bought into?  What kind of connection can he sustain with a glowing screen and a voice in an earpiece?

We could see this film simply as a wry commentary on the smartphone generation, but I think it has more to say.  I think it’s a commentary on all the things that draw us from human connection: our obsessions, our hobbies, our games - whatever it is that beckons us away from those who do, or those who would, love us. 

Her, however, isn’t just vehicle for late-night navel-gazing.  It’s also a finely crafted, beautifully performed and scored drama that quietly, subtly draws us in and invests us not only in the emotional life of Mister Phoenix, but in that of Johansson’s disembodied voice.  You could plug Her into your device of choice, plug that device into your car stereo, and just listen to it on a long drive – I suspect you may have an even more moving an experience than did I, watching it on a laptop in an airport lounge.

In short, Her is a thing of beauty, not to be missed.  I want to watch it again – this time, with people.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Because I’m a good father, I sat down with my 8-year-old and showed him Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

 

Revisiting it for the first time in well over a decade, I’ve come to the conclusion that while it’s a great movie, it isn’t a particularly good movie.

It’s great in the sense of, “Having a long-term influence and presence in the public consciousness.”  Nevertheless, it has some serious problems.  There’s a voiceover which distracts us and pulls us out of the movie.  There’s an uneven performance from Edward Furlong, the preadolescent actor playing the young John Connor.  The dialogue seems functional, at best, and everything moves at such a stately pace that my young’n lost focus for much of the second act.

Nevertheless, there are some wonderful things about this film.  Robert Patrick, as the next generation Terminator sent to provide this story with an antagonist, is marvelously deadpan.  The special effects hold up today and keep us in the story.  And Arnold, well, he’s Arnold.  The guy’s a movie star for a reason, and that reason is that his magnetic screen presence raises anything he’s in.

Still, I’m glad I saw it again and I’m glad I shared it with my boy.  I wonder when he’ll be old enough for The French Connection.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Given:  Martin Scorsese ranks among the greatest filmmakers of all time.  Given:  Leonardo DiCaprio ranks among his generation’s finest actors.  Question: together, can they make The Wolf of Wall Street worth watching?

“What?” you may be asking.  “Why is this even a question?”

It’s a question because The Wolf of Wall Street tells the story of absolutely terrible human beings.  The film knows they’re terrible.  They characters know they’re terrible.  How does one invest in the stories of a bunch of people who, if they were all incinerated in a nuclear inferno at the end of the second act, would leave the viewer thinking, “Serves ‘em right?”

One invests because Martin Scorsese is an undisputed master of the art form of motion picture creation, and Leonardo DiCaprio is an absolutely brilliant actor and movie star who can find something compelling in even the most loathsome of characters.

The film traces the rise and fall of DiCaprio’s salesman, stockbroker, and felon as he learns to the keys to amassing enormous amounts of wealth through means illegal, unethical, and, well, just plain evil.  It’s a cry of rage against an industry that crashed the American economy in 2008, costing untold numbers of people their jobs, their savings, and their homes while its executives reaped ever-larger bonuses.  The film doesn’t go into the specifics of 2008 – in fact, it ties DiCaprio and his cohort into other shenanigans.  But the rage is the same.

So why watch two+ hours of rage?  Because Scorsese knows who to frame a scene, how to build tension, how to craft a narrative in such a way as to keep us on the hook.  And DiCaprio, man, this guy is amazing.  He gives a charismatic, snakelike, evil performance that is absolutely riveting.  Even when he’s at his most evil, duping some unsuspecting schmuck out of his money and, quite possibly, jeopardizing the guy’s marriage, you can’t help but watch him.  This is an actor at the height of his powers, and you must respect the craft.

Does all this mean that you have to see The Wolf of Wall Street?  I don’t know – I’m not here to sell you anything.  All I know is that this film brings together serious talents and presents a compelling narrative.  If that’s your thing, and you don’t mind a little rage, have at it.