Jack Goes Boating

November 5, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

This movie is about two relationships going in opposite directions. One of them, just beginning, is very sweet and the other is clearly at the end of its shelf life.

Jack (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a shy and sensitive New York limo driver who works for his uncle and lives in his uncle’s basement. He listens to raggae, tries to whirl his blond locks into dreads, and dreams about working for the MTA. His best friend, Clyde (John Ortiz) also works for his uncle as a limo driver and is married to Lucy (Daphne Ruben-Vega) who works in the office of a mortician.

The couple sets Jack up with Lucy’s new co-worker, Connie (Amy Ryan), a shy, nervous girl who seems to be right for him. Their own shyness really works to their advantage as each one takes it nice and slow, careful to make sure of each other before taking any big steps at all. As Jack walks Connie to a cab on their first date, she mentions that she’d like to go boating some time. They are walking through the snow at the time and Jack remarks that it might be better to wait for summer. But he takes it seriously and Clyde sets out to teach him how to swim at a Harlem pool.

Connie is approached by a strange man in the subway on her way to work and she violently resists, breaking her nose. Lucy calls 911 and she is taken to the hospital. Jack buys a little stuffed koala bear for her and they talk about a second date, maybe for dinner. She tells him that no one has ever cooked for her, so Jack decides to learn how to cook and make a splendid meal for her. Clyde recommends a chef he knows from the Waldorf Astoria that he calls “the Cannoli.” Without Jack prompting him, Clyde then volunteers that Lucy had an affair with the chef that lasted two years. It’s obviously bothering him, but he tries to pretend that they’ve worked the problem out.

Applying himself to his swimming and cooking lessons, Jack gets good at both. After a few initial problems, he gets his application into the MTA and waits to hear whether he will be called for an interview. As he and Connie become more intimate, he comes to understand that she has serious psychological issues about sex, but he is understanding and goes slow, much to her relief.

Without revealing how the movie ends, I will say that both situations come to a head when Jack finally cooks his big meal for Connie at Clyde and Lucy’s apartment.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman directed this moving film, based on the stage play he appeared in, adapted for the screen by the playwright, Robert Glaudini. The study in opposites is very funny at times, but a feeling of tension runs underneath the surface and it kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen. At an hour and twenty-four minutes in length, the pacing and timing are perfect.

Hoffman’s performance as Jack is just amazing. It is a pleasure to watch such a gifted actor creating such a layered character. Amy Ryan gives a great performance as Connie and she works as a perfect foil for Jack. You find yourself hoping that these two gentle, injured people will find a way to make their relationship work, even as it hurts to see what can happen to a relationship at the other end of the scale. John Ortiz is excellent as Clyde and Daphne Ruben-Vega compliments him very well as the two cope with a relationship that doesn’t have the glue to hold it together.

I’m an innocent when it comes to betrayal. I’ll never understand how partners in a marriage can turn away and wound the other so deeply. Jealousy remains one of the great emotional themes of art.

This is a very fine movie and it should be seen. When it was released, it kind of slid by me–and pretty much everyone else, I gather, but it is really good filmmaking. It’s a story well-crafted and well-filmed and it deserves far more attention than it has gotten. I highly recommend it for adult audiences.

Il Postino (The Postman)

November 4, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

~ Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

On a small, nearly isolated Italian island, a fisherman, Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi), lives with his father. A rather simple-minded young man, Mario hates being out on boats all day and complains of the moisture, so his father tells him to get a job. One night, at the movies, he sees a newsreel covering the arrival of famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) to Italy. A communist, Neruda has been exiled by political opponents and has come to live on Mario’s little island.

Mario sees a sign on the door of the post office advertising for a postman with a bicycle to deliver mail. The next morning Mario applies and finds out that it is a part time job to deliver Neruda’s mail. As he does his job, he begins a dialogue with the poet. At first, he is looking for an autograph, so he can show he is a friend of great Neruda and get girls, but as he reads the poetry, he discovers that it appeals to him in some way that he can’t explain. The poetry stirs in him both a desire for love and a desire to fight for the cause of the oppressed. Wanting to write his own poetry, he asks Pablo how to go about it and that leads to an explanation of metaphors.

