FILM REVIEW: NON-STOP

Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) in Non-Stop.

Flight fight

By John Esther

Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is a guy who starts the day with some booze mixed in with his coffee. You can tell he is sad by the way he carries himself, his lack of grooming and just his general disposition toward other people – in person or on the phone. He not the sort of person you want to be around and you certainly would not like him to be in charge of many lives.

However, as a U.S. Marshall who travels the skyways protecting passengers from terrorists, he is just that. Bill can carry a gun on a plane and he can arrest people, too. Apparently, torture is acceptable for Bill as well. The fact Bill is afraid of the ascension of planes from terra firma only lowers ones confidence in him. Fortunately, the woman next to him, Jen (Julianne Moore), is there to comfort Bill on their way to London.

Of course, the comfort is short lived as Bill starts receiving text messages from an anonymous source who says he will kill a passenger on Bill's plane every 20 minutes until a ransom is paid.

As passengers start to die, doubts, as well as suspicions about Bill’s ability to perform his duties rise while the survivor of the passengers on the plane descends. Bill is being framed, but who can or will believe him? All clues point to the safety guy as the actuall terrorist.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Non-Stop plays itself out in unspectacular fashion. While many of the passengers suspect Bill, we the audience know he is innocent, so we are going to go right on rooting for our protagonist until he redeems himself in front of the rest of the world. Along the way, one must overlook a lot of implausibility before enduring an absurd explanation from the really bad guy in the film.
 

FILM REVIEW: THE SPECTACULAR NOW

Sutter (Miles Teller) and  Aimee (Shailene Woodley in The Spectacular Now.

Some finer drops

By Don Simpson

Despite its ability to break down the social and class barriers between Aimee (Shailene Woodley) and Sutter (Miles Teller), we can only assume that alcohol — or Sutter’s immaturity — will eventually come between them. Something horrible seems to be lingering on their horizon, but there is no way of knowing exactly what it is. I found myself mentally preparing for something horrible to happen, because it just seems like one of those films; the kind that requires a horrible tragedy in order to redeem and/or save its protagonist(s).

For a few moments, director James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now goes the way of The Christmas Story, as Sutter is able to glimpse a future version of himself. If Sutter continues down his current path, there is an extremely high probability that he will end up a lot like the failure of a man who is sitting across the table from him; but even this experience is not enough to shake some sense into Sutter.

It is the incredibly powerful final act that really puts the “wow!” into The Spectacular Now. This is a story that could go a million different ways, but the conclusion abides by the same surprisingly high level of realism that commands the rest of the film.

The Spectacular Now serves as an impressive treatise on teen alcoholism and the social pressures found in high school. Certainly more effective than any of those horrendous alcohol and drug-related videos that they show in school assemblies, The Spectacular Now might actually make teenagers think before taking too many drinks.

THEATER REVIEW: END OF THE RAINBOW



Judy Garland (Tracie Bennet) in End of the Rainbow.

 Live at Rainbow's End

By Ed Rampell

The star playing Judy Garland (Tracie Bennett), playwright (Peter Quilter) and director (Terry Johnson) of the Tony Award nominated End of the Rainbow are all Brits, and this Judy Garland bio-play is appropriately set in London.

After a series of show biz and personal setbacks, Garland sought a career reboot there in 1968. The action takes place in Garland’s suite -- which, the diva repeatedly gripes, is too munchkin sized -- at the Ritz Hotel and the Talk of the Town nightclub, with the sets convincingly designed by William Dudley. Although this is the sizzling sixties at the swinging London town of Sgt. Peppers and the Rolling Stones, Garland -- who’d become a movie star 30 years earlier in Love Finds Andy Hardy and The Wizard of Oz -- still commands a loyal following.

But offstage -- and sometimes on- -- the oft-married Garland is beset by personal demons, bedeviled by financial problems and relationship woes. Worst of all, Garland is in the grips of alcoholism and an addiction to amphetamines and barbiturates that greatly heighten her torment, whether performing in public before a nightclub or radio audience or in the privacy of her quarters.

