Nolan Goes to War and Wins

I can tell you that this is Tom Hardy, but this is the classic nameless soldier that Nolan uses to magnify the breadth of the viewer to the film.

These are really hard to write, because as anyone will tell you it's much harder to write a good review than a bad review, but I was swept away by Dunkirk (ok that was a tired metaphor) ...it blew my socks off ...no even worse. It was amazing ok? And I dare to surmise that it's Christopher Nolan's best film in his repertoire. I know he has a strong following not only of fan boys, comic book nerds, but also cinephiles, and is revered as like the next Orson Welles or something, I mean he makes good films and is very skilled but he's not Orson Welles. Here's the thing, I watched Memento because everyone was pressuring me to do it when it first came out in 2000, and at the time I was still smoking pot so I watched it. I watched it literally the day before I saw Dunkirk for the second time and after all of these years it's still brilliant. 

Now, I know I'm going to get murdered for saying the following, but apart from The Dark Knight, which I don't even think is the best superhero film; I mean it's up there, but no. I don't like his movies. I think they are very conceptually interesting but very self-indulgent; from the crazy runtimes to the weird time parallels he loves to fuck around with, which I see as very self-serving. I didn't bother watching The Dark Knight Rises, and I hated Inception; Interstellar -- same thing. He's one of those people that I think starts out as a massively talented maverick indie filmmaker who turns completely cray once a studio gives him some money a la Darren Aronofsky. 

I'm a history buff, or huge History Channel nerd however you want to call it, and I am actually completely obsessed with World War II so going into the film, I was well aware about the battle and subsequent evacuation of Dunkirk. 

One of the most iconic scenes in the film, and Nolan spared no expense to make it look as authentic as possible. Word has it that over 10,000 extras participated in the film. 

Nolan does not give you any backstory, and good for him. He's a filmmaker that doesn't talk down to his audience and assumes that they are all as smart as he is. Except for in Inception, where there was a character who's whole purpose was to explain the convoluted plot to the audience by asking the questions that we all silently were. 

But back to Dunkirk. If you don't know the story -- The Nazi army is basically a few kilometers from total occupation of France. The only countries allied against Hitler at this time are France and England. The British are retreating and the only way out is across the English Channel which is pretty fucking far even though we have people swimming that shit now. But then again, those people don't get torpedoed by U-boat's or shot down by the Luftwaffe like fish in a barrel. At this time, Churchill had focused all of his military preparedness on fortifying England with the British Navy which was the best in the world. Unfortunately, he didn't plan for the aggression of Hitler's Luftwaffe air force. About 400,000 British men needed to be evacuated off of the beaches in Dunkirk, France, and this story is about the miracle of their survival. 

An actual photograph of the evacuation of Dunkirk.

As a film, it is a towering achievement in the war film genre. I haven't seen anything quite like it. In a world with wall-to-wall CGI, Nolan used basically none. It is breathtaking what he was able to accomplish filming from the three main locations of the evacuation; land, sea, and air...and yes it did lead to Churchill's 'We Will Fight Them on the Beaches' speech. 

I saw it with a Russian who shall remain nameless, and they're an art major (or were); educated in the Soviet Union. There, they are apparently taught to play against action. It's a very character driven, character-centric aesthetic. In fact, they they refer to excessive action as 'Zhelezo' which means metal. As in, too much metal, not enough humanity. 

A scene where the chaos is humanized and meditated on is usually one of a deafening silence. And yes that's Harry Styles on the left. Happy now?

I countered that by arguing that most war films; yes, have a singular viewpoint. Some of the best in fact; from Saving Private Ryan, to The Pianist, to Kubrick's Path's of Glory because someone apparently wrote it down somewhere that war has to be humanized. I understand that sentiment, but in all actuality war is the exact opposite of that. It is a conflict of chaos where everyone who fights in it from the generals to the privates are anonymous and just have one initiative in mind; survival. I would rather actually compare it to a film like Black Hawk Down, which according to my estimates has about 50 speaking roles. You don't remember who's who most of the time; their rank; and what they're whole deal is, because guess what; it doesn't matter. There is a mission, it goes wrong, soldiers are trapped under huge enemy fire and that's the story right there. It's a documentary style of narrative filmmaking, and Nolan just nailed it. His camera work, his beautiful imagery, and his signature aesthetic all worked in his favor and the film is an absolute masterpiece. Because in war, nothing really matters except staying alive am I right? Did that sound too Hunger Games?