When Mario falls in love with Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), the niece of the local inn owner, he begs Pablo to help him win her by writing some poetry for him, but the poet refuses, instead giving Mario a beautiful book of paper to begin writing his own poetry. He brings Mario to the inn and signs the book in front of Beatrice. Using Pablo’s poetry, Mario begins to woo her with great success, so much so that Beatrice’s aunt becomes upset, complaining about the evil metaphors in the poetry.

Massimo Troisi was a beloved Italian actor long before Il Postino, mostly for his wonderful comedic roles. When he found the book Ardiente paciencia by Antonio Skármeta, he bound himself to the project, committing to not only star in the film, but to help write the screenplay, along with director Michael Radford, Anna Pavignano, Furio Scarpelli, and Giacomo Scarpelli, even though he was having serious heart problems. He put off surgery in order to the film and dies shortly after it was completed.

The film is beautifully photographed, full of light and color, with the sea surrounding the island always prominent. There is a great deal of Neruda’s poetry included in the movie and it certainly enhances the beauty. The film’s Academy Award winning score, composed by Luis Enríquez Bacalov, is beautiful and gives the film a heightened sense of the love not only between Mario and Beatrice, but the brotherly love between Mario and Pablo.

Besides the win for film score, it was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screeplay Adaptation. The soundtrack features many well known actors reading Neruda’s poetry to the film score. Some of the readers include Julia Roberts, who backed the project, Glenn Close, Ethan Hawke, Andy Garcia, Madonna, and Wesley Snipes, among others.

This is an excellent film. It is beautiful, full of poetry, music, and love. In Italian, with subtitles in English, it runs an hour and forty-eight minutes.

Ordinary People

November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

For those who remember what life was like in 1980, Ordinary People will be a real trip to the past. For those who are too young to know, this movie will give you a brief tutorial in clothing, hair styles, cars, and so on. For both types of people, this will be an extraordinary family drama, full of terrific performances, raw and deeply moving. It won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Robert Redford.

Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton) is a high school senior in Lake Forest, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Plagued with insomnia, he is a loner who shuns his friends and can barely communicate with his father Calvin (Donald Sutherland) and mother Beth (Mary Tyler Moore). Recently released from a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt that was foiled by his father, Conrad has been home now for over a month, but still has not started therapy. The false happiness and optimism of his parents grates against him as they all attempt to cope with the incident that started everything down this crazy road: the death of Buck, the older son in the family. Calvin pretends that life can go on without regard to the death, while Beth seems to have retreated into a coldness that allows for no emotion whatsoever.

Finally, Conrad goes to see a therapist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch), but all he can talk about is maintaining control over his life. Berger would like to see the boy experience some emotion, to face his own anger, terror, and remorse, but Conrad tries desperately to hold on. Remembering how much he liked his time in the hospital, Conrad seeks out a girl that he had been friends with there, Karen (Dinah Manoff), but she seems reluctant to find a relationship with him. She tells him that she is happy now and that he should be optimistic, too. “Let’s have the best year of our lives,” she tells him. At school, he continues on the swim team, which had been previously dominated by his brother, with all of the awards to prove it, but Calvin is, at best, a mediocre swimmer. He finds it impossible to relate to his old friends, who were all friends of Buck’s, too.

The girl who stands in front of him in choir, Jeannine (Elizabeth McGovern) makes friends with him and a mutual attraction develops. For the first time since the accident that killed his brother, Conrad begins to have a sense of optimism. But the tension within the family contains more than just Conrad’s angst. Calvin has serious trouble dealing with Beth’s apparent lack of emotion and he goes to see Dr. Berger himself, discovering that he still has lingering grief over his son’s death and openly questions why his wife didn’t cry at the funeral.

As Christmas approaches, two dynamic incidents explode the plot wide open. Beth discovers that Conrad quit the swim team a month earlier and hadn’t told them, then Conrad finds out that his friend Karen has committed suicide.