The gay icon’s fifth husband to be, Mickey Deans (Erik Heiger), is a former club owner and jazz pianist who seeks to control Judy’s substance abuse -- and possibly the out-of-control Garland herself. It’s interesting that toward the end of her life Garland hooked up with a beau who bore the same first name as Mickey Rooney, her co-star in nine Andy Hardy movies. Was this handsome lounge singer a dozen years younger than Garland really in love with her or using Judy as his meal ticket?

The star’s gay pianist, Anthony (Michael Cumpsty), thinks so, and there is even an allusion to Mickey’s writing a book about Garland in order to cash in (indeed, Deans' co-authored 1972’s Weep No More, My Lady). As Anthony and Mickey duel over Garland’s well-being, performances and affections, there’s an exchange about Judy’s gay fans that’s brief but intriguing.

The self-absorbed Garland is alternately touching, lusty, witty, desperate and pathetic during the offstage scenes at the Ritz. While trodding the boards at the Talk of the Town, accompanied (when they can follow her!) by a live five piece band, the onetime superstar alternates between the commanding stage presence of a truly immense talent and a drug addled performer one step away from becoming a has been, as the years and decades of substance abuse catch up with her, along with an unfulfilled private life.

Bennett’s Garland is often salty; she slings some humorous zingers about her sex life (or lack of) with husband Vincent Minnelli, and more. (In the play there’s little if any mention of Liza Minnelli, the daughter she had with this director.) In the interests of full disclosure this reviewer/film historian should reveal he is no expert in all things Judy, but having said that it seems that Bennett does a superb job incarnating -- rather than merely “impersonating” -- a 46-ish year old Garland. Bennett, who’s the right age for the role, seems to capture and express Judy’s mannerisms and movements, minus any trace of Tracie’s English accent. The actress also looks remarkably like Garland, who in her post-Dorothy years was no conventional beauty. Most importantly, Bennett can belt out a tune worthy of the character she is inhabiting and depicting. Bennett’s portrayal is nothing short of uncanny.

However, End of the Rainbow shares a problem with other biopics/bioplays that portray the later years of actual historical personages, such as the 2000 film Pollock starring Ed Harris as action painter Jackson Pollock. The playwright does not provide enough back story for viewers unfamiliar with the subjects being depicted to explain their self destructive behavior. In Quilter’s script there is only a very brief allusion to Judy’s youth that explains where her drug habit began, but there needs to be a bit more info for the uninitiated and younger auds. After all, Garland became a star back in the 1930s and died more than 40 years ago.

Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics of Judy’s signature tune, “Over the Rainbow” and other songs in the beloved 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz (a blockbuster spin off was just released), was a socialist who was later blacklisted. In that spirit, it would have been interesting to pursue the angle of Louis B. Mayer, MGM and even Judy’s mom mercilessly exploiting the labor of this phenomenal child artist, using uppers and downers to squeeze every drop of talent and sweat out of her during her waking moments. Indeed, this lifelong drug addiction enabled the studio powers that be to control the singer-actress part of her life, and arguably to ruin the rest. Although this aspect of exploitation is raised vis-à-vis the Mickey Deans character, and how he comes to cope with her addictions to love and substances, the playwright could have more fully explored this theme in End of the Rainbow.

I mean, how is a star of screen, clubs, live concerts, television and recordings reduced to avoiding a hotel manager in order to beat bills? As great as Bennett’s live numbers performed during the nightclub scenes are -- and her singing and hoofing is worthy of Garland in all her glory -- End of the Rainbow is a cautionary tale. Fame is no substitute for a rewarding personal life offstage and offscreen, with loving family, friends, lovers/spouses. For Garland, celebrity and adulation proved to be empty intoxicants: There was no man behind the curtain for troubled Judy. Like amphetamines, renown may give one a temporary perk and high, but being a legend cannot replace the need for flesh and blood true love.

Why is it that the happiness some artists give to so many eludes them? You’d have to be a Tin Man with no heart to not be moved by this dramatization of the last days of the late, not-so-great Judy Garland.


End of the Rainbow runs through April 21 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: www.centertheatregroup.org/; 213/972-4400.

 

    

FILM REVIEW: ROADIE

Roadie (Ron Eldard) in Roadie.

