Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Trying to Capture the Life and Lyrics of That Wry Sage Leonard Cohen

      by

      The makers of a documentary on the singer-songwriter took a deep dive into his “writing and rewriting and erasing” to better understand the man.The documentary “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” illuminates the unpredictable paths taken by a singer-songwriter and his music. The directors, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine (“Ballets Russes”), trace Cohen’s career from his early days in Montreal to his 21st-century renaissance, exploring his creative process, his spiritual search and how his perhaps best-known song, “Hallelujah,” took on a life of its own.Of the musician’s sagelike appeal, A.O. Scott wrote in a Critic’s Pick review, “His gift as a songwriter and performer was rather to provide commentary and companionship amid the gloom, offering a wry, openhearted perspective on the puzzles of the human condition.”I spoke with Geller and Goldfine about their insights into Cohen’s life and lyrical artistry, and his enduring mysteries.What did you learn about Leonard Cohen that surprised you most?DAN GELLER He was clearly struggling to find his sense of place in his life, his universe and his love life — and in his spiritual life. He was seeking so deeply over decades, and when that went away, as he said, “The search itself dissolved,” and a lightness entered his being. He couldn’t even explain why. And he didn’t want to examine it too much because he was afraid that by examining it, it might go away again.DAYNA GOLDFINE I had thought that the only reason he had gone back out on the road in his mid-70s, after a 14-or-15-year hiatus, was because he had had all his money ripped off, and it was a financial compulsion. But just as important was that Leonard felt as if he had never truly reached the same level as a performer as he thought he might have reached as a singer-songwriter. You really saw him then reaching this pinnacle that made a Leonard Cohen concert so deep and so spiritual.He’s amazing in archival interviews because he essentially speaks in lyrics. What is that wonderful phrase he casually drops, “the foothills of old age”?GOLDFINE Yes! “70 is indisputably not youth. It’s not extreme old age, but it’s the foothills of old age.” Isn’t that gorgeous? I found Leonard’s wit both immensely gratifying and also surprising. Especially in the first couple decades of his career, he was painted as this monster of gloom. But if you really hang with him and listen to what he’s saying, he’s one of the funniest guys ever. It’s a very droll, dry wit.Whenever possible, we tried to come up with something fresh so that even the most devout Leonard Cohen head would find something new in our film, or if we were going to use a piece of archival material that had been used in the past, we would try to reframe it. Rabbi [Mordecai] Finley, for instance, reframes some of the material in a really interesting way that gives you a fresh perspective.What were the biggest revelations about “Hallelujah” and Cohen’s writing process?GOLDFINE I hadn’t realized the sheer number of verses that Leonard was writing and rewriting and erasing and reconfiguring throughout the five or so years that it took him to write that song. And then the number of times that he reconfigured the song in performing it. I love in the film where he takes it from the King David Old Testament version of the song and moves it into a secular realm.GELLER There’s also the way that other people have responded to the song — listening to John Cale or Brandi Carlile or Eric Church, to hear why they resonated with the song. It’s given me a window into the souls of these other singer-songwriters.His notebooks are fascinating because there are versions of lines that have different resonances but are also super powerful. “When David played, his fingers bled, he wept for every word he said” — that’s an incredible line there, too! He could have stopped anywhere along the way and had maybe an equally powerful song.GOLDFINE You also see the very first incarnation of “Anthem,” one of his most famous songs, and the first time he ever wrote that line: “There’s a crack in everything.” That almost brought tears to my eyes when I saw it — the first infant steps of “Anthem.” Also in those notebooks you see his datebook, and the first time he met Dominique Issermann, the woman he considered the first great love of his life.Although you couldn’t interview Cohen, did you hear anything from him while making the film?GELLER The Dominique [interview] was interesting because she was staying with Leonard at the time when we were going to film her. She said that he asked her, “Look, if they start asking questions like, ‘Was it your kitchen chair that he was tied to when he wrote the song?’ don’t let them go down that path.” This is the only direct, or close to direct, feedback we ever got from Leonard. Of course, we would never ask that! But I thought, That’s good, because what he was really saying is: Don’t concretize the song and its lyrics. Leave it open to interpretation, and a mystery. Don’t make it specific to Leonard himself.What’s your favorite version of “Hallelujah”?GOLDFINE When I was embroiled in shaping the John Cale section, I just couldn’t get enough of the John Cale version. And Jeff Buckley was the first “Hallelujah” that I ever heard, and it blew me away. But at the end of the day, it’s Leonard Cohen singing it in those last five years’ worth of concerts and, night after night, getting down on his knees to start that song.GELLER Buckley’s haunting guitar arpeggios are so beautiful and exquisite. I love those and his gorgeous voice. But Leonard performing it live — we saw him do it twice at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. Just watching someone truly stand in the center of his song, a song that’s filled with the complications of yearning, of brokenness, of hopefulness, of love, of sex — all of it! More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Watch Austin Butler Cause Hysteria in ‘Elvis’

