The Tender Bar

What Does J.R. Stand For?

or

One Swingin' Dick to Another...

 

A comedian stands on stage and says "So, a termite walks into a saloon and says "Is the bar tender here?" and he waits...

 

George Clooney's directing career has been hit-or-miss. It's never been very consistent, except for the love of details, decor, quality...in words and pictures. After a disastrous run of films soon after leaving his television career, there was a period where Clooney paused and re-considered (rather than merely considered) roles being offered to him, resisting the urge—as the late Betty White observed—to act like a feral cat, consuming whatever was available, in the concern that the supply would run out. Tent-pole films were out, as they could be compromised by locked-in release dates. Directors were important, and not just "flavor-of-the-moment" directors studios were pimping. Scripts had to have the spine to be improved, rather than good box-office "buzz." Clooney wanted less time in the trailer and more time learning the craft, and started directing only when he found a project with enough of a chance to work—a long-languishing Charlie Kaufman script, based on Chuck Barris' highly questionable memoir. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind put Clooney on the directing map, and his next film Good Night, and Good Luck. established his cred as a "serious" director. This was no stunt. Clooney wanted to make good films and good art. To that end, Clooney started swinging for the fences than easy lay-ups.

The results have been mixed. But, with The Tender Bar, he's established a new high-mark for his efforts. Based on J.R. Moehringer's memoir, with a script by William Monahan (the first script of his I've liked!), it's a coming of age story of how a village takes care of their own. JR (played by Daniel Ranieri in the early years) and his Mom (Lily Rabe) make another return to the house of her father (Christopher Lloyd) after being kicked out of her place for being behind on the rent five months. This is not looked upon kindly by the residents who include three generations of family, none of whom have fled the nest. To Mom, it looks like failure. To JR, it looks like family.

JR's father is merely referred to as "The Voice"—a radio bum who got Mom pregnant and had no designs on anything post-ejaculation. This produces the first words of advice from JR's Uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck, developing an Al Pacino growl) "He's just an asshole who happens to be on the radio. Don't look for your father to save you. And don't play sports (you're no any good at it). That's all I have to say. The game is five card stud." And as Uncle Charlie has assured JR "I'll always tell you the truth," JR has to believe him. Still, he listens to his father's voice on the radio as if it was His Master. It is only when the father starts breaking promises that JR takes Charlie's advice.

Charlie runs the Dickens Bar down the road, dive for a regular crowd of pack-rats of which Charlie is the Master of Ceremonies and Obedient Servant. "When you're eleven years old," says JR "You need an Uncle Charlie." Especially, when wisdom is so casually dispensed—you've got to know "how to change a tire...jump a car" and tangentially "never hit a woman even if she stabs you with scissors." He encourages him to read, opening up his closet full of books to him, inspiring JR to become a writer.

But, single Mom wants him to be a lawyer and go to Yale. It seems impossible, but JR stays on track and when he's a young man (played by Tye Sheridan), he's off to New Haven to chart his own course, with several detours along the way, including a romance with a girl (Briana Middleton) that throws him right off the road.

The reviews have been mixed, but I owe that to post-Trump cynicism, where when someone tells you they'll tell you the truth, you can't believe they'd actually do it. Maybe it has something to do with professional jealousy as Moehringer's won a Pulitzer. I don't know. All I know is, at this point in time when a lot of people are moving back home, it is a nostalgic look at when America had such a thing as a community, instead of dwellings standing in for bunkers. 

Clooney has always had a nostalgic streak—his contemporary work can be a little nasty and his one futuristic one had no hope at all. But, here, principles are still intact, his dialog crackles quickly (when it's not overlapping) and the pauses are deftly comic. And the director is less concerned with locked-down formalism as with an economy of footage, that still takes the time for the important interplay of looks between people—or more importantly, not looking. And despite the incessant cursing, it's concerned with civility...and learning about it and recognizing it, no matter what class it originates in.