Director Robert Redford handles this emotionally charged story very deftly. It could very easily have gone maudlin and mushy, but it always seems real and always completely honest. There’s no fancy camera work or other tricks to divert us from the story, but Redford has a keen sense of pacing. Two hours and four minutes of emotionally charged angst could have been way too much, but I never noticed the action dragging for one moment. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really like dramas, but I couldn’t stop watching this one. It is superbly crafted and Redford was deserving of the two Academy Awards.

The heartbeat of the story is provided by Timothy Hutton. His performance as Conrad is one of the best dramatic performances ever and he was given an Academy Award for it. I’m not sure why they gave him Best Supporting Actor, when he is clearly the lead in this movie, but he would have deserved either one. Donald Sutherland is terrific as Conrad’s father, giving a deep, heartfelt performance. I felt a little bad for Mary Tyler Moore, because her character was so emotionally in control that she didn’t have the opportunity to really reveal her talents. Nevertheless, she did an awful lot with very little to go on. I kept wishing that they could have gotten Beth in to see the psychiatrist, because I felt that she was the one of all three that actually needed therapy more. Hirsch is very good as the psychiatrist and both McGovern and Manoff are believable as the two girls.

The fourth Academy Award went to Alvin Sargent for his adaptation of the novel by Judith Guest. It is a really good screenplay, very tight, and beautifully crafted.

The title of the movie is enigmatic. On one hand, this really isn’t an ordinary family. They are quite wealthy. The parents golf, they are members of the country club, and their friends are all equally rich, if not more so. But the title isn’t “ordinary family,” it’s Ordinary People and the title rings true on that level. Stripped of their wealth, these people are just like everyone, struggling with their problems, trying to figure out how to live their lives in the face of adversity, trying to pretend that things are better than they really are so they won’t have to think about them.

One revealing scene occurs on Calvin’s first date with Jeannine. As they sit in McDonald’s eating burgers, she asks him what it was like to commit suicide. He looks at her and remarks that she is the only person–outside of therapy–who has asked him about it. That one stretch of dialogue speaks volumes about the level of disconnect that exists in this family, their utter refusal to face Conrad’s problems.

This is a great film and it is certainly one of the best domestic dramas of all time. Everyone should see it!

Bridget Jones’s Diary

October 31, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

Based ever so loosely on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, this 2001 British romantic comedy directed by Sharon Maguire is full of hits and misses. The hits are all punches thrown between the two men who seek Bridget’s attention and the misses are all those single women who wish they had a choice between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.

Adapted by Helen Fielding, Andrew Davies, and Richard Curtis from Fielding’s popular novel of the same name, the movie tells the story of Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger), a single woman in her early thirties looking for love. She works at a publishing house in London, under the direction of Daniel Cleaver (Grant), a real hottie that she’d like to get her hands on. Over Christmas, her mother tries to set her up with former childhood neighbor Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Get it? Darcy. Firth. Nudge nudge wink wink. Of course, he very aloof and disdainful and she dislikes him immediately.

Right from the beginning, you know it isn’t going to be anything like Pride and Prejudice. Bridget is drunk half the time, smokes constantly, burbling, bumbling, and making a fool out of herself every five minutes. NOT Lizzy Bennet.

Setting her sights on her boss, she begins wearing short skirts and see-through blouses and exchanging flirtatious emails with him. He, of course, responds. When they see Darcy at a party, Daniel tells Bridget that Darcy once stole his fiancée from him. Wickham, eh? They go away for a weekend and there’s that darned Darcy again. On the verge of meeting Bridget’s parents, Daniel abandons her, explaining that he has important work at the office. Not so. He’s actually having an affair with a woman from the New York branch of the publishing company and Bridget finds the woman at his flat.

She dumps him and there is Darcy, immediately interested.

