Now You See Me

Written at the time of the film's conjuration.

"Sometimes The Magic Works, Part 2"
or 
The Slightest of Hands

Bullwinkle: Hey, Rocky!  Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Rocky: But that trick NEVER works!

The tagline for Now You See Me, the latest film by Louis Letterier (who brought to you the modern version of Clash of the Titans, a not too bad film, actually, as empty-headed gladiator-myth movies go) is "The closer you look, the less you see," and, even though that's supposed to be saying something about the power of illusion, it couldn't be more appropriate for the movie it's supposed to be selling. You'll get the most out of this movie if you're asleep during it.*  

Better yet, don't get rooked into it, and do the opposite of the film's title and don't see it at all.  Because there's movie-magic, where you feel the sense of wonder and amazement, and there's the kind that just makes you feel that you've been "taken." Now You See Me makes me feel like a rube.

And that's the mastery of marketing. Great cast, with a bunch of actors who've got taste and have done terrific things before...and James Franco's brother, Dave...so there must be something to this, right? I mean, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine,** Mark Ruffalo, Mélanie Laurent,*** Michael Kelly, and the Zombieland duo of Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson. No slouches there.  

But the movie is such a drab circling-camera edit-fest (it feels like it was shot on a Roomba) that you know you're being misled somewhere, and you're being made to not think about what's going on on-screen, because, ultimately it makes no sense whatsoever. The point of the movie is distraction, and there the movie succeeds quite well. It's so busy and flashy, you stop thinking and take in the swirling, swooping actors and camera moves, and let them wash over you...and your brain stops. It's only at the end that you realize that the movie is a white-rabbit and it's disappeared, if it even existed in the first place. Orson Welles said movie-making is smoke and mirrors, and there are plenty of mirrors here, but the result is pure smoke.

What's it about? Four street magicians Daniel (Eisenberg) card-sharp, Merrit (Harrelson) a mentalist, Henley (Isla Fisher) escape artist, and Jack (Franco) pick-pocket, all accomplished, all a little larcenous, are recruited by a mysterious presence (who has surreptitiously observed all of them disguised in a hoodie—what, they couldn't see the face?) to form a guerrilla magic team called "The Four Horsemen." They, after a jump of time, go from nothing to large coordinated shows, bankrolled by an insurance tycoon (Caine). The first, in Vegas, involves the seeming transportation of a French citizen to his bank in France, that results in the sucking of millions of euros out of its vault, and spraying it throughout the large theater crowd...as if by magic. This attracts the attention of the FBI in the form of agent Dylan Rhodes (Ruffalo) and Interpol's agent Alma Dray (Laurent), who pursue the clues and try to ascertain how they pulled off the heist. Along the way, they interview Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman), a magic debunker, who has a vested interest in exposing the Horsemen for a series of buzz-kill videos and reality shows. He shows the agents how it was done, then stops there, being very cagey about what the next scam will be.  As it turns out, it's in New Orleans, where Caine's insurance magnate tries to buy off Freeman to no avail.

At this point, you're wondering not about the "how," but the "why?" What's everybody's motivation in this?  Freeman's stakes are relatively paltry—the group has just gotten started, who would care—so you begin to suspect he's behind it all. Caine's interest in unimaginable, as he's putting out a large outlay of disposable cash for events that have no residual value, and leave him open to accessory and fraud charges. And the agents' zeal is largely enigmatic (matching those of the Horsemen). What's everybody in this for, other than to propel the movie? It's a bit like The Sting (which had the guts to put the motivation up front) only skin-deep and with shallow surface-flash. Letterier and script-writers Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt provide no fore-thought, but just speed things up and turn on the pyrotechnics, so there's no time for questions and little room for answers, while the actors go through their paces with looks of ambivalence so as not to betray anything.

There's not that much to betray. Once everything has been revealed (save for the fate of the Horsemen), there's no satisfaction, only a feeling of emptiness and pointlessness ("Really? All that for that?") and then you begin to question everyone's behavior during the film, which makes no sense given the actions displayed throughout the movie. One almost thinks that the film might have multiple endings, depending on which cineplex you go to, so tenuous is the resolution and back-story.  It doesn't bear close examination.

But then, we were warned. "The closer you look, the less you see."

And it has nothing, absolutely nothing up its sleeve.

Note from James in 2021: There was a sequel—Now You See Me 2. I didn't.
 * No Morgan Freeman jokes, please...