There are no big issues underpinning the story, other than the origins of respect and grace, personal attributes that have shown up in the director's other movies that give them their air of being old-fashioned and principled. This one is less of a sermon, more of a demonstration. It makes its points softer and less obtrusively, and for some reason that reflects an attitude of more respect towards the audience, maybe because self-respect is so inherent a theme of it that it reflects back. 

It makes it less a coming of age story, than one of the coming of wisdom.

The Card Counter

Defying All Expiations

or

God's Lonely Flagellant (You Want Hearts and Diamonds, But Get Clubs and Spades)

 

I take a journal to movies; I write notes in the dark while the film is playing, scribbling down some nice turn of dialog, diagramming a frame, noting performances and trying to suss out relationships, plot-lines and actors and sometimes highlighting possible "Don't Make a Scene" material (and there's a couple, one after the other, in this one). I usually spend a good hour after the movie trying to make head-way out of the indecipherable ink-spots I put on the page.

 

The thing is, it's one of those college ruled composition books, exactly like the one into which Oscar Isaac's character, William Tell, etches his thoughts in Paul Schrader's new film, The Card Counter. Having it under my arm as I was exiting the theater earned me a couple of worried looks from the other patrons and I wanted to say "nothing to see her, everyone go home, let the people do their work." I don't think it would have helped.

Because William Tell (real name Tillich) is another one of Schrader's existential loners, like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle or American Gigolo's Julian Kay or Light Sleeper's John Le Tor or Pastor Toller in First Reformed, who are all closed off men whose closest relationship is locked up inside their heads and only spills out in the form of a journal that they keep for themselves or for some kind of self-therapy. They live simply, apart, and are somewhat ascetic in their habits and disciplines, in part due to some deep-seated guilt that they can only erase through some long-in-gestation act...or by writing those deepest, most private (and twisted) thoughts in their composition books. The journal only delays the inevitable.

Tell ticks off all the boxes. A wandering gambler, he's ascetic because, while traveling from casino to casino, he takes two valises—one for his clothes and the other for sheets and twine, so he can cover all the furniture in his motel room (for one night only, paid in cash). Disciplined in his lack of expression and the limited pallet of his wardrobe, he has the perfect poker face, while sitting at the table with the trademark strategem—wait, wait, wait, until something happens to take advantage of. Tell writes that he likes having a routine...a regimen—it's why he adapted to his eight years in prison better than he expected.

Wait a minute. He was in prison? Yes, technically a military prison, for his part in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. He realizes that he did wrong and totally accepts his punishment, but that doesn't stop the guilt for his responsibility in it or the nightmares that squirm through his brain at night (Schrader's depiction of which utilizes a lens-arrangement that wouldn't work for anything except a horror film). His affinity for isolation and his tamping down of emotions is also a strategy—it keeps the bitterness that his senior officers, specifically one (played by Willem Dafoe) walked away from Abu Ghraib scot-free, while Tell (being one of the ones with his face in front of the camera) is court-martialed and sent to his own form of Guantanamo.

There, with so much time, he learned card-tricks and the discipline of counting cards. It's why he does well at the casino. Blackjack, poker—he recommends only betting black or red on the wheel to those without skills, given the casino's odds—he wins just enough to not give anything away or arouse suspicion from the surveillance suits. Then, he moves on to the next stop, those two valises his only companions.

But, he has been noticed. Le Linda (Tiffany Haddish, serious this time, but her comedy background plays nicely) runs a "stable" of gamblers and she offers to stake Tell if he's willing to do some professional gambling tournaments, which he rejects. It's too conspicuous. He has a face and he doesn't like the scrutiny. But, in Atlantic City, he comes across a security-industry seminar, one of the guest speakers he recognizes—his old Abu Ghraib commander. He watches, but he leaves and quickly. But, he's followed by a kid, Cirk—"with a c"—(played by Tye Sheridan of Ready Player One), who gives him his number and says they should talk.

