Bringing It Home

I’ll confess to a tinge of worry when I headed out to see Spider-Man: No Way Home, the final installment of the trilogy Tom Holland had committed to make playing the Marvel character. I remember Tobey McGuire’s Spider-Man 3, a movie so bad that the recent animated entry in the canon, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse lampooned its street dancing sequences. Worse, Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man was so-so in the first film, not so amazing in the second, and didn’t get a chance at a third entry. Overall, Into the Spider-verse was the best incarnation, and it’s now getting a sequel, but the first two Tom Holland films were close behind. And the end of Far From Home, with Peter Parker’s secret identity exposed while being cast as a villain by Mysterio/Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), set up a huge cliffhanger. That the news was delivered by none other than J.K. Simmons reprising his wonderful J.J. Jameson from the McGuire films gave it a completely gonzo feel. How do you pay that moment off with the third film and not disappoint fans?

One thing Marvel is, well, marvelous at, is paying off those huge moments, and making those moments pay off at the box office. They’ve also showed how wonderful it can be to intertwine characters from different series. It’s hard to remember now that, before Avengers, that had never happened. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, each had their own world in films, even though in the actual comics they’d been showing up in each other’s narratives for decades. Part of the problem was contractual.  Marvel sold the rights for Spider-Man and the X-Men to Columbia and 20^th Century Fox, respectively. Warners had both Batman and Superman, but they were separated by time. The Christopher Reeve films were in the ‘70s and had faded by the time Batman hit the screens in 1989. The Christopher Nolan “Dark Knight” trilogy was out when Warners tried to reintroduce Superman with Brandon Routh, but he wasn’t super enough to fly anywhere near the level Nolan set.

With Marvel Entertainment, though, you didn’t have a separate studio purchasing a character in order to make a film. From the beginning, Marvel used the individual films to build toward The Avengers, teasing it from the very first post-credit scene in Ironman. It also allowed for crossovers in the series, like Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier or the Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok. Captain America: Civil War was essentially another Avengers film with a full contingent of Marvel superheroes represented. It has made for an incredible string of box office hits and a massive fan base. (DC attempt to creating their own larger film universe, but their attempts have varied wildly in quality and level of success.)

The purchase of Marvel by Disney only increased Marvel’s power, leading to the repatriation of the characters Marvel had sold off when they were in dire financial circumstances. 20^th Century was outright bought by Disney, returning the rights for The X-Men and The Fantastic Four to Marvel. Judging by the quality of the recent entries in those series, it happened not a minute too soon. Best though was Columbia deciding to  unite with Marvel for the recent Spider-Man films. Having Tony Stark as a mentor for Peter Parker put Homecoming on a different level, and that continued in Far From Home with Happy Hogan, Nick Fury, and Maria Hill. You could say say, though, that Tony Stark remained a major presence for that film as well as Peter dealt with the loss of his mentor and friend. So for the ending of the series, Marvel decided to go BIG. Spider-Man: No Way Home doesn’t just a wrap-up for the Tom Holland era, but the past 20 years of Spider-Man films.

The movie begins exactly where Far From Home ended with Peter and MJ (Zendaya) watching as Beck frames Peter, with Jameson now cast as a tabloid news show talking head. They rush home to Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and Happy (Jon Favreau), with Ned (Jacob Batalon) joining them as news choppers and crowds surround the building. Soon they’re taken into custody by the shadowy Department of Damage Control, but are eventually released with the help of a local lawyer, Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox, in a wonderful shout-out to the Marvel/Netflix series). Still, Peter, MJ, and Ned have to deal with the public, some who support Spider-Man while others view him as a villain. When MJ and Ned suffer consequences because of Peter, he turns for help to Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the Sorcerer Supreme.

At Peter’s request, Doctor Strange attempts a spell that would wipe Peter’s secret identity from the minds of everyone in the world. When he realizes that that would mean MJ, May, and Ned would no longer know him, Peter interferes with the spell, trying to carve out exceptions. Instead of wiping people’s memories, it opens a portal to the Multiverse, drawing to this Peter’s reality the villains who fought the other incarnations of Spider-Man: Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Electro (Jamie Foxx), Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church), and the Lizard (Rhys Ifans). When Peter learns that in their own worlds, each of them had died while fighting their Spider-Man, he refuses to let Strange return them to their fates, seeking instead some way to help them. Then MJ and Ned discover that Strange’s spell has also brought Peter some unexpected assistance.