      by

      The director Baz Luhrmann narrates a sequence in which Elvis gives an early performance that stirs up the audience.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.It was the hip swivel that changed a generation. And it is at the heart of this scene in the biopic “Elvis” that introduces the musician to the world.In the sequence, Elvis (Austin Butler) is giving one of his first performances in front of an audience while Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), the man who would become his manager, watches on.While historically Elvis’s first big introduction was said to be at Sun Records, performing for its owner, Sam Phillips, the film takes a different route.The director Baz Luhrmann wanted that moment to take place in front of a crowd, showcasing all of the pieces that came together when the rocker performed.“Elvis wasn’t just about what he sang,” Luhrmann said, narrating the scene. “It was as much about how he looked and how he moved. But most importantly, it was his effect upon the audience.And boy, what an effect here. As Elvis sings and moves his hips, he seems to prompt almost uncontrollable screams from the women in the audience. That builds to a kind of infectious hysteria that feels as shocking as it does organic.Luhrmann worked with Butler (and some very airy trousers) to get the moves right. But the key to the scene was the extras. The moment may seem chaotic, but it was heavily designed. A movement coach and choreographer, Polly Bennett, worked with a team of performers they called the scream queens. These women had training in producing hysterical movements and also in high-pitched keening that solidified the action of the sequence.Read the “Elvis” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Princess’ Review: Holding His Heart in Her Hands

      by

      Joey King is credible and compelling as a vengeful would-be princess bride in this over-the-top action fantasy tale.Le-Van Kiet’s fantasy “The Princess” opens in a traditional manner, with the trill of Celtic-inspired flutes, a pink sunrise and a slow climb to the top of a spindly tower, where an unnamed princess-bride-to-be (Joey King) lies on a bed strewn with rose petals. But here, the royal beauty feigns sleep. Five minutes into this slender yet vigorous blood-spattered fable, two enemy guards enter to drag our heroine to the chapel — and she brutally kills them. Clearly, the classic genre that galvanizes Kiet and the screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton doesn’t hark back to ye olde European fairy tales but rather to the feminist revenge thrillers of the 1970s: works of exploitation and wuxia cinema where warrior women stuck it to the man. With knives.The plot proceeds like an arcade game. Her highness must fight her way downstairs to defeat her naysayer, including a tyrannical fiancé (Dominic Cooper), his cruel consort (Olga Kurylenko) and the princess’s own father (Ed Stoppard), a hapless weakling who believes he can combat fascism with calm and sensible reason. Using scant dialogue, the film makes a counterpoint: It takes physical violence to control the throne. That’s one opinion on which the princess and her villainous betrothed can agree.Long takes highlight both King’s gumption (as when she somersaults back and forth over a card table to dispatch a trio of goons) and the admirably creative fight choreography by Stanimir Stamatov and Samuel Kefi Abrikh, which emphasizes quick-thinking defensive moves that make use of found objects — hairpins, pearls, heads of lettuce — to parry swords, axes, chains, whips and helmets with sharp horns. The high-aggro guitar score is a misstep, but a panting, battered King is credible and compelling as she kicks, stabs and screams for the right to choose her own destiny.The PrincessRated R for rapacious bloodshed. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Mr. Malcolm’s List’ Review: A Finalist for His Affection