It takes awhile, but eventually Tell calls him and they meet. Cirk's story is an obsessed one—his Dad was at Abu Ghraib, too, and it broke him. Mom left. Dad abused the kid. And the kid did his research and wants to make that commanding officer pay—which disturbs Tell, and so much so that he comes out of his shell a bit—telling Le Linda he's all in for tournament poker, and taking the kid under his wing, driving him around, telling him to watch and learn. At least, it gets the kid out of his apartment and out of his own head.

Writer-director Paul Schrader has always done good work, but it's never been complacent work. His protagonists are always withdrawn outsiders—much like you'd imagine a writer to be—who are sparked (and often ignited) out of their self-imposed head-space into taking action, turning from hermit to Hamlet by whatever incentive they might have. And his Calvinist upbringing makes him one of those rare film-makers who know right from wrong, and makes sure that the audience sees it, too, not turning a blind eye to the evil of the world. Actually, he sorta revels in it, like dangling the threat of Hell over a Catholic student...and enjoying it. He and Scorsese are linked in that way—Marty set up the bankrolling entity for the film and "presents"—and it makes for an interesting antidote to the casual carnage of other films. Oh, there's carnage here, but Schrader doesn't dwell on it, skirting over it in a camera move, or simply staging it off-camera with sounds and letting your imagination do the work.

 

It's tough stuff, with a bit of a righteous indignation thrown in, and won't be everybody's sure bet for entertainment, but I was all in.

 

Dark PhoeniX

Jean Therapy
or
Screwing up "The Dark Phoenix Saga", Part DeuX

"The Dark Phoenix Saga" (done in two parts—"The Uncanny X-Men" Issues 101-108 and "The Uncanny X-Men" Issues 129-138) is considered to be THE great story of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne run of the "X-Men" comics, when the series was at its apex, not only in terms of sales but also creativity. It seems inevitable that if you're going to do something with "The X-Men" (in whatever media), you're going to get around to do a version of that particular story, so dominant is it in the canon. How could one resist? It's simple, it's tragic, and it involves that gut-buster of the comics field—killing off a principal character, in this case, the character of Jean Grey, considered the heart and soul of the X-men (as well as the love of the group's leader, Scott Summers, aka Cyclops).*

Well, (as they say in Monty Python) she "got better."

But, the run was controversial and revered. Just that—point of fact—despite its high regard in fan circles, the story is not that great. Claremont was playing with issues of god-like powers and how such abilities can corrupt the weak**—not a big revelation there (although, truth to tell, i get the sneaking suspicion that not many voters are familiar with it). What made the story interesting came from editorial interference. At one point ("The Uncanny X-Men #135), Grey, in deep space in her Phoenix state, decides to recharge her depleted powers by snuffing out a distant sun, thus wiping out billions of beings—the D'bari (remember it, it'll show up later)—in another solar system. She suffered no consequences. Claremont seemed okay with that. But, then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter found the idea abhorrent—comparing it to Hitler going unpunished for the Holocaust. It was Shooter's insistence that Jean Grey die, which was dramatized as an act of self-sacrifice. It terminally limited what Claremont could do with such a conflicted character (you gotta keep your creative options open), but it allowed for some rough justice and a kind of penance, balancing the moral scales just a smidge'. But, it tinkered with the mythological (which, really, all superhero stories do, to a point) in an extremely obvious and melodramatic fashion. Fan-boys love that stuff.