No Way Home benefits from having the same main creative team as the first two films, with Jon Watts in the directing chair and a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers who, along with the Spider-Man films, also wrote Ant-Man and the Wasp and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. One thing that separated the Tom Holland version from the earlier two was a healthy infusion of comedy along with the awkwardness and enthusiasm of a high schooler. While some of that remains, it’s tamped down by the seriousness of the situation. No Way Home does have weaknesses. It goes out of its way to echo a major plot point of the previous two incarnations, and it could have used trimming of some scenes near the end that linger too long, though some fans may appreciate the time given for goodbyes.

But those are minor points in comparison to the feat of assembling all the prior characters, each played by the original actor, and melding them into an effective and compelling story. The bittersweet ending is true to the character, showing the great responsibility that comes with great power. Other than the animated films, it’s unlikely we’ll get another live-action Spider-Man any time in the near future. And that’s all right. The series wound up spectacularly, while still keeping its heart in the right place.

Short Takes: Zombieland Double Tap, Motherless Brooklyn, Midway, Parasite

I’m afraid I need to play catch-up after seeing a half-dozen movies in the last two weeks. With a couple of films I want to see arriving each week through the end of the year, I don’t want to fall too far behind with my reviews. Here are my thoughts on four movies.

Zombieland: Double Tap

A sequel separated by a decade or more from the original can be a dicey proposition. For every Incredibles II or The Color of Money, there’s a Zoolander II or Rings. Thankfully, Zombieland: Double Tap is firmly in the former group. Original stars Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin reunite with director Ruben Fleischer to make a movie that builds on the original while recapturing the anarchic comedy mayhem that made the first film a major success. Part of the story was inherent with the cast, since Breslin is no longer the tween of the first film. Her leaving the nest to discover her place in the apocalyptic world sets the story in motion.

The cast is expanded with Rosario Dawson as an Elvis-loving hotel manager and Zoey Deutch as a ditzy blond who’s somehow managed to survive in a mall through the years since the zombies showed up. There’s also a fun moment when Harrelson and Eisenberg meet their literal match in Albuquerque (Luke Wilson) and Flagstaff (Thomas Middleditch).

Both Zombieland movies are very bloody versions of Roadrunner cartoons with higher body counts, as if George Romero overdosed on laughing gas. Still, they’re raucously fun and funny, and if you liked the original (or the other great zombie-comedy, Shaun of the Dead) you’ll thoroughly enjoy Double Tap.

Motherless Brooklyn

If you’re a fan of the 1999 novel that won a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Gold Dagger, you’ll likely want to skip this movie. If you haven’t read the book, you’ll find Motherless Brooklyn is a decent mystery that could be a love child of Chinatown. The film was a passion project of Edward Norton, who not only stars but wrote the screenplay and directed the film, yet apart from the main character and a couple others, everything else in the film is different from the book.

That starts with the setting in 1950s New York. Lionel Essrog (Norton) suffers from Tourette’s, a disorder that causes tics as well as verbal outbursts. He works along with a couple guys for Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), a low-rent detective who supplements their income by running a car service. Lionel’s challenge interferes with his work, but Minna knows he has a gift that makes up for it – Lionel remembers everything. When Minna’s killed on a job, Lionel and the others must figure out not only who did it but why. The investigation involves a ruthless builder (Alec Baldwin), his estranged architect brother (Willem Dafoe), a neighborhood organizer (Cherry Jones), and a woman fighting to preserve black neighborhoods (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).

At almost 2 ½ hours, the film meanders a bit, but sparkling performances from the entire cast help.

Midway

Roland Emmerich is known for disasters – movies of disasters (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012) and disastrous films (1998’s Godzilla, Independence Day: Resurgence, 2012). With Midway, he’s turned his view to military history, but he still managed to tell the story of two disasters – one for the Americans, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the other for the Japanese with the Battle of Midway, during which three of their aircraft carriers were sunk. While the war lasted another three years, but after Midway the Japanese turned from offensive operations to defensive.

Similar to Tora, Tora, Tora, Emmerich balances the story from the viewpoint of both nations. A bridge between them is provided by Patrick Wilson, playing naval intelligence officer Edwin Layton. A prelude has him in Tokyo in the late 1930s, discussing with Admiral Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) what could cause war between the two nations. In December 1941, Layton is at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese launch their surprise attack. Advances in special effects allow Emmerich to create a pulse-pounding scene, in particular with the hellish destruction of the Arizona. Overall, the history of the battles, along with the Doolittle raid on Tokyo a few months after Pearl Harbor, are shown with historical accuracy, though the times in between battles are flat and pedestrian.