But back to the filmmaking, again with about 30 principals in the cast, with seasoned actors like Kenneth Branagh who basically has like 5 lines and Cillian Murphy who just repeats the same thing over and over again, it's a sacrifice of telling the story as accurately as possible without making it about a particular person or a particular viewpoint. During the evacuation of Dunkirk, everyone's objective was the same, and that's how Nolan approaches it. Most of the characters don't even have names, IMDB it. All in all, well worth the hype, the wait, and definitely now that I come back to it, the best Nolan film to date. 

Trailer below: 

Sofia's Epic Fail

4 out of these 7 women have speaking roles. 

Was that harsh? Well, watching her new film The Beguiled felt like a one and a half torture ride to nowhere's-ville. I want my time back, and my money. And I want her to make better films, but that's not going to happen is it? 

The film was marketed as a radical feminist revenge story, perfect for the chauvinist rhetoric of the Trump era, but Valerie Solanas it is not. It's not even a 'hell hath no fury…' kind of thing. As I said, it's about an hour and a half of nothing. Which is a fair assessment of basically all of her films, yeah I said it. It had such great potential. It's a Misery meets Gone with the Wind story based on a Clint Eastwood movie from the 70's (arguably the best era of America filmmaking). With a stellar cast like Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell, and the up-and-coming Elle Fanning, you were thinking how could this go wrong? In all respects apparently.

Admit it, this part from the trailer is why we all wanted to see it. 'Get me the anatomy book'.

I have to give it up to the marketing department. They did a great job with the theater art, the promo art, the trailers, etc. Basically building up this turd in a dress so that people would shelve out 11 dollars to see it. I saw it with a friend earlier today and we witnessed quite a few walk outs. At first we thought it was because we were basically screaming at the screen, but we couldn't help ourselves. Eventually, we realized that the walk outs had the right idea. 

So stop fucking with us, Coppola. Just because you're Hollywood royalty doesn't mean you can do no wrong. In fact you can do so much wrong to some seriously ripe and brilliant material that it kind of taints your family's legacy.

The film is photographed beautifully; with low-lit interiors, candlelight and sunshine, and dressing that looks like it's actually a house that has been lived in and not a matte painting that was put up the day before. Costumes are en pointe and that's about the only positive things I have to say about the film. I know it was just released, so unlike most of my reviews I'm not giving away the plot. Here's what we know. Colin Farrell is a Union deserter; a Irish mercenary who has been badly injured and is found on the outskirts of a large Southern plantation in Virginia. He is taken in by the children and their headmistress who have had to lay low three years into the Civil War. It's pretty obvious that 6 girls in their sexual prime or in puberty and a woman a bit past her prime but still hot AF (Nicole Kidman) would create sexual tension with the one man they're keeping in the house so palpable you could cut it with a bread knife.

I will give her the director of photography a lot of credit. He managed to make a dull film very pretty. So you have that to look forward to. 

Firstly, this house she runs with 6 pupils seems to have an endless supply of food and wine. What the actual fuck? Every movie about the Civil War, or any war for that matter is about people having no food or rations. Also, three of the girls don't even have speaking parts. That's a waste of space, they literally do nothing. You could just cut them out of the film and save the budget. For an hour and a half run time, I would say there's about 20 minutes of dialogue which is par for the course for a Sofia Copolla film. Every single time there is a moment for potential pathos, drama, and hubris, she builds that moment and then kills it. It's like getting really close to orgasm, and then the person falls asleep on you.

Although it appears deliciously sexually devious, the actually sexuality of this film has about as much erotica as a 13 year old's vampire fan fiction.  

It's almost as if Sofia is afraid of the sexuality of this film, which is basically the driving force of the plot. Even scenes that should be highly erotic are creepy and weird. Scarlet O'Hara crying on Ashley's chest was more erotic than anything in this movie. For a mostly silent film with no plot and no nuance of the main characters it seems to kind of move into the category of Avant-Garde, which I believe is actually Sofia's calling. But go Avant-Garde all the way. Film on 16mm silent Bolex cameras, with a 10 minute run time, and save us the grief. She so desperately wants to be considered a serious artist, but she comes off as uber-pretentious. She breaks so many film rules that it's just not right. 