The first X-Men movie series—the one with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine—rushed into the story, making it cross between X-Men 2: X-Men United and X-Men 3: The Last Stand. But, it did so in a clumsy and quite heretical way; in The Last Stand, Grey's Phoenix (played by Famke Janssen) atomizes her lover Scott Summers—aka Cyclops (James Marsden)—in one of her first acts, giving one of the comic's major characters extremely short-shrift,*** then compounding it by having her disintegrate Professor X (Patrick Stewart) as well. This allowed series star Jackman to be the one X-Person who could defeat her (as he had regenerative healing powers, which was fine as long as she disintegrated him REAL SLOW—if she just "blowed him up real good" that would have been less of a conceit, and one HELL of a writer's conundrum to solve). But, then, The Last Stand chose the easy way out in all matters. It was a huge letdown for both fans of the comic and the film series and the response was quite vocal. Also—as The Last Stand was extraordinarily expensive for its time (even by super-budget standards) it was deemed a financial failure, as well as artistic failure to the point where Singer's "return" X-Men movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past "x'd" it out of existence.

I wish I could say that Dark Phoenix does a better job of it with the "First Class" X-Men, but it does not, although its path is not as radical. There were issues during filming—most of the cast and crew admit that the third act, involving an elaborate trains sequence, replaced an earlier more cosmic resolution (supposedly because preview audiences found it too similar to Captain Marvel's ending, although this is a guess as Marvel is being mum about it). Who knows if it would have been better? But, it doesn't solve the main problem—timing.

The character of Jean Grey (as portrayed by Sophie Turner, who does great work with what she can) was introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse and she had barely enough screen-time for the character to generate any emotional stakes with the audience. This film tries—putting a young Jean Grey into a life-shattering traumatic event (interestingly, the same one as turned Dr. Sivana to the "Dark Side" in Shazam! (I guess Marvel doesn't watch too many DCU movies—they should, if only to see what not to do).

Cut to the efforts of Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) to take on guardianship—and care-taking—of the young Jean at the Xavier School for Gifted Children, where he provides a mental block band-aid to keep Jean from going down a dark path. Unfortunately, he's the one who induces the event that pushes her over the edge. At the notification of the President—the government trusts the X-Men now?—the core team—Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean are sent to space ("raise your hands if...") to rescue the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour from a virulent energy source (fulfilling the classic Marvel trope—"I dunno what it is, but it sure is big"). Nightcrawler *BAMFS* over to rescue the crew, but manages to leave Jean on the shuttle where her efforts to keep the vehicle together exposes her to the energy's attack, which she absorbs. It dramatically increases her psycho-kinesis, but puts the emphasis on the "psycho" part by breaking the mental block Prof. X had established.

Pretty soon, she's having to deal with the awesome powers she possesses, the inhibitions it dispels and the fact that she enjoys it to a destructive degree. There is a lot of room to snark that the plot is a cautionary tale about giving a woman to much power, which is quite the opposite of the line Marvel should take especially given its Captain Marvel film and the too-brief tip of the cowl to super-women in Avengers: Endgame.

The results are damaging to the X-Men—one prominent A-lister is killed—and it results in all the mutants taking sides—Xavier's group on one side trying to get Jean back to school to try to mute her instincts, and the group headed by Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Beast to try to eliminate her. Both groups are challenged by the shape-shifting D'bari (ah, reader, you made it this far!) led by the power-hungry Vuk (Jessica Chastain, who shoves portraying intelligence aside for a serene lizardish entitlement), who have been tracking the Phoenix Energy and want to suck it out of Jean for themselves...

Attack in New York. Attack on the mutant-train (which is quite dynamic and well-realized, actually). But, again, we've spent more time with Evil Jean than with the sympathetic one. The consequences of the actions don't resonate and seem less than a tragedy than a sensible outcome to avert disaster. Timing. 

Another X-Men movie with Turner's Grey might have helped, but 20th Century Fox (which has the movie rights to the characters) wanted to wrap up this version of X-men (2.0?) so that it could be "re-imagined" under the auspices of their new Masters, Disney-Marvel. And so the potential for a good film is once again sacrificed for corporate interests. As they used to say on "The Bullwinkle Show," "That trick never works."