The film is filled with stars, including Woody Harrelson (again) as Admiral Nimitz, Dennis Quaid as “Bull” Halsey, and Aaron Eckhart as Jimmy Doolittle. Ed Skrein, Luke Evans, and Nick Jonas portray pilots and gunners in the torpedo and dive bomber squadrons posted on the USS Enterprise. Everything covered in this film has been filmed before, with the previously mentioned Tora Tora Tora, Michael Bay’s ponderous Pearl Harbor, which also covered the Doolittle raid, and an all-star Charlton Heston version of the climatic battle, also named Midway, released in 1976. The film doesn’t really add anything to the telling of the stories.

Parasite

Korean director Bong Joon Ho is one of the more interesting auteurs currently working in film. He’d broken out with The Host in 2006, a low budget and highly effective creature feature (not to be confused with the 2013 adaptation of a Stephanie Meyer novel that wasted Saoirse Ronan). His first English language film was the dystopia-on-rails story Snowpiercer. With Parasite, you think he’s decided to do almost a situation comedy for the first hour. By then it’s too late.

The film focuses on a poor family in Seoul – husband, mother, grown daughter and son – trying to get by anyway they can, including folding (badly) pizza boxes. Their fortune begins to change when a friend of the son offers to let him take over his job when the friend heads overseas to college. He’s been tutoring the daughter of a wealthy couple in English, and the son’s experienced enough to handle it. Seeing the luxury in which the other family lives stuns the son, and through some brazen lies along with sabotage of prior employees, the other three family members find work in the house. But then the plot twists in surprising and, in the end, devastating ways.

Parasite unanimously won the Palme d’Or this year at the Cannes Film Festival, and it likely will pick up an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. While you think the title refers to the poor family, Bong Joon Ho takes the theme in an unexpected direction. It’s a movie that you won’t easily forget.

A Lively Train Trip

The first mystery I remember watching when I was in my early teens was an Agatha Christie adaptation – 1965’s Ten Little Indians, with Hugh O’Brian and Shirley Eaton. The plot, always one of Christie’s strengths, fascinated me. Later I saw the much better 1945 adaptation with Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Houston, and I read the original novel. (Thankfully no movie ever used its original English title.) Then in 1974 another classic Christie tale, Murder on the Orient Express, was released. Directed by Sidney Lumet and with a cast that truly fit the claim of “all-star,” it spawned a series of Christie adaptations, though none of them matched the beauty of the first. After the memorable original, I was a little hesitant about seeing the new version of Murder on the Orient Express.

True, it had Kenneth Branagh both as star and director. He’s done excellent work recently behind the camera with Thor and Cinderella (we’ll forget about Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, since almost everyone else has), and early in his career he was responsible for a personal favorite of mine in the mystery genre, Dead Again. The rest of the cast is filled with excellent actors both new (Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom Jr., Josh Gad) and well-established (Derek Jacobi, Judy Dench, Willem Dafoe). Given that cast, I knew I would see the film, regardless of the trepidation I felt about it.

Thankfully the worry quickly dissipated as the movie began. Where the 1974 version started with an introduction to the motivating crime, here we have a wonderful introduction to Branagh’s Poirot. It’s not easy to take on that character after David Suchet’s sterling version on PBS, and wisely Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green go in a different direction, emphasizing the obsessive-compulsive aspect of the character. Green has had a stellar year, having written both Logan and Blade Runner 2049, along with producing and doing most of the adaptation of “American Gods” on Starz.

The one aspect of the 1974 movie that I didn’t like was its sedate, cerebral pace. While that works fine in a novel, movies are a visual medium. Directors call out “Action!” not “Time to talk!” The pacing of the new version is strong from the opening sequence. Branagh’s more of a visual stylist than Lumet was, capturing scenes from striking angles that increase the tension. True, he does change the terrain where the story’s set from flat fields to mountain passes, but it works to increase the feeling of being cut off by the elements.

There isn’t a weak performance, though there are standouts. Daisy Ridley gives a thoughtful turn as governess Mary Debenham, the first trainmate that Poirot meets. Dafoe has a fairly showy role as Austrian professor Hardman. But it was particularly good to see a much more controlled and effective Johnny Depp. And after lesser roles for most of this century, Michelle Pfeiffer glows with fire as American socialite Mrs. Hubbard. Pfeiffer also sings the song over the end credits, in a voice as clear and evocative as when she did The Fabulous Baker Boys 28 years ago. (Branagh wrote the lyrics.)

If you’ve never seen the 1974 version, do see this one, if for no other reason than to be introduced to Agatha Christie in her prime. If you have seen the earlier one, it’s still worth watching Branagh’s version to witness how two very different directors can each take a story and put their own stamp on the project, each good in their own way.

The 10 Best Movies About Making Movies

For my 200^th post, I thought I’d look at my favorite movies that deal with making movies, so you could subtitled it “Incest is best.” In a broader sense, though, it’s a way to both explain how the magic trick is done on the screen, as well as make magic at the same time. For this list I’ve ruled out movies that deal with simply watching films, even though that eliminates one of my all-time favorites, Cinema Paradiso. Instead the films below all feature some aspect of creating a movie, be it the actual filming or the creative process before the first camera shot. There are quite a few films that fit that criteria, and I’ve included a couple of Honorable Mentions that have similarities to the films on this list. If I’ve left off a favorite movie-making film of yours, please feel free to mention it in the comments. So, in no particular order, here are my choices.

Singing in the Rain (1952)

Okay, so I went with an obvious choice to start, but this not only is a great movie about the early days of the talkies, it’s also one of the – if not THE – greatest musical films. The songs by Arthur Freed (who also produced the film) and Herb Brown blend perfectly with the sparkling script by Betty Compton and Adolph Green. Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor were at the top of their game, and they were matched by Debbie Reynolds even though she wasn’t a trained dancer. Outstanding, too, was Jean Hagen as the silent star with a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard voice. Sadly, this movie was the high point of her career, and she worked mostly in television after it (including a 4 year stint as Danny Thomas’ wife on “Make Room for Daddy”). She died in 1977 at age 54.  Honorable Mention: The Artist (2011), which looks with the same time period from the opposite perspective.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Jean Hagen should have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Singing in the Rain, but instead she lost out to Gloria Grahame in this movie. Kirk Douglas plays an unscrupulous but talented producer who’s trying to make a comeback. He turns to three people whose careers he built up but who were each hurt by him – an actress (Lana Turner), a writer (Dick Powell) and a director (Barry Sullivan). Grahame played the writer’s wife who interferes with Douglas’ plans until he maneuvers her into an affair with an actor, with tragic results. The script by Charles Schnee could be viewed as a prototype for the Hollywood tell-all novels of Jackie Collins, but the acting and Vincente Minnelli’s direction transcend the material. Honorable Mention: Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), which was also written by Schnee and starred Kirk Douglas.

Hugo (2011)

While movie-making isn’t central in Martin Scorsese’s film, the sections dealing with Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley) and the fantastic cinema world he created when film was in its infancy capture the wonder of the magic lantern days. Scorsese has been at the forefront of film preservation efforts, and this film is his dissertation on why it’s important. On the technical side, it also demonstrates how 3D can be used to augment the power of a film.

Super 8 (2011)

2011 was a banner year for movies about movies. Here you have a group of six kids who are making a zombie movie, but are interrupted when an alien invades their Ohio town. Written and directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, the movie harkens back to their preteen years when they made their own films. Abrams let his young actors actually film a Super-8 movie that plays during the credits, so we get to see the footage that we watched being shot. It turns out to be a pretty good film, too.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

What if your vampire movie actually stars a real vampire? The movie tells a legend about Nosferatu, the classic 1922 film by F.W. Murnau. We watch the filming of that movie, including the recreation of many of the scenes, while we’re also watching a horror movie. John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe (who was nominated for an Oscar) are excellent as Murnau and his star, Max Schreck. Nosferatu qualifies as the first movie adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It follows the plot of the book, but Murnau didn’t have the rights to film the story so he changed the names to protect the guilty.

Day For Night (1973)

Francois Truffaut made many of the classics of French cinema before his untimely death in 1984 at the age of 52. This film, about a director struggling to complete his movie while dealing with a host of personal crises, won the Best Foreign Language Oscar. The title refers to a direction in the shooting script for the cinematographer to film a scene during the day but make it look like it takes place at night. You can often tell when this was done in old films because of the strong shadows in outdoor shots.

Bowfinger (1999)

Written by Steve Martin and directed by Frank Oz, this is a film for movie wannabes. Martin plays a low-rent producer/director who fails to get a major action star, played by Eddie Murphy, to appear in his movie. So instead he stalks the actor to get the needed footage and uses a hapless lookalike (also played by Murphy) for other scenes. While it’s played for laughs, hidden camera filming has been used in films, and it resulted in one of the all-time classic lines. Dustin Hoffman ad-libbed the “I’m walkin’ here” line in Midnight Cowboy when a taxi tried to roll through a scene they were filming with a hidden camera.

Boogie Nights (1997)

Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson usually makes movies that are fascinating character studies, such as There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, and The Master. His first big success was this film that looked at people involved in porn films in the 1970s, when Deep Throat’s success made them think that porn could become a legitimate filmmaking endeavor. The cast is incredible, with Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, Mark Walberg, and Burt Reynolds. An interesting piece of trivia: Anderson made a short version of this story as his first film in 1988, after dropping out of NYU Film School.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Billy Wilder’s poison pen love letter to Hollywood has to be on the list. Silent star Gloria Swanson’s over-the-top performance as Norma Desmond was balanced by William Holden’s sardonic turn as the hack screenwriter she drags into writing her comeback. The film features appearances by Cecil B. DeMille, H.B. Warner, Buster Keaton and others, playing themselves. It was nominated for 11 Academy awards, including in every acting category, but in the end it won for writing, score and art direction. Honorable Mention: The Stunt Man (1980), which featured another maniacal performance that led to a comeback, this time for Peter O’Toole.

Argo (2012)

While it’s a based-on-a-true-story thriller, Argo makes this list because of how the fantasy world of movie making was used to ex-filtrate six US hostages from Iran. Alan Arkin and John Goodman are wonderful as the Hollywood insiders who help Ben Affleck’s character pull off the rescue mission. One aspect of filmmaking featured in the movie is storyboarding, where the film’s shots are drawn out to give the filmmakers a visual for the shots. Affleck uses reproductions of the actual storyboards that were done for the original script before it went into turnaround, the Hollywood term for purgatory. Those storyboards were done by Jack Kirby, a legendary cartoonist whose work goes back to the first Captain America comic book in the 1940s and worked with Marvel during its Silver Age (1958-1970).

To Kill The Boogeyman

Keanu Reeves won’t go down as a great movie actor, but he can be an effective one. He could have vanished after the two Bill and Ted movies, like his costar Alex Winter, but he remade himself as an action star in Point Break, Speed, and The Matrix, and he did character work in the little-seen A Scanner Darkly and was a romantic lead in The Lake House. But then there are the Matrix sequels, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and last year’s bomb 47 Ronin, all of which could have killed the careers of actors. Somehow Reeves keeps bouncing back, this time with his new movie John Wick.

It helps that the first-time director of Wick, David Leitch, was a stuntman who doubled for Reeves. He knows his actor and gives Reeves a chance to shine, and Reeves delivers. The movie’s plot itself is derivative, going back to John Boorman’s classic movie from almost 50 years ago, Point Blank (which was later remade as Payback with Mel Gibson).

Wick (Reeves) is a hitman who retired for love of his wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan in a criminally short role). When she dies from an illness, he’s left to try to deal with his grief, though after her funeral a gift arrives for him from her as a way to overcome his mourning. Wick has a classic Mustang muscle car, and while out for a drive one day the car grabs the attention of Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), the spoiled son of Russian mob boss Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). He tries to buy the car, but Wick refuses to sell.

That night Iosef and his posse break into Wick’s house. They beat Wick unconscious before they take the car, and they also destroy his gift from his wife. When he wakes up and finds what Iosef did, Wick is devastated. He learns Iosef’s identity from Aureilo (John Leguizamo) who runs the chop shop where Iosef tried to sell the car. Aureilo had recognized the car and refused to have any part of it. Tarasov use to employ Wick, and when he learns what his son has done he makes his displeasure very clear to Iosef. Iosef says sarcastically, “What is he, the boogeyman?” “No,” his father responds, “he’s the man you call when you want to kill a boogeyman.”

This movie could be classified as a thriller subgenre called “Crime Fantasy.” The crime bosses and assassins are wealthy and live upper-crust lives. They go about their business in tailored suits (dark colors only). They even have their own hotel, the Continental, on whose premises a strict safe zone is enforced. It’s also a world where there are no cops. One does show up early in John Wick, but he knows who John is and quickly leaves the scene. In a Crime Fantasy, style replaces substance, and John Wick does have plenty of style.