I know breaking film rules can be fine, but what we think of as breaking is actually bending. Tarantino does it, Scorsese does it. But rules are there for a reason. Example: Your main characters have to be nuanced. They have to be three dimensional. They have to have motive good or bad. There has to be a plot that moves forward and doesn't just meander around waiting for shit to happen. I don't care how pretty it looks. 

People think that she's so unique because she plays up the subtlety which is actually giving her audience a giant middle finger. There's being subtle, which is fine, and then there's saying nothing at all, and that's what this film does. I don't need resolution, I can leave a film without closure as long as the film presents interesting questions to consider later. This film does not. You leave the theater thinking…'well, that happened'. Sofia is should really stop writing her own films because she writes about 30 pages and stretches it to an hour and a half run time (I keep mentioning that because it felt way longer). It's kind of sad that coming from such a talented family, we'll think of The Bling Ring as 'the good one'. Hard pass.

Trailer below...I mean...whatever.

Christine Didn't Make It

This is Christine Chubbuck coming to you live from WZRB in Sarasota, back to you George.

I don't usually take a somber tone, I mean 99% of what I say and write is sarcasm. But I watched a movie recently that really affected me, and I've seen quite a few of those. Contemporarily speaking, this was perhaps the most overlooked film of this past year. It's called Christine starring Rebecca Hall as the titular character of Christine Chubbuck who is famous for shooting herself on air at the network where she worked. Rebecca Hall could very well be the most underrated actress of our time. People kind of lost interest in her after she was upstaged by Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Christina, Barcelona. 

It's one of those films that makes you immediately go on Wikipedia because you think to yourself that no way is this based on a true story, but it is. The tragedy of Christine is very much steered by the patriarchy that is constantly in her way. The film is meditative and a strong character piece and if you don't know what happens in the climax it can seem to drag, and yet Hall carries it so brilliantly. 

Christine is a co-anchor at some local station in Sarasota, Florida…jealous? And she's interested in positive human interest stories, alas her boss doesn't give a shit because it doesn't sell. One could say that it's the female Nightcrawler but the opposite of that. She doesn't want to sensationalize the news, in fact she calls it exploitative.

'Jesus Christ, just make your stories juicy!'

What's truly tragic is that she is optimistic to the very end. In the opening scene (this film takes place in the 70's btw) she imagines she's interviewing Richard Nixon, knowing she'll never even get close. We learn throughout the film that she lives with her mother, and about to hit 30, is still a virgin. She hates pot smoking, which her mother regularly engages in, and has a general disdain for the shall we say 'free love' of the times. She is so determined to not be famous per se, but to succeed in the job that she so much loves to do; a job dominated by male culture. She even volunteers at a children's hospital and is desperate for human connection. The lead anchor she frequently works with is the handsome George played my Michael C. Hall, whom she is desperately in love with, but because of her awkward workaholic demeanor, she doesn't really have a chance until he invites her out to dinner only to tell her that despite her hard work and cooperation with the whole 'if it bleeds it leads' attitude the station has taken on, that George has been promoted to anchor in Baltimore in a top 20 market over her. What makes it worse is that he was able to choose someone to take with him and surprise surprise it's not her. Things are made worse when she find out that she a cyst on her ovary and the entire thing has to come out. 

The fake flowers that symbolize a lot more than you think. 

Over time, Christine realizes that everything is working against her. We don't really get a sense that she's suicidal but we get clues that she has some mental issues that are only exasperated by her circumstances. 

Aside from Hall, it's the direction of the movie that is truly special. The camera follows her into an abyss surrounded by 70's glamour. There is a brilliant scene where she's clearly distracted in an interview on air by the fake flowers on her desk. She abruptly stops the interview and throws the flowers at the camera operator saying that it's all she can think about right now. 

I suppose there's a tenacious stubbornness to her that a lot of us, especially women can relate to. She works in a highly sexist environment where her abstaining from drinking and partying is looked upon as weird and she herself is looked upon as aloof. The amount of time she spends working shows how passionate she is, but left and right she is shut down even when she is cooperative. Her boss has nothing but disdain for her, and they are at odds almost constantly.

