Caryn James

April 2015 Film Preview

Tory Kamen and Becca Rose — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 14:00:00 GMT

Summer blockbuster season is just around the corner, but there's no need to wait until then to see a great movie. April brings us a wide variety of women-centric projects, as well as quite a few films helmed and/or written by women.

The month starts off with "Woman in Gold," starring Helen Mirren as a Jewish woman on a journey to recover her family's heirlooms, which was stolen by the Nazis. It's based on a true story, and Mirren roots the film with her powerful presence. "Closer to the Moon" is another WWII-era drama set for an April release, this one based on the crime capers of a group of Jewish resistance fighters a few years after the end of the war. "Marie's Story" is another period piece, centering around the efforts of a 19th-century nun to help a girl born blind and deaf.

There are a few more women-focused dramas being released in April, including the much-buzzed "Clouds of Sils Maria," which garnered Kristen Stewart the prestigious Cesar Award for supporting actress. Stewart has made waves for being the first American actress to win the French award, and the film looks to capitalize on that with its American release. “Félix & Meira" is another award-winner coming out this month. The Best Canadian Feature from the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival aims to make its mark with the story of an unconventional and radical love affair, one that reaches across racial and religious lines. "About Elly" also confronts cultural biases with its depiction of Iran's upper middle class.

"Effie Gray" tackles the sexual politics of the Victorian era, and with a screenplay from Emma Thompson, it's sure to be intriguing as well as quick-witted. Speaking of intriguing, "The Age of Adaline" follows a woman who mysteriously stopped aging eight decades ago. Blake Lively centers the film as Adaline, struggling with love and trust and all the other things that might follow when one lives seemingly forever.

Courteney Cox makes her big-screen directorial debut (the actress has previously directed episodes of "Cougar Town," which she stars in) with "Just Before I Go," and screenwiter Gren Wells makes hers as well with "The Road Within." Director Mia Hansen-Løve ("Goodbye First Love") directs Greta Gerwig in "Eden," a look at the rise of French electronic music in the 90s.

The month will also see the release of a few very different documentaries. "The Hand That Feeds" focuses on undocumented immigrants struggling to form an independent union, while "Iris" follows 93-year-old Iris Apfel, a flamboyant New York City fashion icon. "Antarctic Edge: 70° South" is focused on the changing climate of the Antarctic's Peninsula and was made with the collaboration of Rutgers University students and scientists.

We'll also see comedic projects featuring Mary Elizabeth Winstead ("Alex of Venice") and Rose Byrne ("Adult Beginners"). Nia Vardalos returns to the screen with a role in "Helicopter Mom," which promises an outrageous performance from the "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" star. "Sweet Lorraine" and "Farah Goes Bang" round out the women-centric comedy offerings of the month.

Here are all the women-centric films opening in the month of April. All descriptions are from press materials unless otherwise noted.

April 1

Woman in Gold

"Woman in Gold" is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family. Sixty years after she fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I." Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle, which takes them all the way to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past along the way.

April 3

The Hand That Feeds (doc) - Co-Written and Co-Directed by Rachel Lears

At a popular bakery café, residents of New York’s Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma López has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012 he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back.

Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve. In one roller-coaster year, they must overcome a shocking betrayal and a two-month lockout. Lawyers will battle in back rooms, Occupy Wall Street protesters will take over the restaurant, and a picket line will divide the neighborhood. If they can win a contract, it will set a historic precedent for low-wage workers across the country. But whatever happens, Mahoma and his coworkers will never be exploited again.

Effie Gray - Written by Emma Thompson

In her original screenplay “Effie Gray,” Emma Thompson takes a bold look at the real-life story of the Effie Gray-John Ruskin marriage, while courageously exposing what was truly hiding behind the veil of their public life. Set in a time when neither divorce nor gay marriage were an option, “Effie Gray” is the story of a young woman (Dakota Fanning) coming of age and finding her own voice in a world where women were expected to be seen but not heard. “Effie Gray” explores the roots of sexual intolerance, which continue to have a stronghold today, while shedding light on the marital politics of the Victorian era.

April 8

About Elly

As with director Asghar Farhadi's better-known films, “About Elly” concerns the affluent, well-educated, cultured, and only marginally religious members of Iran's upper-middle class. Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), a pretty young woman invited as a possible romantic interest for one of the newly single men among this group, disappears suddenly without a trace. The festive atmosphere quickly turns frantic as friends accuse one another of responsibility. Plot-wise, Farhadi's drama has been compared to “L’Avventura”; but the film is less concerned with Elly's disappearance per se than with exploring the intricate mechanisms of deceit, brutality, and betrayal which come into play when ordinary circumstances take a tragic turn.

April 10

Clouds of Sils Maria

At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then, she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant (Kristen Stewart) to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal (Chloë Grace Moretz) is to take on the role of Sigrid, and Maria finds herself on the other side of the mirror, face to face with an ambiguously charming woman who is, in essence, an unsettling reflection of herself.

The Sisterhood of Night - Directed by Caryn Waechter and Written by Marilyn Fu

Based on the short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steven Millhauser, "The Sisterhood of Night" is a story of friendship and loyalty set against the backdrop of a modern-day Salem witch trial. Shot on location in Kingston, NY, the film chronicles a group of girls who have slipped out of the world of social media into a mysterious world deep in the woods. The tale begins when Emily Parris (Kara Hayward) exposes a secret society of teenage girls. Accusing them of committing sexually deviant acts, Emily’s allegations throw their small American town into the national media spotlight. The mystery deepens when each of the accused takes a vow of silence. What follows is a chronicle of three girls’ unique and provocative alternative to the loneliness of adolescence, revealing the tragedy and humor of teenage years changed forever by the Internet age.

Farah Goes Bang - Directed by Meera Menon, Written by Laura Goode and Meera Menon

A road-trip comedy that centers on Farah (Nikohl Boosheri), a twenty-something woman who tries to lose her virginity while campaigning for John Kerry in 2004. Farah and her friends K.J. and Roopa follow the campaign trail to Ohio, seizing this charged moment in their lives and the life of their country.

April 17

Closer to the Moon

Set in 1959 Bucharest, “Closer to the Moon” opens as the crime is hatched and executed by old friends from the WWII Jewish Resistance, who seek to recapture the excitement of their glory days. Led by a chief police inspector (Mark Strong) and a political academic (Vera Farmiga), the quintet also includes a respected history professor (Christian McKay), a hotshot reporter (Joe Armstrong), and a space scientist (Tim Plester). Their postwar influence fading amid an ongoing Stalinist purge of Jews and intellectuals, the disillusioned gang retaliates by hijacking a van delivering cash to the Romanian National Bank, staging the robbery to make it look like a movie shoot. Caught and convicted in a kangaroo court, the culprits, with help from an eyewitness (Harry Lloyd) to the robbery, are forced to reenact their crime in a devious anti-Semitic propaganda film.

Felix & Meira

Winner of Best Canadian Feature at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, “Félix & Meira” is the story of an unconventional romance between two people living vastly different realities mere blocks away from one another. Each lost in their everyday lives, Meira (Hadas Yaron), a Hasidic Jewish wife and mother, and Félix (Martin Dubreuil), a Secular loner mourning the recent death of his estranged father, unexpectedly meet in a local bakery in Montreal's Mile End district. What starts as an innocent friendship becomes more serious as the two wayward strangers find comfort in one another. As Felix opens Meira's eyes to the world outside of her tight-knit Orthodox community, her desire for change becomes harder for her to ignore, ultimately forcing her to choose: remain in the life that she knows or give it all up to be with Félix.

Alex of Venice - Co-Written by Jessica Goldberg and Katie Nehra

In “Alex of Venice,” workaholic environmental attorney Alex Vedder (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is forced to reinvent herself after her husband (Chris Messina) suddenly leaves the family. Dealing with an aging father (Don Johnson) who still aspires to succeed as an actor, an eccentric sister (Katie Nehra), and an extremely shy son (Skylar Gaertner), Alex is bombarded with everything from the mundane to hilariously catastrophic events without a shoulder to lean on. Realizing she will thrive with or without her husband, Alex discovers her hidden vulnerability as well as her inner strength as she fights to keep her family intact in the midst of the most demanding and important case of her career.

Cas & Dylan - Written by Jessie Gabe

When 61-year-old self-proclaimed loner and terminally ill Dr. Cas Pepper (Richard Dreyfuss) reluctantly agrees to give 22-year-old social misfit Dyland Morgan (Tatiana Maslany) a very short lift home, the last thing he anticipates is that he will strike her angry boyfriend with his car, find himself on the lam, and ultimately drive across the country with an aspiring young writer determined to help him overcome his own bizarre case of suicide-note writer's block. But as fate would have it, that is exactly what happens. Suddenly Cas's solo one-way trip out West isn't so solo. With Dylan at his side, the two take off on an adventure that will open their eyes to some of life's lessons -- both big and small.

Antarctic Edge: 70° South (doc) - Directed by Dena Seidel

Dena Seidel’s documentary not only offers rare, beautifully shot footage of West Antarctic Pennisula's rapidly changing environment, studying the connections that reveal the concrete impact of climate change; it is also a one-of-a-kind collaboration between the Rutgers University Film Bureau and the Rutgers Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences and contains interviews and insights from some of the world’s leading ocean researchers. It is a fascinating look at their life’s work trying to understand how to maintain our planet.

The Road Within - Written and Directed by Gren Wells

Vincent (Robert Sheehan), a young man with Tourette's syndrome, faces drastic changes after his mother dies. Because his politician father is too ashamed of the disorder to have Vincent accompany him on the campaign, Vincent is shuttled off to an unconventional clinic. There he finds unexpected community with an obsessive-compulsive roommate and an anorexic young woman, and romance eventually -- and uneasily -- follows.

