Let Them Eat Cake

Jennifer Aniston as the newly suffering Claire, tries to find salvation in all the wrong places.

Cake (2014) starring Jennifer Aniston and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink supporting cast including husband and wife team Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy, Anna Kendrick, Chris Messina, and Sam Worthington is a film I avoided. I heard a few things here and there about how Jen should have been nominated, but that's about it. It was there and then it disappeared. When it reappeared on Netflix, I took a bite (pun intended) and I really did love it. 

As a movie, it IS flawed. The script is very thin, and the premise is somewhat ridiculous. What carries the film is the performance of Aniston, and the character of Silvana, Aniston's character's long-suffering maid (played brilliantly by Adriana Barraza). It opens on one of those scenes where all of the exposition is right there. At some kind of support group, so we already know that Aniston's character; Claire is or has gone through something. We notice that she's covered in scars and barely moves and is addicted so much to pain killers she makes her maid drive her to Tijuana for refills when her doctors finally cut her off. It's not hard to figure out what actually happened, and even though the film tiptoes around that reveal, what it does do is offer some amazing albeit off-putting nuances about grief, suicide, hopelessness, loss, and redemption. This isn't Shawshank, but in it's simplicity it finds its niche.  

Desperate for company but loathing the idea of being around other people. Who hasn't had that paradox?

Now I don't get personal too often but there are aspects of Claire that I completely understood from the minute the film started playing. I understand why she's so resistent to help and treatment and what she sees as people telling her what to do, moreover what she sees as people who don't know what she's going through telling her how to get better.

She shuns everyone, except for an apparition of a girl from her support group who killed herself who doesn't appear as a friendly ghost filled with wisdom but taunts her about her selfishness and about how crass and self-serving her attitude is and how it is hurting those who love her. Many times people who have experienced trauma and loss want to dig a hole and cover it up after them, be alone, and shun everyone around them. They drown their sorrows because they don't see how it could possibly get better, and a lot of us are alienated by that. Which is totally understandable. 

During the climactic scene of the film, Claire's hallucination finally offers up some sage advice that ends up turning Claire's attitude around. 

Aniston's growth as an actress has never been more prevalent and transparent than in this role, which she wasn't even the first choice for. And what she brings to the internal transformation of Claire is so much more honest than any episode of Intervention that you might catch on A&E, though her problem is not drugs, it's only a symptom of her depravity. Of course the resolution to this kind of story is written into the script within the first 5 minutes; They will figure all of that out and change their ways, which does happen but not in the cliche way we've all grown tired of. There are some insanely funny scenes that perhaps shouldn't be, and the surreal aspect of it doesn't seem to mesh well, but then after a while, you get it, even though again, the script is pretty thin. It's a mediocre film effort, but for one reason or another I enjoyed it. I identified with the characters, (all of them) and though there's barely a plot, it does work. As I said, it's not a story about redemption, nor is it a story about the human condition in the Jean-Paul Sartre way as in we're all dying what's the point? It's just about people, the worst of us and the best of us, and how both incarnations are inside each of us at all times. It's streaming on Netflix, I'd recommend it but with caution. 

Spotlight On: Joaquin Phoenix

Joaquin Phoenix in a still from The Master (2012) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

After years of playing second banana to his much more talented older brother River, Joaquin (or Leaf as he was called back then) got his golden opportunity in 1995 playing opposite Nicole Kidman in perhaps one of the filthiest, most deliciously satiric films of that decade; Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995). He was only 21 when he played a naive and rather idiotic high school student who gets seduced by Kidman's will-do-anything-to-be-famous-even-being-infamous character Susan Stone who convinces him through her lady parts to kill her dimwitted husband (Matt Dillon). After that, there seemed to be a lull in his career with flops like Oliver Stone's U-Turn (1997) and culty 90's bullshit like Clay Pigeons (1998). But then as we all know, he hit it big, and I mean big as the conniving, hedonistic, ego-maniacal, antagonist Commodus in Ridley Scott's Best Picture winning film, Gladiator (2000).

Joaquin opposite Nicole Kidman in To Die For (1995), jump starting his career at the bold young age of 20.