Parts of the movie are quite funny, but most of the humor depends on Bridget’s putting herself in embarrassing situations, which she does over and over. Personally, I don’t care for that kind of humor, just as I don’t care for novels that depend on the stupidity of their protagonists to make a plot. It was hugely popular for a variety of reasons, but mostly for the sophomoric humor and the beautiful people. It didn’t win any major awards, although Zellweger was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award. (It’s funny that British actors routinely play American roles without getting props for how expertly they handle the accent, yet when a Texan plays a Brit everyone makes a big fuss about it. Frankly, I didn’t find it as believable as everyone else. Kind of like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, there was something that just didn’t completely ring true.)

The supporting cast is wonderful. I loved Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent as Bridget’s parents. Embeth Davidtz, Shirley Henderson, James Callis, and Lisa Barbuscia are all excellent and add to the fun.

There is one other carry-over from the great BBC Pride and Prejudice besides Colin Firth: the screenwriter for that masterpiece, Andrew Davies, collaborated on the script for Bridget Jones’s Diary.

At 98 minutes, it’s a funny, entertaining evening, without having to exercise the brain at all.

The First Annual Amy Adams Film Festival

October 30, 2014October 31, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

When I finished the fifth draft of my novel Walk Against Time, I was suffering a bit of post-partum depression and decided to fill the void with Amy Adams movies, so I decided to create the First Annual Amy Adams Film Festival. Okay, it was a low-key affair, just me and a bowl of popcorn, but it was great fun.

I must confess right from the beginning that I love Amy Adams unconditionally.

There, it’s out in the open. A friend recently asked me what I love about Amy and I’ve got to confess that it’s pretty much the whole package. Red hair, green eyes, a cute little pixie nose. What’s not to love? She’s not emaciated, but not overweight, either (okay, maybe just a tiny hint of baby fat). Inside that perfect shell, there is a personality that just radiates optimism. Don’t blame her, she can’t help it. It’s how she is. She’s like the Tom Hanks of female actors. There’s just something that will never, ever give up on humanity and our potential. Finally, you crinkle in a moderate dash of vulnerability that brings tears to my eyes. Please, Amy, DON’T CRY! I admit it freely. I am besotted.

The film list below contains links to my reviews for each of the movies. Just click on the name or photo to read the full review.

The First Annual Amy Adams Film Festival

Day 1

Leap Year

Amy plays an Irish-American girl who travels to the auld country to propose to her sweetie on February 29th, when she believes he can’t refuse. Along the way, she meets an Irish pub owner that just might change her mind. This is easily the worst of all the films in the festival. It is a romantic comedy that is not entirely successful. Read the review to find out why. It’s a good film to begin the festival with because every movie will get better from now on.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

One of Amy’s most adorable roles as nightclub singer Delysia Lafosse, a flibbertygibbet who is bouncing between three men. It takes a wonderful performance by Frances McDormand to help her realize her true love and find happiness. A wonderful comedy!

American Hustle

Amy does some real acting in this hilarious comedy about two con artists in the 1970’s who get into something over their heads. Christian Bale is unbelievably good in this movie and frankly he steals the show, but Amy is great, too. In fact, everyone is good.

Enchanted

This is an amazing Disney film containing both animation and live action with great music and some incredible songs. Yes, Amy sings again! She is at her delightful best as Princess Giselle who is thrown out of her cartoon kingdom into downtown Manhattan by the evil queen Narissa, played by Susan Sarandon. It’s joyful and funny and one of the best Amy Adams films ever. A personal favorite.

Day 2

Sunshine Cleaning

This is kind of a dark comedy about two down and out Albuquerque sisters, played by Amy and Emily Blunt, who start a business cleaning up crime scenes. It is both funny and touching and features a great performance by Blunt. Alan Arkin appears as their father.

The Fighter

A great film on so many levels! Again, Christian Bale is over the top good and won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as Dicky Eckland, the older brother of Amy’s love interest, Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahberg. Amy plays a smart bartender who helps Micky to escape his family’s bungling of his boxing career. She’s really good in this movie and creates a real regular girl-type character (except that she’s like totally gorgeous, as usual). This is a must-see movie!

Trouble with the Curve

What more could one possibly ask than to have Clint Eastwood as Amy’s crusty old baseball scout father? She’s at her most vulnerable here in a movie that combines some subtle comedy with a deep hurt that she suffered in her childhood. She and Clint are dynamite together and when you add in Justin Timberlake as her love interest, you have a wonderful, feel-good movie that just can’t be resisted. Wonderful!