White lined fervor

By Don Simpson

Jimmy Testagross (Ron Eldard) — the eponymous protagonist of Michael Cuesta’s Roadie — is a 40-something guy from Queens with an unfortunate last name (that earned him the childhood nickname of “Jimmy Testicles”) who has tirelessly schlepped Blue Öyster Cult’s gear for 26 years, a thankless career if ever there was one. While on the subject of thankless, BOC is leaving for a tour of South America soon, and Jimmy is getting the runaround from the band’s manager. It seems the washed-up band is leaving their washed-up roadie behind.

After dedicating over half of his life to BOC, Jimmy has no friends to speak of and nowhere to go. As Jimmy drifts hopelessly towards destitute poverty, he is drawn closer and closer to his childhood home. But Queens is not a happy place for Jimmy; he “escaped” it for good reason. His high school buddies — the same Neanderthal numskulls such as Bobby (Bobby Canavale) who christened him “Jimmy Testicles” — who stayed behind seem uneducated, adventureless and ambitionless to Jimmy. Bobby is exactly who Jimmy has rebelled against; guys like him are the exact reason he abandoned Queens many years ago. What makes matters worse is that Jimmy’s high school sweetheart, Nikki (Jill Hennessy), married Bobby. How could she settle for someone like him?

As is often the case for those of us who purposefully moved away from his or her childhood neighborhoods and dread any return visits, Jimmy’s first means of escape from this harsh reality is alcohol — and lots of it. Reconnecting with Nikki and Bobby further escalates Jimmy’s self-destructive behavior by adding cocaine to his dangerous recipe of escapism.

Roadie accurately represents the conflict between those who have “escaped” their childhood homes and those who chose to stay behind. Cuesta’s dedication to the gritty authenticity of his subject is quite impressive and his casting of Eldard as Jimmy turns out to be divinely inspired.

FILM REVIEW: TRUE LEGEND

Yuan Lie (Andy On) in True Legend.

Intoxicated avenger

By John Esther

What an ungrateful lout. Five years after his stepbrother, General Su (Vincent Zhao) offers the promotion he was originally offered, Yuan Lie (Andy On) comes home to wipeout the family because, hey, it is one of those kung fu "your master (father) killed my master (father)" sort of things. 

Once upon a time Su's superior martial arts skills could have stopped Yuan, but Yuan's Five Venom Fists technique, plus body-stitched armor, are now too powerful for Su. After defeating Su, beating him within an inch of his life, Yuan throws Su into a great body of water whereupon Su's wife and Yuan's sister, Ying (Zhou Xun), jumps in after him, leaving their son behind with his poisonous uncle.

As the years go by, both Yuan and Su train hard at further mastering his martial arts style. Su drinks jugs of Ying's wine while Yuan sticks his fists in a bowl of scorpions. (Impressive, both would be very good pub tricks). When the time comes you can wager the two will do some serious battling; but in a world of an eye for an eye someone must die.

Eventually widowed and homeless, Su drinks himself onto the precipice of self-destruction only to discover that alcohol inebriation which does not kill you only makes a much better fighter. (I just bet the wives down at the local battered women's shelter will find comfort knowing that.)

From the opening credits to its predictable conclusion it becomes clear that True Legend lays its intelligence at the level of a superhero comic strip (or saloon delirium). Time and motion pass by as quick as character outlines are developed. The impressive production design by Huo Tingxiao provides a magical realist, wasted world where gravity, endurance, space and motion recognize fewer limits. Those are some powerful shots.

This creates for quite a few elaborate fight scenes with wildly uneven results. Directed by renowned martial arts action director Yuen Woo Ping (Hero; Kill Bill; The Matrix trilogy), there are some incredibly entertaining combat scenes (mortal, blades, sticks and all), yet for every praiseworthy action scene there is another one as annoying as a teenage jock shit-faced for the first time.

The most sobering non-fighting aspect of True Legend is the incessant emphasis on family ties when it is those very ties that pull the family apart. Yuan, then Su, are so intoxicated with revenge against father, then brother, respectively, that they try to cure the family as a whole by killing of its parts. They should have just thrown a party.

True Legend also hosts martial arts legends David Carradine, who plays a Sinophobic businessman; Michelle Yeoh, as a benevolent doctor; and Jay Chou, as the God of Wushu. While Chou's role is mostly silly and Yeoh's is a throwaway here (she does not fight), the late Carradine's performance, one of his last, is embarrassingly poor. (Are you sure you want to dedicate the film to Carradine's memory?)