You can bet they'll try it again for a third time (unless the "re-boot" tanks) because it's not like there are a lot of other X-Men stories to tell. How many times have we seen Krypton explode and Bruce Wayne's parents get shot? Maybe "re-boot" and "re-imagining" shouldn't be the terms used but "recycling," instead. Send the old stuff to the burn-bin and start anew?

Seems appropriate. Phoenix's may rise. But, first there have to be a lot of ashes.

* No one dies in comics. Not really. And especially in the Marvel Universe ("The House of Ideas"). In 1986, writer Kurt Busiek and Bob Layton revived the character as part of their team in "X-Factor" with the first issue.

** File under: "Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely." You can file it, but it'll probably take you a year to find it again, because a lot of people do that one. I find it...thought-provoking that the director so dominant in bringing most of the X-Men movies to the screen, director Bryan Singer—who could learn a thing or two about the abuse of power—did not direct the two "Phoenix" films.

*** Lord knows why, probably to shock the expectations of those familiar with the original, in much the same way that Stanley Kubrick in The Shining had Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrence kill the guy who, in Stephen King's book, ultimately saves the Torrence family, giving more power to the wife and son to triumph and save themselves, but also to shock the hell out of the complacent fans. Worked great. With Cyclops, not so much, although one could make an argument that she had to kill her former lover to "detach" herself from her Jean Grey past. Pfft.

Rockin' roller-blades, it's Dazzler! (Marvel's dumbest superhero)

Ready Player One

Full Tilt Boogie (Midnight at the Oasis)
or
Virtual Encounters of the Shallow Kind

During the break that was required for the extensive special effects in Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg prepped, cast, shot, edited and released The Post, a very fine film that did get some attention for its historical material that, given the world at large, seemed all the more relevant today.* Ironically, the gee-wizardry of his new film does not feel relevant—unless someone has lived under a rock or in Mom's basement since the 1980's—as RP1 is a monument to nostalgia of the most puerile and shallow kind, piling on pop-culture references on top of each other as they flash, then die, on the 3-D IMAX screen, only to be replaced by others upon others along the way. This movie could conceivably fund its own edition of Trivial Pursuit next Christmas—and it is sure to be the most "paused" movie of the last (and next) quarter-century.

Look, I'm not a gamer. I choose to waste my time watching movies and writing about them on this worthless blog (so, who am I to judge?), so to see Spielberg do his "take" on the immersive experience with the same peripatetic verve that he gave to The Adventures of Tintin is not my idea of the director progressing as an artist, no matter how much of a roller-coaster thrill ride this film might be. It hearkens back to the Spielberg, who grew up frightening his sisters with his horror stories. It's the same Spielberg of the intimate, brilliant detail—like cutting away (in Jurassic Park) while a jeep is trying to out-pace a Tyrannosaurus Rex to a shot of a side-mirror, with the etched warning that "Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear." That Spielberg is here in abundance, unafraid to toss in asides and joking references, which he'd never dared with his more serious films like Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, or The Post. This is Spielberg on top of Play-Mountain.

Oklahoma, City in the Year 2045, not so soon after "The Corn-Syrup Shortage" and "The Band-width Wars," and the cultural hub of the world, while looking like a dystopian nightmare that would depress Calcutta and Jo-burg. The populace lives in "The Stacks," literally motor-homes and trailers stacked on top of each other, under a drab pollution-filled sky. One imagines we're in Oklahoma City because the coasts have since flooded and drowned, and that things are in such a sorry state because through every window of those trailers, people are escaping their realities by entering "the Oasis."

"The Oasis" is its own alternate reality, with its own rules, its own culture, and its own economic system, built on lives and bonuses accrued during play. It is the product of a company called Gregarious Games, a somewhat ironically named corporation as its messianic co-founder, James Halliday (Mark Rylance in a performance that resembles a morose version of Rick Moranis' accountant in the original Ghostbusters) is hardly the gregarious type. He and his former partner, Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) established the gaming platform, which has virtually and literally supplanted the drudgery of real life, in which the participants can compete against each other using avatars of their choice accumulating personal fortunes that can be used to improve their game and their alternate lives.