One of Variety's "10 Directors to Watch," screenwriter Gren Wells makes her directorial debut with this ambitious yet light-hearted coming-of-age tale about the potent medicine we all carry within ourselves. The film is packed with a talented ensemble, from emerging talents Zoë Kravitz, Dev Patel, and Sheehan to beloved veterans Kyra Sedgwick and Robert Patrick.

April 23

Sweet Lorraine

The double life of a Methodist minister's wife (played by Tatum O'Neal) catches up to her, as her husband campaigns for mayor in a small New Jersey town.

April 24

Just Before I Go - Directed by Courtney Cox

Ted Morgan (Seann William Scott) has been treading water for most of his life. After his wife leaves him, Ted realizes he has nothing left to live for. Summoning the courage for one last act, Ted decides to go home and face the people he feels are responsible for creating the shell of a person he has become. But life is tricky. The more determined Ted is to confront his demons, to get closure, and to withdraw from his family, the more Ted is yanked into the chaos of their lives. So, when Ted Morgan decides to kill himself, he finds a reason to live.

The Age of Adaline

After miraculously remaining 29-years-old for almost eight decades, Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) has lived a solitary existence, never allowing herself to get close to anyone who might reveal her secret. But a chance encounter with charismatic philanthropist Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman) reignites her passion for life and romance. When a weekend with his parents (Harrison Ford and Kathy Baker) threatens to uncover the truth, Adaline makes a decision that will change her life forever.

Adult Beginners - Co-Written by Liz Flahive (Simultaneously releasing to VOD)

A young, hipster entrepreneur (Nick Kroll) crashes and burns on the eve of his company’s big launch. With his entire life in disarray, he leaves Manhattan to move in with his estranged pregnant sister (Rose Byrne), brother-in-law (Bobby Cannavale), and three-year-old nephew in the suburbs – only to become their manny. Faced with real responsibility, he may finally have to grow up – but not without some bad behavior first.

Eden - Directed and Co-Written by Mia Hansen-Løve

The film follows the life of a French DJ who's credited with inventing "French house" or the "French touch," a type of French electronic music that became popular in the 1990s. Greta Gerwig costars. (IMDB)

24 Days - Co-Written by Emilie Frèche

January 20, 2006: After dinner with his family, Ilan Halimi (Syrus Shahidi) gets a call from a beautiful girl who had approached him at work and makes plans to meet her for coffee. Ilan didn't suspect a thing. He was 23 and had his whole life ahead of him. The next time Ilan's family heard from him was through a cryptic online message from kidnappers demanding a ransom in exchange for their son's life. (IMDB)

Helicopter Mom - Directed by Salomé Breziner

An overbearing mom (Nia Vardalos) decides that college would be more affordable if her son were to win an LGBT scholarship, so she outs him to his entire high school. However, he might not be gay. (Rotten Tomatoes)

April 29

Iris (doc) (Opening in New York City)

"Iris" pairs legendary 87-year-old documentarian Albert Maysles with Iris Apfel, the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 93-year-old style maven who has had an outsized presence on the New York fashion scene for decades. More than a fashion film, the documentary is a story about creativity and how, even in Iris' dotage, a soaring free spirit continues to inspire. "Iris" portrays a singular woman whose enthusiasm for fashion, art, and people are life's sustenance and reminds us that dressing, and indeed life, is nothing but an experiment. Despite the abundance of glamour in her current life, she continues to embrace the values and work ethic established during a middle-class Queens upbringing during the Great Depression.

April 30

Marie’s Story

At the turn of the 19th century, a humble artisan and his wife have a daughter, Marie (Ariana Rivoire), who is born deaf and blind and unable to communicate with the world around her. Desperate to find a connection to their daughter and avoid sending her to an asylum, the Heurtins send fourteen-year-old Marie to the Larnay Institute in central France, where an order of Catholic nuns manage a school for deaf girls. There, the idealistic Sister Marguerite (Isabelle Carré) sees in Marie a unique potential, and despite her Mother Superior's (Brigitte Catillon) skepticism, vows to bring the wild young thing out of the darkness into which she was born. Based on true events, “Marie's Story” recounts the courageous journey of a young nun and the lives she would change forever, confronting failures and discouragement with joyous faith and love. (Film Movement)

Mauritania's Oscar Nominee: The Fiercely Beautiful "Timbuktu"

Caryn James — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 19:50:32 GMT

A gazelle races across the desert in the opening scene of “Timbuktu,” only to have the silence shattered by gunshots from a jeep full of Islamic jihadists hunting it. That chase at the start of Abderrahmane Sissako’s fierce and vibrant film is an effective (if uncharacteristically blunt) metaphor for its essential conflict, between a peaceful village and its violent invaders. In a year of strong foreign language films, “Timbuktu,” Mauritania’s Oscar entry, deserves its place among higher-profile nominees including Russia’s artistically beautiful “Leviathan” and Poland’s rigorous “Ida.”

The film is set in Mali, during the period when Islamic extremists took control of Timbuktu, from 2012-13. Eye-opening but never didactic, it is a beautifully shot work that relies on a non-narrative tradition, with glimpses of daily life taking precedence over the sliver of a story.

Much of the film is shown from the point of view of the victims of the invaders who enforce Sharia law. They insist that women wear socks and gloves, and only the brave or foolish dare to resist. Among them is a fish-seller who howls that she’s had enough, that she’ll lose her business if she can’t handle the fish.

In the desert near the village, a couple and their 12-year old daughter live quietly in a tent, isolated because their more practical neighbors have fled. The father, a cattle and goat herder named Kidane, is confident they’ll return. The gentle tone of their lives, especially Kidane’s affection for and playful relationship with his daughter, provides the film’s most poignant and wrenching contrast to the jihadist’s grip on the village.

Sissako also depicts meetings between the jihadists and a reasonable local imam, a character who makes it clear that the film is not demonizing Islam, but the extremists who pervert it. They are thoroughly corrupt and selfish, twisting the Koran to their own uses, forcing local women into marriages that the imam is powerless to stop.

Against this, Kidane’s optimism is wishful idealism. Sissako has said, after all, that the film was inspired by the real-life death by stoning of a couple who had children but had never married. Sissako does not tell their story specifically, but “Timbuktu” does have an inevitable yet shocking conclusion.

The cinematography, by Sofian El Fani (“Blue Is the Warmest Color”), drops splashes of bright fabric and color into the serene brown desert palette. Because it was too dangerous to work in Mali, “Timbuktu” was made in Mauritania, where Sissako was raised. He studied film making in Moscow, has lived in Paris for decades, and has directed other acclaimed works, including “Bamako” (2007). His expertise shows here in the seamless mix of professional actors and non-professionals.

Only 97 minutes long, “Timbuktu” is an intense immersion into a horrifying and desperate reality that we usually experience as no more than a headline.

The Subversive Charm of 'Downton Abbey': Season 5 Review

Caryn James — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 13:57:00 GMT

The fast-moving new season of “Downton Abbey” is set in 1924, with the tide of Modernism sweeping through the household. The Labor Party has come into power, and as Lord Grantham crankily says, “Our government is committed to the destruction of us and everything we stand for.” It’s not just the government. In the 12 years that have passed since the beginning of the story, the Crawley sisters have morphed into subversives undermining their own social order, sometimes by design and sometimes accidentally.

The show’s glittering surface is more entertaining than ever. Lady Mary’s exquisitely designed 1920’s clothes are enough to guarantee some glamour. But the changes go far beyond sheath dresses and bobbed hair.

Sybil was the one true radical, who dared to elope with the chauffeur. One of her legacies is that widowed Tom Branson (Allen Leech) is now a beloved member of the family.

When Sybil died, the torch passed upward to poor Edith -- and is there really anything else to call her, even now? Edith (Laura Carmichael) began a mildly feminist career in journalism, and fell in love with her married editor. At the end of last season she stashed their illegitimate child away with one of Downton’s tenant families. But hapless Edith makes such a nuisance of herself with the tenant family that the wife finally slams the door in her face, Milady or not.

As a rebel, Poor Edith is a shabby substitute for fiery Sybil. She’s not radical enough to destroy her reputation by acknowledging the illegitimate child. Yet she nudges the Crawleys toward the future.

This season Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), ever poised and imperious, makes her own stab at social rebellion. It would give away too much to say more, but it’s significant that her action is not taken on principle. As usual, Mary simply wants things her way. Her rejection of strict social codes is designed to serve her own future happiness, not to rebel against the past.

Many of these forward-looking choices seem driven by writer Julian Fellowes’ need to create drama. But whatever the Crawleys’ motives, every small act of resistance chips away at the once-impenetrable foundation of the British aristocracy. Even Lord Grantham, (appealingly played by Hugh Bonneville as stodgy but endearing) so vocally resistant to change, has proven to be a pushover. It may take him a while, but he always gives in, whether it’s to the chauffeur as son-in-law or changes to the economy of running Downton.

Fellowes keeps the season moving with a great swirl of rapidly-developing romances for almost everyone, even the unlikely suspects. (There are very slight spoilers ahead, if you’re extra-sensitive about that kind of thing.)

The Dowager is unsettled by a down-on-his-luck, White Russian Prince from her past. Magically, it seems, Maggie Smith never overplays the many witticisms Fellowes hands her. Violet and Isobel (Penelope Wilton) are now great friends, but that friendship is challenged when middle-class Isobel gains an aristocratic suitor.