As an actor, Joaquin was always a very special presence. Jaded by the Hollywood machine that seemed to claim his brother's life when he was just a teenager, and intelligent enough to bring a forceful yet thoughtful edge to every one of his performances, Joaquin was never an actor who played by the rules, and the roles he chose proved to illustrate that. 

One of my favorite performances of his is when he played sexually repressed, and spiritually tortured Abbé de Coulmier in director Philip Kaufman's beautifully decadent and sharply dark interpretation about the life of the Marquis de Sade after his incarceration in Quills (2000). He proved to be as versatile as he was creative, and was unwilling to be compromised by Hollywood.

Joaquin Phoenix and Kate Winslet in Quills (2000)

This notion might have been driven too far when he went balls to the wall (no pun intended) with his bizarre 'performance art' stint as a methed-out Rabbi, but now he's back to normal and slated to garner even more awards and nominations in perhaps the most anticipated film of this year; cinematic genius' Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012).  Just winning the principle role opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in such a huge project which is premiering at two of the biggest International Film Festivals (Venice and Toronto) is a huge accomplishment and Joaquin proves time and time again that he's up to scratch and is more than just shtick and idiosyncrasy. People will finally start to take him seriously as the tour-de-force which he is, and will stop comparing him to the legacy left by his brother. Joaquin Phoenix is a filthy, unapologetic, obnoxious, tenacious genius, and talented as all fuck. With The Master (2012), he is well on his way to cinematic god-hood, and I have no doubt that he'll get there sooner rather than later...all we have to do is forget about I'm Still Here (2011) which I basically have, except for that full frontal part.

Below some trailers from his films including The Master (2012).

Trailer for I'm Still Here (2011)

Trailer for To Die For (1995)

Trailer for Walk the Line (2005)

Trailer for Quills (2000)

Who Will Win the Palme d'Fuck at Cannes this Year?

As you film buffs are well aware, in just a week the biggest and sparkliest names in show business will descend upon the beautiful resort town in the south of France called Cannes for the most prestigious film festival that exists in history. So basically it's a lot of pretentious Europeans and the Hollywood elite rubbing shoulders, watching a shit ton of movies, and booing Sophia Copolla and Lars Von Trier (which I have no problem with). 

Two of the biggest films in competition this year are David Cronenberg's urban shit-show BDSM violence fantasy Cosmopolis (2012) and sensitive guy socialist Walter Salles' subterranean clusterfuck of disjointed Benzedrine-inspired bullshit On the Road (2012) both based renowned literary opuses, and both starring the principals from Twilight, how fucking appropriate. When you're thinking of adapting Kerouac, the first person that pops in your head should be Kristen Stewart I mean clearly. 

Still from On the Road (2012) be prepared for a lot of nude driving.

Both contain excessive fucking and all other kinds of derogatory behavior, one is surreal, the other nostalgic. One is futuristic, the other, dated. And if you can't tell which is which, then go stand in the corner you dumb bitch. 

Point is, that hey, it's France. Neither of these are going to pick up any Academy Awards for Best Tits, but they might snag an Un Certain Regard or two. Both are big 'risk' movies with explicit material. The Cosmopolis trailer was even slapped with a red band, therefore parents beware, but Frenchies get your binoculars out if you want to catch Robert Pattinson's peen. 

Still from Cosmopolis (2012) be prepared for a lot of nude Robwrt Pattinson shooting and being shot at.

And to assume that a book based on professional drunk Jack Karouac's On The Road would be anything but blatantly explicit is just plain ignorant. Now, I'm not a big fan of either of the books, but I am a fan of Don DeLillo in general (who wrote Cosmopolis, not his best by far) and a way bigger fan of Cronenberg than Salles. To me, if it's competing for who's got the hotter, filthier, more provocative film, it's like the junior varsity sit-ins vs. the starting team on the Lakers. Oh snap, i just made a sports analogy (not even sure if it worked but whateves). It's a no-brainer folks, you're going to make it rain  golden palms on Cosmopolis.

Now none of this is to say that either is going to be a 'good' film in the way that we define 'a good film' in fact, I'm not too excited about either. I'm going to go ahead and say for the record that Abbas Kiarostami is going to walk away with the Palme d'Or or even Sang-soo Hong. 'Oh who?' you ask...go stand in the corner, bitch.

Below trailers for both: