Dogs Bark

Hoover Niebold’s Victory Lap - - Rush (2013, USA/UK) - - 28 September 2013

Strongly recommended.  Back during the mid 70’s, I was obsessed with Formula One racing, rooting for Lotus and most British drivers.  I watched the story of Ron Howard’s Rush careen past from as close as I could get. I can say with that authority that Ron Howard (Apollo 13) and screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen) go pole to victory. Howard claimed racing ignorance going in; however, does anyone remember Eat My Dust or Grand Theft Auto? Whatever its pedigree, Rush’s photography (Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire) and editing (Daniel Hanley, Frost/Nixon) is expert, building tension with each lap. The acting astonishes, given Chris Hemsworth (The Avengers) heretofore unrevealed talent. He crafts a complexly self-destructive James Hunt. Ditto for Daniel Brühl (Inglourious Basterds) as Niki Lauda. Both performances accurately represent the strangely endearing public charm of Hunt and Lauda. Simply stated, Rush puts all previous racing movies in the rear-view mirror.

The Miserable Ones - - Sansho The Baliff [Sanshō Dayū] (1954, Japan) - - 21 September 2013

An essential. Sansho The Baliff is one of the movies, along with The Seven Samurai, that initiated the Japanese New Wave of the 50’s. Its influence on subsequent American and European auteurs is huge. It is also probably the most Zen movie of all time, fleshing out the Buddhist precepts on suffering and compassion with great skill. The ancient folk story concerns an aristocratic family in the 11th century Heian period, when Buddhism was spreading throughout a feudal culture.  Because of the stubborn integrity of the father, the family is disgraced and sold into slavery. Yoshiaki Hanayagi plays the son, Zushio, with Kyōko Kagawa as sister, Anju. The son, bitter and disillusioned, eventually re-gains his humanity and tries to unite the family. The ending shows life as Zushio finds it, still full of suffering, but transcended by his compassion. Director Kenji Mizoguchi gives us a pure vision of great clarity.

Stacked Deck - - Promised Land (2012, USA) - - 13 September 2013

Not recommended.  One should praise a movie that frets over the complicated death of rural America; however, these folks don’t need Hollywood melodrama. What’s frustrating about Matt Damon (Elysium), John Krasinski (The Office) and Dave Eggers’s (Away We Go) script for Promised Land, is that it hints at the complexities so it can’t plead ignorance.  A smart, subtle director, Gus Van Sant (Milk), sleepwalks through this condescending story.  Damon plays a Hawkeye whose home town lost its Caterpillar plant. He claims that he to want to save other farm towns from this fate. We get it that he wants to develop natural gas responsibly but he unconvincingly abandons this worthy goal in a really unfortunate final story twist. Perhaps if Damon and Krasinski had stuck to acting, which they do nicely, the outcome would have seemed less forced. Hal Holbrook (Lincoln) does a nice turn as a high-school science teacher.

Hostile Workplace - - Crime d'Amour [Love Crime] (2011, France) - - 7 September 2013

Not recommended. I'm of two minds about Love Crime, which actually is two movies. The ‘love’ part focusses on an asymmetric relationship between a young woman (Ludivine Sagnier, Mesrine: Killer Instinct) and her ruthless boss (Kristen Scott Thomas, The English Patient). The two women are locked in obsessive passion for: each other, a man they share and their pathological ambitions. The narcissistic reflective nature of their entwining is articulated by Thomas, and later repeated to herself by Sagnier, “We're gorgeous, no?” But when the story abruptly lurches into ‘crime,’ it became both contrived and predictable (but not boring). It also loses Ms Thomas, which was deflating.  Love Crime was Cesar-winning French writer/director Alain Corneau’s last effort and one wonders if the disjoint is ineptitude or his very droll sense of humor. But I was not compelled to work that out. I did like the jazz-noir score by Pharaoh Saunders.

My Private Cul De Sac - - On The Road (2012) - - 3 September 2013

Recommended. Across the arc of the 70’s, I happily followed Jack Kerouac’s magic accordion, more Dharma Bums than On The Road, and like many others, including Francis Ford Coppola, I tried and failed at an On The Road screenplay. Coppola went out and got Brazilian Walter Salles (Central Station) and Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries) to direct and write the movie. The premise, that a foreigner would quake less before such Americana, isn’t demonstrated. While Salles gets the sex, drugs and beat, even the lyrical visuals (cameraman Eric Gautier); he misses the beatitude. The acting of the lead ensemble is fine, and Amy Adams as Joan Vollmer is better than fine but some of the walk-ons, for example, Steve Buscemi and Elizabeth Moss, are wasted. But Kerouac’s "sad peasant” Catholic voice is silent. At the end of the road my position is in the middle. Proceed at your own risk.