Cousin Rose (Lily James), once a whiny annoyance, has become more likable. Her romance with a black man last season announced her disregard for social taboos, but seemed like a social theme wrenched into place. This season she follows her heart in a slightly less scandalous direction. She falls for a Jewish man whose own titled father resists the match. So does Rose’s mother, effectively played as a wretched harridan by Phoebe Nicholls. Rose’s plot gives Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) some irresistible opportunities to remind the socially obtuse that her own father was Jewish. Richard E. Grant plays an art historian who arrives at Downton to look at the Della Francesca painting and stays to flirt with Cora.

Not all the melodrama works, especially downstairs. The investigation into the death of the man who raped Anna drags on. In the swift new atmosphere of this season that feels like flogging a dead plot, until a crucial twist in the next-to-last episode. The loyal Carson (Jim Carter) complains that the staff is getting smaller and things are changing for the worse; Fellowes has him announce this too often and too heavily.

More intriguing, though, some downstairs characters become landowners as they plan for their retirements. That may be the surest indication that Modernism has reached Downton. The entire season is one clever move: staying faithful to the glamorous distant figures, who let us indulge our fantasies, while drawing them closer to a world of equality and mobility that we instinctively understand.

"The Better Angels": Really Young Abe Lincoln

Caryn James — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 13:57:00 GMT

Poetic or pretentious? (Not that they’re mutually exclusive.) There’s every reason to be skeptical about “The Better Angels,” a lyrical, black-and-white rendering of two years in the backwoods boyhood of Abraham Lincoln. The writer and director, A.J. Edwards, is a protege of Terrence Malick -- he has worked on several Malick films, and was an editor on “To the Wonder” -- and the imagistic trailer suggests a film that has picked up the worst of his mentor’s tics. I’m a great fan of Malick, but at times he has gone over a cliff. Do all those hackneyed shots of sun-dappled wheat fields in “To the Wonder” mean a thing?

Forget that trailer, though, because “The Better Angels” is stunningly beautiful, fresh and substantial. It sweeps viewers into a world that contains its own gracefully flowing rhythm.

Although rooted in historical research, this is obviously far from a conventional biopic. With bare traces of dialogue or plot, it powerfully captures the magic of inspiration and genius. The hero’s unpromising rustic background -- living in a wooden cabin, plowing the fields – helped create one of America’s most important and iconic presidents.

The film begins in 1817 when Lincoln is an unschooled boy of 8. His gifts are recognized and fostered by his mother, Nancy, (an ethereal Brit Marling) and after her death by his equally devoted stepmother. As Sarah Lincoln, Diane Kruger creates a woman of quiet eloquence, with a real spine. There’s great tenderness and poignancy in the way these uneducated women insist that their son go to school, and have every chance to flourish. That means sometimes going up against his stern father (Jason Clarke), a hard-working farmer who lacks their sensitivity and insight.

Because the film has relatively little dialogue, the young Abe (played by a non-actor, Braydon Denney) displays none of the rhetorical flair now associated with Lincoln. But then the entire film is driven by the unspoken ambitions and emotions of people living simple lives. There are more words in the voiceover than are spoken on screen. That narrative, with its folksy tone, may sound contrived, but it is based on an actual interview with Lincoln’s cousin, Dennis Hanks, done in 1890 when Hanks was an old man looking back on their shared youth.

The black and white cinematography, by Matthew Lloyd, works effectively to create a world that feels foreign to modern viewers, as the camera roams the woods, the fields, and the river that swoops along, suggesting the wider world where Lincoln will find his place. There are a few too many syrupy shots in which the camera climbs a tree toward the sunlight, but that is a slight imbalance.

“The Better Angels” -- the title comes from Lincoln’s first inaugural speech, invoking “the better angels of our nature” -- is very earnest, which goes against the tide of current cinema. (Malick himself has become increasingly earnest since “Badlands”). But there is nothing self-satisfied or pompous about its tone, which is as modest as our image of Lincoln himself. Young Lincoln’s world was not glamorous, but the film that captures it has true poetry and grace.

New York Film Festival Critic's Choice: 'La Sapienza'

Caryn James — Sat, 27 Sep 2014 17:32:55 GMT

Although this year's New York Film Festival is loaded with high-profile movies like "Gone Girl," Eugene Green's sumptuously photographed, stylized, philosophical "La Sapienza" is exactly the kind of small, exquisite work the festival can help draw attention to.

Fabrizio Rongione carries much of the film's thoughtful eloquence as Alexandre Schmidt, an architect tired of the urban blight and ugliness he has too often been a part of. We literally see what he means.

Green and cinematographer Raphael O'Byrne's camera roams over the gilded vaults and centuries-old sculptures of a church in the opening credits before jolting us to bleakness of Alexandre's industrial present. (Rongione may look familiar because he's a fixture in the Dardennes Brothers' films. He brings a different but equally effective kind of soulfulness to his role as the working class husband of Marion Cotillard's character in their "Two Days, One Night," also in this year's festival.)

In an attempt to recapture his aesthetic idealism, he sets out to revisit the work of the 17th century architect -- and Bernini rival – Borromini. His wife Alienor goes along, an attempt to bridge the distance between them.

Along the way they meet Goffredo, a young architecture student whom Alexandre reluctantly takes along on his Borromini tour to Ticino and Rome, while Alienor stays behind to help Goffredo's psychosomatically ill sister, Lavinia.

Green's interest in the Baroque goes back to his days as a theater director, and his approach is to make the conversations in "La Sapienza" as stylized as the visual look. Couples stare directly at each other as they talk. Alexandre and Goffredo talk about aesthetics and artistic ideals. Alexandre and Alienor -- eventually -- about the coolness between them. The camera often captures the speaker head-on, looking at us. Surprisingly, Green's elegance makes those scenes intimate rather than artificial or arch.

The film is in French and Italian. That's just as well when it comes to the French title used here, which sounds more enticing than the English "sapience," which Alexandre complains that is a perfectly good forgotten word for wisdom.

Green, an American who long ago transplanted himself to France, is scarcely known in this country. His work, most recently "'The Portuguese Nun" (2009), is much more likely to turn up in festivals than in commercial runs. (Kino Lorber will release "La Sapienza" here.) You can spot him in a small scene as a shabby, gray-haired exile from Iraq sitting on a park bench, who talks to Alienor. The episode is not quite surreal but it's far from kitchen sink realism. "La Sapienza" exists in its own lovely artistic hothouse.

Terry Gilliam's 'The Zero Theorem': There's No Going Back to 'Brazil'

Caryn James — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 12:59:00 GMT

Terry Gilliam's futuristic "Brazil" -- still vibrant, audacious, mordant, and wonderfully absurd – is a tough film to measure up to, especially for Terry Gilliam himself. Nearly 30 years later, his new futuristic fantasy "The Zero Theorem," inevitably evokes "Brazil," a seriously wrong-headed move. If "Zero Theorem" were fresher, it might have felt like a continuing exploration of an obsessive interest. As it is, this listless and shallow fantasy lands like a pale evocation of Gilliam's own classic.

Christoph Waltz plays a computer expert named Qohen, with a shaved head and nerve-frazzled manner, who refers to himself as "We." (Identity crisis much?) His house, a former church, is a suitably dingy and eccentric mix of old and new: stained glass windows and Gothic-high ceilings, piles of dirty dishes, an old-fashioned alarm clock and banks of computer screens on which we see a swirling galaxy. Outdoors, the stylized landscape feels like "Blade Runner," with its rainy, neon-lit, crammed city streets.

The feeling is Orwellian. Matt Damon, who appears in just three scenes, is Qohan's employer. He's the corporate czar of Mancom, a company that can spy into every nook of every employee's life -- not in a satirical, NSA is everywhere way, but in the clunky way suggested by the blunt, Orwellian sign that appears in the corporate headquarters, "Mancom is watching," and by the fact that Damon's character is known only as "Management."

Qohen soon gets permission to work at home on Management's pet project: "crunching entities" to prove the Zero Theorem, establishing mathematical proof that life is meaningless. Good luck with that, and with the rest of the movie, which almost immediately flies apart. Gilliam goes from being slightly derivative (borrowing from himself) to self-indulgent. Among other dull, meaningless touches, a woman called Bainsley (Melanie Thierry), who runs a porn website, appears at Qohen's door in the guise of a sexy nurse. Eventually, in virtual reality, they romp on a sunny beach.

No one demands or even wants rigor from Gilliam's ever-kinetic mind. But at his best, in "Brazil," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," or "Twelve Monkeys," the imaginative flights and detours are absorbing enough to sustain interest. "The Zero Theorem," with its flat sequences and repetitiveness, is closer to the recent misfire, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."

Waltz is always lively on screen, even when the film around him becomes leaden and obvious. And some delightful scenes are tucked away here. David Thewlis adds a realistic, human touch as Qohen's colleague. Tilda Swinton appears on Qohen's computer screen as a company-mandated shrink, who turns out to be not nearly as pulled together as she should be. Her clumsy name, Dr. Shrink-Rom, is a clue to the lackluster satire the screenplay lapses into. The film is the first feature by a fiction writer named Pat Rushin, which may explain why it feels as if Gilliam has make a movie from a script by an acolyte.

Like Woody Allen's otherwise totally different "Magic in the Moonlight," this film tackles the mystery of the meaning of life, but "The Zero Theorem" is an oddly humorless work from one of the shrewdest and most darkly satirical of the Pythons. Gilliam devotees will want to catch it for the occasional visual dynamics; watch the way Damon's chameleon-like suit changes to match the backdrop in a party scene. Mostly, it makes you want to go back to "Brazil."