The Game 1 Grand Prix containing such vehicles as the Back to the Future Delorean, the 1960's TV Batmobile, Steven King's "Christine," the V8 interceptor from Mad Max, the van from "The A-Team", K.I.T.T. from "Knight-Rider", and the Mach 5 from "Speed Racer".

The story revolves around Halliday's be-quest announced after his death of his challenge for control of the Oasis and Halliday's personal fortune of over a trillion dollars, which can be one by winning three particular games, each rewarding a key that will unlock the ultimate challenge to win the Oasis' easter egg that will give control to the virtual kingdom. Obviously, this is a really big deal to the world at play, setting up ultimate challenges between "gunters" (the term for "egg-hunters") and a corporate conglomerate (only one?) named Innovative Online Industries—an Oasis outfitter, run by a former Gregarious intern Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), who wants to corporatize the Oasis for his own ends—he has already run studies that he can commercialize 80% of the Oasis' playing surface before his flashing graphics induce seizures in players.

The High Five's—Sho, Aech, Parzival, Art3mis and Daito—
talk to the Curator of the Oasis archives.

That's the hissable villain. Who are the heroes? They are the "High Five," competing gamers who form their own coalition to study notes, compare strategies and research Halliday's life—in the Oasis' virtual archives—to gain an advantage in the competition, dubbed Anorak's Quest. They are Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a somewhat doughy 18 year old who plays as the avatar Parzival, his mechanic friend "Aech" (revealed to be Lena Waithe), the brothers "Daito" and "Sho" (Win Morasaki and Philip Zhao) and the mysterious "Art3mis," (she's ultimately Olivia Cooke), Wade's chief rival and finally partner in the quest for the keys. While they're all putting their minds together virtually, Sorrento is trying to learn their secrets in the real world to gain an advantage in the game.

Aech blows away Freddy Krueger and sets his sights on Duke Nukem.

Spielberg sets up the duel-matches as full-tilt battles royale whether in the neon -graced corridors of The Oasis or the begrimed back-alleys of Oklahoma City—it's just that the Oasis side has so much merch and copyrighted imagery that it's tough for the real world to compete (it's not too distant from another Spielberg production—Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit?—where the real world suffers mightily in comparison to the wonders of "Toontown"). And the three game-set-pieces are so splendidly realized (especially, for me, the second one which I won't reveal other than the clue that inspires it—"The creator hates his creation") that one's interest is drawn to the world within a world, which is probably the point, even while Spielberg is showing the exploitable madness of it all, frame by meticulous frame. I mean, didn't you rather live in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory—the thread and thrust of which this film has in its digital marrow.

So, yeah, everybody wants to be in the Oasis—it's bigger, flashier, and something of a shit-storm for the hyper-active and hyperbolic. So, why is the movie so melancholy, especially when, after the solving of every puzzle, the film goes into a post-traumatic depression when contemplating the inner life of Halliday, The Man Who Built Everything? It's because the whole thing is an Oz-ian "there's no place like reality" info-mercial designed to teach the sad lessons of Halliday's life...by example. By the end of it, the most deserving will win the prize, but only by appreciating the clues along the way and learning the lessons to the keys of life that are merely trinketed as competition goals. The ultimate victory in the competition is in appreciating life beyond the Oasis. He who desires it least wins the most.

There's something almost biblical there. And, as with the Bible (or Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory), in Spielberg's fable, the winner is the one who can look beyond the competition, and look deeper to the lessons inherently learned, and—in that gaming environment—put away childish things, including hero-worship, to become one's own hero, avatar's be damned.

Ready Player One is a smart little reflection of one of the simplest goals of a game—to get a life. And walk away from the table.

* He did, basically, the same thing back in 1990, where, while prepping the special effects for Jurassic Park, he oversaw the production of Schindler's List—which he was only allowed to make if he did the more popcorn-oriented film.