Julie and Julia

The festival ends, appropriately enough, with Julie and Julia. The first time I actually remember seeing Amy Adams in anything, it was this and I fell for her really hard as Julie Powell, a talented wannabe writer in a post 9/11 world who decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s legendary cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Although they have no scenes together, Meryl Streep’s endearing performance as Julia Child is a perfect counterpoint to Amy’s vulnerable, lovable Julie. This is a film that I can literally watch over and over and love more each time. As a writer, two scenes touch me the most. First, when Julia receives the first printed copy of her book, and second, when Julie gets a call that a publisher is interested in publishing her blog. I’m still waiting for the magical moment in my own life, but these two women are wonderful in their own joy of publication. LOVE—LOVE—LOVE this movie!

And so the festival ends. An empty bowl of popcorn. A little wetness about my eyes. And a hope that the Second Annual Amy Adams Film Festival will be just as enjoyable as the first.

I hope you all like my reviews, please feel free to subscribe to my web site to enjoy all of the reviews I write in the future.

Until then, as Julia Child would say, Bon Appetit!

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

October 30, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

London in 1939 was a hodgepodge of pre-war jitters. Depression era soup kitchens operated down the block from posh nightclubs for the rich and the middle class worked to scratch out a decent living.

Miss Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), a middle-aged spinsterish daughter of a vicar gets fired from her job as a governess. Rushing up the street with her suitcase, she bumps into a man just getting out of prison, Michael Pardue (Lee Pace). Frightened, she runs away, leaving her suitcase in the street. Standing in a soup kitchen that night, she sees fashion mogul Edythe Dubarry (Shirley Henderson) kissing someone in an alley. When Edythe sees she’s being watched, she takes her lover and leaves.

The next morning, Miss Pettigrew goes to her employment agency, but they turn her away because she’s lost every job they sent her on. She steals the business card of American nightclub singer Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams) from her agent’s desk, hoping she can arrive first and steal the job. Delysia is in a state. It’s nearly ten o’clock in the morning and she must get a producer’s son, Phil Goldman (Tom Payne) from her bed before her sugar daddy, Nick Calderelli (Mark Strong) arrives. She hopes that bedding Phil will get her the lead role in his new West End musical. She’s using him, just as she’s using nightclub owner Nick for her wardrobe and apartment.

Jumping into action as Delysia’s new social secretary, Miss Pettigrew manages to gently evict Phil and stall Nick because Delysia must attend a fashionable lingerie show. At the show, Delysia introduces her to Edythe, who doesn’t recognize her right away. She also meets lingerie designer Joe Blomfield (Ciarán Hinds) who has been engaged to Edythe. Delysia and Edythe give Miss Pettigrew a complete make-over. Recognizing her at last, Edythe blackmails Miss Pettigrew into smoothing things over with Joe, even though she had been unfaithful to him, threatening to reveal that she knows Guinevere is actually penniless.

When they get back to the apartment, Michael is there. It turns out that he is the pianist that accompanies Delysia in her nightclub act. They are in love, but Delysia persists in using the other men to further his career. Michael gives her one last chance. He has tickets on a boat to America and is leaving the next morning. He begs her to join him and take their act to Manhattan.

This is just the beginning of a rip-roaring comedy filled with delightful performances. Directed by Bharat Nalluri, the film was adapted by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy from the 1938 novel by treasured British novelist Winifred Watson. Scandalous when it was first released, the movie is quite tame by today’s standards, but still very amusing. Nalluri shows a very deft touch in the directing, mixing tracking shots with steady cam to create a beautiful and tight movie. In addition, the music is truly special, capturing the feeling of the time perfectly. The art direction is fantastic, using upscale art deco side by side with the bleak depression era streets.