Whit Stillman's Romantics in Paris: Amazon Pilot 'The Cosmopolitans'

Caryn James — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:30:00 GMT

The echo of "Metropolitan" runs through more than the title of "The Cosmopolitans," Whit Stillman's just-released Amazon pilot. Like the 1990 film that established his droll, sophisticated style and launched his career, "The Cosmopolitans" is a loosely-structured, dialogue-heavy jaunt with a group of privileged young people, now updated and beautifully transplanted as ex-pats in Paris. They couldn't be more romantic, literary or wittily delusional about the odds of recapturing all that lost Fitzgerald-Hemingway glamor.

In the slender plot, Aubrey (Carrie MacLemore) loses her boyfriend, the one she has moved from Alabama to Paris to be with. She meets some young Americans at a cafe, including Jimmy (Adam Brody), who is shocked when another friend tells him "You couldn't be more of an ex-pat cliche." He seems to think he can claim to be Parisian because he lives there. The plot is hardly the point, because like all of Stillman's films, "The Cosmopolitans" is a delicious little comedy of manners. Aubrey, Jimmy and friends drink in a cafe, go to a party where they dance and meet a famous fashion journalist played by Chloe Sevigne, then wander out onto the glistening streets late at night.

If Amazon was looking for the kind of typical, cliff-hanging pilot that makes viewers demand to know what happens next, they may have gone to the wrong person, but Stillman's fans (including me) will be in Parisian heaven.

Here's a quick behind-the-scenes look.

Swinton and Hiddleston in Jarmusch's Sumptuous 'Only Lovers Left Alive,' on DVD

Caryn James — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:02:00 GMT

In a droll, touching scene in "Only Lovers Left Alive," Jim Jarmusch's dazzling take on eternal love, the vampire Eve -- Tilda Swinton, even paler and more elegant than usual – sits in Tangier confiding to her very old friend, Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), who is, contrary to history, very undead. Eve is worried about her husband back in Detroit, a musician-vampire named Adam (Tom Hiddleston in a dark wig, with a penetrating stare).

Kit Marlowe affectionately calls Adam "a suicidally Romantic scoundrel," to which Eve replies, "I mainly blame Shelley and Byron and some of those French assholes he used to hang around with." They are, all three, witty, poignant, literary and irresistible. As I said in my review (you can find it here) "Only Lovers Left Alive" is both pure Jarmusch in its wry, understated voice and a departure into a more visually extravagant style.

The DVD has no commentary, but a quite selective 49-minute behind-the-scenes look at filming reveals how precisely Jarmusch works to create effects that feel so effortless on screen. The transfer looks sumptuous, another reason to revisit a film that seems to contain more nuances, grace notes and emotional depth with each viewing.

'The Knick': Steven Soderbergh Recasts 'House' with Clive Owen

Caryn James — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 12:56:00 GMT

"The Knick" is "House, M.D." set in 1900, a medical drama about a brilliant, junkie doctor, an American played by a charismatic British actor. Clive Owen's character, John Thackery, might have been an ancestor of Hugh Laurie's House, right down to his impatience with fools and preference for prostitutes over messy emotional entanglements. And while Steven Soderbergh's brisk direction, visual audacity and attention to the nuances of acting -- his characters reveal much more than their words express -- elevate the series, "The Knick" never quite overcomes its contrived stories and scripts. The series builds in strength as it goes along; I've seen seven of the season's 10 episodes, and was fascinated after two. But you have to overlook a lot of hoary elements to get there. So far "The Knick" (on Cinemax) is a conventional hospital drama dressed up in period clothes.

It is, like "House," terrific as conventional dramas go. The hospital known as The Knick is a place of dark but glistening corridors and jaw-dropping medical treatments. A former girlfriend of Thackery's is helped by having her arm temporarily grafted onto her nose. The Lower East Side of New York is depicted as a place of muddy streets, dingy bars and horse-drawn carriages which the wealthy use to escape to their more graceful, Edith Wharton worthy homes.

Soderbergh's best choice might have been casting Owen as the driven surgeon always pushing for new discoveries. Thackery is tough, self-indulgent and flawed, yet Owen displays a depth of humanity -- and an as yet unexplained pain -- that engages our sympathy. The rakishly disheveled hair doesn't hurt; what good is a genius doctor in a medical series if he's not also devilishly sexy?

And he is at center of some amazing set pieces that Soderbergh stages with flair while maintaining a sense of period realism. The first episode includes a stunning scene in which Thackery's mentor frantically tries to save a pregnant woman's life in the operating room, where men in suits observe from the bleachers (you realize why it's called an operating theater), while blood gushes everywhere.

In one of the strongest and most subtle subplots, Thackery is gradually developing a delicate relationship with Lucy, a young nurse from West Virginia. They did not get off to an auspicious start. In agonized withdrawal from the liquid cocaine that allows him to function, he had to ask her to inject a syringe into his penis. (He later apologized; he may be a mess, but he's a gentleman.) Eve Hewson gives a lovely performance as Lucy, who's both shy and daring, and secretly tough enough to handle Thackery.

But Soderbergh has often been reckless in choosing screenplays, as he is here. When he has a fresh and sparkling script, as he did with Richard LaGravanese's "Behind the Candelabra", it supports all his strengths. If it's weak, you get the promising but in the end banal thriller "Side Effects."

"The Knick," created and written by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, casts too much contemporary, often smug knowledge on the past. There is Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance), a rich young woman who serves on the hospital's board; she conspicuously bristles at her fiance's assumption that she will quit this trivial work when they marry. There is the talented black surgeon, Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland), whom she insists the hospital hire as Thackeray's deputy. There is an unlikely, unrepentant abortionist who helps impoverished women. Sexism, racism, reproductive rights – all the boxes are checked. Any one of those plots might have worked to allow some light from the future to illuminate all that turn-of-the-20th-century darkness. Together, they make "The Knick" overwrought. The brutal yet casual racism faced by the black doctor feels real; the fact that he exists in this series feels forced.

In the end, Soderbergh and Owen together create a series alluring enough to make its flaws seem like pesky disappointments rather than fatal problems. And the series has already been renewed for a second season. Most series get more forced and overloaded as they go along. "The Knick" started there, which leaves room for it to relax into its characters and its dramatic strengths, to stop trying so hard to be relevant, to evolve from good to great.

Michael Fassbender and The Band From "Frank" Visit Colbert (Video)

Caryn James — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 13:56:21 GMT

The sheer perversity of casting Michael Fassbender then hiding his head under a giant papier mache mask might have been enough to attract attention to "Frank," but Lenny Abrahamson's film is more than a stunt. It's a wonderfully eccentric, loosely structured black comedy with a dark undercurrent. Domhnall Gleason plays a musician of limited talent and a huge longing to escape his deadly office job and life. He falls in with an avant-garde band that includes Maggie Gyllenhaal as Clara, a glamorously dour theremin and keyboard player, and the lead singer, Frank (Fassbender), who never removes the giant mask that lets him move about in the world, until circumstances force him to near the end of the film. The actors really played and sang as the band with the deliberately unpronounceable name Soronprfbs.

The film meanders from Britain to Austin and SXSW, where it makes an emotional curve that doesn't entirely work, explaining Frank's oddness too neatly. But by then "Frank" has created an indelible world, that lingers long after the movie has ended. This smart little indie asks questions about art, ambition, sanity, and more crucially: how can really know that it's Fassbender under that mask?

Fassbender was Stephen Colbert's guest on "The Colbert Report," and the band, including Gyllenhaal and Gleason, performed "I Love You All." Take a look, and hear Colbert pronounce Soronprfbs.

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James Franco's Smart, Stunning 'Child of God'

Caryn James — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 12:55:00 GMT

When I saw James Franco's "Child of God" at the 2013 New York Film Festival, I was impressed by how stunningly it captured Cormac McCarthy's merciless sensibility, but wondered how a film about such a deliberately off-putting character would ever find a distributor or an audience. The tough but serious and ambitious film opens tomorrow, an accomplishment in itself. Here's my festival review:

If "Child of God" had been made by James Franco instead of "James Franco," by just another filmmaker instead of the public figure whose career and self-consciously created image seem like one hydra-headed piece of performance art -- actor in blockbusters and indies, fiction-writer, student at too many schools, the guy slyly asked by Stephen Colbert, "Are you a fraud?" -- it's unlikely anyone would question why it's in the New York Film Festival. The film is a powerful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 1973 novel, directed -- and written by Franco and Vince Jolivette -- with such discipline and intelligence that it captures the mordant darkness of McCarthy's world.

That doesn't mean it is pleasant or easy to watch. Set in the isolated backwoods of Tennessee and shot in bleak brown tones, "Child of God" is about a serial necrophiliac named Lester Ballard, repulsive, violent, barely civilized. Does a movie's main character shit in the woods? This one does, then wipes his butt with a stick. (The scene is straight from McCarthy's novel.) Next to "Child of God, " "No Country for Old Men" plays like a lighthearted comedy.

The film doesn't try to explain or justify Ballard, doesn't ask us to sympathize. Instead, it exposes a humanity so deeply buried beneath the animal behavior we hardly believe it exists. That's a difficult, delicate balancing act, yet it's exactly what Franco does.

We're set up by a voiceover from Tim Blake Nelson as the sheriff, who calls Ballard "a child of God, much like yourself perhaps." At the start, Ballard grunts, flails and attacks an auctioneer selling his family's land -- and degenerates from there. Scott Haze plays Ballard with his eyes rolled back in his head, mumbling and drooling; he's so effective you might think he was some feral child instead of a professional actor committed to playing repugnant.