It also has plenty of violence. The first thing Tarasov does when he discovers he’s up against Wick is to send a large hit squad to Wick’s house to take him out. Needless to say, it’s Wick who is the only one left standing in the end. An example of the style of the movie is that Wick lives in a modernist home where many of the walls are windows, allowing the director to compose an exciting sequence. The old phrase might be re-written: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t shoot guns.

Reeves handles the dry wit of the role as well as he does the action as he fights his way through Tarasov’s army to exact his revenge. The supporting cast is outstanding, with Willem Dafoe as a fellow assassin who has an agenda of his own, Lance Reddick (“The Wire” “Fringe”) as the phlegmatic hotel manager at the Continental, and Ian McShane as the Continental’s owner and enforcer of its safe zone. There’s also Adrianne Palicki (currently on “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) as an assassin who doesn’t mind bending the rules.

If you like the crime fantasy genre, John Wick is a good example of it and it has its pleasures. While Wick is gravely injured during the movie, it takes a lot to kill him. You could say the same for Keanu Reeves.

A Cerebral Thriller, and a Bittersweet Goodbye

For over fifty years, the works of John le Carre have been the antithesis of James Bond over-the-top spy thrillers. His novels have almost no gunplay and nary a car chase; the thrills are cerebral as you watch damaged people struggle to unlock a puzzle box and reveal the secrets inside. On the silver screen, the first adaptation of a le Carre book, 1965’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, created its own subgenre in competition with Bond – the world-weary spy. Without From the Cold, it’s unlikely there’d have been The Ipcress File, The Quiller Memorandum, or A Deadly Affair (based on another le Carre book).

Le Carre’s books have continued to be adapted over the years, with The Little Drummer Girl, The Russia House, and the BBC versions of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and “Smiley’s People,” both starring Alec Guinness as spymaster George Smiley. With the new millennium, though, le Carre has had a bit of a renaissance on the screen. Along with the recent version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (starring Gary Oldman and featuring Benedict Cumberbatch), you have The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardner, which won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Rachel Weisz and was nominated for another three Oscars. The newest addition to these fine movies is A Most Wanted Man. Sadly, it marks the last major film role of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

 

Hoffman plays Gunther Bachmann, an experience German spy who, after a debacle in Beirut, has been put in charge of a small counterterrorist unit based in Hamburg. They operate in the gray area where the police can’t go, and their focus is turning terrorist assets and compromising their funding, rather than making the headline-grabbing arrests the police seek. Their current target is Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi), a wealthy benefactor of Islamic charities who preaches peace and understanding, but who might be siphoning off funds for terrorists through a shadowy Cypriot shipping company.

Then Bachmann’s second-in-command, Irna (Nina Hoss), catches the trail of Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), a Chechen Muslim wanted by the Russians on terrorist charges. He’s slipped into Germany through the port of Hamburg, which has a history of being a porous entryway to Europe. He’s seeking out a German banker named Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe), whose bank was involved in questionable deposits under Tommy’s father. To help with his status in Germany, friends of Karpov put him in touch with Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), an immigration lawyer working with a sanctuary group. Bachmann’s work is complicated by the police, who just want to arrest Karpov and be done with it, as well as interest from the CIA in the person of Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright). Is Karpov a terrorist meaning to strike in Germany, or a victim of the Russian war in Chechnya, or is there perhaps a third option?

Director Anton Corbijn started with rock documentaries featuring U2, Depeche Mode and Metalica, then made the well-received Control and the George Clooney bomb, The American. He gets his mojo back with A Most Wanted Man, letting the camera become a spy itself, eavesdropping on the characters. Stephen Cornwall (le Carre’s son) is one of the film’s producers, and le Carre himself is an executive producer, ensuring a faithful adaptation of the book.

The casting is excellent, especially with McAdams and Dafoe as innocents (perhaps) caught up in the intrigue. Wright is wonderfully enigmatic, while Hoss provides excellent support as a woman who’s loyal to Bachmann but who also sees many things with greater clarity than her boss. At first Dobrygin appears to be everyone’s nightmare terrorist, but as more of his story is revealed, he wins sympathy while still retaining the edge of danger.