      by

      Upper-crust courtship comes with undercooked social commentary in this Regency-era romance.A tepid Regency-era romance, “Mr. Malcolm’s List” hinges on Jeremy Malcolm (Sope Dirisu), a wealthy, aloof bachelor looking for a woman who meets his 10-point checklist for a suitable mate. The trouble starts when Malcolm rejects Julia Thistlewaite (Zawe Ashton), a singleton who fails Point No. 4 — “converses in a sensible fashion” — and is publicly humiliated by Malcolm, who yawns behind her back. Vowing vengeance, Julia schemes to manipulate the snob into falling in love with her childhood friend Selina Dalton (Freida Pinto), a country naïf whom Julia presents, through bits of trickery, as Malcolm’s dream bride. (In one scene, Selina is made to look like a piano virtuoso.) Selina doesn’t so much agree to her bossy chum’s plan as succumb to it, like a leaf drifting downstream.But the film is too soft at heart to condemn Julia as a manor-bred mean girl. (It might be more fun if it wasn’t.) The early sequences are spritzed with a whiff of pity for this society’s anxious would-be wives. The screenplay, by Suzanne Allain, adapting her own novel of the same name, seems to suggest that a marriage-minded society breeds shallow, superficial girls. Emma Holly Jones, the director, apparently agrees, layering images of pretty birds in cages next to shots of desperate debutantes in pink-plumed hats. In a scene at an opera, Jones shows that the young women are too preoccupied with gossip to pay attention to the soul-stirring Rossini onstage.Jones pointedly sets key romantic scenes during horse auctions and board games, but runs out of things to say beyond the well-trodden suggestion that courtship is equal parts commerce and chess. Once it has established sympathy for the embittered Julia — whom Ashton plays with a marvelously light touch, even when forced into heavy-handed scenarios — the film is stuck doubling back on its own social critique by hustling to resolve the various love plots until everyone’s paired off and all insights into the status of women have been tidily swept under the Persian rugs.Pinto’s Selina is judicious and kind — and as interesting as a plain meringue. Her duped suitor, Malcolm, has little personality beyond his seeming to approach every ball as though the dance floor were made of hot lava. We are frequently told that he’s arrogant. The counterargument is that most of the items on Malcolm’s list — be truthful, be charitable, read books — are reasonable. A more innovative period comedy could be made from his frustration trying to find these basics among the upper classes.Instead, Dirisu’s wary gravitas allows Malcolm, ostensibly the main man, to be outshone by Theo James’s Captain Henry Ossory, a flippant, mustachioed love rival who threatens to win Selina for himself — and strides off with the audience’s affection in the process. The score, by Amelia Warner, announces when to titter and when to swoon. In its cleverest flourish, it accompanies the ladies’ marital campaigns with a rollicking military march.Mr. Malcolm’s ListRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Forgiven’ Review: When the Haves Dispose of a Have-Not

      by

      Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain play an unhappy couple who accidentally kill a stranger in Morocco en route to a desert bacchanal.“They were careless people,” the narrator in “The Great Gatsby” says of two of that novel’s wealthiest, cruelest characters; “they smashed up things and creatures.” They would probably get along with the similarly careless wretches who populate “The Forgiven,” though especially the unhappily married couple who smash into a teenager, killing him.David (an excellent Ralph Fiennes) and Jo (a decorative, badly used Jessica Chastain) are yelling — and looking — at each other while rocketing down a dark Moroccan road when they plow into the boy. For reasons that are more narratively useful than persuasive, they bring the body with them to their destination, a sprawling compound where a bacchanal is underway. There, after servants whisk away the body, David and Jo join the festivities, assuming their place among the other avatars of wealth, great privilege and bone-deep rot.As Fitzgerald observed elsewhere, the very rich are different from you and me. They are not, though, always dissimilar onscreen, and in far too many movies, they tend to fall into reliably distinct camps of gaudy buffoons, heroic saviors or unrepentant villains. “The Forgiven” is about villains. Specifically, it centers on the kind of white scoundrels who — with their empty hours and seemingly bottomless pockets, their cultivated cynicism and to-the-manner-born prejudices — stir up trouble for less-privileged souls. These monsters twirl their mustaches, seduce the naïve and rob the credulous because they can. They also do so because authors know villains provide easy entertainment, including when they’re object lessons.Certainly, in his adaptation of the Lawrence Osborne novel, the writer-director John Michael McDonagh has done his best to be diverting while he shoots fish in a barrel. His richest, most dubiously easy targets are the party’s hosts, an unctuous British libertine, Richard (Matt Smith, continuing his journey as Jeremy Irons 2.0), and his down-market American lover, Dally (Caleb Landry Jones). They’re introduced lounging in bed — the camera opens on Dally’s naked rear — as a visibly uneasy Moroccan servant enters with tea. Richard smiles at the man or maybe his discomfort. Is the servant uncomfortable with male intimacy, its unembarrassed display or merely his boss’s amused gaze?McDonagh lets the moment linger, which outwardly lets him off the hook. It doesn’t, though, not really, and he is saying something by making two gay lovers the story’s most conspicuous embodiments of neocolonialist excesses. So it goes: That night, Richard refers to the servants as boys, and Dally winds up the party (and your sensitivities) by thanking their “little Moroccan friends” who renovated the compound. The guests in tuxes and gowns laugh and swirl, eating and boozing as Moroccans hover and serve. A shrieking blonde jumps in a pool the size of a lake. Later, Jo casually drops that she and David killed a Moroccan en route to the festivities; at another point, David sneers about “pederasts” and name checks Allen Ginsberg.“The Forgiven” doesn’t get any subtler, although things improve when David agrees to drive off with the dead boy’s father, Abdellah (Ismael Kanater), and a companion, Anouar (Saïd Taghmaoui). It doesn’t make any sense given David’s prejudices and suspicions. He goes simply because the story needs him to, but it does get you away from the compound’s claustrophobia. Mostly, though, it allows you to spend time with Fiennes, whose performance — in its intricate, complex play of emotions and in the push-pull of David’s contempt for himself and for everything else — says more about this world’s nihilism than all the brittle chatter. Fiennes peels David in layers, unraveling this man until you see his hollow interior.McDonagh’s work is more nuanced and his touch lighter in the scenes with David and these other men, even as the story grows heavier and then leaden. There’s less yammering and hyperbolizing, and McDonagh makes fine contrapuntal use of the landscape’s visual drama and of the chasm separating these characters. Here, in the prickling, ominous spaces between David and Abdellah, in their glances and halting words, you see how power flows from man to man, from world to world, and how it nourishes but also engulfs.It’s then that you are reminded of the sharper work that McDonagh has done before, such as “Calvary” and “The Guard,” and how good he can be when characters talk because they have something to say.The ForgivenRated R for gun and vehicular violence. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Man From Toronto’ Review: Not So Clearly Canadian