The way the film is directed, we can see that not only is Christine at the end of her rope towards the climax, but she sees no other way out. We don't see the gun, not really. We see it in her bag, but we don't see her staring at it contemplating what she's about to do, which is the lazy way out. 

Her final and only revenge is to put on a very false and somewhat creepy facade by going to her boss' office and asking to be lead on the following Monday about the weekend news. She promises that it will be sensational, and in the most prophetic and unforgettable way, through the strangest smile she tells him; 'I'm agreeing with you'.

The real Christine Chubbuck

I've already told you what ends up happening to Christine, and sometimes when you're not quite ready for that moment even though you know that it's coming, you need to see it again. But I couldn't watch this again. It was directed so viscerally that I literally jumped …off of the exercise equipment I was on, but give me a break. 

Back to Hall, I really thought she'd be at least nominated, but the film was small, the film was dark, and if anyone should have won, it should have been Natalie Portman for her haunting portrayal of Jackie Kennedy, but Hall needs to be acknowledged not only for the aesthetics of Christine; the walking style, the hair, the mannerisms, etc. But it was one in a few times where an actor inhabits a character so intimately that it really bothers you. You want so much to know what's going on inside Christine's head and her descent into making the decision that she finally does, and yet you don't want to know; that's great acting. Hall did Christine Chubbuck justice in a subdued, understated performance of a woman who is pushed into a corner by her male colleagues and no matter how hard she fights and how much she compromises, she feels that she's left with no choice and no other way out. And there's a strangeness in that part of you that actually does understand that.

Trailer below, streaming on Netflix, highly recommended.

Shakespeare's Gay Pride

Granted I've never seen this play live, but this is definitely the best and most iconic version of Shylock. 

Brace yourselves, this might be controversial but since when do I shy away from that. I go home after a lone day, and I read or watch Shakespeare and try to write...because I am better than you. Tonight I rented on Demand my favorite Shakespeare play; The Merchant of Venice. Those of you who know it, good for you, and for those of you who don't...you're an asshole. But it concerns a man named Antonio (played in the film by Jeremy Irons) and the story goes that a 'close friend' Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) desperately wants to court a woman named Portia (Lynn Collins) who lives in Belmont which I assume is a tiny island off the coast of Venice. Here's the problem. Bassanio is a do-nothing, just a pretty boy with a lot of passion. Antonio his friend is a merchant...hence the name 'Merchant of Venice'. Long story short (too late), Antonio wants to help him so much that he gives him license to borrow money from the Jew of Venice, Shylock (Al Pacino) who is a money lender because Jews back then couldn't own businesses. Shylock complies but not before reminding Antonio that he's a piece of shit and giving the condition that if he is not paid back, the forfeit will be a pound of Antonio's flesh ...literally. How's the Vera cliffs notes? They agree and the deal is made and that's as far as I'm going because for chrissake read some goddamn Shakespeare. 

Artist rendition of Portia fighting off suitors.

On to my point, aside from the fact that there are always women disguised as men and the other way around particularly in his comedies (Twelfth Night, Midsummer, this play, etc.) There is always a special and unspoken relationship between certain male characters. Ask yourself, why would Antonio agree to this insane condition on Bassanio's sake? He's always seen in the play as being so overtly kind and almost a doormat to the much younger and prettier Bassanio. He is literally willing to put his life on the line for him. It's quite similar to the relationship that Iago and Cassio have in Othello. And no, I don't think this is an Elizabethan bromance. It can be argued that Antonio's loyalty to Bassanio is stronger than Bassanio's loyalty to Portia. 

The debt to be paid. He hath laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains. 

In Shakespeare, the women who have relationships with each other are usually ones of mutual respect and friendship. Much like you would find on an episode of Sex and the City. Yet the director of this particular film likes to play up the shall we say flighty relationship between Portia the most beautiful woman in Belmont and her BFF Nerissa, to the point where it's not so subtle. 

Portia doesn't need suitors, she has Nerissa. 