Without a home, Ballard lives in a barn, then the woods, scavenging for food, regressing at every step. He stumbles across a couple parked in a lovers' lane having sex, and masturbates against the car. He finds another parked couple dead from carbon monoxide, and makes the corpse of the woman his new love interest, carrying her home as casually as he had earlier carried a dead rabbit. One of the voiceovers scattered through the film speculates that Ballard was never the same after his father's suicide, letting us know that he was not mentally damaged from birth. There seems to be no excuse for his existence.

Yet the film makes its point -- justifies its own existence -- with an eye-opening moment. Ballard wins some giant stuffed animals at a carnival, takes them home and treats them like friends, the way a child would play with dolls -- until one day he shoots them, convinced they've been talking behind his back. That moment crystallizes his character as a truly pathetic creature who has the worst of two worlds: he lives on animal instinct yet has the kind of mental delusions only a human can suffer. He's still a vile psychopath, but also a child of God. And in McCarthy's world, God is rarely benign, his children often destructive.

At times the film is too reverent toward its source. There's no need for text from the novel on screen, a stylistic tic of Franco's. And the voiceovers, from various unidentified townspeople, don't work as they do in the novel: as a Greek chorus, and also relief from Ballard's perspective, a little welcome breathing room. Here they're simply functional, feeding us information.

But Franco and Jolivette did make one very smart change. The crucial scene of Ballard shooting the stuffed animals was added, almost on the fly. Franco explained this during an unusual press conference after the NY Film Festival screening. He was meant to be Skyped in but something went wrong. What we saw was a split screen: on the left, an empty chair and Jolivette's name; on the right, a big square of solid blue and Franco's disembodied voice. Franco the performance artist couldn't have planned it better.

The Last, Best Season of 'The Killing'

Caryn James — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:59:00 GMT

Plenty of us have made bad choices in men, but it would be hard to match Sarah Linden's. At the end of Season Three of "The Killing" (the statute of limitations has passed, but spoiler alert anyway) she discovered that her boss and sometime lover, Detective Skinner, was worse than your typical skulking-around married guy. He was the "Pied Piper" serial killer, preying on lost young women, the very person Linden and her funky ever-faithful partner Holder had been searching for all season.

Lured to his lake house, Linden was pointing her gun at him when Holder arrived and begged her not ruin her life by killing him. She paused, and ruined her life. Although "The Killing" may never recover from the bad press and viewers' sense of betrayal after the Season 1 finale didn't reveal its murderer, the show runners learned something. Season 3 – that was a fantastic.

As Season 4 begins, Linden is in the shower washing off the blood from her own personal killing. And in this intense, electrifying final season, Sarah joins the ranks of Walter White and other murderers we root for. Along with Holder, now implicated in her crime's cover-up, we witnessed her anguish and shock, her cold-blooded decision. And while viewers might find it hard to blame her, she has multiple reasons to hate herself. The show's grim, rainy Seattle atmosphere has never reflected the characters' inner lives more. (Dropped by AMC, "The Killing" was rescued for this last 6-episode season by Netflix, which will make it available for binging on August 1.)

The season also offers a new murder case for Linden and Holder: a couple and two of their three children were shot in their upscale home. Their teenaged son, who survived a gunshot in the attack, is the first of many suspects. When he recovers, he returns to his military school, run by Joan Allen in a role so blatantly stern and sinister you have to guess she's a red herring.

That plot is a distraction for Linden and Holder, but less diverting for us. The potent draw of Season 4 comes from watching Linden and Holder try to protect their lethal secret, while Holder's former partner (Gregg Henry) begins to wonder why no one has heard from Skinner. Their relationship becomes a fierce, sometimes antagonistic back-and-forth, with one of them ready to fall apart at any moment. Holder sounds calm when he warns, "Just got to keep our stories straight, Linden," until it's her turn to yell at him, "Keep your shit together!"

Mireille Enos falls apart with controlled agony; it's a terrific performance, portraying a woman who will never be happy again. Holder has more layers than ever this season, which continues his relationship with Caroline, the lawyer who likes his scruffiness and sees through his defensive front. Joel Kinnaman makes it seem effortless, as Holder veers wildly up and down. It helps that he always has the best lines.

"What do you think?" Linden asks after they've questioned a creepy, agoraphobic artist.

"Think Boo Radley over there is one sunny day away from cutting his ear off," says Holder.

There are small touches to notice, good and bad. In Episode 1, watch for a small hospital scene with Patti Smith (yes, the musician-writer), gray hair in a bun, playing a doctor.

But another detail, revealed last season, is as nonsensical as ever. Someone notices that an unusual ring Skinner's daughter wears looks exactly like the ring in a photograph of one of the Pied Piper's victims. A similar regifting of a victim's jewelry by the killer to his daughter features in "The Fall," suggesting an unsettling but unexplored father-daughter dynamic. In both series, it's hard to guess who's more careless, the killers or the series' writers.

Because Netflix did not send links to the final two episodes, I don't know the outcome. What's already clear is that "The Killing" has returned with its strongest, most original season yet. Anything can happen in a series finale. Going to prison would be a high price for Linden to pay for choosing a really bad guy.

Michel Gondry's Playhouse: 'Mood Indigo'

Caryn James — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:47:00 GMT

Michel Gondry's "Mood Indigo" resembles a genius' workshop filled with old-fashioned toys. There are no glistening computer-generated effects here; as in most of his films, the evidence of Gondry's wildly inventive visual imagination gives us quirky hand-made objects that seem to have lives of their own. In "Mood Indigo" these toys include the pianocktail, a piano that automatically mixes and dispenses cocktails according to what music is played. And there's the ride that the hero, Colin, takes on his first date with his true love, Chloe -- an amusement park style ride that seems to exist only for them, a car shaped like a cloud hanging from a crane that swoops them over Paris, their legs dangling in the air.

The film is based on Boris Vian's 1947 novel, "L'ecume des jours" (better known in France than it is here, where the clunky standard translation is "Froth on the Daydream"). You can see why the novel, complete with pianocktail, appealed to Gondry, who transformed it into this dazzling fantasy world where a romance plays out. Gondry updates the story to an unspecified time that comes closest to the 1970's, a period of typewriters and vinyl records, although his LP's magically split into four smaller discs before our eyes. Colin (Romain Duris), who wears trim suits, is financially comfortable and looking for love. Nicolas (a droll Omar Sy), is his chef, lawyer and friend, He is also the matchmaker who introduces him to Chloe (Audrey Tautou) at a party where people dance the biglemoi, in which the dancers' legs grow to twice their length and become as rubbery as those of cartoon characters.

In this nostalgic fairy tale, Chloe's ponytail hints at Audrey Hepburn romping through Europe, and the romance is fueled by jazz, beginning with "Take the A Train" over the film's opening. ("Only two things really matter," Vian wrote in the foreword to his book. "There's love ... and there's the music of Duke Ellington.") In a wry subplot, Colin's friend Chick (Gad Elmaleh) is obsessed with the philosopher Jean Sol-Partre, a dead-on lookalike and thinkalike of Jean-Paul Sartre and another joke from Vian, Sartre's friend in real life.

A more somber tone emerges when Chloe becomes ill and is mistreated by Dr. Mangemanche (played by Gondry himself, uncredited). Soon, a lethal water lily is growing in her lung. As she becomes more seriously ill, darkness literally encroaches on the film. Cobwebs creep across her bedroom window (we see them grow), and the film's colors gradually fade until the ending is black and white. Those final black-and-white scenes (the cinematographer is Christophe Beaucarne) look glorious, but there's a problem: this confection of a film can't sustain the weight of its emotional turn.

Too often, even the main characters have seemed like props in a series of set pieces, as they do when Colin and Chloe take part in a go-cart race up the steps of a church to see which couple will win a contest to be married. Gondry's best film is still the brilliant "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and "Mood Indigo," despite the Vian source, lacks the spine that Charlie Kaufman's screenplay gave "Eternal Sunshine." With a screenplay by Gondry and Luc Bossi, "Mood Indigo" lets the whimsy so overwhelm the characters that there is no emotional resonance to draw on when the film needs it.

"Mood Indigo" is more like Gondry's inventive music videos than any of his films, although "The Science of Sleep" comes closest in its fantasy and visual indulgence. In the end that hardly matters; scene for scene Gondry's playful filmmaking sparkles and mesmerizes enough to carry us through.

Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde in Paul Haggis' Maddening, Self-Important 'Third Person'

Caryn James — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 12:48:00 GMT

Unanswered questions linger after "Third Person" ends, but not the kind Paul Haggis has said he intends his ambiguous film to provoke. What I really want to know is: Does he take us for idiots, or does he actually believe that this pretentious, simplistic film has any substance? Is he cynical or deluded? Either way, the result is the same: an overwrought, vapid three-strand story, set in New York, Rome and Paris. Each thread involves a man, a woman and a shadowy third element of the triangle (a spouse, a child) hovering over the relationship. Each story turns out to be more banal than the last. I was hoping that since Haggis famously left Scientology he might have jettisoned its self-righteous tone too. But his m.o. here is the same as it was in "Crash" and his screenplay for "Million Dollar Baby": pretentious tone, zero depth.

The film's emptiness is especially maddening because the strongest and admittedly most biographical plot is so visceral and intriguing. Liam Neeson is Michael, a Pulitzer Prize winning winning novelist, and Olivia Wilde is his lover, Anna, a talented journalist who joins him in his Paris hotel. Their relationship is sexy, teasing, fraught, painful as they pretend to push each other away and then tumble together. The actors are dynamic, their playfulness refreshingly different from the rest of the film. When Michael outsmarts her, Anna ends up running naked through the halls; Wilde's giggle says everything about Anna's taste for danger. With a dark secret lurking at its center, this is the story that kept me with Haggis for a good long time.