The movie, though, belongs to Hoffman. Bachmann is rumpled and experienced, constantly in need of a shave and a cigarette. Yet within Bachmann is honor and a bit of an idealist who has dedicated his life to serving in a shadow world for the greater good. Hoffman submerges himself in the role, using only the subtle trace of an accent in his voice and a soft, shuffling physicality. The acting world lost a one-of-a-kind talent with Hoffman’s death.

Just as it’s unusual to have a tense thriller without gunfights and adrenalin-pumping car chases, it’s also unusual to have a spy film where you care deeply about the characters. But that’s the key to the le Carre world. His heroes are tarnished every-mans who, while they’re in situations far apart from normal life, are completely relatable to for the audience. It makes for devastatingly effective story telling.

Okay

In the voiceover narration at the beginning of The Fault In Our Stars, Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) explains there are two ways to tell her story. One is the sugar-coated version, where everything can be worked out by playing a Peter Gabriel song, and the other is the messy truth. There isn’t a single Peter Gabriel song in this movie’s soundtrack, but there is plenty of messy truth.

Hazel has been living with cancer for years, and almost died when she a pre-teen. A drug trial miraculously extended her life, but she knows that she is terminal. An oxygen tank to support her compromised lungs is Hazel’s constant companion, and minor exertions can wipe her out. Her mother Frannie (Laura Dern) worries that she’s depressed because she keeps reading the same book, “An Imperial Affliction” by Peter Van Houten. To Hazel, the book is simply the one novel that treats cancer honestly. At the behest of Frannie and her father, Michael (Sam Trammell), Hazel attends a cancer support group for teens and twenty-somethings.

Hazel isn’t impressed with the group, but then she runs into (physically) Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort). Augustus is a cancer survivor who lost one of his legs to the disease. His cancer’s in remission; he’s come to the group to support his friend Isaac (Nat Wolff) who’s lost one eye already and is facing upcoming surgery that will take the other one. Augustus faces life with a joie de vive that is the polar opposite of Hazel’s realism, but they both feel the attraction between them. Hazel gives him a copy of “An Imperial Affliction” to read and, seeing her love of the book, he offers to give her a special gift.

 

If you haven’t read the book, you might think you know where the movie is going after the above two paragraphs. Instead it keeps veering off into messy truth. John Green’s book became a bestseller because it’s not the sentimental Pablum we’ve seen before, such as in the disease-of-the-week movies on television.

Director Josh Boone had only made one feature before doing Fault, but he handles the cast and story beautifully. The novel was adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, who wrote the exceptional (500) Days of Summer and also adapted last year’s The Spectacular Now (which also starred Woodley). It was a help that Green was on the set for most of the shoot, ready to give input as needed.

This is a movie that sits on the shoulders of its two leads. The good news is that both Woodley and Elgort are up to the task, giving luminous performances. While they played siblings in Divergent earlier this year, there’s a definite chemistry between the two of them on film. Woodley demonstrated her strength three years ago by going toe-to-toe with George Clooney in The Descendants and holding her own. It’s a pleasure watching her embody Hazel. Elgort hasn’t as large a body of work as Woodley; his first movie was last year’s remake of Carrie, in which he was about the only improvement on the original film. He is an actor to watch in the years to come.

Laura Dern is excellent as Frannie, a mother who’s not only dealing with a teenager but also is aware she could lose her daughter at any time. Willem Dafoe and Lotte Verbeek have small but pivotal roles as author Peter Van Houten and his wife Lidewij. Special kudos to Nat Wolff; it’s delightful to see him get a shattering form of revenge (you might say) on a girl who dumps him because of his illness.

While this is a raw, emotionally wrenching movie, do not ignore it because the subject matter appears to be a “downer.” It mines a deep and rich vein of humor of the gray rather than black variety. It is also a powerful, life-affirming story that, while it falls into the Young Adult genre, speaks to truths that are universal and ageless. All generations will revel in the power of this movie. See it.

 

Anticipation – Summer ’14

Rather than make a long list of movies for my summer preview blog this year, I’ve decided to focus on the films I’m excited about seeing. These are the movies I’d line up to watch on their opening day over the course of the next four months, in the order of their release dates. At the end I’ve included the titles of some movies I may also see, as well as a few that strike me already as turkeys.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (May 2)

With the reboot of Spider-Man two years ago starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, director Marc Webb cut out the camp of the Sam Raimi films and replaced it with a harder edge. This time you have three excellent actors – Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti, and Dane DeHaan – as the bad guys Spidey must defeat. DeHaan was excellent in Chronicle, which was something of a deconstruction of the genre – super powers won’t solve your problems, it will just super-size them. He’s an actor to watch.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (May 23)

After the classic The Usual Suspects, director Bryan Singer made the first two X-Men movies, which were wonderful. His recent oeuvre (Valkyrie, Superman Returns, Jack the Giant Slayer) hasn’t done well. After Singer, the X-Men series made a bad misstep (“Curse you, Brett Ratner!”), but came back strong with X-Men: First Class. Now we have the best of both worlds, with Singer directing members of his original cast as well as their earlier versions from First Class. Days of Future Past is based on a classic story line from 1980, so it has a strong plot as a starting point. The first trailers look like it’s a winner.