There's another element, it's quite small but it's become an iconic Shakespearean line and most people that use it today don't even know that it comes from this play. Shylock has a daughter Jessica who decides to renounce her Jewish faith to marry a man called Lorenzo. She dresses in a man's disguise to escape and says; 'do not look at me for I am much ashamed of my disguise ...but love is blind'. Indeed it is. Lorenzo would love Jessica as a man or woman. Because love is blind. Ok, enough redundancy. 

In the end, everyone marries each other, save for one character; the Merchant. I would argue that the merchant faces just as bad of a fate as Shylock. He is left alone because of his identity. Shylock is a Jew, and Antonio is gay. Not giving much away, when Shylock asks for his bond to be fulfilled as the money was not paid back to him, Antonio and Bassanio have perhaps the most tender moment between two humans I've ever seen. Antonio asks for his hand to hold him through this whole cutting out a pound of flesh being removed thing, and proclaims love for him...of course this is probably a love of friendship, but still. It's Nicholas Sparks tenderness. If it were me I'd be asking everyone to hold my hand and then probably pass out. And yet, it's deeply meaningful in subtext. And for the first time you see compassion on Bassanio's face. I feel that's actually pretty important. Not even when he wins Portia's hand in marriage does he show such emotion. It reminds me a lot of how Romeo reacts at the death of Mercutio. Yes, we all know what happens in the end, but the sorrow at the loss of a ...shall we say friend, is very powerful. 

So many iconic soliloquies in this play, this is from the 'quality of mercy' speech given by Portia in drag.

Now, this is not the only play that has somewhat homosexual subtext and characters; Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet, Banquo from Macbeth, even Hamlet to a certain extent. But hey, argue with me all you want, I haven't drawn a line in the sand. I'm just finding recurring themes that I want to address (where my theater geeks at?). If people to this day are still debating whether or not Shakespeare actually wrote all of Shakespeare which you can read all about here , then I get my gay themes in Shakespeare hypothesis. Clearly I miss grad school or something. Anyway, below is the trailer. At least watch the film. Aside from the Zeffirelli 1969 version of Romeo and Juliet, this is as close to the original source material as you're likely to get in cinema. 

See below: 

I Have Something For You to Watch on Halloween

One of the more memorable scenes from the film. Can't tell you what's going on though, and it's hurting my soul.

The VVitch came out of nowhere, and I do mean nowhere. Shot in some desolate woods in Canada over 25 days by a freshman director who looks like he just stumbled out of the most hipster hipster bar in Los Angeles, I had heard things about it. Mostly that it was legit the most terrifying, unsettling film that will make your blood run cold. I was assuming this was coming from people who had never seen The Shining, or Rosemary's Baby, or The Exorcist. But now that I too have seen it, I will gladly put The VVitch into that group. I've read Arthur Miller's The Crucible more times than I care to remember and the Salem Witch Trials were never handled with that much honesty and brevity since. 

Does this not remind you of a certain famous painting?

But this is not about that. And the parallels between it and the New Testament were so subtle, nuanced, and brilliant it made me think; 'wow, hipsters can direct'. Robert Eggers, barely 32 (so exactly my age) cast a film with an all British (with the exception of one Scot) cast for this unsettling horror-type movie. I'm hesitant to call it a horror movie, even though that's how it's been marketed. To me, it's a period piece; a bleak drama much like There Will Be Blood with a lot of seriously disturbing images and themes. This is not a film for your parents or for the faint of heart, seriously you've been warned. 

I am not going to give away any spoilers, what I will give you is the premise. Set maybe a few years prior to Salem, a Puritan family is banished for the patriarch's disagreements with his elders about interpretations in the Bible. Defiant, he moves his family; wife Catherine, daughter Thomasin, son Caleb, and two really annoying twins around 5 or so to the wilderness...oh and there's a newborn who's pivotal to the story. What he was thinking I don't know, but it's his pride that spurred the journey and that's already giving stuff away. Now, anyone who is a horror purist knows that only bad shit can happen to you in isolation in the woods. The daughter Thomasin is the central character, who is about to reach 'womanhood' i.e. puberty, and the parents discuss selling her to another family so she can properly deal with it, which was not uncommon at the time. They are completely isolated save for their farm animals one of which is a surly black goat with giant horns called Black Phillip. The twins claim that he speaks to them and they speak back, and as we know, when animals do that and only little kids notice it, it's a common horror trope. But then it launches into a whirlwind of bizarre and such visceral happenings that you WILL have trouble sleeping at night. Even though you live in the middle of the city and don't own any goats. 