Frances McDormand, is, as usual, brilliant. She remains one of our finest actresses and infuses Miss Pettigrew with both restrained priggishness and down-to-earth humanity. In spite of her upbringing, she is open to the friendship that Delysia gives to her. Amy Adams is wonderful as the flibbertygibbet Delysia and she bonds with McDormand very well. They make an amazing comedy team and yet both display great emotion with a restrained script. The two of them make the movie, but all of the male co-stars are also terrific.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a truly entertaining movie that fans of McDormand and Adams will be proud to own. It can be watched over and over with a deepening level of enjoyment. I highly recommend the film!

Silver Linings Playbook

October 28, 2014October 28, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

“The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday. That’s guaranteed. I can’t begin to explain that. Or the craziness inside myself and everyone else. But guess what? Sunday’s my favorite day again. I think of what everyone did for me, and I feel like a very lucky guy.”

This delightful comedy/drama was written and directed by David O. Russell, adapted from the book The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick. Centered around two quirky people, both at a crossroads in their lives, the film presents bi-polar disorder as a condition that can be overcome.

Pat Solatano, Jr. (Bradley Cooper), a former high school teacher, is held in a Baltimore psychiatric hospital for an episode in which he beat another teacher after finding him in the shower with his wife Nikki (Brea Bee). After serving his court-ordered eight months, his mother Dolores (Jacki Weaver) gets him out. In the parking lot, a fellow inmate, Danny (Chris Tucker) jumps in the car, announcing that he has been released, too, but Dolores gets a call from the hospital asking that Danny be returned. Arguing with his mother, Pat grabs the steering wheel and almost gets them in an accident.

Returning home, Pat stops by the library to pick up all of the books in Nikki’s literature syllabus, intending to read all of the books. He is determined that their marriage can be saved, even though Nikki has moved and taken out a restraining order against him. Pat’s father, Pat, Sr. (Robert De Niro) has recently lost his job and is supporting the family working as a bookie, although he intends to open a restaurant so that he can look legitimate. Family and neighbors are all passionate Philiadelphia Eagles fans and Pat, Sr. is hopelessly superstitious about wearing the right jersey, putting his remote controls in certain positions, and rubbing a green handkerchief so that the can bring good luck, “juju” to the Eagles. He also has a temper and is barred from actually attending Eagles games because of his violent behavior. His friend, Randy (Paul Herman), is a Cowboys fan and tries to make money in bets off of Pat, Sr. by gaoding him into making foolish bets.

Pat stays up all night reading Ernest Hemmingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms and then blows up at 4 AM because it doesn’t have a happy ending. He throws the book out the window and harangues his parents. Pat believes that the key to overcoming his illness is to find a silver linings in his every day life. He tries to live by the motto Excelsior (ever upwards) and shares this vision with his therapist, Dr. Cliff Patel (Anupam Kher), who replies that he must get a strategy to live with his illness.

His friend, Ronnie (John Ortiz), invites him to a Sunday dinner. Married to a beautiful girl, Veronica (Julia Stiles), and with a baby, Ronnie is a broker who is suffering anxiety from fluctuations in the market. Veronica’s sister, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), whose cop husband was recently killed, shows up at the dinner and she and Pat find that they can talk about their various medications.

Tiffany agrees to deliver a letter to Nikki if Pat will dance with her in a competition and he reluctantly agrees. They begin to rehearse, but the dance competition takes on a new meaning when Pat, Sr. and Randy make a parlay bet that the Eagles will beat the Cowboys and that Tiffany and Pat can score at least a 5 in the dance competition.

The story is completely engaging. Even though the film runs nearly two hours, every single moment is compelling and one doesn’t notice the time. Cooper and Lawrence are both really terrific, portraying characters that are complicated and yet disarmingly simple. Lawrence won Best Actress for her role as Tiffany. DeNiro is at his very best as Pat, Sr. and Jacki Weaver gives wonderfully believable and warming performance as Dolores. All of the supporting cast are terrific.

Russell’s script and direction are spot on. The editing is amazing, as is the use of music and sound.

It is a movie that deserved all of its nominations and it should be seen by everyone. It is funny, full of pathos, and very moving.