      by

      Woody Harrelson plays a hit man and Kevin Hart the wrong man in this Netflix action comedy.There’s very little Toronto in “The Man From Toronto.” There’s the iconic CN Tower, visible only in a distant establishing shot of the twilit skyline, and a few shots of a remote hide-out somewhere on the outskirts of town, before our Canadian hit man hero (Woody Harrelson) is called away on a mission, and the action moves elsewhere — Minnesota, Puerto Rico, the suburbs of Virginia.Ironically, the movie was filmed almost entirely in Ontario, so Toronto, its capital — as well as Hamilton, Milton and Brampton — will frequently show up disguised as somewhere else. When Harrelson chases Teddy (Kevin Hart), a bumbling fitness buff embroiled in an assassination plot because of a case of mistaken identity, they’re actually cruising beneath downtown Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway — not the streets of Washington, D.C. No one in the cast even manages to pronounce “Toronto” correctly.“Geographic license is usually an alibi for laziness,” Thom Andersen once observed in his feature-length essay film “Los Angeles Plays Itself.” In “The Man From Toronto,” directed by Patrick Hughes, the vague sense of location is typical of a broader lack of effort. Although Hart, as the broadly comic version of the classic Hitchcockian Wrong Man, has a certain goofball charm, his frantic coward routine gets old quickly, with no appreciable change as the action-flick danger continues to escalate. Harrelson, on the other hand, does little with the role of the unflappable super assassin, playing put-upon straight man to Hart’s over-the-top jester without much chemistry.As the shoot-em-up carnage builds to a long one-take fight sequence in Teddy’s gym — reminiscent of the spectacular church battle in the 2014 movie “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” with less panache — the overall feeling is one of simply going through the motions. That’s a shame, eh?The Man From TorontoRated PG-13 for crude language, comic action and some graphic violence. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Accepted’ Review: Reaching for the Stars, Seeing Them Dissolve

      by

      After a scandal unravels at their private school in western Louisiana, four seniors pick up the pieces.In “Accepted” the director Dan Chen takes us inside the world of T.M. Landry, a Louisiana private school whose videos of African American students collecting Ivy League college acceptances once went viral. But nine months after the filmmakers’ first visit to the school, The New York Times published reports of physical abuse, falsified transcripts and “cultish” behavior on the part of its founders, Mike and Tracey Landry. Viewers of “Accepted” get a front-row seat to the life-altering impact of the school’s unraveling through the stories of four promising high school seniors: Adia, Alicia, Cathy and Issac.As we witness both the documentary’s subjects — and its director — navigate a shocking development in real time, a quietly probing film emerges that pierces the myth of American meritocracy.Chen makes the choice to plod along at the same measured pace throughout — even after the T.M Landry scandal comes to light — and forgo the cryptic scoring we’re used to hearing when the jig is up. Similarly, the cinematography by Chen and Daphne Qin Wu moves seamlessly between intimate hand-held shots and aerial views of western Louisiana landscapes that reflect the eventual loss of access to the Landrys and the school.In the end, it is the resilience of the film’s teenage subjects that lifts “Accepted” to new heights. As they sit for close-ups in front of a swirly blue backdrop, gone are the Georgetown and Stanford sweatshirts, and the hopes they once represented. But in their place sits a clear understanding of the misguided pressures placed upon individual minority students to succeed in a society that systemically disadvantages them and a surprisingly powerful tale about making peace with imperfection.AcceptedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Hallelujah’ Review: From Leonard Cohen to Cale to Buckley to Shrek