Black Phillip

What is beautiful about the film is the pacing (borrowed no doubt from Ingmar Bergman) where it emphasizes the feeling of degradation and isolation and eventually hopelessness and loss of faith. The other major aesthetic (borrowed from Kubrick no doubt) is the decision to shoot exclusively with natural light. And anyone who has ever made a movie, whether a 3-hour opus or a student film knows that negating your Omni's is basically film suicide. But to get the authentic feel the director strove for, it paid off.

Again, can't say what's happening. It's not a cliché exorcism I can tell you that much.

Now, you're probably thinking, they are in the wilderness near creepy woods, the film is called The VVitch...there's a witch in the woods, bam, you solved the puzzle...NOPE! And if you want to know what's actually up, guess what, WATCH IT. Stay home from the lame Halloween party you were invited to where everyone will be dressed as either Donald Trump or someone from Orange is the New Black, and just cuddle up with a pet or a stuffed animal like a child because no matter how tough you think you are, this movie will crawl under your skin and scare the life out of you. 

The climax of the film...have I left a good cliffhanger?

It was so impressive to see a film that was not only shot for under 2 million, made the rounds at Sundance and got picked up by A24, but that resurrected a genre that's basically become a parody of itself. If we label it a horror film, it's definitely up there with the aforementioned Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, etc. And it was directed by a guy who's basically the bastard child of Polanski, Bergman, and Kubrick; not a bad label to have. AND it's his first film. This was such a relief and single handedly restored my faith in the genre while making me slightly suicidal. Just kidding, but it did stick with me for so long and so strongly that I'm still not able to shake it off. 

Oh and in its defense, people were wondering why the fuck it's spelled the way it's spelled and that's because that's what pamphlets that made rounds in the colonies around that time looked like when they were asking people to beware of VVitches. It's not a hipster thing...well maybe a little bit. There I just gave you Halloween plans, you're welcome. 

Trailer below. 

Matthias...Say It Loud and There's Music Playing

Well, hello there. 

Congrats ladies, there’s a new foreign piece of man candy to obsess over with a rugged stubble and an accent to die for. Move over Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, and Mads Mikklesen, there’s a new brooding foreign boy in town, with the piercing eyes of the cover-boy of a harlequin romance novel, the street-tough mannerisms of the angriest FIFA player on the losing team of the last game and the tenderness of a Euro-hunk can express just with his eyes. Woah, my bra just snapped open.

Also...Hai.

I speak to you now of a man so hot, his name is literally unpronounceable, because if you could just say it, it would be a Beetlejuice kind of scenario; the heavens would clash, the sky would grow dark, Avril Lavigne’s face would appear as A GIANT APPARITION CRYING TEARS OF BLOOD AND SHE’D RECITE THE GOOD WILL HUNTING SCREENPLAY AND DARKNESS WOULD COVER THE LAND UNTIL THE END OF TIME. Ok I went too far didn’t I? I’m speaking to you now of the little known-about to be as huge as my black eye-liner collection star of films like Rust and Bone, Bullhead, and the upcoming: A Little Chaos opposite Kate Winslet? Haven’t figured it out yet or at least wikipedia’d it? That’s because you’re stupid. I speak to you now of…Matthias Schoenaerts (Phew, nothing happened).

Some promo art for A Little Chaos. Long hair, check, frilly shirt, check, eyes that stare into your very soul...check.

He has a well-deserved Cesar award for ‘Most Promising Hot Euro Dude’ I’m sure that’s exactly what the award translates into from French. And it's well-deserved. He’s on the cusp people; he’s about to blow up a la Cumberbatch so I’d put dibs on him like now. I would, but you know he lives in Belgium and I’m in New York, I mean that’s a bitch of a commute. But I think it would be worth it don't you?

Apparently, he also happens to speak English perfectly. But let’s hope that doesn’t work against him and make him you know, ordinary and stuff. You want your brooding mysterious European guys to stay brooding, mysterious, and European. Let’s admit it ladies, we just don’t like it when males speak. 