Along those lines, On gives a good performance while, I imagine, his strikingly gothic good looks will seduce some audiences members into rooting for this snake to emerge victorious.

Unevenly entertaining, occasionally extremely violent and utterly predictable, True Legend amounts to little more than another martial arts fairytale, full of fists of fury, signifying little else than advocating the consumption of mass quantities of booze in order to improve one's fighting abilities -- which is a lesson we can all carry to our neighborhood drinking establishment.

TRUE/FALSE FILM FEST 2011: THE ARBOR

Andrea Dunbar (Monica Dolan) in The Arbor.

Real to reel

By Don Simpson

The eighth annual True/False Film Festival (March 3-6, 2011) transformed downtown Columbia, Missouri into a utopian haven of nonfiction cinema. Featuring an impressive selection of the best documentaries from major international film festivals (as well as five "top secret" screenings of films pending high profile official world premieres elsewhere), True/False purposefully programs nonfiction films that provoke dialogues about their subjects and bring into question the ethical responsibilities of the documentary form itself. 

Complimenting the films, the True/False Film Festival offers a seamless integration of live music into their four-day program as well as debates, game shows and parties, parties and more parties.

In what has come to be known as verbatim theatre, transcripts of interviews, hearings and/or trials are dramatised on stage by actors. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s film Howl is probably the best cinematic example of this novel storytelling technique, but director Clio Barnard really ups the ante by having her actors lipsync dialogue to audio-recorded interviews, further morphing the line between reality and fiction.


Barnard’s film is about Andrea Dunbar, the West Yorkshire author of three gritty social-realist plays who died in 1990 of a brain hemorrhage at the ripe young age of 29. Dunbar hailed from Bradford, England's rough and tumble Buttershaw Estate (dubbed "the Arbor"). The dialogue in The Arbor is taken directly from interviews conducted by Barnard of Dunbar's family, friends and children while passages from Dunbar's intensely autobiographical plays are re-created by actors amongst the (marginally improved) streets of modern day Buttershaw with a live audience of the estate’s residents. The Arbor also cleverly sprinkles some choice selections from A State Affair (Robin Soans’ biographical play about Dunbar) as well as archival television interview footage with the real Dunbar and her family.


The Arbor brings emotionally heavy subjects such as child and domestic violence as well as racism to the forefront of the narrative -- and let us just say that Dunbar’s penchant for alcoholism and poor life decisions does not bode well for her children, especially her half-Pakistani child, Lorraine (Manjinder Virk). Lorraine begins hiding from the reality of her own shitty existence at a very early age by immersing herself into a non-stop drug-induced haze; then she passes along her genetic history of neglect to her own children, increasing said neglect tenfold to morally troublesome limits.


Dunbar’s story is not all fire and brimstone. The one bright light within The Arbor is her success as a teenage playwright. Dunbar began her first play, The Arbor, in 1977, at the age of 15, for an English class. The completed play, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1980. Dunbar’s writing debut won the Young Writers' Festival then traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to play in New York City. Dunbar was promptly commissioned to write a second play -- Rita, Sue and Bob Too -- which premiered in 1982. (Rita, Sue and Bob Too was adapted by Dunbar into a film directed by Alan Clarke.) Dunbar's third and final play is Shirley (1986). Despite her theatrical success, Dunbar never escaped the grim and downtrodden environs of Buttershaw and her downward spiral into alcoholism never stopped.


With a unique merging of fact and fiction, The Arbor is able to reconstruct the pain and struggle within Dunbar's work as well as reveal the dour consequences her life choices had on her family. Barnard’s stylistic choice of having her actors confide in the camera (therefore the audience) is a purposeful cinematic devise to add more hyper to the hyper-reality by bringing more self-consciousness into the mix.


Barnard is as sympathetic as possible towards Dunbar and her children, rightfully chalking up most of the atrocities recreated in this social realist documentary hybrid to poor economics and politics. In style and tone, The Arbor is truly an homage to Dunbar’s gritty working-class narrative style and aesthetic with clear allusions to the glory days of British kitchen sink cinema.