That tension doesn't last, of course, because we're constantly cutting away to other stories. As Julia, Mila Kunis is surprisingly convincing in a role that makes no sense. For reasons it takes forever to discover, Julia has one last chance to get visitation rights to see her son, which means battling her furious ex, a painter played by James Franco. We're meant to see her as a loving mother, which makes her ditziness improbable -- why does she miss so many appointments about the custody? She turns down a front-desk job at the Mercer Hotel, where she was once a regular guest, choosing to work there as a maid because, she says, "Maids are invisible -- at least they were to me. " She's dead broke, and might have asked whether the front-desk gig paid better, but then we wouldn't have gotten Haggis's sanctimonious line.

The most ludicrous of the stories focuses on Adrien Brody as Scott, an American in Rome who buys stolen fashion designs to make knock-offs. In a bar, he meets an attractive, apparently homeless Roma woman, Monika (Moran Atias), who needs money to pay thugs who have smuggled her daughter into the country. (Both characters are doing black-market deals; we get it.) Anyone would suspect her sob story is a con, which makes Scott's actions thoroughly implausible, even after we learn about the guilty act that may have motivated him to help her. .

Haggis's smooth direction keeps the film moving fluidly, which helps gloss over the screenplay's clumsiness. That's another Haggis trademark, which explains why "Crash" could have won the Best Picture Oscar and also be so derided. But as the strands begin to converge, every turn that is meant to be revelatory -- the other lover who keeps calling Anna, the phone message from his daughter that Scott plays over and over -- seems obvious or forced.

The voice Michael hears in his head at the start, saying "Watch me," echoes through Scott's story, as their plots all-too neatly come to mirror each other. The contrivance makes each character's secret less personal, less believable, less trenchant. And if the interlocking stories are meant to suggest that that their problems are universal, or even that the various characters may be part of the same person, those are sophomoric places to land after all this.

The story begins to unmoor itself from geography. A note dropped in Paris can be picked up in New York -- or is it vice versa? But if location doesn't matter, why set the film in three glamorous cities, except to make it all look pretty? (Cinematographer Gian Filippo Corticelli does that much.)

The film's open-endedness and occasional flights from reality aren't the problem; a smart audience has no problem with artistic ambiguity. Haggis' indulgent self-importance and facile ideas are the real issues, because they thwart any genuine emotional drama. The final 15 minutes are so insultingly flimsy that they undermine the entire film.

Near the end, Michael, having coasted on his reputation and his Pulitzer for many previous books, hands over some pages his editor finds to be brutally honest, raw and stunning. If only "Third Person" had been that, instead of this pretentious cloud of nothing.

Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson in the Fierce, Suspenseful 'The Rover'

Caryn James — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 12:56:00 GMT

"The Rover" begins with the enigmatic text "10 years after the collapse," a global economic meltdown that has made electrical power and gasoline scarce, and caused the Australian outback to seem more desolate than ever. We witness that deserted brown landscape through the eyes of Eric, played with ferocious restraint by Guy Pearce, as he sits behind the wheel of his car. His face is weather-beaten, and to say he is laconic is an understatement. When the car is stolen by thieves escaping a shootout, he purposefully hunts them down. Throughout David Michod's arresting and tense film -- part thriller, part warning of dystopia -- he strides the dust like a character from an old Western. Despite the glaring sun, Michod creates a shadowy world that forces us to sift through the moral possibilities: is Eric hero, villain, vigilante or all three?

The car is taken when Eric goes into what passes for civilization, a bar that is no more than a cinderblock shack, a dingy hole in the wall deserted by everyone except its Cambodian owners. Apparently many Asians have fled to Australia, but so have some Americans, including Rey, who was injured and left behind to die by his own brother (Scoot McNairy) after the shootout. As Rey, Robert Pattinson continues his quest for artistic credibility, and for the first time has chosen well (David Cronenberg's flaccid "Cosmopolis" sounded better than it turned out to be).

He has brown teeth, a buzzcut and -- here is where his career choice outpaces his acting -- a mumbly accent from the American South that makes him seem like a caricature of a backwoods simpleton. Rey is not the smartest guy, and Pattinson captures his anger and sense of betrayal, but in the end can't save him from cliche. That weakness hardly matters, though, because Pearce is the magnetic center of the film. Even if Pattinson can't match his intensity, the two create a believable symbiosis as together they track down Eric's car and Rey's brother. There are guns and more shootouts and a confession that may or may not be true.

Michod (director of "Animal Kingdom," the fantastic, dark thriller about the personal dynamics in a family of criminals) and the cinematographer Natasha Braier use the setting to good effect, as the barren outback mirrors the bleakness the economic collapse has created. As Eric and Rey track the thieves, they encounter a few other isolated people. One is strong but vulnerable: a doctor who jeopardizes her own safely to help them (Eric doesn't give her much choice). The other is immensely creepy: a neatly-dressed older woman who sits knitting in the one clean room of a squalid house, where she pimps out young boys.

It doesn't take long to realize that 'The Rover' is not really about the economy, even though Michod nudges us to consider what it means that even in the middle of nowhere, a shopkeeper with nearly empty shelves will only accept American dollars. The film presents the desperation and violence bred from a world where actions have no consequences, a world that resembles a town in the Old West without a sheriff.

"The Rover" inevitably echoes older Australian films that rely on the vast emptiness of the land, from "Walkabout" to "Mad Max." But the taut suspense, the intelligence and the layered moral ambiguity of the film are distinctly David Michod's.

'Edge of Tomorrow': Tom Cruise Time Travels, But Do We Want Him Back?

Caryn James — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:59:00 GMT

Edge of Tomorrow, or Groundhog Day Meets Alien, is relatively good -- that is, relative to Tom Cruise's recent, unwatchable movies like Oblivion. This one has terrific action scenes orchestrated in rich 3D by director Doug Liman and cinematographer Dion Beebe. And the premise is so silly it's fun: alien invaders have arrived and created a totally war-ravaged Earth. The global military, the United Defense Force, may have a way to stop them, but there will be blood (or alien goop or whatever).

Cruise plays Major William Cage, assigned to do pr, but sent kicking and screaming into battle so he can spin the inevitable death toll our way. He gets killed, then returns to begin the previous day again. There is an explanation for this death-defying time travel, similar to Spiderman having been bitten. Only a fellow warrior, played by Emily Blunt, can understand because it also happened to her. Let's leave it at that, because the more the film explains its loopy plot, the more it dips away from anything interesting. You end up longing for more action if only because the talking scenes are so tiresome.

Cruise has demonstrated that he has a sense of humor (Tropic Thunder), and there's a glimmer of that at the start, when Cage is still weasly and cowardly, assuming he can talk his way out of being sent into battle. But this is ultimately an earnest, Cruise-as-good-guy movie, so the wit doesn't last long. Soon we're in full generic war-hero mode, and Cruise seems to settle back and glide through the part, showing very little dynamism. Guess it's boring to relive the worst day of your life so often.

Blunt glows charismatically, as she always does, playing Sgt. Rita Vrataski (of course Cruise outranks her), a celebrated "super-soldier" who killed a record number of enemies in a single battle thanks to new technology: that is, soldiers step into full-body jackets that make then look like Transformers. Vrataski doesn't have much to do except keep shooting Cage so he can start the day over and over until they get it right and kill the head alien. Brendon Gleeson has a much juicier, small role as the general who ruins Cage's day.

The war scenes are so energetic and captivating that the flattened characters may not matter to action fans. Cage, along with soldiers who actually know how to fight, parachutes (again and again) into a chaotic battle scene on a beach in France, a sly nod to Saving Private Ryan, if the hero had been a bumbler. The CGI'd aliens at first resemble gigantic dust bunnies, then become oversized metallic octopuses with fish faces. There's always something visually fascinating to watch.

But even if you judge it generously, Edge of Tomorrow is only the season's second-best time-travel action movie. It shares a basic premise with X-Men: Days of Future Past. (You can read my review here.) In both, someone from the future -- Cruise here and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in X-Men -- travels back in time to warn of impending, apocalyptic doom. It says something about our worries today that war and destruction are on our minds. What does it mean that time travel is the fantasy solution writers are coming up with? You could stretch a point and see the time travelers carrying topical social messages: we can glimpse the future but won't listen to hard truths about how to avert disaster, whether about war or the climate or anything else. But that would be a big stretch, because neither film aspires to or carries that kind of weight.

Instead, X-Men gives us spectacular action, more complicated characters and bravura acting. Edge of Tomorrow also gives us spectacular action, but relies on a jolt from Cruise's movie-star glow. And that glow has faded, partly from his many bad choices on screen and partly because he is so often regarded as a joke off-screen. Cruise is the least of the reasons to see a diverting-enough action movie that could have functioned just as well with almost anyone, from Matt Damon to some unknown, in the lead. Come to think of it, Emily Blunt would have been an intriguing choice.

Practical Advice for Women Filmmakers, From the Sundance Institute

Caryn James — Wed, 28 May 2014 16:46:21 GMT

I'd been assuming that women didn't have more trouble asking for money than men anymore, but that turned out to be either wishful thinking or delusional. A high-profile 2012 study commissioned by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles found that financing -- money, how to get it and what to do with it -- was the obstacle most frequently mentioned by independent women filmmakers.