Because this happens to every girl every damn time (Fuck my life)

So watch out for him in period pieces coming up. (GAWD is there anything hotter?) I mean take Fassbender for example. Yes, he was unbelievable as the barely clothed ‘I like it rough’ love interest for the teenage protagonist in Fish Tank but how much more did you want him when he was running in slow motion, hair all in disarray, covered in sweat in 300? Ok bad example. But you get the idea. Ladies, we just all went men to strap on a sturdy pair of pantaloons, skip through a field of gilly flowers, take off their top hat, and bow to us; using the term ‘m’lady’ all the while. I know I just mixed about 6 time periods, but let’s admit that’s a secret fetish of ours. And soon you’ll see Matthias Schoenaerts (duck and cover!) in two films as such; A Little Chaos and Far From a Maddening Crowd. Don’t worry they don’t have him there just raking hay for the horses in the stable, jesus I can’t escape cheap sex fantasy cliché’s can I? So sue me. Anyway, he plays the chief love interest in both, and that’s just the start.

Here’s to much more to come (no pun intended…pun fully intended who are we kidding?) Trailers below.

A Royal Affair Reminds Us That Romance Is Indeed Dead

American poster for the film

 I seriously cannot believe it's taken me so long to watch A Royal Affair (2012) but it's been sitting quietly in my Netflix queue until the other day when I was driving up Sunset Blvd. and saw Madds Mikkelsen in a very ill-fitting pair of suede pants (yes, suede in May) walking down the street towards The Coffee Bean. I've heard pieces about it here and there, most of them good, but no one saying it's pretty damn close to a perfect movie, which it completely is. 

An affair begins in shadows. How's that for pretentious?

It is a Danish historical drama that made the rounds at some important festivals last year and even landed a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at last years Oscars, shamefully it didn't win.

It tells the true story of a British princess betrothed to a psychotic and somewhat slow-in-the-head Danish king and is forced to relinquish all over her customs, language, and family and move to Denmark to begin a bizarre life with a bizarre man. Although The Princess Caroline Mathilde (Alicia Vikander) is unbelievably beautiful, like right out of a Botticelli painting beautiful,  the king does not enjoy 'visiting her bed chamber' if ya know what I mean, because he'd rather get wasty-pants and do it with some nasty hooker, his words...no seriously. But it's in Danish so it doesn't sound so trashy. 

The requisite naked-in-a-copper-bathtub scene, every period piece has one, it's in the rule books somewhere.

Time passes, and the king (Mikkel Følsgaard) grows more more and more despondent and insane due to what his trusted advisers believe to be 'excessive masturbation', so they audition doctors from far and wide to be the king's personal physician. Out of the few that make the rounds is a strangely attractive and mysterious small-town idealist and cheerleader for the incoming Enlightenment movement of Rousseau, Voltaire, and John Locke (and others that character names from Lost were based on) doctor named Johann Struensee (Madds Mikkelsen). It's beyond obvious that sooner or later this young impressionable now-queen and idealist doctor will begin a passionate love affair as she has a secret gateway to her bed chamber, and no that's not code for anything, that's actually in the film. I mean, he's the only one who doesn't wear powdered wigs and rouge, with those ridiculous white silk stalkings they thought looked so fly back in the 18th century. 

Madds has that rugged primal manliness...thing that you just can't put your finger on, you just know it's there, although you'd like to put your finger on it.

It's a bit obvious the queen is in need of some real man-lovin' and he's more than obliged to give it to her, but you know what? They end up falling in love, and everything falls apart as it does when love gets in the way of really steamy caressing and intercourse set to classical music. But as a historical drama it works brilliantly. It tells the actual love story and the tragedy of it, although totally inevitably, in such a passionate way that you still fall for it, and by the end of it are wiping away tears saying how you would totally give up all your worldly possessions and live in exile as she's eventually forced to if you could have a love affair like that, but you won't because it's 2013, and shit like internet dating exists. 

I swear 18th century costumes make any plot line sexier. That's also on the books.

It's brilliantly shot, and executed, and as a film is almost pitch perfect in narrative, aesthetic, and every other possible detail. Every time I see a costume that astounds me I immediately thought 'take that Sofia Coppola!' and that's always a good thing. This is a film that gets it right, and really reminds us that true love and romance did in fact exist at one point, where people sacrificed everything for it, and it's not like Grey's Anatomy at all out there, you just would have had to have lived 200 years ago, when there was no indoor plumbing. So you take the good with the bad. But seriously, watch this film. It's streaming on Netflix. I don't want any excuses.