Maleficent (May 30)

This movie does a “Wicked” twist on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale by giving us some sympathy for the Devil – or at least the delightfully devilish Angelina Jolie. It gives backstory that makes the cursing of Princess Aurora more understandable than simply an overlooked birthday shower invitation. Elle Fanning plays the teenaged Aurora, while Jolie’s daughter Vivienne Jolie-Pitt plays the princess as a toddler.  Vivienne had to take the role since all the other children who auditioned for it were completely freaked-out by Angelina in full Maleficent mode. Audiences may be as well.

The Fault in Our Stars (June 6)

One of the pleasures of The Descendants was Shailene Woodley as George Clooney’s eldest daughter. Woodley not only held her own with Clooney, but matched him in magnetism on screen. Now she’s starring in this movie, based on the Young Adult bestseller. Usually in the summer there’s a movie that breaks the blockbuster format for releases, such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel three years ago. The Fault in Our Stars may be the movie for this summer.

Begin Again (July 4)

And if The Fault in Our Stars isn’t the antidote to movies filled with explosions, then this one might be it. Director John Carney scored a few years back with the movie Once, that has now become a hit as a musical on Broadway. Here he again explores music and the effect it can have on people. (The original title for the film was “Can A Song Save Your Life?”) He has a wonderful cast to work with: Kiera Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Catherine Keener, Hailee Steinfeld, and “Maroon 5” frontman Adam Levine.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (July 11)

2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes successfully rebooted the series, after Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes crashed and burned. The advances in CGI, as well as Andy Serkis’ incredible ability with performance-capture special effects, made Caesar believable as an ape with enhanced intelligence. In this sequel, humanity has been decimated by a pathogen. The survivors in San Francisco, led by Gary Oldman, come into conflict with Caesar’s clan of intelligent apes.

A Most Wanted Man (July 29)

This thriller is based on a John le Carre novel and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles. That’s enough to make me to want to see this film, though it also stars Robin Wright, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, and Daniel Bruhl. One caution, though, is that it’s directed by Anton Corbijn, who made the George Clooney misfire The American. Hopefully Corbijn learned from that experience.

Get On Up (August 1)

The trailer for this bio-pic of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, is reminiscent of Ray and Walk The Line, but with better dancing. It stars Chadwick Boseman, who had a star-making turn in the Jackie Robinson bio-pic 42 last year. The movie also has The Help of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as Brown’s mother and aunt respectively.

What If (August 1)

This movie was originally titled “The F Word” and was shown at some festivals last year, but is only now being released. It stars Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan as two people who form a platonic bond of friendship. Radcliffe moved on from the Harry Potter series with an effective performance in The Woman in Black, but the real attraction here is Zoe Kazan. The granddaughter of Elia Kazan wrote and starred in the excellent and inventive film Ruby Sparks. Apparently much of the dialogue for What If was improvised on the set, which with Kazan could be a strength.

Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (August 22)

The original Sin City opened the door for semi-animated movies both good (300) and bad (Sucker Punch). Now co-directors Miller and Robert Rodriguez have returned to town to deliver another story from Miller’s series of illustrated novels. Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba reprise their roles from the original movie, and are joined by Eva Green, Lady Gaga and Josh Brolin.

Others movies that I’m on the fence about: Godzilla, Jersey Boys, Edge of Tomorrow, A Hundred Foot Journey, The Giver, Guardians of the Galaxy, Lucy, and If I Stay.

And there are some movies this summer that you’d have to pay me to see: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Haven’t they reached their twenties yet?), Transformers: Age of Extinction (This franchise should have reached the age of extinction two movies ago), The Expendables 3 (More expendable than ever?) and Hercules (The Rock should have rolled past this one).

Agree? Disagree? Are there other films on your list? Please feel free to leave a comment.