Gravity

October 26, 2014October 26, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 science fiction film Gravity is extremely well-made, a tight thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat for an hour and twenty-four minutes holding on for dear life. It is almost a perfect movie.

This review includes vital information about the plot that may prevent a first-time viewer from enjoying the movie. Please read on if you’ve already seen the film.

On a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), on her first space shuttle mission, works to install upgrades to the system. Veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) flits around her using his maneuvering back pack as he attempts to break the record for the longest space walk, knowing he will never have enough time to do it. Mission Control interrupts them to abort the mission. Apparently, Russia has demolished one of their satellites using a missile and debris is now hurtling through space toward them. As they make their way back to the shuttle, Houston tells them that the debris is taking out other satellites and they will probably lose contact, which happens almost immediately.

Before they can get back into shuttle to return to earth, the junk comes shooting through their area. Although it misses the two astronauts, the shuttle is destroyed and the other mission specialists are killed. Kowalski and Stone must now take a very long space walk to reach the International Space Station (ISS). Time is of the essence because the debris will returns once it has made its way around the earth. Unfortunately, the ISS has also suffered damage. One of the two Soyuz escape modules has been used to evacuate the station and the other has been rendered useless because the parachute has already been deployed. In spite of this Kowalski believes that they can use this useless module to reach the Chinese space station and use their escape module to return to earth. Their approach is fast and they bounce off the craft, but finally Stone’s foot becomes entangled in the chute lines. As Kowalski flies by her, she grabs his tether and holds him tight, but Kowalski’s momentum means pulls against her hold. To save her, he unhooks his tether and drifts away.

From that point on, the film is sharply focussed on Stone’s survival from the Soyuz capsule to the Chinese space station, which is disintegrating in the upper atmosphere, to her entry into its escape module and flight to earth.

Obviously, in winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing, it was clearly the best movie of the year and probably should have won Best Picture as well.

Cuarón’s hand is in most of the movie. Not only did he direct it, but he co-wrote the script with his son, Jonás, co-produced and co-edited it, so he deserved all of his awards, which also included six BAFTA Awards, including Outstanding British Film and Best Director, the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, and seven Critics Choice Awards. The other artists that he surrounded himself with all made major contributions to the success of this movie. The score by Steven Price is amazing, complimenting the action exactly as it should to keep the suspense at a high level. The sound was so good that it was breathtaking at times. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is both flawless and inspired and the special effects by British artists Framestore is simply stunning. Considering that nearly 80% of the movie consists of computer generated graphics, they certainly deserve a huge share of the praise for this awesome movie.

The human heart of the movie exists in Sandra Bullock’s inspired performance. Although George Clooney contributes somewhat to the action, his character is gone by the time the action really gets rolling and the only other in the movie is Dr. Stone. This is Bullock’s film and she carries it from beginning to end with a high-energy emotional presence perfectly in compliment with the music, sound, cinematography. Bullock has grown tremendously as an actress in the last ten years, especially with her role in Blind Side, but she tops that performance in Gravity.

Although it must be considered one of the best space films ever made, right up there with Apollo 13, there were a few things that bothered me and would probably keep the movie out of the top ten best science fiction films on my list.

There are many inaccuracies in the film, most of which can be easily overlooked, but not all. First, I do not believe that neither Kowalski’s mass, nor their speed would have realistically created the situation that forced him to un-tether himself so that Stone might be saved. Their attempt to grab onto the ISS, hurtling into it and bouncing off, is a violent scene. When Stone finally makes it inside, I expected to see bruises and contusions all over her body, but instead, she emerges from her space suit looking squeaky clean. When she finally boards the Chinese space station, the same thing happens, but her grabbing a handhold while hurting at a prohibitive speed with the clumsy glove is extremely unrealistic. The final problem for me occurred during her attempts to figure out how to operate the Chinese capsule as she pushed buttons at random and finally found the one that magically allowed her to re-enter earth’s atmosphere at the proper angle to avoid a complete burn-up.

I might be overly critical on these scenes—I’m sure most people wouldn’t have an objection—but I thought that all of these problems, with a little tweaking, could have been easily made more realistic and would have really made it a flawless film.