** Well, Michael Caine, he used to sign up for supermarket openings...

*** ...spent the whole movie wondering where I'd seen her before—Inglorious Basterds.

Greenberg

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Boy in the Spastic Bubble"

The latest film by Noah Baumbach, Greenberg is a tour de force for actor Ben Stiller, who knows how to marginalize audiences himself (he directed The Cable Guy and Tropic Thunder, after all). Combine him with the writer-director of The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding and you have two individuals creating something capable of making you squirm uncomfortably (in your comfortable theater seat) for its entire two hours, waiting for (if it were so formulaic) a reckoning of devastating proportions.

That would be letting you off easy.

Roger Greenberg (Stiller) is recovering from a nervous breakdown, and is house-sitting his brother's place and dog in L.A.—a place where he can relax in the hills above the smog and try to put his life back together. A carpenter by trade, it is his goal to build the dog a dog-house. "I'm really trying to do nothing for awhile," is his stock answer. "That's brave at our age," says an old flame (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who co-wrote the story) that was extinguished long ago. Greenberg tries to connect with old friends from school days, but as he didn't communicate with anybody while he lived in New York, there's not much in common anymore. 

Greenberg is essentially stifled. Not capable of moving forward and paralyzed at the thought of doing something to change that ("I woke up one morning and literally my legs couldn't move. They said it was psychological."), he exists through the day not calling people, then wondering why nobody talks to him. He's insensitive to other people's needs, wants or emotions—he can't see past his own smog drifting through his mind.

Because there's nothing else to do—he doesn't drive, not terribly convenient in L.A.—he ends up seducing his brother's nanny (Greta Gerwig), herself a fairly directionless person, numbed by a recent break-up and a tendency to be too compliant.

But, the relationship is one way and it all sucks towards Roger. A psycho-narcissist, he is so self-absorbed that any empathy perspective or ambition save for animal imperatives have been consumed and purged. A nanny is perfect for him, as he hasn't grown up. At all. And seems doomed to drive off any kind soul, sympathetic enough to put up with his bullying in-denial bullshit.

Now, let's pause for a second. We've been talking about Greenberg this whole time. let's talk about YOU for a moment.

YOU are NOT Greenberg.*

Oh, you might be in your worst moments—everybody can reach their limits of tolerance, have a crisis or a bad hair day and be less than 20%. And Greenburg can be a litmus test for anyone the least bit self-absorbed (but not in denial). I've already read a couple of reviews that seem to cast the writer's own issues onto a scenario that don't suggest them. So, yes, you will recognize yourself and others in this movie (all except for you, Mother Theresa), but you are not Greenberg. If you were, you'd already be dealing with it by subsisting on some anti-psychotic, anti-hysteric, anti-depression pharmaceutical to get past it. And understand, this is Greenberg's behavior ON Zoloft.

So, this movie can make you crazy. I had waves of wanting to strangle this 40 year old infant...if he weren't already doing it to himself. Reactions to a movie like this can be healthy; at least, I didn't want to walk out. And there is the least amount of some resolution to this guy who isn't happy unless he can hear himself talk.

Still, this is one to take in stages...at home.

* I succumbed to this. I can be insensitive, self-absorbed (I write...duh), and fail to recognize the needs of others. The one that hit me the hardest is that Greenberg occupies his time writing complaining letters to...everyone. And what have I been doing? Writing movie reviews (I blame you, you read them). But, I've been doing other things as well. I have the most finely buffed and polished resume in town. My dog has his waist back (it's been a long Winter), and the taxes were done sooo long ago. I am not Greenberg. You are not Greenberg.

But THAT guy? Oh, man! (*tsk*) Def-initely.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Love Brought Us Here
or
Unbow Your Head, Sister

I wasn't that big a fan of Moonlight, Barry Jenkins' previous film whose Best Picture win caused a stir and put him on the A-list of directors. The acting was impeccable from a cast that made you care about people that were damaged or damaging, and one got the sense of hopelessness and of an endless cycle that only reinforced it, despite the gorgeous tones the cinematography of James Laxton painted it with.

One should be grateful for it, though, when the product of the man's work is something like If Beale Street Could Talk, his adaptation (written and directed) of James Baldwin's 1974 novel of love in New York, amidst a backdrop of prejudice, of love that even hate can't stop.

Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) are young and in love. She's 19. He's 22. They've been friends since they were kids. Then, they grew up and became more than friendship. 

Their families have known each other a long time, but probably wouldn't if it weren't for the kids. Tish's folks are warm and and inclusive. Fonny's out on his own because of his, but mostly his mother, who is struggling with the burden of raising her family according to the teachings of Christ, but with a less charitable reading of it.