Studies can be disheartening unless they lead to solutions, and solving the problems the study exposed is just what Sundance and WIF set out to do. In April the two groups held a "Financing Intensive For Independent Women Filmmakers," which brought together mid-career directors and producers with successful women in the industry, for a day of honest, detailed advice. What are investors looking for? How can women learn to negotiate better? How do you maintain a long career?

The filmmakers were invited to participate, but the information was there to be shared. The Sundance Institute asked me to observe and write about it for the Sundance.org website, distilling the five top takeaways from the day. You can read my story, with practical tips from the event, here. The experience was energizing, informative and -- a word I don't throw around casually -- inspirational.

James McAvoy Meets Himself in 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

Caryn James — Thu, 22 May 2014 12:49:00 GMT

There's a great divide between people who are instant fans of comics-inspired superhero movies and the rest of us, who need convincing. We skeptics want characters beneath those cartoon colors, and a fantasy world we can enter without years of backstory learned in geekdom. Of all the franchises, only two have won me over: Christopher Nolan's dark, cerebral Batman series and much more surprisingly, the colorful, cartoony X-Men, which has combined its silly stories with spectacular action and glorious actors.

The best installment is still director Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class from 2011, when we first saw that James McAvoy grows up to be Patrick Stewart as the psychic Professor X, and Michael Fassbender turns into Ian McKellen as his sometimes evil, sometime friend Magneto. Bryan Singer's bold, entertaining X-Men: Days of Future Past is not as sleek or as clever as First Class, but it makes up for those lapses with a fiercely emotional performance by McAvoy and some dazzling set pieces.

Hanging onto the mind-bending plot can be a struggle. In an apocalyptic future, Professor X and Magneto send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, whose character probably has the most screen time) back to the 1970's. His most difficult job: convince the younger Charles Xavier and Magneto, to believe that he's a messenger from their older selves. Together the mutants must stop a scientist (Peter Dinklage, coldly convincing) from using the shape-shifting Mystique's DNA to create superpowered robots that will take over the world.

There are twists and wrinkles, but what really holds are attention is McAvoy as a depressed, disheveled Charles Xavier, who shoots himself up with a serum that gives him the ability to walk but blocks his psychic powers. McAvoy's eyes may well up with tears a little too often here, but he is wonderfully effective as a man bereft of his friends, his powers and any hope for the future.

Magneto, still his enemy, is in prison, so the mutants set out to spring him, using the character Quicksilver's gift for moving faster than vision. That's when Singer first astounds us, revealing in slow motion how Quicksilver re-positions security guards and re-routes bullets already zooming around the room. Even Magneto's impressive later trick of levitating an entire sports arena and landing it on the White House lawn doesn't rival this witty scene. (Poor White House, constantly attacked on screen.) Newton Thomas Sigel's cinematography may not make 3-D essential, but it swoops us into a world whose subdued palette suits its tone of possible doom.

Jackman's Wolverine has never fit comfortably in the X-Men club, and this film plays up that difference. The brawny guy with claws is a lunkhead compared to genius Charles Xavier, but the two get along. Eventually Wolverine is smart enough to connect the young Charles with his older self, in the scene that brings McAvoy and Stewart face to face; it really is inspired casting.

Fassbender and McKellen have less to do (and never meet). And as Mystique, Jennifer Lawrence's stunt double and CGI people have a lot more to do than Lawrence herself. She mostly stares into the camera in her full-body blue makeup and looks glamorously menacing.

Along the way, the film casually raises the question of just what Magneto might have had to do with JFK's assassination. That question, and the presence of Richard Nixon, are exactly the kind of historical details that First Class, set partly in the Cold War 60's, handled with such flair and wit. In Simon Kinberg's screenplay for Future Past, those touches are thudding. Singer lets a few campy lines creep in, but they're jolting, out of step with the rest of the film.

Days of Future Past fails to resolve another question it raises: was JFK a mutant? But, as most of the X-Men have learned, you can't have everything.

Timely and Eye-Opening About Veterans: 'Coming Back with Wes Moore'

Caryn James — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:47:41 GMT

In the past decade, we've seen plenty of documentaries and television reports about returning veterans, not to mention the continuing and urgent news stories about delayed benefits. But none of those has the unique personal perspective of Wes Moore, who gives the timely series Coming Back with Wes Moore its distinct and bracing tone: empathetic, astute, yet never mawkish or self-congratulatory.

Moore, a veteran of Afghanistan and a best-selling author (The Other Wes Moore, about a convicted murderer who shares his name) was inspired to make the series after one of his best friends, another returned veteran, committed suicide just weeks after telling Moore he was in the best place in his life. As he profiles people who have made both successful and problematic returns, Moore and his production team unveil the daily challenges and moments of high drama, sometimes in unlikely places.

In the first episode, that drama comes from a one-sided telephone conversation at a Veterans Crisis Line in Syracuse, where Letrice Titus, herself a veteran, now works. Like Chris Phelan, who returned from service and left an office job to join the Los Angeles police force, she found that her best adjustment to post-military life was in a job that offered both public service and an adrenalin rush that echoes the danger of being deployed to a war zone. Among the series' most important observations: ordinary life for many veterans can't be truly ordinary.

The three-week PBS series begins tomorrow on WNET in New York (dates for other PBS stations may vary).

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Joe Biden: Between Two Veeps (Video)

Caryn James — Sun, 04 May 2014 16:27:52 GMT

Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Veep is absolutely brilliant this season, the smartest and most pointed political satire on television (and that includes Stewart and Colbert). Her filmed introduction to the President's speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner was gentler, but then her co-star was the real Vice President, joining the fictional Selena Meyer. Joe Biden, already a guest star on Parks and Recreation, knows how to send up his image just enough so there's no real damage. (Or his staff, obviously more efficient than Selena Meyer's, does.)

Take a look at what might be the most successful of the night's comedy, with a couple of Washington cameos.

Joel McHale's material was often lame, except for a long parody of the Chris Christie bridge scandal, in which McHale pretended to recover from a Christie fat-joke by appointing a committee of himself to investigate why he didn't know about the joke he just told.

The President's material was uneven too. But he seemed to enjoy some especially pointed jabs at Fox News. "You'll miss me when I'm gone," he told the channel's reporters. "It will be harder to convince the American public that Hillary is Kenyan."

Review: 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver'

Caryn James — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 15:45:05 GMT

Just because John Oliver was so brilliant sitting in for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, that doesn't mean he should have cloned it for his HBO series, Last Week Tonight. Oliver brought his charmingly wry, acerbic delivery to the premiere of his own series, but the new show is disappointingly like the old one, but without bleeped words or commercials. The problem isn't the weekliness of the show; it's the too-familiar approach, with Oliver sitting at a fake-news desk.

Of course that means there were some genuinely funny, skewering moments, especially Lisa Loeb in a parody of Oregon's too-cute-to-live commercial for the state's failed heath care website. But the main segment -- going after American news' failure to cover the Indian elections -- was so slavishly like The Daily Show's signature, deconstructing the media, that it made Last Week seem like a missed opportunity. Why not include a glimmer of something fresh and original? Even his interview with former NSA head Keith Alexander, while clever (suggesting the NSA adopt the tagline "The only agency in government that really listens" was great) has the same Daily Show-Colbert Report editing that left out too much of the subject's reactions.

The one non Daily Show trick was adapted from typical Fallon-Kimmel internet stunts. Oliver asked, while pretending not to ask, viewers to put fake labels on food in the market -- "Kellogg's Mini Wheats, Literally Better than Nothing" – and upload photos to Facebook.

Oliver himself is always worth watching, and there's every reason to think he'll become more inventive as the series goes on.

Meanwhile, HBO has put the episode online -- worth watching even if it does induce a bit of deja vu.

Critic's Choice: Three Lively Discoveries From The Tribeca Film Festival

Caryn James — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 12:59:00 GMT

The challenge and the magic of navigating any festival is discovering films that play differently -- sometimes better and often worse -- than their descriptions lead you to expect. Here are three lovely, beautifully-realized, low-key films worth catching at the Tribeca Film Festival. Two have well-known actors (though no superstars) and another none at all, but all three surprised me by making familiar ideas or approaches feel excitingly alive on screen.

'ALEX OF VENICE'

In the first feature directed by Chris Messina (Danny Castellano on The Mindy Project and the brother/son in a gazillion movies), Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Alex, a wife, mother and environmental lawyer in Venice, CA who is stunned when her stay-at-home husband, George (Messina), announces he has to leave. The world is full of break-up stories, but when George explains why he's leaving, the scene feels so devastatingly honest and true that you know the film will soar above any predictable plot.

The actors are terrific, especially Winstead as the woman who was always the good girl, and suddenly sees her life fall apart. She is left to deal with her son and her father -- Don Johnson as a once-quasi-famous actor whose memory lapses are troubling -- and a sexy, sometimes irresponsible sister (played by Katie Nehra, who co-wrote the screenplay).

Messina said at a Tribeca Q&A that he let the camera run for 27 minutes at a time to give the actors freedom to talk and find the characters -- a nightmare for the editor. The result was worth it. Visually, the film takes advantage of its vibrant Venice setting, modulating the sunniness with a sometimes overcast look. But its freshness comes from those nuanced relationships. People screw up right and left, Alex as well as George, yet no one is demonized. A break-up film with moments of exuberant humor and no villains – that is something rare. Behind its too-cute title, Alex of Venice is a subtle wonder.