This is still a great and powerful film, a rollercoaster of a movie that shoots its way along an arc that is tightly plotted, with every aspect of the film working in complete harmony, and it does it with no discernable fat in terms of scenes or timing. Everybody should see this movie!

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

October 25, 2014October 26, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

This novel comes rumbling out of some torn up Manhattan tunnel like a queercore punk nightmare, full of profanity, revolt, degradation, and the sweetest young love you’ve ever tasted on some strange Jack Kerouac night full of piss and vinegar.

Much the way On the Road roared at the right side of the highway from America’s kick back against conformity in the 1950’s, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist assaults the reader from the first page and doesn’t stop jumping until literally the last word of the book, which is, appropriately: “Jump.” Young adult authors Rachel Cohn and David Levithan trade chapters in this novel, with her writing as Norah and him writing as Nick. That accounts for the distinctive voice of each character (written in the ever present YA Biblical tense of FIRST PERSON PRESENT).

The book begins with Nick on stage at some Manhattan club playing bass with his queercore punk band, The Fuck Offs. He’s the only straight guy in the group, comprised of high school seniors. The drummer, Thom (with an H), is less than talented and waits for a solo that never comes in the two minute screaming slashes that they burn, and the lead singer, Dev, is a beautiful slut, ever on the make for his next guy. Nick nearly loses it when his ex-girlfriend Tris comes smoking into the club with her newest guy because she is truly, eternally hot and he is still desperate for her. After the set, he goes to the bar and when Tris approaches him, he turns to the girl next to him, who wears of all things, a flannel shirt in this den of trendy commercially run Ramones tee shirts, and says, “I know this is going to sound strange, but would you mind being my girlfriend for the next five minutes?” Norah answers his question by giving a deep, eye-opening kiss that begins a six hour trip for these two angst ridden teens that doesn’t stop until, well, like, you know, the end.

Alternately attracted and repulsed, Nick tries to deal with Tris strutting around with her new guy, while Norah, who is Jewish, tries to deal with her ex-boyfriend who has just returned from a kibbutz in Israel. They are both POSITIVELY unhip and yet at the same time are the two COOLEST people in the novel. Norah, it turns out, is the daughter of a lifelong A&R man and she grew up traveling the country, going to concerts, and listening to every kind of music there is and digging it all. Right now, she is deeply, wholly, into punk and so, of course, is Nick, who himself is into all different kinds of music, even though right now he’s really into punk. Although he doesn’t know who Norah is, she knows all about him because she’s an old friend of Tris and has listened to and admired the mixes he’s made and the songs he’s written. They are both trying really hard to be people that they’re really not because they love this kind of music and nothing exhilarates either of them more than jumping into the mosh pit when Where’s Fluffy? plays their trashed out rejection of The Man. As Norah sagely remarks: “The mosh pit never lies.”

Although there are things in book that made me seriously pause, look out the window, and wonder how it was possible to write something that sounded so trite and yet rang so true, I raced through the 183 pages in less than a day. The prose carries you forward as if you were just a passenger on their crazy train or a thrashing punk song, and after a while, you don’t really want to get off or see the song end. Long sentences that riff like one of Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness poems run into even longer paragraphs that run into pages that occur inside one brain or the other and at the end you realize that only a few seconds have passed in the story and it only felt like a few seconds as these pages devoured you!

Most of the book is just laugh-out-loud funny, although there are some pages where you might develop a permanent little chuckle. Cohn and Levithan have such a grip on their writing, however, that this humor can change to heart-rending angst or unexpectedly profound observation within a few words.

The push and pull back and forth between Nick and Norah is a kind of song in itself as they feel their way through their anxieties, work out their past failures, and grope toward a relationship. They are, in some ways, metaphors for our fractured world and if they can work it out, maybe we can work it out. This must be considered a break-through novel in the YA genre, not just for the language, but for the compression of time, the driving style, and the unique young voices that push it forward.

This is a compelling book that should be LOUD on YA radar.

Like it or not.

My review of the movie is located at Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.