So, when Tish winds up pregnant ("I shoulda said we weren't married" she says in the narration), there's two reactions: Tish's family is warily happy, but accepting. Fonny's father is fine with it, but his mother is livid: "I just pray and I pray and I pray that my boy will come to The Light." But turns on Tish: "I always knew you would be the destruction of my son" and lashes out against "the bastard" Tish is carrying. "You just cursed your own grand-child," Tish's mother Sharon (Regina King) upbraids her and tosses her out.

That is that. Tish and Fonny plan to get married and set their sights on a loft, which is surprising—they find a white guy (Dave Franco) who will rent to them. But then, Fonny gets arrested, charged with the rape of a Puerto Rican woman, who lives across town and out of Fonny's sphere. Seems that Fonny has been set up by a white cop who wanted to bring Fonny in for assaulting a creep (white) who'd been harassing Tish. The arrest is just pay-back for the other incident, and even Fonny's alibi (the ubiquitous Bryan Tyree Henry—he now brings a smile to my face whenever he's on-screen) gets arrested by the D.A.'s office for stealing a car (despite the fact he doesn't know how to drive). The fix is in.

It's the environment of New York at the time. "the black kids were told they weren't worth shit. And everything around them proved it," says Tish at one point in her narration—which has a dream-like reverberation running through it. As she and her family struggle to get a good lawyer (a young eager white dude who insists on being formal and calling Fonny by his given name "Alonzo" to which Tish replies "Call him Fonny. If you're going to defend him, you gotta be family"), Tish takes a job as a token employee at a perfume counter in a department store, the two fathers do whatever they can to raise money, even if it's not exactly legal ("These are our children—we have to set them free."), and Tish's mother takes a trip to Puerto Rico to try to talk to the woman who picked Fonny out of a line-up. They pull together, even as the world threatens to pull the kids apart. 

Jenkins' method of telling their simple story is chronologically complex, going back and forth in time to set up the stakes and challenges at their most emotionally effective moments. And, as with Moonlight, the world of New York has never looked more beautiful, even in the low-light of a basement flat—one may quibble that the Bronx in 1971 was not as portrayed, but it just might be that way through eyes that see with love and will do anything to preserve it.

Tish visits Fonny in prison and tries to encourage him, although it's tough-going—"I hope nobody has ever had to look at someone they love through glass." Their visitations are tough to watch, as Tish and Fonny have barely been out of touch or even in separate frames. They are linked in Jenkins' camera-view, and even when they're not looking at each other, they still hold hands.

It's very much a "you and me against the world" scenario, as most young love tends to be. But, Tish and Fonny are old souls looking to each other to keep hope alive in a threatening environment, looking for saints in the city when they are surrounded by devils. To see light when all around them is darkness and despair.

Maybe Fonny's mother doesn't have it quite so wrong, after all...

The Disaster Artist

Cogito Ego Sum
or
"You're Deconstructing Me Apart, Lisa!"

Have you ever seen The Room? First off, (SPOILER ALERT), don't bother. The Room is a 2003 character drama conceived, written by, produced, directed, and starring Tommy Wiseau an actor-hyphenate of indeterminate origin and talent who has been known by a select few who have seen the film and regard the guy as something extraordinary. He is a bit like piano-playing cats in that he is extraordinary meme material. And to find out if somebody in your relative sphere is familiar with him, all you have to do is clench your fists to your face and with a pained expression on your face (the veins in your forehead have to look like they're ready to explode if you need a directing tip) cry out "You're Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!!"

Go ahead. I'll wait.

The Room is one of those movies that is so bad and amateurish that I haven't even bothered to post a review of it. It is almost surrealistically dumb and amateurish, a train-wreck with the interesting parts cut out, a relationship film where it is hard to follow if the characters are the same people from scene to scene. I would liken it to an Ed Wood-directed movie, but without aspirations, imagination, crew camaraderie, and ingenuity in coping with a small budget. Nobody looks like they're having a good time, so earnest are the cast-members in hitting their marks and making sure-that-they-are-getting-the-words-right. The only reason to see it is if one is in a really bad, vindictive mood and just feels the need to tear into something with malice. I wouldn't even suggest seeing it high, as it is disorienting enough that it might make you want to check into an emergency room (but it's not you, it's not the weed—it's the movie). I might even suggest it as a suicide preventive measure (even though—SPOILER!—the lead kills himself), as after seeing it, one might find something positive about themselves to keep on living—"Geez, even I could do better than that!" Somebody's parents are mighty proud (well, except for the sex scenes, of course), in the same charitably forgiving-Christmas-play kind of way. But, that's it. 