'LUCKY THEM'

Lucky Them sounds as if it might have been Almost Famous, the Gender-Switching Sequel. Toni Collette plays Ellie, a rock critic at a struggling magazine, who is sent by her editor (the wonderful Oliver Platt, mischievously playing the Jan Wenner-like role) to discover what happened to her former boyfriend, a music genius who disappeared a decade ago. Ellie has enough problems; she's always throwing herself into rotten relationships with obscure (but cute) young singers. But she heads off to report the story with an unlikely sidekick: Thomas Haden Church as an uptight millionaire she once dated briefly.

Director Megan Griffiths and Collette handle this road-movie rom-com with such a light, appealing touch that it becomes a joyful escape. And there is a late surprise: a cameo too perfect to reveal.

'BELOW DREAMS'

First-time director Garrett Bradley spent months riding a bus between New York and New Orleans, listening to stories of people in their 20.s Then she moved to New Orleans and cast non-actors to play fictional characters based on those stories, weaving together three separate strands united only by the city.

Shot with documentary-style immediacy and roughness, the film depicts: Leann, a single mother who arrive in New Orleans with four children and no place to go except her own unwelcoming mother's; Elliott, a middle-class New Yorker who has arrived without the woman he loves; Jamaine, a New Orleans native, a convicted felon trying to catch a break and stay out of trouble.

Bradley's approach might have led to a pretentious, arty mess, but Below Dreams is a graceful, direct look at lives in flux.

Elliott's story is less wholly realized than the others, but the film gracefully creates a world of shadows and light where art and reality meet.

Old and New: Marco Bellocchio Series At Museum of Modern Art

Caryn James — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 15:06:05 GMT

When Marco Bellocchio's startling first film -- the dark, explosive family drama Fists in the Pocket -- appeared in 1965, he arrived with a fresh, audacious voice and eye. Amazingly, he remains a vibrant filmmaker all these decades later. Now 74, he may be one of the living Italian masters, but he continues to create work that lives most vividly at the place where family meets politics, where private emotions challenge institutions including -- and especially -- the church and the state.

Eighteen of Bellocchio's films, including his brand-new Dormant Beauty, will be included in a series at the Museum of Modern Art from April 16 through May 7th. Bellocchio himself will introduce the opening night film, The Wedding Director (2006) as well as Dormant Beauty on the 17th (it opens in New York on June 6th). Isabelle Huppert stars in a story inspired by a real-life legal battle over the fate of a woman who has been in a coma for 17 years.

One other highlight: his 2009 film Vincere, (translated as Win), a visual and emotional swirl of history about Mussolini's mistress. Giovanna Mezzogiorno is extraordinary is Ida Dalser, besotted with the young, ambitious journalist Mussolini, even after he abandons her and their young son. As he rises to power, Ida becomes obsessed. In this sympathetic portrait she is a woman who clings to the truth -- she is the mother of his son -- even while her erratic behavior leads the world to treat her as a lunatic.

In almost operatic style, the beautifully-photographed film captures the dreams and illusions of the period: a kiss in a dark alley in Milan, the brightness of the open countryside, black-and-white news footage of the theatrical dictator. Yet it is Mezzogiorno's emotional fire that defines the film; she is at once powerfully individual and a metaphor for a country seduced and abandoned by a tyrant. As in so many Bellocchio works, the personal and political meet, and bring the film fiercely to life.

A complete schedule for the series is at moma.org

'Mad Men' Preview: The Sense of an Ending

Caryn James — Sat, 12 Apr 2014 23:28:23 GMT

Given everything we know about Mad Men -- that its final season is about to start, that its main characters have been in a constant state of emotional torture lately -- it's no surprise that by the end of Sunday's new episode one character is in a puddle of tears on the floor and another sits in lonely isolation staring into the night sky. Because Mad Men spoilers have achieved a status close to the bubonic plague, I won't even say which coast that sky covers.

But there is a darker-than-ever tone hovering over this season precisely because we know it's the last. (It's beyond annoying that the season is cut into two, with seven episodes starting now and seven more arriving next year). That isn't a hint, because I don't know what's coming, but a simple rule of television: the options are wider and the stakes higher for any series about to wrap things up.

For starters, anyone can die. It may seem that shows are bumping people off left and right -- a Matthew Crawley here, a Will Gardner there -- but in a final season, truly no one is safe. And think about where Mad Men finished last year, at the end of 1968, heading into the (yikes!) Nixon years. It's cheap and easy hindsight to say there's no reason to think this will end well. That doesn't mean Don will die, as so many people have predicted (Slate has even created a tongue-in-cheek Don Draper Doomsday Clock ); there are other dismal fates.

There were plenty of questions hanging at the end of last season, and only some are answered in the next episode. Don was forced to take a leave from his job, and reneged on a promise to Megan that they'd move to Los Angeles. He had taken his children to see a house he'd lived in as a boy, startling them (especially precocious Sally) with a glimpse at his true past.

The new episode, like so much of Mad Men, is a tease as well as a step ahead. Don meets a woman on a plane, so we instantly wonder where this might lead. Pete introduces him to a woman who looks remarkably like Betty in her early-season blonde guise. Will this new woman circle back, or is she a false lead? You can approach Mad Men like a code-breaker, but I prefer to let the show engage us with its ever-evolving characters.

Over the last six seasons almost everything has changed. As creator Matthew Weiner has often said, the series reflects changes in the country itself, as it headed through the 60's into the Civil Rights era and feminism, a more thoughtful and more fraught era. The Sinatra-esque booze and playboy appeal of the show's early seasons has given way to a deeper, more reflective approach. More superficially, Peggy wears some astonishingly awful clothes, including a knit hat that was never a good idea on anyone ever. That doesn't speak well for the future either.

But the show is, after all, mostly about Don. The series has moved on from the secret of his stolen, hidden identity to a question of who he is now and who he will be -- how much do people change, how much can this one change even if he wants to? Mad Men engages with American culture and questions of identity much the way F. Scott Fitzgerald did, using tragically flawed and endlessly appealing heroes. The early seasons gave us a counterpart to the glittery world of Gatsby, but that has slowly been replaced by the darkly romantic emotional wreckage of Tender is the Night. On the upside (spoiler alert) there is California sun.

To Die For: Swinton and Hiddleston in Jarmusch's 'Only Lovers Left Alive'

Caryn James — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 02:12:42 GMT

The camera swirls in circles overhead as Tilda Swinton lies sprawled on a bed, long platinum hair splayed around her, wearing an extravagantly beautiful black and gold robe. From that sumptuous early image, it's clear that Only Lovers Left Alive is a visual departure from Jim Jarmusch's minimalist approach and affection for black and white. But it doesn't take long to see that his droll attitude has only been enhanced in this wry yet emotional story of Adam and Eve, two perfectly cast vampires in everlasting love. Only Lovers Left Alive is a brilliant, magical combination: at once pure Jarmusch and entirely new.

The role of Eve seems tailored to Swinton, with her natural pallor and her air of pure disaffection that can suddenly flash with the fiercest look. Eve lives in exotic Tangier, and gets the best blood from her friend, the aging vampire Christopher Marlowe, played by the aging John Hurt. (How and why vampires grow old here is a mystery, but not a bothersome one.) No matter how many centuries he lives, Marlowe will never let go of his resentment that Shakespeare gets credit for his work.

Tom Hiddleston, better known as the golden-haired Loki from the Thor movies, is the wonderful surprise here as Adam. With long black hair falling over one eye and a rocker's clothes, he may be the coolest vampire ever, an updated model of a Romantic poet with a tortured soul. A composer who collects vintage guitars (he's a vampire, they seem new to him) he lives in a dilapidated house in Detroit, where the photos on his wall reveal his dark view of life and Jarmusch's humor: Kafka, Poe, Rodney Dangerfield.

Adam is retro, while Eve is more modern. She calls him on her iPhone, but there isn't much in his house that seems younger than the 1980's, including the big-tube TV that somehow lets them video-chat. He's in black; she usually in pale, neutral colors that match her hair and skin. They're Yin and Yang.

As in so many Jarmusch films, there is a mere thread of a plot, which works perfectly well. Eve visits from Tangier, hoping to cheer Adam up. In Detroit they have a surprise visit from her kid sister (Mia Wasikowska), a wild child who argued with them 87 years ago in Paris. Adam buys blood at a hospital -- they are civilized vampires, whenever possible -- doing the black-market deal using fake names, including Dr. Faust and Dr. Caligari.

But the film's premise is more than an excuse for droll references. Typical genre films exploit vampires for their horror value. Jarmusch has acknowledged using them metaphorically, as social outsiders, but that short-changes how deeply he peers into the souls.

Living on the fringes of society for all eternity becomes an existential crisis. Marlowe says of Adam, "I wish I'd met him before I wrote Hamlet," and he would have been the perfect model. Adam doesn't say "to be or not to be," but he does contrive to buy a suicidal wooden bullet. The film is all about his will to go on -- or not. Maybe love, even the love of a vampire like Eve, isn't enough. Or maybe it is. Neither Swinton nor Hiddleston wink at the humor; they wear their existential angst lightly, but they are serious about this love story.

Whatever else it might be, love is one drug among others in the film. Adam and Eve drink their blood from tiny liqueur glasses, then fall back in a druggy ecstasy. No wonder Adam worships the dark-souled Kafka and the drug-addicted Poe. (I can't explain Dangerfield.)

Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (who shot the gorgeous I Am Love, also with Swinton) creates a hauntingly beautiful look, as neon colors break into the night's blackness. Jozef Van Wissem's lovely, minimalist, unobtrusive score adds atmosphere without doing anything as clumsy as giving us emotional cues.

Jarmusch has chosen his collaborators well; no one is out of synch with his amazing ability to let viewers see and experience his world directly, even when he places us among the gloriously alive undead.