Trailer below: 

Ode to Joan Crawford

As some of you know, I'm writing a play about Joan Crawford, not particularly to dislodge all of the 'wire hangers' rumors or discredit her daughter Christina's novel 'Mommie Dearest' which for all of it's sincerity was highly and almost comically sensationalized. 

I want (for some reason) to help people know and appreciate Crawford for who she was, and that was the 'ultimate movie star'. I'm sure that when the term was being coined, she was whom they thought of first. Not only was she a consummate professional studying constantly, taking allocation lessons, losing and gaining weight for roles before it was a thing, and even know which eye to cry out of when she needed to for a scene, but as an iconic figure head of old Hollywood, she's one of the most recognizable. She only won one Oscar, but had always stuck to her guns. She played the game until she could play it by her own rules and that's what makes her unique. 

Joan Crawford the flapper under contract at MGM

Aside from the alcoholism, obsessive behavior, abusiveness, chronic infidelities and other personal bullshit, Joan was a true professional, and completely focused, which is exactly how she became what she became. All that other stuff lead to her eventual downfall, but if anyone had a good run and fought the good fight it was her. 

Although she was married four times, she said that the love of her life was ultimately someone she never exchanged vows with; the very Catholic-bound to his marriage Clark Gable. They were too much alike, both from poor obscure families who came to Hollywood when no one would take them seriously and people had to fish their headshots out of the extras pile. They never gave up and before they knew it they were Hollywood gods, having quickies in dressing rooms between takes. They did 5 films together, but the relationship unfortunately dissolved. Gable's wife wouldn't give him a divorce and Joan was too obsessed with herself to care. 

Joan and Gable always had great chemistry on film. Wasn't hard when the two were in love behind the cameras as well.

Here's another thing you might not have known, Joan was bisexual. One of her most famous conquests was Marilyn Monroe, 22 years her junior, whom she incessantly hit on usually in a drunken stupor when Marilyn would spend the night at her Brentwood mansion, and for some reason Marilyn eventually decided to reject her advances, perhaps because she was not her type, or perhaps because Joan was kind of scary at that point, who knows. Anyway, can you only imagine how hot that would be? 

I love Joan because she adapted to every single thing asked of her. She started in Hollywood as a contracted dancer, not an actress, and appeared as a chorus extra in mid-level films where she was nearly unrecognizable. But with limitless drive and determination she learned everything about the business and made friends with the right people until she was number one on her studio boss' L.B. Mayer's list for his next projects. By the time she had achieved that, she had come into what people like to refer to as her 'face' that very recognizable look of the giant eyes, exaggerated eye-brows, and those crazy lips which Max Factor invented calling it 'the smear'. By the time she was declared box-office poison from playing too many shop girls who make good but still manage to wear designer gowns, she decided to keep fighting and told her boss L.B. 'no more goddamn shopgirls'. After that they fought over parts and she was one of the first to move out of her studio and fly solo. Back then, a hugely risky move, but it payed off because rival to MGM (where she got her start), Warner Bros. was inclined to hire her for a little project sitting on the shelf for two years called Mildred Pierce (1945) which one her her first and only Academy Award. 

Joan Crawford still gorgeous in her 40's in Mildred Pierce (1945)

At that point, she was close to mid-40's herself, a battle year for any actress, but she decided to reinvent herself again; had her teeth recapped, cut her hair short, and wore mannish clothing, making herself into some kind of warrior identity which worked perfectly for Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954).

Basically after that, it was a slow decline, but the legacy was cemented. That is of course until her adopted daughter Christina wrote a scathing tell-all called 'Mommie Dearest' and tarnished Joan's reputation forever. No one would give you an argument if you said that Joan was not mother of the year, but the book is not exactly fully accurate. Books need to make money too, and I'm not saying I'm agreeing with it one way or the other. As Joan historian William Schoell said 'it's a great tragedy that when people hear the name Joan Crawford the first thing they think is 'no more wire hangers', because there is another Joan Crawford that people should remember.' Which is just exactly what I'm trying to do. Wish me luck!

Here are some clips.