Okay, you don't believe me. Here is YouTube channel CinemaSins video of The Room (in which they broke the "Sins" meter). I'll wait:   

Well, it is legendarily bad. So much so that in Los Angeles (of course...) it is legend...regularly playing at midnight shows...enough to make back its six million dollar (yes, really) budget. A bewildered article in Entertainment Weekly appeared. The film became a staple of the podcast "How Did This Get Made?"—which features Los Angeles fringies back-biting projects that they or their friends were not involved with, and one episode ,featuring Wisseau's friend, co-star, and line-producer for The Room, Greg Sestero, kicked a thought-about a book on the film into high gear. 

The rest is history. James Franco's Disaster Artist (from the Sestero book, adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, who did the, for various reasons, wonderful (500) Days of Summer, The Spectacular Now, and The Fault in Our Stars), do an extraordinary job in recreating the madness that went into the making of the film and its results (and, let's face it, Franco made it easy on himself choosing this subject—not exactly a high bar).* After a flurry of "witness" interviews—with Kristen Bell, Danny McBride, Keegan Michael-Keye, Adam Scott, J.J. Abrams, and Kevin Smith—talking about what an amazing thing The Room is, the film starts with the first meeting of Wiseau (Franco, James) and Greg Sestero (Franco, Dave) in an acting class (taught by Melanie Griffith, I should say) where Sestero is frozen by fear and Wiseau is alarmingly voluble and, frankly, a little bit freakish. Sestero is entranced, though, and asks Wiseau to do some scenes with him. After being initially skeptical, Wiseau relents and his positiveness—his "all things are possible" instinct—turns them into fast friends, eventually deciding to become room-mates in L.A. (Wiseau has apartments in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, sparking one of the mysteries of the guy—where does he get all this money?

Sestero is able to make some headway towards acting—he gets an agent (Sharon Stone), if not any work in particular. But, Wiseau comes up against a brick wall with acting coaches, agents, and all the niche-workers who think he'd make a good vampire, but that's about it. Wiseau becomes despondent until Sestero, trying to cheer him up, tells him, heck, let's make our own movie. Hey, Judy and Mickey did that! 

And so, they did. With a script by Wiseau—that is handed out scene by scene on a "need-to-know" basis like it was the latest Star Wars script, and it might be leaked to the media, they find a studio, buy (rather than rent) equipment, shoot in BOTH HD and 35 mm and shoot entirely inside the studio, even if, rather than shooting on an alley set, there's a perfectly fine alley right outside the stage door. Based on Sestero's reportage, it was a chaotic shoot, with a lot of bad behavior on Wiseau's part and an extraordinary number of takes when he was on-camera. Franco can't quite duplicate the deadness in Wiseau's eyes when he's on-camera, like he's one "z" away from falling asleep, but other than that, it is a freakishly accurate performance. It would remind one of Ed Wood, Tim Burton's tribute film to the worst director in Hollywood, if for the lack of any real acceptance of its subject actually having a "vision-thing." Burton celebrated Wood's "gee-whizery" about making movies. Franco does not have that luxury, as Wiseau has no vision other than what is of the moment.

One is reminded of the phrase that a good movie is something of a miracle—a good movie has ingeniousness, good planning as well as that indefinable something that cannot be explained or, by sheer rigor, has eliminated everything that can possibly stand in its way. Martin Scorsese said that every first assemblage of footage should make you want to throw up—it is only in the editing room that a good movie "finds itself" and is born from the raw material that is purged from the self-indulgence that created the movie. But, what if there is nothing there but self-indulgence...?

It does celebrate something in that only in America could a marginally talented person achieve his dreams as long as he has enough money (yes, I'm talking about Tommy Wiseau) and that, even though it may be totally garbage, it will still find an audience who will embrace it. America is that diverse—and capable of absorbing and creating enough self-rationalizing bullshit—that someone, somewhere will find value in it. 

* And, in apparent effort to either show off how exacting it was or just how bad the original is, in case no one believes it, Franco ends the film with side by side comparisons. Stick around for the end for the post-credit scene in which Wiseau plays a L.A. party-goer having a conversation with Franco's portrayal. Think that's odd? When the character of Greg goes to have a meeting with a talent agent (played by Sharon Stone) he is first interviewed by an assistant who is played by...wait for it...Greg Sesteros! Oh! It's like space and time folding in on its cinematic self!! (Although, not really).