      by

      A new documentary tells the entwined stories of a songwriter and his best-known composition.Leonard Cohen’s final album, released in October 2016, is called “You Want It Darker.” He died on Nov. 7, the day before the U.S. presidential election, and in the years since, things have grown very dark indeed.Cohen wasn’t one to offer comfort. His gift as a songwriter and performer was rather to provide commentary and companionship amid the gloom, offering a wry, openhearted perspective on the puzzles of the human condition. “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” is, accordingly, not a movie designed to make you feel better about anything, except perhaps Cohen himself. But this generous documentary is nonetheless likely to be a source of illumination for both die-hard and casual fans, and even to people who love Cohen’s most famous song without being aware that he wrote it.That’s “Hallelujah,” of course, which you can hear at weddings and funerals, on singing-competition reality television shows and in too many movies to count. The directors, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, wrap a circumspect biography of the singer — loaded with archival footage and interviews with sundry friends and admirers, including a rabbi and a Canadian government official — around the story of the song.It’s quite a story. “Hallelujah” took something like seven years to finish — Cohen’s own estimates varied. Larry Sloman, a music journalist who knew Cohen well and interviewed him often, surmises that there may be as many as 180 verses, starting with the one everybody knows. By now, we’ve all heard about the secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord.But “Hallelujah” did not please the executives at Columbia Records, who refused to release “Various Positions,” an album recorded in 1983 that also included the future classic “Dance Me to the End of Love.” John Lissauer, who produced the LP and who had worked on and off with Cohen since the early ’70s, recalls the label’s decision with dismay and surprisingly good humor, given the damage done to his professional prospects. (“Various Positions” was eventually released on a small American label.)At the time, Cohen had been recording for nearly 20 years, though he was also something of a musical late bloomer. He was past 30 when he turned to songwriting, having established himself as a poet and figure on the Canadian literary scene. The filmmakers sketch his early life and career, noting his privileged upbringing in the Westmount section of Montreal, his interest in Jewish and Zen Buddhist religious teachings and his reputation as a Casanova. (His fifth studio album is called “Death of a Ladies’ Man.”)Personal matters stay mostly in the background. Suzanne Elrod, his partner in the mid-70s, is briefly mentioned — we’re reminded that she was not the inspiration for the song “Suzanne” — and their children are glimpsed but not named. Dominique Issermann, the photographer with whom Cohen lived on the Greek island of Hydra, reminisces fondly about their time together. But “Hallelujah” is interested in Cohen’s private life mainly insofar as it suggests themes for his work.These could be divided up — spiritual, sexual, existential, emotional — but he specialized in tracing the entanglement of those categories of experience. Sloman, citing an unidentified critic, says that Cohen was most interested in “holiness and horniness.”“Hallelujah” is his great anthem of religious ecstasy and sexual longing. Some versions emphasize the sacred, while others dwell on what another poet called “the expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” “All I’ve ever learned from love/Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you”: Some singers omit that line (and the one about being tied to a kitchen chair), but even when transcendence seems to prevail over cynicism, the tension between sacred desire and profane disappointment remains.The documentary’s account of the song’s fate, indebted to Alan Light’s book “The Holy or the Broken,” is a fascinating study in the mechanics and metaphysics of pop-culture memory. Bob Dylan, who admired Cohen, added “Hallelujah” to some of his set lists in the late ’80s. John Cale’s cover, recorded for a 1991 tribute album, brought the song to wider attention.“From Cale to Buckley to Shrek” is Sloman’s synopsis. Jeff Buckley’s full-throated rendition injected “Hallelujah” into the ’90s pop mainstream. “Shrek,” the DreamWorks animated blockbuster about a lovelorn green ogre, repurposed Cale’s glum version. The soundtrack album, which sold millions of copies, included another one, more in the melodramatic Buckley mode, by Rufus Wainwright. The floodgates were open.“It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth.” By the hundredth time, you might think the magic would be gone, but “Hallelujah” is one of those rare songs that survives its banalization with at least some of its sublimity intact.Cohen lived to see its triumph, and the last third of the documentary is devoted to his comeback, including generous clips from his later concerts. He is, throughout, a vivid, complicated presence — witty, melancholy, well-dressed and soft-spoken. By the end, he radiates wisdom, gratitude, and the kind of fulfillment whose elusiveness had always been his great subject.Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a SongRated PG-13: She tied you to a kitchen chair. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More